Ricketts Glen State Park, PA

Our first day out in January is always special, often with some new lens or gadgets, and this one was no different.  Barb presented me with the 50mm lens and our son Matt bought me a macro focusing rail for Christmas. 

Dave Cohen and I had some time on this overcast Wednesday afternoon and decided to go to Worlds End State Park.  On the way we stopped “briefly” at Ricketts Glen.  A few hours later we ran out of light and Worlds End became an old dream.   See Dave’s Zenfolio gallery HERE.

We parked in the lot on Route 118, and spent our time around the lower park area.  The Falls Trail is closed in winter, except to qualified ice climbers.  Looking at the photos in this gallery you can easily see why.  All of our shots are from the low area near Adams Falls and the 118 lot, so you can imagine how dangerous the higher climbs would be. 

It’s always fun and interesting shooting with Dave.  We can shoot all day together and rarely cross focal paths.  Our tripods could be tangled, but we come away with something different; yet one of us could come by the trail where the other had been a half hour earlier, and we come up with relatively the same shot. 

The first 5 photos were taken where the creek goes under Rt. 118.  They are all HDRs and the first real outdoor shots taken with the new 50mm.  Normally for this shot I'd probably use the 24-105mm, even now with the 50mm available, but it's good to see how sharp this lens is from corner to corner.  It's speed at f/1.2 will be a big plus indoors, and a bunch of other situations.

My favorites of the day are on page 2 of the gallery.  The icy abstract of #30, the frozen shapes in #38, the questionable scale of #40 (which is a crop of #41) and the light entering on #36 all qualify.

Nescopeck & Lehigh Gorge State Parks, PA

Again Dave Cohen and I talked about going to Worlds End State Park, but we figured the ice would be too snow-covered to make interesting photos.  The sky, which the weatherman properly predicted would be totally overcast for the day, started to look like it might be blue with puffy clouds, so we went to Nescopeck where we hoped to get some shots with some sky.  Then we planned on moving on to Lehigh Gorge to a spot with a waterfall cascading over moss-covered rocks and surrounded by rhododendron. 

Well, as you could guess we were wrong about nearly everything except the exposure readings we used to get what we got.  What we got was pretty much snow-covered ice floating in streams in Nescopeck, and the cascade at Lehigh Gorge totally covered with snow where you couldn’t even tell there was ice underneath.

Usually on the way home we say something like, “A good day was had by all; we had a good walk, and maybe got some good photos.”  Today?  Well, we enjoyed a good walk in the snow.