Barn Series

These are a few shots back from late winter/early spring of 2016. The little bit of snow we had this winter is gone, but the blue skies make photography interesting despite the drab ground colors.

The farm with the silos can be found on the Lake Champlain Islands along the West Shore Road in Alburg, while the other barn photos were taken right here in Westford during some of our local walks along Huntley Road and Cambridge Road.

Red and Blue make for a good combination, despite the missing white :-)

First Snow

First Snow (Smugglers Notch, VT)

First Snow II (Smugglers Notch, VT)
Still experimenting to find the right settings of LR/Blog export plugin, but I am getting there... This post shows two images from late October when we drove up Smugglers Notch for a short walk. The first snow made for a beautiful contrast to the yellow/orange leaves at that altitude.

Green River Reservoir, More on Lightroom

Dead Tree (Green River Reservoir, VT)

Dead Tree II (Green River Reservoir, VT)
The photos above have been taken on Green River Reservoir last fall. We had the luck of hitting peak foliage season there with perfect weather for the last three years now. Again, this is my "old postcard" look achieved with Topaz "Glow".

I have to write a bit more about Lightroom: I am really positively surprised by that tool. I still find the Library/Development module a bit more clunky than the Apple Aperture solution, but once you get used to it, working with it is just as easy. So far, I have been reading just one book on the tool, but there are countless videos on YouTube that not only explain the mechanics, but also give great advice on workflow. You can find some cool plugins (like this LR/Blog for posting photos to a blog). The only one I am missing from the Aperture world is "Border FX". Of course, you can do all these things with Photoshop, but I prefer simple, intuitive solutions.

Moss Glen Falls and my Switch to Adobe Lightroom

Moss Glenn Falls (VT 100, Granville)
This is the Moss Glen Falls along VT100 between Warren and Granville (there is another one north of Stowe). I am not sure how often I have taken photos of this place, but this one is (a) taken with my shiny new camera (Canon 5D Mark IV) as well as (b) developed with Adobe Lightroom (and again, a pinch of Topaz Glow).

After many years of using Apple's Aperture (I was one of the first adopters), I finally made the switch to Lightroom. It took a while to convince me, still hoping for Apple to turn the corner and make their "Photos" app into something meaningful after they gave up on Aperture a while ago. I loved the Aperture interface, and had so far not warmed up to Lightroom during initial trials. But after reading Jason Bradley's book and watching Thomas' use of the tool, I gave it a serious second chance and quickly got the hang of it. Long story short: Since August 2016, all my photos are managed and developed by Lightroom. And I believe the quality of results has improved quite a bit with that move.

I still have not decided how to handle my many photos, hidden inside Aperture's database. But I will keep my old Mac Mini at the last OS version that officially supports Aperture for the time being. More on my new computer hardware in a future post.

Restart

Christmas Tree (Casa Crana, 2016)
As I am still experimenting with how to best publish/showcase some of my photos, I have started and then stopped this blog. Now I have decided to give it another try. I am not really ready to hand off the copyrights of all my hard work to Facebook, Flickr and the like.

Suiting the time of the year, I'll start with this photo that shows our own tree this year. A lot has happened and I plan to write about that later and also post older photos in the future. Keep coming back!

Tall Brown Grass on Eagle Mountain

In contrast to the last posting, here is one from this "winter". It's actually a rather warm toned photo that I took on Eagle Mountain in Milton, just a few days ago. It was not a particularly good day for photography, but I was fascinated by the light shining on this brown grass. And after a few steps in Topaz, the resulting image is my interpretation of a late fall day.

I am attaching the original image for comparison as well... maybe a good idea for future postings.

Cascading Waterfall on New Haven River

Going through my 2014 photos, I discovered this little cascade photo that I took in May along the road from Bristol up to Lincoln along the New Haven River (and post processed the usual way with Topaz Adjust and Simplify). It was just a small tributary to the New Haven River. and I discovered it by chance while trying to take photos of the main river. It one was only a few feet tall and, of course, not marked in any map.

It shows that it is not just the big waterfalls that provide the most beautiful images. You have to explore, and more often than not, you discover little gems like this.

Late Afternoon at the Lake

While working on my annual Calendar project, I stumbled across this image that I took while on tour with Alex this spring. It was a perfect early May day, lots of sun and an amazing sunset at the Burlington Waterfront. I am sure you will see more photos from that outing, but here is a first one: The Burlington breakwater with the southern lighthouse in a dreamy late afternoon sun.

The original photo was rather uninspiring (colorless), so I took the challenge making this into a meaningful image: Topaz Adjust and Simplify to the rescue...

Summer Evening in Westford

August has been dry and rather warm this year. It's September as I am posting this, but the photo is from August, only a few days old. There is a barn down the road from us with haybales in front. I have been driving by every day, but last week I had to get there with my camera in the evening light to take photos.

Here is the result after some 'Topaz' post processing that brings out the hazy mood of that warm late summer day even better (you can click onto the image above to get a higher resolution one).

For those of you who do not know yet: I am using some photo editing plugins from Topaz Labs (Adjust, Simplify, DeNoise, ...). One of my favorite settings in "Adjust" is called 'faded glory'. I used this one on the barn photo and tweaked a few things here and there. Although I hardly noticed them at exposure time, I especially like the goldenrods in the foreground.