Tag: Lake Champlain

Categories
Landscape

Champ Spotted!

Champ is taking advantage of the high water in the lake to make the rounds to businesses he can’t normally reach. Here he is outside the Vermont Lake Monsters front office down at the King St. ferry dock in Burlington.

Champ, Lake Champlain's lake monster, is back in his element.

He’s not very bashful right now and hung around for a few portraits while I was walking around the waterfront.

For those of you that haven’t made it down to Perkins Pier to see the flooding, here are a few shots of what it looks like now. According to NOAA, the lake is at 100.7′. I’ve heard reports that it is supposed to crest 101′ and with 80″ of snow remaining on Mt. Mansfield I have little doubt that we’ll get there.

Normally, these benches are a nice place to watch the sun set and be safe from waves. Today, you’d be hard pressed to get out there without hip waders.

For comparison, here’s what it looked like last March. The dark line on the water is the Burlington breakwater which is completely submerged right now.

An early March sun sets behind the Adirondack mountains and Lake Champlain.

Categories
Event Photography Sports

Unplugged Half Marathon

Note – all of these photos and many, many more are available on SkiPix.com. If you ran, you should hop over and check it out. There are prints, posters, magnets, and even digital downloads if you want to use these on Facebook.

This past Saturday, Run Vermont organized the 5th Annual Unplugged Half Marathon along the Burlington, VT waterfront of Lake Champlain. 600 runners pre-registered for what can be a questionable day by the lake. Some years, we get freezing temperatures, cold winds, and even snow. This year, it was in the mid to upper 30’s at the start and it got downright warm once the race was under way. Even standing at my first location, I was able to take off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and enjoy the sunshine.

The course is the same every year, as far as I’m aware. It starts in Colchester, just over the Burlington line (aka the Winooski River) where it makes a quick loop through some neighborhoods before joining up with the Burlington Bike Path and heading due south along the lake shore. This is the third year I’ve photographed this event and I try not to shoot the same location twice in a row. This year, I was drawn back to the bridge over the Winooski where the curved lines make for interesting framing and the sun really highlights what a beautiful day we had.

Most of the events I photograph are filled with a relaxed crowd, out to have a good time, but this one seems exceptional. Some people will run through the “photo trap” with arms around their running partners,

some smile & chat

make a point to wave hello and / or thank me for being out there (it really is my pleasure)

or suggest that world peace is the answer (at least, I think she was saying that and not whirled peas.)

When I moved to Oakledge Park to take some photos by the lake with Burlington in the background, I came across this group of fans cheering for someone’s mom if I remember correctly.

They certainly caught the runners’ attention as they came through the park!

Near the end of the race, they really encourage you to finish strong.

No, seriously, the truck drivers that go through there did an amazing job navigating the fans, runners, and cones. And the runners knew the trucks didn’t really want to run them over.

Thanks for putting on another great race, Joe!  I’ll see you next year.

Categories
Nature Photograph

Before and After: Flooding on Vermont’s Winooski River

A few weeks ago, I walked down to the Winooski River on the boarder between Williston and Essex. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to walk around, but somehow I had never stopped until that day. I was surprised to see that you can walk all the way down onto the rocks and “in” to the river. I walked down pretty far and scrambled over the rocks, looking for the shot I had in my head. I’m not sure I found it, but it was a fun experience.

Yesterday, after two days of heavy rain all across Vermont, my commute was redirected because of flooding and I passed by the same spot.  I had to stop. The contrast to just two weeks ago was astounding. It looked like we had been transported back to April or May with the spring runoff raging down the river.

You see those rocks straight across the river? That’s where I was standing for the above picture.  For the photograph below, I was standing just to the right of the building in the photo above.

I’ll finish off the post with a panoramic photo snapped on that day a few weeks ago. The river almost looks like a pleasant place to hop in with an innertube and float towards Lake Champlain (well — except for the knowledge that there are a few dams and waterfalls along the way…)

Categories
Family Photograph Portraits

Outdoor Family Photographs on a Beautiful Vermont Morning

This past Saturday, I spent the morning at Oakledge Park in Burlington with Courtney, Kinsley, Andrew, and Connor . We had a great time wandering around the park, taking a combination of posed and candid photos. When you have an almost four year old involved, you never know what you’re going to get, but both kids were in good moods, very well behaved, and we had a great time making some photos.

We started on the swings, spidering, which turns out to be one of Kinsley’s favorites things to do. It was a good way to relax and get into the swing of taking some photos.

Then we settled into some posed photographs for a little while

Totally unprompted, and they struck almost exactly the same pose.

If you go to Oakledge, you can’t miss out on the giant treehouse, so we headed up there next.

What’s Cody drawing in the sand?

“I love you, Dad” of course.  What a great kid!

I think this is my favorite series from the whole day!

It’s hard to argue with a quote like this, “The pics are SOOO great THANK YOU!!!!  It really was fun shooting pics! The best part was the kids thought so too!”  I had a great time, too, Courtney!  Thanks for the opportunity to hang out with you and make some great photos.

Categories
Nature Photograph

Lake Champlain or Icelandic hot spring?

The Burlington Free Press recently posted an article about algae growth in Lake Champlain triggered by the recent heat wave and lack of winds.  As soon as I saw their photos of milky-blue water, I was transported back more than 4 years to a quick trip we took to Iceland.  On the day we arrived (on the red eye from Kennedy airport) we booked an afternoon at the Blue Lagoon to relax in the hot springs and try to recuperate for the next three days. When we arrived at the spa, the water rendered us speechless.

The next day we toured around and saw some of the other natural hot springs that are close to Reykjavík. Amazingly, many of these other pools of water had similarly mystical colors. The second shot below doesn’t really capture the vibrancy of the water – it almost glowed when contrasted to the yellow/gray rocks surrounding it.

Incidentally, if you’re headed to Iceland I recommend taking a half day or so at the Blue Lagoon to adjust.  Heck, if you’ve got a layover in Keflavik, I believe they run shuttle busses for those folks that want a quick dip or massage.  If you’re staying a few hours, though, why not just extend your trip and stay the weekend or longer.  Iceland was wonderful to us and we’d go back again in a heartbeat.