A Day of Spring Sketches
“Spring Morning Leaves”, pastel, 9″ x 12″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
When I looked out my kitchen window this morning, above is what I saw. I couldn’t paint it because the light was changing fast at that early hour, so I photographed it and worked on it a little later. I wanted to keep it leafy with a lot of movement, so I used all my pastels on their sides.
Below are two small sketches I did of Robinson Run along the Panhandle Trail. Both are pastel, and while there are areas I am very pleased with there are also areas I am not…but it just means I need to restock my field boxes of pastels with some of the colors I’m missing.
The first sketch was:
“Robinson Run Early Spring”, pastel, 8″ x 10″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
The second sketch was:
“The Swimming Hole in Spring”, pastel, 6″ x 8″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
Sands of Time
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
Welcome to the Neighborhood
The Pink Birdhouse
Hand made birdhouses, created by local kids in school, hang in young maples along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Township. You can’t miss this one! And it looks like the birds have noticed it as well—this one is either showing signs of occupation from last year, or a new resident this year.
Moonlit Sycamores
Moonlit Sycamores
The Cold Moon of December is not quite full but illumines the land with the cool blue of coming winter in the deep dusk of a winter evening.
Twilight on the Trail
Twilight on the Trail
There is magic as the landscape becomes a velvety darkness beneath the bright sky on a clear autumn evening.
What Does Silence Look Like? 2010
Summer Silence
On a still, hot afternoon, the time of day in the time of year when sensible wildlife take refuge in shade and rest, and even insects take a break in their brief but incessant calling for the continuation of their species, I encountered a trail off into time.
At first my ears rang with the silence of the afternoon and of my own stillness, accustomed to the noise of my daily life, the radio programs I listen to, the white noise of my computer, the sounds of my neighbors going about their summer days drifting into my windows, the thoughts that accompany my own daily activities.
Then, in the same way we let our eyes adjust to darkness and suddenly we can see all about us, I let my ears adjust to the silence and heard the slight rustle of a breeze in the very tops of the black willows, crickets in the grass, the occasional chirp or click of other insects, an occasional bird moving from one branch to another. My mind was momentarily as empty as the air with the resting of my senses.
This trail off the trail leading through woods to a field was so enticing but time was elusive.
I remember exploring the woods and fields that still existed when I was young, following a path just because it was there, soaking up the sun and heat of a summer afternoon and filling my senses with all it offered.
Because our daily lives are so full of activity we rarely experience silence, or at least the quiet that generations of people heard before us, before we had so many ingenious motorized things and methods of transportation, then there are those cell phones ringing everywhere and one-sided conversations. Even once we escape all these noisemakers our silence today is rarely complete. It is, however, restful to the ears and to the soul, as I find in an afternoon outing on the trail, in the woods, out in a field somewhere.
A few minutes into my trek onto the trail, no matter the season or the weather, and the reduction of sounds has an impact on me that nothing else ever does. I don’t realize until then how I’m often breathing shallowly or even holding my breath, gritting my teeth, holding my shoulders rigid, even when I think I’m relaxed and happy and ready to stay all day, or forever.
This Is Not A Sunflower, 2011
False Sunflower with bud for next in line.
Actually, it is a false sunflower, but of all the woodland sunflowers I saw this weekend on the Panhandle Trail, I liked this one the best. Those five petals are so deliberate that they are difficult to ignore, and remind me of a wind turbine. Most sunflowers have petals, or rays, all the way around the central disk, but this one has apparently chosen, by genetics, to have only five. this variety, Heliopsis helianthoides, can have anywhere between five and eight. All the plants in this area with similar leaves and stems had five rays, yet in other areas along the trail, I know I’ve seen others with six rays and more. I guess they each have their own territory.
And the photo below is interesting in its own right. I use several different lenses when I photograph wildflowers, and I also manually change the settings, shooting “dark” so that I get all the highlights in the petals where the sun highlights them, for instance, while the background detail fades to focus interest on the flower. I usually have to adjust the levels when I get into PhotoShop, to lighten it up a bit. Often, I’ll simply choose “auto levels” and see what happens. I rarely like what it does—it’s usually too contrasty for me—but it often shows me elements of the image I wouldn’t see otherwise, like this! This photo began with the same color ranges as the one above, but who would think there would be blue and purple in the background and no green? And that zappy yellow! I love the effect.
