Rambles

Down the driveway this morning with dog and my oh-so-easy-to-carry-along-camera. Light wasn’t anything special and nothing grabbed my attention as anything special but I did snap a few shots just on general principle – though I’m not at all sure what that general principle is.

The beech trees have finally dropped the leaves of last year and are coming alive with new growth.

The pine trees at the top of the old garden are showing signs of "candling." Doesn't this usually happen in June?

And, of course, the apple trees are blossoming again. We've had three consecutive good apple years because of generous spring rains. We've had less moisture this year so far. It will be interesting to see how they do. One of the best trees hardly has any blossoms on it. What's up with that?

 Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

Got out on the lake relatively early this morning for our weekly Wed. “Out of the House Time”. And it was glorious – at least until we were heading home. I had the G9 around my neck and all was well until the wind picked  up and as we headed back home I was getting regularly sprayed by waves breaking over the bow. I worried about the camera which was in my shirt pocket, as the shirt pocket was soon soaking wet. Happily, the shirt apparently absorbed all the water and the camera make it through just fine. The last image was taken after I got back and was waiting on the dock for my companion to catch up – proving everything was still working.

Headed down river below the locks.

The view up river coming back through the locks.

Merlin, the dog, eagerly awaiting the return.

A fine day for a paddle. And a fine paddle it was. We were out for two hours and got some good exercise coming home into the wind. Only three days until the first race of the season – the Round the Mountain. Should be fun. The weather is supposed to great.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

Well, not quite. One snuck in spite of itself. There was a high school art show going at at town hall while I was gallery sitting the other day and they had town hall festooned for the event. This is one image with two looks.

Town Hall, Saranac Lake. Pretty much straight out of the camera - considering RAW and all that.

Same image desaturated except for the banners. All done in Lightroom with nary a hint of Photoshop

And I have nothing more to say about that. It is what it is.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

Here are two photos taken several month and may miles apart. One is from Chicago and the other taken on our driveway just the other day. Both are photos taken with the camera pointing pretty much straight up. It’s not a perspective we tend to examine very much, unless we’re looking for figures in the clouds or recovering from a nasty blow to the head or a bacchanalian hangover (which could be eerily similar – so I’m told, never having experienced such personally, of course).

Widow washers at work in Chicago. Fun job on a windy Chicago day, I'm sure.

Up the trunk of a mighty White Pine. Mother Nature is such an amazing builder.

Just read a fascinating piece about work being done to discover new ways to approach building and making things. Notice the obvious differences in how we (humans) do things (note the rectilinear structure of the building) and how nature does things (organic, fluid forms). The research is about looking for ways through mathematics and basic engineering to replicate nature’s approach to building. See this link.

Pretty exciting and wonderful stuff. Or maybe we should just keep on forcing the world to do our bidding. We’ve been doing so well with that approach so far.

And on another topic: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all who have or are mothers.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

The rains have fled and it’s been a glorious day. So it was time to get out of the house and go looking for some photo ideas. Now in my neighborhood when I go looking for things to shoot what I end up looking at mostly is Trees. Lots and lots of trees. If I lived in a city or even a small town or village, I could wander around my neighborhood and perhaps see people to take picture of. But around here that’s just not the case. So I end up with trees. Which when you really start to pay attention to them, are not really all that bad. For the last few weeks, I’ve been paying more attention to trees in the singular rather than as an aggregate (that old tree and forest thing) and  have been reminded that they have a wealth of possibilities. So begins an homage to trees. I’ll do this sparingly so as not to overwhelm any poor, hapless souls who have the misfortune of stumbling upon this site through the vagaries of Google.

Birch tree with lots of detail and texture.

On close inspection, even the Beech trees have things to offer. Rather sensual what?

Enough for now. As I said I don’t want to overwhelm delicate sensibilities. But fear not, there will be more to come. Please Curb your Enthusiasm.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been trying to shoot pictures on a more regular basis and have been relatively successful. But today, with a persistent rain and low, grey clouds I was thinking this wouldn’t be such a good photo day. But then I said to myself, “Self, said I, Why not try to get some shots today anyway?” So I picked up a camera, two cameras actually, and wandered around the house abit just looking. And sure enough, I found some things that encouraged me to click the shutter – things that on a regular day either wouldn’t have been there quite like they were today, or I just wouldn’t have been “looking” in a way that let me see them.

No great shakes, but a bit of a different look in a place that is everyday familiar. It was a fun exercise anyway.

Out the window on a grey and rainy day. (D300 w/ 300mm lens.)

Another window shot. Same camera and lens.

Looking much closer to home, the porch, with a different camera and the 50mm lens. This one seemed to work better as a B&W - it was that kind of a day.

While this one liked the "color" look. Looking at the garden through the screen door. 50mm f/1.8 lens.

It never hurts to just take some time to “look”. You never know what you might “see”. Even if it’s stuff you look at every day, when you take to time to really look, there may be some surprises.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

What a gorgeous day! Blue skies, flat water and blossoms and leaves busting out all over the place. No question, spring has sprung even in the Adironacks. It still seems frightfully early for all of this to be happening, even the black flies are getting into the act already. Daffest is still the main happening in Saranac Lake and the wife has the house and yard filled with flowers – of the daffodil persuasion. So, I had to check out the bokeh of the sweet little 50mm f /1.8.

A little inside arrangement of little flowers in a little vase. Cute though.

An inside arrangement of daffodils.

An outside arrangement of daffodils. (Seems to be a theme here.)

Breakfast time on the grape hyacinth.

The photo ops of spring are so much more colorful than what we deal with in winter up here.

 Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner and it has become sort of the traditional opening time for the first show of Pendragon’s annual season. The first show is typically the “kiddie” show and this year’s offering is the classic “Pinocchio.” I was at a dress/tech rehearsal for the show yesterday and had a chance to test out my still pretty new Sony camera in the theater environment – an important test since theater was one of the main places I was hoping to improve image output with the new camera.  Here are some results.

Gepeto and his wooden boy.

Puppet master Gepeto with two of his "creations."

Pinocchio's conscience - the cricket.

Lorenzo, the evil kidnapper.

One of the most amazing things about these new cameras is their incredible high ISO capabilities. I set the camera on Auto ISO (which I virtually never do) and the shutter speed high enough to stop all but the quickest actor motion and just shot. Some of the ISO settings were as hight as 3200, but the images are more free of noise than I used to see at ISO 400 when I was shooting shows with the Canon G9. Also amazing to me is that the shots I’ve included here are all cropped, some quite a bit and are still clean and sharp. I like it. There is a bit of shutter noise though which is why I’m going to be doing more shooting in a rehearsal setting than during actual performances as I’ve done in the past. So I will be going back and see it once it’s open even if I don’t take a camera.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.

As usual, the first Friday of the month was the occasion for another art opening at the Guild’s Gallery. This month the featured artist is Guild member and fellow photographer and bowler, Barry Lobdell. His title for the show is Sunrise and Sunset and includes some lovely images with lovely light.

At Barry's opening

This is looking through gallery from the back wall toward the front door. It’s my first post of a panorama from the Sony camera that does such a good job of creating panoramas on the fly. It’s a nice show, was a nice opening and had good attendance – and yummy food.

Burdette

RoundLake Studios

Copyright 2012  Burdette Parks. All Rights Reserved.