From Rockwood Hall to Sleepy Hollow – Overview

by Posted in Landscapes, Nature, Trees Leave a comment
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A couple of weeks ago I went on another walk. I had recently acquired a new camera: a Polaroid I2 and wanted to try it out (see picture above, one of eight I took. For the rest see: Film Camera 2024 -2: Polaroid I2 – Results). My plan was to go to Rockwood Hall, try out my camera, and try to find a way to walk to Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown without having to walk along busy Route 9/Albany Post Road. After consulting a couple of maps, I concluded that I could walk from Rockwood Hall, past Kendal-on-Hudson (an assisted living facility with a nice path along the river). I could then walk past Phelps Hospital up to Route 9. From there it was only a short block’s walk along a grass verge adjoining Route 9 to where I could turn onto Hemlock Drive. I could then down to the river and then past Philipse Manor station; through Kingsland Point Park, past the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse into Beekman Avenue in Sleepy Hollow.

Taken with a Sony RX100 M3

Doves Silhouette

by Posted in Black & White, Wildlife & Animals Leave a comment
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I was leaving my house the other day when I noticed these two doves in a tree near the end of my driveway. They were quite a long way away and I had a 45mm lens on my camera, so I knew I would have to crop quite a lot. Luckily the camera has a resolution of 33 megapixel so I could crop quite a lot and still have a decent picture. While I was taking it I “visualized” a silhouette so the post-processing was fairly simple except for the rather lengthy processing of removing small, distracting branches.

I’m quite pleased with the way it came out.

Taken with a Sony A7IV and Samyang 45mm f1.8

Eirah’s Roses

by Posted in Flowers, Nature, People Leave a comment
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I thought I had already posted about this, but after checking I believe I didn’t.

The “Eirah” in the title was my wife.

She enjoyed gardening of all kinds, but her first love was growing roses. She was particularly fond of old roses, especially those from the English grower, David Austin.

She also participated actively in a number of Facebook groups related to this topic and naturally she wanted to post pictures of her roses. As I’m an avid amateur photographer I was tasked with taking the pictures.

Initially she posted individual pictures, but after a while decided to combine a number of pictures so that they could be seen as a whole. For some reason this became known as the “calendar” even though it really wasn’t. While this was a good way of sharing a lot of pictures at once it had a major problem: the pictures were really small, and you couldn’t see the individual roses well.

So, we decided to do a photobook instead. I would provide the pictures and she would provide some text to go with them.

I dutifully took the pictures (mostly because she reminded me to do so), but she was a very busy person and never got around to providing the text. She passed away unexpectedly in 2020 after a thankfully brief illness.

Even though I lacked her text, I decided to go ahead with the book anyway after her passing. Since I don’t know much about roses I borrowed text from the David Austin web site.

So, this is very much in memory of my lovely wife of forty odd years.

You can see more pictures of her roses here.

Film Camera 2024 -2: Polaroid I2 – Results

by Posted in Polaroid I2 Leave a comment
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So how did my foray with the Polaroid I2 go.

It went better than my first effort with the SX-70. The camera is clearly working as intended. The picture above, and the three below are pretty much straight out of the camera and onto the scanner.

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I was a bit disappointed, but on further consideration I decided that the poor quality of the photographs is most likely the fault of the photographer (i.e. me). One of the main reasons for this is that I’m stubborn. I’d read on a number of websites that the camera didn’t work well in auto mode: i.e. it tended to overexpose and select a slow shutter speed, which introduces blur. I’d been told, but I decided to find out for myself. I can confirm that what the other sites had said was true.

Of course, after I’d scanned them, I had to fiddle around with them in Lightroom. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on them, so they’re over sharpened in many cases. See the pictures below for how they looked after I’d “processed” them.

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There were numerous constraints: Apart from the SX-70 mentioned above I’d only ever used a polaroid camera once, and that was about 50 years ago, and it was one of the “cheap and cheerful” models; This was the very first time that I was using this particular camera; I don’t know much about scanning polaroids and I’m not much good at scanning at the best of times; and I’d chosen to use a mode that everything I had read told me not to use.

So, bearing mind the constraints I was satisfied with the results. I’ll certainly use the camera again (I a paid a lot for it), but next time I won’t use the auto mode. Instead, I’ll probably use either Aperture priority (usually my preferred mode) or maybe even full manual.