Hello,

Some time ago, Marcin and I took a very quick drive up to Vermont to check out the sites and colors of New England. While it was a very quick drive (we had to get back to the city in time for a wedding next day), we did enjoy it very much. We traveled the scenic route 100 north to some of most colorful parts of Vermont. Although it was extremely cold that day, it seemed like a lot of people decided to travel that same route as every stop we made along the road turned into nature lovers stopping and  ultimately causing a “leaf jam”.

Here are some of the pictures we snapped along the way.

Fall in Vermont

Vermont countryside

This one looks like back home

Reflection

Lonely Tree

Barn

River view

Maple syrup stop

Guard Dog

Countryside

Reflection

Golden Tree

By the river

Winding road

Older couple enjoying the afternoon

Hope you enjoyed…see you next time

R.

Every now and then we like to drive wherever the road leads us. Yesterday evening we were driving all around Jersey with no set destination, no set arrival time, just driving. We finally stopped at the local shopping plaza, and I couldn’t been more surprised if I saw a farmer with a cow selling milk by the cups. Right there next to a Coca-Cola vending machine, there it was!. All black, white letters only. Simply black and white. There it was – a milk dispensing vending machine!!! (did it come from California? from those happy cows in California).  Personally I wouldn’t be so surprised to see a farmer selling milk, but a milk dispensing vending machine right smack in the middle of farmland! ?!  

So after taking a snapshot of our new friend “Moo”, we decided to find something to eat. We were pleasantly surprised to fine a nice Japanese Restaurant that didn’t involve us putting in a quarter and punching buttons to get our food. Maybe few years down the road this dish will be served from a vending machines as well?

Stay tuned to see what else we’ll come across. 

Ciao!

I have always wanted to go underwater and explore the “different world” out there. There was never a time or place. Then last year when Renata and I took a trip to South Caribbean islands for a weeding we were shooting we extended our stay to make it a little vacation. We did little snorkeling with stingrays and turtles, some sightseeing and even watched planes land in the wildest place in the world to watch airliners – St. Maarten Airport runway that is few feet from the beach and the ocean. On that trip I came by an offer to discover scuba diving. Since I wanted to try scuba for the longest I did not think twice and went for it. We did a lot of great things on that week long trip but scuba was the highlight of it. I then did it again on Barbados and while the sea conditions were less than perfect since they had storm coming it was still very cool. I was hooked, Came back to NY and started my research about certification and scuba spots. And then the normal, busy life came back and I did not have time to think about scuba….. it was pretty cold and long winter so that did not help either. The spring came in and one of my friends told me one day that he found very friendly local dive shop and he was scheduled to take his certification classes in few weeks. Few phone calls later and I was scheduled for my class that was to begin in two days. LOL There is something in my life that makes things come up at the last minute… little hectic and stressful but otherwise cool. Love it. And so my journey with scuba begun. After I was done with my certification and open water dives I took quite few dives without the camera. First to get used to the equipment and the environment and then just to perfect the skills before taking one more task (photography) which is not easy as it looks. Even that I have been a photographer for the last dozen of years underwater photography is very different. But since I love new challenges its a lot of fun learning new skills.

Last week was the first time that I took my camera for two of the dives that we did. The bottom of the lake looks very interesting and sandy but actually is sill that is very soft and easily stirred.

Bottom of the lake

Its very quiet but you can still have fun. Well the conversation is a little different… or should I say even non existent.

Conversation or is it a dance?

There is a lot of interesting things underwater. You can run into a staircase leading to the surface, or maybe leading to nowhere.

Underwater Staircase

So what do you do when you encounter a stairs totally covered with Zebra Mussels except the steps at a depth of 50 feet? Well You can do a lot of things… You can sit on the stairs for example, you can walk the stairs, you can just hold on to the stairs…. Or you can try running up the stairs as my friend Ed demonstrated which did not really worked.

Running up the stairs does not really works

OK, enough talking, dancing and running… Lets just observe and enjoy the views. The world underwater is very different and you never know what you are going to run into. The lake that we were diving into is a 50 acre lake with depths up to 120 feet. It is spring-fed from and underground aquifer that filters trough limestone to provide pretty decent visibility. There is a variety of interesting fish and aquatic life including Rainbow Trout, Largemouth Bass, Bluegills, Palomino Trout, Koi, Yellow Perch and Goldfish. While we were exploring the lake we run into a school of Koi fish that was hanging around a big steel structure of an old pump house. There were all the colors that we could imagine, from an albino Koi to all shades of yellows, reds and oranges.

Koi Fish just swimming around the structure

So lets just stick around for a while and try not to disrupt their habitat, lets see how close can we be without the fish being scared off. Well we just stayed by the structure and let the fish choose how close to us they wanted to be.

Koi up close

Albino Koi

Yellow Koi

There was one yellow Koi Fish that was a lot bigger than any other fish…. I know everything underwater looks closer and bigger. But that is only when you have nothing to compare to. In our case we had other fish to compare this guy to.  Just take a look at the size difference.

Big Koi Fish

How is that for a comparison? This guy was huge. I had a lot of fun diving and looking at those beautiful Koi fish.

Till the next time.

I don’t know if it is me or is this winter dragging and dragging? I feel like we had months and months of winter, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to end soon . All this snow makes me think back of a place we visited over a year ago – the Islands of Aloha- Hawai’i. Hawai’i is just a great place, I plan to return there one day. It has so much to offer everyone. The beautiful beaches for sun lovers, the lush rainforest for hikers, the volcanoes for nature lovers and everything else in between. Here are some of our pictures. 

The most southern point in the USA

Elevation 10,003ft

The softest sand ever.

The most southern point in the USA.

Black Sand beach, Hawai'i

Snow on top of a volcano.

Aloha!

Renata

After posting our picture of the Oldest Church in Barbados, I received a comment asking for more pictures of that particular Church. So here they are.

Hope this helps Carol.

Renata

We’re back…

Yes, we were away for a while. We just returned from the gorgeous Caribbean Islands. While we were there on business, we still managed to squeeze in few days to relax and take in the sun.  We had a blast. We snorkeled with turtles and stingrays, we saw shipwrecks on the bottom of the sea, we flew above tree tops and enjoyed fresh fruits of the islands such as raw cacao bean, cinnamon, and coconuts. 

Here is a map of the places we visited while there as well as some pictures to give you a visual representation of what we saw, what we experienced and enjoyed. 

Click on the image for bigger view. 

Condado Palm Trees

Please check back often as I decided to update all of our past travels including some exotic places as Hawaii and cultural center of Dublin Ireland. 

Hope you enjoyed it. 

See you soon. 

Renata

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