The Red Brick Church in Berkshire, NY

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I live next to a church that sits right on the corner of Route 38 and Glen Rd here in Berkshire, N.Y.  It's a pretty neat looking old building.  I have no idea how long it has been around for - I'm guessing a while anyway.  Admittedly, I don't spend much time in churches - most of my Sunday's are at races or football games. I did happen to pop into this particular church a year or two ago - they were having a bake sale, or maybe a blood drive?  I don't know - I forget now - but I had to physically go inside of the place.  Once in I happened to get a peak of the main room where the pews and stuff are.  I decided right then and there that I had to speak with the "Padre", as I call him, and see if I could get permission to shoot the interior of his church 'cause it looked pretty cool in there.  :)  ( I'm guessing maybe he's a "Minister"?  It's not a Catholic church -- I dunno what kind it is -- but I like Clint Eastwood's use of Padre from some of his old westerns ... <grin>  )

The Padre' here at this church - he's a pretty cool and interesting guy whom I have met on more than a few occasions locally and he was more than willing to hear me out.  We agreed that I should just keep in touch and let him know if /when we wanted to see if we could do this.  That was late last summer.  This past Thursday morning I happened to notice that the (now low and early rising sun) was basking the church once again as seen in the top photo.  It was time to speak with the Padre' ...

My thinking is that the church, being situated and facing more or less to the east, early morning sunlight would be best.  I'd hoped to catch the stained glass windows getting illuminated via mr. sun and the interior in general taking on a nice "glow".

Click to view the photo larger | Click here to view it really large (3600px)

I'll be adding more photo's to this post over the next few days ..  I wound up bracketing and doing some HDR as it was pretty dark in there.  We turned up a couple of the lights but that just killed the atmosphere that I wanted / was looking for so - tripod, cable release and slow'ish shutter speeds were the order of the day.

This was a learning experience ...  wouldn't mind trying a do-over.  | Click the photo to view it larger | Click here to view it really large (3600px)

Last ones ...

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Click the photo to view it larger | Click here to view it really large (3600px)

Rise & Shine

Sunrise at Upper Lisle / north end of the Whitney Point Reservoir.

Fuji X-T1, 14mm lens, 3 bracket HDR via photomatix pro / lightroom and photoshop

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( A few more a few hours later after watching F1 race, eating, etc .... :) )

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Click to view larger | Click here to view it *much* larger at 1800px

Fuji Play and Waterfalls

...  gotta post this quick - have to run car to garage for repairs.  I think I have a few more keepers that will wind up here.  Briefly though:

Oxbow Falls at Oxbow County Park in Madison County, NY.

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( .... a few hours of time has passed )

OK - dropped the car off, came back home, played with the dogs for a while, fed them, fed me, and just exported these other two keepers from the little batch of photo's that I took today at the falls.

I had seen signs for this little park in the past but had never stopped to check it out.  It's a nice little place - it would be good for a quiet day picnic with some friends and/or family.  The falls are nothing compared to Chittenango State Park which is 20 or 30 miles south of here.  But this is a nice, small'ish quiet little park none-the-less.

So I went down into the creek bed / falls and photographed my way back up and out.  The top photo is from the furthest point down in that I had gone on this particular outing.  The next two are sequential as I worked my way back up.

Click the photo to see it larger | Click here to view the 1800px export (much bigger)

Click the photo to see it larger | Click here to view the 1800px export (much bigger)

This was the first time that I have shot raw with this little Fuji body.  The thing produces huge files - averaging 32 - 33 meg .raf files!  Wow....  way bigger, and presumably packed with far more data, than either of my Nikons.  Talk about chewing up disk space though ..  ouch.  The more I use and learn this little camera though, the more I like it...  :)

The middle photo above:  yes - the lens did catch a few water drops in case you happen to notice those ...  'eh.

I may go back to this little park sometime in the future ...  not sure.  Maybe after a hard rain or a good long rain - see if the water is running a bit higher and faster, and maybe the falls will be a bit more "fally".  <grin>  :)

-=- jd -=-

April Showers

...  bring May flowers?

At the very least they can create some high running water and produce cool looking skies.  Full disclosure though - this is the bridge at Upper Lisle just off of route 26 slightly north of Whitney Point.  The bridge itself is low and there is even a sign right before you cross it warning that the roads beyond it, including the bridge, may be closed from time to time due to flooding.

It looks cool though...  <grin>  :)

Click the photo to view larger | Click here to see full sized export (1800px)

( time has passed) .... and a black & white one now too.

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Something About the Sky This Afternoon

....  it was blue.  And there was a bright "thing" shining from within the blue.

That bright thing was steadily descending towards the horizon though and turning into an orange'ish color which did cast some neat shadows and created some nice light.

It was (is) COLD out - my hands were nearly numb after just but a few minutes out of the car grabbing these pic's....   think the guy on the radio said it was 3* at the time.  The wind chill far below that ...

Welsh Church Rd. in Erieville, NY.

Automatic Tranny

So get this - shortly after I got to work this morning I discovered a bunch of boxes that had been left for me from Friday deliveries (UPS and FedEx).  I unbox stuff and set it in various little piles (this goes here, these things have to go over to the plant, this thing for the new guy, etc... )  I break down the cardboard and proceed to take it out to the garage where we have a dumpster for recycling and I see this:

I was like "Whoa.... !  What is THIS thing... ?!   Damn Sam...  this is cool....  "

I dumped the cardboard into the bin and went and grabbed me camera.  :)

It is apparently going to be hanging around our facility for a week or so as the company is testing it to see if it is something they may consider investing in.  Get this - big honkin' 18 wheeler truck like this - it's an automatic tranny!  lol!  Yeah ....  

The wrap job / paint job on it?  Apparently this was THE truck used to haul the Christmas tree to the White House this past year - that's pretty neat.  I'm hoping to get some better shots of it later on this week, and maybe I'll try to get some more lose ups / detail shots of the paint job / wrap on it.  It really is quite cool.

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Early evening in Cazenovia, NY

I had to stop at a bank to get some cash from an ATM. I happen to know that one of the offices of the bank that I use is in Cazenovia - so I went that way on my way home after work. It had been a damp, drizzly day and I had hoped that the ground would have been a little wetter than it was (would have made for cooler, more colorful reflections I'm thinking but ... ). I got my cash from the ATM and then pulled the camera & tripod out of the car and setup right there on the sidewalk and captured this.


As my D700 body and 24-70mm lens are both out of commission at present and at the Nikon repair facility in Melville, NY I'm now using my trusty old backup D300 body and a handful of little fixed focal length lenses (24, 28, 35mm's mostly)  I grabbed this with the 24 @iso 320 and bracket it with 7 frames.  (HDR)  The longest exposure of the bracket was 8 seconds.  What is kind of cool though is that with really long exposures, the people that were walking though the scene - they just disappear.  I'm not honestly quite sure how that works - but it's just cool.  :)
So anyway -- imported into Lightroom, blended together using enfuse and then tweaked / cleaned up some in photoshop.