As predicted, the weather was pretty bad. It started out OK, with relatively warm temperatures and a high overcast that still allowed reasonably good photography. But as the afternoon progressed, the overcast thickened (making it tough to get good landscapes) and the wind started to blow (making the flowers dance too much to be pictured well).
By early evening it began to sprinkle. At this point the light was so dull and gray it was sucking the color out of everything. So I headed to my motel to retire for the evening much earlier than I have done in previous years.
But it wasn’t a lost day because of the weather. I managed to find some very pretty flowers that were in bloom...and this was not a good week for flowers or tree blooms - they are still a week to ten days away from their best showing.
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| Big Four Violet |
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| Yellow Pollen - White Petals |
I also found a beaver pond. It was an active pond with a lodge that appeared to have new wood on it. I got out of the car to look at it closer and realized that there was a beaver swimming right towards me! But the beaver also saw the human walking right towards him/her and he/she immediately turned tail, dove under and swam away. I wasn’t even close to getting my camera to my eye. Not that it mattered, the light wasn’t going to let me get a shot that proved I saw a beaver, let alone a shot worthy of this contest. Undeterred by this reality, I got my tripod and set up in an area where I had a good field of view of the pond, just in case it came back out. After wasting about a half hour of my time, I realized that I knew nothing of the ecology of beavers and should really learn more for a return visit.
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Beaver Pond in Bolster Hollow
The dam is visible in the bottom of the picture.
The lodge is the pile of wood at the upper left corner of the pond. |
I woke the next morning at 0500 so that I could be in place for sunrise. I had looked up beavers in
Wikipedia and learned that they are nocturnal (and really tremendous engineers), so the pond was where I wanted to be for first light. But it was now raining hard and light was going to be a serious problem. I broke out the rain gear and ventured forth.
When I got to the pond I saw two beavers and did manage to get what I call “proof of encounter” photos. These demonstrate that I did see what I claim to have seen, but aren’t anything that I would want to show to anybody except to prove the encounter.
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Proof of encounter - Beaver swimming towards the lodge.
Or maybe it's the Loch Ness monster. |
The 24-hour contest started at noon on Friday, meaning that our photographs had to be shot (as evidenced by the photograph’s EXIF information) by noon on Saturday. The rain stopped at 10:30 Saturday morning, so I was scrambling to get some of the pictures I had imagined would be good if it weren’t raining. Then, just to taunt us, God made the sun come out at 11:00. I
FLEW back to the beaver pond. Of course, beavers are nocturnal (I’m now an expert in
Castor canadensis) so I wasn’t going to get a shot of them, but I wanted a good shot of the pond, dam and lodge. My last shot is time stamped 11:43 am.
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| Into the Distance |
On my return to the ‘Digital Darkroom’ at the Hocking Hills Dining Lodge I began to process my pictures and decide which ones I wanted to submit. It wasn’t easy as my shots were nowhere near what I had hoped. It wasn’t the weather that screwed up my pictures, it was rust. I haven’t had camera in-hand for a while...for far too long, actually...and my technique had suffered. There were little things that I needed to do, either with camera positioning or camera settings that I just plain forgot. It showed in the low quality of my images.
I selected my five pictures for the contest judges to review and one for Photographer’s Choice (where the contestants vote for their favorite...I really covet this one but will never be that good). I burned them onto the official CD, turned them in and went home, at ease with the fact that I wasn’t getting any hardware this year.
Turns out I was wrong. The photo that I submitted in the Abstract category took 3rd place! I grabbed this one at the beaver pond. I was parked near some trees that were just begging to be treated abstractly, so I did.
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| Bolster Hollow Abstract Trees |
This was inspired by some abstracts done by Eddie Soloway. I should note that normally when an artist says something was “inspired by” they mean “plagiarized from” but in this case Eddie encouraged the use of this technique in his Natural Eye class at the Maine Media Workshops. He said something to the effect of needing to get over the requirement to hold the camera still. As you can see, I got way over that need. Thanks Eddie!
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| Cold, tired, dirty and happy as a clam! |
My thanks to the Friends of Hocking Hills (sponsors of the contest), Barb and Jerry Jividen (originators and organizers) and all the other volunteers that make this such an outstanding event.
