From April 2010 archives…

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.

I shot this as a single exposure, tripod mounted with Cokin Graduated Sunset-2, Neutral gray and Graduated Tobacco-Grey Pro-Z filters.

I’ve been thinking about this shot all week, knowing how the weather was being forecasted, and I was really looking forward to today’s 74 degree temps and clear skies.

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.

I shot this as a single exposure, tripod mounted with Cokin Graduated Sunset-2, Neutral gray and Graduated Tobacco-Grey Pro-Z filters.

Time to get my creative hat on. I grabbed a previously un-posted shot I took of an adult Bald Eagle flying over the Susquehanna River in Maryland back on 8-1-2009 and combined it with a sunset shot at Lake Ontelaunee in Pennsylvania I took back on 7-15-2009 to make this composite piece. Lake Ontelaunee does have its own nesting pair of Bald Eagles but they are seldom seen this close, so this helps to image what it might look like.

For more information on Bald Eagles, visit the Cornelll Lab Of Ornithology.

This was taken close to the dam at water level about nineteen minutes before I took the sunset shot with the fisherman. The fisherman sunset was taken about five hundred feet further down shore. Lake Ontelaunee, Wednesday night 7-15-2009.

Single RAW exposure, tripod mounted with Cokin Neutral gray (ND2) 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.

This was Saturday night’s sunset over Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ. Forsythe was my second refuge of the day after having started my day off at 7:00 AM at Bombay Hook NWR in Smyrna Delaware.

I was setting up to do an HDR shot of the setting sun reflecting off the pools near the end of the straightaway on this section of the wildlife drive but never got a chance to do that when my progress to the end of the drive was held up by a pack of five young skunks who took up position in the middle of the road. By the time they decided to creep back into the marsh grass and let me pass, the sun was already down. So I had to settle for this single frame traditional shot taken before my close encounter with the skunks. You would be amazed what emerges out of the marsh grasses when darkness takes over at the refuge.

Single RAW exposure, tripod mounted with Cokin Neutral gray (ND2) and Graduated Tobacco-Grey Pro-Z filters.

For more information on the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, visit their web site at www.fws.gov/northeast/forsythe/.

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.

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.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually shot the sunset before. I’ll have to work on fixing that sun flare issue but I still sort of like how this came out.

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.