Sunday Morning Downtown

I went wandering around downtown Shippensburg yesterday while my laundry was drying. It was an overcast, dreary morning, and by the time I went back to take the laundry out of the dryer and head home it was also starting to drizzle. Ah, November! I decided that color emphasized the dreariness even better than black and white because it's getting so raggedy and sparse. So here's yesterday's wander.

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Applying Antiquity

I processed the shots from the other day as black & white and then had an idea - "antique" them in Photoshop, i.e. add film grain and sepia. The building shots worked the best, so here they are. Enjoy!

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Walking Around Town

I went walking around town today looking for things to catch my eye. Here are the results.

Twin small Victorians on N. Earl St., complete with gingerbread trim

Another Victorian, the Memorial Lutheran Church parsonage at S. Penn and E. Orange Streets

Sign on a historic building downtown on King St.

Carved wood decoration on the same building

The back shed next door

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Fall Foliage in the Peace Garden

I went up to Shippensburg Memorial Park to take pictures of the Peace Garden in full Fall color yesterday (I took you on a visit there for Memorial Day 2012). It was a very bright, sunny day, which this phone camera doesn't deal well with, and the sun was in a bad place to get some very enticing shots without glare and white-outs. But I did end up with three shots that give a good indication of the beauty of the place in the Fall. Enjoy!

The entrance to the Peace Garden

Carved rock and Japanese Maple niche

Flowers and decorative greenery in the Peace Garden

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Fall Foliage on the Rail Trail

I went walking up the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail yesterday; I noticed I'd never done a Fall foliage photo essay on the Rail Trail before and thought this vacation week would be the perfect excuse to fix that. I got farther up than I've ever gotten before, past the mile 6 marker and up to Oakville Rd. I took a lot of photos, and these were the ones that passed quality control. 

Near the beginning of the trail

A farm along the trail

The trail just path the farm

A farmhouse along the trail approaching Ott Rd.

Approaching Ott Rd.

Approaching Oakville Rd.

Turned around and heading back home

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Extravagance

“Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.” - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

"The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire since the word go!" - Annie Dillard,  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

I was walking up King St. this morning and noticed that the Ginkgoes planted here and there along the street had changed. Last week they were still green, and on the weekend they finally turned  their characteristic autumnal fluorescent yellow. This morning something further had happened; it was as if they'd all given themselves a vigorous shake and let loose their leaves. At the foot of each tree were piles and drifts of golden yellow, so many of them that it almost reached the level of "too much."

I've been rereading Annie Dillard's work the last couple of weeks, and at the moment I'm making my way through Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The impact of all those golden leaves strewn across the sidewalk reminded me of what Ms. Dillard had to say about Nature's extravagance. She's dead on target! The color alone is excessive, and then there's the amount of them. When you add them to the rest of the colors in the Cumberland Valley and on the surrounding South Mountain and Blue Mountain ranges, it's really more than is necessary. All variations of yellow, orange, and red decorating all the Maple, Ginkgo, Osage Orange, Oak, Elm, Locust, Black Walnut, Willow... Really, it's too much. All that color, all those leaves everywhere you look is overwhelming. It's really not necessary! But would we have it any other way? I don't think so. 

Beauty so overwhelmingly expressed may be excessive and extravagant, but it makes going out the door every Fall morning a joy. Long live extravagance!

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Limitations

The bad news is - my camera is dead. I got caught in a mini hurricane on the way to work Friday morning and it got soaked along with me. I tried several drying-out methods, but it's a deadster. And I can't afford a new camera at the moment; I make enough money to pay the bills and eat fairly healthily, and occasionally afford a Kindle book or an iTunes album, but that's it. When tax return time comes I'll be able to get something like what just died, but that looks to be sometime in February. 

So that leaves me with the built-in camera in my smart phone. Now, don't mistake me; it's a good camera for what it is. It's a Samsung Galaxy S4, 5" screen, 12 megapixels, a 4x zoom, and some at least rudimentary controls. But it has some serious limitations: the f-stop setting seems to be limited to ƒ/2.2 (at least, I haven't yet found something that lets me change the f-stop), which is awful shallow and created problems with faraway objects. Related to that, the focal length seems to be limited to 4.2 mm; again, very, very shallow. Both of these mean the panoramic mountain, meadow, and farmland shots I like to take will be problematic at best because of a lack of focal depth; I've tried and had limited success, but it's sporadic and iffy. And I won't be able to use anything I take with the phone camera in any of my calendars or photo books on Lulu.com; print standard resolution is at minimum 150 pixels per inch (ppi), and this camera is stuck at the web standard of 72 ppi, which makes awful prints. And there's no way to control ISO ratings, which are automatic but all seem to be below 100 ISO, which means I can't adjust "film" speed to the lighting conditions; no low light shots without flash, which I do really well and like working with.

There are other limitations with have more to do with my own working style. I can't use it for low light, no flash shots for another reason - there's no way to use a tripod with this thing. I do note that there's a night setting in the Modes menu, and I'll have to play with that and see how it works. But I also use the tripod for other things, like slow shots using neutral density filters to turn waterfalls and fountains into flowing silk. Which brings up the next limitation: no way to attach filters. It was a really bright day today and I would have loved to have been able to use my circular polarizing filter to tone things down a little and get rid of glare. No way to attach filters means I also have no way to use my teleconverter or wide angle lenses. And worst of all, at least for me, is no macro setting or way to attach a macro lens; which means for the time being my ultra close-ups of bugs and tiny flowers are out. That hurts!

So for the time being I'm going to have to learn how to use the limitations of the Samsung's camera for my online stuff to keep from going crazy until February. Especially this week, since I'm on vacation through next Sunday and plan to hike around a bit. I did some playing today to see what I could do or get away with. Some of the shots I got give me hope that there are ways to work with the limitations and get some decent shots. Here are the results.

