Ice Shots

  

My son and I went to Peapack Brook and Hacklebarnery State Park for a photo shoot, my having had the idea for several years now to get some shots of ice associated with falls. When we got to Peapack Brook, some swans on Peapack Pond where a bubbler keeps a little water open caught our interest, and I spent a few minutes shooting them at my feet. Then we walked over the bridge, and when we got down to the brook, I said, "Let me get a couple of shots from in front," and I took two steps when suddenly a large mass of the ice yards away I was about to shoot broke off and into the brook with a hollow thud. We laughed.

I had said last night that the milder weather might mean we could have got better shots, had we gone sooner, but Matt said it would make no difference. Ice wasn't going to melt that fast. Oh, yes it does.

We noticed lower temperatures at higher elevation Hacklebarney, and nothing had broken up. The falls of Trout Brook were pretty much frozen in completely with nothing dramatic to get on pixels, but I did a lot of close-up work on water flowing on ice formations, but having come home, deleted files I don't want, and loaded the rest into Lightroom, I'm not satisfied with what I got. And at Peapack, I decided, results might have been much better had I thought to bring my tripod and somehow set it up in front of the falls at the dam, though I doubt this would have worked with the snow and ice on the concrete. 

It's a long process of trial and error. I'm just hoping we get some more cold winters over the course of the next 10 years. I had wanted to go to Clinton Falls on the South Branch, also, but there wasn't time. It's been three years since I went there a couple of times with heavy ice on the dam, and it seems yesterday. That falls and mill has been shot so many times, it seems almost impossible to get anything original, but I don't recall any published shots of the scene with such ice; it's just that what I got three years ago didn't satisfy me.

We got back to Bedminster at 3:53. I dropped Matt off and drove over to Martinsville with my auger shaft to get those blades sharpened.