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Blogging Chester County Downingtown Flickr Google Earth Google Maps Location Marsh Creek State Park Nature Photography Tone Mapping

Father’s Day 2011 – Daddy’s Day

Feather Light
Feather Light

It’s Dad’s Day and I don’t need to do anything!

Well, within reason.

After all I have two kids…

But that is the best part!

When I was woken up, I was presented with Father’s Day cards, and a special banner that Amy, Madison and Logan had worked on just for me!

What a nice way to start the day!

From there, I was allowed to watch my Sunday morning programs with a hot cup of coffee and an omelet in peace!

So far so good!

And peace was a relative term…

I could hear the kids up stairs running back and forth in the upstairs hallway, screaming and giggling…

It was also not hard to realize, they needed to get out and burn off some of the energy that is perpetual when the two of them are together!

Since it was Daddy’s Day, I got to say where we were going! Yeah!!

I did not have to compromise or negotiate, especially when the kids heard that Mommy was going to come with us!

Marsh Creek Reservoir looking North (Panorama 01)
Marsh Creek Reservoir looking North (Panorama 01)

My plan was slowly taking shape!
(Insert “Mad Scientist” Laughter)

Now the hard part… Where?

I wanted to try some place that I have not been to before, but keep it close by.

I knew because of the heat and humidity, I wanted to be near water.

Based on that, I looked up Marsh Creek State Park.

Am I suggesting that I have never been to MCSP before? – NO

Along the trail (20110619 Marsh Creek 107)
Along the trail (20110619 Marsh Creek 107)

I have been to the Pool and Water Park area on the east side several time, and I have been Mountain Biking before in the south-west part near the Brandywine before, but I did not think anyone but me would be interested in that adventure.

So I had to figure out some place new, so I took to Google Earth to fly around a little to scope out a trail, and in doing so, I remembered the damn in the southern park.

So I gather up the troops, jumped into the car, and headed out, and about 30 minutes later, we were parked and heading down the trail.

There are many small coves that surround the lake, and as we approached the first one, there were some folks fishing and a dog that was having a grand time in the water.

Not to be out done, Logan and Madison pleaded with us to be allowed to go in the water and play with the dog.

Who am I to say “No”?!

We let them play for a little bit, and then called for them to join us on the rest of the walk, and all we got was “Awww…”, but finally we were off again!

I should have figured that as soon as we were on “open” trail, Logan would be running down the trail, and the parents calling out to him to slow down and be careful! Soon to be followed by his sister, trading back and forth who would be our guide, calling out rocks and roots so we would not fall.

Very cute, but after the first 50 “obstacles ‘… Well, what do you say as a parent…

We finally got to the over-flow drain, and the kids were having fun walking on the grate, looking down into the rushing water as it fell in, but Amy was a little more apprehensive about the whole situation.

Butterfly on the Damn (20110619 Marsh Creek 095)
Butterfly on the Damn

Then we crossed over the main damn, where we were pasted by several Mountain Bikers as they headed to the trails on the far side. I reminded both kids, that we needed to work on getting them off of training wheels so that we could start doing the same thing.

At the edge of the meadow, we stopped and rested, saw a Red-Winged Black bird, and agreed that it was time to head back.

Tree Stump and Ferns (20110619 Marsh Creek 110)
Tree Stump and Ferns (20110619 Marsh Creek 110)

On the trip back, Madison made sure that we all knew she was the guide, but after some time, she relinquished her lead, and Logan scampered to the front.

As we returned the swimming cove from earlier, both the kids just ran into the water without evening asking, and happy played until it was time to leave once again.

On the car trip home, there were talks of baths and then fun that we had on our Father’s Day Nature Walk.

– Andrew

Andrew (SDC) - View my 'Marsh Creek ('11 Father's Day)' set on Flickriver

Additional Information

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Chester County Downingtown Google Earth Google Maps HDR Panoramio Pennsylvania Phoenixville Photography Web West Chester West Pikeland

22 Images Submitted to Panoramio

Andrew Seymour on Panoramio
Andrew Seymour Panoramio/Google Earth

It has been several months since I have had a chance to sit down and pull a collection of images to submit to Panoramio for Google Earth.

