Morning On The Deerfield.

Frau B. and I got up before dawn on Saturday to try for some “Sunrise on the Deerfield” photos.

Turned out that the sunrise was a good deal less spectacular than it might have been, but the location where we set up was still productive.

The river was low enough for me to ford it at a thigh-deep rapid, and with a full compliment of camera gear on my back, the swift water provided something of an adventure.  I used a piece of “beaver wood” as an upstream support and crossed tripod-style to the rocky shallows on the opposite side, arriving dry and jazzed, thanks to a pair of felt-soled hip boots I’d thought to bring along.

With the sunrise fizzling, we turned our attentions to details closer at hand.  I found these chickory blossoms curling inward against the cool mists of morning, and with the time pressures of an exploding sunrise removed, took the time to set up Elliot at an eight-degree tilt.  I tweaked the angle to get a decent focus from about a foot on the right to the distant skyline at center left:

Mists rose from the upstream waters as Mount Todd appeared and disappeared in the clouds rising through the steeper valley upriver from us.

The trees here have begun their seasonal transformation to Technicolor, and though the shoreline foliage has a long way to go to “peak,” an occasional scarlet leaf can be found drifting down river or clinging to anything which emerges as the dam-released water drops, in this case a birch log:

I dug the reflection in that scene enough to look for more of the same, and discovered that the so-so sky looked more intense in this reflecting pool:

Things were still enough in this shot to use my 16-35mm L-series lens, one of my favorites.  A long (several seconds) exposure gave me enough depth of field to capture both the reflected clouds and a very distant Frau B (opposite bank center, in a green shell jacket.)

All in all, it wasn’t a wasted trip despite the uncooperative sun.

A later post will show you this river in a much different light.  😉