Loudoun Holiday Lights

 

Leesburg is a beautiful town with a vibrant downtown area. Holiday seasons are filled with activities and decorations. The Loudoun County Courthouse in the middle of town always has displays to celebrate holidays from different religions. This season, the courthouse was lit in a beautiful shade of green. Other buildings were also decorated with lights and displays. Enjoy some of the beauty of the season.

2022 Photography Resolutions

Its been nine months since my latest post. The lack of posts to this blog and the level of my sports coverage over 2021, leads me to these resolutions:

1. Post to my blog at least once per month, more if there is something to cover. This should be easy, if I maintain the discipline. 

2. Take less photos but of higher quality. I took over 167,000 shots last year with my Canon 5D Mark IV at more than 100 sporting events. The time covering the games and the post processing time afterward are difficult to manage with a full time career job. My goal is to be more discerning while covering the games to reduce unwanted shots. Also, I hope to take better quality shots so it takes less post processing time. More shots like the one with this post.

3. Cover a game at Beaver Stadium! Okay. Okay. That's more of a goal than a resolution. But I want it down on paper/electrons. The Nittany Lions roster includes local players and I plan to use the opportunity to cover them as a way to achieve this goal. It's a great atmosphere. 

Sports Back in Action

Sports are back in action at Segra Field with the inaugural home opener for the Old Glory DC professional rugby team. Old Glory is one of 12 teams in the Major League Rugby league in the U.S. and Canada. The league is in its fourth year and this is the team’s first season at its new home – Segra Field in Leesburg.

My latest post was a full six months ago a few weeks after the professional soccer season came to an abrupt end at Segra Field due to the COVID pandemic. The fall high school sports season was dead in the water and there was little hope of restarting anytime soon.  Athletes hoping to have a great fall season to impress college coaches and get a precious scholarship offer were out of luck at that point.

Things changed a few months later as sports leagues found ways to get back in action. Professional teams broadcast their games with empty stands, piping in crowd noise to give some appearance of normalcy. College sports leagues did a variety of approaches from out right cancellation of seasons to delayed and shortened seasons. The Virginia High School League decided that they would play abbreviated seasons for all of the sports beginning with the winter season, followed by the fall season and spring season. Fan attendance was extremely limited to start but gradually was allowed to increase as a vaccine was released and to number of vaccinated people increased.

This approach was the best that could be done safely under the conditions at the time. Players had their seasons and their chance to impress scouts. Those chasing school career records were hamstrung by only playing six games instead on 10 or 11.

Professional sports found their way to play through the winter and are in the preseason preparations for the sports playing throughout the summer. Baseball is starting in April, although the Washington Nationals had to cancel their opening day game due to COVID infections among their opponent. Soccer leagues are playing preseason games and starting their season next week. Major League Rugby already started their season.

Multiple vaccines are now on the market to protect against the coronavirus and jurisdictions around the country are loosening restrictions. Hopefully, we will soon see all sports going on as before, or at least some semblance of normalcy.

Some images from the inaugural game at Segra Field.

Soccer Swan Song Sunset at Segra

The Loudoun United Soccer team took on the Pittsburgh Riverhounds at Segra Field near Leesburg a couple Saturdays ago. Both teams had several supporters scattered around the stands keeping social distance for safety from the coronavirus. Fans were treated to spectacular early autumn weather as the early evening sun warmed the east side of the stadium and shade began to envelop the western side. Seemingly without warning, the sunset snuck up on Segra Field. The clouds in the sky captured the warm colors of the setting sun and showered the stadium with golden colors. Unfortunately the beautiful sight turned out to be the swan song for soccer at Segra this season as the team soon found several coronavirus cases in the organization and cancelled their remaining games. (As the Count on Sesame Street would say – This post is brought to you by the letter ‘S’.)

DON’T BE A JACKASS!!

South central Pennsylvania is known for its great soils in the Cumberland Valley. Farming has dominated the landscape since the early European settlers move in in the 1700s. Drive anywhere in this region and you will see barns and silos surrounded by green fields of the different crops grown there. At one time, every farm had cattle or dairy cows, which required hay to feed them and barns to house them. A popular style was “bank barns” built into the sides of a hill that enabled entry from two levels – Livestock on the lower level and hay and supplies on the upper level.

There is one big problem with storing hay in barns in that area if the farmer doesn’t let it dry thoroughly before putting it in the barn. Damp hay generates heat and is prone to spontaneous combustion! The solution is to provide ventilation to keep temperatures low. A large number of barns in the region were built with brick ends that provided ventilation by leaving openings in the bricks. The bricklayers got creative and started leaving the openings in a variety of patterns. These patterns were made to look like sheaths of wheat, chalices, geometric shapes, or other shapes.

One such brick end barn has local notoriety along Route 16 west of Greencastle, which gets to the point of the title. Around about 1850, a farmer wanted his barn to have a man riding a horse at the top of the brick end. Versions of the story are that he didn’t have the money to pay the mason and that he was hard to work with. The mason got angry and finished the barn by replacing the horse with a mule to express his feelings toward the farmer. The moral of the story – Treat your hired help with respect, pay your bills, and don’t be a jackass!!

Here are some pictures of the barn and a few others in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Man Riding a Mule on Brick End Barn, Greencastle, PA

Man Riding a Mule Brick End Barn, Greencastle, PA

Brick End Barn, Fort Loudon, PA

Brick End Barn, Lemar Rd. South of Lemasters, PA 

Brick End Barn, Lemar Rd. South of Lemasters, PA 

Brick End Barn off Stitzlers Road, Mercersburg, PA

TIGER LILIES IN THE SUN

My Mother had several tiger lilies next to her deck that provided a colorful accent in her flower bed. She gave me some seed from them a dozen years or more ago. I dropped them in a flower pot along with some lavender plants my son had from school. Every year the lavender and the lilies would spring up and give some some nice colors. They were in an out of the way part of the yard that we didn't see very often and we rarely watered them or took care of them. They were ignored. After a strong storm this summer, I noticed that the pot had blown over and the lilies, now about six feet high, were on their side. The pot was disintegrating and ready to be thrown out. Rather than throw it out, I decided to replant them (not something I do regularly since I'm not much of a gardener). How the lilies had survived amazes me. After re-potting them, the lilies found a new home on our deck where the bright sun lights them up every morning. The shadows our the nearby trees provides a nice backdrop to highlight their beauty. 

THIS IS FOR THE BIRDS!

Spring sports are cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic began surging in the US just as the high schools were doing their scrimmages for the season. I was three days away from getting to photograph the XFL professional football game at Audi field. Then everything went crazy as the number of cases surged. The high schools postponed the start of their season. The XFL and Major League Soccer postponed their games. All were hopeful that the pandemic would wane. But that never happened. Eventually all sports went on hiatus and we were all put on lockdown and told to stay home to reduce the spread of the virus. Here we are months later and places are starting to reopen and teams are about to start playing again but to empty stands. More than 100,000 of our people have died so far and more will pass before it is all over. In the grand scheme of things, not having sports to photograph is nothing. Still, the itch to take photos is strong. Fortunately, there are plenty of birds to shoot. Well, with a camera that is! My Mother's feeders and our gazebo attract a lot of different birds. The disruption of the pandemic is for the birds, and so is this post!