Barn Light

The Inn at Mountain View Farms, East Burke, Vermont

One of the coolest places that I visited during my recent photo workshop was the Inn at Mountain View Farm in East Burke, VT. The inn is located on a 440-acre historic farm on top of a mountain with picturesque views of the surrounding Vermont countryside. One of our workshop leaders had arranged for the Inn and all of the surrounding farm buildings on the property to be available to be photographed. In one of the old stables, I found what I believe is a storage basket that probably holds hay. The way it was shaped led me to believe that, when full, the horses could reach up and eat the hay. The light coming through the window was wonderful and lit the weathered wood, giving it a golden glow.

All in all, we spent several hours at the Inn shooting images. We could have spent at least a week there. I hope to revisit with my wife sometime in the near future to get the full experience. Click here to find out more about the Inn.

Weathered

Burke Road, Sutton, Vermont

Today's image is from Sutton, Vermont. We had arrived in full force to a local farm that was nice enough to let us shoot the Sutton Church steeple in the distance. After shooting the church, we were walking back to the cars and I spotted this barn. I was taken with it's color and weathered look and was hoping to capture the scene in a way that conveyed what I was seeing. I am very pleased with the result but how I got there was a real learning experience. I had taken this photography workshop for many reasons and one of those was to get an assessment of my composition skills. My original image is below and gives a full look at the barn's wall. During the review of this photo, it was pointed out that while it was an excellent image, the real gem was the window with the weathered wall that is featured in this post.

I heard this type of comment numerous times during the week and I realized that I had a "wide angle" tendency when composing my images. I was encouraged to continue to shoot wide angle but also to analyze the scene to see if there were any stronger compositions that could be extracted from it. As the week progressed, I found myself finding strong subjects that might have been missed in the wide view.

Fall Foliage Graffiti

Albany Covered Bridge, Kancamagus Highway, Albany, New Hampshire

Today we visit New Hampshire's famed Kancamagus Highway. The Kancamagus Highway (also known as the "Kanc") is a 34 mile scenic drive that is known as one of the best fall foliage viewing areas in New England. The Kanc in October is the destination of choice for thousands of "leaf peepers" from all over the country. With the weather being unusually warm (high 70's and low 80's) as well as being Columbus Day week, the crowds were at all-time highs. The Kanc has many attractions but one of the most popular is the Albany Covered Bridge. Being part of a photography workshop, we arrived after our dawn shoot at Cathedral Ledge (see yesterday's post) in hopes that it was still early enough to beat the crowds. As the 20+ photographers in our group arrived in the parking lot, we found it totally deserted. Little did we know that a tour bus was on its way to the bridge.

This is the first time that I have shot with so many photographers, so it can be interesting to see where everyone goes to set up their shots. Trust me, we had this bridge covered from every angle. This shot was taken inside the bridge with a 16-35mm as I wanted to get a wide view of the river, the surrounding foliage and the bridge structure along with it's graffiti. I will say that despite the number of photographers, everyone was conscious of not walking into one another's shots and would remain motionless whenever someone was shooting so as to prevent the bridge from shaking.

Blue Hour at the Pier

Edgecomb, Maine

This is one of those very unexpected photos that we sometimes discover and become one of our favorites. When booking hotels for my lighthouse scouting trip with my son, I found this relatively cheap hotel within 25 minutes of Pemaquid Point. When Greg and I checked in, the hotel was the typical hotel room you would expect. We headed to Pemaquid Point to scout out the location for the next morning's shoot. After the scouting trip, we drove to Wiscasset to grab a quick dinner. Getting back to the hotel at about 8:30 pm, we walked around the hotel property and found this extremely long pier that was lit up. After seeing the pier and the great blue hour light, I ran back to the car and grabbed the tripod and camera. This was one of the images that I shot. It was a beautiful night and we spent a long time just hanging out on the pier. It was one of those totally unexpected moments and images.

Campanile View

Venice, Italy

I am really excited this week. On Friday, I saw that there were some last minute openings in Bill Fortney's and Matt Kloskowski's New England Photo Workshop. I've never taken a photo workshop before and have always admired Bill's and Matt's work. I decided to take the plunge and I am heading back to Maine on Saturday for the workshop. Looking forward to it so much. Now to today's image... Venice is one of the most unique cities in the world. It is a photographer's paradise with views on every street / canal. The center of our stay in Venice was St Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco). The square seems to be the designation of every traveler to Venice and is also a popular meeting place for the locals.

