Fishing

I'm not sure why, but there's something deep inside my soul that gives me the ability to stand on the side of a lake, river or stream all day long, and toss and retrieve a lure or bait for hours.  Until it gets dark. It's just so hard to put the fishing pole down. I can remember camping at Atwood Lake, in my early teens, getting eaten up by mosquitoes, basically doing the mosquito dance at dusk, until I absolutely couldn't stand it anymore.  I don't care what type of fish I catch, I have always loved fishing.  I can thank my dad and my grandfather for that passion.

They got me started at a pretty early age.  My earliest fishing memory is Goodyear's Wingfoot Lake Park, a private retreat area for Goodyear workers outside of Akron.  It isn't private anymore- in fact, it's now a state park.  But there, probably at the age of five or six I remember catching a tiny little bluegill and a nice fat crayfish.  The rest is history.

I don't remember my grandfather fishing very often.  He just didn't participate in the sport very much in retirement.  I think by that time, he put most of his effort into golf.  But when he passed on last February, I went through his THREE tackle boxes, and found some pretty amazing fishing tackle spanning decades of fishing history.  I've been going through it this weekend.  I'd like to select the most valuable and interesting pieces and mount them on a shadowbox to hang in the wall.  Heck, I think there's enough stuff to fill three shadow boxes.

Although I don't do it much anymore, fishing is something that first sparked my interest in nature and wild animals at a very young age.

-Tom

Maine Glow

While we were visiting Megan's parents in Maine this past holiday season, I did what I always do there- I take plenty of photographs.  Since I've been going there five years now, I have to make a conscious effort to find new images.  It's SO easy to just take the same pictures year after year.

One late afternoon, just as the sun was dropping, I decided to walk through the woods surrounding their home..  The dominant trees of this particular area are balsam fir, white pine, hemlock, red oak and yellow birch.  Even though the light was really great, I couldn't find a subject that was interesting enough to my eye.  I then turned around, and noticed the small but specatular patches of light where the setting sun came through the forest.  I used my telephoto lens to single out these areas of reflected and refracted light, shooting straight into the sun.  Making sure I didn't look through the camera at the sun, I snapped several images that I was really happy with.  I've never quite made this type of photograph before here, but I am really pleased with these.  Yes, there are  plenty of lens flare, normally considered a "problem", but to me, the technical flaws are what makes these images interesting.

No matter what you're doing, be it looking for rare plants, searching for wildlife, or photographing the natural world, take time to look at things a different way- you never know what you might find.

-Tom

Photography Exhibit January 21 - February 18 in Crestline, Ohio

I'm quite excited to announce that I'm going to be doing another photography show.   This time, I've received an invitation from Crawford Park District Director Bill Fisher to exhibit my work at Lowe-Volk park near Crestline, Ohio.  I'll be showing sixteen of my most compelling works (i hope).  I'll be at the nature center on Saturday January 21 for a reception.  I hope my friends in north central Ohio will be able to make it! 

 Here are the details from the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum:  

The Crawford Park District will begin its nature photography exhibit featuring native Ohioan Tom Arbour at 1 p.m. Jan. 21, providing an opportunity for visitors to meet Arbour and view samples of his work. The exhibit will be in Lowe-Volk Park Nature Center, 2401 Ohio 598. The nature photography exhibit will continue through Feb. 18.  Arbour is a wildlife research technician for the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Olentangy Wildlife Research Station. His interests include a wide variety of natural subjects, but he is particularly interested in close-ups of insects and sweeping landscapes. Although his work is primarily Ohio-based, he has a large body of work from his wife's home state of Maine. He has recently photographed nature subjects in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Carolina, Florida and Puerto Rico.

Arbour's photography has been exhibited at the Peggy R. McConnell Arts Center of Worthington and the ODNR headquarters in Columbus. His nature photographs have appeared in multiple ODNR publications and web pages. He is perhaps best known to Ohioans for his Ohio Nature Blog (www.ohio natureblog.com).

I hope to see you on Saturday, January 21!

-Tom

Sunset

Lately I've been showing photographs of the sunrise, but this evening, I photographed the evening sunset.   I was struck by the contrast between the natural lines created by the gnarled bur oak limbs and the crossing angles created by the contrails just above the horizon.

-Tom

Ruffed Grouse

And we're back!  Over the river and through the woods from Grandmother's house in Maine, where we spent the Christmas holiday.  Thanks to everyone at Little Pond for hosting our family for almost a full week. I think grandma, grandpa, great-grandma, and the aunts and uncles had fun playing with Brody and Weston.  Megan and I appreciated the help just looking after the kids- keeping tabs on them is a full time job!

During this trip, I had the opportunity to photograph this pair of ruffed grouse.  Relatively uncommon in Ohio, the ruffed grouse is a popular game bird species in Maine, where they are often referred to as "partridge".  My in-laws have told me they see grouse occasionally, but they had, up until this week, eluded me at Little Pond.

I had just come in from outside when Megan started whispering for me rather loudly from the other room.  I am well familiar with that loud whisper, so I grabbed my camera to see what she had spotted.  These birds were foraging in the grass just outside the house, apparently eating clover, as evidenced by the little bit hanging from the male's beak.  Megan spotted them out the window as she was coming down the stairs.

I only had about a minute, but I was able to get a fairly decent photograph of the female and a "blog-able" image of the male.  You'll be sure that I'll be on the look out for ruffed grouse the next time we visit Little Pond, Maine.

-Tom

Muskingum Dawn

It's hard to beat the gray.  It seems as if we've had quite a bit of it lately.  Rain, and few snowflakes, but little color or interesting winter weather so far.  There are those few magical moments, however, each morning, if we're lucky, when the sun rises up between the thick deck of clouds and the horizon.  I snapped this shot as the first light of day bathed across this typically harsh landscape in Muskingum County.

Merry Christmas- I'm hoping to catch a few snowflakes in Maine.

-Tom

Muskingum Sunrise #2

I freaking love the Iphone.  I love it even more than last year, when Megan bought it for me as a Christmas gift.  I literally took about 30 seconds to capture this image Tuesday morning.  Yes, I did spend five minutes post-processing in Photoshop CS4 tonight, but I was just bringing out the tones captured by the phone.  We think of winter as being void of color, and for most of the day, that is true.  But sometimes, for a few minutes each morning, this happens.

-Tom

Muskingum Sunrise

It's been a while.  As our boys grow (Weston is closer to 3 than 2, and Brody is closer to 1 than 0), I find myself spending more time with them and Megan.  Tonight I took a few hours to organize my basement office and finally add all the photos I have taken in the DSLR-era to my lightroom catalog.

This morning I had the pleasure to witness this spectacular sunrise.  The tree?  It's a tulip poplar- Liriodendron tulipifera.  One of the first things I learned about trees from my grandfather was that tulip trees are always straight- I mean really straight.  They take advantage of tree fall gaps in forests and shoot up quickly before the canopy closes once again.  But when a tulip tree doesn't have competition and is growing on extremely poor soil, than you have things like this happening.  This would be a great tree to photograph the tulip-like flowers of this species.  Typically the flowers are 50 or so feet into the canopy, but on this tree, you could practically pick them from the ground.  I'll have to remember that come next June.

-Tom

Warm Night in the Suburbs

Tonight I debated this question: Do I go outside and photograph something new, or work on older photos I have not yet processed?  Here's my answer.

-Tom

More Winter Birds

Female House Finch

Female House Sparrow

Song Sparrow

All of these birds took my instruction to "look to your left" quite well.

Tom