I spent three very enjoyable days (August 21-24) on a photography and mountain biking trip to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jim Thorpe is a very small town (named after the famous athlete) located in the Western Pocono Mountains, approximately 2.5 hours from New York City.
I went to Jim Thorpe with the intention of photographing a 25 mile organized bike trip I was making through the Lehigh Gorge. As it turned out, the biking was fantastic but the photography was poor due to the very bright harsh sunlight encountered on the day of our trip. Since light is everything in photography, I packed my camera in my Lowe-Pro Slingshot bag and left it there unused for the entire 5 hour ride. I could have tried using a polarizing filter to cut glare or made images in the shade, or used fill flash to shoot portraits but decided against these options preferring to enjoy the beautiful scenery and bike ride instead.
One important aspect of photography I have learned over the years is knowing when to shoot and when not to. I will rarely if ever, photograph in bad light even when presented with a good subject. It's just not worth it.
I spent the next two days in Jim Thorpe photographing architecture and old trains very early in the day and again in the late afternoons and early evenings. I carried with me my Nikon D300 with the new Nikon 16-85mm f3.5-5.6 ED VR lens. I really liked using this lens. I found it equally as sharp and much lighter in weight than my professional 17-55 2.8 ED zoom when stopped down to an aperture of f8. There is some barrel distortion that shows up at the 16 to 24mm settings which affected some my architectural photos but this is a normal phenomenon common to most consumer and some professional grade zoom lenses. The Vibration Reduction feature built into the 16-85 was a godsend and worked as advertised allowing me to shoot at 3 stops below the recommended minimum shutter speed of 1/focal length for hand-holding. With VR activated, I was able to shoot down to 1/15 sec. and obtain sharp photos.
If you are an outdoors oriented individual and enjoy bike riding, hiking, historical sites, fishing, scenic drives and photography, a visit to the town of Jim Thorpe will be worth the time and expense.
A few examples of the images I made on this trip are presented below:
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