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...

Sagebrush Hell or The Day I Nearly Died and Chuck Laughed at Me

We decided to take a day off during our Grand Teton photo tour - Slept in, had breakfast instead of granola bars, and did a little wildflower shooting on the outwash plain. Then Chuck and I made the fateful decision to off-road on the badly-named River Road. It should have been called the sagebrush-engulfed, cliff-clinging, two-track, endless, dust ball trek through hell.  Chuck, who has no fear of heights or of being lost, enjoyed driving along knife-edge cliffs, in the literal middle of nowhere, looking down into watery death in the Snake River.

 

It started mildly enough, with a light-hearted drive down a rough track onto the upper river plain. We stopped at a little parking area, looking down over the Snake and a little bit of a ranch, pretty and isolated.

Some rafters in the river:

 

 

A panorama of the Tetons, just before we became lost forever. Note the Citadel in the far right side of the photo - giant SUV, you could've bowled in the back.

 

 

We decided to follow the track farther north – it was on the GPS, so we weren’t going to get lost. Hah! Hours of driving, sometimes on the crumbling edge of the enormous cliff dropping down to the Snake, with the passenger side wheels riding half on air.

No landmarks, no idea of how long before we reached pavement, much less civilization and with only granola bars and 4 bottles of water to sustain us.

 

Endless, sunbaked miles of sagebrush hell. Craven coward that I am, I actually got out of the truck and walked in couple of spots that were entirely too close to a crashing plummet ending with the Citadel crumpled and us crushed at the bottom of the river.

 

 

Chuck, my best beloved, had the decency not to start laughing until the track veered away from the river. But laugh he did, the rat.

 

 

When we finally got back to pavement, we were about a mile and a half from where we started and ten minutes from refreshing beverages at Signal Lodge.

I would have sucked at being a pioneer…