It’s hard to pick just twelve.
I enjoyed photography in 2022 and decided to share my pick of favorites. It was not easy! 12 photos for 12 months – not one per month, but just the twelve that I felt were especially beautiful or interesting. See the full gallery – where I recommend clicking the “play” button to see them as a slideshow – and read on for some commentary about each one.
Several days without power, but with snowy beauty.
A large snowstorm passed through New Hampshire on Friday and Saturday. At our house, snow fell for about 26 hours. It was warm (33º), so the snow was wet and heavy, accumulating to a depth of 8″ … but I just know that higher elevations would have seen fluffier snow that got much deeper. Can’t wait for a chance to get out and hike some mountains!
Unfortunately, the weight of all this snow caused many trees and branches to fall, blocking roads and knocking out power and Internet across the region. We are fortunate to have battery backup – which lasted for about 17 hours, fed in part by our solar tracker soaking up the post-storm sunshine. In turn, the batteries can be refilled by a propane generator. (The relationship between the two is complicated and buggy, but that’s another story.)
I took the opportunity to ramble around the backyard – local authorities asked everyone to stay off the roads unless necessary – and try to improve my ability to find interesting compositions and to expose properly for snow. Check out the gallery; at the end is a bonus: bald eagles spotted high in the trees during my afternoon walk, including a short video of two eagles taking off to fly across the river and greet a third bald eagle in the trees over there. (Apologies for the low-res iPhone photo and video… it’s all I had with me.)
P.S. Grid power is back! After about 39 hours.
A beautiful time of year.
The Hanover Green is particularly beautiful in December, especially now with the renovated Dartmouth Hall and Baker Tower illuminated, along with the annual Christmas tree. The gallery includes more scenes with fresh snow.
Scenes from a ramble about town.
A quick post to share a few photos from my visit to Seattle earlier this month. As you may recall, I arrived on a weekend in time for a short hike in the woods at Tradition Plateau. Later, I rambled around Pike Place and out by the Space Needle before a dinner at Chihuly Gardens. The gallery includes a few snapshots.
A walk through Pacific Northwest forest after a recent snowfall.
Today I had the opportunity to visit Jon, a friend and former student, after arriving in Seattle late last night. We drove east of the city to a natural area called Tradition Plateau (and also, it appears, Tiger Mountain). It snowed a little yesterday, so the trails and surroundings were covered with a thin layer of wet and crunchy snow. The verdant forest I so associate with the Pacific Northwest was still evident, as were the incredibly tall and thin cedars and firs of the sort we just don’t see out East.
No more DNG for me.
[Time for another photogeek blog post!]
I’ve been using a DLSR camera since 2008 and have been photographing in Raw since 2012, after I finally realized the benefits of camera-raw over jpeg. In 2012 I also started keeping my entire photo collection in Adobe Lightroom, allowing Lightroom to convert any Raw photos to DNG (‘digital negative’) files at the time of import. Why? Because I was convinced by books and bloggers that DNG is The Right Way to store images. Today, ten years later, I’ve changed my mind. In this post I explain why.
Continue reading “CR3 vs DNG”
David Kotz 