A glimpse at a video I would have made for the Franklin Park photobook

Some of my readers will remember that at the end of the summer I ran a Kickstarter campaign to try to raise funds to buy the equipment I needed to create a photobook of a year in Boston’s Franklin Park. Not only would I have taken a year’s worth of pictures for the book, I also would have shots some videos as well. This morning I was finally able to shoot a video that I’ve wanted to make for a year and a half.

One of my favorite things in Franklin Park is the stream by the Wilderness, the 99 Steps, and the Ellicott Arch, right along the path from the Williams Street entrance to the park. Unfortunately something happened earlier this year and after the spring thaw the stream ran so low that for most of the summer you could hardly see any water flow in the stream at all, even after a heavy rain in July.

Yesterday New England got heavy rain that came up from the south and it was so bad I referred to it by the very old-fashioned term “gullywasher” (although a gullywasher is typically a short rainstorm, not an almost all-day event like we had yesterday). As I was walking along the path last night on my way home I could hear how much water was flowing down the stream. It sounded like the rapids people love to row down in other parts of the country and I would have loved to take a picture of it but there just wasn’t enough light.

(A friend upgraded his Android phone recently and was kind enough to allow me to use his for Wi-Fi calling since my phone got dropped so many times I lost the ability to charge it a few months back. It can’t take great pictures, but I can take some pictures with it.)

This morning the water was still flowing pretty quickly, although not as quickly as it had flowed the previous night. Even though it was misting this morning I was able to shoot a two-minute video of part of the stream so I could share it.

If I had been able to make the Franklin Park photobook I would have shot a video of the entire stream, from where it comes out my the Ellicott Arch all the way down to the Williams Street entrance at Forest Hills Street. The video cut out early today because I didn’t have the storage space on the phone to shoot a longer video, but perhaps I can shoot the entire video some time next year.

I’ve been asked if I’m going to try another Kickstarter campaign for the book and while I have that option it’s not something I’ll do without knowing I can raise more that the 4% of funding that I did in July. I’ll look at things again in February or March to see if I can adjust the budget to make it more manageable, but I’ll need to be certain I’ll make the goal if I’m going to try another Kickstarter campaign for the book. The good news is that if I try it again it will make the book start in the spring, rather than the fall like the original plan would have had me do.