The piazza is home to the famous St Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace. To get a different view of St Mark's, you can enter it's campanile (bell tower) and go up 323 feet to see the basilica from above. The view shows the five domes of St Mark's against the backdrop of the surrounding city.

Inside Looking Out

Sturbridge, Massachusetts

I am often asked about my workflow and I thought I would start documenting it. It's an ever evolving process and what is good for me may not work for you. Today I will describe how I organize my photos and choose them for editing. First a little history. When I first started shooting as a full time hobby, I would identify my keepers and immediately process them and put them on the web. I quickly began to realize that I wasn't being selective enough and was spending way too much time processing images that, quite frankly, were not worth it. I also felt a bit overwhelmed when I got home as I felt the immediate pressure to process all of the images. As a result, I became more critical of my work and only kept the images that I really liked and thought had potential.

My digital darkroom skills back then were pretty rudimentary.  So, I began to edit a few photos from each shoot and saved the other ones for future editing once my processing skills improved. I quickly discovered that finding the unprocessed keepers was a challenge due to how I organized my photos. I organize my images in a "Master Photo" folder location that contains sub-folders for each year . Inside each year's sub-folders were additional sub-folders for each shoot (labeled with the shoot name and date). While this structure worked (and still works) for me, it made looking for these unprocessed keepers a bit tedious.

It wasn't until I started using Lightroom's collections feature that I stumbled upon a way of finding these older images a lot easier. The first step was to lose the mindset about folders. Yes, I still store my images in the same folder structure, but after they are imported into Lightroom, I no longer use them. Immediately after import, I review the photos, rejecting the obvious ones and giving 5 stars to the obvious keepers that I want to process some day. These are automatically sent to a collection named "To Be Processed". The remaining photos are reviewed a second time, usually to evaluate similar photos that I haven't made a decision about yet. On this second review, some images are deemed keepers and given 5 stars.  I have done that for all of my images.

Now when I want to process an image, I don't care which folder an image is in. Instead, I simply look through the "To Be Processed" collection and pick the ones that feel right to me that day. The image could be one I took last week or one that I took years ago.

How does my workflow differ from your yours? I welcome any comments, suggestions or questions.

This image was shot a few years ago from inside one of Old Sturbridge Village's cabins. The light from the outside gave a great glow on the old window frame.

Glass Canopy

Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia

When planning our recent vacation in Alaska, we decided to end our trip in one of my favorite cities, Vancouver. We elected to stay at the Pan Pacific Hotel that is part of Canada Place so we didn't have to go very far when our cruise ship docked. We were very lucky to have some great weather and spent a lot of time exploring the city. The last night of our stay, before we headed home, turned out to be the best night for shooting. There was a golden glow everywhere we walked and the reflections on the surrounding buildings were some of the best I have seen. This view is one of my favorites of the night and I took it as I was leaving the hotel. The hotel's glass canopy with it's geometric shapes nicely framed the buildings that surrounded the city block. As I processed the image, I noticed what I thought were halos but after careful inspection, they turned out to be reflections from the light on the glass.

Palace Walk

Achilleion Palace, Corfu, Greece

The Achilleion Palace on the island of Corfu, Greece was built in 1890 by the Empress of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria. The palace was named and designed after the mythical hero, Achilles. The palace itself is a monument to Achilles with paintings and statues of him throughout the building and its surrounding gardens. The back of the palace is impressive with its checkerboard marble patio that is surrounded by impressive statues. Off to the side of this patio is a terraced walkway that leads to a viewpoint that overlooks the surrounding countryside. This image was taken from the viewpoint looking back toward the palace. It was early morning and the light was streaming through the gardens leaving streaks of light and shadow on the terraced walkway. I was taken with the textures of the stone and wanted to make sure I composed as much of it as I could leading toward the vanishing point of the walkway.

Boat Building Reflections

Hartford, Connecticut

This image is of Hartford's semi-famous Boat Building with the Travelers Tower in the background. Hartford, often referred to as the "insurance capital of the world", is also the capital of Connecticut. You may not be able to tell, but the Boat Building is actually a two-sided building that looks like a football from above. Built in 1963, it was the world's first two-sided building. The building is located on Constitution Plaza adjacent to the Connecticut River immediately to the east. When approaching from the east, the building looks like a sail of a boat that is docked against its moorings. The building itself has a lot of meaning for me as I moved to Hartford from the Philadelphia area for a job in 1992. I worked in that building on and off for about 10 years. I shot this image during Scott Kelby's "Worldwide Photowalk". I was drawn to the contrast between the glass of the building with it's refections against the more traditional Travelers Tower.

