Discontent in Winter
By Jay Voss, February, 2015

In the middle of a funky winter
The snow piles high on the 
Side streets of town.
The whiteness suggests purity, 
But the reality is not so pure.
Winter for me once was a time
Of sledding, skating, skiing, 
And photographic wonderment
As I snapped heavy snow 
On bending branches.
With age comes a reticence
Toward the falling snow, howling wind,
The drifts piled high.
I have shoveled enough.
Winters come and winters go;
Some are more annoying than others.
However, there is still wonder 
In the infinite flake formed shapes 
And wind sculptured snowscapes.
Perhaps an aging soul 
Just needs to take a deep breath
And be thankful for the beauty 
Contained in the four seasons
Of nature's symphony.

My annual visits have produced numerous photos of the flora and fauna on this enchanting peninsula, but I continue to shoot one more flower and find one more rabbit or bird that I can capture.  I am not sure these repetitive efforts result in a better product, but I continue to try.  At the very least, the current photos are a fresh look at familiar objects of interest.  Below is a portfolio of recent photos that present a current view of the Chatham area.  I take the photos when I walk or ride the bike.  The camera rests in my hand or dangles from my neck as I continue to look for newer versions of the old.  

There may be more to come during my final two days.

I have this empty corner of my living room that is crying for a 20 by 30 framed poster collage to complement the one hanging on the wall near the adjacent corner of the room.  Yesterday, I made an attempt, experimental at best, to create this wall hanging using the theme of flower photos that I took on a recent trip to the Biltmore Estate located near Asheville, NC.  My goal was to use the various tools in Lightroom to modify each of the flower photos for use in the collage.  Secondly, I wanted to use the layers application in Pixelmator to create a design that gave a feeling for the beautiful outside gardens in spring with the more fragile flowers nurtured inside the Atrium that borders the Gardens.  Most of this work is purely experimental.  I purposely decreased the opaqueness of the black oval background to allow a hint of the large garden shot to show through, hopefully without interfering with selected photos from the outside gardens and the inside atrium.  If nothing else, I find the colors interesting and the design works for me.  I will have more of an opinion once I hang it on the wall.  It may come across as more of marketing visual than a photographic collage, but it was fun trying.

As I experiment more and more with this Website, I am discovering what a thrill it is for me at my age to have the opportunity to mess around with this technologically supported creative activity.  It is certainly pleasing to me and I hope it has some value for those of you who choose to look at it from time to time.  At the very least, it is a hobby that gives me personal satisfaction.  It may serve as a sort of journal of this phase of my life that may have some meaning for my kids and grandchildren.  I keep adding to the various pages on the site, but I am beginning to have the most fun with the "Photos of Interest" section.  As I learn more and more about the power of Adobe's Lightroom, I am amazed what Lightroom enables me to to do in transforming a decent or not so decent photo taken with my trusty Canon Powershot SX50 HS or occasionally with my Olympus D300 or even my iPhone.  



The  camera course I took at  the Silvermine Art School in the early part of this calendar year taught me a great deal about how to plan for the original shot.  I find myself using the manual settings more often, including the ISO settings, Exposure Compensation scale, and overriding the automatic white balance, although this last function, I do rarely.  Often, reality dictates that I have only a few seconds to take a shot or it is gone forever.  Birds flying, wild animals in the backyard, people doing acrobatic exercises on the beach, my grandson hitting a Wiffle ball thrown by his Father provide just a momentary set of opportunities. 

I suppose it is possible to take the time to pose some of these shots, but I love capturing the spontainaity of a candid photo with little semblance of posing.  At any rate, those rapid fire shots often leave much to be desired with the initial photo.  Shooting in RAW and importing the photos into iPhoto for editing in Lightroom and occasionally some final touches in Pixemator comprise a process that is working well for me.  I will continue to develop this site.  The time will come when I will need to start removing some content to keep the navigation of the site more manageable,  but I am not quite ready to do that yet.

Springtime Fantasies

Jay Voss
May 7, 2014

It is not so easy 
To fantasize at 71,
But that should not 
Stop me from trying.
Another way to look 
At this later act in ones life 
Is to “play it as it lays,”
Or “live for the moment” in 
Some existential late life
Search for meaning
And purpose.

Yet, I look to the future
With a trip to Ireland and Scotland
In July and another return 
Visit to Madison in the fall.
In younger years, I would 
Rarely think about what
Can get in the way of the future.
But not now. Two months ahead
May bring those challenges 
That disturb the “best laid plans.”

So here I am in the present
Sitting at a picnic table 
On quiet Squantz Pond 
In the middle of the week
Musing about how to get
Through the rest of this day
With a sense of making a difference.
(Is that even necessary?)

What do I feel?
The gentle cool breeze on an early
May afternoon with an overcast light
That keeps me 
From working with my photos,
But not from rambling on in
This moment to moment reverie.

Have you read the poems of Billy Collins?
He often writes in the “here and now,” 
With clarity and descriptive excellence.
I suppose this little effort is an attempt
To adopt his approach 
To record a few moments 
As they actually happen
Sitting on this bench looking at the 
Moving waters, hearing the birds 
In the background, but also 
The common manufactured noises 
Of our daily travels to and fro.
There are even voices 
Of real people walking behind me 
Or preparing a motorized boat 
For fishing on the pond.
In front of me, two fishermen
Row a small boat to 
That perfect spot, if indeed
It can be found.

So what have I accomplished 
In this brief mid afternoon respite?
Well, there are words placed 
Together in patterns that are new.
The thoughts may be old, refined
Or even original because of describing 
An old scene in a new setting.
Who is to tell?  The fact is
I have written about it
And that should be good enough.

