Adirondack Paddlefest in Old Forge This Weekend
Going Solo: Organizing Backcountry Gear
The Anxiety Of An Empty Backpack
It’s spring in the Adirondacks! This is a photo of one of the participants in the ‘Perfect Pictures Every Time’ photo workshop I did during the last weekend of April at the Adirondack Folk School in Lake Luzerne. I saw him move into place by the cascades, and moved over to place him in front of the falls. Zoomed in to a telephoto focal length and shot with about a 1 second exposure to have a nice motion blur in the water. What a beautiful day it was for a workshop and photography.
I
t may be due to some weird alignment of the stars, or a movement to start “Cinco de Mayo” early, but Friday May 3 there are four great art events in Saranac Lake.
With good timing, it could be possible for one to make all four events, but it’s more likely choices will have to be made. » Continue Reading.
View, Adirondack Explorer magazine, and Mountainman Outdoor Supply Co. are co-sponsoring their second Paddlers Photo Contest. The deadline for submissions is this Friday, May 3.
Amateurs and professionals are encouraged to enter. The awards include subscriptions to Explorer, memberships at View, a Werner Camano paddle from Mountainman, and the winning photos’ publication in Adirondack Explorer. » Continue Reading.
It still looked quite wintry in this view of Whiteface Mountain from Copperas Pond on a mid-April morning. The crocuses are bloming in our backyard in Brant Lake, and I heard the first peepers here on the lake last week, but there’s still a good layer of snow and ice in the High Peaks region. This photo was taken about 6:20 AM. I had along my Nikon D300S and was shooting some angles with that also, but this was taken with my Nikon Coolpix P7700, 6 mm (28 mm full frame equiv.), 1/15 sec at f /4, ISO 160.
Spring usually doesn’t come to the High Peaks until May, but the beautiful alpenglow in this view from Mount Van Hoevenberg, taken in late March, gives a spring-like warmth to an otherwise wintry landscape. Alpenglow colors can be tough to capture in a photograph. » Continue Reading.
Paul Schaefer took this photo in the Pack Forest in Warrensburg sometime in the 1940s or 50s when he was fighting elsewhere in the Adirondacks to save ancient groves from dam builders.
At Pack Forest Paul told us he took one of his best and luckiest shots. Wanting to capture the public’s imagination with something as ancient and compelling as a 500 year old stand of white pine, Paul was at a loss with the scale and the difficult angle and the lighting until the clouds parted for an instant and sun suddenly shot through the forest canopy.
Paul clicked, the shutter opened. Opportunity and preparedness aligned.
Paul told us that his photo was in demand all over the Adirondacks and the country, including in Washington, DC, where a representative of the USDA Forest Service put it on the wall. By the 1960s, the photo came to represent the urgent need to expand the Forest Preserve, protect the Adirondack Park’s remaining old-growth forests, and plan and care for the entire Park, public and private. It has been used in many publications since then, including Defending the Wilderness: The Adirondack Writings of Paul Schaefer (Syracuse University Press, 1989). » Continue Reading.
The ides of March spawned a remarkable confluence of art and artists in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. Two exceptional exhibits opened that evening that were marveled at by crowds of fascinated people, in spite of occasional white-out blizzard conditions.
“The Past Through the Eyes of the Present” opened at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts and will be on display through April 12. I’m not sure who initially had the idea for this, but I know artists Parmalee Tolkan and Tim Fortune sent out the letters that invited artists to participate. The subtitle of the show is “Barry Collection Photos Re-Imagined by Modern Artists”. The story behind the show is that in the early 70’s, Dr. George Hart, who was present at the exhibit opening, was at the town dump when someone was about to dispose of a large number of old glass plate negatives.
Over 8,000 of them were rescued and most had been created by photographers involved with the Lake Placid Club. Now known as the Barry Collection, the images range from sports and family activities to wildlife, people in costume, x-rays, and even bodies in coffins! The Collection had been gifted to the Lake Placid Center for the Arts and they passed it along to the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society. » Continue Reading.
Whether an eagle soaring majestically through the sky, or a raccoon knocking over your garbage can, wildlife is a part of Adirondack life.
“The Wild Life” is an exhibition that puts our wild neighbors front and center will be on display at View from December 8, 2012 – April 28, 2013. The exhibition will have a wild opening reception and preview on Friday, December 7, from 5-7pm that is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to show their wild side with furs, antlers, tails, and any wild apparel encouraged.
» Continue Reading.
I have been traveling for most of the summer and fall, hiking and painting in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks and visiting family in Atlanta, so have not written much for the Almanack. I have literally taken thousands of digital photographs. Dealing with all those photos has prompted me to think about how our use of images and technology is evolving.
First, all of us with digital cameras have learned that we can now take unlimited numbers of photos. Up close, far away, every possible angle, multiple views – only then we end up with huge numbers of images, like I did, and it becomes an immense task to do something with them. » Continue Reading.
As part of Queensbury’s 250th anniversary celebration, the Chapman Museum has opened a new exhibit, Queensbury’s Boom: from Country to Suburb. The exhibit explores the post World War Two development of Queensbury from a rural township to a bustling community.
Using materials gleaned from archives at the Chapman, the Queensbury Town Historian, Crandall Public Library Center for Folklife, History and Culture, and the Warren County Records Center, the exhibit features the history of early housing tracts such as Cottage Hill, the first shopping centers on Upper Glen, the Queensbury school, the Warren County Airport, and popular tourist attractions that sprang up along Route 9. » Continue Reading.
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