Well, my travel plans notwithstanding, Hurricane Irene saturated the area pretty nicely, so by the time tropical storm Lee dumped it’s load of water in NY, PA, and the northeast in general, I was met with a wet reception.  Part A:  Denver to Philly – no problems  Part B:   Philadelphia to Albany – canceled…re-booked me to Binghamton! Part C:  Philadelphia to Binghamton – canceled.

Part D:  Driving!  I finally said to heck with flying, I can drive there from here in 4 hours, so off into a rental car I went…thinking “How bad can it be?”  The answer:  pretty bad!  As it turns out, every road east of the Susquehanna River was either flooded, washed out, or otherwise impassable.  If you look at a map of Upstate NY, the two cities nearest my ultimate destination of Oneonta were Albany and Binghamton – which we knew had cancelled flights.  As you’ll notice from Map 1:

There’s only one Interstate between B and O – I88…and guess what was closed due to flooding:  yep, the entrance to I88.  Okay, well I went to school at Cortland so knew of a few roads up that direction that cut across.  The best is state highway 206, which turns off at Whitney Point and brings you back to I88 at Bainbridge.  Take a look at the closed roads I encountered in that area:

So, with both Greene (the midway point across 206 closed and (from what I heard) the Main street at Bainbridge before the Interstate, that was out of the question, so I tried going south to Chenango Forks and cut over at 79.  Turns out that even after a local road loop around some washed out road on highway 79, I still wasn’t able to get over because of the flooding right in Chenango Forks.

When I finally called in reinforcements to help me scout out flooded areas, I learned that most points north of me were out of commission too – all the way up to Albany across the Thruway! (Yes, even Albany had flooded areas).  Suffice to say, Mother Nature was telling me that I just couldn’t get to Oneonta.  So, I stopped trying and returned to the dry and non-flooded confines of Colorado a day early.  But, since I had my camera with me, I was able to stop at one place (Chenango Forks) and get a few shots of the flooding typical to the area:

Highway DOT officials told me the depth was about two feet, and that several pickups without a decent clearance were already prohibited from getting through.  Suffice to say, my Chevy Aveo rental was not up to the challenge!  So, home I went, anxious to get out of the flood zone, and having not seen one family member in 3000 miles of flying and probably 500 miles of driving!  It was a crazy week last week, which is also a partial explanation as to why I was not posting or really plugged in that much.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go work off the cholesterol I inhaled from those three travel days and meals at diners and Wafflehouses!

Happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Oh yeah, one last thing – don’t forget that today is the last day to register for your chance to win a Drobo from me and the folks at Data Robotics!  Hit the Monday post for specifics, and we’ll announce the winner next week!

Happy Labor Day!  Go out and shoot!

For everyone else:

Go out and shoot anyway!

Today was a family day and I did take an hour towards sunset to go out and see what I could see through the lens.  Got a few but not sure if I had all the dials and exposure settings right, so look for them in the post tomorrow!

With tomorrow being the 4th of July, I will be taking the day off from blogging. I will be taking a short trip to NY to spend some time with family and close friends over the long weekend – then it’s back to SC to finish our packing and preparations for the move to Colorado.

While many others will also be traveling and spending time with family and friends, we will all no doubt be snapping away with our cameras. We’ll likely be capturing our relatives, families and friends in various activities: eating, drinking, general merriment, perhaps a baseball game, or running with sparklers, or taking in some fireworks at the local ballpark. All of these activities are just a few of the ways in which we celebrate our freedom and the establishment of our independence as the United States of America!

The United States of America has many problems that we face. Tomorrow though, we celebrate one of the best things about this country – the establishment of our freedom from the crown of England. It’s pretty amazing if you think about it. A bunch of rough-shod farmers, a few businessmen, and political thinkers, stuck up for one another and to defend our rights. Our right to own land, unobstructed from military regimes, the right to bear arms, the freedom of speech, the freedom from religious oppression, the right to choose those who we permit to govern on our behalf – and in our best interests. Yet these days, it seems our rights to freedom are gradually eroding away. Land can be taken “for the public good”, while the country is faced with economic recession and layoffs, the military-industrial complex continues to thrive, laws continue to limit our ability to defend ourselves, speech is becoming offensive and restricted, religious zealots (or aetheists) push agendas in purely subjective directions, and elections are becoing more and more of a circus, it seems we are not as free as we once were.

Before people think this is a political post, or a rant on the social and economic woes of the times (which it kind of has been thus far), rest assured: it’s not. Instead, I am suggesting that we photographers go out tomorrow, and over the course of the next month and look for examples of freedom. Capture the essence of freedom in a photograph. Think you got a good one? Then share it! I’ve set up a Flickr group to share pictures into with Canon Blogger. We’ll go for the next 30 days, so from July 4th to August 4th, the challenge is to go out and capture the essence of freedom in a photo.

Share it with the Canon Blogger Flickr group. Once the time window closes, I’ll go through all the pictures and put a slide show together here on the blog of all the images. Plus, the best shot will actually WIN something! That’s right, Canon Blogger will be hosting it’s first ever photo contest! I’ll choose what I think is the best image that captures the essence of freedom in a photo and give that lucky winner the first ever prize from Canon Blogger. Since this is a prize that is coming out of my own pockets, there are a few restrictions though (you knew there would be). Here they are:

• All shots must be taken within the United States.
• All shots must be taken between July 4th and August 4th 2008
• While photo corrections are permitted, editing should be restricted to corrections (adjusting shadow and highlight details, a little dodging and burning here and there, etc.) only. No composites!
• Be prepared to submit an original image with all exif data, no smaller than 800 px on the longest side.
• All images must be submitted to (and remain shared in) the Canon Blogger thread titled “Photograph Freedom” on Flickr.
• The decision of the judge (me) is final.
• 2nd place, 3rd place, and Honorable mentions will also be noted for their images.
• No person can submit more than 3 shots for consideration.
• Shots included on Flicker should be no larger than 600px on the longest dimension.

So, the big question is still lurking in everyone’s minds: what’s the prize? Well, it’s not much, but the winner of the first ever contest from Canon Blogger will receive a $25 gift card to their choice of Amazon or B&H Photo!

Everyone who enters an image will be included in the slide show, but there will be only one grand prize winner. But wait a second, grand prize? You mean there’s more? That’s right! The 2nd, 3rd place and honorable mentioned photos will also receive accolades. Here’s the list of all prizes:

1. 1st Place: $25 gift card to your choice of Amazon or B&H Photo
2. 2nd Place: A DVD of all videos produced by CB thus far.
3. 3rd Place: A CD of all articles written and shared here on CB to date.

All finalists will also get (Honorable Mentions included) a day of your photo (and website if you have one) promoted and highlighted on the blog. Naturally, all ownership of images stays with the shooter, except for the instances of display outlined above (the slide show and the day of recognition).

P.S.  While travelling I hopped online while on layover at DC, and saw a link to the blog coming from Hyperphocal.  Looks like they picked up my latest article I submitted, titled “Looking at Light“  It’s actually a pretty good read, even if I do say so myself.  But, since todays post was already on another topic, that article will likely be long gone by the time I get back from NY.  So, stop over to Hyperphocal today and check out the latest!  Happy holidays all and happy shooting!  (Keep watching those apertures…)