Fog is ever present on the trail – slow, slow shutter speeds but still shooting wide open, my favorite combination for shooting. Old and familiar all look different in this light, a light that happens rarely – even more rare to be in a spot to work with it.

No music on the way in, just the sounds of my steps on the frozen ground, the dog running silently through the woods. At the swamp its eerily quiet – no birds, no color, all life seems to have gone south or burrowed into a cave.

Walking back, now listening to Osher, seeing new light as the rain starts.

What a beautiful way to end the year…and prepare for a new one.

Happy New Year everyone.

Saturday she called again. “I’m releasing a barred owl Monday – are you interested…and over the flu?”

Interested – you bet! Over the flu – I wasn’t going to let a lingering cough stop me this time. Family in the car, phone call to some good friends who I thought would be interested in seeing the release and off to Maine. We got to the release site a few minutes before the beautiful owl was to regain its freedom – it had been in rehab since being found laying in the road in November not far from the release site ( I think the choice of release location was anything but an accident).

Jane Kelly, the volunteer, handled the bird as familiarly and gently as I handle my dog – confidence exhuded from her as she removed it from the carrier used to transport it, showed the bird off for a few pictures, then with a flourish set it free.

The owl flew to a nearby maple tree, landed and surveyed its circumstances for a few minutes, then flew to another tree, rested there, then on again. I was struck by the bird’s  camouflage – had I not seen where it had landed I never would have noticed it.

Makes me wonder how many owls I’ve walked right past and never known they were there. And thanks to the efforts of the Center for Wildlife in York, Maine, there is at least one more raptor alive in the Maine woods. Now if only I can learn to spot them in the wild.

Felt so nice to just wander with the camera and dog, starting to dream of putting the jackets and boots away – and hoping the snow is finally behind us. It was a really long winter, so ready for spring.

Its even harder to do when your teaching photography. Suddenly the works of 35 people are lumped into a mass of incoming assignments, helping kids learn the tools and terminology, trying to promote love affairs with light … the tsunami of working in a classroom.

I’m teaching two classes of photography to students at Great Bay eLearning Charter School in Exeter.

Since we’re working with digital point and shoot cameras, much of the technical aspects of photography are out the window – aperture and shutter speed concepts are only theory if you’re using cameras where those adjustments aren’t possible.

The impetus of the classes becomes providing an environment in which students are free – and encouraged – to experiment. Its about widening people’s horizons, expanding their vision and view of the world around them.

Its tough! Unlike teaching at a college level, not everyone in the class is interested in photography. So there are frustrations – but the rewards are huge. Especially when there’s a chance to step back and take a look at the overall work.

That’s what happened when I needed to chose some photos to be in the student art show. I figured it would be easy to pick a had dozen to be printed…after all, the work had felt pretty uninspired as the semester went along.

Wow was I wrong! Stepping back provided  window on some pretty fabulous photographs, and picking 6 became picking 25 – I just couldn’t edit it any tighter. A lot of good work was left out of the show ( a learning experience for me – next semester I’ll be far more prepared).

Here are a few of the photos that hung in the show. Would love to hear any feedback or comments.

Look out the window, watching the branches sway, rock and roll actually – big limbs still even in the wind gusts, smaller ones doing the dance though. The sky that intense shade of blue that happens at the false dawn, more intense than can be named or if there’s a name I don’t know it..reminds me of being out on the water duck hunting years ago, hearing the birds but not quite seeing them, remembering just how cold cold could be.

WOW its so incredibly beautiful….quick, camera, tripod, memory card…not going out, set it up on kitchen table…shoot few frames…long exposures which I’ve been meaning to play with lately…not even concerned about shooting through the glass…just the need to make some frames, can I capture the mood, the cold, the intensity?

Coffee’s ready – good to be alive!

Me? I got to walk the terrain park, lie down and let boarders sail over my head, dodge tubes coming down the hill at nearly 40 miles per hour, and convince a couple of tubers to hold my feet so I could shoot as we hurtled down the slope.

The park, which is open Thursday through Sunday is an amazingly good time…flying down hills and you don’t have to hoof it back up! They are minutes off I-495 in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and well worth the drive, though if you can slip away during the week there will be less waiting in line to go down again. You ask me, it’s a must-do this winter, no matter what your age.

