More Beautiful Winter Desolation

 Some more pictures of the backroads of Vermont. As my life seems to inexplicably lead me to central Vermont I guess it's natural and unavoidable that more pictures of it pop up. I wish I could say that I took these with my new camera, but I simply snapped them with my phone. And, no, they're not black & white, but simply the extraordinary winter beauty (desolation) of Vermont.

Closer and Further

 I think this may be my favorite picture so far, but that may speak more to my love of cemeteries than its aesthetic merit.

And this is when I wish I had a better lens, and thus you can see the slippery slope of buying a nice camera.

But then the beauty of having more pixels is that cropping and focusing in gets easier.

Now, which is the best version?

And Even More Faffing About

 And here's another picture from the early evening I spent down at the lake experimenting with filters.

This filter was supposed to make the blue sky more blue, which I guess it did, although I think in the process it made the clouds a bit too dirty, sort of late winter roadside snow.

More Faffing Around

 OK, here's another clumsy picture. The other day I was down by the lake to meet up with my dear, dear friend Sarah who was passing through the state. As things were breaking up I walked over to the shoreline and, for the first time, tried out one of the polarizing lenses for the camera. Unlike the upcoming trip to Jordan, I don't have buyer's remorse on spending the money on the camera (at least not yet). I want to have a better handle on it before I take a few hundred pictures in Jordan.

For a first effort I'm fairly happy, especially in regards to what it the lens did to the sky. Hmmm, I'll post some more pictures later and keep tinkering.

Faffing Around

 As I mentioned in another post I recently bought a camera. It's not a fantastic camera but rather a good camera, a Nikon D3500, which is one of those classic starter cameras. Classically, it didn't come with an instruction manual, but instead you could go to a website to view the manual. They always sell it as a sign of their environmental concerns, when, obviously, they're simply trying to maximize profits. So, the learning process has been slow. All I've been doing so far in tinkering with it, measuring my level of buyer's remorse. Soon I'll start messing with the options and gadgets, with a hope of having a better idea what the hell is going on before I head over to Jordan next month. I've taken the camera out for a test drive at Greenmount Cemetery, which is close to my apartment, and then out to the Causeway. Both days were appropriately overcast, that is, a day when it's hard to fuck up pictures. I can already feel the urge to buy a bigger lens for closeups, so this will all end badly.