View shared by generations of newlyweds standing on a stone bridge across Enfield Creek. This is another version, taken a few years later and earlier in the season, Memorial Day morning.
Here, I have taken the lessons learned from the last post: to run from the Raw file, open it in Photoshop, make Raw dialog adjustments conversed in an .XMP file written by Photoshop. Export from Lightroom using these adjustments.
We are looking back on the place where Treman Gorge Trail from the Old Mill enters a narrow gallery looking here northwest along Enfield Creek.
It is 8:30 am on a Memorial Daty morning Robert H. Treman Park, Ithaca, Tompkins County, Ithaca, New York,
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Winter 2020 I posted “Winter People Watching” featuring the Sony F828 and candid street photography.
What I love about this place, a unique feature, is the size and different vantage points making it possible to view the same place from different angles. November 2019, readers were shown “The Bend,” a place with Taughannock gorge makes a 90 degree turn, changing from a southeastern to an eastern flow. Here are photographs from spot overlooked by that post.
Here the camera faces away from the sun, the graduated neutral density filter allowing me to capture the cloudless blue sky, a little milky the way it is here February with a hint of spring.
The gorge makes a 90 degree turn, changing from a southeastern to an eastern flow. Here is am in the creek bed facing east.
This little one is studying the information placard with rapt attention, learning how the African continent, pushing against North America, across the eaons, formed the right angle fractures mirrored by this dramatic change in Taughannock Gorge. For the Big Bend photographs I was standing behind them, along the stream bed.
Here is a broader slice of that sky.
The gorge makes a 90 degree turn, changing from a southeastern to an eastern flow. Here is am in the creek bed facing east.
Can you see the tiny figures of hikers, dwarfed by the frozen cliff?
The gorge makes a 90 degree turn, changing from a southeastern to an eastern flow. Here is am in the creek bed facing east.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Purling of the water beneath this foot high waterfall was enhanced by reducing ISO to 100, tamping down the aperture to f/22 resulting in an shutter speed of 1/10th second. I set the graduated Neutral Density filter to shade the left side.
On the cliffs ahead is where the observation platform is cut into the rock. It has a great view of the waterfall, in some ways the experience of the falls is enhanced, compared to hiking the 3/4 mile path and standing below.
The Gorge Walls, hundreds of feet above the creek are very dangerous to stand below.
A marvelous forest grows on talus from the high gorge walls.
A sign on a disused pier warns waders to leave the creek bed. Ahead the gorge walls tower above the creek. Rocks dislodge and crash down unexpectedly, crushing foolish waders. It is appalling to see, in warmer months, people walking below those cliffs gathering the fallen rocks to make delicately balanced cairns.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
The United States Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp number SP 33, inaugurated May 1, 1934, Marathon New York, worked four years (1934-1938) to improve Fillmore Glen State Park.
Bridges Five (5) and Six (6)…..
We can see the work to maintain the CCC work continues today by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Look closely to see the cable flowing from the south gorge rim (to right) by which the limestone, out of sight along the gallery, was lowered for this project. There are building supplies at Bridge Five and Six, both left in these photographs.
…the gallery and Bridge Six (6)…..
Fillmore Glen, Cayuga County, Moravia. In the Finger Lakes Region of New York State
Copyright 2022 All Right Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
A faint organic whiff of Paleozoic Era generations follows hikers enjoying the Gorge Trail, an odor luring contemporary treasure seekers thankfully spurned by the December 2014 New York State fracking ban. Thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s leadership, the ban protects public health, drinking water, the environment, local economies based on agriculture, tourism and small businesses. The ban on fracking sets the New York State apart for its climate leadership by leaving fossil fuels in the ground while the state simultaneously leads the nation in expanding renewable energy.
A plentitude of waterfalls…..
…bridge number 5…..
Fillmore Glen, Cayuga County, Moravia. In the Finger Lakes Region of New York State
Copyright 2022 All Right Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
A challenge in photographing Finger Lakes Gorges and the potential for an interspersement of bright light against shadow. A strategy I used in this series from Fillmore Glen is to choose the time of day carefully. The gorge is anything but straight forcing me at time to forego a shot or to carefully compose. Here I was drawn in by the golden reflection of Slippery Elm leaves on the flowing water of Dry Creek.
without…..
Moth-like I was drawn to the bright light. Using the tripod, I took two shots. One exposed to the gorge depths, a second more to the bright light beyond — while still not fully adjusted to it. Using a High Dynamic Range (HDR) tool, the two exposures were combined into the following.
…and with HDR.
Copyright 2022 All Right Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 