Recently in strictly scenic Category

In THE BEST RICE, a list of points of composition I put together a while back where each letter corresponds to a photographic point, entrance and exit is one "e".

Here, in this photo of Brigus, Newfoundland, the tiny road leads up to the town. From there, let your eye wander over the churches, the wall of rocky mountains, the colorful fall colors and the man walking his dog.

Newfoundland is a wonderful place to visit, and during any time of the year, you'll find photos worth framing at every turn. The ferry trip to the west side of the island is about six hours, the east side about 17 hours. Once on the island, view the icebergs, moose, whales, and enjoy the company of the friendliest people you'll ever meet. And you won't have to fight the elbow-to-elbow tourists as you would on Alaska cruises.

While at the Brigus Blueberry Festival, we sampled all the local food, including fish and brewis, fried cod tongues and cod jerky. Being an island, much of the economy is based on fishing, and they eat what they catch. For a recipe for fish and brewis, click here. For a recipe for fried cod tongues, click here. The latter recipe I gleaned from Joyces Fine Cooking. Honest. Be aware, both are very, very salty.

The scenery is varied, from Scandanavian-looking fiords to forests to sparse tundra. Remember, they don't call Newfoundland "The Rock" for nothing.

Yep, winter's getting here in a hurry and my sister in Mentor, Ohio, shoveled about five inches of snow Monday. Mentor is just east of Cleveland in the famed snowbelt area on Lake Erie, so they have learned to expect it. We have no snow yet, but...

But the critters around my house and probably yours as well, are hitting the feeders with a fury. The birds are emptying the sunflowers seeds in half the time it usually takes, and the neighborhood squirrels, well, they'll eat anything that doesn't move. I keep a tin garbage can full of corn-on-the-cob so they'll stuff themselves with that and not the sunflower seeds, but they were even walking around on the can this afternoon, trying to find away inside.

For tips on feeding birds in winter, click here

For tips on how to keep squirrels off bird feeders, click here

Now, when that doesn 't work, be careful of leaving anything edible outside. While playing tennis, I left a bag of animals crackers on the court. Within minutes, this one decided it was his/hers.

Another good lesson-- keep a camera handy wherever you go.

Ricketts Glen State Park is a wonderful place this time of year. The trees scream out in every color you can imagine, the waterfalls adding a central element to your pictures.

Tuesday, however, the park was buried under a foot of snow (some say), and the colors were erased with a blanket of black and white. The park office there had no power all day because of tree limbs coming down on electric lines.

On the trail below, there was plenty of color.The precipitation came down as snow only on the higher elevations. Compare the two pictures, and you'll understand. There are only about two miles of highway between the two photos.

Pritchett, Colorado, is one of my favorite small towns. Sitting in the middle of the eastern Colorado plains, there are no stores in Pritchett. In fact, if someone wants to buy a loaf of bread, gallon of gas or a ball point pen, they must drive 16 miles to Springfield. Now, understand that Springfield isn't the Big City-- about the size of York County's Mount Wolf.

Years ago, we traveled the country to show what it's like growing up as a kid in the United States. We talked to and photographed the athletes, musicians, cowboys, skinheads, military. And we stopped in Pritchett to show how small-- very small-- towns worked.

Aside from the schools, where every girl in the high school played volleyball (there were four seniors that year), we showed town life. We had to show that once the sun went down, life pretty much came to a screeching halt.

So we took this four-hour exposure of Pritchett's grain elevators on the flat countryside with the stars providing the only action. What you see are star trails as they move around the North Star. You'll see few lights from cars crossing through town.

Pritchett is one of my favorite places. Quiet, friendly. I'll be returning soon to see how it's changed.

The weather forecasters are predicting a hard freeze this weekend, so be prepared to find some artistic patterns on the car windows and some frost on the fallen leaves. Fall is my favorite time of year because of the beautiful colors, the temperatures and the hint that winter is not far behind (another good thing). Well, that and knowing I'll not have to cut any more grass.

I'll be headed north next week to find more color and expect to spend a day or two at Ricketts Glen State Park, my favorite spot for autumn photos. It's a hike down the gorge will all its water falls, but worth the effort. For more information about the park, click here

From Ricketts Glen, I'll travel into Canada for a week's vacation-- possibly leapfrogging over fall color.

To check for fall foliage maps from the Weather Channel, click here

Night-time photographs are among the most interesting, because they combine the physical aspects we always see and an element of time.

This photo is of a coal ship transporting its load to Hamilton, Canada, from Sandusky, Ohio, while passing under a bridge.

Pressing the camera lens onto a cabin window and exposing the film for about five minutes kept the ship crystal clear while blurring the overhead bridge, giving the illusion of action in a still photo.