Zappy Sunflowers
The Fine Art of Making a Snowcone
The fine art of making a snowcone.
A few more photos from Rock the Quarry yesterday, and two young ladies in pink waiting for their rainbow snowcone.
The making of snowcones is a family affair for the woman in charge here; I didn’t realize when I ran out to the snowcone truck when it came around my neighborhood I’d meet those same people again one day as an adult.
Rainbow snowcone is done.
How Did They Get It There?
American Flag Reflects
A fairly large flag hangs on the highwall of the old limestone quarry, above the quarry pond, along the Panhandle Trail in Walker’s Mill, near Pittsburgh, PA. Today the event was “Rock the Quarry XII”, an annual two-day community event that also raises funds for the trail development and maintenance. The trail runs along an abandoned railway line and through the older part of a limestone quarry (part of it is still quite active), and the festival has music and food vendors and games for visitors.
Fossil: 2011
Fossil
Just a pattern in the rock, or a fossil?
We visited Fossils Cliff in Collier Township, the limestone layers in the valley the ideal for finding impressions of archaic living beings between the layers. Sometimes the patterns were clearly just a pattern of the layers settling against each other, but other patterns clearly looked organic. This, to me, looks like a spine and perhaps even ribs. It’s about 12″ long and on the underside of an outcrop, impossible to take away.
I came home with a pocket full of smaller possibilities.
Now there’s a place I’d like to be on a 97 degree day—under a limestone outcropping in the woods looking for fossils! I’ve meant to go back, I think it might be time.
Me and My Shadow: 2011
Damselfly
A busy damselfly pauses on a leaf, her shadow clear in the bright mid-day sun. She looks right at me and seems just as curious of me as I am of her.
I’m not as informed about damselflies as I could be and can’t really identify this one beyond a few guesses. I found it as I was wading in Robinson Run in Collier Township, Pennsylvania.
A Day In the Woods: 2011
Looking Forward
I enjoyed this day so much last year, and this photo has become one of my favorites of all time for so many reasons: the literal and metaphorical meanings behind my great-niece standing in shallow water, looking upstream, the ripples rolling out from her, she is growing up; the colors and spatters of sun on the water, and how much she reminded me of myself at that age, going barefoot and carrying my shoes, which I still do as I was standing barefoot in the water behind her with my camera, and the practicality of a bathing suit she can grow into, tied in a knot in the back because it was a little too big for her right then. I have a large print of this in my home to enjoy and wonder how I caught such a moment.
I spent Sunday afternoon in the woods along the Panhandle Trail with my great-niece and and great-nephew, 9 and 11, just to run around, explore, be outdoors and make up our own activities with whatever was there—paths up and down hills, wildflowers, trees, a stream (Robinson Run), a trail made from an ex-train track (rail-to-trail), and an absolutely perfect day.
And we did. We did everything. I was so happy to have someone to play with, a few sun-warmed black raspberries and muck on our feet. Above is one of my favorite photos for the light, the color, the composition and the memories; that might have been me forty-odd years ago wading in a stream barefoot, carrying my shoes. It’s my great-niece Cassidy, just as fearless as I was then, and we were joined by her brother Kyler. We enjoyed exploring the woods, but we liked being in the water best. They live in Savannah, GA now, 88 degrees “is kind of like what it’s like in the spring,” but their streams happen to have alligators so they can’t go swimming like you can here.
And the rope swing…there is nothing like swinging on a rope swing, even if you don’t go too high it’s just that feeling of freedom, letting go, waving your feet around—the things that usually carry you around are off the ground!
Yes, their great-aunt was right there in the woods and the water and the rope swing with them, who do you think showed the way and was the first in the water and the first on the swing? But I had the camera so there were no photos of me.
I was also scouting places to paint and this year I’m determined to get out there. One little casualty was that I slipped sideways and my little Lumix digital went underwater in my pocket. It was out of order until I could take it apart and things could dry out a little and I got some action from it; I put it in my gas oven with the warm pilot light overnight and today it works but I need to replace the battery pack. I looked at the waterproof cameras for a reason, but they just didn’t take good photos. The other casualty from the same little slip-up, and more serious, was my 70-300 zoom lens for my Pentax K10D. I think it may come back too, but I am awfully fond of that lens. My camera bag is breaking down and took on water where it never used to.
Click here to see last year’s post for a brief slideshow of some of our events.
Great Spangled Fritillaries!
