click for gallery
First Summer season trip to the park.

enlarge snapshot
The Taunton River crested high into the surrounding forest in Bridgewater, MA back in June and created these never ending trees.

enlarge snapshot
This spotted turtle finished crossing the road. A perilous journey to say the least!

click for gallery
Raptor Weekend is the largest bird of prey celebration in New England sponsored by the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. Wildlife rehabilitators and raptor experts were onhand to showcase a variety of birds like the african raven, barred owl, gyrfalcon, and harris’ hawk.

click for gallery
A unique natural landmark located in Sutton MA, Purgatory Chasm runs for a quarter of a mile between ganite walls rising as high as 70 feet. Popular with picnickers and rock-climbers alike, the Chasm is believed to have its origin in the sudden release of dammed-up glacial meltwater near the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 14,000 years ago. Trails lead to a wide variety of rock formations, with such romantic names as The Corn Crib, The Coffin, The Pulpit, Lovers’ Leap, and Fat Man’s Misery.

click for gallery
Located in Quincy, MA, visitors can see the Boston skyline across the harbor and dozens of species of wild birds in the park. Originally used as a Naval airfield, it was also once home to the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, which built destroyers for the Navy. The Department of Conservation and Recreation developed the site as a waterfront park while maintaining both its bird habitat and the traces of its aviation history. The park officially opened to the public in June, 2001.

click for gallery
A third trip to the Stanley Iron Works yields a sunny, crisp winter’s day after a snowstorm. The return home nets a plethora of melting icicles melting in the sunset.

This little guy took to sleeping in my parents' wisteria vine during the day this summer.

click for gallery
This 251-acre coastscape in Hingham, MA includes rocky shores, broad hillsides, and open fields bracketed by woodlands. World’s End was once an island at high tide but colonial farmers dammed the salt marsh to grow hay and cleared trees for farmland. In the 1880s a Boston businessman, John Brewer built a farming estate and hired Frederick Law Olmsted to design a 163 house subdivision, the homes were never built and only carriage roads remain. In 1945 the site was considered for United Nations headquarters and in the 1960s was a potential location for a nuclear power plant.

click for gallery
This 75-acre site was an agricultural fairground with a grand exhibition hall from 1820 to 1875 in Bridgewater, MA. In 1895 a local teacher, William Basset Sr., purchased the land and founded the Bridgewater Brick Company, mining clay and manufacturing bricks. In 1913 the Stiles & Hart Brick Company purchased the operation. Damage to buildings caused by a hurricane in 1938 forced brick production to cease but clay mining continued until after World War II. Now the site has grown in with forest, all structures are gone, and the only evidence of prior uses are piles of old bricks here and there throughout the site.

I was expecting more from this park. There are ponds/lakes but, not much open land, it’s all forest right to the water line. Good amount bugs and loud people camping in close quarters. I might go back at a different time of year when it’s not so busy.

The extreme angle on the road may be my favorite in this group. Yellow flowers always look good to me. I also learned a Photoshop trick to darken the over exposed sky in the third picture.

I walked over to Carver Pond today. Tons of dragonflies and lilly pads. I saw one heron but, it was too far away to get a picture of before it flew away. I'll have to try again another day.

Nothing is better than puffy white clouds on a deep blue backdrop for landscapes. It almost looks fake sometimes.

This is a mix of photos taken over the last month from all over the place. I found taking pictures of flowers to be one of the easiest things to photograph and most always look good. The risk/reward ratio is very good.

I enjoy macro photography the most right now. Getting in tight focus and making the bright colors really pop out is the best. I need to be faster to get more insects pollenating.

Down to Fall River’s Battleship Cove to take some pictures before and after seeing Spider-Man 3. Good thing we stopped on the way back from the movie. That sunset was sweet after being overcast all day.

Little bit of everything today. Sunset, texture, depth of field, and animals.

This park is so well hidden in the middle of a neighborhood that I drove by the entrance twice. It looks like the driveway to somebody’s house in the front then becomes full on forest once you get in. Unfortunately, the day was overcast and nothing started growing yet besides moss and mushrooms.

More macro and texture shots. Not much else to say here.

Back for more here. This time with a new camera and JB joined me with his new DSLR too. Explored more of the leftover structures this time since the place hadn’t become overgrown yet.

New camera here, a SP-510UZ. It has a 10x zoom, more megepixels, and scene pre-sets. Macro works well to get a shorter depth of field in a few shots.

I started looking for local parks that might have something a little different to photograph and found this place just around the corner. It was a big-time iron factory at the turn of the century. Just about everything was torn down, remnants remain.

C-765 again. This is a pretty handy camera and the 10x came in handy. Would have liked a wider angle a few times but, I ran out of real-estate to back up.

After taking some quick pictures Renee and Brian’s wedding last month, I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood with my camera. Bridgewater is really just a normal suburban town but, there’s some nice views.

First camera walkabout with the C-765. Also had to get used to using new tools in Photoshop for photo editing since I hadn’t done too much of that before.