My favorite spring blossom, the redbud; this one actually was in a neighbor's back yard. 2013.04.20 Roll in a Day / A Day in a Roll This was an open assignment. Since it's still early in a late-arriving spring, I focused on spring photos, several around our property and most of the remainder in Fincastle, Va., the Botetourt County seat. The camera was a Nikon N-8808. The lenses were an AF Nikkor 70-210mm and AF Nikkor 24-50mm. Film was 400 ISO generic color from a CVS drug store; processing was at the same CVS. As far as technical shooting goes, this as one of my better assignments; I'm getting better at exposure, focus and minimizing shake. All frames looked contrasty; I don't know if it was me or the processor, but I'm blaming the processor. SOME NOTES ON FINCASTLE AND BOTETOURT COUNTY: Botetourt County, Va., was carved out of Augusta County to the north in the mid-1700s. It was named after Lord Botetourt (we pronounced is BAH-tuh-tott, with a cadence similar to "tater tot), the then-current and much-admired Colonial governor of Virginia. The settlement Fincastle was chartered a little later on. At one time, Botetourt was comprised of most of what is now West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin as far as the Mississippi River. It was called the "Northwest Territory" (which is why Northwestern University is so called even though it is in the Midwest). St. Louis by the Mississippi River claims the title of Gateway to the West, but so does Fincastle, because the initial staging for the Louis and Clark Expedition in 1804 took place here before moving west to the Mississippi and moving up the river to the Missouri, etc. At the time of the expedition, Botetourt County was the home of one of the leaders, William Clark, and a number of Meriweather Lewis' relatives lived nearby.
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