So, this is where the ship was, and -- zip!-- this is where the ship is now.

It's easy, but makes for an interesting picture.

While parts of York County have seen color changes (more in individual trees than locations), autumn has started its slow progression south.

In Ontario and Quebec over the weekend, the color I saw was most obvious east and north of Brockport, Ontario, and then south through the Adirondacks.

Many trees in New York haven't caught the autumn fire yet, including most in this picture. Contrast in the stark white birch tree accents the few red and yellow leaves that have made the change.

Without giving license to youngsters through the land, this is a photo taken years ago of one of the few sports that ESPN II hasn't yet covered.

Pumpkin jumping is the ability to jump from one pumpkin to another without squashing, breaking, cracking or otherwise destroying the season's most famous person, Jack O. Lantern.

This boy's parents ran a pumpkin farm and didn't seem to mind him hopping from one pumpkin to another. Appparently, he's become good enough at it that he knows which can be jumped and which ones will become mush.

Notice the angle at which the photo was taken. The background has been simplified, and the viewer's eye goes to what's important, not a busy background of trees, farms and fences. Bend your knees, give the viewer a scene other than what he'll see as he drives past.

We've all seen signs like this. With apologies to comedian Bill Engvall, this is a "Here's Your Sign" entry.

As if a driver wouldn't notice that this road was closed. Duh.

Indianapolis is the 13th largest city in the United States, and the second most populated state capital in the country, and somehow, you'd expect a more sophisticated welcome to the home of Peyton Manning, the Indy 500 and more soybean fields that you can imagine.

The state seems proudest of its breadbasket with this sign, something I came upon while on my way to an in-law reunion. Seeing humor in photos is another way to keep interest in pictures, and this one seems to fit-- Indianapolis and all its skyscrapers, welcoming visitors with its soybean fields.

Splashing through the creek at York College could have been so much fun this summer; and you wished you could just forget about mortgage payments, gas prices, your job-- just for a moment.

Newspapers once used a lot of what we at the YDR call 'free art', that is, just photos that are fun, pretty, or unusual. Generally, however, newspapers have now steered away from this type of photo unless it goes with a story. By itself, it's too much 'fluff'. People want news, and photos that are linked only to those stories.

This photo was shot years ago on one of those miserable hot days in summer, when kids were finding ways to cool off. You see some interesting things just cruising around town...

Silhouettes are relatively easy to shoot, and often, especially with point and shoot cameras, you'll get a silhouette even when you don't want it. The light meter will read all the strong light from behind the subjects and adjust accordingly, giving the silhouette. Many cameras have a backlight mode which will allow more light into the camera, and put more detail in the subjects.

Someone once said you must know all the rules in order to break them all properly. That's probably true in any field, but certainly in photography.

One rule I've generally gone with is the Rule of Thirds, where the main subject is at the intersection of horizontal and vertical rules, dividing the photo in thirds. It seems to give photos more life, less static.

But this photo, which won a first place ribbon at the York Fair, has the main subject -- the flamingo's eye-- smack dab in the center. As an experiment, I cropped the photo different ways, taking the black upper left corner out, accentuating it, etc. None of them worked for me.

And that the picture is nearly perfectly square isn't especially pleasing either, but rules are made to be broken.

And this photographer knew the rules and broke them-- properly and perfectly.

While it might not be the world's most dangerous job, washing windows must be one of the most interesting.

This photograph, taken 20 years ago in downtown York, shows a washer hard at work, taken from an angle different than most people would see as they pass on the streets below. Maybe this picture's interest is the soap suds trails, but maybe it's more of a "wish I could try that for about a day."

Myself, I prefer a job where both feet are planted on the ground, with only an occasional fling in the air, under water, or upside down.

Waterfalls are one of the few things that can look totally different with a simple change in camera exposure.

This photo, with a tiny falls that looks delicate and soft, was shot with a shutter speed of about one-half second. Other frames were shot at a speed even slower. Use something rock-solid to steady the camera.

But turn that shutter speed up, freeze the splattering of the water on the rocks, and the waterfalls suddenly becomes a torrent of action and splashing. The higher the shutter speed the better, but at least 1/500 of a second.

It all depends on what kind of picture you're looking for-- raging action or quiet beauty. And don't dismiss the possibility that this small waterfall can look angry. Give it a try. You might be surprised.

This photo was taken while biking the Great Allegheny Passage.

While it might appear that the Big Savage Mountain tunnel in Maryland is ribbed with arches, it is just the light that makes it appear so. A biker is silhouetted against the bright light at the other end.

