Merry Christmas!

Red squirrel north of Beaver Marsh, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

RussianTeacakes for Christmas

This recipe is from my Grandma Zdenka Kucera. She made them every Christmas, along with dozens of other delicious cookies and pastries. 

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter

½ cup sifted powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ¼ cups sifted flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup ground walnuts

Directions

Cream the butter, powdered sugar and vanilla, using an electric mixer. Stir the salt into the flour. Add the flour mixture into the butter mixture, using a slow setting on the electric mixer. Mix in the ground walnuts. Chill dough.

 

Roll dough into 1” balls and arrange on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 9 – 11 minutes, until set, but not brown. Cool on the cookie sheet for 1 -2 minutes, then allow to finish cooling on a rack.

When completely cool, roll twice in powdered sugar.

 

Makes about 4 dozen.

 

Notes:

Soften refrigerated butter for about 15 seconds in the microwave. It should be soft, but not melted. Don’t use margarine or light margarine.

Fluff the powdered sugar and flour with a fork before measuring. Level contents of the measuring cup with the straight side of a knife.

Pulse walnuts in a food processor to grind. The results should look like a nut meal, rather than chunks.

Cookies can be placed about 1 ½” apart as they do not spread very much in the oven.

Cookies are fragile when hot. Give them a minute or two to cool before transferring them to a rack.

Recipe can be double or tripled.

Use a sturdy stand mixer since the dough is quite stiff.

Raptors!

Had a wonderful shoot at the Medina Raptor Center on December 8. The Center rehabs injured raptors as well as other animals. Only one of the birds we had the good fortune to photograph is likely to be able to return to the wild, and that was a juvenile osprey.  Josh Clark, an excellent nature photographer and coordinator for MPEG, made the arrangements for 15 photographers. The weather was frigid, which was good, because that meant the snowy owl could come out. Here are a few of the photos. I hope to post more soon, including the snowy owl.

This is a red-tailed hawk. His name is Owati, which means Mischief,

 

Victory, ruffling his feathers at the crowd of photographers, is an adult osprey. I saw one of his kin flying over the Snake River when Chuck and I were on our death-defying off-road expedition in Grand Teton National Park.

Cloud is a luecistic red-tailed hawk, not quite an albino because they have pigmented eyes and legs. This guy lived in an area with a lot of limestone, so his coloring didn't make him a target for larger predators.

And finally, the bald eagle Migisi. He looks all fierce and noble here - and he is a gorgeous bird - but he was basically checking out his handler for more snacks.

 

More information on the Medina Raptor Center can be found here: http://medinaraptorcenter.org/.

Everett Road Covered Bridge

Spent a happy hour shooting the Everett Road covered bridge today, while there was still some snow left. Lost the light before I could get to the downstream side.

 

Played around with some black and white conversions. I think they look better with a little bit more contrast and grain added.

 

 

 

The bridge crosses Furnace Run. Must be glacier rocks, they're different colors and kinds. Every once in a while, tiny ice floes crunched into the rocks - it was so quiet, even that little noise was startling. 

 

November's muted color palette is austerely beautiful. I love trees pencil-sketched against textured clouds and snowy stubble-fields showing the contour of the land.

The bridge is in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, just off Riverview Road.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Lanterman's Mill

Lanterman's Mill is in Youngstown's Mill Creek Park. I went on the 19th of October, and the leaves were just starting to turn. Not perfect conditions for shooting - a little late in the day and breezy - but I was determined to get there before going out of town. Wish I'd had a little more time to explore. The park looks pretty big and has a nice gorge running through it. Might be good for ice photography later in winter.

This first one has some texture layers:

Looking downstream, under the bridge:

 

Taken from a little farther down the walkway:

 

And one black and white, from the covered bridge:

High Bridge Glen

Hoping to get a little fall color, I went to High Bridge Glen Park in Cuyahoga Falls last Monday. It was still quite green, with just a hint of yellow and orange. It's a great place to shoot, with a nice, clear view of the cascade.

The remnants of the Sheraton dam are barely visible. By next year, the raw bank where the heavy equipment stood will start showing green, erode a bit, and gradually blend into the rest of the gorge.

 

I'm not sure the trees on the side of the gorge are helping the composition. Looks a little better slightly off-center, below.

 

 

Closer, more dramatic, lots of texture in the water:

The water is so pretty rushing down the cascade - this looks almost like a Japanese woodcut, dark rock contrasting against the silky water:

 

So pretty and so dangerous...