Posts in Category: Sunday
10/16/2011: Goodbye to Fall Foliage
I was tempted to call this post “Goodbye to Fall” but that would not be accurate. We have weeks, maybe months, of fall ahead of us in this long slow slide to winter. Rain and wind have pretty well put out the fire of fall in Southern Maine this past week, and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. Still the trees will be bare a good long time before they are loaded with snow. We might even have an Indian Summer in between. So this is just goodbye to fall foliage…the brief weeks of stunning color here in New England.
Canon SX40HS at about 155mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and Vivid set in My Color.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. Maybe is just the hang-over from a week of intense meetings and late nights, but I can feel my mind shifting out of summer gear today, settling in to the more studious mode of fall and winter, turning inward. I feel the need of a fire in the fireplace. We don’t actually have a fireplace of course, but I still feel the need to huddle down to warmth and light, inside, and think deep thoughts. The thoughts of summer are all external, bright days and doing, life so fast and vital you can barely catch it, and never catch enough. The thoughts of fall and winter are internal. The days may be as bright and as full, and I may be outside just as much, but I become more alive than the world outside. I take my life out to experience fall and winter. Summer just breaks in and overwhelms me. And I am ready for fall…ready even for winter.
In my job fall and winter are busy seasons. Over the next month I will experience fall at least 4 times more in trips to the south and west, and even at the depth of winter in New England, I will be taking brief vacations into the shallows of what passes for winter in Florida and other points south. So it is more a thing of the mind and spirit, this inward turning. But I recognize the beginnings of it today, here in Southern Maine. It might be goodbye to the flame of fall foliage, but it is hello to the mind of fall.
10/2/2011: Still life with water, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
On my visit to Saco Heath a week ago, the day started overcast. The sun did not break out until I had already passed through the forest part of the trail. I found interesting fungi along the way, and the subdued light and persistent damp made for kind of “fall in the rain forest” mood. Still after sunny couple of hours on the heath I was hoping the sun would persist on the way back through the forest to the car…and that it might waken more lively colors along the path.
This is just a little random collection of leaves, moss, and water to one side or the other of one of boardwalk sections through the forest. We have had a lot rain this late summer/early fall, and the wetter portions of the forest are brim full. The boardwalks were definitely needed. I take a lot of these found still life shots, especially in the fall, attempting to find significant patterns by framing them carefully. They are primarily exercises in composition…which is one thing I value about the long zooms on the bridge cameras that I choose to use. Generally I can set the frame just as I want it, simply by zooming in or out. In this case I took some care to include just enough of the decaying branch to ground the bottom of the frame. And since the floating red leaf is what catches the eye first, I put it at one of the rule of thirds power points within the frame.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not stand and study, figure and plan. I just pulled up above this scatter of leaves along the branch, saw a possibility, put the frame around it, zoomed until it looked right to me, and squeezed off the shot. I do keep the rule of thirds grid turned on in my finder as a compositional reminder, and I am certainly conscious of the composition as I frame and zoom, but it is not in the forefront of my mind. I shoot more by eye than by mind. I see the image and capture it…I don’t plan the image and make it. That is just me of course. Your method may be quite different.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 176mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
So I am thinking this Sunday morning, about creativity. I read an article this week on the psychology and personality of creativity. It was one of those wiki type things that is more a digest of what other people think and have said (minus the need for footnotes and proper attribution :) ), with no real original thought or even a recognizable thesis…but still it got me thinking. As usual the idea of inspiration came into it. And as usual some pains were taken to explain the moment of inspiration as a sudden convergence of experience and experiment that yields an unexpected result…or something of that sort…anything to avoid the notion that some greater creative spirit at large in the world occasionally touches those with open minds and willing hearts with quite unearned bursts of liberating vision…as though for a second we are allowed to see through to the underlying reality where everything makes sense and is as it should be, and bring just a fragment of that vision back with us to apply to whatever problem or process is in hand.
Taking a picture for instance.
And as usual, the idea that creative genius and madness are closely linked…that the creative person walks a fine line with the balance of the mind…was presented as more or less historical fact. That has me thinking about gratitude. Thankfulness. I suspect…I do not know but I do suspect…that gratitude is a key element in the creative personality in maintaining the balance of the mind. You have to be thankful for every insight…for every inspiration…for every gift of vision that comes from that spirit of creativity greater than yourself. If you are not genuinely thankful…it you take those sudden convergences of experience and experiment as something that belongs to you, that you deserve or have earned…well, I have a strong feeling that that way lies madness.
And, as is not usual in these Sunday ramblings, that is a lot of weight to hang on a found still-life, a few leaves scattered in moss and water, over a decaying branch, along the boardwalk at Saco Heath. I scroll back up to look again at the image. Yup. Still thankful. So maybe it does work.
9/25/2011: Fotoprowl, The Yard. Happy Sunday!
Though it was raining heavily when I wrote yesterday’s post, by 10AM the rain had become light enough to get out for a Satruday fotoprowl. Fotoprowl®. I coined that word yesterday on Google+ in describing my adventure. Or I think I did 🙂 Someone may well have come up with it before me. Fotoprowl: an exploratory walk or ramble with camera in hand, intentionally hunting for images. I think it describes what many of us do. There comes a moment when the hunger for an image overtakes us, and we pick up the camera and head out the door…only thinking of destinations as we go…as likely places for pics…not setting out to see any particular thing or place, but going in search of whatever might make an image.
Yesterday I was headed for our back marsh and my pocket sanctuary along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, but it took me a half hour to get from the front door of the house to the car door. Now that the Japanese Beetles are gone, we are getting our first really good roses of the season. This giant pink was just begging for a pic.
