Aquia Creek

Overcast Blues on Aquia Creek /  by Todd Henson

Overcast Blues on Aquia Creek

On New Year’s day my father and I went for our first hikes of the year. We visited a couple locations, one of which was Widewater State Park in Virginia. I’ve previously shown views of Aquia Creek as seen from the park, and today we return to this view with a couple new photographs from January 1st of 2024.

It was a very overcast day, and in fact it began raining lightly for part of the time we looked out at Aquia Creek. The overcast quality gave the scene a very blue look with interesting breaks in the clouds near the horizon, providing enough light for the scene and for some reflections in the creek. This scene is also interesting in how you can often see different channels where water flows in the creek by the different looks of the water’s surface. Sometimes it may be caused by a boat that’s moved through, but this morning I believe it was all due to water flow and perhaps to any breeze further out. We didn’t see or hear any boats while there, and there was little if any breeze where we were on shore.

And, as luck would have it, one of a pair of mating bald eagles happened to fly into the scene as I was photographing, creating a nice little bonus in the upper left of the image.

Below is a panoramic photo stitched together from 29 vertical views of the scene with a 105 mm lens. It gives a taste of this wide open part of the creek, and of the calm feel to the morning. Perhaps this is why they named the park Widewater.

A Wide View at Widewater

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A Walk in the Woods at Widewater /  by Todd Henson

On the last Saturday of May, 2023, my father and I decided to hike the trails of Widewater State Park in Virginia. This is a somewhat new park to us though we’ve now hiked it several times. It’s a fairly small park with a small number of trails, but what they have is enjoyable, fairly level, and always changing with the seasons. It offers a mix of forested trails, a small pond, some marshy areas, a wide portion of Aquia Creek, and a very wide part of the Potomac River.

This time we began at the main parking area and chose to hike Long Pond Trail towards the road. There were few clouds in the sky this morning and we got a bit of a late start, so the sun was really shining through the clearing as we approached Long Pond.

Long Pond Trail

When we reached the pond we turned right onto Holly Marsh Trail and hiked over the road to the other side of the park. Not too far into the woods I spotted movement amongst the ferns and when I slowly got down and looked closer I found an Eastern (or Northern) cricket frog, one of the smallest vertebrates in North America. To make it easier to see I framed it almost at the center of the photo. It has a nice light green stipe down its back.

An Eastern cricket frog among the ferns

We also found an Eastern grey squirrel foraging through the underbrush. It didn’t appear at all concerned about us and went about eating the small snack it had found in the leaves.

Snacking with a squirrel

When hiking in the woods I absolutely love looking up into the tree canopy. It’s beautiful the way the light shines through, backlighting the leaves. And I love the patterns of the branches and bark and leaves. In this case I chose a white oak to photograph.

White oak canopy

After looking up doesn’t it make sense to also look down? In this case I chose to focus on a small field of ferns.

Among the ferns

We were still hiking Holly Marsh Trail, which strangely enough parallels Holly Marsh. In the distance we could just begin to hear the sounds of boats on the Potomac River, almost 3 miles wide at this point.

Holly Marsh Trail

Pausing to allow a family to walk past us I noticed this small, young leaf growing directly out of the bark of a tree. I’m always fascinated when leaves grown on their own instead of from branches. I’m not certain, but this may be an example of an American sweet gum tree.

Perhaps a little sweet gum

Instead of hiking back the way we came we decided to walk along the road back to the other half of the park. Along the entrance to this section we saw a small clearing in the trees and within that clearing was a field of ferns and a single lichen-covered tree. The sun was fairly bright at this point so it did shine through and highlight some areas.

Small fern clearing

Along the side of the main road there are several sections of old rusted barbed wire that’s been there so long many trees have grown right around it. Along one stretch I watched as a pale damselfly landed on the wire. It proved very patient and allowed me to approach close enough for a photo.

Barbed wire damselfly

Last time we hiked this park we noticed some poison ivy growing on a tree right near a bench that faces Aquia Creek. As with last time I chose to photograph it, and in one of the photos I later found a harvestman resting on a leaf. It would appear harvestmen don’t have quite the same reaction to poison ivy as most of us might.

Harvestman on poison ivy

At this point we were very near the main parking lot and it was approaching noon, so after a short rest on the bench we took a last look out at Aquia Creek before leaving the park.

Approaching noon along Aquia Creek

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk along with us as we hiked Widewater State Park.

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Variations on a Theme: October on Aquia Creek /  by Todd Henson

To set the stage, the weather forecast in late October had called for somewhat overcast skies which I’d thought might work for photographing autumn color reflections along the shoreline of Aquia Creek as seen from Widewater State Park in Virginia. So my father and I set out that morning to find hardly a cloud in the sky. Such is life. 😀

While walking along the shoreline I noticed a pier in the distance and for whatever reason was attracted to it. The sun was up, there was this single long cloud or perhaps a large contrail in the sky, and cormorants were fishing in the creek. I thought the scene might work as a black and white image since there wasn’t a lot of color, mostly the blues of the sky reflecting off the water. I honestly figured any images this day would be sketches of the scene and I’d try returning another day with different weather. As we walked along the shoreline trail I kept photographing this same scene from slightly different perspectives.

At some point either the wind or perhaps a boat created a wake in the water that seemed to reflect the angled line of the cloud. I liked that symmetry so created another set of photos, the results of which can be seen in this post.

October on Aquia Creek (black & white version)

As I’d mentioned, I was thinking black and white while photographing so that’s how I first processed the image, making various tweaks to the underlying colors which lightened and darkened those areas in the black and white version to create what I hoped would be an interesting final image. I lightened up the little bit of water around a cormorant to the right to draw some attention to it if your eyes happen to follow the angled funnel of the cloud and water to that area.

After I’d thought I’d finished the black and white version I decided to see how it might look if fully processed in color, so I went back in and created a new version. I made different adjustments in the color version than I had in the black & white which resulted in both the pier and part of the far shoreline standing out a bit more.

October on Aquia Creek (color version)

I thought I was done. But I remembered there’d been a flock of geese that flew through the scene at one point, which I’d created a few images of, so I went back through all the photos I’d created of this scene and found those. They didn’t have the nice pattern symmetry of cloud and water, which is why I’d overlooked them when looking for the one image I’d work on. And yet I liked what they added to the scene. So I decided to do something I rarely do, pulling the flying geese from one image and copying them onto another. Because of inconsistencies in how I processed the color and black & white versions the geese appear in a slightly different location in each image.

So what do you think? Does either version work? Do you prefer one over the other? Do you think the geese were a good addition or an unneeded one. Let me know in the comments below.

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