A Week Ending in Herons

One day at home in a week of travel. Chuck took me to dinner at a quirky Kent restaurant called Wild Goats. They serve brinner, breakfast for dinner. This is his favorite hot sauce, which he liberally applies to his breakfast burrito.

 

Then off to "sunny" Florida: day one, monsoon; day two, 55 degrees, exactly one degree warmer than home; day three (Saturday), lovely and we headed for the airport at 11 am, of course! The view from my hotel room.

Love this dolphin statue - so exuberant!

Ah, Chipotle. Decent food, no resort prices.

After all the travel craziness, I needed some time outside. So we (me and my 80 - 400 mm lens, roughly the size of a small cow) went to the Bath Road heronry to shoot some herons. Look at this handsome devil - decorating for his lady-love.

And with that, I will say goodnight.

More Changes, Some Good, Some Bad, Some Bittersweet

The last day of February, I said goodbye to my Honda. I tried to get it washed before turning it in, but it was a nice afternoon after weeks of rotten weather and all the car washes had lines a mile long. The Accord was a great car, reliable, safe and solid. It did have one quirk, though. It did not like to plow through snow. It liked to ride up over the snow until the drive wheel was off the ground. Can't tell you how many times that happened. You'd think the driver would have learned.

 

Good car - I'll miss it.

 

And this is my new car. Pearl white, light grey cloth interior, AWD. No more perching. Plenty of room for bags of mulch, suitcases and camera gear. More adventures ahead!

 

Mom's, March 1 - daffodils already popping up. Spring is on its way.

Breakfast with Chuck at Yours Truly.

My room at the Cleveland Renaissance, sales meeting week. Very short meeting, long enough to announce the plant closing, followed by a subdued awards dinner at the Hard Rock in Tower City. Not that you'd got there for the food, but it was so-so at best.

 

 

Had a chance to shoot a little bit of Public Square while waiting for a colleague for the trip home. Same window I looked out a hundred years ago when I was with Avery. The view was pretty much the same, minus a few police cars.

 

 

The sun will come out tomorrow, tomorrow...

 

Nothing like Living in the Airport

A huge snowstorm in early February, outline all the branches with white. This tree is just inside Chapin Forest Reservation in Kirtland.

 

 

Flying over the Lake Erie Islands on my way to Salt Lake City. The ice was checked with giant cracks - it almost looked like a road map. Catawba Island is on the left ( and is actually a peninsula). South Bass in the middle and Middle Bass on the right.



 

Stuck in Salt Lake Airport. Akron-Canton was closed due to bad weather that didn't materialize until well after I would have landed. 29 hours without sleep tied my previous record from my detour through Paris on the way to Brussels. Thank you once again, Delta. Beautiful view of the mountains from one of the concourses. And, while I was having dinner, bagpipers in full dress came skirling down the concourse. Never found out why, but happy to hear bag pipe music. Photo processed in Snapseed.

 

Finally on my way home...not soon enough. Did finish Anna Quindlen's Still Life with Breadcrumbs and Maeve Binchy's A Week in Winter, both very good.

 

 

Poor Sootie, not enough lap time, and then tortured by having his picture taken. He was back to sleep in about two minutes. He snores like the Three Stooges - weep weep weepweepweep!

 

 
All photos taken with my trusty iPhone.



Grand Teton

Just a couple for now - this place is breathtaking!

This is Mt. Moran, at Oxbow bend, the location of one of Ansel Adams' iconic photographs. We we there before five am, overcast and raining. Got some nice cloud drama, and then the sun came out, to highlight Mt. Moran.

Top of Jackson Lake, from a little turnout on Rt. 89. More snow on the mountains this year than is normal. Just beautiful!

Both shots are with the iPhone and Snapseed, might have gone a little overboard on Mt. Moran.

Love this place!

 

Blackwater Falls State Park

Chuck and I went to West Virginia for a short vacation Labor Day week. We stayed at the Bright Morning Inn in Davis, just a few minutes drive from Blackwater Falls State Park. Blackwater is in the Potomac Highlands on the east side of the state, just below the Maryland panhandle. Pretty spectacular scenery, deep gorges, rocky outcroppings, and a hundred waterfalls on every stream. As you can see in a couple of the photos, the Blackwater gorge was invisible in the fog at times.

The first three photos are were taken from the Pendleton Point Overlook shortly after we arrived at the park. 

 

 

The view below is from the overlook at the Lodge a couple evenings later. It's a HDR to cope with the contrast in the sunset and mountain sides.

