Posts in Category: still-life
So much depends on the red fire-plug…
Lakeside Chautauqua maintains a slightly Victorian air, in part, because residents take pains with paint and plantings to make it so. You may know the Chautauqua movement from history lessons, but few are aware that there are still two in full swing: the original in Chautauqua NY, and this one in Lakeside OH. Lakeside offers a full summer program of art, music, and cultural enrichment, and its thousands of privately owned homes and cottages are rarely empty for more than a day during the season.
We are here for the Midwest Birding Symposium, an every other year event that draws pretty much the full who’s who of the birding world and thousands of interested birders to Lakeside for several days of workshops and lectures and networking 🙂
I could not resist this little snippet of the Victorian air. The house and the flowers would have been enough but the bright red fire hydrant makes it a mandatory shot. (And perhaps you recognize the oblique reference to the poem by William Carlos Williams in the title.)
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone Mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Google Nexus 7.
Fall is coming…
The leaves that are falling now, in mid-September, are that dull brown of leaves that have died of simple old-age. The brilliance of frost killed leaves is still several weeks away. Still a little scene like this is a clear reminder that the summer is about to go out in its usual New England blaze of glory. That is a little of what I have captured here, but of course the image is really about the play of light over the various textures and the reflected patterns in the moving water. 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone mode (in-camera HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.
Sure as God made big green tomatoes!
Yeah, I know that is not the quotation, but this image certainly brings it to mind…or maybe that is just the way my mind is working this morning. 🙂 It is Saturday the 14th and I am proclaiming it a “lucky” day (though I am not a believer in luck of any kind…let’s say a “blessed” day). Saturday the 14th is, from this day forward, such a good day as to make people look forward to it with as much good energy as they (if the do) invest bad energy in Friday the 13th. It will be such a good day today that late green tomatoes will ripen on the vine! Sure as God made big green tomatoes.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in macro mode. Processed in Snapseed on the new Google Nexus 7 and Auto Enhanced by Google+ Photos. Taken in our yard between thunderstorms.
Orchid: quietly blooming. Happy Sunday!
This is an orchid that my daughter bought for my wife on her birthday the beginning of August. It has been quietly blooming on the entertainment center by our front windows ever since. Occasionally I look at it and think I should photograph it. It is a thing of beauty and I should celebrate it! Yesterday I took it out to the back deck and actually did it 🙂
I could not find and did not take the time to improvise a completely dark background, and I don’t have the sophisticated lighting required for a studio style shot anyway, so I made do with the shadowed trees around the deck and my Samsung Smart Camera in Macro mode. I did do some extra processing to isolate the flower in Snapseed. Besides my usual Ambiance and Structure adjustments, I used the Center Focus filters to blur and darken the background, then finished off with a dark frame just highlighted with a thin white edge.
All in all I think it works. It is certainly a beautiful flower. Nothing I could do could obscure that, and I am hoping my efforts do help to capture and share that beauty.
And for the Sunday Thought. I am reminded by this birthday flower that my wife too is a thing of beauty, quietly blooming, and that I do not take time often enough to celebrate her. Her beauty is more a matter of character and harder to capture and to share, but that does not mean I should not make the effort. So, Carol, this orchid and my efforts are for you this morning. An orchid quietly blooming. 🙂
Wood Shed
We were hiking along a road, or the last vestiges of a village street, near Tubingen, Germany, to cross the Neckar river on a foot bridge, looking for raptors late in the day over farm fields where Storks wandered…when I saw this wood shed attached to an aging barn. I could not resist. My companions, all hard-core birders, turned around to look for me when they noticed I had fallen behind. “You have to remember,” I said, “I am a tourist here, and I am going to do the tourist thing and stop to take pictures.” They had a good laugh at that…the tourist birder is a new concept in Germany…but I got my pictures!
I love the blend of textures here…raw wood, weathered wood, wood siding, bleached out particle board, concrete and brick. Such a range! I zoomed in for a tight crop with the Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone (HDR) mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Google Nexus 7 FHD.
