Fall Quickly Transitions into Winter

We had a brief pre-Halloween snow storm that turned the flowers into displays of crystal. Here are some photos from this past week; first of fall arriving at Great Falls and then of winter arriving today in our front yard.

Brookside Gardens

It was hot and muggy today, but since we were gong to make a trip to Wheaton anyway, Judy and I also visited Brookside Gardens. We enjoyed the botanical garden, butterflies and flowers, but also the many respites in the air-conditioned buildings between our excursions into the 100+ Heat Index weather.

More Dragonflies

It was another hot day, so the dragonflies were active. Unfortunately I was not!! So there was time to take only a few shots at the Sunrise Valley Wetlands.

Powerboat Races in Cambridge, MD

This was the second day of the racing held in the Choptank River in Cambridge. It seemed like a very NASCAR-like atmosphere, although a much smaller crowd. We stayed about an hour and got to see one race. The oppressive heat was tempered by a strong offshore breeze. All shots were taken handheld and using auto focusing. The racing shots used very fast shutter speeds, approx 1/1000 sec, ISO 320, and f/5.6 with a 600m equivalent lens.

Plein Aire at Easton, Md

It was a very hot day, but the painters were spread all over the downtown area creating their two-hour wonders. The art galleries around town provided an air-conditioned respite that made being outside tolerable. Even the camera got very warm in the 105F temperatures.

Even with the hot and humid weather, the people turned out and purchased quite a few of the plein aire compositions.

McKee-Becher Wildlife Management Area

Today a group of OLLI photographers enjoyed a photo shoot of the sunflowers at the Mckee-Becher Wildlife Area. The weather was unusual for mid July both low temperatures and low humidity. I shot with the Lumix G3 and the 14 to 140mm lens with excellent results. Since Lightroom has yet to update its software for G3 RAW images, I used the JPG Fine mode of the camera. The sunflower field was very crowded with photographers, making it difficult to shoot without capturing a photographer in the image. As we were leaving, Joe Ellis found a black snake and we had some fun both photographing it and watching Joe trying to play with it.

Additional images from McKee-Becher can he found here.

Sunrise Valley Wetlands

Beautiful day for photographing dragonflies. Low humidity and low wind. Used Lumix G3 with 300mm lens (with 2x factor this is equiv to 600mm with a full frame camera).

Two secrets for photographing dragonflies. Wait until they have been warmed up by the sun and observe their motion to find the places they like to land. Then just set the camera up and focus on the landing sites and wait and wait and ...