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| Green River above the Village |
Exploring Opportunities
This last week I have been struggling to work through
images from this year’s Fall Foliage Workshop.
The pressure has been relaxed by all the great pictures that my group
has already posted to public media. I
have been amazed by the variety and quality of the work.
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| Dan Shooting in the Rain |
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| West Guilford Valley, Vermont |
In past years I have recounted a chronological story
of the weekend, from our departure early Saturday morning to the reluctant wrap-up
around noon on Sunday, but this time I thought I might organize things a bit
differently. Our workshop included a
wide range of opportunities, and challenges across the two days and this seems
like a good way to share something about the experience.
Weather: It’s always about the weather
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| Barn in the Rain, Chesterfield |
Saturday morning started
over-cast with intermittent showers. The
rain gave me a chance to discuss methods of protecting the gear from the wet,
while taking advantage of the special light. I tried to convince everyone that cloudy
conditions were often the best to capture the fully saturated colors of fall
foliage, and I was happy to see everyone adapt to the conditions.
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| Green River Falls, 16 seconds with ND |
We shot on the back roads of Chesterfield New
Hampshire and up to the remarkable Roads End horse farm, but much of our day
was spent in Vermont. With many stops,
we worked our way to the classic village of Green River in Guilford Vermont. Within a compact location, Green River
provides an arrangement of almost everything which makes an iconic New England
village icon; a waterfall, a covered bridge, a white church and more. Everyone found their own approach. I had
the opportunity to demonstrate the use of a neutral density filter to soften
the waterfall and create leaf swirls in the pond below.
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| Reach Maple, Guilford Vt |
As the day progressed, the rain thinned, and we saw
some sun, but the clouds were never very far from view. We had more sun on Sunday which allowed us to
appreciate the value of a polarizing filter and the dramatic effect of strong
back-lighting.
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| The Group, Precious Monadnock View |
Flowing Water
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| Broad Brook, Guilford Vt |
I am always enthusiastic about shooting flowing water
in all its manifestations and the recent rain, provided several
opportunities on Saturday. Brooks and
rivers tend to open gaps in the trees allowing light to penetrate, highlighting
the color of the foliage and creating contrast with the dark blue water. We found beautiful views at a couple of
locations on Broad Brook, and along the Green River in Guilford Vermont. Of course, the falls over the wood crib dam
in Green River provided many different opportunities to capture the flow at
various shutter speed
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| Sherman's Pasture Jaffrey NH |
The Human Touch
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| Shack ion the Woods, Marlborough NH |
Our corner of New England is known for its pristine
farms and, as always, we found that the autumn colors contrasted nicely with lovely
barns, sugar shacks and farming equipment.
The trick was to allow the color to comfortably envelop the human
touches. On Sunday, we completed our
tour with a visit to Jaffrey where the streets were lined with hundreds of
scarecrows. The “Scarecrows on the
Common” is just part of a family-oriented autumn celebration which included
face painting, hayrides and somethings called a “Donut Dash”.
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| Jaffrey Scarecrows |
Animals
There always must be animals. Horses, sheep, goats, and cows, we found lots
of opportunities to capture farm animals.
The remarkable thing is how oblivious these creatures are to the
spectacular colors which are all around. The trick is to get the critters to stop
paying attention to the mass of photographers and return to doing “critter”
stuff. It usually just took patience.
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| Chat Break |
Everything Else
Not all the attractions of our workshop fell into neat
categories. It is Autumn and sometimes
things where just plain beautiful. What
is not captured in the images is the great fun that we had chatting, often about
photography, and sometimes about nothing vaguely related to photography. Frequently I had to break off the
conversations and suggest that we might want to take a few pictures!
I have more of my own images to process, but much of
my time was spent helping the group find great locations and then get the most
from their expensive equipment. From all that I’ve seen so far, the
group took LOTS of great pictures!
Check it out.
Jeff
Newcomer, NEPG
www.partridgebrookreflections.com
