...it's the humidity

Seriously—air should not have weight. It just shouldn't.

After much deliberation as to how I could take some halfway decent photos with a minimal amount of physical exertion on my part, after work I decided to head just up the road into East Arlington and photograph the river there. The parking lot across from the Village Peddler is right next to the water, meaning I'd have to walk maybe two feet to get a clear shot of the river. Plus there's one spot where the water cascades down a ton of rocks, which I thought might look pretty cool if I photographed it with the same small aperture setting I'd experimented with last month.

Believe it or not, though, there was actually too much light hitting that stretch of water to produce the effect I was hoping for. So I'll have to give that part of it another try sometime along. Thankfully, some of the shots of other points along the river came out okay:





This last one was definitely my favorite of the bunch:

River shots

I wasn't feeling all that inspired today when it came to photography possibilities, so after work I decided to head up Kelly Stand Road, hoping that being in a different locale would spark some ideas. Now that it's June the road's open all the way up the mountain, enabling me to find a nice, quiet spot to pull over that wasn't already occupied by some of the many campers who hang out along the Roaring Branch this time of year.

After making my way down to the water's edge (not quite carefully enough, I'm afraid—I have a feeling I'll be needing some Motrin before too long here), I used some smaller stones to get out onto a large, mostly flat rock, where I took a seat and snapped some shots of the water:





Remembering some of my previous experiments with changing the aperture, I dialed it down as far as the camera would let me and tried a few photos. Because it was late afternoon and overcast, the camera automatically compensated for the small amount of light I was letting in by keeping the shutter open much longer. So my first photos, taken when I was simply holding the camera, were really blurry all the way around—I couldn't keep it steady enough to allow anything to stay in focus. Undeterred, I switched over to using the monitor instead of the viewfinder, propped the camera on my knee, and tried again:



For the rest of my time there I either used my knee as a brace or put the camera right on the rock itself, taking full advantage of my ability to move and angle the monitor so I could still see what I was aiming at:







Of course, it was only when I was heading back to my car that I remembered I had a perfectly good monopod/tripod hybrid sitting in the backseat... Ah well. Maybe next time.

Water world

For whatever reason, this year the switch to daylight savings time has left me with the approximate brain function of a turnip. So, lacking anything remotely resembling inspiration, I figured, "hey, it's been a week—I'll take some more river shots." I did at least pick different locales, though. These first two were taken on the outskirts of Manchester; I'd gone just far enough uphill that there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground. Much more than in town, anyway:





At my coworker Yoshi's suggestion (and man, did I miss a golden photo op with him today. Granted, he'd have likely killed me if I'd posted it, but still: golden), after work I took a drive down Arlington's River Road off Route 313. Route 313 follows alongside the Battenkill pretty much all the way into New York, while River Road parallels Route 313 along the opposite side of the river. It's a dirt road that also hugs the edge of a mountain, so the traffic was minimal and no one cared if I suddenly stopped, backed up, and pulled off. Which is exactly what happened when I noticed this feeder stream tumbling down the mountain:



I liked how the afternoon light was hitting different spots in the water, and even managed to catch a couple of examples:





Here's hoping this jet-lagged feeling starts to subside before I'm so lacking in ideas that I resort to photographing my dryer's lint trap...