Scenes from a Fall Day
We stuck around the cottage this past weekend. Cooler weather has set in. The furnace even kicked in a couple times at night.
But sticking around the cottage doesn't mean there aren't photo opportunities all around me. I walked around the park for an hour or so and captured some great images. With the bright, sunny day that Friday was, it was a perfect opportunity to get some backlit shots.
Also, many milkweed pods had just recently burst open and I enjoyed doing some macro shots of the seeds and the pods. I could have literally spent hours just on that subject alone.
This series of milkweed images is from two different areas in the park. The images above are from the meadow around Hole 17 on the golf course. The images below are steps from the pool area, where the dense bushes and reeds hide the tee off area for the same hole.
For me, the act of photography is relaxing in and of itself; it's a time to slow down, do some self-reflection (or not), or just get absorbed in the world around me. These quiet walks are my meditation time. I make many pictures - and not all of them are great, believe me - but I enjoy the time to decompress and disconnect - and even though I see every photo on the back of my camera, I'm always excited to get back and jump into the editing process as well.
There are times when what I think I see isn't what I end up getting in the final image. I'm not really talking about aspects like color, contrast, detail, texture or composition; those are elements that - by and large - can be altered/controlled/enhanced during the edit process.
What I really think I'm talking about is the emotive component of the image. For some reason, what I "felt" when I saw the scene in front of me didn't come through accurately in the final work. And that's OK - I don't expect every image to succeed. Failure is how we learn.
The images above are an example. The first renditions produced technically acceptable results, but they were just, well, a couple nice photos. I approached them again and through cropping and additional processing, managed better results that might end up in my Adobe Stock collection thanks to the available negative space in each image. Cropping has definitely helped, but still, neither are shots I would consider printing and framing.
Our "seasonal lake view" is once again materializing. As nice as it is to see the lake from my deck, at this time of year it is a bittersweet sight; it means cottage season is over. Next weekend is the final weekend and we'll spend most of that closing up the #fortressofmoderatesolitude for the winter. It has been a great season, despite the pandemic still lingering in the corners. It's my hope by next season, we are back to more of a normal life, but I also know that CoVid-19 is not going away. In some shape, manner or form, it is a part of modern life, now.
Geez, I got awfully maudlin there...Sorry about that. Thank you once again for reading - and viewing - right to the end of this project. Keep coming back as I will always have something new to share.
