March arrived hear like a lion (it’s still snowing as I write this) but until yesterday it felt a lot like Spring here and I suspect that feeling will return soon enough.
This is a photograph of Nashoba Brook in Acton taken a couple of years ago. There is a small mill building next to the brook — perhaps a pencil mill (they used to make pencils along the brook).
I’ll use this opportunity to also plug an upcoming film festival — OARS, our local river stewardship organization, is hosting the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival on Wednesday, March 7th at the Fine Arts Theater in Maynard. Come to town, grab a little dinner before or after, and enjoy a wide range of short films featuring people working to raise awareness of our environment. To learn more and reserve tickets (this show often sells out) visit the OARS website.
If you like the above image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop or tablet wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:
Download the 1024×768 version here. (Perfect for your iPad)
Download the 1280×1024 version here.
Download the 1680×1050 version here.
Technical stuff:
Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm and f/16. 1/8 second exposure. ISO 1600. (filtering not recorded, likely a polarizer)
Processed with Lightroom 3: this is a pseudo-HDR image: essentially compressing the shadows and highlights and stretching out the mid tones. The goal was to keep the shadows of the stream while not losing detail in the trees/sky. Consequently a fair amount of fill light and black point to restore contrast, clarity +44, vibrance -21, saturation -15 (restoring something closer to natural color saturation). A bit of dodging was done in the lower left-corner for this rendition so the calendar wouldn’t be lost amongst the rocks.
I will have a small placard near the entrance with this QR Code that will lead interested patrons to a 
