Pictures from two days. First is a set of pictures taken around a neighbor’s butterfly bushes. I have no idea if these are even actually butterflies. The could be moths of some sort. But I like the results. Second are pictures from a sunrise boat outing on Lake Lanier. We did not get a lot of great color, but it was not bad.
A selection from walks in the yard, on the greenway and at the lake. We had heavy rains from Nicholas, and so we had heavy dew for several days. I tried for images several days but only a few worked out. Something to continue practicing. On another day in the yard, my neighbor spotted the praying mantis on her truck and a number of spiders on the bushes. I walked on the greeway just to get out and stretch my legs. I happened on a Joro spider right beside the greenway where I could get my macro lens within inches of the web, and there were interesting fungi and blooms along the way. Lastly, I did get up for sunrise on the few days it was not either fully clear or fully cloudy. Not the greatest light, but still very nice.
Cruised on Lake Lanier before sunrise one morning in early September hoping for a colorful, dramatic sunrise, but it was not to be. So I had to work to find good compositions and good light.
A bit of repetition here. I included some pictures of Hemlock falls, but added new pictures of a couple of sunrise walks at West Bank Park on Lake Lanier near Buford Dam. The sunrises have started being a bit better than we’ve had for a while, and the ducks seem to be returning. We had a large amount of rain as storm Fred went by, and the lake rose to 1.6 feet above full pool. That put many of the rocks on which I sit or that I use as foregrounds under water. So I got a shot of a tree in the water that normally does not exist. And we’ve got a lot of haze or smoke in the air, so the sun rises as a fireball if there are no clouds. Great fun to photograph.
I did the scouting hike for the Hearthstone Hikers along with a few folks from the camera club on a sunny bright summer day. The trail was quite wet from recent rains, and the water was running high and hard. None of us had ever seen the creek or falls as full before, so the photo ops were a little different than what I had anticipated.
Most of the time, the pool below the falls is placid and suitable for wading/swimming. This day it was wild and none of us chose to venture into the water. So we shot from behind or on the logs bordering the pool. In addition, I turned around and tried some Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) shots of the trees and leaves. On the way back to the truck, I stopped couple of times to snap the creek below the falls. The creek is getting quite overgrown and it is now much more difficult to get good pictures without shooting through the rhododendron foliage. Perhaps int he fall…..
Continuing the pattern of shooting alone, either around the yard or on early morning jaunts to Lake Lanier. I have begun hiking more, but there is not much to photograph, at least not much I find interesting.
I did not go out much for the past couple of weeks, mainly because the weather has not been good. Too wet or too hot most of the time. But I did shoot the few blooms in the yard, the one good sunrise this month, and a few things on the Jarrad Gap/Slaughter Creek loop. Sure how things improve soon.
Another motley assortment of pictures from the few good sunrises we had and a jaunt along the river at Jones Bridge.
Not as many pictures as I had hoped to get, but ya play ’em like they’re dealt. We had some rain, and there was no wind toward the end, so the raindrops were still on the grass and flowers as the rain was ending one Sunday morning. And I did a couple hikes with the Hearthstone Hikers to places I had not been before: the Frady Branch trails near Toccoa, GA and the better-known Toccoa Falls. The day before that the Sonny Day Hikers did the Homestead Trail at Red Top Mountain State Park.
I had not been to the gardens for a couple of years, and I needed at waterlily fix, so I went. Not a lot has changed; the main difference was a resident Great Blue Heron I had not seen in years past. And the waterlilies had been thinned dramatically. That made for easier framing of shots. I had only a short time there, so I focused on the waterlilies and the Japanese Garden, with one shot on the path between therm.