And if you see me there ( I’ll be the tall guy in the red coat with a camera and no gloves), wave…I just might take your picture!

I was going to post a look back at the last decade, but its pretty overwhelming when I think about the fact that at the beginning of the new millennium – remember the big scare with Y2K – well on New Year’s Eve I was in El Paso, Texas, having just covered the Sun Bowl and people were afraid to fly because they thought all the onboard computers might crash. So I spent New Year’s Eve alone in a hotel room waiting for the next day to fly back to Oregon. Spending New Year’s alone was no big thing – its never been my favorite night, but the digital camera I was using was an issue. Quite simply, it was a piece of junk! Worse, I really had no idea how to massage it to do what I needed – I knew nothing about white balance, using image editing software or the like.

A year and a half later digital cameras had taken a quantum leap forward, I had a clue what I was doing…and I found myself driving through the Columbia Gorge enroute to a new job in Minnesota.

There was no lack of news the next few years: the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Paul Wellstone dying in a plane crash. Exciting times in the news business, wonderful times with amazing photographers in the Twin Cities, awesome friends and neighbors. But it was, when all was said and done, Minnesota.

In the middle of the decade digital cameras took more quantum leaps…and I returned to New England, this time following my wife. Her father was in poor health and it fell to her to be the caregiver. Not a bad decision – New England’s a great place to live, I had serious quality time with my father-in-law before he passed away, had a great run teaching college until the school closed ( hopefully not because of me!), became my own boss with the start of Jay Reiter Photography, found a summer home at Charles River Creative Arts Program.

Yea, the first decade of the new millennium was pretty amazing…makes me wonder what’s next. Digital cameras are taking yet another leap, the newspaper world as I knew it is virtually no longer, I’m still in New England being thoroughly modern with a facebook account and everything… Oh, and my daughter has blue hair…and I love it!

A couple of night’s ago I had the opportunity to photograph a performance of Clara’s Dream, a jazz and tap rendition of The Nutcracker produced by Maine dancer and artistic director Drika Overton. The costumes were stunning, the stage lighting and set design phenomenal, the band tremendous…but all paled in comparison to the dancers. They could have put this show on on your local street corner and it still would have been mind-blowing.
From a photographer’s perspective, it was like being a kid in a candy store – almost impossible to choose what to shoot – there were visual delights stage left, stage right, and center stage. If you took the time to look away fro the spotlit dance, all sorts of subtle dances were happening in the background. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My suggestion – send Drika an email (http://www.jazzandtap.com/ ) and beg her to bring the show back in 2010. The show was first performed in 2000, and its been on vacation since 2006.  Don’t let it go back into mothballs again – the 6 musicians and 20 dancersw are a must see-must hear. After insuring its return, Mark it on your calendar, and make sure not to miss this show – it could – and should – be the start of a new holiday tradition!

And support it. Without money, the arts are just a footnote in a textbook. Don’t let that happen to this one-of-a-kind show. It’s too great to slip away.

Here’s a slideshow of some of the highlights of Clara’s Dream.

My nephew was married recently in Pittsburgh, PA. I went – carrying only 1 camera and 1 lens. In a total test of my willpower, I also only brought 2 flash cards – a 4gig and a 2gig. Since I always shoot raw, that wasn’t a lot of images I could retain.

Pittsburgh was unseasonably cold and rainy, but the morning of the wedding I walked down a typical Pittsburgh hill ( they’re reminiscent of San Francisco if you’ve never been to Pittsburgh) to a church I’d passed a gazillion times but had never stopped to shoot. I found an open door but the interior of the church was as dark as a dungeon, so I played around with the incredible architecture. The church was built around 1901 – the ivy covering the walls seemed that old as well. I’ll admit to wishing I had a tripod and/or some strobes along. I was shooting at a 15th of a second at F 2.8. For those who aren’t photographers, that gobbledygook simply means there was no light and it was tough to hold the camera steady – especially since it was raw damp and freezing!

That afternoon when I went to the wedding ( at a historic downtown hotel), I noticed the rest of downtown in the gloom from a room where I was going to change into a full-blown tux…this was a black tie affair – including 1 poor soul still working at 6pm on a Saturday. Made a few photos using the window as a steadying agent for the camera.

Shot a few wedding photos also, haven’t had a chance to even look to see what I got, so here’s a few photos from a busman’s holiday.