Posts in Category: Sunday
1/8/2012: Webhanette Falls, in Ice
The Webhanette River flows between Wells and Moody Beach Maine and forms the Webhannet Marshes behind the dunes of Wells Beach. On its way down to the sea it flows over some rocky ledges. Waterfalls of any size in Southern Maine are few enough so that the Town of Wells has created a little park around the falls, not, honestly, much visited. It is a quiet spot just of busy RT 1, on a loop of road that has been bypassed by newer construction, and worth a look most seasons. Here it is in its winter persona, minus, due to our strange winter so far, the usual solid coating of snow that generally buries the rock and the ice itself…so I guess it is a somewhat unusual view.
I like the way the flowing water has frozen…the interesting shapes and textures…and the way the strongest flow has remained free.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 120mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. 2) and 3) 410mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 125 and 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: Many places in the world, and even in Maine, no one would even notice Webhanette Falls. It is too small, too tame, too homely. But when you live on a coastal plain, hundreds of miles from real mountains (where in fact any decently high hill is called a mountain) any waterfall is a treat…a reminder of the beauty and the power of falling water. And what is it about waterfalls anyway? Why do we humans, pretty much universally, find them awe-inspiring…why do we drive and hike out of our way to see them? We paint them, we take pictures of them. We are irresistibly and undeniably drawn. Why did the town of Wells, when the new Rt. 1 was constructed, preserve this little park around this vest pocket water fall?
I can ask the questions but I can’t answer them. All I know is that waterfalls make me glad…a bit giddy in fact. They lift my spirit, fill my soul with wonder. They make me happy. There is a sense of play about them…from the smallest to the most majestic that speaks, always…maybe in a whisper at Webhanette and a roar at Niagara…but speaks always to the place in me that feels closest to the creator.
1/1/2012: Horizons, Happy Sunday, Happy New Year
One of the advantages of living near the ocean is that you can, most days, go look at the horizon. I have taken a lot of pictures of the horizon over the ocean over the years…because I love the light that happens there, especially on stormy days…on days when fronts pass and the weather is changing. This shot, taken at East Point in Biddeford Pool on my Snowy Owl prowl the other day, has an early morning feel to the horizon light but it was taken in early afternoon. The sun was still high above the clouds and the warmth along the horizon was due only to the distance and the amount of air between. You can also, if you look closely, see the curtain of light breaking through about half way to the horizon..showing in the image against the clouds as what we call drawing water lines.
On the days when I need to see the horizon, it is because I need that apparent distance to give scale to whatever is cluttering my mind and clogging my spirit. I need to be able to look to the limits of vision and know there is something beyond that is not bounded by my day.
I have never sailed far enough to know days on end where the horizon is all there is to see. I am always standing on some shore when I look, so the horizon is a promise, not a threat. When I have my fill of horizon I can turn around and walk back into my day…with the challenges, generally, reduced to manageable size…or at least with the promise that something from beyond the horizon might change everything (and I can still believe that will be for the better).
And a horizon is an appropriate image for the new year, for today, the first day of 2012.
/////////////////////////////////////// Gap detected /////////////////////////////////////////////
(I am just back, in fact, from a quick dash to the beach to photograph the sunrise of the new year. I will post images in a while as a special New Year’s Day edition.)
But to finish the original Sunday, New Year’s thought, it is that horizon thing. Facing the new year, it is good to see it as a horizon experience, both in the mundane and in the spiritual…something to give scale to the whatever has cluttered your mind and clogged your spirit this past year. The horizon is always there. The good days are the days when we have it in sight.
12/25/2011: Merry Christmas. Happy Sunday.
Christmas on a Sunday is, in fact, not all that rare an event. There is a 28 year cycle and the gap between Sunday Christmas’ varies (due to leap years) from 11 to 5 years in a predictable way. The next one will be in 2016 and the one after in 2022. (I did not do the math myself. Check with Ask.com.) Still…
It feels just slightly more special. In some ways (purely temporal) it complicates the day. In some (mostly spiritual) it elevates it. But of course I profess to believe that for people of faith there is, or should be, no such dichotomy. The spiritual finds expression in the temporal or it does not exist at all. When all our moments are moments in eternity, in the presence of the divine, then we are living our faith.
