Outdoor Source Magazine

Now that spring is here and I have a yearning to get out and be in nature, I thought it was finally time to put up the series of photos that I took back in the fall. As a reminder, I went out to the Muttontown Preserve for 4 or 5 weekends spanning from September to November. There’s a couple of different pieces of nature out there. First is a rolling meadow that’s been taken over by wildflowers. The second is a forest featuring several different types of hardwoods and pines. I can only imaging that this is what all of Long Island used to look like before the hordes from NYC turned into millions of people with a million cars. Anyway……

The first shot below was taken walking through forested section of the park in mid to late September. Off on the right side are the first signs of fall with the changing of the leaves.

I’ve had a pretty stressful few months work-wise so when I was given the opportunity to chill out by my brothers pool for a few days I took him up on his offer. The first night I slept extremely bad and was up for the day by around 3:30. Thinking quickly, I thought back to my NYIP (NY Institute of Photography) courses and all of my issues of Outdoor Photographer and decided to head out with my camera.

One of my favorite subjects is birds, I particularly love Egrets. They’re a very skittish bird that fears pretty much everything. If you make noise or sudden movements, they’re gone. I was in one of my favorite birding hangouts out in Orient, NY (the tip of the north fork of Long Island) when I came upon this scene — 3 Egrets getting themselves ready for breakfast and the day. This shot illustrates a couple of good outdoor photography points, in particular that early morning is a GREAT time to get a pretty cool shot.

In the shot below, you’ll notice the soft bluish tone to the photo, you can’t get that tone during with the blazing sun to your back. I took this shot over 3.2 seconds so these guys were pretty still. I wanted to use a very small aperture to make sure that I got some great details about their surroundings (the shore behind the birds is about 3/4 of a mile away).

The lesson from this shot — early morning light (this was actually about 1/2 hour before official sunrise) or late day light is the best for taking effective outdoor shots. The critters are active (or like in this case just waking up getting ready to be active).

Well the other week when I headed into the woods, I had some nice success with the camera. Over the last year or 3, I’ve been having a tough time getting out due to business requirements, but when I get out and get shots like this, it’s all worth it.

The photo below is Kaaterskill Falls. These falls are a very short easy walk in from the road up in the northern Catskills. The falls are a total of about 260 feet in 2 stages. I took this shot with my Canon Digital Rebel (a few photogs were convinced that it was film). The walk is right off NY 23A about 3 miles from Pallenville, NY. Right along the road is another set of waterfalls called Bastion Falls. If you’re a waterfall fan (like I am), this under 1 hour round trip walk is definitely worth checking out. There’s a parking lot that can accomodate about 10 cars about a quarter mile from the trail head. [Be careful around the trailhead, the road is really crazy right there.]

For more information check out http://www.localhikes.com/Hikes/kaaterskill_0000.asp