Great Spangled Fritillary on Milkweed.
What wildflowers are blooming in in the woods and fields lat spring through mid-summer? In my region, the greater Ohio Valley and a good bit of the northeastern US, we’ve transitioned from a lot of gentle greens with touches of white and yellow to brilliant yellows, oranges and pinks.
I’m documenting walks along local trails to capture the flora you’d see along the trails as you walked. I’m familiar enough with the trails near me to know what blooms when, since it’s been one of my projects for years, even before my digital camera. I’ve got loads of shots on film, but they aren’t in sequence as these are, though I’m catching up in scanning those.
I’ve created several slideshows of local woodland wildflowers which you can find on my regular website, which is where things went before WordPress came up with this wonderful software for blogging. If you hold your mouse over the image you’ll see the common common flower name at the top of each image.
This project is intended to one day become an online and perhaps print reference for the wildflowers of the Lower Chartiers Watershed, so I’ll be keeping them organized by trail. Wildflowers are amazingly predictable, and anyone else would be able to walk the trail around the same time I did in another year and see these wildflowers in about this sequence. So far I’ve visited the Panhandle Trail area, but I’ll also be visiting Kane’s Woods in Scott Township, Wingfield Pines in Upper St. Clair, to name a few.
These images are provided for familiarity rather than strict scientific identification; I am not a scientist, and my goal is first to take good photographs, then to give people a general appreciation of the beauty of their local wildflowers. The names are accurate, but I’ll keep to the most common name to make it easier for you to find these in guidebooks and pursue more information. Just enjoy looking at them.
You can see more flora, fauna and much else on my website under Photography.
In Pieces: 2010
In Pieces
Time for the annual trail cleanup on the Panhandle Trail in Collier, the trail I use most often since it’s so close. I know especially this section of trail because I’ll stop there on my way to or from other places and have a short walk in the peace and quiet of the valley, walking the smooth trail or moving off into the woods or following Robinson Run. I’ve studied and photographed and sketched and painted, identified wildflowers and birds, found interesting rocks and fossils all along this trail. Even just a quick visit will free my mind, an afternoon brings that transcendant experience that only nature can give me and so much inspiration that I’ve come away with a whole exhibit’s worth of ideas.
This spring it was more than picking up litter and patching and raking the crushed limestone surface—many downed trees and broken limbs lined the trail, including partially bent trees or branches which had fallen over in the snow but were left hanging, still partially attached. Anything unstable had to come down so that later in the year it wouldn’t come down in a summer storm and possibly injure a trail user, or simply come down of its own accord unexpectedly. Once we began I looked up and down the area we were working and realized the extent of what we needed to do…we’ll be out there a few more times before we’re done!
But we’ll have plenty of wood for the bonfires we have at events along the trail, and others who joined us had plenty too. The brush piles we left in the woods and the damaged trees we left standing will allow for new habitat, and the tree canopy along the trail will simply rearrange as the remaining trees grow fuller to fill the space left open.
I’ve been scheduling these images to post around midnight, but when I’ve set them up the past few days I forgot to actually hit “schedule”, so they’ve been sitting as drafts on the blog. I never realized! So “today” there are three photos.
I’ve written before about the Panhandle Trail, and you can choose it in the category drop-down list or use the search box at the top of the right column to collect other images. You can also visit the Panhandle Trail’s website.
Sands of Time: 2011
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
The Winter Trail
Winter Trail, pastel © B.E. Kazmarski
Despite today’s lovely snowfall, I need to catch up on not only photos but sketches as well. Last Sunday was a perfect sunny winter day, even somewhat warm by winter standards, warm enough that I would take my bike to the trail (I try not to ride below 45 degrees because of windburn), though my ultimate goal was the peace and relaxation of sketching something.
Reference Photo
I know the trail pretty well, where the shadows fall while the sun is still at its winter angle and where the trail itself stays icy until well into May. The Panhandle Trail was once a railroad line and has some deep cuts through limestone walls where it’s actually cool even on a hot summer day.
Of course, I thought I’d get a few sketches done, but only stopped at one area about two miles from the Walker’s Mill trailhead, at the bend where you can look across a little valley, Robinson Run and a flood plain to see one of the oldest cabins in the region, the Ewing-Walker-Glass Cabin, “rebuilt” in about 1750.
