Best of 2013: June

                      
                              

Enders River, Connecticut

  
On this Sixth Day of Christmas, I chose this memento of a totally wonderful and fun trip to Connecticut and Massachusetts. The official excuse was to attend a friend's wedding, which I did and it was great fun.

But for three days before the wedding, I roamed and took pictures, and spent one wonderful day climbing mountains along with Google+ friend Craig Szymanski and his family. What a blast! They were so nice they didn't even walk off and leave the oldster struggling along in the rear! Truly great folks!

This is Enders State Forest. Craig put me on to the site and I spent a half a day there. Inside the State Park, the Enders River is mostly a series of lovely waterfalls. I take pride in this shot because I really had to innovate to get it. No tripod, of course, and it was cloudy, plus the tree canopy filters out lots of light.

So... I'm perched on a rock over the falls. I put the camera on a bit of bubble-wrap on the sloping surface of the rock, ease it over the edge to point down but keep it from falling with a foot on the strap, and take the picture with the cable release. Miraculously, it took only three tries to get the framing I wanted.

A 1/4-second shutter produced just the right balance of motion blur and texture in the water--at least for my taste! And in celebration of my continuously improving editing skills, I just did a bit more post on the image and it is better than when I first shared it last summer.