Spring in Spartanburg

Dogwoods

It has been Spring for a few weeks and I have been remiss in my Spring photography. Truthfully, just as it officially turned to Spring we had a blast of Winter-like weather, i.e. cool, wet and overcast. Anyway, here is a different view of one of the dogwood trees in my yard.

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Glendale Mill

Glendale Mill Sentry

Another photograph from the Spartanburg Area Conservancy's Glendale Shoals Preserve. This is one of the "towers" of the old Glendale Mill that still stand. Seeing it from this angle made me think of the sentry towers in European Castles for some reason.

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Moody View

Reflections and Ruins

This is another photograph of Lawson's Fork Creek in the Glendale Shoals Preserve in Spartanburg County. It is taken very close to the same place as yesterday's photograph if not the exact same location. I was trying out different compositions with the reflections and the trees. As I was developing the image I started to feel that it needed a more moody treatment and converted it to black and white. I think that it works for it. If you look carefully, you will see a couple of the old mill's chimneys through the trees and their reflections in the water. That is were the "Ruins" in the title came from in my mind.

In order to further accentuate the "moodiness" I made a few other tweaks to the image in development. First, I selectively darkened and brightened areas to try to lead the eye down the rapids. Next I reversed the expected sharpening of the image's elements. By this I mean that I reduced the sharpness of every thing except the water, and then I sharpened the reflections. To me this gives a sense that the reflections might be more "real" than the actual trees and ruins. It does at least seem to help convey the moodiness that I was feeling with the image. Finally, I added a slight vignette along the edges to bring the eye into the image.

Well, that is what I did and why I did them anyway. I hope it worked the way I intended them to.

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I'm back

Down Lawson's Fork Creek

It has been a while hasn't it? I've been dealing with a lot of stuff and hadn't been able to get out with the camera very much. Things have not really settled down, but I am trying to make time for photography again now that the weather is more agreeable. However, it does seem to like to rain on the weekends for some reason.

Earlier this week I went to the Glendale Shoals Preserve. It is a conservation preserve of the Spartanburg Area Conservancy based around the historic Glendale Mills property. Lawson's Fork Creek flows under an iron trussed bridge, over the mill's dam, and over exposed rock below the dam. The preserve has a couple of trails, numerous picnic tables, and some historic kiosks relating the story of Glendale Mills and the area's natural features. I didn't spend very much time there, but I do look forward to going back and exploring it in better detail.

This photograph is Lawson's Fork Creek as it re-enters it's wooded embankments below the shoals before leaving the Preserve.

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January Snow

Gate Lines

Here is a shot from last month's big snowfall. We got six to eight inches of snow with a quarter-inch of ice on top of it by the end of that day. The ice and snow mess stayed around for the rest of the week as the temperatures didn't get above freezing until the next week. It was an unusual winter storm for us. We get storms like this every 5 to eight years it seems.

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The Past Month

Howdy.

It's been awhile, huh?

This past month I've been fighting a corneal abscess due to an eye infection / irritation. It started the week of Christmas just after I had a bad cold. I have had similar symptoms the past couple of years, but previously they had always gone away in a week or so. This time it wouldn't go away. It took awhile to get in to see my doctor because of the holidays and the week everything was closed down from the big snow we had in early January. My doctor referred me to an ophthalmologist who has had me on eye drops and an antibiotic ointment gel with almost weekly visits to monitor the condition. Today's appointment was quite good and it looks like it is finally healing properly and it should be behind me soon.

As a result of this, I haven't been taking any photographs. The times that I have had similar symptoms in the past where all after long days with the camera. So, I didn't want to do anything to irritate it further. I do have a few photographs to process from the big snow we got, so hopefully I can get some of those up by the end of the week.

The ophthalmologist told me that this can be a recurring condition, particularly in the Spring and Summer which is when I had had the symptoms in the past. But now I know what to be aware of, and he gave me some advice on how to prevent it.

As they say, "that's life".

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My Favorites from 2010

With 2010 gone, it was time to look back at the photographs from the year. You may have noticed a couple of new links in the "My Links" section in the sidebar. One of those links is for the gallery of my favorite photographs from 2010. It is around 190 images and I probably could edit it down to a much smaller number of "the best". But favorite and best aren't the same things and these were MY favorites, so here they are. There is a Flash slideshow of the gallery which you can see in the full post (click the Read More link below).

Also, I have added a link to purchase prints of some my photographs. I have gotten enough requests that it felt like a good time to make it available. There is a limited selected right now, but I will add more over time. I will likely reorganize it into various categories as I add more images to purchase.

I hope your holidays were merry and your new year is a good one.

Follow the link for the slide show.




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