A Hidden Treasure

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Today is Friday.  I usually hike on Fridays during the summer, but only two of us could go today and both of us are photographers, so we decided to do a photo field trip instead.

On the recommendation of another friend, we went to Round Lake.  Where???  I never heard of this place, even though it's only about 45 minutes from where I live.  It was like stepping back in time.

In 1868 Round Lake was a Methodist "camp" and the first camp meeting drew between 2,000-8,000 people per day.  By 1869 the "camp" boasted approximately 20,000 participants in a Sunday Service.  Over the years it evolved from a camp, to summer place, to a town of year-round residents.

There is a library and a post office, and we came across a wonderful bakery, but we didn't see much else in the way of development.  The homes, however, were beautiful, although some were in various stages of upkeep and restoration.  

We were a little hesitant at first to use our tripods.  We arrived fairly early in the morning and there were no people out-and-about, but in typical "small world" fashion I met someone I know working at the bakery where we went for our morning break.

After talking with him and being assured that it wouldn't be a problem if we were wandering around with our tripods taking photos of people's homes, we eagerly began using them.  I took waaaayyy too many photos to post, so here are just a few samples.

On the way home I mentioned that I needed to find a country Baptist Church for a project I'm working on, so we detoured through Galway and OMGosh, there, right in front of us, was 

THE.   PERFECT.   CHURCH!!!

So all-in-all, it was a pretty productive day.

Oh....and we also stopped in Ballston Spa for lunch at the Whistling Kettle.  Couldn't get any better than that.

Some HDR

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Last week was Vacation Bible School at my church.  I managed to get some really great photos of the kids.  Some were taken in their classrooms and some outside during "recess".  I particularly LOVE this one.  The kids in this class had a lot of personality, as did the teachers.  Whenever the subjects ham-it-up, a great image results.

I put it through the HDR process.  I tried it several ways and liked all of them, but instead of posting them all and boring you to death, I chose this version.  

My birthday is in a few days, and one of my friends wanted to take me out for lunch.  Whenever we get together we try to make a day of it, including some photography.  She needed a break from work, and we hadn't been out together in a long time, so she was more than willing to go to Saratoga and photograph the En Pointe ballet slipper statues scattered around the city.

The weather was perfect, it wasn't too crowded and we had a great time.  

This slipper is in front of a restaurant.  Although I don't know for sure, I'm guessing
that each business sponsored the slipper in front of its location, ergo, the fork in front
of the restaurant.

There were many more statues, but often they were surrounded by clutter (benches, trash cans, bike racks, etc) and were not very photogenic.  Still...we had a great time.

Thanks, Trish, for the wonderful day.