Getting ready for Valentine's Day.

Armed with my iPhone 6, a trip to Wegmans to help Amy with the grocery shopping turned into a photo essay for this week's blog.  For those of you that follow my weekly adventure into photography that don't live in the Rochester area and have no idea what Wegmans is, just google them and I'm sure you'll find plenty.  For those that live in this area they are more than just a grocery store.

Bulk Seeds for sale.

One feature of a Wegmans store is the variety of items sold in bulk or at least in a way that maximizes customer choice.  Some of the most interesting photo ops were from the bulk food sections.  The "every kids dream" bin filled with double bubble gum with its bright red, yellow and blue colors stands out among the shots taken during our shopping expedition.

Grind your own coffee.

I was a bit uncomfortable at first taking picture in the grocery store, even with my iPhone but soon got over it and looked around for interesting things to shoot while trying not to fall too far behind Amy.  She had more important things on her mind, go figure.  Even a little exercise like taking snapshots in a grocery store reminds us of the importance of paying attention to the details. This is one area of improvement I know I have to make and it applies no matter what situation you are shooting in.

Colorful sprinkles.

Two photos shown here are good examples of this.  First is the bins of coffee beens that you can measure out and grind yourself (I prefer the chocolate hazelnut).  It wasn't until we got home and I was looking at the pictures when I noticed the sign in the background and the fact that the word coffee is cut off (missing the final 'e').  This shot would me so much better if the sign were complete.  The other case is the brightly colored sprinkles which would be improved if all the labels were facing the camera like the light green one is.

Make your own six pack.

I thought the iPhone did an excellent job with these pictures.  The colors are bright and accurate and blur was not too bad.  One interesting feature of the camera on the iPhone is that it will take a burst of shots if you hold the shutter button down. I did not intend to get bursts but did on several pictures.  The bubble gum shot posted here is the result of taking the 5 frames the phone gave me into photoshop and using the focus stacking technique I've described before to maximize sharpness throughout the frame.

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Ice on middle falls.

Having to return our son, Doug, to school at SUNY Geneseo on Saturday morning we decided to make a day of it and use that opportunity to take a trip to Letchworth State Park and photograph the icy waterfalls for this week's blog posting.  When we left the house to head south the skies were blue and the sun was bright but by the time we dropped him off at the university and continued the additional 30 minutes south to the southern entrance of the park the clouds had started to roll in.

Close-up view of ice on middle falls.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Handling the harsh contrast of bright sun and deep shadows is a difficult challenge but having blue skies and a brightly lit scene is also nice.  As it turns out we had moments of both as there continued to be breaks in the clouds while we walked around the upper and middle falls area of the park.  As is often the case when posting here I had a challenge picking the shot to emphasize as the photo of the week.  The shot I chose is a four image panoramic stitch taken with my 24 mm lens in the portrait orientation.

Observation point for upper falls.

This was the only way I could get the entire width of the falls in a single image.  The next two images posted here were strong candidates for top billing.  They are both slightly different views of the ice covered horseshoe shaped gorge wall just to the right of the falls in the top photo.  If you think one of those would have been a better choice, I would welcome your comments as to what you like about them.

Trail near upper falls.

Fountain at Glen Iris Inn

After taking these shots at the middle falls, we walked along the snow covered riverside trail to the falls that cascade below the iconic rail road bridge over the gorge.  The sun was shinning more here than when we were at the middle falls and helped back light the mist coming off the falls.  Although the day was only in the mid teens, the temperature slowly climbed throughout the early afternoon and by the time we hiked back to middle falls and back up to the parking lot of the Glen Iris Inn the temps were in the low to mid 20's.

Looking down river from middle falls.

As we were about to end our excursion and return to the car we noticed that fountain outside the inn was still operating and had produced a large mound of ice and made for an interesting subject to photograph.

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Nikon D750 with 24 mm lens. ISO 6400 1/50 sec f3.5. 

In order to get pictures for this week's posting, Amy and I drove to Pittsford on Friday evening for some scenery and dinner out.  We drove to Schoen Place on the Erie Canal in hopes of capturing some nighttime winter scenery around the historic waterway.   I was torn between the shot from the bridge of the canal and Schoen Place (it also includes most of the Orion constellation as well - click on the image to see it full screen) vs the high key black and white version of the park bench and its interesting shadow.  From an artistic and photographic perspective I actually think the bench shot is a better one but I drove all the way out there for the canal shot so I'm sticking with it for top billing.

Serene park bench in winter.

The evening was quite chilly and all shots were taken hand held (I had my tripod with me but chose to leave it in the car and rely on high-ISO hand held shots).  I used my 24 mm prime lens on all the shots and kept the 50 mm in my pocket (hands were too cold to swap lenses!).  I like undisturbed snow for picture taking so it was nice to see a section of the canal side untouched and allowed for a couple nice photos (including the aforementioned park bench.)

Schoen place from across the canal.

After taking the photos we decided to stay in Schoen Place for dinner and selected Aladdin's Natural Eatery, that serves mediterranean style cuisine.

 Amy had her favorite, moussaka, and I had the gyro plate and a pint of Rohbach's beer.  Overall not a bad evening despite the temperatures in the teens.  Now all we need is some snow so that we can try out our new snow shoes and get outside for more photo taking opportunities.

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While once again trying to decide what to feature this week I searched the internet for interesting ideas.  Being a bit under the weather for most of the week didn't help my motivation any but I did find this site on photographing individual snowflakes that looked interesting.

I got lucky and Friday's weather brought light snow flurries and temps in the mid 20's.  I put my knit cap out on the railing of the front porch and waited for it to cool down and some flakes to land on it.  In the meantime I got my camera with the 105mm macro lens attached and my tripod setup and waited to see what might become available to photograph.  I succeeded in capturing a few flakes but none are as spectacular as those in the blog link provided above.  I also had a small piece of glass with me in hopes of using his other technique of photographing the flakes through the glass to see its crystalline structure better but I couldn't get any flakes to stay long enough.   Once again, I have learned a few things from this experiment and look forward to trying it again in the future should weather conditions allow.

Frost on the caravan window

Worried that my snowflakes pictures would not be good enough to share (they are OK but I wish they were better) I took some pictures of ice and frost on our caravan that stays parked in the driveway these days.  The results here were interesting, particularly the snow and ice from the windshield with its emerald green color.  Its not worthy of bumping a snowflake from top billing this week, but came close.  These shots were taken handheld with a burst of exposures that were then staked and auto merged in photoshop to get the necessary depth of field.

Ice and snow on the windshield

I intended to use the focus stacking technique on the snowflakes with my camranger (like I did with the Pooh ornaments in last week's posting) but weather conditions changed before I could get that setup.  I did try manual focus changes with one or two of the shots. These are made up of 2 or 3 frames with slight focus differences and then processed in Photoshop.  This still did not achieve the full depth of field I would have liked.  Hopefully this does give you an idea of just how detailed a snowflake really is.

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