Having been out at the same place the previous night, we had an idea of what kind of scenes she wanted, and I had a pretty good idea of how to light them.  Forwent the multi-strobe setup this time and settled on a single 430EX on a light stand with shoot-through umbrella.  Later, I added a second 430EX to a Justin Clamp, which was clamped to the light stand, and also sported an umbrella, for some clamshell-style lighting.

(On a side note, if you’re using Speedlites and don’t have a Justin Clamp, get one.  ASAP.  Super cool piece of gear that’s got all you need to mount a Speedlite & modifier pretty much anywhere.)

I’m shooting with the 7D + 50mm, at f/2.2, ISO 200, and a shutter speed that knocks the BG down a stop or so.  Still using the 580EX on-camera as a master

Here’s one with the clamshell lighting, which helps cover the 3/4 body length better than a single umbrella, while also providing flattering light.  This is one of those classic senior portrait poses – stick the subject in a tree and tell ‘em to grin.  Not very progressive, but it’s constantly repeated for a reason – because it works.  I shot a series and picked this one for two reasons: first, because it cropped out the light pole at far camera right, which was a distraction in the other shots; and second, because the wind gusted through and pushed her hair back just enough to give it some pop.

The wind was another of those mixed blessings.  It can take dead, limp hair and make it look alive.  But it also has a nasty habit of catching umbrellas and tossing your light stand into the next county.  I keep saying I’m going to find/order some sandbags, but in the meantime I came up with a quick solution.  I had my Tamrac 5374 backpack with me and simply clipped it to the base of the light stand with the tripod attachment strap, and tightened it down.  With extra gear inside, it was plenty heavy to hold the light stand in place when the breeze came through – and it helped keep everything together as we moved around.

So there you have it – a low key kind of evening, a few good photos made, and another trick added to the list.

It started small, just a couple of us out there with a single monoblock strobe & softbox, swapping the PocketWizard between cameras and sharing exposure settings.  While one of us was shooting, another played the role of Voice-Activated Lightstand and held the strobe aloft.  We got our model up on the lid of a rusty old dumpster and shot him against the brick wall, and then really lit a fire and shot him against the sky.

This is the sort of thing that we’ve all read about on the Strobist site, but I think all too many of us have never actually done.  Well, we did it.  The whole thing was trial & error; plug in the settings, blast off a shot, and chimp to see how it worked.  We just figured it out as we went, although in retrospect, the setting was practically custom-made to our needs.

Being behind the building, the loading dock was in mid-afternoon shadow, which made it much easier to overpower the ambient light with a strobe.  We put the models against the blue sky and shot at or near the max sync speed, f/11-f/16, ISO 100.  (The range in f-stops helps determine the lighting ratio between the model and the sky.)

The trick to this kind of work is, keep the light close to the model.  I mean CLOSE - as in, just barely out of the camera frame (this is where a VAL comes in real handy).  The closer it is, the more light is reaching the model without dissipating out into space.  With the monoblocks we were using, the power was at about half the entire time; with Speedlights, a full-power punch was needed.

And as you might expect, a single model evolved into all three of them out there, in the cold, poor Joe with his shirt off, looking incredibly badass.  They didn’t take a lot of prompting, changing poses every few shots, usually to something even better than the one before.  This is the part that I find the most amazing – take a look at these shots:

One was taken with an AB + softbox on a stand.  The other was taken with my Speedlight ProKit 6 reflector on a hotshoe-mounted 430EX Speedlite, shooting at full power.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two.  At the time I was being impatient waiting my turn in line, so I threw the ProKit & flash on just to see if it would work.  I’m blown away at how well it worked!  I think that if I had stuck it on a lightstand and fired it off-camera, the difference between the two would have been almost impossible to see.

And frankly, if you can’t guess which photo used which lighting setup, I’m not telling!

This is the kind of shooting that lies at the heart of the Strobist concept, and it was an incredible thing to see a whole group of photogs squeezed onto that tiny loading dock, models balanced on a dumpster, and everyone taking turns and rocking the light.  It goes to show what a single strobe can do; it goes to show what a simple, even ugly, location can be made into.

It also shows what you can do with a group of great models.  These are three really fine folks who aren’t a fraction as mean as they look in the photos.  In fact, it became hard for them to keep a straight face with some of the poses, and there was a lot of laughing.

And the stinkin’ dumpster has probably never seen that much love!

