visit to western Mass Part II

Once in Shelburne Falls we went to see the Potholes.

This was Maddie in between the fence that stops you from falling down into the potholes. I stuck my camera out and shot back to see what I could get.

Maddie decided she wanted to take pictures so I gave her my backup rebel. It was on full manual and I taught her to adjust the shutter speed to make an image lighter or darker based on how the first one came out on the display. I showed her maybe twice and she knew what to do from then on.

She took this picture of my mom, grandma and me.

I love how the lady is watching Maddie in this picture.

We made our way to the bridge of flowers. It was nothing like I expected. I thought it was going to be a car bridge with flower boxes or something like that. I was definitely wrong. It was a small pedestrian bridge with flower beds completely covering both sides of the small path. Maddie was SO excited to take pictures (oh yeah, Jackson was asleep by the time we got to the Potholes. we were right next to the car at the potholes so we just left him in the car and at the bridge my grandmother stayed in the car with him.)

I was amazed at how serious she was about taking pictures. Absolutely everyone that walked by her made a huge fuss over her.

This is one of the many great photos she took. That's my mother's hand.

and one more. One of the things I loved about going through the photos later was seeing an underexposed image followed by a perfectly exposed one. She absolutely blew me away.

If you're interested in seeing all of the photos she took you can see them in her very own flickr album!

She took this one of me...(my mom in the background talking to a stranger as usual)

while I took this one of her.

On the way back down the bridge I tied the neck strap in a knot so it was shorter that way if it slipped out of her hands it wouldn't smash on the ground. She was shooting with my 50mm lens while I had my 100mm macro on my 7D.

Of course I have to share a couple that I captured too.

After we had seen all the dahlias we could (that's basically all that was in bloom at that time of year) we made our way back to Turners Falls. We had to drop my grandmother off at her house so she could meet my cousin's son there after school. My mom took me to Poet's Seat which is another place I can't believe my parents never took me to.

The view from the mountain was awesome and the coolest thing is that the main building at the bottom of this photo is the hospital where I was born.

I wanted to climb the tower. My mom stayed on the ground with the kids and took a picture of me once I was at the top. I'm not overly afraid of heights but I was quite uneasy up there.

Maddie continued taking pictures (in the background).

...to be continued again.