David Griffin Photography

Category Archives: Staring

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January 3, 2007 – 9:12 pm

Normally photos of snow in January aren’t what you would call “distinctive”, but we haven’t had a normal winter season here by a long shot. Here’s our backyard on New Year’s Eve with a (temporary) bit wintry coating of snow.

How did you spend your New Year’s weekend? Me, I started re-cataloging my photos. I recently switched my photographic workflow and cataloging from CaptureOne / iView to Apple’s Aperture. It was also an opportunity to bring more of the archives into my current standard. 33,000 photos later and I’ve got the past 4 years now available at my fingertips. The next job is to tag all of the photos with keywords — that’s Betsy’s new daytime activity.

I had to head back to my real job yesterday, but ran into a short delay. I was reading the morning news in the living room and noted that the sunrise light was just great. But, alas, there wasn’t anything to take a photo of. A few more minutes pass and another burst of light — I headed out to the deck. Looked around. Gorgeous conditions, but the backyard just didn’t have anything calling out to me. And then….

Two double rainbows in a little over two weeks! I hope this means good fortune or something.

By Dave | Comments (0)

Paddling on the Assabet in December

December 17, 2006 – 9:15 pm

Great Blue Heron - Assabet River, Stow, MA

Winter doesn’t officially start until December 21st, but we’re nearly there and we found ourselves drawn to the river this afternoon. Normally this would be a hard decision, but temperatures in the 50’s made it a little easier to justify.

We found this Great Blue Heron hunting in the shallows by Honeypot Hill in Stow.

By Dave | Comments (0)

Chasing Rainbows

December 16, 2006 – 7:25 pm

Rainbow - Moultonborough, NH

We were in New Hampshire and Maine this weekend for the first annual Stone Mountain Christmas Show. We’ve headed up to the foothills of the White Mountains for several years now for the ancestor of this event - Carol Noonan’s Christmas Concert at the Little White Church in Eaton, NH.

Usually we stay at the Inn at Crystal Lake, but we didn’t get our reservations in soon enough. Tim and Bobby were kind enough to point out another inn in Chocurua: The Riverbend Inn. The inn is, not surprisingly, at a bend of the Chocurua River. Sadly there wasn’t any snow (indeed we debated opening the windows for the night) - but it was a quiet yet convenient place to stay for a couple of nights.

We drove up Friday night (in the fog) and planned to do some random photography on Saturday before the show. The weather, for a change, cooperated with some dynamic skies. We were headed towards Center Harbor when it started to drizzle and the sun was peeking through the clouds. I instantly remarked that there should be a rainbow behind us. We’re never headed in the right direction. Sure enough, 42 degrees off the antisolar point it was there. Little did we know the show that was to come…

We came upon a nice landscape with a gentle rainbow arcing up from it. It was fading in and out as the weather and wind kept things constantly changing. I wish I had a slightly higher vantage point and I would have been thrilled to get a nice reflection… No such luck.

We headed into Moultonborough to visit a quirky little country store there and when we came out we saw the rainbow behind a tree in the front of the public library. I ran and grabbed my camera, but was gone by the time I came back - only to reappear a few minutes later. Meanwhile, Betsy had scoped out another vantage point by the town building. A few minutes later the sky, sun, and rain created one of the most intense rainbows I’ve ever seen — including the fainter “double rainbow” — which had me scrambling for my 16mm lens.

I’m not sure how many fender-benders this caused, but people were lining up in parking lots and pulling off the road to witness this wonderful show of nature. Betsy and I travelled around the area a bit hoping for some better views, but none were to be found.

The ephemeral nature of rainbows makes them all that more enjoyable to see and they were a quite a challenge to photograph.

By Dave | Also posted in Photography | Comments (0)

I think Spring is finally here

March 12, 2006 – 6:29 pm

This has certainly been an odd winter, but Spring seems to have firmly dug its claws into our part of the country. It’s difficult to wrap my head around the fact that we were “enjoying” -25 degree weather just a couple of weeks ago in Yellowstone and today we took the kayaks out on the river for the first time this year.

Betsy and I try to get into the water as soon as possible. “Ice out” on the river is just a magnificent time to be paddling around. The variability of this year’s winter made ice out less of an event — and we were still wrapped up in our trip to catch it at the right moment. But there’s no time like the present and the temperature was in the 60’s and no rain in sight for a day, so on to the water we go. We paddled up and down our favorite stretch of the Assabet River in Stow.

Bluebirds are rather elusive around here and the only time we see them with any regularity is during early spring. We caught up with a small flock as the sun was starting to snuggle down into the clouds (my luck is impeccable), but it was great to see them again. People say Robins are a sign of Spring, but we see them all winter long now. Bluebirds are our sign of Spring.

In “Walden” Thoreau said “One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in.” We take what leisure and opportunity we get and savor Spring’s arrival. Alas, back to work on Monday…

By Dave | Comments (0)

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