It was an incredible day, filled with amazing models, great photogs, and a whole lot of fun.  (If you’re not sure what DPC, Strobists, or a GTG is, don’t worry – all will be explained.)

Expect a full post by Tuesday!

And sometimes, reality kind of stinks.

Take 2 of the family Xmas portraits involved doing them for my girlfriend’s family.  If you’ll remember, the concept was a good one; cycle people through a nice living room scene with a good lighting setup, and make some really nice group images.  That was the theory.

Reality turned out to be quite different.  Due to a breakdown in communication between the multiple planners on their side, and my girlfriend (not sure why they didn’t just call me directly?), they were expecting us to arrive 30 minutes before the time we had written down.  So needless to say, tempers were flaring, small children were burnt out already, and instead of a calm, orderly studio environment, I stepped into an outer ring of Dante’s Inferno.

Unexpected good weather made the family decide they wanted outdoor photos instead, but strong wind gusts and the sudden lack of a dedicated assistant made an off-camera Speedlite and umbrella impossible.  So I slapped the 580EX onto the 7D, dialed in a fill-flash compensation, and away we went, with each family picking their own backyard location.

Some of the shots went pretty well – this group let me work them into a band of shade, and while the lighting is still not very much sculpted, it does get the job done pretty well.

Others didn’t go as well as I would have liked.  The extreme dynamic range here means that even with the fill, the highlights are running too hot and the shadows block up.  Simply put, there’s too much contrast.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible shot, it’s just not what I’d like to have made.

Ironically, that same issue results in a lack of contrast here.  The group opted for the shade to avoid the squinting problem, but put the sunlit backyard behind them, creating an over-contrast issue.  To solve that issue, I applied a Shadow/Highlight layer in Photoshop, which helped create some semblance of balance, but ate up too much contrast.  Suffice to say, this was a post-processing intensive set of images, and I’m not nearly as happy with them as I’d like to have been.

The only two that I am pleased with are these, taken of my girlfriend’s immediate family – her little sister suffered complete burnout at the original setting, so we went home to their house to finish their portraits.  Finally able to step back into a studio setup, I was able to setup a single Speedlite off-camera w/ and umbrella to create these:

I like this first one for the darker overall quality.  Originally I had wanted to merge it with a second shot, one taken at a longer exposure with the tree aglow, but my PS skills aren’t really up to that challenge, and more importantly, I don’t like doing things that way in the first place.  I’d rather get it right in camera (which was not going to happen due to an unhappy 4 year old).

The final image was even simpler; the same single Speedlite positioned high and almost directly in front of the subjects, just in front of me.  And I’ll even admit, believe it or not, that I used Live View to get this shot – it was the only way to see when little sister’s eyes were open and looking at me, since through the viewfinder I couldn’t always tell (the lights were dim from the last shot, still).

In a perfect world, I’d have been able to stick with the theory and gone with the well-planned studio setup.  Or at the very least, had the time and help to use and off-camera Speedlite outdoors.  But given the way things went down, the pictures were still taken – and that’s the main thing.

1.) Protect your camera

This seems like it should be common sense, but far too often it isn’t. The reason being that winter hazards are sneaky. You obviously need to be careful when you take your camera out in a snow storm; that’s little different from shooting in the rain, which we all know is chancy at best. So if you are going to be out in the snow, take an umbrella with you, or take shelter under overhangs. Anything to keep the camera dry.

But what about that sneaky hazard? It’s condensation. Taking your room-temperature camera gear from your heated house outside into the cold will almost never be an issue. But the reverse is a very real hazard. A cold-soaked camera and lens coming into a warm house is just begging for condensation. Condensation is water, building up on the inside and outside of your gear, and next thing you know the electronics are shorting out.

The solution? It’s simple: 1 gallon ziplock bags. Take the bags outside in your pocket and before you come in, shake one open, let it cool down for a few moments, then pop your camera inside and seal it up. Do NOT try to squeeze the extra air out! In fact, keep the bag as full of cold outside air as you can. That way when you take it inside, the temperature variance doesn’t occur on your camera, it occurs on the ziplock bag; condensation forms only on the outside of the bag as the air inside slowly comes up to room temperature, as does your camera. After an hour or two the camera is warmed back up with no risk of damage and can come out of the bag.

Alternatively, pop your flash card out of the camera while you’re still outside and put it in your pocket. It will warm up that way just fine so you can download your images when you get home. As for the rest of your gear, zip it up tight in your camera bag and leave the bag zipped for a couple of hours once it’s inside, just like for the ziplock. Most camera bags are “sealed” enough to bring their contents – air and gear – slowly up to room temperature without any problems.

