I drove up the house on Grindstone Lane to visit family for a couple of days. We had a number of rain bands move through, and so I had to find images when I could. I was fortunate to get a very nice image of the lake as one rain band moved to the east. I had opportunities to get abstract images of what little sunlight we had as the tree leaves lit up. And I just generally looked around for interesting stuff.
Some images, sunrises and a trip to one of our local botanical gardens.
A few from the last couple weeks in the month. I got up for many sunrises; I hiked some, and I made my annual trip to Gibbs Gardens to see the waterlilies. Nothing really unusual or difficult photographically, just a lot of pretty scenes. This is only a small selection.
Back home for a couple of months after my travels. So back to my routine of watching the sunrise at Lake Lanier and walking my miles while I’m there.
I travelled to Monterey to attend Addy’s graduation from high school. While I was there, I wandered around the area to see what I might find to photograph. I spent an inordinate amount of time a various spots photographing the surf, but few of those images worked out to my liking. But I did learn a lot about how to photograph the ocean. I also drove up to a couple places on the Elkhorn Slough, an estuarine preserve toward the north end of Monterey Bay. That was very interesting and I found some unexpected good images. The area of Monterey Bay Park to the Coast Guard Pier was also fruitful.
A few from between trips out of town for graduations. A couple of very nice sunrises after several days of rain and flowers from various places.
Shortly after returning from NC, I flew to St. Paul/Minneapolis to attend Gabby’s college graduation and to visit family. I had a great time.
I spent a couple hours one morning on the Hogback Ridge Trail from the Old Cedar Ave Bridge trailhead. A good walk but no particularly good images.
I also walked one morning at the Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield. Despite construction, there were quite a few birds. I got images of wood ducks and red-winged blackbirds.
And I went to the arboretum one afternoon. The tulips were in full bloom, and I got another shot although I don’t know the flower species.
I drove to Gorges State Park in North Carolina since I had never been there before. Then I went on to Brevard to visit friends and take pictures. That’s what I do in Brevard. I stayed overnight and got up early to watch the sunrise over the mountains.
Then I drove to Raleigh to visit family. While there I photographed the Dambo trolls in Dix park, stuff in Beth’s yard and stuff in the Beeloved Garden at the West Raleigh Presbyterian Church.
I was trying out an ultrawide angle lens, 10-18 mm. A lot of what I got was out of focus or too distorted to use. But I did learn a lot about the lens and wide-angle photography, and I did get a few good results.
I booked a trip with Backcountry Journeys (BCJ) to parts of Scotland I had not seen before. I had been to Scotland in 2014 with National Geographic, but that was a hiking itinerary adapted for photographers. The key failing of that trip was that we spent a lot fime travelling to places and not as much time actually photographing things. This trip appeared to be better suited to my desires since it was organized by photographers for photographers. However, this was my first venture with BCJ so I had not real expectations; just hopes.
These images are my favorites. Not all a great images, but they do reflect great memories. Our stops were in the general area north of Glasgow around Glen Coe or on the Isle of Skye. I can provide more details on request.
These are not in my preferred order, but I can’t figure out how to change that. Hmmmm……
I got out quite a bit and took many pictures. However, most of them did not turn out to be particularly inspiring. I was up regularly for sunrise, but we had only a few interesting skies or color. I also did a bit of hiking and found a few abstracts I liked. Lastly, I travelled to the Shirly Miller Wildflower Trail in northwest Georgia while the bluebells were at their peak.