Fall Color Lomography

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As I mentioned earlier in the week, my attempts to head north for some fall foliage photography this year have been thwarted. Instead I’m making the most of the local color using both my regular DSLR and the iPhone. I am working up a set of iPhone photographs made using the lomography workflow I described in a previous post. I’m not sure where I’m going to go with the project but I’m having fun and starting to develop an idea about how the photos should look rather than relying on what the presets give me. Often this means that I’ll initially process the image and then as I live with the original processed image for a while I’ll find things that I want to change. This was certainly true of the image above that was taken just in front of my house. This image is now into the third iteration of edits. I’m finally liking it as it is, although digital editing means that it is way to easy to go back and tinker some more.

Where Do You Turn for Fall Color?

It’s almost peak fall color here in Massachusetts. I had grand intentions this year of talking some trips North to Vermont this year but I have missed my window of opportunity to do that. There are a number of websites that will either give you a prediction of the color or that use a network of spotters to give a more accurate representation of what the current status is. Of course if you live in New England like I am fortunate enough to do then these websites are useful, not so much if you booked your trip a year in an advance.

Okay so where to go? Not sure how you prepare for trips to new locations but I usually will use a combination of on-line searching with digging through books and if I can get some local knowledge so much the better. Jerry and Macy Monkman put together a book a few years ago called ‘The Colors of Fall: A Celebration of New England’s Foliage Season‘ that I quite enjoyed. They then followed that up with ‘The Colors of Fall Road Trip Guide’ which gives you a range potential New England trips, from ones that might be familiar such as the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park to what might be less expected such as Rhode Island Beaches and Mansions.  While the book highlights good vantage points for leaf peeping it’s not specifically targeted towards photographers.

Countryman press have a range of books for the photographer that I’ve mentioned here before and that I’ve found generally useful.  The Photographer’s Guide to Vermont and The Photographer’s Guide to the Maine Coast both by David Middleton are good resources when planning trips at anytime of the year to either Maine or Vermont but especially during fall.

While it looks like I’ve missed my opportunity to travel north this fall I’m making the most of the color nearer to home.

Trees in Motion

I have been playing with the interaction of still and moving, generally trying to combine the two into a single photograph.  When I saw these trees together on my way down to the beach recently I wondered whether I could build on my interest in motion to create an image that I was happy with.  I took a lot of frames but was happiest with the one above.  I may try more of these!

Winter Stream

After one of the recent storms I headed out to one of the local conservation areas to see what I could find.  I had been photographing one of the streams in this area before the snow and wanted to see how the snow had changed things.  Increasingly I find with areas that I’ve been to often that I have an image in mind that I want to take.  In this case I’d photographed a series of rocks in a stream before the snow storm and wanted to make some similar images with the rocks covered with snow.  The images I made were okay but as I moved on and continued to photograph the image posted above revealed itself.  This shot captured much my feeling of the couple of hours that I spent tramping around in the snow than my planned images did.  I’m pleased that I continued to explore and photograph after I came what I was after.  A reminder that regardless of what my preconceptions are, its always worth remaining open for other opportunities.

Winter Trees, Close to Home

We’re in a cycle of one storm per week here in the northeast at the moment.  When I first moved here, over 10 years ago now, having storms that could drop 1 – 2 feet of snow was quite a novelty.  I’d never really seen that much snow before.  As a kid had always wanted to live somewhere where it really snowed.  Well I do now!

I was around the house at the end of last week for a number of reasons.  This photograph is the view from my back door – I didn’t even have to do outside to take it – just before I headed out to scrape some of the snow and ice off my roof. With more snow on the way there’ll be many more opportunities for winter snow pictures!