Other waterfalls at Treman State Park
While Lucifer Falls is the best known waterfall in the upper part of Treman State Park, others there also deserve attention. In the first photograph, though no direct sunlight had yet reached these falls on the morning of August 1st, reflected light from near by added yellow to the pool at the base of the waterfall. In some of my photographs I zoomed in to minimize or exclude that trespassing sunlight:
Here’s a different waterfall altogether, the most channelized I saw there:
And here’s a downward and more abstract view of a waterfall:
I used a shutter speed of 1/800 of a second for the third photograph and 1/1000 for the others.
Speedy me, or at least speedy my camera’s shutter.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
2 x Frank Lloyd Wright + a non-architectural bonus
You may recall that on our 2018 trip we visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania. On this year’s return to the Northeast we toured his Martin House complex in Buffalo, New York, on the morning of July 26th. Later we got on the last tour for the day at Graycliff, the summer home that Wright designed for the Martin Family on the shore of Lake Erie in Derby, New York. By the time we finished, the sun was getting pretty low, so I hung around to see if we’d get a great Great Lake sunset. We did.
In looking at this picture now I’m reminded of the sunset we saw over Lake Michigan in 2016.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
Dynamic snow-on-the-prairie
Here’s a dynamic look at snow-on-the-prairie, Euphorbia bicolor,
at Parmer Lane and Wildhorse Ranch in Manor on August 24th.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
Dragonfly obelisk
Call it a handstand if you like. Entomologists refer to this upright dragonfly pose as the obelisk posture. Online articles that I’ve read list two purposes: to regulate body temperature when in bright sunlight and, for males, to assert dominance. Notice how the amber patch on this dragonfly’s wing acted like stained glass and let sunlight transmit that color to part of the insect’s body.
I took this picture on August 7th when we stopped in Charlotte,
North Carolina, to visit a friend we hadn’t seen in a couple of decades.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
Keeping and not keeping to the unstraight and narrow
Here are a couple of pictures from July 30th showing how narrow and sinuous some parts of the gorge are at Watkins Glen State Park in New York’s Finger Lakes region.
In other places the gorge widens and its high walls curve more broadly:
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
Mesquite pods
While on the Blackland Prairie in northeast Austin on August 24th I spent time at a mesquite tree, Prosopis glandulosa, whose many pods caught my attention. Indian tribes in what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States used to grind the pods to make a sweet flour. In fact many places sell mesquite flour today. There’s even a Texas mesquite group on Instagram. And it isn’t just people who like mesquite: I noticed plenty of ants attracted to the pods, presumably due to their sweetness.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
Reptile-textured tree stump remains
This reptile-textured tree stump fascinated me in
John Bryan State Park near Yellow Springs, Ohio, on July 21.
© 2019 Steven Schwartzman
