I appreciate your patience as I revise this site. Comments, thoughts, or just a friendly chat, use the response box below or email me at patrickgroleau@gmail.com.

August 28, 2015

OF NORMA'S GARDEN, PICNIC WITH THE KIDS, AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

... while robert was feeding the cats i made a bit of a wander through norma's greenery ... fresh tomatoes, something i miss much ...

... a tiny little plant, as usual i've no idea its name ...

... norma's yard is a very, very happy place ...

... i drove up to bangor to spend the day with three of the tracy gang ... we took a hike down to the park by the school ... tom fit himself to a tree ...

... dan, on the other hand, found a tree upon which to teach his brother how to "run up the trunk" ... we all did this when were were kids, and i can remember how we'd all heard of "a kid on the other side of town" who could "run up the trunk higher than he could touch" ... we tried, which meant that most of the time we went home with sore noggins and bruises on our butts ...

... megan packed up a perfect picnic lunch ... all the food groups, each bag neatly labeled as to the intended consumer ... i watched from a distance as she prepared the setting, noticing how careful she was to make sure the blanket was perfectly squared ... such effort and concentration in a simple thing like a picnic, this, i believe, says good things of megan ...

... dan is daringly contortionistic on the monkey bars ...
 

... while there was a certain element of bravado and showmanship to his aerial antics, i believe this is the moment where begins a process that can eventually cumulate with a russian judge grudgingly raising the "10" card ...

... sister and brother, being entertained ...

... megan offered up to me a tiny birthday bouquet ...

... dan, strutting a stage that belongs to him ...

... butterflies and milkweed, she's equally fascinated ...

... here, i think, megan was advising her younger brother about some important reality of the upcoming school year ...

... "tom" and "ponder" ... synonyms ...

... emily, observing ...
  

... sisters ...

... megan and i made yarn dolls, like they did in the olden days ... she then taught her sister the skill ...

... little walker, growing up so very fast ...

... interested in everything ...
  

... after supper, em and chad and the kids offered up a birthday cake and a most wonderful present ... i was caught by surprise, which, i'm sure, was their plan ... it was a perfect moment, even if chad couldn't manage to keep the candles lit ... megan whispered to me, "make a wish, but don't tell anyone" ... how so very strangely wonderful, in that moment i could think of nothing to wish for ...

... adrien and liz, my brother and sister, family and friends, even, it seems, new family ... i mean, it almost seems silly that i would get a wish, doesn't it ...

August 22, 2015

TWO OF MY EAST POND FRIENDS

... my friend, chuck ...

... my friend, bella ...

... for these two, and many others, i am, indeed, a very lucky man ...


August 20, 2015

A LITTLE AFTERNOON BREAK

... today we visited maine state museum to view the excellent exhibit of the work of kosti ruohomaa ... ruohomaa was one of the great photographers of the 1940-50s era, especially noted for the pictures he took chronicling the daily lives of mainers ... many of his photographs were used as life magazine covers ... when i was first learning to be a photographer many of the pages from that great magazine graced the walls of my bedroom, with many others his work serving to both inspire and tutor me ...
KOSTI RUOHOMAA
... after we drove over to take a stroll through the maine state viles arboretum ... it was a hot, bright afternoon, so we greatly enjoyed breaking photography's infamous "not at high noon" rule ... i thought i was going to have a hay fever fit when we walked through this field, but john informed me that nobody is allergic to these yellow weeds ... apparently it is the other yellow weeds that are the problem ... i learn something new every day ...

... at first glance i thought there might be a bird living here ...

... my tamron 90mm sp macro lens and i, we're becoming great friends ...

... a little ant, he, too, wanderabouting his fascinating world ...

August 19, 2015

ALL SORTS OF WANDERS

... i drove down with roger to southport on cape newagen so he could complete his "motorcycling to all the towns of maine in one year" effort ... 425+ towns, over 7,000 miles, it's quite possible he's the first to ever accomplish the task ...

... roger said, "get a shot of me taking a bow," which for him, is a rather demonstrative action ...

... it's quite a drive down to southport, and at first i thought this might be the first time i had ever been to the remote end of this peninsula ... from the town landing, however, a single glance at the cuckolds lighthouse and i remembered being here over forty years ago ... bittersweet at first, but, upon reflection, good memories ... let go from service by the coast guard, now completely restored, you can spend the night at the inn at cuckolds lighthouse if you've a desire for a slightly different getaway ...

... a man who likes to ride his motorcycle ...

... i started playing with my "new" (forty-year old) tamron 90mm sp macro ...

... i've never owned a lens like this ... these flowers were photographed from a distance of almost five feet ...

... the lens is as sharp as anything available in modern autofocus designs ... it's a bit "soft" in terms of contrast, but that's actually a plus for this type of photography, and, in any case, that's relatively easy to compensate for in photoshop ...

... i thoroughly enjoy playing with "depth of field" ...

... we had lunch at shaws in new harbor ... i had haddock so fresh it was still floppin' around when they put it in the fryer ... looks to me like the lobster's just as fresh ...

when we were leaving i helped the woman on the left down the stairs ... i don't know how old she is, but she and her husband, the man on the right, have been married for seventy-two years ... he used to be one of new england's premier wedding photographers ...

... john asked me to go out in the morning and do some picture taking on the trail along the banks of the kennebec in winslow ... this diesel-electric engine brought to me memories of a time when i was absolutely fascinated by trains ...

... there was a time when this was how people traveled coast-to-coast ...

... the barrier preventing boaters from getting near the dam formed an interesting composition ... it was just after i took this picture that i discovered my 90mm lens was falling off my camera ... seems the screws on the lens adapter had stripped out ...

... i switched to my 12mm ultra-wide and found this pleasing arrangement ...

... last night i drove up to cape cod hill, where at about midnight i practiced different techniques for photographing the milky way ...

... i saw the twin meteors after i shot the picture, or so i thought ... seems i'd accidentally set the fuji x-t1 to "bracketing," so after my first exposure it went on to take two more pictures, one of which captured the meteors ... parallel like this, i imagine this is a single meteor that's split into two pieces ...

... a three panel (bottom, middle, top) merge, again i managed to catch a meteor trail ...

... after selling books all day, i drove out to east pond to spend the evening heat in the cool water ... in chuck and ann's yard i found these flowers ...

... nobody was home, so i sunned on the dock for awhile, then swam way out off the point to stand on the huge log stuck in the mud on the bottom of the lake ... later i saw chuck bringing the boat home ...

... next door the neighbor girls enjoyed the calm evening ...

... another wonderful day comes to end ... (and, yes, rather than sending it back for a refund a bit of j-b weld and my lens adapter was even better than new) ...

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
HORACE LORENZO TRIM