2.) Pack extra power

Cold weather eats up battery power, no matter what device you’re using. If you’re going to be shooting in the cold for a while, bring extra batteries with you, and keep them in the pocket of your parka where they’ll stay warmer. As one battery wears down, swap it for one from your pocket. Chances are as the “dead” battery warms up, it will regain some of its life, and you’ll be able to use it again. Same deal if you’re powering accessories like a flash – bring extra AAs and keep swapping them out.

3.) Use a polarizer

Want gleaming white snow and crisp, vivid blue skys? A circular polarizer is the answer and will cut the glare coming off the snow. It will also eat up between 1 and 1.5 stops of light, which can be a real help when you’re trying to shoot with a wide aperture on a sunny winter day. Polarizers work by managing reflected light and let’s face it, on a sunny winter’s day, every snow and ice covered surface is reflecting.  Alternately, they’re a great way to punch up the reflections on any open water, while bringing out more vivid colors.

4.) Dress for the weather

You’d be surprised how many people overlook this point; they’ll head out with all sorts of extreme-condition camera gear, but they won’t remember to put on heavy socks or a hat. Fact is, if you’re not comfortable and warm, your photography is going to suffer. And it would really stink to miss that perfect shot because you ended up half-frozen and had to quit early. So remember what your mother told you: dress in layers for extra warmth (and that means bottoms as well as tops – wearing three shirts and a parka, but just a pair of blue jeans is a dumb idea).

Gloves are a constant problem for photographers. We need our fingers to be warm, but bulky gloves make it impossible to press those little control buttons. The trick is finding gloves light enough to keep you protected but not too heavy to interfere with the controls. Or, as some prefer, buy the gloves with the removable fingertips. Myself, I stick with lighter weight gloves, but I throw one of those one-time-use glove warmer packs in my pockets. That way even if my fingers start to freeze, I can stick them into my pockets and grab the hand warmers to erase the chill.

Likewise, invest in the proper footwear. Sneakers are a definite sign of failure, whereas good hiking boots might work for light snow, and real winter boots are absolutely necessary for slogging through the drifts. In fact, if you’re really planning on hitting the outback in the snow, it’s worth looking into a pair of snow shoes or possibly cross country skies as a way to get around (my preference is snowshoes). Either will make it much easier for you to access remote locations, and do so without expending huge amounts of energy plowing through snow up to your waist.

Here’s one thing you don’t need a specialized version of – a background.

If this sounds counterintuitive, it isn’t. Although there are plenty of vendors ready to sell you everything from sheet paper to expensive muslin backgrounds, the reality is that you don’t need them. You have all the background you need already around you.

This shot wasn’t taken in a studio. It wasn’t taken at a state park, or a preserve, or a garden. It was taken in someone’s backyard.

The simplest setup needs only a blank, white wall. If you’re doing head-and-shoulder style portraits, and you place your model several feet from the wall and then light both independently, you’ll have a nice portrait. Let’s say you get fancy and put a color gel on the BG light, then shoot it through something (glasses, a plant, etc) to add some shadow textures – at this point, you’ve completely left the realm of “mugshots.” For proof, take a look at the Stobist site, where David Hobby regularly turns the walls of hotel conference rooms into BGs. If you can do it with a Holiday Inn, you can do it anywhere.

Personally, I don’t like artificial BGs nearly as much as I like natural ones. In my latest portrait shoot, I used white roll paper in the studio and got some great shots. But my favorite frames came afterwards, when we were doing the last few outside. And we didn’t go anyplace exotic to get them – far from it, we were in a side yard.

As you can see from my sketch, this is your fairly typical, rural yard. We’ve got our big pine tree with the rope swing as a central point, but surrounding it we’ve got the house, a fire pit, a pile of kid toys, a horse trailer, and a fenced-in pasture. Some elements, like the pasture, could be useful as a BG (most places will lack a pasture, but a garden, or a small wooded/brushy area will work just as well). Most of the other features, not so much – nobody really wants a pile of kids toys in their senior portrait.

The key then is to setup your shot so that this distracting stuff isn’t visible. Sure, you could clone it out later, but why bother? It’s far easier to just get it right in-camera. In this case, I was lucky – the sun was already down near the tree line, so I was able to work in any direction I wanted without worrying about flare.

