Moonrise Trail – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Tangled

One of the few native trees that lose their leaves in the fall, sycamores are always something special in the autumn and winter months with their colorful foliage.

First Day of Spring Break

Well, probably officially the second day of Spring Break! I spent Friday doing all the things I usually do on Friday mornings – cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, and so on.

Today, I got up early, determined to finish up a couple of rolls of film. When I ran out of film, I was sort of cursing the fact I hadn’t another roll with me, or a decent digital camera. All I had was my phone, but it did an okay job. In general, I don’t really like the pictures from cell phones – mine is a Galaxy S5 – but you can get a decent shot or two. I think they tend to overdo the sharpening or whatever they do.

I headed out around 7:00 to a local open space, Wildwood. I took the Moonrise Trail, but veered to the right rather than the left as the path was crazy muddy. It was definitely a delight! Sunflowers, lupine, morning glory, mustard, allium, and others I recognize but don’t know the names. In particular, the image “Tiny Pink Flowers” was a bit of a favorite – these flowers are about 1/4 inch across – less than .5 cm, I am sure.

About to Fall

Last week I took five rolls of film for processing. This was taken with Kodak UltraMax 400 with an Olympus Trip 35. It was a dark and stormy day when I wandered out, but even with 400 iso film, the images came back extremely noisy. I had to do a bit of work to get the roll even somewhat acceptable, in my eyes, but some of the pictures were really nice.

My cheap “go to” films for 135 are Kodak UltraMax 400 and Agfa Vista 200, but I think I am going to use up the UltraMax to see how it works in different cameras. It could be that the Olympus was at fault as it died a bit later. I don’t want to just be done with it, but want to see if there are other issues involved.

This sycamore curves and twists over a steep fall into a barranca. How it hangs on is rather amazing! And when the leaves change, it is a stunningly beautiful tree.

In case you don’t know, I absolutely love trees.

Sycamore

Another image from the Moonrise Trail. Because it varies from sunny to shady, it’s a great place to play with exposure and other photo-y things, like compensation, speed, and aperture.

This was taken using the Canonet GIII QL17, Agfa Vista 200, and scanned at home using the Pakon NonPlus. Some tweaks in LR and On1.

V

Last week, on a windswept and rainy morning, I ventured forth along the Moonrise Trail. My trusty Df and 50mm came along, and in the wind and rain, we took 1000 images (ah, how I love digital! so good for excess!), working to create panoramas. Success and failure always await. So, here is one of a tree . . . more to come!