Foggy October Photography
Have to get out and take advantage of these foggy mornings before they’re gone – only to return in early spring.
Shot on the Canon EOS M and EF-M 22mm f/2 in Jackson, Michigan.
nature
2025 Vacation: Acadia National Park
I had the chance to visit Acadia National Park almost 20 years ago. It’s where I climbed my first mountain, and I was excited to show off the park to my family.
Acadia is not the biggest national park, but for sheer variety, it has a lot to offer: great hiking, mountains, oceanfront scenery, with ponds and rivers galore.
The park helped me appreciate the benefits of Canon’s lighter mirrorless kit. When you’re hiking up and down mountains, the portability of the EOS M series was definitely a benefit. And the image quality never suffers.
It’s a shame Canon discontinued the M series. With the R series, cameras got bigger, lenses got bigger, and apart from a few of the APS-C and point-and-shoot bodies, there’s nothing like the M series in the lineup anymore. Trips like this highlight the need for a smaller kit.
We worked our way around the park and by mid-day, we finished up and headed into Bar Harbor, Maine, for dinner.
Shot on the Canon EOS M and the EF-M lenses.
Digicam Winter & Nature Hike: Canon PowerShot SD750
This weekend, I made a thing.
It’s funny to see the recent digicam craze. Everything old eventually becomes new again, and sure enough, it’s the classic point-and-shoot camera’s time to shine.
So, after a big snowstorm this weekend, I hiked into the Kate Palmer Wildlife Sanctuary here in Jackson, Michigan, to take my trusty Canon PowerShot SD750 on a photo walk in the woods. I also shared a few classic and recent shots with the PowerShot – a camera I used for years, on many trips, from 2007 up until I bought my Canon Rebel T1i in 2010.
Bringing it out into the woods reminded me of a few things:
- The files hold up decently, but man, my modern photography eyes are spoiled. There’s so much chromatic aberration, shadow noise, and corner softness with this 35-110mm lens.
- It is nice to have a tiny, pocketable camera that you can carry anywhere. I used it quite a bit over the holidays because of the flash and the size.
- “Unfussiness” should be a guiding light in more modern cameras. The Ricoh GR series comes close to this level of simplicity. Truly: point and shoot.
I can see the charm. These younger generations want something imperfect. Film is difficult and expensive, so classic digital is the practical (and affordable) way to go.
This PowerShot will stay with me until it’s dead. It’s still fun to bring it out once in a while and remind myself that, for a long time, this was the best I had.
Around the Riverbend
Manistique, Michigan
Had a great vacation in the Upper Peninsula last week. More to come.
Good Excuse
CJ Chilvers says he was wrong about landscape photography:
Landscape photography is healthy. You hike miles. You look at gorgeous things. It feels good. It makes others looking at the results feel good too. Few things create such positive results for all involved.
Amen. As always, photography can serve as the excuse to do something you already love.
Go Outside and Play
Last summer, at our former house, we noticed something more and more: of all our neighbors, we were the only ones who spent any measurable amount of time outside.
Whether for grilling, or for playing on the swing set, or going for a simple walk around the block, our family was largely alone. We didn’t see some neighbors for weeks. Others only went outside to mow the lawn, or get in their car and leave. My wife and I would sit in the backyard, after putting the kids to bed, just to read and drink and watch the birds. Again: all alone, all by ourselves.
Granted, we lived in a rural neighborhood, and most country folks stick to themselves. But we couldn’t shake a thought: how weird that other people in our neighborhood weren’t enjoying the lovely Michigan summer. So far, it’s been the same story at our new house.
Maybe a lot has changed since I was a kid (“Go outside and play!” my mother would shout, and we did – all day long). There are a lot of new time suck options, from Netflix to Facebook, even in rural areas. Given that more people (especially children) are spending less time outside, my values probably differ from my nation’s.
On the other hand, it’s easy to fall into nature worship, and praise fresh air so much that you become annoying. I’ll admit that not everyone craves Thoreau’s “tonic of wilderness” like I do. We sent our son to a nature center for preschool, and he spent most of his school day outdoors in the woods. That’s not for everyone.
But, I do think that if you have a yard, you should spend time in it. If you live on a road, you should walk up and down it from time to time.
And if you’re a photographer, getting outside should be a part of your practice. Take your camera, grab your kids or pet, and go outside to see what the season has accomplished.
(Coincidentally, a recent Roderick On the Line podcast episode had a discussion about this subject, specifically about people playing sports outside. Good listen.)
Bad Ground
On the first of October last year, I took a walk in the Whitehouse Nature Center in Albion, Michigan. It was a beautiful fall day, one that only hinted at the darkness to come. The leaves were just starting to fall, and I wanted to play with the light and see what I could capture.
This what I came up with – edited and processed more than a full year later.
I’m doing this more and more: letting projects sit for a while, and then addressing them months (or a year) later to see what sticks out, creatively. For these leaves, I knew I wanted to let them marinate for a while.
Here’s to the last days of October.
Beware the Woods At Night
It’s been a pretty great October here in Michigan. And just before it turned pitch black on my morning commute, I grabbed some foggy forest shots as the leaves were turning.
Consider it a goodbye to the leaves for seven months or so.