 

We stopped early in the morning for sunrise - but got dense fog instead. It look like the world ended just past that ridge.

We made friends with a young cat - he was just a bundle of energy, zooming around the terrace, chasing leaves and grasshoppers. Quite the cutie.

That white behind Chuck is a wall of fog blanketing the entire gorge.

An elderly deer pretty much ignored us as she snacked her way down the side of the road.

More photos to come - it's just a beautiful area.

Zoar Vignettes, the Video Version

Here's a link to the Zoar Village Vignettes video hosted on Vimeo. It's definitely an improvement over the embedded version in the previous post.

https://vimeo.com/45373788

My favorites:

Pretty place, definitely worth a visit.

Zoar Village Vignettes

A short slide show on Zoar Village - it'd be great to go back when it's cooler and in better light. Zoar is loaded with rustic vignettes and really old, beautiful buildings. Even with the temperature in the low 90's there were a few sturdy souls out taking the tour.

This is the second slide show I've made in Lightroom. The title and end slides were done in Photoshop Elements. I'm not quite sure what resolution to work with yet. Tried 300x 400-ish, and 1080P. The first pixilated and the second was too big to load. Blogger doesn't seem to having any guidelines for file size or format, at least that I could find after a cursory look.

The resolution on this looks pretty awful, even though it was saved at 720P. Any thoughts you might have on making it looking better would be appreciated. In the meantime, view small!

Upper Falls, Old Man's Cave

Thought I'd post something, so you don't think I've passed on the the Great Digital Darkroom in the Sky. The past month has been a combination of disgust and depression about my photography skills and issues with back-ups brought on by user ignorance. I'm just about past both, and wanted to get one Hocking Hills photo up. This is one of my favorite views in the Old Man's Cave gorge - love the old stone bridge and the gnarly tree roots framing the Upper Falls.

Vignettes from the Inn at Cedar Falls

The Inn at Cedar Falls is a pretty B&B in Hocking Hills. The innkeepers have carefully designed and placed vignettes of weathered tools, old furniture, plants and vintage advertising. Here are just a few:

Ok, Seriously

 

Yes, one of the stops on our trip today was the Pencil Sharpener Museum in Logan, Ohio. The Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum. We went into it on a whim, because the lady at the visitor's center said we shouldn't miss it. Tiny little building, filled to the eaves with 3,400 (yep!) pencil sharpeners. Some cute, some weird.

Some instruments and cameras:

Fancy antique cars:



Typewriter pencil sharpeners, bug sprayers, and if you look closely, a blender:

Anime-looking critter pencil sharpeners:

And some critter-sharpener potential nightmare creatures:

Finally, Cinderella's pencil-sharpening pump-carriage:



If you're near Logan, this quirkly little museum is worth a visit. 

The Barn Inn, Millersburg

Chuck and I spent his birthday weekend at the Barn Inn in Millersburg. Pretty place, lots of antiques and country décor. The innkeepers, Loretta and Paul, told stories about Amish life and the local area at breakfast each morning, over an excellent breakfast. Interesting stories, but, however picturesque, Amish life is restrictive and not very friendly to women. Or independent thought. To each her own, though.

This little stream with its tiny waterfall runs behind the inn. Country-quiet – you can hear the stream, birds, the innkeepers’ sheep, goat and llama – and not much else. Very peaceful.

And here are some of the critters:

Good trip, very enjoyable and a nice break in the work routine.

March 9 - 11, 2012

Travel is Overrated

Busy week, got a walk in on Monday, before traveling to Las Vegas for a tradeshow. Cattails in a pond near the end of my neighborhood. 2/27.

What's missing in this picture? A suitcase! It spent a lonely night without me in Houston. Continental finally brought to me - mere minutes after I completed a desperate shopping trip. 2/28

The trade show was for suppliers to the retail industry - this one sells Christmas decorations, and that's all. Very glittery. 2/29

The trump tower from my room at Treasure Island. Got to spend some time with Vickie and Tom Barker. Nice to visit with them for a bit. Still miss ya, Vick! 3/1

Going home - Mandalay Bay from the airport. Completely uneventful flight, thank heavens. 3/2.

A latte at Crooked River with Chuck. Ran into our friends Dick and Sherry and chatted for a bit. 3/3

A pleasant Sunday drive home from Mom's. Stopped at Squire's Castle to take a couple of photographs. 3/4

 

And that's about it for another week.