New England Fall - Part 4

I think I left off my story at the point where I was packing my camera gear up and calling it a night at Sleepy Hollow Farm.  As I was putting the last of my stuff into the car, one of the locals came by and started up a nice conversation about the farm and telling me a little about its history.  They told me how the farm used to be owned by Joe Perry of Aerosmith who actually grew up in the area.  I think I had heard that story at some point,  years ago but had totally forgotten about it until now.  I could totally understand why he would have loved living there as the area is beautiful and the farm is far enough out of the way that he would have been afforded plenty of privacy while not out on the road touring with the band.

He eventually got around to asking me where I was from and asked if I traveled all that way just to take photos of the farm.  I told him it wasn't the ONLY reason I had made the trip, but it was certainly high up on the list of places I wanted to see when I finally got out to Vermont.  I mentioned that I have the worst luck in timing my trips and how I had really wanted to be there during peak fall colors, and that's when I found out I'd actually only missed them by 4 days!  He told me how the colors were amazing just the week before, but 4 days ago they had a really heavy frost in the area and that overnight most of the trees had dropped their leaves.  *sigh*   I was SO close!  LOL

It was getting really cold out and I said a quick goodbye and headed to town for the night.  I found a little motel tucked away on the edge of town and called it good for the night.  I was planning on being up super early to get back out to the farm for sunrise anyway, so it was really nice that I was dead tired from a very long day of travel.  I was fast asleep in no time.

My alarm went off 5 minutes after I fell asleep (okay, maybe it was more like 6 hours later but it sure didn't seem like it!).   My body was thinking it was 2am and I was trying to trick it into thinking it was really much closer to the time I would be getting up back home anyway.  I don't think it fell for my trick and demanded some caffeine before I hit the road again.  I grabbed my stuff and opened the door to my room and was hit with a blast of cold air and a view of snow covering everything in front of me.  What month is this???  LOL

Well, now I felt I really needed to rush back to the farm as I have the chance now to photograph it in two different seasons, within a 24 hour period.  All I kept thinking was that this will totally make up for missing the fall colors!  I just had to make sure I got there before the snow melted away as the sun came up.

I was really happy I was able to find a place fairly close by and think I was back to the farm in about 30 minutes.  I got all my gear out, set up my camera and realized that my hands were already frozen from touching all that metal in the freezing cold air!  Okay, I'm realized I wasn't going to be hanging out there for an hour shooting a lot of photos as it was just way too cold for that.  Luckily the light and the snow were all great and I got what I think was my favorite photo on the whole trip within 15 minutes of getting out of the car.

I did fight the cold for another 10 minutes and took a few more photos just to make sure I didn't mess something up or not have the photo in perfect focus or any number of other mistakes that are easy to make when you're still half awake and freezing your tuckus off.   Everything looked great though and I rushed to pack my stuff into the car just as a van full of photographers pulled up.  I couldn't have timed the morning better if you ask me.  I was really happy with this shot and those of you that know me well, know I don't say that often.

The trip was now officially a success in my book.  I mean heck, I got a Fall and Winter photo of the place I wanted to photograph most in New England... all in one trip.  :)

New England Fall - Part 3

Now that my mood had improved again after getting a couple of nice photos, I figured it was time to step it up a bit and make sure I got to Sleepy Hollow Farm before the sun went down.  After all, it was the top spot on my shot list for this trip and if nothing else, the one place I really wanted to make sure I got a good photo before heading home.  I'd actually planned my drive through Vermont and New Hampshire, in a way that it would bring me past this location on 4 different days, JUST in case the weather was bad on any of those days, or maybe the fall colors hadn't hit peak yet and I could see it over the course of a week and maybe get super lucky and catch it on a great day.  That was my thinking anyway as I planned the trip out. 

The closer I got to the farm's location to more I realized I really had missed the best of the fall colors.  I was passing more and more areas where the trees were bare and the ground was covered in leaves.  There were still a few trees that were holding on to the last of their fall colors, but the best of the show was already over.

It didn't matter though, I was going to go get a shot of Sleepy Hollow Farm either way, and I kept telling myself that maybe I'd get lucky and get a pretty sunset instead.  I had no idea which way the farm faced or even if the sun would light it up during the golden hour, but hey, you have to stay positive in moments like this when you start to think about how far you've traveled just to take this one photo.  LOL

As I watched the sun get lower in the sky, I kept thinking that maybe I would get lucky after all.  The sky wasn't going to light up with amazing colors or anything, as there just weren't the right kind of clouds to make that happen, but the golden light that was falling across the valley was making everything look great and I was just about to the farm.

