Vistas/Freeze Frame

This is the dam that forms Railroad Pond, the less accessible sibling to Paper Goods Pond.

Camera: iPhone 4s Processing: Hipstamatic

Isolation/Soft Focus

A solitary Canada goose drifts on the surface of Paper Goods Pond. The image as shot--as well as the scene itself--had a dreamy quality, which seemed to ask for a soft sepia toning.

Camera: Canon EOS T3. Lensbaby Muse Processing: PSE

Winter

Nothing is more emblematic of winter in New England than a nor'easter. Today's storm depostited the highest snowfall in 24 hours in recorded history at Bradley Field north of Hartford. We got about two feet here in Kensington. After the worst of it was over and the plows had gone through, John and I went for a frigid walk to Paper Goods Pond. The snow was too deep to get near the shore, so I wasn't able to get close enough to capture the swirls of snow blowing over the surface of the pond. It's hard to believe that a few months ago, we were kayaking out there.

Independence

A man teaches his grandson to fish--one more step on the boy's road to independence. The photo was taken with the Hipstamatic app and processed in FilmLab.

Dark

As night falls, a couple fishes at Paper Goods Pond. Taken with Hipstamatic, this iPhone photo was processed in SwankoLab.

White

I hadn't wanted to do a snow scene for "White," but it's finally snowing here in Connecticut, and it looks so lovely. No one had even walked near Lisa's bench at Paper Goods Pond. The snow was falling silently in big, fat flakes like the ones you see in movies set in New England. With all that, I couldn't resist. I took the picture with my Kodak Z915. I used Elements to convert it to B&W (which made the picture more crisp and resolved the blue tone the snow had before) and to add the frame.

Mini-Assignment: Balancing Elements

The ice on Paper Goods Pond hasn't melted yet, but it was a relatively warm day, so this evening ice fog formed. It's eerie. The bottom picture is a stright shot of the pond, the ice and the fog. The second adds balancing elements with the reed in the foreground and the goose flying over the fog near the back. In the third, there's just the reeds in the front, but they present a stronger prensence than the single reed in the middle shot.

Paper Goods Pond is beginning to freeze over. This flock of Canada geese (which, like many others has forgotten both where Canada is AND that it should fly south for the winter) settled in the last stretch of open water. I used Pencil Sketch and Graphic Pen to explore the textures and shapes of the water, the geese and the trees beyond.

I stopped by Paper Goods Pond on my way home this evening. As the light drained from the sky, the lights from the houses started to glitter on the surface of the lake. Just for fun, I tried out Night Vision, then played around with blending modes, and added a bit of a sepia tint. The final image looks a bit like a faded fabric print.

July 22: We drove all day in the rain, crossing Michigan diagonally. We pulled into this campground with not much time to spare in order to set up and prepare dinner for guests who were coming to visit us. There wasn't much time for photography, so I'll be the first to admit that this is not a great picture. It was actually, "OMG I haven't got a picture for my blog yet; I'll snap one of the pond real quick before it gets dark!" But it did give me a chance to use the Water Paper filter, which gives it a soft dreamy look.

I had no intention of taking today's picture ar Paper Goods Pond because I've featured it so many times before...but when I stopped by, I saw this. Some pictures really don't need filters and shouldn't even have filters, and I think this is one of them. However, since the use of PSE filters is the theme of this blog, I had to use one. Water Paper worked best.

My trusty Nikon point and shoot needed to be replaced, so I went to Best Buy. When I bought the dearly departed, I was looking for small, the tinier the better. I wanted something that I could carry with me all the time. There was plenty of small there; but then I saw this Kodak Z915. Not tiny, but not bulky either, on sale and in the price range (i.e. had to be significantly under $200)--and it did a lot more than the Nikon equivalent of the damaged camera. So I went for it. This was all after work, and by the time I got home, made dinner, ate dinner and got back out, it was getting pretty dark. It wasn't the best time to try out a new camera, but it did a decent job of Paper Goods Pond at late evening. The Water Paper filter gives it an Impressionistic effect.

At dusk as we strolled at Paper Goods Pond, this canoeist was paddling in to shore. My little point-and-shoot is not good in low light conditions, generating a lot of artifact. Conte Crayon incorporates the artifact into a soft sketch effect.

Paper Goods Pond at evening: in my mind, I saw this image in terms of planes of tones and colors. The Cut Out filter rendered it as I imagined it.

I'm going to try to catch up by posting the photos I took while I was away--it'll take some time to do that, but it's like re-living the vacation!

JULY 4: This is the ancient barn on my mom's property in upstate NY, with an ever-growing beaver pond behind it. Perhaps I see it so frequently and have photographed it often, the picture looks rather routine to me. Cut-Out gave it a more basic graphic quality that I like.

The weather today was sultry, to say the least. This family went to Paper Goods Pond to catch a bit of evening breeze. Intensifying the color at the top and softening it at the bottom evokes the mood of a still, humid summer evening down by the water.

The light at Paper Goods Pond this evening was incandescent. Everything was lit up with an internal fire. Quite a few filters looked god; but Dark Strokes was the one that showcased the extraordinary light.

Today was typical for March in southern New England: cloudy, glum and raw. The water of Paper Goods Pond reflects the sullen sky. The Dark Strokes filter works well with the lights and shadows and the moodiness of the scene.

I was early for an appointment in Middletown today, so I drove around the neighborhood looking for a picture. I found this small pond, and I was intrigued by the repetition of vertical lines. I've never used the colored Pencil filter before, but I found it perfect for drawing attention to that feature which had attracted me to the scene.

Paper Goods Pond is still covered in ice and snow. The bench is dedicated to my friend, Lisa, who died way too young of breast cancer. I always think of her now when I come to watch the pond changing with the seasons.

I used tow effects on this one: first, Old Paper, which added some texture to a fairly ordinary scene that had a lot of flat white; and then Blue Tint, to bring back the chill of late afternoon in the winter.