Last week, as I mentioned previously here on The Black Laser, Juli and I took a much needed vacation up to the Finger Lakes which are in the western part of New York State. We stayed at a fantastic bed and breakfast called The Fox & The Grapes in Lodi, NY, which, as it turns out, is right smack in the middle of New York’s wine country. Who knew? And being relatively close to Ithaca, there were the expected, yet utterly exceptional, gorges to experience. It was a lovely trip, one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to a couple wanting to get the hell out of the city for a few days. Check out The Fox & The Grapes. We were easily the youngest people staying there by two generations, but don’t let that deter you. The owner, Jim, is fantastic and will give you a discount if you stay for more than three nights. Go! Now!

Anyway, while up there we hiked around a couple of state parks, Taughannock and Watkins Glen Gorge, went to a weird military museum in another, played tennis with rain threatening, kayaked, ate buffalo wings so hot that I had an endorphin reaction and got high, and then liberally sprinkled wine tasting throughout. Since only two of those outings were picture friendly and dry, my photos are quite hike-centric. Here are a few of my favorites. Thoughts on the photos afterward.

Here’s the whole gallery—Finger Lakes, NY Gallery 8/27/2009

Yeah yeah, so photos of waterfalls are cliché. Whatever. Fuck you. I like them. I think they’re nice. What’s wrong with nice? Nothing. I’ve come to grips with the fact that I am not, nor shall I ever be, one of those totally edgy photographers that makes even the most mundane things look super intense. I just don’t see the world that way. I appreciate that type of photography and sometimes think, “Man, I’m going to try and shoot some, like, really edgy, intense photos or something,” and then they just end up coming out pretty. Even when I want to shoot that way, I can’t help but just making things look nice. Oh well. Fuck it.

On the topic of the way I see, I was playing with shooting things on this trip to match my eye sight. I’ve noticed that I see at about 73mm equivalent—probably why I like the 85mm prime so much, it’s close to the way I see normally—by opening both eyes while zooming until what I see matches. Of course, not everything in this set was shot at 73mm, but it was something I was cognizant of as I composed my shots. It was an interesting exercise to crop such a limited rectangle out of my normal field of vision. For example, the first shot of the four above was one of the 73mm-same-as-Joe’s-eyeball photos. Feel free to dig through the gallery on Flickr to see if you can find more 73mm photos.