Reminiscences – A Walk in the Park

Yesterday morning my wife and I went for a walk in the Lehigh Parkway in Allentown, Pa. In many regards, the city of Allentown has fallen on some hard times and hasn’t been able to bounce back like other areas cities (most notably Bethlehem during the decline and death of Bethlehem Steel). But the one thing Allentown does still have is an absolutely exceptional, some may say world class, park system. The Lehigh Parkway following the Little Lehigh Creek for miles is truly the jewel of that system.

As we walked yesterday, we passed numerous fisherman (the Little Lehigh is one of the best trout streams in the state), joggers, walkers, cyclists, dog walkers and horse riders. There were even signs going up for a women’s 5K race through the parkway. But through it all, it remained a quiet and serene morning stroll. Very different from what it used to be like on Sundays in my youth. Back in the late 60s/early 70s, the “Parkway” was the place to be. The single roadway passing through was always turned one-way on Sundays. The road was choked with cars, bumper to bumper from one end to the other. There was nowhere to park. And everywhere you looked were the youth of the Lehigh Valley. Music played. And the children of the 60s did what children of 60s did.

To this day, rumors persist that John Lennon used to bring the boys from NYC to the Lehigh Parkway to frolic in open air during the much quieter mid-weeks back then. Our local paper just revived those old rumors with a reminiscence of their own in the past year.

But things are much different now. The teens of the 21st century don’t hang out in the Parkway. And things are left to us older folks. It was a great morning. I had a chance to work some of the kinks out of my landscape and IR photography prior to heading to Acadia National Park  next week. 

Which brings me to this particular image of Bogert’s Covered Bridge crossing the Little Lehigh Creek there in the Lehigh Parkway. This particular image is a HDR (High Dynamic Range) composite image made from a series of five individual images shot at different exposures with the base image shot at 1/80 sec @ f/11; ISO 100; 0 EV. The remaining four images were shot at -2, -1, +1 and +2 EV. The images were then combined using Photomatix HDR software before being finished in Lightroom and Photoshop 4. 

The individual images were made using my Canon 30D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens at 40mm, tripod-mounted. 

I think this image captures some of the serene beauty of the Parkway and hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed our walk in the park!