We are back!

Sunset, Mallory Square Key West

Oh, I forgot ... We were Away
I should mentioned that we were away for the last month.

Back to the Cold

I love winter in New England, but this year, Susan and I decided to escape the worst of the season and head south for some much-needed warmth, and an early glimpse of spring green.  March is the time of year when the winter dark begins to show its earliest hints of fading, but it is also the time when the persistent cold, snow and sleet becomes increasingly hard to bare.  Now that we are both retired, we realized we could just get out of town and come back, whenever.

Roanoke Market

We had a great trip and I came home with over 4,000 pictures.  Many of the green landscape but mostly of animals, especially a great variety of birds.  Yes, I am a birder now.  But there was a problem.

Keeping the Secret

Florida Sunrise, Hollywood

Every evening, as I uploaded more fantastic images, I was desperate to share our experiences with pictures on Facebook, but there was a problem.  This was not the first time that we were worried about publicizing to the world that our house was empty, but this time we were away for a whole month.  As always, we had arranged for someone to stay in the house for many of the nights and our trusty local contractor kept the driveway clear.  Jason also came by for regular checks on the property.

Everglades Croc

 
Despite all these precautions, I still decided to avoid direct references to our absence, no blogs, no posts and no images.  It killed me to publish generic blogs, while I was seeing such amazing stuff.  Of course, I couldn't keep entirely silent.  I referred friends to a gallery of a few images on my web site, with the marginally cryptic title of “Search for Warmth”.  I trusted that the standard issue burglar would not venture that far down on my front page in search of prime targets.  


 

Ringbill at Dawn, St Augustine Florida

 Our plan worked and we returned to an intact house and the shock of frigid cold and blustery winds.  We considered turning around to head south again, but the van was due back.  To get me through the mud and stick season, I have the consolation of thousands of warm weather images requiring my attention.
 

The Trip

Kure Beach Sunset, Wilmington North Carolina

Susan is a master travel planner and she knows the cravings of my photographer’s eye.  She scheduled a month long, warmth seeking, tour along the coast as far south as Key West, planning visits with friends and family along the way. We packed all my camera gear and a full range of clothing, winter to summer, into our rented minivan.  The southbound itinerary included stops in Roanoke Virginia and Savannah Georgia, on our way to spending a few days with Sue’s college roommate in Hollywood Florida.

Key West Lighthouse

We spent the majority of our trip in Florida, mostly exploring both sides of the Everglades and relaxing for five nights in a quiet Key West condo oasis.  Key West is lovely and we were nicely shielded from the craziness of the spring break “thuglets” that roamed the bars on Duval Street.

White Egret Naples, Florida

Our trip back home included stays with friends and family around Naples on Florida’s west coast.  In addition to enjoying the beaches and nature preserves, we had the opportunity to see the criminally opulent seaside mansions of so many of the one percenters.  All during a time when we are told that we don’t have enough money to provide food or basic healthcare to our most vulnerable.

Everglades Osprey

St Johns Ruins, Harpers Ferry WV

On the way north we stopped for a quick tour of Saint Augustine and a morning in a pleasantly deserted Harpers Ferry Virginia.  The park’s empty streets made it easy to be transported back the town’s  turbulent 19th century past.

Quick Meal, Young White Ibis

It is good to be home.  I am excited about the impending spring, and I have shows to prepare, the spring and summer course and workshop schedule to finalize and, of course, a boatload of images to edit!





 

Appledore Sunset, Key West Florida

I have so much more to share from this trip, sunrises and sunsets, interesting architecture, lush landscape and most importantly a wide variety of fauna.  And of course, much thanks for the wonderful hospitality from; Joanie and Allen, Judy, Mark and Joan, Mark and Veronica, and Larry and Evelyn.  

It feels SO good to finally get out a few of my pictures from this wonderful adventure.  More to come, but in the meantime, you can follow my editing progress in my “Searching for Warmth” Gallery.  

Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com

Spring Preview

  Washington D.C.

Last weekend Sue and I took what seems to be becoming an annual spring trip to visit our daughter in Washington D.C. It was wonderful to spend time with Abigail and her friends and perhaps most importantly we had the importunity to get to know her new boyfriend. He checked out quite nicely.

