A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

covered bridge

Beating the heat with a little kick of adrenaline

And out they go!

The heat really seems to be able to make people do crazy stuff.

During a week in July, we had a pretty good heat wave in the Northeast. Though I’m sure it went longer than a week, there was one particular day it really stood out to me.

Two of us were doing a full day of geocaching as we did a bunch in New York, crossed into Vermont and then into Massachusetts, where were heading for a mega (more than 500 people) event. We knew it was hot because we were crossing certain caches off our list for the day — ones where we’d need to hike a bit.

How hot was it, you may ask?

This is one way to beat the heat!

It was to the point where when you were out of the car for a few minutes, you started sweating. We left the vehicle running at cache stops because we wanted to get back into an ice box.

A side thing, too — ever notice in the middle of a hot summer, we want to be cold? Yet, in a cold winter, we’re looking for heat. Go figure.

Anyway, I digress.

We arrived at one covered bridge, where a geocache was hidden. With a parking area close, the car was once again left on. A few minutes later, another car showed up. Two kids — probably in their late teens — showed up. They parked and walked past me and headed to the bridge. I didn’t think anything of it.

Until I heard a splash. And then another.

What the hell?

I started peeking around, got into the bridge and looked out the windows and, sure enough, those kids had gone jumping. Turns out they climbed out one of the windows. From there, they either jumped straight down or climbed on the little roof over the window and jumped from there.

There didn’t seem to be any scouting, either. You know, to see how deep things were etc. I’m sure this isn’t the first time they did it, but still … it had been awful hot. What if some of the depth had gone away?

We watched one more time and started talking to them some. It seems they enjoyed the adrenaline of it all (though one seemed a little more risk-taking than the other) and liked jumping in the water from higher heights. I took some photos and a couple of videos. They even humored me by switching sides, as the light was better.

Of course they did some recon on that one and checked the depth before jumping. Check out some video footage (sorry that there’s some shake in he footage):

These guys were daredevils. I’ve never been much of a person who is willing to do crazy things like that. I know there are adrenaline junkies out there, but it still amazes me when I see these things.

This wasn’t the only place we saw this. Over the course of the day, we visited eight covered bridges. I’d say we saw jumpers and no fewer than three of those bridges. One of them, people were climbing out the window and going to the roof of the bridge and then jumping down below.

Nuts!

Maybe I’m missing something in life not taking some risks like this. I imagine it’s quite exhilarating when you splash down on something like this. Or when bungee jumping or something along those lines.

The craziest thing I’ve done is para-sailing, which took some prodding for me to do. But I felt secure and it turned out to be quite a fun experience.

So, for those reading today — tell me, would you go bridge jumping? Or have you done things like this? And what’s the craziest thing you’ve done? I’m interested to see what others say.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Soundless Sunday: Sept. 8

“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”

— Henry Miller 

Millbrook Covered Bridge

Soundless Sunday is a weekly feature where I’ll try and feature a favorite quote and a photo that I’ve taken. Enjoy life — it’s the only way to go!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Photographing covered bridges is shooting a lost era

Millbrook Covered Bridge is one of the 14 historic bridges in New York I’ve had the chance to photograph.

I think I’ve finally caught up on most of my covered bridge photos.

I’m a covered bridge nut. Shooting these structures is like Americana. It’s somewhat like a lost era. When these bridges were magnificent and really appreciated. As time goes on, some of these bridges get into disarray, wash away or moved and allowed to fall apart. In time, many of these structures will be gone, so documenting them is something for the future as well.

However, sometimes I take a bunch of photos and then squirrel them away and post. Alas, I wanted to get them up and into sets and collections on Flickr.

I know I have some others to work on, mainly from a trip a few years ago where I got to see a couple in southern Pennsylvania and Maryland. Those are almost ready. I just need to get them labeled and uploaded.

I’m supposed to be heading to the Philadelphia area this weekend for a pair of disc golf tournaments. On Friday, my goal is to play an early practice round to see the course and then I want to cache in the area. Three caches are tours of covered bridges in Bucks County. Three caches cover many miles and 12 covered bridges. Of course I’ll add other caches along the route, but I’m super pumped that I’ll be able to shoot all those new covered bridges. At least that’s my hope. Plans can change, of course.

In my lifetime, I’d like to see as many covered bridges that I can, so if I can squeeze a dozen this weekend, I’d be pumped. Disc golf, caches and covered bridges. With the weather supposed to be cool and sunny, it sounds like a perfect weekend.

One of my favorite shots of Fitch’s Covered Bridge.

Some of my recent Flickr uploads include four historic New York structures — Millbrook, Forge, Tappan and Jay, all of which I found earlier this year. There are 24 historic bridges listed on most sites for New York. Unfortunately, Irene in 2011 washed away Blenheim. So that means 23 remain. A few years ago, I had set a goal to shoot each and every historic bridge in New York.

(Two excellent sources for New York covered bridges include: New York State Covered Bridge Society and Covered Bridge Site).

I’ll include all 24 as I, thankfully, has been to Blenheim.

