Columbus Day Photography

Looking down the Brandywine - Hibernia Park

Looking down the Brandywine - Hibernia Park

I was lucky enough to have a free day to go out and do some shooting.

The later Summer, early Autumn weather has been relatively warm, and no cold snaps to set the leaves into colors yet, but I was still going to go out.

If anything, just to do some scouting.

So off I went…

I love having a GPS!

After about an hour of just driving around, enjoying the beautiful scenery of the Morgantown, Churchtown and Honey Brook areas, I headed toward Hibernia Park to find the spot I had surveyed earlier in the Summer on another GPS drive.

After parking in the small little lot, I equipped myself, crossed the bridge and down the trail to find a way to creek edge.

What had caught my eye about this section before, was the bigger rocks and swifter water flow.

I was hoping for more color in the canopy over the water, but it was not going to be…

Looking up the Brandywine - Hibernia Park

Looking up the Brandywine - Hibernia Park

Even without the real reds and oranges of Fall, this part of the Brandywine presented many nice sections of water action, and found myself setting up and capturing several section during my creek walk.

As I crawled across a fallen tree, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a single small white mushroom, growing in the hollowed out root ball of one of the trees.

Tree Stump with White Mushroom - Hibernia Park

Tree Stump with White Mushroom - Hibernia Park

Setting up my tripod for this shot, was very difficult because of the angle I needed to see into the stump, and having a stable platform to do the multiple shoots needed for HDR, but I think it was worth it.

- Andrew
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Stop and Smell the Roses HDR Approach…

Summer Hay Bales hdr 02 bw 01

Summer Hay Bales hdr 02 bw 01

It has been over two weeks since I have published something to my Photo-Blog…

This is not to say, that I have not been taken pictures, I’m just back logged on processing!

I have also started to take a different approach…

Several Posts ago, I mentioned the HDR work of Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel), and in particular,  his post on “The General HDR Workflow“.

“Let the finished file sit on your hard disk for a day or two. Don’t post it right away. I found that when you get back to it a day later, you will discover things that you might want to change, things that you did not discover while you were working on the details of the image very intensely.”

True words to live by if you are doing HDR…

I have also taken to heart Klaus’ idea of doing:

  • Noise Removal
  • Sharpening

as early in the HDR process as possible.

I wish I had read or thought about this before!

Anyhow, I just finished posting three images to Flickr and Panoramio, and have many ideas for future captures!

- Andrew
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Norwood Road Creek with Logan

It started just like any other morning around the house.

The scramble of breakfast, then off to the bus stop and on to Day Care.

But today, there was going to be a twist.

When Logan and I got to Day Care, we were told that there were electrical issues, and the second floor was without power.

The refrigerators were down and the indoor temperature was already in the 80s, and if I left him, I might be getting a ‘pick-up’ call shortly.

110531 Norwood Road Creek hdr 01

110531 Norwood Road Creek - Follow-Up

So what to do…

After a phone call or two, it was going to be a “Boy’s Day”!

After grabbing donuts at Wawa, we headed home, and spent some time catching up on some cartoons.

As lunch time rolled around, we began to prepare for our walk, and eventually head out.

Finding parking along the road was a breeze, and from there we gathered our gear and head down to the creek, which called for some bush whacking.

Once we where down in the creek, Logan began to explore, and I was able to set up for my first shoot.

Almost…

I left my Neutral Density filters in my bag…

Thankfully, we were still close enough to the car that I could dart back and grab them!

Back at my tripod, I attached my 1.2ND, and started to frame my follow-up shot to my January picture.

In January, this was my last scene of the day, because I had started further downstream.

What made this shoot easier, was the temperature, which was totally opposite. Today, it is in the low 90s with high humidity!

After doing a series of HDR exposures, I called Logan and we started upstream. This was new territory for the both of us.

As we walked up the stream, one could look by the sides and see debris that had washed down through the months. It wasn’t that bad, but it was still sunny to see three beach balls sitting on the side of the stream.

110531 Norwood Road Creek 034 tm 01

Norwood Road Creek - Water Fall 034

I stopped a few times and set up for some small waterfall shots, which served two purposes.

The most obvious being to capture the scene, the second was to stand in the nice cool water!

We also noticed in the many pools of water filled with small little schools of fish swimming away from us as we continued walking upstream.

Logan made many attempts to crack catch them to little avail.

The creek split several times, and we continued to the left all the way up to the exposed manhole, which stood out from the creek bed a good 6 feet.

As we got closer, Logan very excitedly and insistently asked me to put him on top.

The grin on his face when he finally felt secure enough to stand, was ear to ear.

Looking at my watch, we had about a half hour before Madison got home.

I had Logan jumped from the top of the manhole cover into my arms, giggling on his flight down.

Heading downstream, we veered to the right and ventured into more new territory.

As we walked, I asked Logan if he thought Madison would also enjoy this little creek, and he nodded his head in approval.

We splash your way down the stream and finally found where we had started and headed up the little hill back to our car.

Once we were at home, we unpacked our things minutes before Madison walked in the door.

She was bombarded by Logan with “Sissy! Sissy! Guess where we went!”

 

Additional Images

As I was processing my images, the waterfall detail, struck me as a potential candidate for some additional post processing work of dropping out the color and turning it into pure black-and-white image:

110531 Norwood Road Creek 034 tm 01 bw 01a

Norwood Road Creek 034 bw 01a

Here is an additional overview shot of the same scene:

110531 Norwood Road Creek 028 tm 01

Norwood Road Creek 028 - Waterfall Overview

Thanks again for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed what you have seen!

- Andrew
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Little Elk Creek

After finishing up with my images of Glen Hope covered bridge, I turned West, and headed up the creek to see what I could find.

It was easy to see, that the water level was down, which made it a little easier for me to explore and walk.

I ended up doing 5 series of HDR captures, and this is the first one that I have processed and published.

Little Elk Creek hdr 04

Little Elk Creek hdr 04

What do you think?

- Andrew
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