Again this was a great time of year to visit the capital. Spring was fully in bloom and the oppressive summer heat had not yet settled on the city. The Cherry Blossoms were already gone, but the rest of the colors were a lovely foreshadowing of what is to come to us up north.


Botanic Garden

On Friday we walked the Mall, which seems in perpetual construction, and then escaped to the wonderful United States Botanic Garden at the base of the Capital Building.

The gardens were featuring a remarkable collection of Orchids. On a Friday morning

US Botanic Garden

the place was not especially crowded and we had a wonderfully peaceful and colorful stroll. The exotic flowers in the greenhouse were lovely subjects for photography. I only regretted not having my tripod to allow better control of depth of field with smaller apertures and longer exposures. As I discussed in my previous blog about cheating with greenhouse photography, enclosed settings eliminate the wind which can often limit the length of exposure in outside flower photography. Without my tripod, I did my best by cranking up the ISO and trying to suppress the jitters from my morning coffee. In these situations positioning of the narrow focus point becomes critical as I tried to place the

Get the "Business" in Focus

small zone of sharpness on the most important spots. In portrait photography that critical focus point is the eyes, for flowers it is generally the central pistil and stamen. If you get that sharp, the surrounding softness tends to serve only to draw attention to the flower’s “business" zone. All I could do was get as stable as possible, compose an interesting arrangement, and then adjust to ISO and aperture to allow a shutter speed down to around 1/40 – 1/60. With the help of my camera’s image stabilization function, this was about the limit of what I could trust myself to hand-hold. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not. I had to be careful not to trip people as I knelt next to the flowers and I quickly learned to photograph the name tags immediately after I shot each flower. I hate having to use labels such as, “Red Flower # 2”. Next time I will come better prepare, but it is silly to complain about any time spent in such a lovely refuge. 
 

Vanda

Green Dragon

In the evening we went to the annual Gospel Concert by the National Symphony at the massive Kennedy Center.  Great concert, but sadly, not awfully photography friendly in the hall.

Kennedy Center

Northern Virginian Wines

Saturday was another beautiful warm day and

Trail-Side Dogwoods

we headed out to Northern Virginia to hike with Abby and her boyfriend Grayson in the shadow of the Blue Ridge. The Dogwoods were blooming along the trails at the Blue Ridge Center in Purcellville Virginia. It was a wonderful day for a walk and we would have lingered longer in the forest, but our primary goal for the day was wine tasting. Abby had her own favorite vineyards to sample as we worked our way through the spring colors in the
rolling Virginia hills. Susan was assigned to the job of driver so the rest of us

Abigail and Grayson,  Sampling the Wine

sampled many, “excellent vintages with a dry/sweet taste accented with a hint of smoky wood, fresh plums or citrus finish”.  I swear, vintners are even more annoying than photographers when describing their work. Despite all of the showmanship, the wine was fair, but the settings were gorgeous. I got my usual complaints whenever I wanted to stop for photographs, but I couldn’t bypass the old road-side barn that was nearly consumed by vividly colored Wisteria. The day was capped by dinner at a surprisingly good Thai restaurant located in a gas station in Leesburg.

Wisteria Barn, Purcellville Virginia

Old Town Alexandria

On Sunday, Abby and her house mates hosted about 20 of her

Doors of Old Alexandria

friends for a delicious brunch.  It was reassuring to talk to all these brilliant, committed kids who are so thoroughly engage in careers that, being in Washington, are focused on government and public service.  It is really true that our government is actually run by 20 and 30 year olds, and that's ok.  We spent the afternoon on a relaxing touring of the Old Town of Alexandria Virginia.  Although it has largely been transformed into a tourist haven, the Old Town is along the shore of the Potomac and has many historic building which recall the city’s seaport history. The challenge here was to capture the colonial charm without the intrusion of wires, neon signs and BMWs. For this, the back streets were much better than the busy main roads.

On our way home on Monday we watched as the spring color slipped away, but things here in New Hampshire are greening up as well. Over the weekend we had a great early taste of the season,   but I know that, given our shorter growing time, our spring will be even more vibrant and exuberant. I can't wait.

Colors of Home,  Spofford New Hampshire