Finger Lakes Trip

Hello again. I have been a such a blogging slacker this month!

Marc and I just got back from a trip to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. A group of our friends went last year and loved it so we decided to join in this time and we're happy we did. The region is known for its wine and beautiful scenery. I thought we would have some fall foliage to enjoy but everything was still very green.

On the long drive up, we stopped at the Saranac brewery in Utica, NY for a tour and some samples. I am normally more of a wine girl but their Pomegranate Wheat beer was perfect - not too sweet:




We stayed right on Seneca Lake:




We hit the wine trail... hard. Here is our impressive tasting agenda:
Day 1
Fox Hill

Day 2 (Whoa!)
Keuka Spring
Hunt Country
Yang Cellars
Prejean
Torrey Ridge
Miles Cellars
Rock Stream
Pompous Ass
Glenora

Day 3
Silver Springs
Hazlitt
Rasta Ranch
Bagleys
Wagner
Standing Stone





"Make a U-turn, if possible..." On our way to Miles Cellars, we almost had a Michael Scott moment:










Love this!




Unfortunately, most of our group shot attempts were totally botched... I guess thats what you get when the photographer and the subjects are more interested in tasting wine than taking photos! Haha. These, taken at Rasta Ranch, were the best of the bunch:




Here is sunrise on our last day...

SNEPP Shoot

One of my goals is to meet more photographers and people that are interested in photography. To that end, I recently joined the Southern New England Portrait Photographers (SNEPP) group on Meetup.com. There are a ton of photography groups on Meetup but I chose this one because they seem to have a lot of interesting events and didn't look too intimidating!

I went to a workshop today with the group that was focused on outdoor lighting. I thought we'd be working with natural light but they had some studio strobes set up for us. It was so much fun!













LOVE the lighting in these last two...

Fun on the Cape

I can't believe summer is almost over but at least I had a great Labor Day weekend to finish it off! I went down to Cape Cod for the 3 days and the weather could not have been better...

We spent Saturday at Ridgevale beach in Chatham. Thankfully, we did not see any great white sharks... just plenty of seagulls:




Back at the condo, I had a little photo shoot with my favorite puppy. I take WAY too many pictures of my parents' dog, Bijou (he is actually 10 years old but still a puppy at heart). Thus far, I've tried not to post them on the blog but this one was just too cute! Bijou probably couldn't fetch if his life depended on it and is usually quite indifferent to his tennis ball but I love how he is acting all possessive here.


I headed to Yarmouth on Sunday to visit with some more family. My Aunt Sheila is a true Codder (hah!) and loves to go clamming. We ate some of her freshly gathered steamers for lunch:




My cousin, Lisa, modeled for me while I tried to capture some serious sunflare. Yes, I am aware of the blue pentagon covering her face... my Photoshop skills aren't quite developed enough to edit that out but I will keep trying!


My dad and I kayaked around the Big and Little Cliff Ponds in Nickerson State Park on Monday:


We semi-stalked this heron and got some great pictures. That is the awesome thing about approaching wildlife in a kayak - you can be so quiet! You can see the fish in his mouth in this one:


"GULP!" If you'd like to know why his eye looks cloudy in the above picture but not in this one, check this out.