Posts in Category: storm
Dutch Sky
Before it slips too far into the past, let’s revisit Holland at least a few more times. I love the Dutch skies. The few days I was there, they were ever-changing and, except when it was raining sideways, always beautiful…filled with drama. They made me what to be landscape painter.
This is out on the wildlife trail at the Oostvaardersplassen refuge. In Holland you are never more than a few hundred yards from water: pond, lake, canal, river, sea, or ocean. In fact, until the 1970s, where this was taken was sea bed…the area around Lystadt is the newest land in the Netherlands. There are forests, but they are all fast growing trees, willows, linden, and pine. Most places there is nothing to block your view right out to the horizon. Hence the drama of the sky. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 40mm equivalent field of view for framing. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
3/29/2012: Maple Blossoms is a Snow Squall, Kennebunk ME
As I mentioned in yesterday’s Maple Blossom Special post, snow squalls were in the forecast for Southern Maine yesterday am, and one hit our back yard about 7:30. Of course, I threw on a coat and ran out to get a few shots of my maple blossoms with caps of snow. It was still snowing, and you can actually see a clumpy “flake” coming in for a landing in this shot.
The light was very different, afternoon to morning, sun to heavy cloud with snow in the air, and exposures were considerably different. Program with iContrast on the Canon SX40HS pushed the ISO well up to handle the subdued light, and the yellows brought out by the afternoon sun of the previous day turned dull. Only the reds held color.
Though a lot of my attention went into keeping the camera dry, I did manage to pay attention to the background of the shots. I tried both open framing, with the whitish sky behind, and closed framing, with the dark trunk of the tree behind. The top shot is in between, with background blossom clumps and branches making a patterned bokeh. One of the advantages of extreme tel-macro is the interesting bokeh effects you get.
All at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-extender function). 1) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 500. 2) same. 3) f5.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. These are all at –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for color temperature, intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/14/2012: Snowscape with Birches
Another shot from Thursday’s snow storm. This classic country estate with its long reach of pond and covered bridge is pretty in any season, but particularly striking in this winter scene.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/100th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Dynamic Photo HDR, and then final processing in Lightroom.
1/13/2012: Snow!! And a road in the wood.
We finally got our first significant snow yesterday in southern Maine. They predicted 1 to 3 inches, and we got 6 to 8 🙂 Heavy wet snow finishing off in little pellets of ice late afternoon. The roads were as bad as I have ever seen them in Maine. Still that did not stop me from getting out mid-storm to get a few pics. This is a wood road that runs through Rachael Carson National Wildlife land between us and the coast.
This is not sensor friendly light…levels are low in a storm like this…and exposing to hold highlights in the snow almost always results in greens that are grey at best, and mostly verging on black. I was really pleased to be able to pull up the greens while processing the image in Dynamic Photo HDR without losing the white of the snow. This is very much a naked eye view.
Canon SX40HS at 126mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed as a single jpg HDR in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing and a slight crop from the top in Lightroom.
And just for fun, here is the same image processed in Dynamic Auto Painter as a painting.
12/31/2011: Cape Porpoise Harbor in Green
The final pictures for 2011.
When I was about to leave Cape Porpoise the other day on my Snowy Owl prowl, I turned to see that a shaft of sun had come in under the cloud over to light up the harbor and the town. It was not the usual warm low sun shaft that sometimes leaks under the cloud cover at sunset, but a shaft of mid-day winter light…it turned the water of the harbor bright green, and picked out every detail in the boats and houses of the village. It was stunning. I hurried across the parking lot and out on to the deck at the (closed for the winter) clam shack to catch a few shots before the clouds closed in and shut off the light. This shot is zoomed in to frame the village and the church.
Canon SX40HS at 112mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
And here is the side shot (24mm equivalent).
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Auto color temperature adjustment to match the green in the two shots. Some extra Recovery and some exposure and brightness adjustment in the second shot to tame the highlights.
12/29/2011: East Point and Wood Island Light
Yesterday was a good day to look for Snowy Owls. I had to go north on a shopping expedition so on my way back I worked my way out to East Point Sanctuary at the tip of Biddeford Pool. I have seen Snowys before on the the rocks and stony beaches of the point, as well as on Wood Island, which is visible from the point across the Saco River channel. In fact I saw my very first Snowy there.
As it turns out, yesterday was a very good day to look for Snowy Owls…it just was not a very good day for finding them. 🙁
The goodness of the day is due to the weather. There was a front passing and the clouds and the sea and the light all along the coast south from Casco Bay was spectacular. This is the view across the channel to Wood Island Light. I love the hammered steal of the sea, and that mass of cloud slanting in over Wood Island, with the Lighthouse standing against the ranked clouds out over Cape Elizabeth and the far shore of Saco Bay.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
The seas coming into Saco Bay were huge. In this second shot, I zoomed in for more detail on the Lighthouse, but also to catch one of those breaking swells. Coming in against the wind, when the swells broke on the underwater ledges between the Point and the Light, the spray made for some fantastic shows.
Canon SX40HS at 77mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. To capture this shot I took a burst of images at 4 fps when the wave began to break and selected the best of them.
