The Three Views Project

Please have a look at the Three Views page to see these photos next to last month’s photos.  And check back in a month for the next in the series.  There isn’t much difference now, except for the ice in the river and traces of snow on the ground.  I expect that the April and May pictures will show quite a change!

January 31, 2015 
29 degrees F, clear

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1:24 pm EST  18mm  f/9.0  1/200sec  ISO 200

Billy Goat B trail, east end, looking southeast across a narrow channel toward Vaso Island


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1:54pm EST  28mm  f/9.0  1/400 sec  ISO 200

Billy Goat B, mid-way between trailheads, looking upstream (more or less northwest) with Hermit Island on the left.



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2:25pm EST  18mm  f/8.0  1/200 sec  ISO 100

boat launch ramp near Old Angers Inn, looking downstream and more or less south

A New Year, Another Project

Here are three photos from the Potomac Gorge.  For the next year, on or about the first of each month I’m going to re-visit these sites, stand in the same positions, and photograph the same views, in order to see the progression of the seasons.

December 31, 2014
38 degrees F, mostly clear

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2:42 pm EST  18mm  f/5.6  1/200sec  ISO 200

The photo above was taken from the Billy Goat B trail, at the eastern end where the trail abruptly changes direction away from the river to head back toward the canal.  We’re looking southeast across a narrow channel toward Vaso Island.


 

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2:57pm EST  18mm  f/10  1/125 sec  ISO 100

This one was taken from the western end of the area I call the Rock Garden, the large rocky bluff that’s not quite at the mid-point of Billy Goat B. Here I’m looking upstream, more or less northwest, with Hermit Island on the left.


 

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3:36pm EST  18mm  f/5.0  1/250 sec  ISO 100

And this one was taken from the boat launch ramp near Old Angers Inn, looking downstream and more or less south.

By December 2015 I should be able to make an interesting slide show with all these.

Coming soon, “What’s Blooming Now?”

Happy new year, everyone!

The Potomac Gorge

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You might be wondering, since I keep mentioning it, what the Potomac gorge is.  It’s an interesting geological/hydrological feature of the Potomac River: a 15 mile stretch from Great Falls to Theodore Roosevelt Island in Washington, DC, in which the river drops about 130 feet.  Great Falls itself is a plunge of 76 feet over about two thirds of a mile.  This is one of the longest and most dramatic fall zones of any watercourse on the Atlantic seaboard.  It’s the area where the hard metamorphic rock of the piedmont meets the sediments of the coastal plain, and as a transitional area supports a large diversity of life, including over 200 rare communities and species.

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One of the interesting geological features of the gorge is the bedrock terraces. These very hard rock formations are quite erosion resistant, and are swept by frequent floods, resulting in micro-habitats where you can find unusual species of plants.  Sometimes you can find plants growing next to each other that wouldn’t co-exist anywhere else in the world.  And there are species found in the gorge that are otherwise rare east of the Appalachians, like racemose goldenrod and Coville’s phacelia.

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More rare plants can be found in the Potomac gorge than in any other part of Maryland.

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There’s more.  A lot more.  When I started researching for this post I discovered some really nice articles, and spent hours reading, and decided I couldn’t do the topic justice on my little blog.  Most of what’s written here I found in the following sources:

“The Wildest Urban River: Potomac River Gorge”  –Jeffrey P. Cohn, Oxford Journals

Potomac Gorge Field Guide  –National Park Service

Potomac Gorge Site Conservation Plan  –Nature Conservancy

Potomac Gorge –Michael Kircher, Burn Magazine

Geologic Map of the Potomac River Gorge  –USGS

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Sunset

Late in the afternoon of October 23rd, as I was starting to cook dinner, I remembered that a partial solar eclipse was about to begin.  I turned off the stove, threw a lid on the pot, grabbed my camera bag and dashed out the door just as Steve was coming home from work.  “Dinner in an hour or so, okay?”  I drove to a nearby spot, parked the car, then jogged a half mile to the riverbank and quickly set up my tripod.

If I had remembered sooner I could have reached a more scenic area.  But it was a cloudy day, and the eclipse wasn’t visible, and my hopes for strange magical evening light were dashed.  Still, I managed to get this:

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