During our trip to Chernobyl, we got a chance to visit this children’s summer camp outside of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Like everything in the Zone, mother nature is taking over. There is something beautiful about this scene, in a sad way.
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I love the shadows in this photo. We were walking around this abandoned children’s camp outside of Chernobyl. It had all these little cabins (maybe 20 of them) with cute murals painted on them. As we were walking back along the path towards our bus, this scene unfolded in front of me…… I had my camera all packed up and had to get it back out to capture this moment. I’m glad I did!!!
Btw….Happy Thanksgiving.
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I feel like I missed fall this year. I don’t know if it was because of my work schedule, travel schedule or if I just blinked and missed it. Regardless, I missed it. Thankfully, we had nice weather this weekend.
Anyway, here is a fall photo I took, not this fall, down at Babcock State Park in West Virginia. It’s an amazing spot.
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I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend, at least if you’re in the United States. We had family over to visit, relax and hang out. Yesterday we went to Mingo Park and had a great time. I took this photo of Ebenezer Bridge inside the park….. it took some patience waiting for people to get out of the way (cars, bikers, walkers, etc…). They all wanted their time on the bridge.
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Here is another photo from my time at Valhalla Ranch near Grayling Michigan. This 650-acre hunting resort is a wonderful place. If you’re a deer hunter, you won’t be disappointed with the number and size of the white tail deer. I took this photo behind the lodge which sits next to the West Branch Big Creek. I loved the composition of the river, the forest and the ranch road.
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As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been off the grid the last 10 days or so. Between work, work travel, my Baldrige volunteer work and some fun travel; I’ve been extremely busy. I started last week in Washington D.C. for work meetings and ended the week in northern Michigan to get some ship wreck scuba diving in around the Mackinaw Straits area of Lake Huron. By the way, the scuba diving in the Great Lakes is amazing. But I’ll leave that for another day.
Anyway, I had an old friend contact me to see if I’d photograph his hunting resort and ranch in Northern Michigan. He had no idea that I was going to already be in that area. So, I spent some time at his 605 acres ranch and resort photographing the deer, the property and the facilities. I have to admit, he has a wonderful setup if you just want some quiet time in the forest or you want to bag a trophy white tail buck. You can see more on his location here: http://www.valhallami.com/
Tonight’s photo is one of the bucks. We came up on this one by mistake and found it laying in the tall grass.
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I’ve written about this location many times in the past, but I’ll say it again. If you get the chance, go hike the waterfall trail at this Pennsylvania state park. There are a ton of great waterfalls all within a three-mile hike. Just amazing.
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Great waterfall in a great state park
Today’s photo is from Connellsville PA. This wonderful waterfall is a hidden gem in this area. Most people have never heard of it. To bad!!! Great spot.
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I realize this isn’t a technically perfect photograph. The “Pure-ist” would rip this photo apart and tell me all the problems with it. But I don’t care. There is something about this photo that just makes me happy. I think it reminds me of the actual experience of standing there in Muir Woods National Park looking up at these huge, majestic trees. It was so peaceful with the sun shining through…… Or maybe I’ve just been working too hard and my mind has turned to jello. Regardless, I like it.
MJ and I took the trolley north of the Bourbon Street to go find New Orleans City Park. We spent some time walking around this very large park (larger then NYC’s Central Park). It was a nice day, nice weather, and very pretty park.
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What to post? What to post? On some nights, I have a very clear idea what I want to share with you. Other days, I struggle just to pick something I think is worthy of sharing with you. Tonight was one of the tough nights. So I scanned through some of my pictures and found this photo from Muir Woods outside San Francisco. The Redwood trees are amazing. You can see my last post of these great trees here: http://brook-ward.com/blog/2013/9/7/muir-woods-national-monument
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Short post tonight.
This is a 7 auto-bracketed exposure of Erie Falls at Ricketts Glen State
Park in Pennsylvania.
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Okay. It is
getting late, so I have a quick post for you tonight. Here is Delaware Falls, which is another waterfall from
Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsylvania.
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Muir Woods National Monument
This amazing 554 acres of California Redwoods sits just 12 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge outside of San Francisco. It is the only section of Redwoods left in this part of California after millions of acres were cut down in the 1800s for railroad ties and other construction projections. John Muir and the Kent family saved the woods by talking President Theodore Roosevelt into declaring it a national monument. Otherwise it would have been destroyed with the rest of the Redwood trees in the area. Not only are the trees great, but they are super close to downtown San Francisco.
Hiking through the woods was peaceful and had us wanting more. This small redwood forest made us want to see Redwood National Park in northern California. Maybe next trip.
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I took this picture of a stream running along the Abandoned
Pennsylvania Turnpike. We never
planned on taking any pictures like this when we went to the turnpike,
basically because we didn’t know there was a river along the roadway. This is a 7 exposure HDR
merged with Photomatix Pro and edited in Photoshop CS6. I also used a +8 ND Filter (Neutral
Density) to slow the shutter speed down to get the movement in the water.
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This is the ragtag group that I routinely go on photo walks with. From left to right: Brad Truxell, Dave Truxell and me. We are standing at one of the tunnel entrances. This photo was taken and processed by Brad. I appreciate him letting me share this photo with you.
The HDR Crew: Brad Truxell, Dave Truxell, & Brook Ward
I love this picture because it always makes me wonder
exactly where this trail leads to once you get into the forest and near the
mountains. What will you see along
the way? What animals will you
find as you travel into the distance?
Who will you see, if anyone along the way? It just plain gets my sense of adventure flowing and gets me
excited about the possibilities.
What do you think about when you look at this picture?
This is a single exposure tone-mapped image that I took hand held with my Nikon D90 set at f10, focal length of 35, and exposure time of 1/400. I created the tone-mapped image with Photomatix Pro and did some very minor edits in Photoshop CS6.
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