While bicycycle touring the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) from Cumberland, Md., to near Pittsburgh last week, the 3,200 foot-long tunnel provided welcome relief from the heat. And it was a sign that our long climb up the mountains was nearly over.

We'll have an Excursion in the Record later on, but for now, know that the GAP in an interesting path, and is easy enough for families and laid-back recreational bikers (like me).

For more information on the trail, click here

Photographing fireworks is incredibly easy, and it impresses the daylights out of your friends when it works. If they only knew how easy it was. You point the camera, and open the shutter. Fireworks (the explosion) is easy. But strong composition and showing the crowd which is there is another problem entirely.

Of course, the people in the foreground will all be facing away from you. And they'll be backlit, just a fraction of the light in the sky reaching the crowd on the ground.

Photographers get plenty of silhouettes, a few people lit by a fill flash, or buildings lit up with enough existing light to show up in the frame.

The above exposure was about 30 seconds-- for the bottom of the frame. And maybe five or six seconds for the top. I used a black card to block out the top (fireworks) while keeping the shutter open for the bottom. No double exposures or computer manipulation is allowed.

I'm all for trying something new to get better photos. If your fireworks photos look terrific, and you'd like to share your expertise, let me (us!) know how you did it.

A while back, one of our intern photographers noticed my ancient 500mm mirror on my desk. He picked it up, inspected it like an geologist looking over a fossil and asked, "Where's the autofocus?" There was no autofocus. That lens is older than most of the reporters at the Daily Record.

The photo above was taken with the 500 mm mirror lens. I bought it used nearly 30 years ago, and it's still one of my favorites. It's less than six inches long, fits nicely into a small belt pack and weighs almost nothing, making it wonderfully handy on walks through the woods. I don't think Nikon even makes mirror lenses anymore.

The Record's 400 mm lens weighs almost 12 pounds, and is optically shorter, but at least a foot longer in real length. The 400 is a favorite among sports shooters,and one that's seen along football sidelines. It's huge and heavy. But it's a beautiful lens. It's quick, sharp, and at least three f-stops faster than the mirror lens.

I couldn't carry the 400 through the woods and survive unless I'd find someone to haul around this massive hunk of glass.

So, look at my 500 as a short cut. The picture above wouldn't have happened without my 500, and it would have been impossible with a shorter 80-200.

The problem, of course, is that the 500 is awfully slow at f8. Once the sun goes behind the trees, put this lens away. And another problem is obvious in this photo-- all those circles. It takes away from the heron here, but sometimes, it's an unusual element to the photo. The circles are just the result of the mirror images bouncing around inside the lens.

It's the lazy man's long telephoto. And if you find another 500mm around, let me know. This old girl should have been put out to pasture years ago.

While in Loganville shooting another assignment, I wandered onto this scene. Now, one would think that shooting photos all day for eons would get old. But it's always another challenge, getting the best possible picture out of a particular situation.

It is frustrating, however, seeing a pastoral scene that begs for a terrific photo and I can't quite capture it. My eye sees it better than the camera.

Does this happen to you?

Took a weekend jaunt to the Tyler Arboretum, a place I've never visited, or known, before Sunday. In Media, Pa., just outside Philly, it is overshadowed by its more famous neighbors like Longwood Gardens, Winterthur and others.

More than 600 acres, this wonderful collection of greenery is now featuring Totally Terrific Treehouses through September. Don't go with the idea of seeing 12 treehouses perched in trees, there are none. It is what the PR director calls a 'fanciful collection' of treehouses, most on the ground, some not even touching a tree.

Still, it's a great way to the get the kids outside and away from the computer screen. Even if they don't like treehouses, it boasts 20 miles of hiking trails and plenty of things to keep the family happy.

More on Tyler Arboretum in the YDR later in the summer as an Excursion.

Many years ago, a good friend and I put together THE BEST RICE, or 11 steps to good composition. THE BEST RICE is the first letter for each rule. For example, the first T stood for "Thirds, Rule of", and continued with the other letters. It's elementary, but simple. lt was used to help York Daily Record correspondents in their photography, explaining that getting a good picture was more than hitting the shutter release.

Sometimes, you shoot a picture that works. It's pretty, pleasing and, well, it just works. Can't explain it. This photo is one that breaks all the rules, including the Rule of Thirds.

Was shot Monday on the Great Allegheny Passage, a bike trail that runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland. Hand held at 1/2 second and f11, 200 ISO.

Not interested in losing my mortgage payment on the tables at Atlantic City, we cruised instead to Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge recently, so close to AC we could almost hear the quarters in the slot machines.