For the rope-swing shots, I setup with the pasture in the BG – it’s an area that will go nicely out of focus without any distracting elements. The kids toys and fire pit got hidden behind the pine tree; the house was kept out of the other side of the frame by the focal length.

Next, we shot some with the model up on the front porch. It’s a nice porch, which helps, but still we don’t want to see a lot of it. So I had her stand by one of the vertical posts and shot through some ornamental grass. The BG goes dark, and the foreground elements help disguise the location.

Turn it around with the model sitting on the porch rail, and the same trick still applies; the focal length keeps some hanging plants out of sight, the horse trailer is hidden behind the model, and the toys go far enough out of focus to pretty much disappear.

I guarantee you, you can walk into any backyard in your area and find several backgrounds against which you can shoot good portraits. It may take a little creativity, you may even have to accept that some elements are there and work them into the overall shot – but it can be done.

Remember – zoom in to discard distractions, play with angles to exclude elements, and find ways to hide things in plain sight.

** For all the photos here, I’m using the 400D & 28-135mm lens at 1/200th, f/5.6, ISO 200. A single strobe with a shoot-through umbrella provides key light, while the ambient provides fill.

The main portion of the shoot was studio-based and went pretty much as predicted, although there were some early issues to overcome. The home-office space that I used wasn’t quite as large as I would have liked, but worked better than any other option I had. Ideally the room would have been longer, to put more space between the model and backdrop.

On the other hand, that would have caused yet more problems, as my roll of background paper isn’t wide enough as it is. In fact, it was causing such problems during the setup test shots done with my assistant for the day, Mandy, that I ended up supplementing it. The quick fix was to cut off the length of paper, then roll out another. I overlapped the two pieces, taping the cut-off piece to the backdrop stand and the roll sheet using painter’s tape. (There was a seam line, but the BG light helped hide it, and a quick use of the Heal tool in Photoshop fixed the rest.)

As we were just about to get started – as in, the model had just arrived – the lightstand holding the BG light took a fall, and in slow motion I watched the flash explode – batteries, battery door, and baseplate all blew off. In an amazing bit of luck, the flash’s internal workings were undamaged, and I was able to jam the battery door back on. The baseplate plastic was broken, however, so instead of mounting it back to the light stand, Mandy became my voice-activated lightstand for the duration of the shoot.

A side note – of my three Nikon Speedlights, the other two already have homemade base plates on them. One I broke after buying and the other I got cheap because of the broken plate. Since I won’t ever use these on camera, it was no big deal to open up the bottoms, remove the hotshoe connections, and glue on a dummy baseplate – a piece of plastic the right size and shape, so they can still mount to the lightstands.

Using the clamshell lighting I talked about in the pre-game post, I shot four different outfits, each in a variety of poses, with some differences in the BG lighting. The BG light varied between 1/4 and 1/16 power, depending on the colored gel or lack thereof. The clamshell strobes were set to 1/4 and 1/8. All were shot with a Canon 400D & 17-40mm lens combo at 1/200th, f/4, & ISO 200.

Clamshell lighting really is a great technique – the effect is smooth and well diffused, and shadows are minimized, especially against a white BG. It’s also easy to setup and work with – the lighted area is actually fairly large, so small movements in the model’s position don’t require resetting of the strobes.

After packing up the studio, we made a quick stop at the client’s grandparent’s house, where we did a few more outdoor shots. We were looking to capitalize on the foliage – aided by the lovely afternoon weather – and we weren’t disappointed. A rope swing in the side yard became the main site, and lit by a single flash, we were able to capture some amazing shots!

The outdoor shots are lit once more by a single strobe with a shoot-through umbrella, held aloft by my assistant. I was shooting at the max sync speed, f/5.6, ISO 200, with the flash on either full or 1/2 power to balance out the afternoon ambient.

I still cannot recommend this technique enough – once you nail down the ratio of strobe to ambient – this took me about a minute’s worth of test shots – it remains constant as long as the light doesn’t change. (And even then, gradual shifts in lighting are easily compensated for on-camera.)

All told, I took over 500 photos during the afternoon. Edited down, the client will only get a fraction of that number – but still, I don’t envy their job of picking the ones they want printed!

