New Hampshire

I hope I can spend more time in New Hampshire very soon. This shot is from the White Mountain region at Crawford Notch State Park. We were only in New Hampshire for a few hours, but we found some beautiful locations at this park. After sunrise, we passed this beautiful grove of trees and decided to pull over and take a few shots in the river. I cleaned out some of the dead leaves caught between the rocks, and put my camera down low on my tripod. I was able to get very close to this rock since I was using my wide 10-22mm lens. The inherent distortion makes the rock and the leaf seem large, since they are close to the lens. It exaggerates the distance between the foreground objects and the trees on the other side of the river. I love the depth I can create in an image with this technique, and you'll notice it in many of my photos.

I used a circular polarizer filter to cut through the reflections on the water and let me see the rocks underneath. The filter also enhances the color a bit, but I try not to let that get out of control. I can tone it down a bit in PhotoShop if necessary, but in this case, I was comfortable with the finished product. I used a long exposure to blur the water in the foreground. I wanted to capture the light coming through the leaves in the background, and also through the red leaf in the foreground.

Perfect Beauty

I had planned to process photos this morning, but when the sky is as beautiful as it was this morning, I simply can't stay at home. I ended up taking only a few shots at a local park before the sky quit putting on its show. I haven't processed this morning's shots yet - I want to finish my Northeast shots first. (I'm always behind!) I did take a few minutes to process an easy one, though. This flower has such a soft color to it.

I also took the time to put my latest Maine photo up on Fred Miranda and NPN. These are some of the best critique sites on the web.

And now - back to processing Maine and New Hampshire!

Rise and Shine...

We slept in this morning since weather conditions are less than ideal today. We were up around 7am. We are booking a room near the park we're hoping to visit tomorrow, and then we'll be on our way. We'll explore Acadia today. We hope to find a good location to shoot this evening, and then we'll head towards the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. We'd like to find some nice colors in Crawford Notch. On Monday, we'll be flying back home.