Streaming

I'm trying something new here: the text I use to describe the pictures will be the color of this text just to make thing clear.

I went for a walk yesterday night to get some pictures (OK maybe the frickin' awesome weather swayed my decision some too). If any of you are familiar with Lancaster and its parks I went to Scheiner's Park. If you're not familiar with the park I'll describe it briefly: low-lying, mostly wooded, fairly primitive (the only bathroom there is a porta-potty) and, because of all the trees, feels rather secluded. I had heard that the same flooding that I wrote about in my last entry was pretty intense here. So I went to check it out. First thing I noticed were the gnats. The second thing I noticed was that I had forgotten any bug repellent (some of you who have been following along with this blog for a while now may remember that I said before that I prefer to wear clothes that bugs can't bite through as opposed to putting on repellent. Well, I forgot both). They weren't biting that bad they were just really damn annoying...so I decided to go ahead with my photography and just tolerate the infernal bugs. I photographed for a while and then decided to walk up the stream bed (I like water and plus walking in the stream bed makes for an unusual perspective for taking pictures – unusual because you don't see many people dumb enough to walk in stream beds because the overwhelming majority of stream beds have streams in them too which most sane people avoid walking in). This stream is primarily fed by springs (most streams are that are this small in southwest Wisconsin) and it was on the chilly side. But the good part is that the harassment by the gnats virtually stopped when I got down in the stream bed.

The flooding in the stream must have been quite a sight to see. I wish I had been there at the time. The stream bed was quite scoured – there was rock along the whole length of the stream bed, and in some spots was down to bedrock. In some spots the high water had dug the stream bed out three or four feet. I put a picture in here that I took last night and one from a long time ago so you can see what the nature of the stream used to be and how it has changed.

The top three pictures were taken at Schreiner's Park. The top one is one I took a while ago. The second one has nothing to do with the flood. The bottom one is of the same creek that you can see in the first picture. They're not taken in the exact same spot but can give you some sort of comparison. The stream before the flood was pretty tame. There were a few spots where it flowed over a few rocks but nothing like what is showed in the third picture.

This morning I decided to get up early (early in this case is shortly after 6 so it's not really like I was getting up before dawn or anything) and take some sunrise pictures. I walked around in the park near my house (Memorial Park) and took pictures for about an hour. [A side note: the next time I go to this park I will be taking something to keep the bugs from biting] When I got back home I went to look at the pictures on my computer and something must be be screwy with the light meter on my camera because every single one of them was hugely underexposed. So all the pictures were dark (there were quite a few that were almost black) and I decided to just delete the whole lot of them...which is just what I did. Then I reconsidered. Every once in a while the pictures that turn out to be the best are the ones that some photo tech-geek/snob would say are junk. So I thought it would be worth a try to resurrect these pictures, so I went to my “edit” button and did an “undo delete” and took a closer look at the pictures. It turns out that, with some photo editing love, the pictures (some of them anyway) became decent...but I'll let you be the judge, you can see the pictures below.