So much depends on a few reeds in dappled water…
I am not sure why, but this little snippet from Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk Maine has a very oriental feeling to it. At the same time it reminds me of William Carlos Williams Red Wheelbarrow poem.
so much depends
upon
the red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white
chickens
There is that sense of much depending on the close observation of a fragment of reality: here the reeds standing in the dappled water among the distorted shadows of the trees around the pond. It is a very simple composition…but there is a lot more to it, somehow.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone (HDR) mode. 41mm equivalent field of view. Nominally f3.6 @ 1/1225 @ ISO 100. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
Who knew? A macro.
Who knew a flower petal hid within the anther, folded as in a tiny furry coat of pollen? Who knew?
Probably lot of people actually. Botanists. Serious cultivators of flowers of all kinds. Maybe even observant gardeners. The point is, of course, that I did not. I had never looked closely enough, or perhaps, never caught the anther at just this stage of development.
This is my wife’s valentine lily, and I was using wide-angle macro (24mm equivalent, focus to 0 cm) plus the Digital Tel-converter function on my Canon SX50HS to get as close as I could. At 2x the DTC gives a 48mm equivalent field of view with better working distance and larger scale…and with an image like this that is “all detail” you loose very little quality. I might have gotten just a bit closer, but not without seriously getting in my own light. Already, on my HD 14 inch laptop display, the anther is 8 times life size.
Camera as above. f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Hand held (great IS on the SX50HS). Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. Processed in Lightroom for intnesity, clarity and sharpness.
My Valentine: a funny little story.
My Valentine and I took our daughter Kelia, and her sister, out for Indian as a late birthday present yesterday. On the way back we stopped at the local grocery giant, ostensibly for tea and bananas, but I had an ulterior motive. They have a good selection of flowering plants there at all times, and they would certainly, I was sure, have beefed it up for Valentine’s Day. And they had. This lovely lily is my Valentine’s Day gift to my Valentine. On the way out of the store she commented on how good the flowers smelled and stuck her nose in close enough to pick up a good smear of that very orange pollen. We laughed. When she got to the car and the rear-view mirror, she did a good job of smearing it over most of the tip of her nose, without removing any of it. Sticky stuff. “Engineered to stick to bees’ behinds”, as my daughter Kelia helpfully pointed out. At home it did come off with soap and water, so my Valentine is no longer branded, but if you see us together you will still, very likely, be able to tell she is mine. My Valentine.
And so the tale of a love is told, one funny little story at a time.
Canon SX50HS at 24mm equivalent and macro. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. f3.4 @ 1/20th @ ISO 800. A mix of pre-dawn window light and incandescent. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness (with some defocus and desaturation on the table cloth and the radiator in the corner to make the flower dominate).
And a very happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Valentine. May you have your own funny little story to roll out the tale of love.
Snow Fence
There is something about a snow fence that has always captured my eye and my imagination. I like the color of the worn wood. I like the curves the fence makes…especially as it ages. I like the shows the slats throw. Add some actual snow, on a bright sunny morning, and a snow fence can make the perfect still-life/abstract. Or that is what I think anyway.
I have photographed this particular fence, which is along an access road to a beach and beach houses near our home, often. I used moderate zoom on SX50HS (275mm) to frame just the curve at the end of the fence against its shadows. The texture of the snow, caused my melting and refreezing at the surface, just adds more interest to the shot. f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode, with –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightrtoom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Designer Ice: Branch Brook
For the recently new year, I am trying a new theme which allows a larger view of the main image. What do you thinK?
This is the strange ice that forms along the edges of Branch Brook at Rachel Carson NWR, a mile of river channel from the sea, where the water is, according to the tide, a mix of salt and fresh. I love the long fibers, the arrowheads and the spears. It is so designed! I know there is a chemistry and a physics of water behind it…a whole crystal science…but it certainly does not look random to me. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.