Alleghenyville is a census-designated place in Berks County Pennsylvania. It is near a historic Mennonite meeting house, which dates back to 1885, and is on the register of historic places. The town proper is also a short distance away from the popular Maple Grove Speedway.

The historic Alleghany Meeting House was originally built in 1885, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Mennonites, for those who are unaware, are a sect of Christians similar to the Amish. They hold religious services in meetinghouses and have similar beliefs, but unlike the Amish, do make use of modern technologies such as motorized cars.

This meetinghouse is no longer in use and is preserved solely as a historic site.

Apologies for the radio silence and missed Photo of the Week posts.

You’ll find a few updates making their way on to the web in the coming days, which are part of a new series describing some local sights in Pennsylvania, my beautiful home state. There will be plenty of pictures.

I’ve had access to a car, so it is certainly more varied scenery.

Additionally, I have pushed some changes that make some minor tweaks to the site. They’re not 100% tested, and they’re pretty minor.

Probably the most notable change is that posts now have a link to “Leave Feedback” at the very bottom. (Note that this is only visible on a post’s individual page, and not on the main blog.)

I consider it my Web 1.0 way of getting comments.

Stay tuned for further developments and thanks again for reading!

For the last week, I have procured access to a car. This is great, because it gives me the ability to do things other than watch the same flowers grow on the same streets.

One of the places I visited was Hawk Mountain, which I hope to return to later, both as a topic for this blog, and as a place I physically go to.

The highlight of my visit on this Wednesday morning was no bird of prey (alas!), but instead some deer munching on greenery, who were far less spooked by the presence of myself and fellow hikers than I would normally expect.

So, with three or so deer to point my camera at, and a killer telephoto lens (with suboptimal forest lighting) how did I do?

A photograph can capture a scene, an image, a fleeting moment, and transform it into an object of study.

Macro photography does this, but like super hardcore. By definition, macro photography is a 1:1-scale reproductions, where an object should be captured at life-size relative to the camera’s sensor. The lens needs to be able to focus quite closely on the subject, and it should be able to capture as sharp and distortion-free an image as possible.

A steady hand is needed, because shake can easily blur an image taken so close-up. Having a lot of light and a wider aperture can help cut down on shutter speed, but due to the closeness of focus, the focal plane also becomes quite narrow, such that you can only focus on a single facet of a complex surface.

With all that technical description provided, I invite you to instead picture me hopping around shoving a camera as close to a grasshopper as possible, framing photos poorly, and having it jump around.

Not too, too long ago, I was having a great conversation with Sepi in which the topic of what we really cared about came up.

Music was among my answers. My friend was a tad incredulous.

How much did I really care?

A little over a week ago, I decided to go on a stroll from my parents’ house to a park with hiking trails and preserved woodland.

I was interested in the hiking trails.

Then I got to them.

They weren’t interesting.

The walk to the woods, however, was.

Continue reading for 24 more photos…