I’ll paint that someday, but I did the sketch above, “Winter Trail”, 9 x 12 in pastel—who ever said winter was colorless?—and the 5 x 7 pencil sketch below. Looks like I forgot to sign it…
Winter Trail Sketch, pencil © B.E. Kazmarski
Winter Afternoon on the Trail
Trail Sketch, pastel, © B.E. Kazmarski
I took a walk on the Panhandle Trail on Christmas day, a lovely sunny day and even fairly warm, no snow, but no rain either. Of course, there were many photo opportunities and one of my pleasures of being on the trail is also doing a sketch or two. Above is my sketch from Christmas day, just a nice spot on the trail, but nothing notable. I like to show the edges of a sketch, not sure why.
I hear about winter being “gray” or “brown” and somehow these colors are unpleasant and there are no others in the scene. Anyone who doesn’t see the the colors of a winter day just needs to stand still and let them happen. Below is the photo I took of the same scene, though it was near the time I was done and the light had changed somewhat. Still, there are blues and purples and reds and yellows to be found in highlights and shadows, and the light itself is always dramatic.
Trail Image
Moonlight Sycamores
Moonlit Sycamores
The Cold Moon of December is not quite full but illumines the land with the cool blue of coming winter in the deep dusk of a late autumn evening.
This Is Not A Sunflower
False Sunflower with bud for next in line.
Actually, it is a false sunflower, but of all the woodland sunflowers I saw this weekend on the Panhandle Trail, I liked this one the best. Those five petals are so deliberate that they are difficult to ignore, and remind me of a wind turbine. Most sunflowers have petals, or rays, all the way around the central disk, but this one has apparently chosen, by genetics, to have only five. this variety, Heliopsis helianthoides, can have anywhere between five and eight. All the plants in this area with similar leaves and stems had five rays, yet in other areas along the trail, I know I’ve seen others with six rays and more. I guess they each have their own territory.
And the photo below is interesting in its own right. I use several different lenses when I photograph wildflowers, and I also manually change the settings, shooting “dark” so that I get all the highlights in the petals where the sun highlights them, for instance, while the background detail fades to focus interest on the flower. I usually have to adjust the levels when I get into PhotoShop, to lighten it up a bit. Often, I’ll simply choose “auto levels” and see what happens. I rarely like what it does—it’s usually too contrasty for me—but it often shows me elements of the image I wouldn’t see otherwise, like this! This photo began with the same color ranges as the one above, but who would think there would be blue and purple in the background and no green? And that zappy yellow! I love the effect.
Zappy Sunflowers
Me and My Shadow
Damselfly
A busy damselfly pauses on a leaf, her shadow clear in the bright mid-day sun. She looks right at me and seems just as curious of me as I am of her.
I’m not as informed about damselflies as I could be and can’t really identify this one beyond a few guesses. I found it as I was wading in Robinson Run in Collier Township, Pennsylvania this weekend.
Fossil
Fossil
Just a pattern in the rock, or a fossil?
We visited Fossils Cliff in Collier Township on Sunday, the limestone layers in the valley the ideal for finding impressions of archaic living beings between the layers. Sometimes the patterns were clearly just a pattern of the layers settling against each other, but other patterns clearly looked organic. This, to me, looks like a spine and perhaps even ribs. It’s about 12″ long and on the underside of an outcrop, impossible to take away.
I came home with a pocket full of smaller possibilities.
Below is a photo of the cliff with my niece and her children and Bingo the dog at the bottom, to give a sense of scale. It is easily three times wider than this, and between visitors and natural rock activity pieces of limestone are constantly falling. The fossil above is right about the center of this photo, on the shadowed outcrop right above the top of the loose limestone. We could only step around on this loose limestone, no climbing for us!
Fossils Cliff
Sands of Time
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
Welcome to the Neighborhood
Welcome to the Neighborhood
Hand made birdhouses, created by local kids in school, hang in young maples along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Township. They’re not usually hung this close together, but these two look so neighborly.
Local kids finished their art project and hung their birdhouses at the end of last semester so the colors are still bright. I used one of the photos I’d taken just a few weeks ago on a cold sunny walk along the trail for a design project and the colors stayed with me. Today, bright enough in the morning but overcast by afternoon and without the reflected white light of total snowcover, the bright blues and pinks called to me.
I hope they’re calling to the birds too so I know where to find them when I go photographing later in the spring. But in the meantime I enjoy the bright flashes of color in the scrub along the trail.
