Kayaking at the Point
Kayak on the River
On waters flecked with gold a kayaker rounds the Point in Pittsburgh where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers come together to form the Ohio.
I took this photo and the one below during the Three Rivers Arts Festival in June 2014. Today looked much the same as I drove through downtown Pittsburgh and looked at the rivers. Because the kayaker is in silhouette it was a little difficult to tell what he’s doing so I wanted to capture a shot with a clear shape of the paddle somewhere in the image, but the silhouette itself and the angle of the kayaker made that nearly impossible. I walked along the wharf keeping the kayaker in the line of the sun’s reflection, taking photos all the way, hoping I wouldn’t run into someone in the crowds at the festival and also hoping I wouldn’t just walk off the edge of the wharf.
I was rewarded with the photo above, also capturing the clear and focused sparkles in the front and softened sparkles behind the subject, and absolutely nothing else but him in the water. Below, I also wanted to get that fantastic sun that turned out so cool in so many of these photos, as well as a bridge and the hills beyond, so “Pittsburgh”.
Kayaking at the Point
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Magic
Outlying Planet
More bubbles from the festival.
Foreign Sun
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The Magic of Bubbles
Reaching for the bubbles.
Along with everyone else I was enchanted by the huge bubbles people were making! Two long sticks with a 36″ loop of rope between were dipped into five-gallon buckets of bubble solution then held up to the breeze coming off the river. Sometimes one long bubble would form like a long tube, but if the wind moved about or the make moved the sticks it would twist and fold on itself or break into individual bubbles.
Of course, I had to get the bubbles and the fountain together in a few photos.
The best bubble of all.
This perfect bubble moved on the wind through the crowd…
This bubble went floating by…
…then suddenly, pop!
Then…pop!
The most wonderful thing was that everyone around the bubbles was smiling! The light was a little too dim to get a good photo of it, though.
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All images in this post are copyright © Bernadette E. Kazmarski and may not be used without prior written permission.
The Sun and Water
The Glow of Light and Water
I was enchanted by that big yellow ball in the sky and what it did to the scene of people and pavement and water; this is another in the series of photos from the Three Rivers Arts Festival. The photos above and below were taken through the spray that blew off the fountain over the water, and the sun is refracted through all those flying droplets, some of them landing on my camera lens. The blending of color from white hot to pale yellow to orange to red in the sun is pulled apart into a pattern that I didn’t notice at first until I started playing around with the RAW photos. I ended up not modifying them at all, I liked them just as shot, including a few others that are kind of abstract, shot through the fountain spire and fans.
The photo above shows a man and a little girl walking hand in hand, and I took a few shots as they walked past the yellow path on the water made by the glowing sun. The little girl stopped to point at something and the man paused.
The photo below is blurred, and that was unintentional—it was the first one I took as the two walked toward the path of light and my camera was finding its focus on the droplets of water flying around me, but I like the softened effect, and also the fact they are just stepping into the path.
Entering The Sun’s Path
In the photos below, I intentionally shot with the sun shining into the fountain, trying to capture the little gold droplets as the water fell from the spire along with just tiny hints of the landscape beyond.
Fountain Spray
Catching a few droplets falling, and one person through the opening.
Below, a little more abstract as the sun touches one thing after another.
Fountain Abstract
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The Fountain at The Point
Two young girls run through the wading pool around the fountain.
I went to a concert at our annual Three Rivers Arts Festival weekend before last, and I captured so many images I was absolutely overwhelmed—as well as busy with a big project in house so I barely had a chance to review and edit photos. I realize it’s been a week since I posted anything at all! But a little distance from all those photos and getting the big project done gave me a little more perspective and choosing and editing images was actually easier.
The Point at Pittsburgh is the headwaters of the Ohio River, and the reason Pittsburgh exists where it does. The Allegheny River flows from the northeast and the Monongahela River flows from the south east and they come to a confluence in this valley and flow on to West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois until it reaches the Mississippi River in Cairo, Illinois. It’s an interesting feeling to stand above this point and see the rivers come together and flow off through this landscape that was once so scarred by industry and pollution, but which is now clean and green, the hills still tree-covered, the waters, well, I’ve had a swim in each of the rivers.
People gather at the point during the festival.
The most surprising thing is the point itself. Because river travel was so important for industry, this very point was once the site of factories and warehouses, trainyards, docks and even coal tipples that loaded barges and boats to carry raw and finished materials from the hinterlands of Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia into Pittsburgh, and picking up more to travel down the Ohio. If you’ve ever seen the land left behind after a steel mill or a chemical factory or a glass plant has moved on, it’s about as dead as the earth can be. But with the beginning of Pittsburgh’s Renaissance in the 1950s, this point of land was taken for a state park, rehabilitated and made a lovely place to visit and see the city and the rivers from a unique point of view—Pittsburgh is very hilly, and there aren’t many places that are this flat.
The fountain celebrates this spot with three short fans each facing a river, and the spire in the center fed by the “fourth river”, an underground river that flows out of Coal Hill or Mt. Washington directly underneath the Point.
The plate marking the Point.
The seal above is on the pavement near the edge of the wharf and has the names of each of the rivers on the side facing that river and also reads, “Point of Confluence, Point of Conflict, Point of Renewal”. A pentagonal shape marks the spot where Fort Duquesne once stood. I’ll be writing more about that with other photos coming in the next few days.
Below is a photo of the point from up on Mt. Washington from 2011 when the Point and the park were under construction so that you can get an idea where this fountain stands and see the confluence of two rivers that makes a third.
Pittsburgh
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All images in this post are copyright © Bernadette E. Kazmarski and may not be used without prior written permission.
Today 