Winter Evening at Mapleside Farms

Mapleside Farms in Brunswick, Ohio is home to an apple orchard, gift shoppe, and restaurant. It's also one of the best sunset spots in Northeast Ohio.

During the summer months, you get all kinds of people hanging out to enjoy the sunset. People who:

• have just come from a good meal inside,
  
• are driving by who stop their cars and sit in the parking lot,
  
• bring a blanket to lounge on the sloping hill,
  
• bring their kids to look at the pond at the bottom of the hill,
  
• play golf and make life challenging for those of us at the pond trying to take pictures while golf balls go whizzing past our heads (okay, so far that's only happened to me on one memorable day),
  
• take pictures when no golfers are about,
  
• enjoy an ice cream cone ... although I'm not sure if ice cream will be sold this summer or not. Here's hoping!

Come the winter months, there's only one person fool enough to venture forth into the great outdoors to enjoy the beauty of nature. That would be me, the self-proclaimed Queen of Narnia. Any sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who travel here after the leaves have gone and before the apple blossoms spring forth all head quickly inside to warm themselves. I say, they're missing out.

Now that night has fully fallen, I'm home enjoying the quiet with a cup of green jasmine tea and a peaceful and appropriately-scented candle of apple and cinnamon.

Wishing all a cozy winter weekend ...

Kelleys Island Photo Published in Lakeland Boating Magazine

As February ends, I just received in the mail some copies of this month’s issue of Lakeland Boating Magazine. Page 41 contains a photo I took on Kelleys Island called “Glacial Grooves."

The original photo was taken in May of 2005. What amazed me was how the striped pattern in the clouds matched the rock formation directly below.

Getting the shot was a matter of timing where I had to hold my breath. Reason being, when I first saw the cloud formation hovering over the rock formation, a family with small children was just starting to make its way around …allll the way around … verrrrrrry slowllllly around … the entire walkway surrounding the glacial grooves. Now that rock formation had been around for 30,000 years since the ice age that carved it, but cloud formations vanish into thin air instantly and without warning. So patiently I waited, at least outwardly. Inwardly I was thinking, “Come on, comeon, comeon, comeon, hurry, hurry hurry, please, please, please!”

The family finally reached the end of their groovy tour. No sooner had they stepped down and past me that I snapped my camera shutter and caught the shot. Good thing too. The cloud formation changed shape and floated away within ten seconds.

For more information on the Glacial Grooves of Kelleys Island, here are two websites you can visit:

http://www.hollianneholmes.com/glacialgrooves/

http://www.kelleysislandhistorical.org/island_places/glacial_grooves.htm

And for more information on Lakeland Boating Magazine, please follow the link below:

http://www.lakelandboating.com/

Question for Readers: Do you have any photos that you snapped just in the nick of time? Where everything came together perfectly? Have you had any photos published in a magazine, or do you plan to? Please feel welcome to leave a comment and share your experiences.

Winter Sunset at the Dreamkeeper Pond

Cattails like paint brushes reach up through evening glimpses of muted light and cold color towards a charcoal watercolor sky.



Cattails along the ice-covered Dreamkeeper Pond bask in the last falling rays of an evenstar.



A magnificent ending.

These three photos were all taken on the same day at Mapleside Farms in Brunswick, Ohio.

Being a landscape photographer in Northeast Ohio can mean standing for a whole hour in mud that cakes around your boots up to your ankles, wind that keeps blowing the hood back on your winter jacket, and cold that seeps through your gloves to numb your fingers. Meanwhile, your heart and mind are alive with the surrounding beauty.

What sort of challenging weather do you come across when you go out to take nature or landscape photos? Do you make any special preparations for weather conditions? Do you enjoy the many moods of the great outdoors? What are your favorite weather conditions for enjoying nature?

You are welcome to comment and share your feelings.

Transforming Ice, Water, Mud, Sunlight, and a Twig into Modern Art

The above photo taken yesterday at Mapleside Farms in Brunswick, Ohio is called “Mineral Water” and carries on a wintertime tradition of mine involving the creation of abstract art by using an ice-covered pond for inspiration.

It can be quite a challenge in Northeast Ohio to get decent sunset photos during the winter. The weather tends to be so overcast that there’s even a local folk song the gist of which describes Cleveland as the land of “a hundred shades of gray.”

Yesterday, when the sun finally came out and the clouds were magnificent dramatic billows in the sky, was a cause for celebration. So what caught the attention of my camera? The humble muddy edge of an ice-covered pond with an embedded twig and weak sunlight playing across the surface. Awesome!

Below is the original photo.

With the help of Photoshop, nature can become surreal to the point of unrecognizability and abstract to the point of one’s own imagination.

Question for Readers: Have you ever used nature photography as a starting point to create fantastic, otherworldly, surreal, or abstract effects? Please feel welcome to describe your venture from nature photography into art, or alternatively, your preference for realistic nature scenes.

How to Get Started in Landscape Photography – The Journey from Tourist to Artist

One of my very first landscape photos, "Hay There, Sunshine!" taken in the Hocking Hills of Ohio on October 16, 2004. I was all excited by the hay bales off in the distance ... which ended up looking like tiny little dots you can barely see! That's why the word "Hay" is in the photo's title, even though the fence post came out much nicer.

I was afraid to take my first digital camera out of the box for three months. Like most people, I had the photographic skills of a tourist taking snapshots without any awareness of the thought and care that should go into producing a finely-crafted artistic photo. But my enthusiasm for this new hobby meant having to start somewhere. So I surfed the web for all the info I could get my hands on dealing with:

1) Landscape photography tips
2) Nature photography tips
3) Artistic composition tips

Here’s a link to an awesomely helpful website for landscape photography hints that really helped me:

http://www.photographytips.com/page.cfm/77

While my personal focus tends to be more on autumn or winter trees, sunset ponds, and roadside scenery, I also checked out websites on nature photography. The site below gives some decent insight on interacting with wildlife and being aware of your surroundings using cues such as bird language:

http://www.outdooreyes.com/photo14.php3

To see through the camera with the eye of an artist, here are three links on artistic composition … Yes, three links. Composition is that important! (More important, even.)

http://www.colorpilot.com/comp_rules.html

http://digital-photography-school.com/digital-photography-composition-tips

http://photoinf.com/General/Theresa_Husarik/Photography_Tips_-_Composition_Refresher.htm

Finally, for all those on a quest to take their photography to the next level, don’t be afraid of breaking the rules if inspiration leads you to see a better way. But first learn the rules -- the better to know how, and when, it might benefit you to break them.

Stay tuned … I plan to add my own list of favorite tips for free-spirited photographers in a short future blog entry, then expand on each tip in upcoming posts.

Question for Readers: How did you take the plunge to improve your photography skills? Please feel free to comment and share your favorite technique on landscape, nature, or artistic composition.