I was down in the Eminence area in November and stopped to photograph Alley Spring Mill, one of my favorite places in Missouri, where an early snow fell. I never have a chance to shoot the Mill there when it snows, so jumped at the opportunity to do so this time….
Beautiful as always…
I stopped at the Shaw`s Garden Arboretum the day before Christmas Eve on my way to work…to photograph the pretty snow we received….
sure was pretty !! 🙂
I was down at Eminence doing some rock and mineral collecting with friends late in August this year and decided to stop off at Rocky Falls on the way home to check it out again…the last time I had been there was colder and drab looking in March…..
…this time it was much prettier and much warmer….one of my models who also likes to collect rocks and minerals, was with me…we arrived late in the evening that Sunday and found a few locals swimming and playing in the falls as well. We hiked up to the top to look around so as not to bother them, and found some nice reflective pools at the top of the falls as well as some neat falls on the way up there….I photographed the falls with and without Josh….
Two weeks ago, I was driving to Eminence by way of the scenic route of Highway 19 in south central Missouri, returning from Black Rock, Arkansas on a rock hunting trip. I stopped by Falling Spring Mill just south of Winona, it had been several years since I had photographed it and I thought I would see how it was aging. On the way there, I passed by a few fields full of colorful black and white Jersey cows….
…and then I dropped off down into the hollow where the old mill is located, neat old one story mill with a huge iron overshot wheel next to it and next to that is a waterfall a few feet wide coming out of a bluff behind the mill building….
Last week I drove down to the Eminence area to do some rockhunting and had a couple of new rockhounds with me and Missy. I stopped off at the Summersville Mill the week before, on my way home and photographed it on a beautiful cloudy day…..
…it sits on the east side of town and has been restored recently….
…here we were a week later, driving down past it and I wondered if there was any good fall color in the Jacks Fork Valley, specifically thinking about Alley Spring Mill. We decided to stop and stretch our legs and find out….
Alley Spring Mill is one of my favorite mills to photograph, restored and preserved by the US Forest Service, and I have photographed it in the spring, summer, and winter months, but never in the fall with any good color, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a little bit of good color this time there. I also enjoyed the nice reflections in the rushing waters behind the mill….
…we then walked around to the spring side of the pond and shot back across….where again, there was just a litlte bit of color to be found there….
It`s been awhile since I have posted any new photos on my blog site, been super busy with work and have done quite a bit of rock collecting in the past few months. I was hoping we would have a great colorful fall season this year, but boy, it has been a really weird fall so far. We had more rain than the droughty summer last year, but had less color this year, plus cooler weather has come in sooner as well. For some reason, there has been better color up on the hillsides and hilltops, away from water sources, than there has been down in the creek and river valleys, where leaves have in many cases, just simply changed from green to brown. I was driving down to a rock hunting location last week, and spotted two beautiful young maple trees, maybe twenty feet high, side by side, and while one was a gorgeous orange and red mixture of color, the other one, not ten feet away, was still a bright green…I can`t even explain that, both are up on a hilltop in a residential yard right next to the highway. Traditionally, in east central Missouri, we see our trees turn color from green to reds, yellows, and oranges, around the second week of October, but here we now are nearing the end of the month and we still have trees cloaked completely in green, while some others have simply gone from green to brown.Â
Two weeks ago, I was driving to work and decided to stop off at Fenton, and shoot the color of the Meramac River bank on the south side of I-44, just west of the 270 interchange, and photograph the color above the river on the west facing bank that rises to the top of a high hill. There is a quarter mile stretch of trees that are usually cloaked in hues of reds and oranges for the most part, with a few yellows sprinkled in as well. I was able to walk down to the edge of the water and there was a neat snag in the water near the bank on my side that lent itself to the art of the scene…
…this is a spot that one can even walk across in the hot summer dry months, the water level gets down to knee deep or less. Today, .luckily, I had enough water from bank to bank for a neat reflection….
…and the closer I walked to the edge of the water, the better the reflection became….
…and that snag was just in the right spot….
..and even looking upstream toward the I-44 bridges, was pretty too, with a fisherman across the water….
Last week, Missy and I were out rockhunting once again and as we were driving down to the location, we came upon a side road and a quick glance down that road revealed a small doe, standing at the edge of that side road, in the edge of the brush, intently watching us as we were driving by. I quickly stopped, grabbed my camera, and slowly backed up to see if she was by chance, still there….she was….
