Bogged

Southeastern Massachusetts is cranberry central. There are dozens of working bogs in the area and I spend a lot of time walking the dog on the paths around them. More often than not I bring a camera.

Here’s a small collection of bog shots taken over the course of this year, including some this week. I always enjoy the colors and how they change across the seasons.

Under the Golden Dome

Our latest foray with the Duxbury Camera Club was to shoot up on Beacon Hill. We spent an afternoon in the Massachusetts State House. Here’s a gallery of some of my shots.

Staff were very open to our group shooting away and one of the security folks even opened up the House Chamber for us. I used the Leica SL3 with a Sigma 35 f1.2, as well as the Viltrox 16mm f1.8. The Sigma is a little big and heavy but both lenses performed well with the interior shots.

Snow, snow and more snow.

It’s been quite a winter here in coastal Massachusetts. Very cold and lots and lots of snow. Shoveling was tough and it was no fun going days without power. But all that snow was perfect for black & white photography.

It seemed like a new fresh coat would arrive each week, keeping the ground cover clean and camera-ready. And then, as February ended, it was all gone in a single week of warm days and now all we have left to remind us of the snow are the photos.

Museum of Industry

I haven’t posted anything. for a while. But now I have a few photos to post. This group of images is from a Duxbury Camera Club field trip to the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA.

It’s a cool little place. I tried out my new Viltrox 16mm F1.8 on the SL3. (It’s a really sharp and fast wide-angle, with very little distortion. It performs well with the big sensor on the SL3 and gives the Leica lenses a run for their money on image quality.)

Shine On

I had not planned to shoot the Harvest Moon, but I was out walking the dog near the North River and just before heading home I remembered that the Harvest moonrise would be tonight — and in only a few minutes. I had the SL3 with me and a Sigma 20-200mm that I had been testing, so I decided, on the fly, to head up to the North River bridge and see if I could see the moon come up. And there it was.

As mentioned, it wasn’t a planned shoot and I was barely able to check my settings as I rushed around to catch the moon near the horizon from a number of different perspectives. I caught it over the lobster shack and out over the spit. A big thanks to the woman who pointed out the Great Blue Heron on the post behind the marina.

Also to Uma, who waited patiently for me in the car.

Westworld

Just back from a long road trip from Phoenix to Rapid City, via the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Jackson Hole, the Tetons, Yellowstone, the Bighorn Mountains and the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Beautiful scenery, varying along the way, from desert to canyon to plains to rich forests.

I took a limited photo kit, centered around the Leica SL3. Most of the time I had the good old 24-90 Vario-Elmarit attached but I also leaned on the 21mm APO. As I get older I find myself optimizing for lighter weight over having all the tools. It would have been nice to have a long lens in the bag for the bald eagle shots but it would have been too heavy for my old bones on those long hot hikes.

So anyway, here are some images from the trip.

Down East

Last week we took a quick trip up to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park, via Portland and Camden. It wasn’t really a photography trip but I did manage to get a few minutes to climb out on the rocks with the M11 for a shot of the iconic Bass Harbor Lighthouse. And we also stopped at Fort Knox on the Penobscot River. Here are a few other shots from along the way.

Blue Hour Workshop

As part of Duxbury Camera Club programming, I recently joined a photography workshop put on by Dave Long. Dave is a local photographer known for his vibrant landscapes. This workshop was a sunset and blue hour exercise set on Cape Cod, at the Nobska Lighthouse and The Knob, a peninsula on Buzzard’s Bay.

I hadn’t shot at either location so it was a good opportunity to get out with the group from the camera club and to get a little shutter therapy. Dave was a pleasure to work with, providing a good blend of guidance and tips, appreciated especially by some of the less experienced photographers in the group.

For gear, I brought the SL3 with a 24-90 and 90-280, but I particularly leaned on the Sigma 14-24 for the wide shots. I had the Travel Tripod too, but used it only on one long shot of the lighthouse. I also brought ND filters but didn’t use them at all.

The post-sunset sky was kind of a dud but the Canadian wildfire smoke did give a little warmth to the setting sun, so there was some color, at least. Here are some of the shots I managed.

Concord & Lexington

The April 2025 Duxbury Camera Club field trip was to the towns of Concord and Lexington on the heels of the 250th anniversary of the historic battles. It was a beautiful spring day with maybe a bit too much direct sunlight to be ideal for photography. But I shot anyway. (None will be heard around the world, I’m sure.) An enjoyable day nonetheless. Click through the header photo for more images.

Bilbao in the rain

On a rainy day, more than twenty years ago, I took some shots of Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao. I didn’t like the photos and filed them away. Recently, I decided to go back and reprocess those images with the most recent Lightroom tools and I liked the results much better. Moral of the story: don’t delete photos.