While we were there, the Fall Festival was taking place. The primary attraction? Giant pumpkins; huge, oversized, mutant pumpkins, pumpkins that are small if they only weight 800 lbs. Pumpkins so large that it takes a front-end loader to lift them onto the scale. Pumpkins that, after being weighed in and admired, are the next day hollowed out and floated across the lake in a regatta (I didn’t get to see that part, sadly). It is a quintessentially American celebration in the most quintessential of American towns – a celebration of home-grown excess coupled with bizarrity. And it was wonderful.

The weather was lovely, a blue autumn sky and puffy clouds in the morning, the sort of day where you don’t need the “vivid” setting on the camera – lift itself is vivid enough. I was using the G10 all day, carried along for convenience. This was a trip to make photos, but primarily it was a trip to get away and spend some time with Mandy, so juggling the DSLR and lenses was out. But that didn’t matter, the little Powershot was plenty: at ISO 80 and f/8, I was still getting good shutter speeds, and everything from here to Canada was in sharp focus.

In a place like this, where everything looks scenic, I tried to take shots that would show something true about it. The Fall Festival was remarkable for the pumpkins; the main street for its lovely, olden-time charm; the lake for the reflection of the sky and foliage on the water.

I ended by the lake, in a small park at the very headwaters of the Susquehanna River. It is hard to believe that such a large river, a river I grew up around, has such modest beginnings, but then I suppose that’s the way of most things. I spent some time photographing the headwaters, trying to capture the green tint. And I spent some more time photographing sailboats at their moorings, with the whole lake and autumn hills behind.

This was the most challenging set of the day; the scene was beautiful, but the light was starting to fall flat as the clouds built up. Without a tripod, true HDR was out of the question (the G10′s continuous shutter speed is far too slow to try and handhold three exposures). I settled for shooting a single RAW file at the best exposure I could get, and then processing it into a psuedo-HDR image at home. It was just enough to kick an edge back into the scene, without looking too fake.

This is the time of year when photographers should be out and about. It is a time filled with festivals, filled with celebrations of the harvest and of life, when small towns really shine and the hills are filled with color. Pretty soon we’ll all be griping about winter, dragging on in its third month of gloom. Find the time to enjoy autumn while we have it.

On the 23rd, SMP posted “Idaho Wedding Filled with Style,” which is very, very cool (be sure to check out the link for photos by Stephanie Fay ). The location, aside from being in Idaho, is the bride’s parent’s backyard – take this as proof that a modest setting can become an amazing set. The large lawn and fields give some wide open spaces, but it’s what the happy couple did with those spaces that rocks.

Essentially, they built a rustic church on-site. Or at least, part of a rustic church. Windows mounted in pieces of walls, a framed doorway, a plank platform for the ceremony – all of it constructed out of weathered old boards, apparently by the bride’s younger brother, and propped up around the perimeter of the seats and platform.

It’s like sitting inside of a rustic American Stonehenge, open to the sky, with a startlingly yellow dresser forming the altar. This is better than a Hollywood set – it’s beautiful, it’s unique, and it must have been heartbreaking to take it down afterwards.

From a photographic standpoint, this is a no-brainer. You’ve got the best elements of a building (windows, doors) without the all-enclosing aspect that would normally leave you praying for light. Add to that a beautifully overcast day, and you’re left with lovely, diffused light that makes bright colors glow.

Check out Part II for some lovely portrait and detail work, but also for a nice example of some Strobist-style lighting. Notice that the ambient is kicked down about two stops, with a warm-gelled flash providing fill on the foreground wall. The end result reminds you of how it would look lit by an old oil lamp. It’s an edgy look, and I have to wonder if the photographer did any other shots that way.

Me, I’d have been tempted to shoot much more of the day that way. Don’t get me wrong, that diffused ambient lighting is wonderful. But mix in some strobes and you have the chance to really kick it up a notch. The colors in the sky would saturate, and the whole scene would take on an almost surreal look. You could even think about really working the whole oil lamp look and placing your strobes to emulate that light; this would be a rare occasion to make long shadows work for you, instead of trying to eliminate or hide them as we’d usually do.

I am not second guessing Ms. Fay or saying that she did anything wrong – far from it, I think she did a wonderful job. I am simply looking at the situation and seeing something that I like, and would have pursued further in terms of style. This is what we should all be doing as photographers when we study the work of our peers/competition; reverse engineering the elements we like, and then taking them a step further, flavoring them with our own personal styles.

You can teach a chimp to copy a setup; you have to be an artist to borrow an idea, work with it, and make it your own. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to borrow elements of this setup someday. First, I have to find someone who can build it.