Fall color in the swamp in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park. This sort of middle-distance focus seems to work well.

The path around the swamp in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park. Middle and close focus works well.

The upland meadow with Blue Mountain in the background. This worked surprisingly well, and I was surprised at how well the mountain turned out. But those trees in the middle go in and out of focus, and that bothers me.

Organic objects on my Earth Altar. This camera excels in this kind of indoor photography.

A terracotta dragon candlestick in my workroom.

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Fall Color At Last

Finally, the color is popping down here in the valley! This is Day One of my 9-day vacation, and I was walking around town today doing errands and getting these shots with my cell phone. I'm using my cell phone because my vacation has started out with a disaster. Yesterday morning on the way to work I got caught in a downpour which wasn't supposed to have happened for several hours. As a result not only did I get soaked (except for my upper body, protected by my umbrella), but everything in my shoulder bag - which includes my camera - did as well. I had thought the bag was waterproof, but I guess not. So at the moment my camera doesn't work. My friend Arleen said burying in dry rice does wonders for wet electronics, so my camera is now buried in 5 lbs. of dry rice, hoping for the best. Meanwhile, here is what I have for you today, given the limitations of smart phone cameras.

Branch Creek at King St.

On South Fayette St.

On South Queen St.

On Walnut St.

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Blessed Samhain, Happy Halloween!

It's Samhain time again. This is the old Celtic New Year, celebrating the last of the harvest and settling in for the "death" of the Earth in Winter, waiting for life to return in the Spring. It was a time when it was believed that the veil between this life and the afterlife was thin, and the dead could cross over and speak to the living. So it's a time for remembering those who have passed on, memorializing the ancestors and the recently departed. It's a somber time yet it's also a joyous time, celebrating the lives of our loved ones. It was appropriated and "Christianized" by the Church in the early days, turned into a holiday to celebrate the lives of the saints; it was called All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, and the night before was called All Hallows Eve, which is now called Halloween. You can read my full essay on this here.

I woke up this morning to find fog and just had to get up to Spring Hill Cemetery to catch the appropriately Halloween-ish mood. I so wished a Crow would appear and perch on one of the graves, but no such luck. In any case, here are some shots of Spring Hill in an evocative seasonal mood.

That was for Halloween. Now for a mood more in line with the celebration of Samhain. The church's traditional Requiem mass is sung at funeral services and can often be a most moving and awesome experience (just listen to Mozart's and Verdi's requiems), but it's didactic, meant to teach a lesson about death. And that lesson is fairly dark, with threats of hell and eternal damnation, warning the attending congregation that they need to get their affairs in order and get right with God or else. 

Johannes Brahms changed all that with his Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem); this work abandons the traditional format of the mass and instead presents six movements dedicated to the comfort of the friends and family of the deceased with promises of life after death and reunion with loved ones and with Christ. This air of comfort is much more in line with the atmosphere of Samhain, so I'm posting the first movement of that symphony. Read the libretto to see what I mean about comfort.

Blessed are they that mourn,

for they shall be comforted.

They that sow in tears

shall reap in joy.

They that go forth and weep,

bearing precious seed,

shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,

bringing their sheaves with them.

Here's Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1961. Blessed Samhain!

Photos & text © 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Scenic Route Again

This is the start of what promises to be a busy photographic stretch. I took the shots below on the way to the grocery store this morning. I'm off again tomorrow and I'll be hiking to some of my favorite cemeteries for pics for my annual Samhain post. And then Saturday starts my 9-say vacation. It'll be a stay-cation and some of it will be spent updating my calendars on Lulu.com to 2014 and maybe creating some new ones. But I'll also be hiking around getting more Fall color, and there's also a good chance that a good friend and fellow photographer will be visiting, so there's sure to be some photographic magic in the air in the coming days! Meanwhile, here's what caught my eye on the way to the grocery store today.

The north duck pond, Dykeman Spring Nature Park

Reflections on the south duck pond, Dykeman Spring Nature Park

Timber Hill from the upland meadow in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park

Jogger on the hay road in the upland meadow

The hay road in the upland meadow, looking west

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Lemons ==> Lemonade

I'm home suffering through a stomach bug; you don't want any more details than that. But... You know the old saying, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Well, as a photographer, I decided to turn illness into a mini photo shoot. Don't worry, no graphic scenes, just me on the sofa and my prescription for viruses.

My "station" during illness - the living room sofa

My treatment for viruses - chai masala (spiced tea) and honey

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Around Town on a Crisp Fall Morning

A single day off again, so I've been spending my day running errands, and the following shots were taken while running said errands. It's been very chilly and a bit blustery lately; the highs yesterday and today never got out of the 40s (4º - 9º C). And yet there's still not a lot of Fall color here in town. Up in the mountains there's certainly color, but here in town only the occasional Maple blazes out, like the one in the gazebo park across the street from me, and some Dogwoods have turned a bronze color. But others are being slow to catch up; even the usually fluorescent yellow Ginkos are still green. And the wind is stripping the trees that have turned. In any case, here are some shots that catch what Fall color there is in town.

The colorful Maple in the little gazebo park across the street

Branch Creek at King St., still green but with some hints of color

The view of South Mountain from the Baltimore Rd. rail overpass

Looking west up the tracks from the Baltimore Rd. overpass

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

More Fall Color

On the way to the grocery store this morning I walked through the upland meadow of the Dykeman Spring Nature Park  on the Meadow Trail and got these scenes of advancing Fall color.

Calico Asters along the Meadow Trail

Meadow view with Blue Mountain

Meadow view with Blue Mountain

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger