Tagged: Hanover Pennsylvania

Snow Flurries

The reason I haven’t been taking blog pictures or posting much lately is that I have been busy with other photography interests, thoughts, and ideas.  I have also been selling cameras and ordering a new one.  I haven’t finished, but I am trying to simplify and reduce the amount of gear I have.  I will be writing about it later.

I had to make a quick trip to the market this morning and I took these pictures from inside the car while waiting on my wife.  If you look closely, you can see that we had snow flurries this morning.

Reviving an Interest

I have been thinking about what to photograph when it warms up.  One approach I have taken is to look back through some of my older pictures to see what I liked.  While doing that I also checked what camera and lens were used so I would know what to take if I go back out to similar areas.  Since I was looking closely at the old pictures I usually reset them and tried different crops, styles, etc.  The following were not processed totally identical but they were mostly adjusted to look like older pictures with less dynamic range and contrast.  I am not sure that I will process new pictures this way but it was fun to do this morning.

Don’t forget to click on any picture and then cycle through them using the right or left arrows in the gallery mode to view them larger.

Shady Maple Farm Market

One of my favorite stores in Hanover is the Shady Maple Farm Market located in the Amish Market.  This past Saturday we went to the Amish Market rather than the Hanover Market.

Those who are interested have probably noted that the majority of my pictures lately have been taken with the Ricoh GR camera at f/2.8 and 1/250 sec. shutter speed with the ISO floating up and down automatically as needed.  It makes an ideal pocket camera that doesn’t draw much attention and it can easily be carried in a pocket.  I mostly use this camera for my “lifestyle photography”; i.e., just the things I see around me as I go through a day.

Hanover Streets at Night

These are a few more pictures that I took on the streets of Hanover, PA on the night of the ghostly history walk.  I have no problems with the quality of these pictures for use in my blog.  Even the WB was good; but I did tweak some of them for WB to standardize the look.  As we walked around, the temperature color of some of the lights changed and some of the images had a more yellowish look than others.  I thought that the pictures looked like I remembered them, but I decided to take out some of the yellowish cast in a few just to get a more pleasing uniform look to the set.

Hopefully I will make it back outside in the dark and get some more images like these.  I have no plans for any photo walks or drives at this moment so don’t be surprised to see some wide gaps in my posts.  I am pretty much through with experimenting with my cameras so I might be taking less pictures this winter.

PS … did you notice the WV sticker on the back of the white pickup?  It reminds me that I need to get a WV sticker for our Ford Escape.

Hanover Ghostly History Walk

On the evening of 1 Nov. we took a Ghostly History Walk around downtown Hanover, PA.  It was a fun way to learn a little more history of Hanover from our guide Richard Gladfelter.  The tour started and returned to the Emmanuel United Church of Christ.

As an aside, I have more information and pictures of the Emmanuel cemetery in an older post.  You can click here to see more.

I used this latest opportunity to see how the Ricoh GR camera performed.   I was interested in seeing if the 28 mm focal length was a good focal length for walking around the Borough and also how the WB performed under those conditions.  I was pleased with the camera.  I may have some more night-time pictures from the walk in a later blog.

Bleak Prospects for Democracy

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In a few days the U.S. has mid-term elections.  The prospects are rather disappointing.  It seems to me that we could save on the order of $4 billion if the corporations just picked who they want to represent them rather than going through the shams of elections by the people.

Very few of the population will actually vote and those that do will vote based on the propaganda they received that was funded by the corporations who support who they think will support their interests rather than the interests of the country.  In effect, the corporations buy the votes of the Congress.   Corporations are only interested in their financial bottom-line in the coming few years.  They have little to no interest in the long-term sustainable future of the U.S.  Their only concern for the people is that they buy their products.

The side effect of corporations buying the votes of Congressmen is that most of the good, knowledgeable citizens do not want to run for office so we get the less knowledgeable and greediest to run.  This creates a downward spiral in the ability of Congress to conduct the necessary business for the long-term success of the country as more and more of these types of individuals are elected.  In effect we have built a house of cards which will someday collapse.

There is another more subtle way that they control the results of the elections.   While the parties send propaganda to the people in their party, nothing is sent to the independents.   I think we have an election on 4 Nov. but few around where I live could prove it.  No information reminding people of this fact has been sent out so far (2 Nov.).  No information informing the people of the election sites or hours has been sent out.  No information of what/who is on the ballot has been sent out.  I was hoping that the local Sunday paper would have this information, but it has nothing.   This is all probably part of the strategy to keep the independents from voting.

Seeing Red on Hanover Streets

I needed to drive across town so I took my Panasonic LF1 and took a few pictures when I was stopped in traffic yesterday.  They turned out better than I expected since I took all of these through the tinted, not absolutely clean windows of my car.  I didn’t have the luxury of driving a BMW X3 with the top down like the young blonde.  I took more pictures than these but I decided to show you the ones which had something red in them.

The reason I took these pictures was that I thought it was a good time, given the clouds we had, to further test my LF1.  I have been thinking about looking for something to replace or supplement it.  What I would desire is better IQ, better low light capability, and better, faster focusing.  The LF1 will not focus on the clouds so I have to focus on the distant skyline and then recompose the image.  In order to get better image quality and focusing, it would have to be a larger camera.  That is the downside.  Anything else isn’t going to fit in a shirt pocket.  I am looking at the 2/3 inch or one-inch sensor cameras hoping to find something affordable with the right ergonomics, speed of focusing, etc. that isn’t too large.

In reality, I don’t need or desire to take pictures like the above.  I probably don’t need a camera to replace the LF1.  Instead, I should just use the LF1 for emergencies and use my Olympus E-PL5 and lenses for any serious photography.  If I need better IQ than it has, I would look at a larger size sensor and one or two prime lenses.

Neas House

I stopped and walked around the Neas House in Hanover, PA this morning.  In the two years I have lived here I have never found it open.  I even bought a ticket to tour it last year but have never been able to get inside.  I eventually lost interest after I found that they wouldn’t let me take any pictures.  It looks like it is well maintained for the benefit of those driving by.  You can read what the Historical Society says about it by clicking here.