Salt Springs is my favorite park out of all the ones I’ve visited, in any state. What is has to offer in terms of landscape and opportunities is completely unique. And because it stays under the radar, it is a quiet park, where solitude is easy to find. It is the Cinderella of the PA State Park system; doesn’t look like much from the outside, but get to know it, and it’s a real gem.

Driving in the main entrance, the road turns to dirt and crosses a bridge over Silver Creek. A branch road just before the bridge goes off into the woods to the left, past a pavilion barn and down to a small cluster of cabins and camp sites along the bank of Silver Creek. The cabins are fairly new, and while rustic, appear to be very pleasant to stay in.

Across the bridge there is a house on each side of the road; on the left is a private residence, on the right is the Wheaton House, home to the park office. The road continues around back of the Wheaton House, where there is an entrance to the parking lot. Of particular interest is the barn and fenced areas next to the parking lot, which house a half-dozen llamas. The llamas are great fun to interact with, and they will usually come to the fence to investigate you – especially if you offer handfuls of grass!

RESIDENT LLAMAS AT SALT SPRINGS STATE PARK

This parking lot is also the staging ground for the first series of hikes. Cross the road and Fall Brook via a footbridge, and you will find the first in a series of 5 parallel trails that along the creek. The Fall Brook trail follows the edge of Fall Brook, working upstream through a series of three waterfalls. The trail actually involves climbing the sides of these waterfalls; none are much over 15′, but the rocks are slippery, and in winter ice makes this trail nearly impossible.

WATERFALL ON FALL BROOK TRAIL

The next trail begins near the actual salt spring, from which the park takes its name. This is the Hemlock Trail, which climbs the hillside to an observation platform overlooking the waterfalls and gorge, amid a tall hemlock forest. The trail is steep at first, but overall is not a hard hike. The observation platform is a nice place to stop and admire the forest, but views down into the gorge are somewhat limited. The three other trails all form enlarged looks, connecting to the Hemlock Trails start and finish.

From the llama barn, continue up Salt Springs Road; you will crest the hill at a large field, which is regularly mowed for hay. The field is part of the park, and is a superb place from which to view the sunrise. Pull off onto the grass to park (be careful of soggy areas!); tripods can be setup right next to the road for great views of the hills to the east, or of the farm to the north. Across the road is private property, part of the farm that is visible. There are sometimes cattle in the field, and if you hike the Silver Creek Trail, which starts by the llamas, you will pass through cattle gates when crossing the cow path leading up to this field.

SUNRISE FROM THE FIELD AT SALT SPRINGS

COWS AT SALT SPRINGS

Follow Salt Springs Road farther and you arrive at a four-way intersection; the only option is to turn left, as the other directions are no longer open to traffic. Park in front of the signboard there, and the western road (Buckley Road) heads up the hill. When you reach the gate at the top, you will find the Meadow Trail, which leads through several grass fields situated at the top of the hill. These fields are also occasionally mowed for hay, but in between sport tall grasses and wildflowers. The trail ducks into the woods as it passes around and between fields, and there is ample evidence of the farm that once occupied this area, in the form of cellar holes and stone walls. This trail is fairly long and takes at least an hour to complete – longer if you stop to make photos. This is especially recommended in summer and autumn, when the fields and/or foliage is at its fullest.

FENCE POST IN THE HIGH FIELDS

The high fields are also reached via the Silver Creek Trail; trails at Salt Springs form a rough loop around the park, so for the intrepid hiker, it is possible to start in the main parking area and circumnavigate the entire park, returning to the parking lot at the end.

It is important to note that nearly all of the park is open to hunting. Be sure to check and see if a hunting season is open during your visit, and wear highly-visible clothing. It must also be noted that while the State of PA owns much of the park, a large portion of it actually belongs to the Friends of Salt Springs State Park, a private association dedicated to preservation and upkeep of the park.

After several years, I’ve still not hiked the woodland trails in the far southern section of the park, but my understanding is that they travel through a scenic forest, and offer overlook views from the backside of the hill.

No matter what you’re coming to the part to photograph, several items are essential. A tripod will be useful whether you’re shooting Fall Brook or the high fields; a polarizing filter and neutral density filter will also useful. The range of subjects here is almost limitless; macro, wide-angle, and telephoto lenses would all have application.

Finally, as always, do your utmost to respect the park, its visitors, and its rules. The folks who maintain Salt Springs do an excellent job.

LLAMA BARN AT SUNSET