I am reading a book now by a woman photographer who is maybe 10 years younger than I am, about art and the creative life.  I have known about her for years, and I own a couple of her books of photographs.  She uses a huge 8x10 inch view camera and a really old lens that is not as sharp as modern lenses but that is part of the richness of her work.  So I started thinking about and remembered that a college friend had sent me a really interesting small lens perhaps 30 years ago.  It is essentially a magnifying glass lens in a funny mount so that you could tilt it in different directions to make some parts of the photograph sharp and others out of focus.  Well, I found the lens in my bureau drawer and wandered around first thing this morning shooting out of the house windows, hoping for a photograph that seemed similar to hers.  Well, I was not successful exactly in doing that, but I did get this photograph which I think is really interesting in a kind of haunting way.  Because the device has only one optical lens, it is only sharp in the middle.  I will have to go back and find some posts I did with the lens years ago on the blog.  Oh, I took the color photograph and made it look sepia in color, because the photographer with the large camera does a similar thing. 

So this is the lens on my SONY camera. The three screws can be turned to tilt the lens in any direction for different effects of sharpness.  This device is called a Lensbaby, and they have many new, more modern versions, but mine works just fine, thank you.  I am glad I could find it when I needed it.  If you are curious, here is the link to the first time I used this lens, and it turns out I was trying to do the same thing with this lens! Lensbaby Photo

 

Lines and Stripes

Today, of course was Dunkin' at the beach day.  We were sitting in the car looking at the water while having coffee, tea and a donut each, and then this caught my eye.  Sort of lines or stripes everywhere, and then the snow fence.  When the fence is first put up, the only choice for a background is just the sand, or if I crouch down, just the water. But today with the fresh snow on the beach and snow on some of the remaining ice, all I saw were the stripes and it seemed like an interesting photograph.  Not one of my best, but, hey, I NEED something every day!

 

After The Storm

So the good news is that the storm ended early for us - the original forecast was for it to snow most of the day on Monday.  The snow had pretty much stopped after breakfast this morning.  The other good news was that some forecasts were for from 18 to 24 inches of snow!  I think we got 14 to 16 inches, something I am also thankful for.  After breakfast I was out with the snow blower and worked for 2 hours getting all the big areas cleaned - the driveway and the sidewalk to the back steps and the sidewalk to the BBQ!  Gotta' keep that open!  While doing the BBQ walkway I spotted this!  How beautiful is this, the way the snow has affected each window differently, and then the mysterious shapes in the foreground really make this photograph.  Those shapes are two chairs and the glass topped picnic table!

We got a lot of snow just on the porch and I love the look of the different chairs and part of the couch covered in snow.  Makes things seem just a bit surreal, I think.  No sense showing you any photographs of the snow in the yard or street or driveway.  It all looks the same as last time!

 

And the Snow Begins

I took this photograph of the Japanese maple this afternoon after it had been snowing lightly for about an hour.  Love the beauty and delicacy of the lightly coated branches. It was taken at about 3:00 PM

This photograph was taken at 6:60 PM as it was getting dark.

And this beauty was taken from the front porch at 11:00 PM.  The big question of course is how much snow will we get by the end of the storm, which may not be until tomorrow night around suppertime.  The forecast is from 18 to 24 inches!  Yikes!  the snow blower is gassed up and ready to go.

 

The Big Thaw!

I hadn't been to the harbor in two days because of the rain.  Today I went on my walk, carrying my camera, of course and look what I saw!   Water!  So did I call it in yesterday's post? "I am curious as the ice melts, how the harbor waters will be uncovered.  Maybe one day, suddenly most of it will be gone?" And in one or two days, half the harbor is now water instead of ice.  I was lucky that the sun was in and out of clouds and I got this beautiful reflection from the surface of the water.

I took a lot of photographs, of course, trying to show the condition of the ice and the water.  This is further south in the harbor and you can see that half the harbor still has some thin ice covering it.  What a quick transformation!  By the way I saw this swan sailing in from the left and I kept the camera pointed for the best composition, and then clicked the shutter when it arrived at this spot!  PLEASE click on these photograph, they are beautiful seen larger and you will be surprised at all the additional detail you will see.

 

Ice, Water, and Two Ducks

In my continuing my quest to see how many different kinds of photographs I can take that involve ice, or melting ice, I present you with two Mallard ducks, some water, and some melting ice.  It has been raining for two days now so I haven't really taken a fresh look at how the ice is covering the harbor.  I am curious as the ice melts, how the harbor waters will be uncovered.  Maybe one day, suddenly most of it will be gone?  I will keep my eye out, and of course report back.

 

A Group of Trees

There is this grouping of six trees here on the point, and these are five of them..  Some of these trees are the ones you see from the side when I photograph this point from way off to the right - the classic photograph of just three trees on the end of the point.  So I like this grouping and I have photographed it a number of times, each time, just a bit differently.  If I step to the left or the right, the spacing between the trees changes, which is really fun to play with.  So the reason I photographed them this way was because of the shadows of the trees, seen against the snow.  So this photograph is so differerent from the single, truncated tgree I showed youy yesterday.  So much fun photographing trees!  One of my favorite subjects!