Pics of the little town we are going to

[mathjak107]

we live full time in nyc but have an eventual retirement home in the pocono mountains of pa. there is a very nice resort callrd sky top lodge right near us. it used to be a private good ole boys club for the wealthy but have no opened it up to the public.the grounds are beautiful

 

[mathjak107]

giving up nyc for this

This will be our new home,

 

[Rambler]

Beautiful...I'm green with envy!

R

 

[haha]

You guys are going to have big adjustments to make.

Ha

 

[Goonie]

I've been through the Poconos area many times, and it's simply beautiful!!! It's a lot like where I live, 'cept with mountains! You've found a very nice new home there too!

As much as I love NYC and all that it has to offer, I think that I would much rather live out in the Poconos and play & visit the big city! Much the same as I like going to Chicago and having fun, but I really like livin' out here in the sticks 80 miles away!!!

You guys are going to have big adjustments to make.

Ha

Ain't that the truth!!! But on the bright side, whenever ya need a 'fix' of the Big Apple, it's only about an hour & half away...'bout the same as me and the Windy City!!! Far enough, but not too far...close enough, but not too close!

 

[audreyh1]

Wow - extraordinary! What a beautiful area!

Audrey

 

[Ronstar]

You cant beat a place that has fudge, bait, beer and fried chicken all under one roof!

 

[Goonie]

You cant beat a place that has fudge, bait, beer and fried chicken all under one roof!

Amen!!!

 

[audreyh1]

You cant beat a place that has fudge, bait, beer and fried chicken all under one roof!

Not to mention parking! LOL!

 

[Notmuchlonger]

How were these pictures taken?

 

[audreyh1]

The photos are extremely saturated. But with overcast skies, colors do tend to be intense. They look great.

Audrey

P.S. and some of the sky colors have me thinking "polarizer"?

 

[NW-Bound]

Nice pictures. I think the OP has some photo processing software!

 

[freebird5825]

You're killing me here...first NYC, now the Poconos.
We used to drive to the Poconos from East Nowhere, every single April for an advance taste of spring. So nice to see some of the old stomping grounds of my salad days again.

Best of luck in your beautiful home. It looks like a dream come true.

 

[mathjak107]

The photos are extremely saturated. But with overcast skies, colors do tend to be intense. They look great.

Audrey

P.S. and some of the sky colors have me thinking "polarizer"?

yes polarizer but more important is we do whats called light inversions. its almost like hdr photography where you combine 3 different exposures to get 1 super extended range picture except i use 1 well exposed picture.

if you picture squeezing a spring to fit in a box if you squeeze the spring on the ends you will get a smaller but very natural version of what you had, however if you squeeze the spring in different parts and not end to end you can get very different looks... well we squeeze the spring in different spots and we can control the look from very cartoon like to very natural and everything in between.

normally the sky is brighter then the ground, but what if you make the ground brighter then the sky? or dark objects lighter and light objects darker... now you get the idea. i use software called photomatix to do this

 

[audreyh1]

I've played around with using Photoshop to darken and then increase the contrast in the sky, and to "punch up" the high tones in the foreground by using layers and different blending modes for background versus foreground or highlights versus shadows. A trick I sometimes use is to multiply the sky layer with itself to create more drama - that can result in the "sky darker than foreground" situation. You usually have to turn the opacity of the sky layer way down so it looks "natural".

I've also done multiple exposures of the same scene in the field to extend the range in a tough exposure situation. Or just use multiple "exposures" from the camera raw file for combining. Didn't know I was doing HDR! I was just thinking of the equivalent of an ND grad type filter but achieving same through multiple exposures and then blending doing the graduated overlays in Photoshop.

I'll have to check out that Photomatix software - looks like something I might could use. I do a LOT of landscape photography. Thanks for sharing!

Audrey

 

[audreyh1]

Here is a scene where I created two different exposures in Camera Raw and then combined them in Photoshop so that I could bring out all the fine line details in the foreground sand dunes without over-darkening the background.

Dunes at Clam Beach, near McKinleyville CA

 

[target2019]

Here's a piece of software for Windows can look at JPG and discern quite a bit of information.

 

[mathjak107]

nice merge audrey... sometimes ill just merge when i want a realistic clean look, but more ofton then not if im going to all the trouble to take and work with multiple exposures im going for the gold ha ha ha... my wife is much subtler then me so she also goes for a more natural look.

 

[Khan]

Some serious fieldstone in the main building.

 

[mathjak107]

we have lots of lakes all around us, nothing like a frosty morning

A nice crisp fall morning of 28 degrees at 5:30 am

 

[freebird5825]

Already only 28 degrees at 530 AM , or are these from last year?

 

[mathjak107]

yep last fall... we are about 1500 ft up so weather can be pretty cool... before we bought up there the broker told us the weather was just like we were used to in nyc....ha ha ha 55" of snow and 12 degrees cooler all the time isnt exactley nyc weather ha ha ha .

 

[tjon72]

Excellent fotos !!