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”Photo galleries from our trip at the end of August.
Some of you will recall that in early September my father and I visited Katmai National Park on the southern coast of Alaska, as part of a Muench Photography Workshop focused on photographing the Coastal Brown Bears that feast on the annual salmon run along the southern coast. I wrote a summary of the trip – and posted a few teaser photos – shortly thereafter, but then became busy. Since then, I have struggled to find time to complete the work of selecting and editing a few photos out of the 8,000 shots I snapped during the trip. I finally finished. Read on!
I just joined the Nature First community, because I am impressed by their efforts to communicate about respect for nature while photographing nature. For more, I recommend their why Nature First page.
“The Nature First Principles were developed to help educate and guide both professional and recreational photographers in sustainable, minimal impact practices that will help preserve nature’s beautiful locations:”
The first snow of the season is always special.
I missed the first snowfall of the season. I left town on Tuesday night for a business trip to Chicago, and missed the 2″ snowfall that arrived on Wednesday morning. So today, back at home and waking to a brilliant blue-sky day, I was eager to get outdoors. Most of the snow had melted close to home, but we chose a short hike along the Appalachian Trail to the top of Holts Ledge – home of the Dartmouth Skiway. (Things looked very different when I visited seven weeks ago!) We didn’t have to climb far before reaching an elevation with consistent snowcover. It was shallow, and crunchy from several melt-freeze cycles, but it was a wonderful taste of the winter hikes to come!
We paused at the top to enjoy the southward views across the Upper Valley and toward Mounts Cardigan and Ascutney. We then strolled over to view the activity at the top of the Dartmouth Skiway, chatting with two fellows who were tinkering with the snowmaking equipment. Only three weeks to opening day!
Halfway down the Appalachian Trail we encountered one of those wondrous effects to be seen this time of year: needle ice, where some mud froze, causing the expanding ice to crystallize and push the mud upward into the air.
We were fortunate to have good weather when North America was treated to a full lunar eclipse this morning. It was expected to occur an hour or more before sunrise, as the moon set in the west. Using PhotoPills as a planning tool, I didn’t think I’d have a great view from my backyard, so I arranged to meet a colleague at a location on the Dartmouth campus – a location that has a great view to the west, with Dartmouth’s iconic Baker Tower in frame.
David Kotz 