A Paddle Around the Bay

This afternoon was so beautiful on the water that I couldn't resist putting the yellow "Otter" kayak in the water for what might be the last day of the year. I got a nice "retro" look at the house in the first shot, and then went up the bay to the campground, the "Town Landing" and the mouth of Flander's Stream where it empties into the bay. The pictures were mostly just for the color of the fall season, but the joy was really in just sitting on the bay. These are all mobile (iPhone) pictures, so the resolution isn't all that good, but some were done with the Hipstamatic app, and I really enjoy the surprise with them as you can never really be sure exactly how they will look. Here are a few of the photos!

Sunrise in Trenton

I may have made a post similar to this one in the past, but the sunrise as I passed the golf course in Trenton the other day really grabbed my attention. That "special image" that a photographer sometimes finds comes from the quality of light and of course the subject matter, but if that light is such a beautiful thing pushing through the clouds and creating separate rays here and there that it becomes a spectacle, it asks to be captured. The mist along the river and the formations of the clouds bring a texture and layering to any composition that reflects that quiet and dimness of light that can be seen only at that time of morning. Colors are subdued on the ground and in the trees, but the magical sky comes brightly alive.

Pig Apple

That's all. Construct meaning for this!

Just Another Sunset

Last night the sky was gorgeous, as it seems to be most every night, but this case was unusual as there was a "hint" of a rainbow in the clouds to the south of the setting sun. Reflected on the water, this gave the water and sky an interesting cast as David set sail for a quick evening cruise around the bay. There is something magical in the tricks that the sun plays on the water, from reflections that are mirror-like to the sparkle of windy whitecaps. I just liked this image for the color and the quality of the light.

Pumpkin in the Rain

I went out from the house this afternoon looking for "water photos" and took a quick shot of the film of water on the patio tiles at the main entrance to our house.

 I glanced to my right and saw a pumpkin lying on the tiles underneath a glass patio table, and the most interesting thing about that was that drops of water had formed underneath the table. The result was that the drops (each drop) formed a lens that captured the pumpkin perfectly. I began to move the camera and change my point of view and so came up with the second shot, which seems even more abstract and surreal that the first one!
No filters were used here, these are straight shots from life. I'm thinking the second one could be better in a vertical format... hmmm......

Bar Harbor During "A" Block

Dan and I took our classes to Bar Harbor this morning for some "on site" artwork and photography. Getting the studetns out and giving them the "real world" to work in seems to make a difference. We'll see what they got fro images and if there was anything that Dan's students can use for reference.

Here are a couple of pictures that I liked, one of the water fountain at the top of the "Green" and one of a fire hydrant in the middle of town. Water related items, I believe!

Tonight Before Supper

Yeah, I know, it's "dinner", although as I was born and raised in a small coastal town here in Maine, we always called it "dinner & supper", not "lunch & dinner" as the "folks from away" tended to say. So I guess I'll stick with the title.

The first picture is one of the house where Jen grew up, across the road from where we now live. I was a bit nostalgic for some reason this afternoon and so it seemed important to me to photograph that house. We were married to  the left of the house, in the back yard under a huge silver maple tree during the remnants of a hurricane, Doria I think it was called. Although the timing doesn't seem right, it makes a great story.

The next one I struggled a bit with the balance between the sky and the water. The water was so beautiful, as only water can be, but the sun bouncing off the bottom of the clouds also fascinated me, so rather than look at an asymmetrical balance of sky and water I split the difference and held the land mass in the middle. The beauty of the light on both subjects caused me to share their importance as subjects of the shot.

Finally, as I often find myself doing, I was drawn to the water. Using the camera to describe water is so amazing! If you compare these last two pictures just on the basis of f-stop and shutter speed, you can see that there is a difference in color, and with the reflected sun as a light source I'm not really sure which is more accurate. What really caught my eye as I was taking these was how much more the water looked like it was actually a thick layer on the rocks in the slower (blurred) shutter speed photograph (bottom).

Gelatin Prints from Haystack

Man, the time sneaks by so quickly... I just got the chance to "ink" some of my prints from last weekend at Haystack, and then I took a few pictures with my cell phone. The images are only about four inches square so they are actually bigger than "life" on the screen. I enjoy the color play with gelatin prints and it seems that each individual print usually is a pleasant surprise. I resorted to a few of my "old" stencils... those shapes that I have used before in a number of works and that I feel are still "valid" to my mindset and creative process. I like to "name" prints, but I haven't really gotten that far yet with these.

Geese at School & a Beautiful End to Day

I got a phone call during first period with my digital photo class and it was our school bookkeeper who saw geese on the lawn on her way into school. I took the class outside armed with telephoto lenses and we got a lot of great pictures of the geese. Here are a couple.

The day ended gorgeously with a cloud reaching for the moon over the bay!

Busy at Haystack

... so I had very little time beyond the studio sessions to look at or investigate school work or the interweb. The one time I felt the need to use technology, wait there were two; one was to look up the difference between a monotype and a monoprint (got it quickly on Wikipedia) and to listen to Pandora while I fell asleep last night. That was it, I'm really, really tired, so I will post one iPhone photo for tonight then I will get some Haystack stuff up this week.