Parking Lot on the Water

The New York State Canal system was scheduled to open for the season on May 17th. While most of the system is currently up and running, the Champlain portion of the canal, from Waterford to Whitehall, has yet to open due to high water levels. The buoys for the Hudson River portion of the route still sit on barges waiting to be placed in position.

I walked around Waterford Harbor this morning and noted many boats headed for Vermont and Canada after spending the winter further south. Waterford sits a few miles south of the first Champlain lock and is as far as they can travel until the canal opens.

All other portions of the canal system are open and lock E2 on the Erie portion welcomes its first boats of the day. You can follow the status of the canal system on their website at http://www.canals.ny.gov/.

Congratulations Sarah and Anthony

This past Sunday saw a family wedding at a nice Saratoga Springs venue. I brought along a 5D Mark III body and the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens. The photographer for the wedding was https://www.viscosiphotography.com/ and they had a nice bunch of Canon gear.

I ended up only making a dozen or so photos, all at f/1.8 and ISO 3200. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/125th of a second to 1/500th. Here are a few.

One Eaglet This Year

It looks like there's only one eaglet in the nest this year at Peebles Island State Park. It's unlikely there's another bird that size hiding in the nest at feeding time.

I know I've been going back and forth between Peebles Island and Cohoes Falls the past handful of blog posts. I promise the next one will be something different. If it's not for some reason, I'll just delete this paragraph.

The usual gear for Peebles Island, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II and EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens.

More Water over Cohoes Falls

I posted a blog entry on May 6th after a visit to Cohoes Falls. You can view that post here.

This morning, there was quite a bit more water coming over the falls along with some nice clouds in the sky. I processed these files differently in that I left out the deghosting step in the HDR processing. This left the water looking smoother as if a longer shutter speed were used.

Of course, if there were a bird flying in the scene, you would see five ghosts of the bird in different positions in the final product. If there were foliage closer in the scene that would also not be a good look.

I've also included a couple of short videos.

Eagles and Herons and a Fox

I went on to Peebles Island this morning mostly to check on the Eagle nest as I hadn't been over in ten days and saw no evidence of any chicks on that occasion. This morning, however, there was feeding activity going on and by zooming in 200% on a couple of shots I could see an eaglet head.

I only saw one adult in the hour I was there and it took a few minutes off from nest duty to fly around. Here are some eagle photos.

There were also a handful of Great Blue Heron in the area and I got some shots of those also.

And finally, I shot this scene to document the condition of the dam and only after processing the files did I notice the fox across the way on Bock Island.

Viewing Park at Cohoes Falls Open

While there is a somewhat distant viewing park at Cohoes Falls which is open all year, the closer location across the canal to the power plant is closed from the end of October to the beginning of May. This morning was my first chance to visit even though there was a bit of precipitation in the air.

It's good to get there before the leaves are fully out as they leave only a few good viewing angles without too many obstructions.  If the lighting was better I would have ventured down the stairway and path but it didn't seem worth it this morning.

Equipment was a 5D Mark III with EF 24-105mm f/4 image stabilized lens. The geese were in the canal and the images are not cropped.