Shadows

The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island

Newport, Rhode Island has been a summer resort destination for a long time. In fact, during the Gilded Age, many rich industrialists built some of the most opulent summer "cottages” of the era. They came to Newport for the short summer social season. Their "cottages" had large receiving areas, dining, music and ballrooms, but with few bedrooms, since the guests were expected to have "cottages" of their own. The social scene at Newport is described in Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. The biggest of all of the mansions is the Breakers which was built by the Vanderbilt family. The Breakers has 70 rooms and contains approximately 65,000 square feet and cost $12 million to build in the 1890's.

This image of a small portion of the front entrance to the Breakers caught my eye before entering the mansion. The sunlight painted great streaks of shadows on the marble columns and walkway.

Giant Spoke

London Eye, London, England

I thought I would give you another uncommon image of a very famous icon. When looking at this subject, I was trying to figure out how to capture it in a way that showcased the size of this popular attraction in a way that was different from the thousands of other photographs of it. The spindle in this photo is approximately 225 feet in the air. The cables include 16 rim rotation cables and 64 spoke cables, which are similar to bicycle spokes, holding the rim tight to the central spindle. Did you guess what it is? No, it's not a big bicycle spoke in the sky but rather London's very famous tourist attraction, the London Eye. Have a great weekend everyone

Early Morning at the Lodge

McKinley Lodge, Alaska

As I have mentioned in my previous posts about my Alaskan trip, we stayed at the Mt McKinley Lodge for a couple of nights before heading to Denali National Park. The lodge is located off of Alaska's Parks Highway (Milepost 133) that connects Anchorage and Fairbanks. This remote location (the nearest town of Talkeetna is 45 minutes away) guarantees that there is always a crowd in the lodge relaxing and taking in the view of Mt McKinley and the surrounding scenery. The lodge is beautiful and and well appointed with several restaurants, viewing rooms and outside decks. As you can tell from my website, I rarely take photos of the inside of buildings (not sure why) but I really wanted to capture the beauty of the lodge's main viewing room. I figured that in order to shoot the room without anyone in it, I had to get there very early in the morning. I was happy to see that at 5:30 am, I was the only one there other than staff. I wish that the weather was not overcast as having Mt McKinley visible through the window would have been great but I am pretty pleased with the result. I think that I will making an effort in the future to shooting more inside subjects.

Ruins

Cape Sounion, Greece

We only had a day to spend in Athens, so with so many options, we had to narrow down where to visit to a couple of things. Of course, you must visit the Acropolis but what to do next? For something a bit different from the bustling activity of the city, we decided on taking a bus to Cape Sounion to visit the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon. Along the way to the cape, we passed some stunning coastal views as well as many great beaches. Pulling up to the entrance of the temple, it was obvious why the temple was built on this site. The ruins are situated on top of a rocky hill where views of the beautiful Aegean Sea are visible in almost every direction.

The Temple of Poseidon was built around 440 BC and these columns are all that remain. According to Greek legend, Cape Sounion is where Aegeus, king of Athens, leapt to his death off the cliff, thus giving his name to the Aegean Sea.

I chose this composition as I thought the colors of the columns would contrast nicely with the cloud cover.

Spiderman's View

Transamerica Building, San Francisco, California

After my post last Friday of the Balancing Upside Down Elephant, I decided to end this week with an unusual image. The Transamerica Building is an iconic part of the San Francisco skyline. There are thousands of images of the famous pyramid shaped building from every angle (okay, I admit to taking some of those more common shots). I also wanted to take an uncommon shot of the building and this is it. I have a little history with The Transamerica building. In the 1980's I visited San Francisco for the first time for some business meetings that were held there. It was then that I fell in love with the city. When I first looked at the image, my first thought was the perspective Spiderman would see if he tried to climb the building. I'm not sure why that popped into my head but it is probably because as a kid, I loved to collect and read comic books (baseball cards were a close second). I don't know what happened to the comic books of my youth but I still have a fondness for them today.

