Three Beautiful Things 09/11/15: Deep in the Suburban Woods, Photographing Light, Ale and Ducks at Quench

1.  It's a wooded suburban getaway. It's the closest campground area to our nation's capital. It's operated and taken care of by the National Park Service. It's Greenbelt Park. It's about ten minutes from our apartment home. Today I strolled the Perimeter Trail and parts of the Dogwood Trail, enjoying the heavily shaded trails and the local temperatures having dropped into the 80s.  Deep in the forest shade at one point, I saw a deer and a fawn, nearly completely camouflaged by the shadows and the woods. I stood and stared for a few seconds, realized they were too deep in the dark for a picture, and strolled on.

2.  I took mostly black and white pictures while I sauntered along these trails. With so much broken light in the woods, I decided to take pictures of the light and experimented with different shutter speeds and aperture, often taking several pictures of the same subject.  I'm still at the point in taking pictures where I don't yet foresee what a picture will look like when I open the shutter, but I make adjustments and then find out from the picture what I did.  I look forward to the day when I can imagine what I'd like a picture to look like and can confidently adjust the shutter speed and aperture to achieve that effect -- well, I do this once in a while -- but I'd like to do it more.  Here are some of the results of me photographing light today.  (If you'd like to see all 70 or so pictures I took, they are stored, here.

3.  Before the Deke and I went to chez Diaz for spaghetti dinner, we stopped in at the Quench Tap Room and I enjoyed two superb beers:  a big and fruity and not overly bitter IPA from a new brewer in Ellicott City, Maryland  called Manor Hill and I began our stop at Quench with an English strong ale brewed by Innis and Gunn,  straight outta Glasgow. It's a sweeter beer than I usually drink and perfectly so.  I loved it.  Our visit was made even more enjoyable by running into a U of O alum (Class of '87) named Robert.  He and I are both nervous about Oregon's tilt on Saturday with Michigan State and he gave me his card and volunteered to tell me about breweries in our region he's enjoyed if I just email him.