Pixley Falls State Park
Little Cascade
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 3.2s, 17mm, f/16, ISO 200
Little Cascade
Tag Archives: state park
Picnic Time
Delta Lake State Park
Picnic Time
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/80s, 25mm, f/16, ISO 200
Low Flow
Buttermilk Falls State Park
Low Flow
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 5s, 15mm, f/16, ISO 200
Highlights
Delta Lake State Park
Yesterday was a short work day. My company offers summer hours which allows us to work four, nine hour days and then only have to work four hours on Friday. With this being a long weekend, and it was a very long week for me in which I had unintentionally worked nine-plus hours all week, I allowed myself to take advantage of the summer hours offer. It isn’t something I regularly participate in but I needed it this week.
Of course, I never did mention to Mother Nature that this was my plan so she decided to hit us with a little rain in the afternoon. It was OK with me though, I did some reading and I am not afraid to say I took a cat nap too! By the time dinner rolled around I was ready to go again.
We actually had a tornado watch in affect most of the evening up until 9:30pm. As far as I know a tornado never did make an appearance. With me being the adventurous kind (not really) I decided to catch the sunset but chose to stay close to home for my exploration. I drove to Delta Lake State Park as the clouds started to roll in. The earlier rain had basically cleared the beach area and I found I had the sunset to myself. I was running back and forth along the beach capturing images for over an hour. It was a good way to end my work week!
I found an interesting composition which included a small, water filled depression in the sand. I aligned myself with this small water pool and the setting sun which created a very nice line of highlights. By including the sun I had to be careful about lens flare and as you can see in the first image I wasn’t able to remove it all with camera orientation. I ended up using my ‘finger blocking the sun’ trick to get a second image without the flare and used Photoshop to combine the two images.
After processing the image I felt there was empty space on the left which was not adding anything to the composition. I regretted not turning the camera into a portrait orientation while I was at the beach. It is a practice I typically follow but in my enthusiasm over the empty beach I forgot. I decided I still liked this image but needed to change the orientation through a drastic crop in Photoshop. I basically threw away over a third of the pixels I had captured but the end result is the image I wanted to have.
Highlights – Start
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200
Highlights
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200
Down the Drain
Buttermilk Falls State Park
Down the Drain
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 3.2s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200
The Pools
Buttermilk Falls State Park
The Pools
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 2s, 15mm, f/16, ISO 200
Another State Park Day
Buttermilk Falls State Park
The weather forecast predicted a beautiful Saturday here in Central NY so I decided Friday night I was going to make a run to Ithaca for some waterfall action. There has not been a lot of rain recently but my thought was the lower levels would produce some interesting cascades in my “go to” state parks. I gathered up my equipment, packed extra clothes and headed out around 5:30am.
My first stop was Taughannock Falls on the western edge of Cayuga Lake. Much to my disappointment the gorge trail was closed which only left me the falls overlook location. I grabbed a couple of images and explored around the new visitor center before reluctantly leaving for my next stop, Buttermilk Falls.
I was at the northern end of the gorge trail before 8:30am. The change in plans due to my first stop probably worked to my advantage. The trail was fairly empty and the sun had not reached into the gorge in a lot of the locations. I spent a good hour and a half photographing the upper portion of the gorge. I have never been very impressed with the namesake falls. I have found much more interesting images in the upper portion of the park. The image for this post is one of those locales.
Buttermilk Creek
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 2s, 19mm, f/16, ISO 200
The next stop (which ended up being my last stop) was Robert H. Treman park. By the time I arrived a little after 10am the park was already starting to get crowded. I didn’t think it would matter too much though as there are over 5 miles of trails along the gorge. What I didn’t think about was the number of people ignoring the signs about not playing in the water. I lost count of the images I walked past because there was someone in the water.
This park ended up kicking my butt! The next time the little voice in my head says “it is only a couple hundred stairs up to the top” there is going to be a fight. It is only a five mile round trip from one end of the park to the other. What the park map doesn’t explain is the huge changes in elevation. I will put together a post later in the week with a better look at this great state park.
For now, I am going to relax and recuperate… and probably head out for some sunset action. 🙂
Through the Arch
Butternut Creek, Old Erie Canal Park
Through the Arch
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, {1/125, 1/50, 1/25, 1/10 & 1/5s bracket}, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200
MLCreations Photography 