Very confident shore birds, they don’t fret too much when humans arrive on the scene. This one photographed on the beach near the Village of Duck, North Carolina. Many more on the website. Click on “John Harding Art Prints” in the right column then click on “Birds”. See you soon on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 27, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/27/the-sandpiper/
I’m still going through shots I took on my last trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Three 4 gb cards worth. This one on the beach just south of the Village of Duck short after sunrise. A pretty strong storm had just blown up the coast resulting in lots of driftwood washing up on the beach. See you soon on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 26, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/26/268e-edited-1/
Our house is pretty much soundproof so when you can hear the wind outside, it’s howling! I heard it this morning around 6AM when I woke up. It was Henry Morgan’s doing. Henry is my cat. I named him after a 1950′s disc jockey and TV Personality in New York. We made the mistake a while back of giving Henry a cat nip treat one morning. Cat’s don’t forget. So like clockwork, every morning Henry hops up on the bed at 6 oclock sharp ( yes Henry even adjusts for daylight time) and proceeds to lick my nose. I’ll usually roll over and go back to sleep and Henry usually leaves me alone ……for maybe 15 minutes before that second lick. But this morning, Henry really wanted that treat. When the lick didn’t do it, he started patting his paw on my head. Henry rules. On my way to the kitchen with Henry trotting at my heels, I noticed the first hint of daylight filtering through the pines. There was a hint of pink and I knew wind or not, I had to hike out to the field to get a shot.
Thanks Henry. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 25, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/25/i-owe-it-to-henry/
When I was growing up in Virginia, Periwinkle was always the first sign of spring in our backyard. Even before the Forsythia. Here in Eastern North Carolina it comes a bit later but is still a pretty reliable harbinger of warmer weather ahead. Not that it isn’t warm already. Just a tad above 80. No kidding. Makes me wonder whats ahead for April and May. I don’t even want to think about June and July. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 24, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/24/flags-of-spring/
Call them makeovers, upgrades or major renovation jobs, but two big photo sharing sites have just gone through a major do over or are about to. 500px unveiled their new look earlier this week and there’s word that flickr is going to take the wraps off a huge makeover on the 28th. The entire flickr site was down for an hour or two this afternoon. Trying to log in got you a “connection refused” message. I have no clue whether it had anything to do with the do over. I checked again around 7pm EST and the site was back up. Over at 500px, which has been grabbing a lot of disgruntled flickr users of late, the new look plasters a page called “flow” as a users home page displaying recent uploads in different sizes. 500 has also added a storefront from which members will be able to market their shots should they want to. The site had pulled the plug with Fotomoto some months ago and had been promising a replacement for some time. Several of my contacts at 500 are not happy with the new look and frankly, I’m not too lathered up about it either. Perhaps driving it a while will boost my enthusiasm. I’m really curious as to what flickr has up its sleeve. I suspect they will do away with a lot of the white space on the site and boost up the size of photographs displayed. My major wish is for the default look on flickr to be the “On Black” or as its also known, the “light box” view. Perhaps they will see fit to stop blacklisting thousands of their paying customers from the explore club which is supposed to represent the best shots on the site. Kinda hard for it to be a sample of the best if so many members are banned or as flickr calls it “throttled” from being included. Stay tuned. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 23, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/23/major-makeovers-at-photo-sharing-sites/
What a letdown this Winter has been. No Snow. Not one flake. Not even the threat of a flurry. Nothing. They got some snow last week up in Raleigh and along the Virginia border but here….just rain. You’d think the local grocery stores would have gotten together by now to persuade a TV weather guy to at least mention the word to produce a nice run on bread and milk but No! Frankly, I think the heavy frost the other morning would have at least scared the schools into closing. Doesn’t take much to close the schools here. But I don’t think anybody got up early enough to see the big freeze….and by 9 oclock it was about gone. Looked pretty impressive for a while though.
We need some snow here for aesthetic reasons. It covers all the leftovers from the cotton harvest in the fields. All those stalks and stuff. What I wouldn’t give for a few inches. Just one morning would I like to grab a sunrise out here with some snow on the ground. Frost just doesn’t do. Obviously I am trying to jinx what many consider our good luck in avoiding the really frigid stuff. The Kinston Municipal Electric Company where we get our power has some of the highest rates in the country if not the highest ….. and I don’t care to pay them any more than anyone else but one morning with a few inches of snow wouldn’t break the bank……Just a few inches. You think? See you soon on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 22, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/22/the-snowless-winter/
Never let be said Camellias can’t take a punch. Down for a mandatory 8 count after a killer frost blanketed the farm this past weekend, they’re back in the ring. Sort of a floral rope a dope. This closed bloom caught my eye in the waning light of the late afternoon.
The closed center coupled with the variations of pink lend a little winter elegance to an otherwise pretty drab time of year. I shot this with the workhorse of my bag, a Nikon 18-200mm which pretty much lives on the new D7K Camera. Unlike the full frame 28-200 which stays with my F100, this digital or DX lens allows very close work even at the extreme focal length. If I could have only one lens on a digital camera, that would be it. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 21, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/21/renewal-2/
Photo Of The Day!
Back to the Daffodil patch with the 60 mm to catch a solo in the early morning light. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 20, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/20/trumpet-solo/
It’s quite easy to come down with the winter blahs. Winter carries with it a certain isolation. It’s almost as though ones senses become semi-comatose, teased now and then by a false spring of early buds and blooms only to be dashed by another hard freeze. For me, the sameness of the days requires a daily cure. A three mile walk around the farm. It always proves to be a powerful reminder of the somber elegance of the season. 
It’s one of the great benefits of photography. One sees things others take for granted. For me, every turn on my daily trek results in a mental note to come back with my camera as happened with the above shot. I see this scene every day I take my walk but on this day, I saw it again for the first time. See you next time on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 19, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/19/a-cure-for-the-winter-blahs/
Ever have a shot framed in your mind but never found the right situation to pull it off? I’ve been carrying this one around in my head for months waiting for the right combination of sky, clouds and sun position. Today was the day. 
This is Center Grove, the Civil War Era Cemetery here on the farm. North Carolina is filled with small family cemeteries located in farm fields. Many are still in use. This one is not. The last burial was in the 1930′s or 40′s. Most of the graves are Confederate Veterans of the North Carolina Infantry and their wives. As you might imagine, there are visitors from time to time. People researching their family heritage or Civil War Buffs. I’ve taken many photographs here. Lots of sunrises and sunsets. What is it about cemeteries that attracts photographers? But I had never composed a shot this way. With the Grove of Live Oaks and Pines backlit by the rising sun. It was probably the perfect opportunity to use a split neutral density filter which allows one to expose on the ground without blowing out the sky. But that wasn’t the effect I was after. I took several versions of this. They’re all on my website which you can reach by clicking on “John Harding Art Prints” just to the right. But this one is the one I’d been visualizing since last fall. Waiting for Sun to make its way to this particular spot in the field. Some things are worth waiting for. Thanks for the look. See you soon on most of this same blog.
Posted by John on February 18, 2012
http://johntharding.me/2012/02/18/sunrise-at-center-grove/
