Oakledge Park

Last week, while we were supposed to be in Dayton, Ohio at the National Museum of the US Air Force for a dedication ceremony (see my previous post with video of the ceremony), we were attending a prior commitment at Oakledge Park in Burlington, Vermont.

Sheila's employer holds a statewide meeting for their employees and a related media event each year and, this year, this meeting and event fell on the day of the dedication ceremony at the National Museum of the US Air Force.  We plan to head to Dayton for our own little dedication ceremony of my "Data Plate" on the Wall of Honor sometime this autumn.  (Assuming fate and my health cooperate.)

See the island in the top photo? This flock of geese was flying
way out by that island... I used a very long zoom lens to capture
this shot. I like the motion blurring of the flock... shows action.

I always try to attend this annual event at Oakledge Park with Sheila. She does her thing at the meeting while I walk around the park looking for good photo opportunities. Unfortunately, most of my time this year was spent dodging rain, trying to keep my camera gear dry and sitting in a car because it was pouring rain outside!

Oakledge Park is situated on Lake Champlain. This is a huge lake which lies between New York and Vermont. On a clear, bright day, it is easy to get beautiful photos of the Adirondack Mountains across the lake. The Adirondack Mountains are rugged high peaks affording Vermonters with a beautiful view across Lake Champlain. Unfortunately, it seems as though "clear, bright" days are very rare here, especially this time of year... the rainy mud season which most of the rest of the world outside of Vermont refer to as "spring". This time of year, quite often, the mountains are obscured by clouds. Last Thursday was one of those days. It was cold, dark, damp, wet and very dreary.

Trying to shoot beautiful photos in these conditions is tough. The lighting is bad... which means the amount of light is low and visibility is very limited as well. The distance across the lake to the Adirondack Mountains of New York is about 10 miles at this park. A 10 miles distance in lousy weather means poor visibility due to low clouds, rain, fog, mist and exceptionally poor lighting. These sort of conditions are tough for any photographer.

To make matters worse, I didn't bring a tripod with me so this meant I had to handhold the camera for all my photos. In low light, it becomes tough to get a clear, crisp shot when handholding a camera. The camera really should be on a tripod because the shutter speed will be slower than usual. On this particular day, my shutter speeds were exceptionally slow even when my ISO sensitivity was set very high. This combination makes for bad photos all around... a lot of fuzzy 'noise'... motion blurring... dull colors...

An approaching thunderstorm...

"Dull colors"... this reminds me of another problem I always encounter at Lake Champlain... getting the color right. No matter which camera I use, my photos of Lake Champlain always turn out very blue. This lake is so large and reflects so much light coming down from the sky that everything turns blue. This is a phenomenon that drives me crazy when it comes to photography. When it is dark and dreary, color is also difficult to capture accurately because of the distances involved.

Anyway, here are just a few of the photos I shot that day at Oakledge Park. I hope to write more about this park in another blog post. There is some interesting history to this park... a history which is almost dead and long gone...