Touring Route 125 in PA

Written by Friends, Nature, Photography, Tania

Felix, Tania and I drove west from New York to Pine Grove Pennsylvania. Once in Pine Grove we drove 32 miles through Route 125 all the way to Shamokin. It was a very twisty, scenic, calm, smooth, and nonetheless beautiful. The drive to PA. was foggy and misty, thus we all thought the weather was going to limit our pleasing trip. Little did we know the sun managed to squeeze some rays through the clouds to provide us with warm and appealing weather.

The drive through Route 125 was very green, farmland everywhere. We passed farmhouses, farms, old cars, monuments, and ‘grandma style’t houses. Aside from the scenic views Route 125 proved to be a great road to drive on. Seeing as Felix just got his VW GTI, this was the perfect opportunity for him to put his car to the test. Being in the passenger seat I can safely say that the drive was breathtaking on many levels. Zooming out of corners to see beautiful landscapes was a great experience (Image 5). There were many instances in which we could not see what was up ahead, either due to fog or a sloped road. Thus the drive was quite heart pounding.

Route 125 ended in Shamokin, and that was were we grabbed some pizza and coffee. Shamokin was a quite, distant, and old town. Majority of families seemed to own small shops from which they made an income. Not only were the people friendly, but even their pets seemed to be calmer as compared to those in New York. After an hour or so we drove back through Route 125 and took a turn to explore what we could find.

After some turns we arrived at Sweet Arrow Lake. It reflected its surroundings clearly, and occupied our time efficiently. We began by skipping rocks on it, and then curiously walked along its shore. We then came across a woman who told us to walk up to the eastern side of the lake. It was there where we saw the waterfall and warming sunset. This was one of the first times in which I enjoyed shooting into and away from the sun. We ended the night by waiting for the sun to set in order to shoot some fireworks. After two rounds some farm owners zoomed towards us on ATV’s claiming that we “are going to scare the cattle”. We then drove to an area with no farms let out two more fireworks and headed home.

What did I learn from shooting today? As we drove on the highway towards P.A. I experimented with different shutter speeds. Since we were moving at fast speeds I had to use very fast shutter speeds in order to prevent too much blur from ruining each picture. The consequence was using a higher ISO which resulted in noisy images. Also the weather was not very pleasing. It was gray and dull, therefore properly exposing each frame in terms of white balance was difficult. I realized that when metering for light I should meter the subject, zoom out, and then snap the shot. There were many images in which I simply snapped the shot without properly selecting which area to meter for light. This gave a gray layer the grass and the sky. Instead I could have properly metered for the grass, zoomed out and then snapped the shot.