... on our spring wanderabout, i had rhode island all to myself while adrien took a couple of days to attend a friend's birthday party and watch a broadway play ... this afternoon i borrowed beth's truck (which, i must admit, is great fun on unpaved back roads) and went exploring ... driving along the plainfield pike through clayville i noticed this old structure perched along a rock channeled section of the westconnaug brook ... the short section of pipe protruding from the wall is where a huge supply line used to bring water under hydralic pressure into the building ... a combination of three images, i'm quite pleased with the results of the hdr (high dynamic range) blending ...
... these concrete cradles supported the pipe, which ran from a containment pond about a hundred yards uphill from the building ...
... some sort of turbine or water-powered milling machine must have been mounted in the center of the building ... now, to me, at least, all is a mystery ...
... i parked along the side of the hope furnace road to explore the old dam across the pawtuxet river ... this was my first use of my fuji x-t1 and 12mm wide-angle lens with a 12-stop neutral density filter ... the filter is so dark that even in bright daylight it's almost impossible to see through it, thus allowing the use of long shutter speeds ... these two images were taken using a 10-second exposure ... if you look closely through the water you can see the faint outlines of the huge stone arches supporting the structure ...
... i've been driving by this dam for over forty years, this is the first time i've gotten out of my car to fully investigate it ... on hot summer evenings local kids will congregate atop the stone abutment on the other side of the impound, and in the shallow waters at its base the dusky shadow of the dam will slowly envelope fishers finding excuse to relax away the end of the day ...
... i'm not sure what these are, but i know they mean spring is here ...
... although i know these are something else, these brought to my mind how ma so loved when we would bring her bouquets of pussywillows to decorate the dinner table ...
... even as i watched the little blossoms formed into a happy swarm ...
... returning home, i became once again fascinated with beth's beautiful orchards ... for this photograph i made twenty separate images ... i began by focusing just beyond the far side of the flowers ... then, as i held down the shutter button with the camera set for five frames-per-second, i slow rotated the lens' focus ring so each picture was focused a couple of millimeters closer than its predecessor ... i had hand-held the camera, so after bringing them into photoshop i used the alignment feature to bring the images into precise registration ... the next to last step was to do a "focus merge" in which photoshop used the sharp sections of each of the separate images to produce a final picture that was in focus from near to far ... a tiny bit of touch up, the addition of a white vignette, and i was finished ... at first i thought i might go back and darken the stem, but i soon came to like it just as it is ...
... what a fun day ...