Tower Hill Botanic Garden 2016

I headed west to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden last week with friends.  Summer's been slow coming this year, but the blooms are starting, and the vegetables are starting to grow tall.  Here's some photos of the trails.

Searching for spring, 2016

I took a cool and breezy walk along the water in Beverly the other day.  Spring is taking its slow time getting to the North Shore this year.  Here are some shots.  I've switched back to digital.

A friend and I went to Kite Day at Cogswell Grant in Essex the other day.  Here's some photos.

Black and white

I've spent the 2015-2016 winter with a variety of projects. One of which was trying an old type of photography.   I had heard that vinyl records and film cameras are now the "newest" things going, so I dusted out my old SLR.  It's an Olympus OM-10 and a good camera.  I had stopped using it when I started traveling.  Carrying the camera, lenses, film and assorted other paraphernalia was just too cumbersome on a plane.  So I picked up a range finder and made do instead.  As time progressed, I did too, and moved to digital. 

I like the immediate  gratification of digital photography after my experiments with both color and black and white film.  I also prefer not having to limit my shots and being able to try different angles at the same location without having to check how many exposures I have left.

It's nice to have the paper copies of what I shot, but now, I have those paper copies that I paid for and am now hesitant to throw away--even the duds. 

Black and white was more challenging than I thought it would be.  It seems to work best for patterns, but makes landscapes look a little dreary.  That could be the fault of the photographer though.  And I caught myself sometimes on a crystal aired, blue sky day, whose colors were lost.

Here are a few samples. 

In the Bleak Mid-Winter, color version

I recently took out my old 35 mm SLR camera after hearing the news that vinyl records and film photos were the latest thing.  I invested in some color 400 speed film and took some local photos.