Out & about
Posted: September 28th, 2025, 8:44 am
dem bones, dem bones
dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
dem bones, dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around
northern parking lot, Birch Hill WMA, New Boston Rd. I don't know why I like taking these, I just do.
cluster of bracken ferns maybe a half-mile down the road from my house...
Taken on one of my recent rambles, don't recall which or where. It's been retouched, using 64-bit Irfanview v4.62 - nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop or GIMP, but a whole lot easier to learn. I was struck by the tiny yellow sunburst surrounded by darkness within the greenery - but the Canon did its best to render every part of tie image at the same brightness. So I suppressed the midrange tones by reducing gamma to about 40% of its default value, then increased the overall brightness by 50 Irfanview units (whatever they are), and the contrast by the same amount (50 whatevers). It's more true to what I actually saw.
View from New Boston Rd, Birch Hill WMA. Several years ago, this was heavily wooded, until the state clear-cut this & several other parcels along the road. They sold what lumber they could, chipped or hauled away the tops, and partially stumped it, leaving the remaining debris behind to compost. Then they just let the land become whatever it wanted to become. Given the soil's acidity, porosity, etc., that turned out to be open scrubland, a low, brittle heath where birch & aspen saplings are starting to take hold. It's popular with ground-nesting birds like grouse - and the hunters who like to shoot them.
Image enhanced with Irfanview's automatic color correction algorithm. I wish there were a way to determine exactly what parameters it adjusts and how, but I don't know of any.
Priest Brook, one of the Millers River's many feeders. You'd never know it from this angle, but it's passing through the scrubland. Unretouched.
Downstream view of the Millers River from a boat launch in the Birch Hill WMA. Went kayaking there once. Enhanced with Irfanview's autocorrect...
Another view of the Millers River from somewhere downstream of the bridge, looking back towards it. Unretouched.
Wooded hillside a few miles in along an unnamed & little-used trail at Birch Hill. Taken at an intermediate zoom setting with my 250mm lens. Unretouched. It catches just a hint of that ghostly backlighting I riffed about in my chapbook...