The fine folks at the visitors center there warned me that it was a lousy day for birding. "It's cold, windy and rainy," he said, repeating what I already knew. It was, indeed, a miserable day. The wind was so strong on the dikes I couldn't hold the camera steady; rain was 'falling' horizontally, and fortunately I had a pair of gloves with me to keep the fingers warm.

Why spend a full day in those conditions?

With the price of gas crippling my travel budget, I've not gone on any long distance trips lately, so I 'make do' with locations close by.

This male cardinal was photographed in my backyard on Monday. It was shot with a 70-300 mm lens, at about 1/250 and f4.5, I think. No tripod.

Bright cloudy days are terrific for photography. No shadows, highlights retain their detail, the recent rain washes the dust off everything, and the colors pop.

Don't put away cameras because it's damp or cloudy. You might be surprised with the results.

A group of friends got together over the weekend to talk about photography. We talked about composition, lenses, camera bodies, what we look for on outdoor excursions. All the usual photo stuff.

But much of the talk centered around tripods. When to use them, when to leave them in the car, how tall, how heavy, the heads on them. In all the photo books, you'll read this command From Above (my caps)-- "Always use a tripod". Period. No questions.

Baloney.

A tripod has its uses, and mine is witness to heavy use. But like a macro lens, a filter, flash, extension rings, only use it when necessary. Yep, it looks really sexy when people see you working behind it. You're busily checking buttons and dials-- know that they are very impressed. Well, some people are impressed, usually those who don't know any better.

Here's a good rule to remember--

The Cherry Blossom Festival committee says that about a million people crowd into Washington D.C. during the two weekends of peak blossoms. The peak bloom was Saturday, and it seemed everyone who was there was carrying at least one camera.

So, with all these cameras, how do you come up with a photograph that's not been done before? Or, as Bob Dorksen, a terrific photographer friend in Cleveland once told me, "Excellence is always excellent." In other words, if it's a good picture today, it'll be a good picture tomorrow. And, getting something different isn't always the best choice.

As he also told me, and I've remembered since 1970...

Three Lancaster County fishermen were seen Friday afternoon standing up in their boat near Long Level on the Susquehanna River. As one of the men said, and as we've all seen on bumper stickers-- 'A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work'. Since the trio had caught only one fish in the three hours on the water, Friday probably qualified as a bad day fishing. But they were all smiling.

Water temperature was 43 degrees, and we're assuming they had life jackets somewhere in the boat, since I didn't see any being worn. In those temperatures, they wouldn't be swimming for long.

Lake Clarke Rescue does a terrific job, but I'd rather not get a shot of them working.

To accompany a "Here comes Spring" story, we needed a picture showing people working outdoors, preparing for the annual explosion of green leaves and lawns.

Generally, most folks are still huddled indoors, nervously expecting a late-season snow storm any day, squashing hopes of wildflowers and warm temperatures. But professional landscapers get a jump on things, cleaning up winter's mess (downed tree limbs, dead plant material, and other assorted cold weather yard maladies).

So, Dick Rishel and his crew are already hard at work, making their client's yards look like they came right out of HGTV's Gardening By The Yard. My yard, on the other hand, is a prime example of a 'before' picture on Desperate Landscapes, also on HGTV.

So, how do we make men spreading mulch look interesting to our readers?

Since we haven't had much snow this winter, I drove Monday to one of my favorite places, Fairport Harbor, Ohio. Wanted to see how much havoc was raised with the recent storm there, and take pictures of the sights.

Fairport is a tiny town on the Lake Erie shore, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. Generations ago, the Slovaks, Hungarians and Finns arrived to build the railroad to Pittsburgh, and those cultures are still strong. Cabbage rolls or chicken paprikash are terrific here, but only if you know someone's Grandma who cooks it up at home. Strangely, there are no ethnic restuarants in Fairport and it seems like an obvious place for one.

The town boasts a Slovenian Club, Finnish Heritage Museum, and a Hungarian Culture Club. It also has two lighthouses; one is a now a maritime museum, the newer one is far out on a stone breakwall. Sunsets here are beautiful, and with the lake frozen over, I expected to shoot a cold wintry scene.

Sometimes, a preconceived idea of a photo blinds me from a better picture.

An explanation of the long, thin vertical 'cloud' toward the right of the photo comes from our friend Dr. Bill Kreiger, professor of earth science at York College--
It appears to be a solar pillar. Sun dogs, solar rainbows, solar pillars, solar rays there is a variety of atmospheric optics. They are cool! Water in the atmosphere, ice crystals, snow flakes, dust, ash, soil particles under the right conditions produce all sorts of atmospheric optics.

