THE OTHER IDEAS...

this is Sparrow's Mill which was in business in the early 1900's and run by the Sparrow Brothers.  not much left now as you can see, but it does have historical value and an archeological team has worked the site at least once a few years ago.  unfortunately the stream is not included here, and without the water this doesn't represent the SLT well as a single image.  still, a good image :) even if i did take it in 2005!

THE SUBMITTED PHOTO

ok i have managed to confuse the issue...but here it is:

the image below is the version submitted to represent the SLT because this version includes the woodland border across the top, thus covering three key elements of our area - water, marsh, woods.  the version on the wall of the office has this border of trees cropped out.

for me this makes them 2 very different images...

OFFICE PHOTO #3

just to complete the trio of prints hanging over the sofa is our new office, Sparrow's Mill, the stream in snowmelt, shot at the end of february this year when the water was high.  having spent the winter shooting the salt water in motion on the shore i was in the mood to do some more traditional rushing water shots.  a good excuse to go visit this property because there's a reason they chose to put a mill here 100 years and more ago!!

for this i pulled on my highest wading boots and put my wooden tripod in the water and got in and balanced my footing on the rocks :)  i love the effects a slow shutter speed can have on moving water, and bring out the flow and ferocity of it at the same time...

OFFICE PHOTO #2

there are currently 3 framed images of mine on the wall of the new office.  the Howland Marsh one hangs on the left, and this one hangs on the right.  in my mind i call this one "choices" for obvious reasons.  i took this at the top of a ridge in the woods of one of our newest conservation restrictions, Mahoney C-R, where many trails seem to meet and move on, rather like finding a roundabout in the middle of nowhere!!  the property is 248 acres and contains a turtle nesting ground, and there is no easy access to it.

"one photo to rule them all"

we needed a photo to represent us at a conference...no easy task to pick just one!  what should be in it, and what shouldn't be in it (!).  there just isn't one to cover it all...but several good suggestions were made and explored.  our first choice was a vertical portrait-oriented one from Brainard Marsh which included water, marsh, and woods.  unfortunately we discovered only horizontal landscape-oriented ones were acceptable.  our second choice had some history in it, the ruins at Sparrow's Mill but none of the images included the stream, and i thought water was too important to our mission not to be in the shot, so we went to our third choice "late afternoon on Howland Marsh"...which was actually the first choice for two of us :) below is the image as printed and framed and on the wall of the office, but for philosophical - not artistic - reasons for the submission i went back to the original and left in the top border of treeline (cropped out in this version) so the upland would be visible.