My interest in photographing nature began in 2006 when I made my first trip to Niagara Falls, which turned out to be the most breathtaking site I had ever seen. I took pictures of it from both the American and Canadian sides from every angle I could access, including taking my camera aboard the Maid of the Mist boat ride. One day my wife and I ate at the restaurant in the Minolta Tower, which provided a continuously changing view of the falls by utilizing a rotating floor. After dinner we went upstairs to the deck on top of the tower, where I was able to take my favorite shots of Niagara Falls, which were aerial views.
In 2009 my wife and I traveled to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to see the peak fall foliage, which occurs in early October. Viewing the mountains for the first time was another spectacular experience, which sparked my interest in landscape photography. One day when we took the cog railway to the top of Mount Washington, I felt as though we were in the arctic, since it was freezing and we could see snow for miles in every direction. I was able to get some quite unique photos from both the foot and the top of the mountain, as well as from the train on the ride up. We went back to the White Mountains each fall for the next three years, finding numerous waterfalls whose photos I was able to provide with a surreal, silky effect by using a neutral density filter and a slow shutter speed. We took another trip to northern Vermont where I was able to get many more fall foliage photos including some of Lake Champlain, which I took during a tour of Shelburne Farms. In the years that followed I discovered that there were numerous waterfalls located in the Delware Water Gap area that I could photograph in the course of a day trip.
When you first entered my website, you may have discovered that half of the photos are of birds, which is now my main photographic interest. My bird photography began after moving into a newly constructed townhouse in Easton, Pennsylvania in 2006. I soon started taking photographs from the home's second story deck of the finches and sparrows which frequently nested in the evergreen trees located only a few yards away. In 2008, construction of the townhouses was halted due to the sudden decline in the price of homes. This left a grassy area the size of several football fields behind our home which remained there until construction was resumed about ten years later. Judging by the amount of birds roaming in the grass, which included cowbirds, European starlings, robins, killdeers, mockingbirds, and blackbirds, the surrounding woods must have been the home of a multitude of birds. The most success I had in photographing those that landed in the field was in the photos I took from my car, which allowed me to get close enough to take a picture of birds before they flew away.
In order to photograph a greater variety of birds, I began making frequent visits to parks and wildlife refuges. Their regular inhabitants included chickadees, tufted titmice, cardinals, blue jays, white-throated sparrows, doves, catbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, grackles, and woodpeckers. There were times when I was able to photograph just about all of these birds in one outing. The occasional visitors included goldfinches, rose-breasted grosbeaks, dark-eyed juncos, eastern towhees, American redstarts, indigo buntings, and magnolia warblers. I consider myself lucky just to have been able to to take photographs on only one or two occasions of these infrequently seen birds. I experienced a great amount of joy, not only in taking the photographs, but in returning home to identify a new species I had just photographed for the very first time by comparing the photos I took to images in my books or on the internet. As an added bonus, I was able to photograph quite a few small critters that would wander into the the places where I was photographing birds. My favorite of these photos is one of a raccoon hanging from a bird feeder with his head turned toward the camera as if he was posing for me. Now there's a once in a lifetime shot!
I went on to travel to other states such as Audubon Park in New Orleans, where I had the opportunity to photograph various species of ducks and geese, including the muscovy duck and the Chinese goose. My favorite shot from the park is one of a snow goose gazing out over the edge of the lake. When my wife and I took a trip to the Florida Everglades, I managed to photograph an osprey and a great egret in flight from an airboat ride, as well a limpkin hidden in the thickets, and numerous landscape shots. Two summers ago, we visited Brigantine Wildlife Refuge and Cape May Meadows, both located in New Jersey, where I was able to photograph herons, egrets, swans, and terns wading in the water or at the water's edge. Since these birds are not nearly as skittish as the smaller ones, I could hike to spots where I could photograph them from a close distance.
My photos of the bald eagle, which I took last spring, represent my proudest accomplishment in bird photography. One day I read an article in a local newspaper that described a nature preserve only a few towns away from my home in Tobyhanna where they were nesting. Several days later I visited that preserve and inquired in the parking lot if anyone knew of the bald eagles. One person answered by telling me that earlier he saw a group of photographers with lenses mounted on tripods about a quarter mile up the trail. However, I hiked the entire loop of the trail, about a mile in length, but did not find any photographers or bald eagles. Several days later I returned to the nature preserve and saw a bald eagle sitting on a branch near the top of a tree over sixty feet tall. It remained perched in the tree for about fifteen minutes, during which time I took about eighty photos of it from various angles and using various camera settings. I was truly awed by the experience of photographing a bald eagle for the very first time.
Well, that's the story of how I came to accumulate a vast amount of nature photos over the last fifteen years. In the galleries in my website you will find what I consider to be the very best of this collection. If you are a bird enthusiast or a nature lover living in the northeastern United States such as I am, you will find that this website contains many of the birds that you have seen in your birdwatching travels and possibly some landscapes that bring back memories of places you have travelled to. I hope you enjoy the photos!