..she was quite pretty and after a short stare down contest, she turned and jumped into the heavier cover brush….Â
…as we were leaving the rockhunting spot a bit later, we drove upon this beautiful reflection in a neat waterhole…
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On the way home from rockhunting in Eminence a few weeks ago, my new rockhunting friend Ray Pohlkotte from St Louis at the wheel, slowed down enough for me to photograph a beautiful double rainbow at the junction of Highways 21 and 72….’
…and then farther west up Highway 72, we came across this beautiful pastoral sunset near Highway TT….
Drove down to Dillard Mill one Sunday afternoon in May, had heard there were some flowering trees in bloom there, but after Missy and I walked down to the Mill itself, we didnt see any trees in bloom. Still it was quite pretty and the recent rainfall had the waterfall flowing at full strength….
The second day of my Arkansas vacation began with me driving down to Jolly Mill, located just west of Pierce City, Missouri and just south of Highway 60…its one of those water mills built before the Civil War that miraculously escaped the harm and wrath of the war and was restored by a group of concerned citizens a few years ago too. I photographed several old mills several years ago, and there are some websites and books devoted to old mills across the country and around the world. I like to photograph old mills and old barns that are well taken care of, they make great backdrops for modeling work too.
I had talked to a young guy who lives just south of Jolly Mill and he agreed to meet me there Saturday morning and shoot some photos with me, so I pulled in about 8:15 am and not seeing him there, turned Missy loose in the parking lot for a few minutes while I got my camera and prepared to shoot the old mill. There were a few fly fishermen in the stream, which is Capps Creek, spring fed and runs into Shoal Creek which feeds Grand Falls at Joplin, and is maintained by the Conservation Department who stocks it with brown trout for the fishermen. There is an old steel truss bridge on either end above and below the Mill and there is a high water manmade dam next to the mill that creates the millpond just above the mill…
…and a big ole Sycamore tree right behind the mill blocks pretty much any view from the millside of the stream below it too…the main problem with photographing the mill, I found out, is that the property on the other side of the mill is marked private, no trespassing, and that would be the ideal position to be to photograph it properly, but I decided not to put my waders on nor venture over to the other side. I`m big on getting reflections in my photos when possible, but opted against it this time. I settled for what I could get on the parking lot side of the mill. Due to the millpond there is a split in the creek so one can get some reflections of the mill itself in this smaller creek from the millside…
and then if you walk around to the east side of the mill, the group that restored the mill, built a concrete walkway to the dam and this is the view from the end of it by the dam…
..a nice view of the back of the mill…
About 8:30 am, Derek and his brother Nicholas showed up and found me photographing the mill from the little creek and using some of my filters on the photos….after talking a bit, we started shooting. I explained to both of them how I used to photograph old mills and would incorporate guys into the scenes in overalls or holie jeans, sometimes just sitting or standing next to the mill, leaning into the walls, or even sitting out on the dam or edge of the millrace by the mill, fishing with a cane pole and bobber…so Derek put on some overalls and we started shooting….for someone who had never modeled before, Derek took to it like a duck takes to water….
the reflections on the creek down in this light were a bit dull…so we walked over and shot some photos up against the mill building itself and around to the side…
…and upstream from the mill is a neat footbridge, where I took a few extra shots of him before heading south to Arkansas….
As I was out rockhunting late in May 2010, the sun disappeared behind some clouds and I looked up to see this nice fluffy cloud backlit…couldnt resist so I snapped it…I like sunbeams as well as sunsets…
Pretty soon I was working on filling the second bag when my rake end snapped off my trusty tool, so I walked one filled bag back to the truck and grabbed my handrake instead…and saw this pretty butterfly on the way back…
As we were leaving and heading home…I looked over at Missy and had to take a pic of her as well…looked like she had been swimming in the clay all day….
Well we started home and started seeing sunbeams all over the place…
On the way home, they were talking on Y98 Radio about a huge thunderstorm parked over the city of St Louis and just dumping alot of rainfall on the entire area….. I spotted it from the Cuba area, about 75 miles to the west of St Louis…
As I drove into Bourbon, I turned off 44 to go by my parents house to show them the nice druse, yes they are druse fans too…and snapped a photo of the Bourbon Water Tower against the supercell clouds…
and saw this sunlit backlit cloud driving down the road near my parents home…
another one of those clouds that looks like its on fire at the top…and this sunset was taken near my home in Sullivan`s city park…I`m like Virgil, like to see Old Glory waving when I include flagpoles in my photos…