It's that time of year again, when snow geese and tundra swans migrate back to their northern summer homes. It's quite a site. Thousands and thousands of these beautiful birds (the swans are larger, with longer necks and the geese have black wing tips) make a brief stop at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area north of Lancaster about this time every year.

Most people stop on weekends, pulling over to the side of the road and watching them swim around, some not 20 yards away. And that's a good feeling. But to see the massive numbers, wait until the sun goes down.

A few years ago, a photographer with a lens as long as my arm set up at the prime spot-- a point of land at the end of a paved walking path. He had all the tools-- tripod, monster lens, big camera. But he didn't have the one thing he needed most.

Many years ago, newspaper photographers frowned on using flash to shoot pictures because it was adding light to a situation in which there wasn't much light. To keep from using flash, we used special film normally used to photograph star tracks (recording film), 'pushing' film to extraordinary and coarse, grainy depths.

But let's back up a step or two. The higher the speed of film (or digital ISO for that matter), the 'grainer' it gets. That is, 100 ASA film is terrific for larger pictures. The grain grows as the speed increases. At 3200 and 6400 (some claimed even higher) It looked like beach sand sprinkled on a photo. If we didn't use flash, we had to increase, sometimes dramatically, the film speed. Light-- or the illusion of light-- had to come from somewhere. Digital imaging has improved some of that, but just substitute 'noise' for 'grain'.

We used special developers, heated the water, agitated the solution a particular way. Some probably even danced over the stuff, hoping to give it magical powers. Looking back on those days, it's almost comical now...

It's been said that a wildlife photographer's greatest asset is not his eye, equipment or experience, but patience. And that in a nutshell is why I never even tinkered with making wildlife or nature photography my life's work. A cocker spaniel puppy has more patience. If a picture's not there in 20 minutes, I'm gone. Outa there. History.

Check fatali.com for Michael Fatali's exquisite scenic work, mostly from the U.S. southwest. Click on his images, click again on his field notes, and you'll see he sometimes waited four days for the light to be just right. FOUR DAYS! Dallastown's Cliff Beitel spends days looking just the right bird photo, and it shows in his amazing artistry. Once they see it, they click into 'artist' mode, and experience and equipment join in. Both of their links are along the right side of this blog.

As much as I love the outdoors, my work isn't going to be on Country magazine's cover anytime soon. Instead, it'll end up in a shoebox under my bed, just like everyone else's.

So, driving to Hanover, I spot two majestic swans swimming on Spring Grove's pond. Now, how can I miss?

Oh, it's easy to miss. I do it all the time.

Former York Daily Record photographer par excellence, Kristin Murphy, has left sunny York to work for the Park City, Utah, Record. It's got to be a tough job. Ms. Murphy is an excellent skier, and she's living in the middle of The Greatest Snow on Earth (Utah's state slogan). 'Work' is certainly a relative term.

Like most skiers, Ms. Murphy probably skis for the excitement, the exercise and the adrenaline rush. I ski for the view from the mountain top. Or maybe to provide entertainment for real skiers going up on the lift who have applauded some of my more spectacular crashes.

This view is from Sugarbush, Vermont and the view is so amazing it almost makes you cry. Natural snow covers everything, including the mountains that go on forever. The van, where I left my sanity and my shoes, is a dot far below. The view is beautiful. Me getting down, on the other hand, is downright ugly.

Despite rumors that I sat behind Civil War photographer Matthew Brady in school, it's not true. But I've been shooting pictures for a long time, and there still aspects of photography I just can't master. Winter, for example. I love the season-- it's purity of scenes, the cold, the activities. But I have a tough time making it look as good in the camera as what my eye sees.

Here are a few sites I've read to help improve my winter shooting.

http://www.corel.com/uk/pdfs/press/071121_winter_photography.pdf
http://www.creativepro.com/printerfriendly/story/18632.html
http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGall2.asp?catID=450

Took a long weekend to ski in Sugarbush, Vermont, recently. While that was our primary reason to head north, we usually manage some free time to explore the state's backroads, trying to capture Vermont's stereotypical charm of its pastel yellow homes, blue homes, bright red barns, its snow-covered mountains and nearly-frozen rivers.

I've always struggled shooting winter. No matter what I try, winter always looks better in my eye than in the photographs I shoot. But I keep trying-- keep looking for that perfect picture.

But on this day, it was just a house and barn that captured our attention. We were on our way to Magog, Quebec, and our favorite restaurant for dinner (about three hours away) when we spotted a long, winding road that crept up a hill through the snow. Being a firm believer of always taking the road less traveled, we drove up to look over the entire scene. At the top of the hill was a beautiful house and old farm.