I have spent the last week working on post processing the photos that I took on my recent trip to North Carolina and Georgia.  My current goal is to post relevant photos in the appropriate pages with some brief commentary when necessary.   I will strive for quality rather than quantity to refrain from boring you with the mundane.  However, my excitement may be your mundane.  I have not made up my mind yet to create a separate posting for the Travel page, but that may come at the end of this process where I may choose to use photos not selected in the first round.    I was able to post a number of photos today.  Enjoy

When I returned to Asheville from Hendersonville, I decided to make another visit to the Biltmore Mansion  to see the outdoor gardens in bloom.  In 2012, I was only able to enjoy the colors of nature's palette in the Conservatory.  Today, it was another story and I will offer in this posting a brief sample of some of the flowers I saw both outside and inside.  My visit to the gardens came at the conclusion of another tour of the mansion itself.  Since I had been there before, I mostly walked through the rope guided tour without the benefit of a guide or a ear phones.  I enjoyed seeing the various rooms and the many different parts of the mansion that housed both the Vanderbilt family, the invited guests, and the servants.  You are not allowed to take photos in the mansion, so I was anxious to get to the floral extravaganza that awaited me.  I also new that I would get some exercise navigating some of the terraces that surround the home.   I will be adding additional photos to the Flowers page of this Website taken both outside and in the Conservatory of the Biltmore Mansion.

The next morning, I continued my vacation jaunt to Cumming, GA where my son and his family have just moved.  I was anxious to see my three year old granddaughters, Chloe and Skylar.   I arrived around 10 AM on Thursday morning and began a two day visit that was quite delightful.  I will shortly distribute photos about this phase of my trip in the various pages on the Website with special attention to some photos of the twins placed on the Informal Portraits of Life page.   Here is just a sample of the delightful and beautiful Voss twins.

This shot was taken with my iPhone on the last night of my visit.  The girls had a good time playing on the playground in the ballpark and just exploring the entire facility.  This was one of those random shots we took when the Team Mascot was walking by.  The majority of the trip was spent visiting parks in the area and trying out all of the climbing structures found in the various locations.  And so, the photos I took of the girls are mostly of them in action with an occasional pose for the camera.  I also caught a beautiful sunrise on the second morning of my visit and a couple of other candid shots you will find in Informal Portraits and Landscapes.  We had fun eating pizza and other fun filled sandwiches in our visits to a couple of local restaurants.  This two day visit was a highlight of my trip.  It is just plane fun watching these two play and interact with each other and with their doting parents and grandfather.  They already know how to push the envelope and I pity my poor son and daughter-in-law when they hit the teenage years.  What a joy to see them in action.  At one point at a rather tense couple of moments of disagreement with their parents, Chloe was articulating a rather strong philosophical argument about fairness--and at the age of 3.  Skylar was adding moral support.  I will leave it to you to guess who won and how.  

Early the next morning I was on my way to St. Simons, GA for a rendezvous with the two couples from Ridgefield, CT.  I would share a beautiful 3 bedroom condo with them for a whole of week of hoped for sunshine and relaxation.  Here is a view from our deck.

We had a delightful week of conversation, walking the beach, riding our bikes, balancing eating in with visits to great little restaurants--the ribs place was outstanding.  The weather was great for the first three days, rained on the fourth and sixth, and was cool and windy on the fifth and seventh.  Nevertheless, we had a great time because during the downtimes we we could read, talk, and just chill out.  We joined together with another couple, Skip and Nancy, who had rented a place in St. Simons for six weeks.  They are long time friends of the Ridgefield group.  They acted as our guides for a majority of our bike riding time.   In addition, they told us where to eat, shop for food, and what to see.   We were also guests for a wonderful brunch at their condo on the last full day of our visit. I plan to share many of the photos of the St. Simons phase of my trip on the Landscape, Flowers, and Portraits of Life pages of this site.  Take a look and enjoy  (Still in Progress as of this posting).

We left for home at 4 AM on Saturday morning.  Peter and Mary rode with me, and Peter and I shared the driving.  As a result we made it home by Saturday night.  It was an action packed thirteen days of travel and I owe a bow to my comfortable and reliable 2013 Ford Escape for making the trip so special.

A Visit to Lasden Park
On this Thursday, April 3, 2014, the sun was shining, there were few clouds in the sky, and the temperature was hovering around 50 degrees at 11:00 AM when I pulled into the driveway of Lasden Park Gardens and Arboretum near Katona, NY.  It has been such a long, cold, and dreary winter, I thought perhaps the park, which is naturally beautiful in the warm summer, might have a head start on showing some springtime color.  I was wrong.  The place was mostly brown with some green Pachysandra making its usual encroachment.  You could just begin to see some of the bulbs beginning to rise from the ground, but there were so  few colors.  I was lucky to find the purple flower all by its lonesome blooming in a very brown patch of mulch and early spring growth.  Although green does not always appeal to my camera, I found a leaf shot that caused me some interest.  There are many ponds and quiet areas for sitting and contemplation around the park, but the one shown above was the only one that suggested a spring time ambiance.  The photo of the China Pavilion demonstrates how little color was present in the park, but the reflection of the pagoda in the water does provide some subtle hues.  I also experimented with a ten second timed "Selfie" where I perched the camera on a stone bench aimed at the wooden bench in the photo.  I ran the 20 or so feet to get comfortably seated on the bench, just as the camera released the shutter.  I have been to this park when the colors are brilliant and the walk along the paths calming and regenerating.  There were not so many colors today, but I still felt a calmness and the assurance that Spring would once again renew the beauty of our surroundings.