Scenic | Dust and Rust

Lake George, NY

We took the kids up to Lake George to give them a little fun before school starts. This is another place that I had been to as a kid over 30 years ago. Some things I remembered seeing back then are still there like the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum. Storytown USA is now a Six Flags park, but parts of the original park are still there… I took a picture of my kids in front of the Little Old Ladies Shoe where I had been posed by my parents. My only regret is that the foliage was still green… the views in the fall must be spectacular. The shot above was taken fairly early in the morning while everyone else was still sleeping. I took it with the D800 and 85mm 1.8G. I wish I had brought a tripod and an ND Filter… but I like the way this came out after some Lightroom Graduated filters and some B&W tweaking. I might have to go back by myself in October… with a tripod and ND filter!

Balloons Over Napa

This shot was taken with a Nikon N60 35mm film camera back in the late 1990’s. Back in December this post over at TheOnlinePhotographer brought up the issue of the demise of film scanners. It provided me with a bit of motivation to pick up a new Plustek OpticFilm 7600i film scanner. Even though it has all of the bells and whistles like IR dust and scratch removal… scanning is a slow, tedious and frustrating process. Most of he prints that looked good as 4×6 prints, start to look blurry and noisy after scanning. I know there are some good shots in my collection… and seeing what the scanner unveils is fun. In the end, scanning really brings out an appreciation for how good digital cameras from the past few years really are.

A photo blog by Sean Unruh