Hills Creek State Park

View of Lake from Picnic Area next to Beach

Hurricane Irene left us without power for the machine shop and the skies the day after the storm were beautiful so I decided to take a short trip to Hills Creek State Park and the Pa Grand Canyon.  Hills Creek park is very special place to me as my grandfather was one of the ones that pushed for the lake to be made and a park to be formed.  I fondly remember family picnics there when I was a youngster and it is where I was taught how to use a canoe. I wanted to take the opportunity to see if I could get an exposure with a single image as compared to what I could do with HDR.  The objective was to most closely match what I saw with my eyes.   The wind was blowing steadily and the skies were dark blue with white, puffy clouds.  I used the Canon 1D MK IV with Canon 24-105 f4 lens with a circular polarizer mounted for all shots. I found that once again the HDR compilatrions of three to five images delivered the most realistic looking images of the scenery.

View of lake from breast of dam

View from Fishing pier at lower boat access

The swamp behind the Cabins

Road across the dam.

The view at Harrison Lookout at the Canyon was great with the puffy clouds-but the lighting was harsh. A graduated density filter would have come in handy to take good images there. 

Until next time

Jim Borden

Maine Lighthouses and Coast

Nubble Lighthouse at Cape Neddick

A friend and I traveled to Maine last week to compete in a National Rifle Match in Augusta.  We left three days early to spend some time along the coast viewing and photographing lighthouses and coastal birds.  My planning was not perfect as we hit Lobster Festival weekend and the coastal highways were packed with traffic.  As a result we did not get to see as many lighthouses as desired-but still had a great time.  I love the rugged Maine Coast.  Once again, I applied the use of HDR to some images to produce an image that was what I saw with my own eyes. I had intended to pass by Nubble lighthouse as I have taken so many images of it, but the skies were full of puffy and stormy clouds and I had to stop and see what different effects I could see.  Ended up capturing a partial rainbow with the lighthouse and stormy skies.

Portland headlight is close to being my favorite lighthouse along with Nubble. We also were able to observe it with stormy skies.  There were more people there this time than any time I had previously visited it. So I stayed away from doing any closeups as I did not want people to become a focal point in the images.

This was my first visit to owl's Head light and the scenery from there is absolutely gorgeous.

This was also my first visit to Marshall Point and we enjoyed a good share of the day there as traffic on US1 was bumper to bumper and the coast and crashing waves offered peace and relaxation.

The following gulls were taken in harsh lighting with a better beamer to tame the shadows and harsh light.

Until next time

Jim Borden