The final shot is from a bit further down the channel, looking past the light and out to sea, at an intermediate zoom between the first two. Again, I was after the braking wave in front of the Light.
Canon SX40HS at 30mm equivalent. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
All processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I used Graduated Filter effects to balance exposure on the sea and sky, and adjusted color temperature to warm the sea to its visual gray, rather than the blue-grey the the camera rendered.
12/24/2011: Kennebunk Plains, Christmas Snow?
The great Christmas Snow Storm of 2011 has come and gone. Of course, it fell mostly as rain. If it had been a few degrees colder, we would have had a good foot and a half of snow cover today…but, alas, it was not to be. I went out in the late afternoon when the setting sun was trying to get out from under the cloud cover in the west to see if there was more snow inland, but evidently it turned to rain at least an hour before the storm passed there too. There were only remnants. Still, the light in the sky on the retreating cloud mass was worth the trip.
This first shot is the view north and east. Turning right around and facing south west, we have the horizon view.
And finally a zoomed in shot of the same horizon.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. 2) 50mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. 3) 173mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. All received some color temperature adjustment as well as dueling Graduated Filter Effects to lighten the foreground and darken the sky.
7/7/2011: Storm over Mothers’ Beach
My daughter and a friend like to walk in the evening. They got ambitious last might and walked the 2 miles or so to the ocean. Unfortunately when they turned to come home, this is what they saw bearing down on them, complete with flashes of lightning. I was called to the rescue with the car, and, while there, of course, had to try to capture the sky. It is really more impressive (even more impressive :)) in the enlarged view available by clicking the image.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/125th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto with Active-D Lighting.
This took more than my usual processing in Lightroom. I did not think to switch the White Balance to Cloudy, and the auto WB did not respond well…the clouds were blue, blue, blue. Auto WB in Lightroom took care of most of it, but I also had to selectively reduce the saturation of the blue and aqua bands, using the color selection tool in the HSL panel. To capture the visual effect, I also had to reduce overall brightness. Though it still looks a bit strange…it did in fact look a bit strange in reality. Very weird light!
A little luminance noise reduction smoothed the dark sections of the clouds.
Finally, since I had the camera tipped up a sharp angle, and the zoom set to 23mm, the wide-angle distortion was very visible in the houses and beach structures, especially on the right. Lightroom’s lens and vertical distortion tools restored correct perspective, at the cost of minor cropping of the top right and left.
5/15/2011: After the Storm, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
I woke to a rainy Sunday morning this am, so this shot from last Saturday seems appropriate. We had a day of rain which finally broke up, late in the afternoon. I took a run down to the beach to see what the light was getting up to. The sky was not as dramatic as I had hoped, but in this shot, the foreground detail, I think, makes up for it.
This was an experiment in the Nikon Coolpix’s HDR mode…the camera took three shots and stacked them for an extended range. Results right out of the camera are almost always disappointingly flat…unless the scene is exactly as the authors of the software envisioned it…but some work in Lightroom can produce a very pleasant extended range effect…very natural compared to a lot of HDR you see. And, since the images are captured very fast (8 frames per second), shots of moving water like this one are possible.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 31mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160. Backlight (HDR) mode.
And for rainy Sunday thoughts…well, my mind is certainly in rainy Sunday mode already…thoughts are slow and pleasantly lagging and I am ready for a nap after an hour up. I am not sure exactly why rainy Sundays are so much more conducive to sleepy repose than rainy Thursdays (to pick a day at random), but they are. The day of rest is deeply engrained in us, perhaps? Maybe even at the cellular level? In our genes?
This scene, with its peaceful motion (in the water), its subtle light, and its restful balance fits the day. There is a quiet that is deeper than the flesh, when the soul lays in wait, on the threshold of revelation, and feels no need of motion beyond the gentle swirl of life around it. Rainy Sunday quiet.
3/27/2011: Spring Snow Morning
Happy Sunday!
Before the season slips behind us and is forgotten…here is a shot from just a week ago, when we woke to fresh spring snow. We might yet see another storm. We have had snow in April within my memory of this place…quite a few times at that. This snow was typical of spring, with big furry flakes, but exaggerated enough to be interesting, as chronicled on 3/20 and 21.
This is Back Creek where it crosses Route 9 just before the end of Brown Street, and is always a pleasant view, even here where the snow is doing its best to obscure it. I actually took the shot out the window of the car, keeping the camera dry. Moderate telephoto zoom framed the little curve in the creek and the gap in the trees, and emphasized the falling snow.
Canon SX20IS at 60mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Sports Mode to catch the falling flakes in mid-air.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
When picking a shot for Sunday, I always look for something that speaks, however faintly, to the spiritual side of things. I am a firm believer that the spiritual is in everything…that it underpins everything and every moment…and that we can (and should) see it wherever we look. I am not talking about a Platonic reality here, where the eternal cast a shadow that is the temporal reality we experience, but a world of experience that is, moment by moment, and second by second, the living expression of the creative spirit of all. This instance of spring snow is a single character in a single word in a single sentence of one paragraph of a chapter of one volume of the endless story that is being told. It is being spoken. Here I have written that character down, caught it in a pictograph, and it has meaning beyond me, only because we are all part of that same story being told. Spring Snow Morning. From my piece of the story…now into yours.