And, in that spirit, I am not exactly certain why this is my Christmas Sunday pic. It was taken yesterday, on Christmas Eve Saturday, along my little stretch of the Kennebunk Bridle Trail where so many of my local pics are taken. We had an unusually high tide which flooded the marsh with salt water, so that the fresh water spread thin on the surface and froze to an icy lace. As the tide fell, the fragile skin of ice bent and broke around things as delicate as individual grass stalks, creating impromptu sculptures to catch the clear December light. I attempted to memorialize the effect in frames of various sizes. This one, at full zoom, is one of my favorites.
Maybe that is it. If light is spiritual and water temporal (as we often draw the lines), this image represents the fusion of the two, and just how fragile and fleeting our attempts to see them so too often are. Rare as a Sunday Christmas…but beautiful enough for memory…and frequent enough, the sweep of time, for hope.
Today I celebrate the birth of Jesus, Son of God, God with us, God in us, who through life and death and life beyond death, gives us life…today and forever…like, in some way, the clear light of December caught in fragments of ice on a falling tide. A thing of beauty and wonder worth celebrating.
Merry Christmas. Happy Sunday.
12/18/2011: Happy Sunday! Home for the Holidays
I have done a lot of travel in the last 30 days. I spent significant time in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas (Harlingen to McAllen), in New Mexico (Albuquerque, Gallup, Bosque del Apache), and at Wildcatter Ranch in Graham Texas. But now I am home in Southern Maine for 3 weeks…one already past…and vacation time the next two. I still have a few images from Texas and New Mexico to post, but I forced myself away from the computer yesterday long enough to get out on the local patch and see what was happening photographically.
It was chancy day…little balls of ice falling off and on, trying to convince us it was snow…and massive rolling cloud cover doing its best to make a gloomy December day. I drove down toward the ocean and my favorite walk along the Kennebunk Bridle Path through the marshes beside the Mousam river. The landscape was, indeed, dull…a winter landscape without the saving grace of snow. Brown grasses, bare trees, and, under the overcast, steely waters…as chill as the wind on this 30 degree day.
But the sky was impressive. And behind those clouds the sun was making every effort to break through. The clouds were shot through with light, and full of form and shadow. It was truly a dimension sky and pulled the otherwise dull landscape out of its doldrums.
This is looking toward the sea from the Route 9 bridge over the Mousam. Now that is what I call a sky, and I composed with just enough land in the foreground to give it scale.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent. Program and iContrast, with –1/3EV exposure compensation. f8 @ 1/1600th @ ISO 200. This was great exposure for the sky (and I tipped the camera up when metering to bias it for the sky) but it left the foreground dark and lifeless. Fill Light, rather heavy, in Lightroom restored some life to the landscape, and a blackpoint adjustment restored it even more. Finally I used Auto Color Temperature to offset the under-corrected blue bias from the camera’s Auto white balance setting. All of which brought it pretty close to what I saw standing there.
So, for the Sunday thought: no matter where you roam, and no matter how dull by comparison, it is always good to be home for the holidays. As a photographer I am not really anywhere until I can see the beauty and experience the wonder of the landscape I am in…and that can be a challenge at home. But it must be done. You do have to come home, all of you, everything that is you, for the holidays. In the house, we have been listening to Christmas music (and I have bought my limit of three new Christmas albums), and last night we put up the tree and decorated it and set up the crèche. Packages have been arriving all week from Amazon. The kids are gathering in or setting arrival schedules. The season is in gear. But until I went out yesterday to find the beauty and wonder in the winter dull landscape, I was not really home. We will, of course, have sunny days sometime in the next two weeks, and I can still hope for snow for Christmas, but whatever happens now is okay…I am home for the holidays. And glad to be here.
12/11/2011: Dawn Church, Happy Sunday
Coming out of the hotel to catch the shuttle to Wildcater Ranch one morning last week in Graham Texas, I looked to the east and was taken with the dawn light behind this lighted steeple, and with the silhouettes of the trees. I framed it several different ways, but this was the keeper.
Canon SX40HS at 250mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/40th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: Photography is all about catching the play of light and shadow. Note that it is not “light and darkness”…it is definitely light and shadow. We are creatures of light. Light is our reality. Darkness is simply the absence of light. It has no substance of its own, and it always flees at the first hint of light. Every photograph is a record of the light that stuck the film or the sensor…producing a chemical change or a charge that is then rendered into an image of reality. Shadow is only the record of where the light did not reach.