So this morning, while I was drinking my coffee, I slowly went back through my catalog of images, and pulled together a series of 22 images that I thought would be a good selection for submission, including late Fall, Winter and Spring images from:

If you care to see what I have selected, as well as my other images that have been accepted, they can be found on my Panoramio (Google Earth) account.

As always, please feel free to add comments!

– Andrew
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Update on Panoramio submissions

6/6/2011 – Wow! The folks that monitor submission seem to be working overtime!

Normally, or at least from my past experience, it usually takes 3-5 days for any news on images being accepted, but by late Sunday night, ALL 22 of my images have been approved! (I now have 135 images on Google Earth!)

Categories
Blogging Chester County Downingtown HDR Nature Photo Journal Photography Streams

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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Categories
Chester County Downingtown Nature Photo Journal

Changes in the weather…

Storm Clouds - UHES 266 tm
Storm Clouds - UHES 266 tm

It was another Saturday in the later winter, and there were reports that some rain was on it’s way, but by mid afternoon, the kids were too filled with energy to spent any more time inside.

So we packed up the car with Madison’s scooter and Logan’s bike, and we head up to Uwchlan Hill Elementary School to get some fresh air and exercise.

When we got there, we noticed two other families also had the same idea, and were enjoying the usually warm day.

As we walked around the school, playing on the various pieces of equipment, I was continuously pointing my camera to the sky, to capture all the dark storm clouds that were crossing our area.

At first, I let the camera’s sensors take care of the exposure, but in reviewing the images on the little LCD screen, I decided to switch into manual mode, with some setting as high as 1/4000 at F16 ISO 100, which was definitely underexposing the my captures bu 2-3 stops, but at the same time, giving more depth to the clouds as the flew by.

During the outing, I took around 350 images, and when it came time to edit them, I had to look very carefully, 1) because the images were very dark; 2) there were only subtle differences between some of the frames.

I was really surprised to find so few images with lens flair, especially considering that in many cases, I was shooting directly into the sun. What I found very intriguing, was some of the color halos that I was getting around the sun. It was easy to see that I was pushing the limits of the CCD on my camera!

After making my initial selections, I used basic Lightroom corrections to try and enhance the images, which worked in many cases, but I wanted to get a little more.

I then imported some of the images into Photomatix, where I applied mostly default settings in the enhanced tone-map section, plus added a little color temperature warmth to some of the captures.

Looking forward, I plan to use this underexposure technique again when faced with similar scenes, I only hope, that I will be able to hold the foreground detail…

If you are interested, more images can be found in my Flickr Photostream, under “Uwchlan Hills Elementary School (110305)

Andrew (SDC) - View my 'Uwchlan Hills Elementary School (110305)' set on Flickriver

Thanks for stopping by

– Andrew
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Chester County Creeks Downingtown Flickr HDR Nature Photo Journal Photography Photostream

1,100 Views of my little creek

1,100 Views, 761 Comments, 42 Favs, 2 Galleries
1,100 Views, 761 Comments, 42 Favs, 2 Galleries

As I sit here, trying to heal from another cold, I have been Flickr-ing about, and in doing so, I have noticed that my simple little picture of the small little creek near my house, has reached 1,100 views!

I think back to that day, it was the day after the first snow of the new year, and at the time, I had know idea how this capture would be received.

It just seemed such a simple capture, and simple HDR processing.

• • • • •

Since I posted this pictures, it has received several Flickr group awards that I am very proud to have gotten, including the following:

Andromeda "50"
Andromeda "50"
Elite Club of Photography for Recreation
Elite Club of Photography for Recreation
Above and Beyond - 500+ Comments
Above and Beyond - 500+ Comments

 

Build Your Rainbow Group Member
Build Your Rainbow Group Member

This capture has also allowed me to connect with many more photographers on Flickr, and share our unique visions from around the world.

Dragon Dagger Awards
Dragon Dagger Awards
The Light Painters Society
The Light Painters Society
Chariots of Artists
Chariots of Artists

 

Needless to say, I want to thank again all those that took the time to click on my thumbnail, and paste an award!

– Andrew
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