Capturing the Moment

  Luckily I had my camera handy as I drove around Vermont yesterday. There had been a light dusting of snow the night before, and unusually cold temperatures for April made everything look like we were back in the middle of winter. It made for some fine snowboarding at Stowe, but also provided a wonderful chance for landscape photography.   I always enjoy the beauty of the farms that you can find out here. Old barns looking over vast fields have always caught my eye. It seems like every side road you take in this part of Vermont will eventually lead you to one of these beautiful farm scenes. Rolling mountains in the background add a bit of Vermont flare to the scene.   Something else that the mountains provide are rocky streams, cascading down the slopes. It is not hard to find a waterfall or two here, and now is the perfect time to capture moving water and frozen water in the same picture. I used a long exposure to blur the cascading falls as the icicles held ...

No visit from mom is complete without a trip to some gardens. Keeping with our theme of exploring new places we ventured upcountry to the small town of Kula, nestled 4000ft up the side of Haleakala volcano.   Here we found the lavender farms where you can find over forty kinds of lavender as well as many other flowers. The views from here are amazing. You overlook the entire valley below from Ma'alaea bay across to Kahului harbor. After walking through the gardens we stopped at the gift shop to try some of their famous lavender tea and lavender scones. I could eat about a million and a half of those scones. But at $3.50 apiece I settled on splitting one with mom. Jackson's chameleon strolling  Our next spot was the botanical gardens. I was hoping to spot a wild Jackson's chameleon and was lucky enough to find one ambling across the top of this wooden fence. This one had three big horns identifying it as a male. These chameleons were introduced here in Maui by a...