I came up over the next little hill and then suddenly there it was and I was so happy I'd planned on getting here 2 hours before the official sunset.  It turns out that the valley the farm sits in runs north and south and the sun was already being filtered by the trees on the hill behind me.  It would be dark here at least an hour before sunset because the sun was going down behind the hillside behind me at a scary fast pace.

I couldn't believe my luck though as everything was bathed in this really strong golden light.  I grabbed my camera gear out of the car and set up really quick and this was one of the first photos I shot here.

It wasn't the shot I had imagined, with all the trees covered in vibrant fall colors, but heck, it still wasn't a bad shot and the golden light, and the trees in the background still having some leaves on them kept it from being a total bust.

I think I hung out here for just over an hour, waiting to see if more clouds would move in overhead and catch the last of the sunlight before the sun completely set, giving me a chance for an even better photo that day, but no such luck.  I decided that I'd go find a motel in the area and stay the night close by and come back up first thing in the morning to catch sunrise here and see if maybe the light would be even better in the morning.

This post is getting kind of long, sorry about that!  I will stop here and tell you about my morning in my next post.  This one is scheduled to post on Thursday the 28th so if you want to hear the rest of the story, check back on Monday the 4th.  I think I'm going to try to stick to the schedule of a new blog post every Mon and Thu until April when I have a trip to Scotland planned and will be trying to do a daily blog post from there while on the road.

New England Fall - Part 2

After spending a good hour at Grist Mill taking photos and then exploring the area around there for a little while, I decided it was time to start working my way north and into Vermont.  One of the first things I noticed once the sun came up, was that most of the trees in Massachusettes were still green, but there were a few bare trees sprinkled in among them, so it got my hopes up that maybe I would still get lucky and find fall colors as I drove north.

 I had marked a few places to check out on my trip north and with how pretty the day was, it made for a really nice drive just exploring as I went.  There was a small town along the way, where the town square was built around a nice little pond, and I thought it might have the potential to be a beautiful photo in the right kind of light. When I got there though, the skies were mostly blue and it was just too close to mid-day to really get any kind of special photo there, but I still stopped to walk around and enjoy it, and took some shots to try to figure out what would be the perfect spot for a photo if I make it back out this way again in better conditions.  This spot has great potential to give you a beautiful photo at sunrise or sunset, or maybe when covered in snow and the pond is frozen over.  I love the location and wished I lived closer so I could visit it over an over again until I get that great photo here.  Even just catching all those trees at peak fall color would have made a world of difference to this shot.

Well, now that I've put this on my list to revisit someday, it was time to explore some more.  I could see why people talk in such glowing terms about the Northeast because I was passing so many pretty towns, on small country roads that just made me smile and think of the photos I could try to take there.  Even some of the everyday buildings would catch my eye and make me want to take pictures just to see what I could get.

I mean, something like this isn't a normal hot spot for photography, but the shape of the building and the way the light was hitting it as I came down the road, caused me to stop, and then I couldn't help but think how cool it could look if those trees behind it were bursting with fall colors or once again, everything was covered in snow.

I was starting to notice that my luck for catching great fall colors wasn't looking too good for this trip though.  From what I was seeing, I was about a week too late and many of the trees had already lost all of their leaves.  Those that hadn't lost their leaves were already past peak color...

Was I disappointed?  Yeah, I do have to admit I found myself kind of bummed at this point in time and decided I would just make the best of the trip that I could and use it more as a scouting trip than I'd hoped it would be.  Since I'd never been here before, it was the perfect chance to explore even more than I would have if I'd been totally concentrating on taking photos instead.

I knew there would still be opportunities for some nice photos, but they would just have to be things that didn't fully depend on fall colors to really make them special.  I'd already seen a number of cool old barns and some covered bridges and so I'd just set my sites on taking photos of them more than of the landscape.

My next two stops did wonders to cheer me up and put me back in the right frame of mind.  

Okay, so the fall colors aren't looking so great right now and it's looking like I had bad timing, but I can see now that there will still be some great photos to be had and that has me excited again.