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Low Tide, Down River. April 6, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.
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So I got out through the swift current with hip boots, ski poles and a good deal of patience and concentration; after waiting for visual low water, I was still amazed at the power of what looked shallow from the road.

Once I was at the gravel bar, the Deerfield was glowing in the rising blush of the setting sun, its cobbles showing their serpentinite-green roots through the silvery, slithering water.

I set up low, glad to have the hip waders on as I knelt in the shallows and contorted myself to get a working view of my camera’s LCD screen at 10X.  That part is necessary to get the best out of Elliot; the interplay of tilt and focus and exposure, coupled with the complication of arranging hand-held graduated filters, requires a view of the process beyond what appears through the view-finder.

The results were predictably mixed, and most of my haul went directly into the Round File (that’s trash,  for those of you who remember waste baskets.)

Here’s what emerged as the keeper from this effort:

Courtesy of Elliot, with about six degrees of tilt, and a pair of stacked/staggered hand-held graduated filters for a total of six stops of cooling that sun.

Once again, my hat’s off to the right gear producing the desired results.

Well, that and a little elbow grease.

It’s Hot, But We’re Not! July 21, 2011

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.
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This past weekend was a scorcher, especially in the lower climes, so I invited my Susan to join me for an afternoon at the Cold river.  Flowing as  it does through a high, narrow valley and getting less sun than the wider water courses in these parts, it’s of a scale which is easily assimilated by humble minds and lives up to its chilly name.

We parked at a spot which has room for only one car (ours!) in a half-mile stretch, so we wouldn’t see another soul.

And we didn’t.  We walked the short distance down to the boulder-strewn river bed:

…and set to exploring.

It was magical; Susan got deeply into building delicate stone towers:

…while I scoped out the scene for photos.  The place was rich with opportunities, and I was soon hunkered down amongst the rocks, framing shots of the rich range of colors on display:

The predominant rock type here is schist, but there are chunks of blue-green serpentine as well.  I like the complexity of this rock, with its angular features on a micro scale:

…and its colorful weathering:

There are also a lot of big round quartzite boulders, which display a weathering pattern known as “spalling,” and look like they’ve been carved with a round chisel:

As a black and white image, I think that shot evokes old India ink drawings.

Eventually we got down to the hard work of the day: holding down the big boulders and keeping a bit of the sun off them:

It was grueling, enduring the hypnotic pink noise of the burbling cascades and all.

But hey, somebody’s  got to do it, and we volunteered!    😉