Railroad crossing sign at the old WK&S Train Station in the small village of Wanamaker, PA.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped them in Photomatix Pro.
From the monthly archives:
July 2009
On the way back from the Gull Pond area and back towards the wildlife drive, I saw several Great Egrets sitting in a tree on the corner of the Gull Pond. I stopped and setup my tripod in an area with just barely enough room to see between the trees. Two of the Egrets were engaged in some sort of altercation that can only be described as being similar to a third grade child’s “I know you are but what am I ?” type of argument during recess. They would stand on branches and each would raise its neck a few inches to try and top the height of the other one. Up, up, up their necks would go until they could extend no further. A few tense seconds would elapse as the one who was still shorter would have to give up, after which the melee below would take place with lots of wing waving and squawking and grunting. Then things would calm down for thirty seconds until they would resume the neck raising contest again. Had the Egret on the right just moved to a branch more level with the other Egret, it would have been a more fair contest and maybe worthy of a little less drama. It was a blast to watch.
From my 7-3-2009 trip to Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ.
For more information on the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at www.fws.gov/northeast/forsythe/.
For more information on Great Egrets, visit the Cornelll Lab Of Ornithology.
I’ve wanted to shoot this barn for quite a while. I pass this on the way to and from work each day and in the evening, the magic hour sun does wonderful things to the stone texture of the barn. I also like the maroon wood instead of the traditional red or white treatments on most area barns. This is the barn to the left of the road that leads up to the parking lot at the Bear Creek Mountain Ski Resort outside of Macungie, Pennsylvania.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped them in Photomatix Pro. Incidentally, if you use Photomatix Pro and haven’t yet upgraded to version 3.2.0, I highly recommend the upgrade. You will experience much yummy improved work flow goodness, especially if you use Adobe Lightroom in your work flow.
It was another magical sunset at Lake Ontelaunee tonight (7-15-2009). I shot the sunset from water level this time instead of from the dam and I used my Nikon 24-70mm instead of the wider angle Sigma 10-20mm I used in previous Ontelaunee sunset shots. I was lucky enough to have a late day fisherman take his place in the frame within the last few shots.
Single RAW exposure, tripod mounted with Cokin Graduated Sunset-2, Neutral gray and Graduated Tobacco-Grey Pro-Z filters.
Lake Ontelaunee is a 1,082 acre reservoir that provides much of the drinking water for the city of Reading Pennsylvania. It’s a favorite fishing spot year round and is surrounded by state game lands and farms. The lake is formed behind the Ontelaunee Dam and was created in 1926.
For more information on Lake Ontelaunee, visit this page.
One of the 2 Great Blue Heron that were sharing the Raymond Pool with 56 Great Egrets comes in for a landing. There was some tall marsh grass in the way as you can see in the bottom of the frame.
From my Monday 7-6-2009 trip to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge outside of Smyrna, Delaware.
For more information on the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at http://www.fws.gov/northeast/bombayhook/.
For more information on Great Blue Herons, visit the Cornelll Lab Of Ornithology.
Billy Joel may not be able to tell the difference between the Pennsylvania towns of Bethlehem and Allentown but those who work and/or live in the Lehigh Valley certainly know which plant the song refers to. Steel customers wanted cheaper foreign steel. Unions wanted wages and benefits the company couldn’t afford. In the end, everybody lost.
“…So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel…”
You can see a video of the pouring of steel at this plant (Bethlehem Steel Blast Furnace C) made back in the 1990s here.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames and then combined them into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and finally, tone mapped that image to create the final product.
These are two stone dwellings on the Henry’s Forge historic site within the Jacobsburg Environment Education Center near Wind Gap, PA. They forged iron here starting in 1809. Today it is surrounded by some great trails that are used pretty heavily for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding, all in a very quiet, forested setting.
For more information on Jacobsburg Environment Education Center visit this site
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames and then combined them into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and finally, tone mapped that image to create the final product.
One of the 56 Great Egrets that I found in the Raymond Pool on this morning. There were so many Egrets all fishing in the same corner of the pool that they would fish for a few minutes then have to take flight and move to another spot in the pool in order to regain some territory. After a while it looked like a wild game of chess where all the pieces were white and had feathers.
From my Monday 7-6-2009 trip to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge outside of Smyrna, Delaware.
For more information on the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at http://www.fws.gov/northeast/bombayhook/.
For more information on Great Egrets, visit the Cornelll Lab Of Ornithology.
When I found this fellow in a tree, he seemed to be taking a nap. Once he was aware that I had stopped nearby on the wildlife drive he awoke and we sort of had this moment where neither of us moved, waiting to see what the other was up to. He sort of reminds me of “Mr. Burns” from the Simpsons cartoon.
From my Monday 7-6-2009 trip to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge outside of Smyrna, DE.
For more information on Black-Crowned Night Herons visit the Cornelll Lab Of Ornithology.
For more information on the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at http://www.fws.gov/northeast/bombayhook/.
The older (by one week) of the two Osprey chicks at nest # 4 takes flight, even if for just a few feet and a few seconds. I watched both chicks take turns taking flight today. Within a week I think they will have this stuff mastered. I noticed that all the Ospreys at the refuge looked to be banded recently. This is great news. Now we’ll be able to track their progress over the coming years as they mature, migrate and hopefully come back.
From my Saturday 7-11-2009 trip to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ.
For more information on Osprey, visit the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology.
For more information on the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at www.fws.gov/northeast/forsythe/.
Watch your back dear, your brother is trying to parallel park…
The Russian and French Judges withhold the awarding of points until the contestant has clearly stuck the landing.
From the fireworks display on July 4th 2009 at Dorney Park and Wild Water Kingdom in Dorneyville, PA.
I setup camp on the side of the road in front of the Comfort Inn and Suites Hotel which gave me a pretty good angle on the fireworks but also gave me a steady stream on insanely heavy traffic crossing in front of me, I’m pretty sure the headlights were throwing some of the metering off during the course of some of my shots.
I was a little disappointed in the finale though because of the density of the explosions, most of them came out just white flashes of light instead of nice, even distributed showers of sparks. The City of Allentown fireworks display which was also visible in the night sky off to the north was a lot better in my opinion.
I took this before the fireworks display at Dorney Park and Wild Water Kingdom Amusement park on Saturday 7-4-2009. It’s a 2.5 second exposure that had to be timed so that none of the passing cars would get in the shot and luckily the roller coaster, with it’s single passenger, was going uphill very slowly. I only wish that fence wasn’t in the frame but other than climbing to the roof of the Comfort Inn hotel and shooting this from that vantage point, I don’t know what else I could have done to avoid it.
It’s 7:26 AM, do you know where your Egrets and Herons are ?
The clouds were pretty thick for most of the early morning so instead of trying to venture out onto the wildlife drive to photograph birds in the early morning hours, I opted for an alternative strategy. I noticed rays of sun trying to burst out from places in the cloud cover so I changed heads on my tripod and grabbed my Sigma 10-20mm lens, cable release and Cokin Pro-Z filter set and climbed to the top of the observation tower at the end of the Gull Pond. From there I was given great 360 views and set this shot up so that when the sun did finally burst through, I was ready to capture it.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames with a Cokin Pro-Z Neutral Density ND-4 filter and a Tobacco gray 2 filter mounted to combat the sun’s strong oncoming rays and bring out some of the color of the marsh. I then combined those frames into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and then, tone mapped that image to create an output image.