Anchorage Evening

Anchorage, Alaska

I started to look at my Alaska photos today and realized why I don't look at them for a few weeks or months after a trip. I am usually overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos (many of them to be deleted) as well as they seem to pale in comparison to the actual scenery. After a few weeks or months, my perspective is much better and I find that I actually find some gems in there. That said, I decided to edit the very first photo I took in Alaska. If you asked me before I took the trip, I would have guessed my first image published would be of the beautiful Alaska landscape but instead it is a photo of Anchorage from my hotel room. The journey to the hotel was long and tiring. Up at 4 am to catch a flight out of Hartford, we didn't get into the room until almost 5 pm (9 pm Eastern Time). To our surprise, it was really hot in the room and it had no air conditioning (I guess we should have been happy that it was sunny out for the first time in weeks).

I opened the drapes and saw this scene. Unfortunately, the angle was bad which caused terrible reflections in the window pane. Because of the lack of air conditioning, the windows were able to be opened just enough to barely stick my D700 out the window. I fired off a burst of 5 shots and hoped that Photoshop's Auto-Align would work miracles (it did). A good start to the trip.

Island Monastery

Sveti Đorđe, Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

One of the most surprising places that I have visited was Kotor, Montenegro. Once a part of Yugoslavia, Montenegro became an independent nation as recently as 2006. Located between Croatia and Albania, its shoreline lies on the Adriatic Sea. It is a small country (about the size of Connecticut); is mostly rugged mountains and is home to only about 620,000 people. According to our guide, the most amazing fact is that it has 365 churches. I have already posted about our visit to the Lady of the Rocks (you can read it here) located in the middle of the Bay of Kotor. After our visit to the church, I wandered outside and noted the smaller island across the water. I learned that this was a monastery (Saint George Benedictine monastery or Ostrvo Sveti Đorđe).

I was intrigued by the sight of the majestic mountains behind the monastery. I took a single shot as it was mid-day with the light and shadows being harsh and didn't expect it to come out. Only recently did I pull it out of the archives to see what I could do with it. I am pretty happy with the results.

Colorful Chapel

Air Force Academy Chapel, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Back from my awesome trip to Alaska and Vancouver where I shot tons and tons of photos. I haven't processed any yet but I am sure that you will be seeing some in the near future. In the meantime, a revisit to the Air Force Chapel in Colorado Springs (you can see my original post here). This time we head inside the chapel (there are actually three chapels) to check out the Protestant Chapel. The point of the roof is about 100 feet from the floor and the spires are separated by colored glass. The chapel seats 1,200 people.

That's it for today while I recover a bit (I need a vacation from my vacation).

Heavy Load

Grand Canal,Venice, Italy

Venice is a magical place and it is very hard to describe it to someone who hasn't been there. There is a feel to the "city" that is unlike anywhere else I have been. Venice actually lies in a lagoon that is protected from the sea by thin strips of land that have three small inlets. Rather than an island, Venice is actually made up of 124 small islands connected by small bridges. Venice is a favorite destination for tourists who arrive by plane, water taxi and cruise ships. This particular morning, I got up at dawn and wandered out onto the Grand Canal. This is one of the few times you can avoid the crowds of tourists and get some shots without worrying about bumping into someone. I noticed this artist that had the same idea and was painting the scene. As I began to shoot a few photos of the artist, I noticed this large cruise ship being towed down the Grand Canal out to sea by a little tugboat. It was an amazing scene that I never saw coming. I think I enjoy the images that were a result of just dumb luck the best.

As I edited the photo, I wanted to give it a painterly feel and I am happy with the result.

There is a great video that explains how Venice "works" and needs to be constantly maintained.

Motif No. 1

Rockport, Massachusetts

This bright red building is a fishing shack In the small town of Rockport, Massachusetts. Located on Bradley Wharf, it is purportedly the most painted fishing shack in the America. The shack even has its own name, Motif No. 1 that was given to it by an art teacher in the 1920s who, after seeing his students repeatedly draw the shack, exclaimed "What? Motif No 1 again!" The original shack was destroyed by the blizzard of 1978 when it was swept into Rockport Harbor. Motif No. 1 was rebuilt within a year. The fishing shack has even been commemorated on a postage stamp.

We had vacationed in Rockport is the 1980's when we lived in New Jersey. At that point in time, I wasn't into photography. Since we now live in New England, I finally got around to revisiting Rockport with my son to photograph good old Motif No. 1 and the surrounding area. There are many places to set up a tripod but this location is probably the best angle. I highly recommend a visit to Motif No. 1 if you are in the Cape Ann area.