Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

I’m finally starting to run out of IR / HDR shots from my vacation last March - guess I should think about another trip somewhere…

Anyhow - some more shots of Chesapeake City. As I mentioned in my last post about this great little town, a massive bridge dominates the scene. Nonetheless, it is home to a very pleasant main street and lots of nice little shops. Here’s another photo of the main drag - Bohemia Street - on a warm March afternoon:

And here is an interesting building located downtown on the corner of Bohemia and 2896 - this is a glass works, I can’t remember the name:

And a couple of glimpses of the side streets:

And a parting shot of the bridge taken from the north side of the canal:

About a week ago I ventured out to the Pierce Creek Institute, partially to drop off a couple of prints that will be in an art exhibit celebrating their 10th anniversary, and partially just to hang out and get some dragonfly photos. Here are a few photos from that trip.

After weeks of cold, wet weather, things were finally sunny and getting hot. There were lots of large puddles and flooded areas, and the wetlands around the Institute were buzzing with dragonflies. As I drove down Cloverdale Road, the dragonflies filled the air, their bronze wings catching flashes of light as the buzzed around.

A few photos - first - the most prevalent early spring dragonfly around here, the White Faced Dot Tail:

And here are a couple of immature Common White Tails:

I’ll have a few more photos from that trip and last weekend’s trip to post yet. Unfortunately, my precious Pentax SMC A ’star’ 200mm macro lens began to malfunction in the field last weekend. Well, after 12 years of devoted service, and hundreds of thousands of photos, I can’t complain. But it is off to Pentax to hopefully be repaired. I may take that as a cue to step back from dragonflies and find some other way to pass the time, at over the next couple of months while the lens is repaired.

Here are more spring hepatica from 2009:

Ok - back to photos from my trip last March to Maryland and D.C. I’d better post these before I forget about them…

Chesapeake City was one of our last stops during our eastern shore tour of historic Maryland Towns. With somewhat narrow streets and mostly wood framed buildings, it was a bit quieter and less architecturally impressive than some other locales. But it more than made up for that with a really relaxed atmosphere and some really interesting stores. I even bought some stuff, which is pretty uncommon.

A bridge, which has Maryland Route 213 running over it, dominates the town. Per Wikipedia, the bridge is 500 feet tall. Needless to say, where ever you are in town, when you look up you see the bridge. (Well, unless you have your back to the bridge.) For being so big, it’s hard to get a clear shot of the bridge. Here’s my best effort from the downtown area:

And here’s a fine old home. Like I said, the bridge seems to dominate the place:

And again with the bridge:

Lastly - a snapshot of the downtown retail area. As you can see, it is a most pleasant and enjoyable place. At least, I found to be very enjoyable with some really nice shops:

As before - these are digital infrared shots, processed in Photomatix with other digital enhancements. A few more shots from Chesapeake City will be coming up…

Michigan’s cold and wet spring finally took a turn for the better today, with downright hot temperatures and sunny skies. So I slipped away for a bit and checked out the Mc Linden Nature Trails to see if any dragonflies were out.

The dragons were indeed out in the field - not as numerous as I expected, but given the cold temperatures I guess it is understandable. Here is the one shot I was able to get during my hour in the field - a Four Spotted Skimmer:

I haven’t been out shooting wildflowers this spring, but I found a directory of shots from the spring of 2009 that I never got around to posting. So here is the first installment (there will be a few more.)

These are all early spring hepatica. Most of these were taking in Berrien County, Michigan. The last couple of shots were taking in the Allegan forest. The dime gives an idea of the size of these blooms.

These were all taken in the early days of April, 2009.

Here’s a snapshot of the Chicago skyline in the early morning, as taken from a hotel room last year. I re-worked the photo, previously posted here, in Photomatix. I really like the results on this morning photo, but oddly, Photomatix didn’t help the night shot at all.

I don’t expect that I’ll have much opportunity to photograph wildflowers this spring, so I thought I’d post a some older shots form a few years ago. I recently upgraded my medium format scanner from an Epson v500 flatbed to a dedicated Nikon 8000 ED, and have been rescanning some medium format images. Here are three shots of a spring woods with trillium in bloom. I don’t remember when I took these shots (I guess 2006 or 2007) but they were scanned this year and re-worked.