Springtime

I'd really love to find the energy to get up early... just before sunrise... grab my photography gear, including my tripod, and head out to shoot some early morning landscapes of the new spring growth... preferably on a morning with a dewy, misty, foggy, moody atmosphere as the sun begins to appear. Unfortunately, the weather has been rather lousy the past few days so I have no desire to get up early just to be frustrated and disappointed by attempting to shoot photos in the rain, with poor light, and generally lousy conditions. My health has been rather lousy the past few days as well and, when this happens, very little gets accomplished in my little world. I have, however, managed to capture a few photos of our spring season in the past few days.

New leaves emerging from buds

Now that the springtime rains have started, I don't think I'll be getting out there with my photography gear again until after most of the blooming has occurred. In the meantime, I have managed to capture a few fairly decent shots of springtime so far this season that I feel do a good job at capturing "springtime".  

I brought my camera with us when we drove up to Lowes the other night to pick up a few patio blocks. I was hoping to capture some landscape photos as the sun was setting but, unfortunately, the lighting was very flat due to mostly overcast skies so I came home with some rather blurry and disappointing photos that night. It seems that whenever I grab my camera while running an errand, the photographic conditions end up being just short of miserable. When I don't have my camera... the conditions are stunningly beautiful! I think my biggest obstacle here is my own dumb luck.

To make matters worse, I was shooting with a long lens from a car moving at 65 mph on the interstate... shooting from the passenger seat... leaning back into the back seat... and even shooting out the rear windows at times. These bumpy conditions at high speed are far from ideal conditions for landscape photography! Nevertheless, I did manage to get a few halfway decent images so I shouldn't complain too much.

I think my complaining about poor conditions is due to the fact that I often see great light but I don't have my camera with me because we are in a hurry to get where we are going or I am feeling too miserable with health problems. Those are missed opportunities. Then on other nights, I know that we really have no place that we need to be and I'm feeling fairly well so I grab my camera in the hope that opportunities will present themselves like they do all those other times... wrong. Somehow, conditions often seem to deteriorate whenever I am carrying a camera with me. I've been on a roll lately with this kind of luck.

I did, however, manage to get a few decent shots... nothing I really had envisioned but decent shots nevertheless.

Admittedly, spring is not my favorite season so I typically won't even pick up my camera during this very short season in the hills of Vermont... it is muddy, vegetation is lacking, it is usually raining and I hate rain (mostly because I wear eyeglasses and rain makes it extremely difficult to see through eyeglasses covered in raindrops) and the landscape after the snow melts generally looks stark and brown rather than a lush green. Once everything starts blooming, however, things start to look good! In fact, once everything begins to bloom... with all those yellows and varying shades of green... I find spring much more impressive and beautiful than northern autumn colors which everyone seems to love.

Shot from a moving car on the highway... dirty windows, bumping, obstructed views... not ideal conditions.

When the trees begin to bloom with new yellowish and light green foliage, it contrasts beautifully against the dark green pines and firs. The new leaves and foliage continue to grow, deepening in color ranging from yellow through to all different shades of green. This color spreads like a movie transitioning from black and white to color.

At this time of year, we are emerging from six to eight months of nothing but snowy white landscape... with cabin fever... and snowblinded vision. We then get a couple of weeks of muddy brown landscape as our eyes and minds adjust to this changing, evolving landscape. By the time the trees begin to bloom, all the shades of yellows and greens are a very welcome sight!

I love this combination of colors in the spring landscape... even more so than our autumn landscape with almost alien-like, unnaturally bright colors emerging from these same trees. Autumn looks really strange to me... it always has, it always will. Don't get me wrong... I love the autumn weather we experience in the northeast but the colors are a bit freaky making Halloween strangely appropriate to coincide with this seasonal phenomenon. Autumn colors remind me of false color infrared imagery. I sometimes feel as though I am on an alien planet during autumn in the northeast. (But I do love those cooler temperatures!)

Springtime, on the other hand, starts out colorful in yellows and greens moving higher and higher up the hills toward summits from the valleys and then continues to grow and spread into a lush green landscape as the weather gets warmer and warmer each day. Although I had a few other ideas when I set out to capture some of this springtime landscape over the past week, in hindsight, these photos turned out fairly well.

The wildflower gardens around the house have begun to germinate in the past few days. This is another sure sign of spring. When these flowers begin to germinate, this typically signals the start of summer. This year, this happens to be about a month earlier than usual. Either we are in for a longer than usual spring or this summer could be a brutal one.

Once these wildflower gardens are in full bloom, I will be shooting more wildflower photos. In the meantime, hopefully, I will find myself among some early morning mist and trees in springtime bloom...

Until then, I will continue to add some odds and ends in photos and blog entries as my health allows...