Welcome to focusingonnaturephotography blog

Hi, I'm Pat Manning, csj. I've set up this blog in conjunction with my website, http://www.focusingonnaturephotography.com/with the hope that many of you will share your experiences with photographing the beauties of your natural surroundings.

My story begins with a great opportunity that I had to travel three years ago. At that time I received a six month photo sabbatical from the college where I have taught for more than 25 years. A long time friend and colleague and I set off by car from Long Island on Jan. 1, 2005 with the destination of rimming the continental United States, she with her binoculars and spotting scopes (see her website at http://www.obinoculars.com/) and me with my Nikon D-70 digital camera. On this trip of a lifetime I took over 15,000 photos. Now I take the camera on every journey, even if it's just overnight. I have been awestruck by the variety and the extent of the phenomenal natural land and sea formations that I have seen and photographed. I'm including a photo of Glacier National Park that I took last summer with the hope that you might find my website a leisurely place to enjoy more than 90 other photos for purchase...or for the sheer enjoyment of looking — http://focusingonnaturephotography.com/.

We have many stories that I will enter here periodically as we blog along. My traveling companion is a great storyteller. She promises to add to my descriptions of our days of traveling and photographing everything in sight. I hope you will travel with me and comment on our experiences and add your own.

Nocturnal Musings

I promised that I would post some of my traveling companion's stories about our six month trip around the United States. This is one of Rosalie's early entries...and I've added one of my Assateague photos as well. There are at least six Assateague or Chincoteague photos on my website at http://www.focusingonnaturephotography.com/. Come visit my site and see if you can find them all.

It's about 3:30 a.m. and I should be snoozing away like Patti, but my brain is racing and I thought this a good opportunity to tell you about the great day we had in the Assateague National Park (on the Virginia side). The Maryland side, which we visited on Tuesday, is comprised mainly of salt marshes and beautiful dune areas along the shoreline. The Virginia part of the island is a mix of stately forests, pools, ponds, marshlands, and wide, relatively flat beaches. Both host an unbelievable number of wildlife species, including the famous wild ponies who have roamed free here for over 300 years. Miniature Sika elk, deer, great blue herons, egrets, and slews of other creatures are accessible, visible and beautiful beyond words. Today was a real treat. I think we were the only visitors. (Even the toll booths were closed.) Except for a few park employees, we joined the "critters" as free-roaming inhabitants. The park was dressed in a moderate fog which enhanced its serenity and mystery. We drove, walked, climbed over barriers (short ones) at will - no school buses filled with tourists, no patrolling park rangers, no noises except for some squawks, honks and flappings... and, of course, the sea. Patti got some fantastic photos - very different from the ones she shot in MD. the previous day when the sun was pounding down, raising temps into the 70's. These were so much more subtle - grays and browns peeking through the fog, softer reflections and gentler shadows. I just love off-season. In my view, it is the only time to "tour". You meet the "real people" of an area (wild and tame), you eat in real local restaurants (the others are closed), and you can see it ALL! After cavorting around the park all day, we were beat. A good hot meal in Bill's Seafood Restaurant revived us (huge amounts of very good food at 1/3 NY prices). This joint is on the main drag just off the bridge connecting Chincoteague to the mainland. You know me, folks. Ordinarily, I would take one look at the exterior and I'd be gone - but, hunger drove us inside and it was a wonderful surprise. A “must” for any visitor to the island. Tomorrow we leave the Delmarva Peninsula and head for the Outer Banks of North Carolina ... still off-season there.

Jockey Ridge, NC

Here is a Rosalie description from the emails that we sent to relatives and friends while we were traveling on a photographic sabbatical rimming the United States. Try to visualize all of this!

So much to say, just can’t find the time to say it, so I’ll start by describing an incredible experience Patti and I had at Jockey Ridge State Park in Nags Head, NC. A young, energetic waitress hustling grits at a local eatery told us this was a great place for pictures, as it is home of the highest sand dunes on the East Coast – over 100 feet above sea level. She spoke of observation points – I assumed they would be civilized stairs or ramps or something solid anyway. She also said to bring water bottles. (Should have been my first clue! Another clue should have been that, when we got there, the only other human we saw was limping badly.) Patti was all riled up to go – so, after checking out of the hotel where we stayed for the night, we headed for the dunes. Sure enough, there they were – imposing masses of sand and beach grass with 15 levels of observation points … all straight up and narrow. No ramps, no steps, just fine powdery sand that gave way with every step. One step up … three slides down. And it went on FOREVER. Now I know where they must have filmed Laurence of Arabia. What a picture – two old bats struggling up these dunes, half jumping, half crawling – trying to both protect the cameras and keep their shoes from disappearing into the sucking sand. Of course, we lost sight of the car, the signposts, all types of humanity and – as usual in off-season - we were ALONE. Thank God it wasn’t 90 degrees. Now, I get a laughing fit, thinking we would be like Hansel & Gretel trying to follow the bread crumbs back home – only this time we were frantically trying to search for our ascending footprints. Luckily, we had distinctive sole markings. But, the kicker was that the descent looked more hazardous than the climb. So, we thought up the “heel and toe” method. – dig in your heel so that as you slide down a foot or two, it creates a sand step for your toe. It sort of worked. Except when we started laughing and hanging on to each other, it backfired. Finally, what we thought was a mirage materialized into the parking lot. I was never so happy to see asphalt! Of course, we were ten pounds heavier with all the sand in our shoes, pants and coat pockets. Then, off to tour up and down the whole Outer Banks strip, visiting lighthouses, fishing villages and new “Hampton-like” developments. We found a motel in Buxton for the night – then took off on two ferry rides to Morehead City, NC. I can’t wait for somebody to make another suggestion there!