Sandy Springs Heritage Center

I did a quick trip this past weekend with my friend David, owner of BlueStarPhotos. We went to the Sandy Springs Heritage center to shoot some pics since neither of us was in the mood for a road trip.

The trip started out with a stop at a local camera equipment rental business. David rented a wide angle Nikon lens to try-before-buy. Being the lens is $900 to buy and $50 to rent I think it's a good idea to rent first unless you're dead-sure you need it.

Now this is where I have to admit my shortcomings. We all have them. So, I realized once I started to attempt shooting some pics my D70's battery was dead. Dang! How did I let that happen? Borrowing David's keys and walking back to the car I discovered I had not returned all my equipment to the camera bag after the last adventure! Now that's a problem! And the only solution to the problem was to use my wife's Canon A570 IS. A handy little point & shoot for sure but it's no DSLR. After swapping the tripod mount to the 570 I walked back to the park telling myself "You are going to get everything together soon as you get back home, no waiting!"

I enjoyed going through the heritage center shooting pictures. The site is well maintained and has been nicely landscaped. The main buildings consist of the Heritage Center itself and a small outbuilding which is a Summer kitchen or servant's quarters.

Outbuilding with bell

Like most photographers I like to try and take pictures in filtered light.  Filtered light means cloud cover, so, of course, it rained on us! It actually started just as I was getting ready to snap a pic of the backside of the building above. Not to be defeated, I placed my hand over the camera and got the pic in spite of the rain. I then shot up the stairs as quick as I could to try and miss the heavier rain. I almost make it too. Luckily the rain didn't last long it just upped the humidity from "horrid" to beyond description. 

After the rain we spent time getting some close shots of some of the flowers and foliage present around the center. Some of the shots came out rather well for a PS camera.

Now if you're a photographer at heart you know you can't take all the pictures that could be taken in one day. So we decided we'd shot enough at the Heritage Center and went to find some lunch. As fortune would have it, we found a good place across the street that served oyster & shrimp po' boys. Yum!

After lunch we went to scout one of our future shoots, Sope Creek. It's a creek not too far from home that has some Civil War history attached to it. We drove by and found the ruins to be very close to the road. The parking lot to get to them is about a half mile away however. When we do get to visit this site you can be sure we'll have all our equipment ready as the parking lot is uphill from the ruins! We won't want to walk that hill but once I promise.

All-in-all it was a good day. Some goofs were made but that's how you get to be "Pro" at something. We had a good time and look forward to our next adventure be it near or far away.