Figure 1 – Ducks taking flight, Concord, MA (c) DE Wolf 2013

I went to Concord, Massachusetts today to take pictures at one of my favorite spots the National Historic Site at the Old North Bridge.  I walked down the path towards Daniel Chester French’s heroic Minute Man Statue and chatted with one of the park rangers about how high the river was because of recent rains – and I commented how Eagle Pass, TX had gotten over seventeen inches of rain yesterday.  Then I had to stop in my tracks.  Just beyond the bridge, the Concord River had consumed the foot path.  There was no going forward.

I continued to poke around a bit.  But no pictures grabbed by eye.  I wandered back towards my car along a little flooded meadow.  A pair of mallards thought that I was getting a bit too close, infringing on their personal space.  So they swam off towards a crowd of ducks.  Suddenly as I approached these, they all took to the air – retreat getting the best of valor.  I had no time to compose or anything.  Just lifted my camera up, pointed it in the general direction of the ducks, and pressed the shutter.  The ISO was 400 and the shutterspeed 1/4000 secs.  The results were not perfect.  The lens was wrong.  But they were just a bit satisfying – a little more satisfying then to merely have to speak of “the one that got away.”

This has truly been a year for terrible weather throughout the United States.  Most recently there was El Derecho and terrible rain and hail storms pounding the Midwest.  There is a wonderful photograph from June 12 of a lightening strike on the Willis Tower in Chicago by Chicago-based photographer, Scott Olson of Getty Images.   This is weather of biblical proportions and we are reminded of the movie “Ghostbusters.”

Dr. Peter Venkman: “This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.”
Mayor: “What do you mean, “biblical”?”
Dr Ray Stantz: “What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.”
Dr. Peter Venkman: “Exactly.”
Dr Ray Stantz: “Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!”
Dr. Egon Spengler: “Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…”
Winston Zeddemore: “The dead rising from the grave!”
Dr. Peter Venkman: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
Mayor: “All right, all right! I get the point!”