Cleveland Tall Ships Parade

Every few years, the City of Cleveland hosts a Tall Ships festival.   About 10 or so ships sail into Cleveland for the event.

This year I was lucky enough to get a seat on a chartered boat by the Cleveland Photographic Society.  About 60 fellow photographers ventured out on the lake to enjoy the ships as they made there final approach into the Cleveland Harbor.

The conditions with the sky and calm lake were ideal to try and convert the scenes into high contrast black and white images.

You can view my favorite images from the afternoon at my photographic web site:

Cleveland Tall Ships Parade - July 3rd

Exploring a new place

One of the exciting parts of nature photography is discovering a new place to photograph.  That is part of the incentive for people to travel to far and distant locations to explore a new place with a camera.

Sometimes we don't have to travel far to discover these new areas.    The Metro Parks of Summit County (based around Akron Ohio) acquired this former farm property in 2011 and is transforming it into a prairie  landscape.    You can read more about this at the Metro Parks web site:  Springfield Bog

There is a wide variety of birds and wild flowers that are slowly reclaiming the land.  The colorful picture above is mainly garden coreopsis and clover with a bit of daisy fleabane mixed in.

With the passing of years to come, it will be fascinating to see how this area changes back into a more native type of vegetation.  

The other variety of coreopsis that is in bloom right now is lance leaved coreopsis.   They make for a colorful yellow amongst the grasses and other plants in the area.

There is a loop hiking trail around the property that is worth walking early in the morning with dew and fog coming off the lush prairie plants.