Or taking a word from another tradition: “The light of the world has come into the world, and it utterly defeats the darkness.” That is the promise and that is the reality we celebrate this season. So happy Sunday…and an early Merry Christmas, from a dawn in Graham Texas.
12/4/2011: Happy Sunday! Sun Fire | Burning Bush
Hiking the Marsh Trail at Bosque del Apache, I looked up at the top of the loose conglomerate bluff at just the right spot and just the right moment to see this. It was late afternoon and the sun was getting low enough so the bluff cast a shadow across most of the trail, though the marsh itself was still in sun, and the light spilling over the bluff caught in the fine seed filaments of this plant (I am not sure what it was but I suspect, from the fine fibers, that it was Cliff Rose) and lit them up like the glowing wires of incandescent bulbs. I am sure it was a purely a diffraction effect…the seed fibers were fine enough to bend and focus light…they were not, of course, heated to incandescence themselves…but it certainly looked like I imagine Moses’s burning bush might have. I wonder what wonders I missed by not stopping to listen?
But then that question, apt as it is in logic of writing down my impressions, is not true to the experience. I actually experienced a wonder that goes well beyond questions of what I might have missed. I was, in fact, caught up in the act of wonder, and, simultaneously, busy trying to figure out how to record it so that I might, eventually, share it.
For me, that is what it means to be a photographer…and those are the moments I treasure…when I am caught up in wonder and fully engaged in making an image of it. I tend to favor cameras that do most of the work in those critical moments…auto exposure…auto focus…set-and-forget cameras that allow me to concentrate on framing what I am seeing effectively. I can think about that, about the framing and the composition, without losing the wonder. If I have to actually think about f-stops and shutter speeds and ISO values then I am in danger of getting separated from the wonder. And what fun would that be?
No, I need to be able to point and shoot…simple as that…so that when I see a burning bush I can share it with you without losing it myself.
And besides, what God is saying in most burning bushes is pretty simple. “I am here. I am with you. Trust and enjoy.” (We humans generally translate that into “Do not be afraid”, or sometimes “Trust and obey” but, believe me, it is “trust and enjoy” in the original language…the one you can only hear with the ears of the spirit.)
No, the burning bush on the top of the bluff spoke pretty clearly to me…and I hope I caught just a bit of the message for you.
Canon SX40HS (ultimate point and shoot) at 180mm equivalent field of view, f6.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/27/2011: First Sun at Bosque del Apache, Happy Sunday
This is another shot from the delayed sunrise last Sunday at Bosque del Apache. Clouds closed the eastern horizon and it took the sun an hour or more to make its way up behind them before there was any direct sun on the ponds and fields. While the Geese were up and away at first light, many of the Cranes remained in the overnight ponds well past their normal departure for the feeding fields. The combination of subtle indirect light with a touch of dawn color made the morning unique.
Canon SX40HS. 1) 107mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. 2) 246mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/250 @ ISO 200. 3) 717mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125. Programed Auto with iContrast. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, light balance, and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: Too often we think that clouds on the horizon spoil the dawn…and they certainly mute the sunrise and delay full light…but there is a beauty in that more subtle light, and you have much longer to appreciate it…to study the effect…to absorb the wonder of it. This is good, or can be if we we can see the delay for what it is and let go of our impatience. Taking it as a metaphor, of course, clouds on the horizon delaying our dawns are all too common in our lives…both our worldly lives and our spiritual lives (for those still making that distinction). When we commit to living with eyes wide open and full of wonder, we let go of our expectations of speedy dawns every day…we commit to giving the sun time to climb up behind the clouds, and we commit to enjoying every moment of the wait. In fact, we commit to not waiting at all. We commit to being in the moment and appreciating each one for what it is. That’s not waiting for anything. That is the life of the creator in us through spirit of his son, enabling us to be as we are intended to be. A long slow dawn, below the mountains, with majestic birds walking on reflected light…makes it easy to be wide eyed in wonder and belief…but that’s call for each day…no matter what shape the dawn takes.
Now if I could only remember that!
