Road trip in Iceland: Dandelions galore

Some random beautiful scene (they appear every 100 feet, it seems) in Iceland…dandelions grow profusely along the roadway and entire fields are covered with them. Unlimited dandelions = unlimited wishes!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

(Unidentified) beetle on Chicory bloom

I photographed this red headed fellow at one of the McKee-Beshers sunflower fields this morning, alongside my fellow avid photographers, Heather Callin, Michael Powell and Marisa Sarto.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Wildflowers, Hwy. 281 in San Antonio

Here’s a record shot of the median strip on Hwy. 281 in San Antonio….there were wildflowers everywhere last month!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Leaf-footed bug on Prickly pear cactus

Leaf-footed bug, order Hemiptera (thanks, Brian K. Loflin, oh bug man!) on a Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Prickly pear cactus bud (Opuntia)

I was in San Antonio last week to photograph interior remodeling projects for a client, but got a chance on Monday to photograph wildflowers in bloom as well. My dad was an excellent day trip companion—driving me to and fro, holding my tri-grip diffuser to soften the Texas sunshine on my subjects, keeping an eye out for dangerous vermin (I learned that if you hear a rattlesnake, freeze until you can locate where the sound is coming from—do not run or jump), stopping at a yard sale (homeowner was actually named Porter Wagoner), treating me to lunch at Texas 46 Bar & Grill in the Hill Country, and crooning classic country songs from a 25 cent CD he picked up at a yard sale (Sonny James, Freddy Fender, Bobby Bare, anyone?) en route home. More to come…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Vermont Road Trip Part 1: Ice cream, shoes, cheese, and a most memorable picnic in the rain

The Lower Otter Creek Wildlife Management Area in Ferrisburgh, VT, near the entrance to Kingsland Bay State Park, encompasses 738 acres of wetland and floodplain forest habitat. Otter Creek reaches out to Lake Champlain and hosts a wide variety of wildlife: birds include state-endangered ospreys, bald eagles, ring-billed and great black-backed gulls, double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, mallards, hooded mergansers, and many types of ducks; mammals include mink, fox, white-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits and gray squirrels; reptiles include many species of salamanders, bullfrogs, spring peppers, tree frogs, turtles and snakes; fish include large and smallmouth bass, northern pike, walleye, chain pickerel and yellow perch.

After photographing the Hearing Loss Association of America’s Convention 2012 in Providence, R.I. (June 21-24), my sister Debbie and I hightailed it up to Vermont for a short road trip. We left Providence about noon on Sunday and officially kicked off the Vermont tour that evening with a visit to Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in Waterbury. I tried the Late Night Snack, which was inspired by Jimmy Fallon (vanilla ice cream, fudge covered potato chip clusters and a salty caramel swirl). I just read a few online reviews and although the reviewers rave about the flavor, I wouldn’t try it again. I should have stuck with my favorite standby: chocolate chip cookie dough. You can’t go wrong with that flavor, no matter which company makes it!

We stayed in Shelburne that night. On Monday morning we impulse shopped at the Vermont-based Danform Shoes (great bargain basement where I bought a pair of my craziest shoes to date—heretofore known as my Saturday-Day-Night-Fever-Don-Johnson-Miami-Vice-white-Mafia-don-Wendys-advertising-newsprint-tabletop mules; stay tuned for a shot of these wild things!), drove around part of Lake Champlain, visited Shelburne Farms (a beautiful 1400-acre working farm) where we bought picnic supplies (cheese, crackers and various spreads), stopped at the Vermont Wildflower Farm in Charlotte, then stopped at Dakin Farm in Ferrisburgh for more cheese, crackers and Vermont maple syrup. It rained off and on all day, so I wasn’t able to hunker down and get some macro shots at the wildflower farm, unfortunately. That was something I was really looking forward to. I did get some great deals on wildflowers seeds and perennial bulbs, though, so it was worth the trip. Plus, who cares about rain when you have cheese?

We then drove to Kingsland Bay State Park and had a wonderful late afternoon lunch picnic on the porch of the historic Hawley House, c. 1790. This property dates back to the first settlers in Ferrisburgh and was home to Ecole Champlain, an exclusive girls camp, until the late 1960s. I’ll have photos and history to share on a future post about this lovely stone house with a wraparound porch on all four sides. We started our picnic at a picnic table by the bay, but the intermittent rainfall drove us to the wraparound porch. It was the most memorable picnic ever! Debbie and I concocted our own strange Chopped dishes with the various cheeses, crackers, chocolates and sweets we picked up along the way (photos and descriptions to come!). Aside from the two employees at the park entrance, a few seagulls and one very attentive chipmunk, we had the entire park to ourselves that afternoon.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

I shot this image with my iPhone using the app “645 Pro” in 6×17 panoramic format. It is one amazing app! It gives you lossless developed RAW tiff files and high quality jpgs, low-light performance, and live preview and real-time LCD readout. It offers seven professional color and b&w “film” options inspired by classic print and transparency film, and five switchable “backs”—645, 6×6, 6×7, 6×9, 6×17. Amazing! (I own a FUJI 6×17 panoramic film camera, so I’m very familiar with this format. It’s so fun to use this app to mimic the panoramic film format—it’s much lighter and easier than the real deal!)

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/40177690″>645 PRO for iPhone</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/jaggr”>Jag.gr</a&gt; on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Yellow Trillium

Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.