Of the two dozen listed, I’ve now visited 14 of the bridges. Two of them are purely accidental. Let me explain.

Several months ago, a new cache was listed in our area. It was a covered bridge, so I decided to head over and make the find. After finding that one at Millbrook Bridge, I decided to head to another that was hidden at another, more modern covered bridge. Along the way, I passed two other covered bridges. Figuring I was here, I took photos. One was private, so I stayed on the main road and took a few snaps. I then went to the modern one and then tucked all the photos away.

Then, as I was trying to figure out what covered bridges I had been to/shot and which I needed to visit, I realized these two were historic bridges.

Score!

So that helped the total.

Of the remaining covered bridges, three are private. One seems to be able to be shot from the public road, one is at an educational place where permission is likely not too hard to get and the final is at a place not far from me, but appears to be hard to get permission. That might be the tough one. I do have a phone number, so I’ll see what I can do to be able to secure permission. I have heard, however, that the bridge has been quite damaged from the 2011 floods.

There are also a handful of authentic and non-historic covered bridges in the state, but for now, I’m concentrating on the one list.

Somebody jogs through Hamden Covered Bridge.

It looks like I’ll have some planning to do.

That being said, by looking through my list of covered bridges, I realize I often take different angles (as well as the traditional ones), but I don’t focus on some things others do, such as the inside. Though I find the trusses for the bridges highly interesting, often it’s tough for me to get good photos. A lot of times, I want to make sure I capture what draws me to the bridges, which is more of the outside.

In the near future, I’ll be updating my Flickr collection with more covered bridges — ones I’ve already shot and ones I hope to shoot this week. Then my quest for the remaining 10 I need in New York will continue.

You can see my collection of sets on Flickr. It will be constantly updated as I add more bridges.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Soundless Sunday: August 26

“I began to realize that film sees the world differently than the human eye, and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed.”

— Galen Rowell

The Blenheim Bridge, which was wiped out one year ago (Aug. 28, 2011) from flooding caused by Hurricane Irene.

Soundless Sunday is a weekly feature where I’ll try and feature a favorite quote and a photo that I’ve taken. Enjoy life — it’s the only way to go!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Learning star trails

Star trails above Fitch's Bridge in Delhi.

I’ve wanted to learn star trails for a long time.

Some of the ones I’ve seen on Flickr are simply amazing. With this week’s theme in The HooHaa 52 being stars, I thought it was the perfect time to challenge myself and go for it.

Earlier this week when coming home from a softball game, the skies were clear, dark and amazing. So I stopped at the top of Meridale Mountain and set up the tripod, hoping to see if I could figure something out. I stayed for a while, took a few shots and realized I vastly underrated how hard star trails are.

So, back to the drawing board.

Knowing the weather going into the weekend wasn’t being looked at as perfect for star trails, I aimed for Wednesday or Thursday, which would follow another softball game.

Wednesday got washed out.

Alas, despite clouds throughout the day Thursday, things cleared up to allow me a second go at these things Thursday.

I was more prepared this time as I went and researched star trails a bit more online and had an idea of what I did wrong the first time (exposure, lens setting, exposure time etc.)

Earlier in the week, my attempt was awful. With not setting my camera to “infinity,” I got nothing but a blur. And with only going for a short amount of tiI didn’t even get any blurred star trails!

Awful!

Back to figuring things out, I guess!

After looking at many star trails photos on Flickr and reading about techniques in other places, I realized a few things:

  • I needed something in the foreground to attempt to focus on.
  • I needed to set the camera at infinity.
  • For a single exposure, I was looking at a 20- to 30-minute exposure, at least.

Enter Fitch’s Bridge.

I’m a nut when it comes to photographing covered bridges. But I’ve wanted to come up with other ways of shooting them, so this was the perfect example. Fitch’s Bridge is outside the village of Delhi, so it would be dark, for the most part. I just needed to hope against cars and houses with flood lights (which killed my final of three shots of the bridge).

This was my first attempt:

First attempt

I like this, but I wanted to get more of the bridge. My second attempt is the one at the top of this post.I like that one because of the streaking car lights coming through the bridge.

I still need to get better focus on the foreground object, I think. And I need to find a place where I think I can get a good foreground object and a solid, dark backdrop for the stars. I have a few ideas that I plan on trying out.

Too, I need to be better prepared to light up the foreground object so I can focus. A large flashlight or floodlight so my camera can see the object would be best. Maybe even setting my car up to point at the object, get everything set, turn all the lights out and then let the image go.

I’ve seen some things about taking 100 or so images of 30-second exposures and stacking them. It sounds like a cool way to do this, but I wonder how it works considering if I tried a 30-second exposure, I get nothing but darkness. If anyone has any thoughts on this, I would appreciate it.

Star trails are wild, that’s for sure. It’s actually one of my Day Zero goals. But until I get an image that really wows me, I won’t check it off yet.

It’s a challenging image, that’s for sure. But I think, when done right, it’s totally worth the wait.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.