Last fall I spent a week in Acadia National Park. I've been to Acadia many times before and was looking for new places to explore.  My "search" lead me to Acadia's  Schoodic Peninsula. The Schoodic Peninsula is fantastic, and the communities  outside the park are classic ME. Beach Cliff Sardines was taken in one of these communities, Prospect Harbor. At the time it was taken I was unaware of the story this sign, this piece of Americana had to tell. Fellow Baltimore Camera Club member Kathleen Hill pointed me to an article telling of a sardine canning factories closing. The last factory in the US to can sardines, Beach Cliff Sardines in fact.

I have been aware of the photographic technique of panning the camera while using a shutter speed long enough to blur the image for several years. I have seen it used to create beautiful images by Karen Mesick and Tony Sweet but until last week never made a serious attempt to do it myself. I really like the result achieved in Forest 1. The fresh greens of the spring forest with the tree trunks receding into the distance. I'm not sure how many people would recognize what this is an image of without an explanation but feel it does unique job of representing the  forest. There are several other "Swipes" in "Smokies 2010" gallery but this is my favorite.

The trees here in the Great Smoky Mountains are in the green of spring. When illuminated by the sun the intensity of the greens are incredible.  Not one shade of green but many. Fresh red leaves are part of the palette too. This blog image attempts to capture the "Smoke" in the Smokies along with the spring color. I think it's a great combination. This shot was taken on Newfound Gap Rd.  at 70mm, 1/80^th Sec., at f11

"Waves of Color" was created shortly after arriving at Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee today. I'm here with fellow Baltimore Camera Club Members Karen and Chuck. After the nine hour drive to get here (Chuck Drove) it felt great to get out and take some shots. Good company and great scenery should make for a great week here.

"Waves of Color" is a shot of moving water in Laurel Creek showing color from the creek and sky. It's shot at 200mm, f29 at ½ sec.

Ruffles is a shot of a  Cattleya Orchid taken using a 180mm macro lens with a 25mm extension tube and Live View. I always enjoy looking for abstract images to shoot but in general haven't had much success finding them in flowers. This is at least in part due to the fact that making a careful choice as to what to keep in focus for good composition was difficult while looking through the viewfinder using depth of field preview button. In most cases depth of field preview made the image too dim for me to judge  what was in focus. Live View helps overcome this problem. Pressing the depth of field preview button while Live View is active gives a brightened  image on the LCD that can be zoomed to 100% allowing a clear view  of what is in and out of focus.  I really look forward to continued exploration of  the possibilities Live View provides.

BTW, I was turned on to using Live View by reading an article on the subject by Ian Plant.

Big Dark Cloud was taken at the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge  Nov 27th 2009. Karen, Annette, Chuck  and myself went to Bombay Hook in search of Snow Geese. 2009 didn't reward us with the massive number of Snow Geese we witnessed and photographed in 2008, but we certainly had dramatic skies! I feel tremendously lucky to have Bombay Hook and the many other State and national parks within such reasonable driving distance from where I live.

Big Dark Cloud is a 4 shot panorama stitched together in Autopano Pro. In many cases the ability of the camera with the correct choice of lens and isolate and simplify the subject is the way to go. At other times though, the ability to get the grand view with a multi shot panorama is the best choice. In addition to Autopano Pro Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4 have excellent multi shot panorama stitching capabilities. Go ahead give it a try.

 While some may find this scene decrepit, I consider it "Beautiful Decay" . The textures and colors accentuated by the  side light create an image that I like a lot. Natures forces crafted the pallet used here. Water and sun have transformed an ordinary inside scene into one with a much greater depth of texture and color.

" Beautiful Decay" is a 3 shot panorama stitched together in Autopano Pro 2.0. The camera was moved 3 times to different positions parallel to the wall. A series of 5 bracketed images was taken in each position. Moving the camera this way minimized the distortion created by the 24mm lens used. The bracketed images were used to create HDR images, expanding dynamic range allowing detail in both the shadows and highlights.  As a finishing touch " Beautiful Decay"  was mirrored horizontally because I thought it did a better job of leading the viewer into it.