11/20/2011: Bosque Sunset
You go to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Cranes and Snow Geese show, but the landscape and the light certainly add to the experience. Dawns are spectacular and so are sunsets. Add the birds and you have a truly unique experience. We stopped at one of the pans along the road back to San Antonio to watch the Cranes settle as the sun set. It was not the most spectacular of New Mexico sunsets but it was still special.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. The wide shot used Night Landscape mode. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for Sunday, I believe that any experience that awakens awe in a human being opens a connection to the Creator…however momentary and however unconscious…there is a second there where God is very close to breaking through the mundane shell. A percentage of people, of course, are never the same again. It wakes a hunger that must be satisfied and that can only be satisfied by a perminent connection to our Creator God. Bosque is a place where such moments happen every day. Go for the Crane and Snow Geese show, but don’t say I did not warn you.
11/13/2011: Bluebirds (of happiness?)
I am not sure how the bluebird became associated with happiness, but, according to the wiki on the subject, it is a tradition that is both widespread and ancient. And of course, in its origins it almost certainly referenced some other blue bird than the North American thrushes that have acquired (or appropriated) the name. Eastern Bluebird (shown here in this shot from yesterday from Sana Anna National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo Texas) and the western Bluebird which share the two tone blue and rufous coloration, and the Mountain Bluebird which is almost entirely blue. Still, I have to admit that I do find our North American Bluebirds conducive to cheerfulness. They are such perky little guys, going about, at least in migration, in flocks of up to 40 birds, decorating the trees and bushes with their splash of unlikely blue.
I mean, look at these attitudes here. Don’t they make you smile (at least just a little)? No? How about this one?
All taken with the Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ with shutter speeds between 1/320th and 1/500th and ISOs between 100 and 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We humans are prone to externalizing our most precious internal states. Happiness is a bluebird…the Bluebird of Happiness. Maybe the feature more apt about Bluebirds and happiness that is caught in these images is sense of arrested motion. Bluebirds are seldom still for more than a second, and, without warning or apparent provocation, the whole flock will shoot at high speed from their current perches in a tree to decorate tall grasses in the meadow. Maybe it is that fleeting nature of happiness that we celebrate in the bluebird. On the other hand, Bluebirds generally don’t move far at a hop. They settle within easy sight of their original perch and work an area well before abandoning it. During nesting season they are very sedentary, if still highly active. They reside on territory about their nests and are easy to see over a matter of months. They are the model of domestic bliss. So I your take on what aspect of happiness the Bluebird represents might depend on the season and the place where you see them. Still, of course, we are externalizing…projecting our human feelings and needs onto the Bluebird. I do find them cheering to watch…and testimony to both the creator’s joy and sense of humor. Such unlikely little creatures! And I have to admit that the world is a happier place, for me, for having Bluebirds in it!
10/23/2011: Egret in Filtered Light. Happy Sunday
Happy Sunday! I am in California for a few days, doing a Point and Shoot for Wildlife workshop at Sea and Sage Audubon, so I spent the morning on Friday exploring likely places for shooting at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, where Sea and Sage are headquartered. San Joaquin is one of those rare city bound NWRs, sitting between Irvine, Costa Mesa, and Laguna Beach. You can see the city around you from any point on the refuge.
San Joaquin is also well under the Marine Layer in the morning, so most of my explore was done in light fog under a completely featureless overcast (denser fog). To say that the light was well filtered is understatement. The light was as near to non-directional as is possible in nature. (The environmental image above was taken near noon, when the Marine Layer had finally burned off.) This is less than ideal when shooting birds at a distance, and near disaster when shooting against the sky, but for big white birds on the ground and fairly close it is actually pretty much ideal. This soft light is the only kind of light that really brings out the more subtle modeling in an Egret while maintaining a natural look to the surroundings.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the Vario eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 1400mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/800th @ ISO 160. f4.5 effective (limited by the camera). Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
(Environmental shot at 24mm on the Canon SX40HS.)
And for the Sunday thought: we sometimes think life would be better if all the days were sunny…Southern California sunny…but even living in paradise, it can take a day of foggy air and and soft, filtered light to being out the more subtle details that we might otherwise miss. True for the photographer who is perhaps hypersensitive to the light…and true for anyone with eyes. True in what passes for normal life, and true in the life of the spirit. Sometimes it takes those spiritual fogs…those spiritual Marine Layers closing the spiritual sky and filtering the light…to let us see the more subtle details close to us.