And this yellow was growing right next to it, head hung over and still dripping from several days of rain, but still striking.
Then, only a few steps away, the tiny massed flowers of the Sedum caught my eye and the camera’s lens. The rain water still sitting in the flowers and the subtle light of an overcast day deepened the pinks toward red.
Then on the way to the car I looked up to see the first touches of fall color, literally touches, across the street. The flow of cooler air along the pavement touches the exposed leaves of Maples earlier than the season. And I have always suspected that the higher levels of carbon monoxide above the road have something to do with it too. Later in my fotoprowl, I found trees more fully touched, but I like the way the partial color here is framed against the pine needles.
And finally, reaching the car, I found that fall had gotten there before me.
I eventually did get in the car and get on with my fotoprowl behind the beach and along the Bridle Path…but that is a story for another day.
So what is the Sunday point? Those of us who have chosen photography as a way of celebrating the world around us…as our creative medium for sharing our vision…are driven by the creative urge to our occasional or habitual fotoprowls. That fact, simple as it is, never ceases to fill me with joy, and with a deep and abiding quiet satisfaction that is indistinguishable from deep gratitude. Not every fotoprowl results in a great image…in a image that takes on a life of its own…a true creative capture…but that does not diminish the satisfaction, or the gratitude. The satisfaction is in the prowl itself. We do not hunger so much for the image as for the hunt…for the state of mind…for the intentional openness and heightened awareness that is the essence of the prowl. In the fotoprowl, the photographer is fully alive. And that is why we do it…and what we are thankful for.
9/18/2011: Late Lake Erie Dawn: Happy Sunday
I went out early yesterday to see if I could find some birds and maybe digiscope a few before the Midwest Birding Symposium vendor area opened. Birds were in fact somewhat scarce, at least where I was, but I got to East Harbor State Park and the shore of Lake Erie just as the sun made its first brave attempt to break the hold of the overcast. Though it was well past actual sunrise, the horizon was streaked with orange, and contrasted sharply with the cold grey waves of the lake.
I took a number of shots. These three move from a wide angle view to zoom in on the details of the dawn.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm, 100mm, and 300mm equivalent fields of view. ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: that bit of warm light forcing its way under the edge of the solid cap of cloud and out over the cold waves speaks of hope and the irrepressable surge of day. The light of life has come into the world and the darkness can not extinguish it, as John wrote, thinking of that other light of the world…and mornings like this it is that much easier to believe. Happy Sunday!
9/11/2011: Black Saddlebags, Happy Sunday
Happy Sunday.
As I mentioned a few days ago in the Ruby Meadowhawk post, I have started what appears to be a little love affair with dragonfiles. Suddenly they are everywhere I look, I am taking a lot of pics, and my iPhone Audubon Field Guide to New England, which has a good section on dragonflies, is getting a good workout. Browsing there, a while back, trying to identify a dragonfly I had managed to catch with my camera, I came upon an image of the Black Saddlebags…one of the larger and showier of the New England dragonflies (found everywhere in the US east of the Rockies, as a matter of fact). Okay, so I want to catch an image of one of those! I saw a few in the air earlier in the summer during my rambles, but they never settled for a pic. Of course that just made me want one more. It turns out those early flies may have been vagrants from the south. The Saddlebags only reach adult stage in late summer here in Maine, so this specimen is most likely newly awing. And clearly more cooperative.
I saw it cross the beach and settle a the edge of the beach rose on the dunes (I was chanting “land, land, land” the whole way), but by the time I got there the Saddlebags had moved in a few yards. I had to maneuver among the rose bushes to get a shot. It was sitting in full sun, but deeper in among twigs and grass stems, and there was no clear shot that showed the full bug. The only way to get a full body shot was to stand in my own light and shoot the dragonfly in my shadow. I was pretty sure that as soon as my shadow touched it it would be up and away…but it sat.
And here is a full sun shot for contrast.
One spectacular bug!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode with the zoom setting overriden. 1) 403mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/80th @ ISO 400. 2) 538mm, f5.7 @ 1/40th @ ISO 200. 3) 499mm, f5.7 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. 1) and 2) adjusted for color temperature and Vibrance to more closely match the balance of 3).
Sunday thought: Every time I look at these images in the future, I will remember the thrill of taking them…and the feeling of deep gratitude and crazy joy that lasted all the way back to the car after. Right now, writing about it, and looking at the images, that same feeling is there, just behind the words. I am grinning here. I will probably take better pics of Saddlebags in the future…but these will always be special. Special in part because of the anticipation…because of wanting them since I saw the first Saddlebags in my reference and on the wing…and special because I had to dodge rose bush thorns to get them…but most special because of the feeling of being in the right place at the right time and ready for the blessing. No credit to me. The joy of these shots has nothing to to with self-satisfaction…it has everything to do with appreciation of the gift. (And not “my gift” as in “a gifted photographer”…but something I have not earned, and don’t deserve…an outright gift from someone who loves me.) While taking the images I was, of course, concentrating on angles, light values, zoom settings, and all the technical stuff of photography…and holding my breath (almost literally) lest the bug fly…but in a sense I was also totally absent from myself…completely caught up in the wonder of the moment. And when I stepped back down off the dune to return to the car, I was only aware of the gift. And grinning like…well…like a very happy man (or maybe boy). And that is what it is all about. Photography. Nature study. My new love affair with dragonfiles. To be so gifted I can only grin.
8/21/2011: Purple Vervain
Happy Sunday. I am not sure if Vervain is classed as a wildflower or as a weed, but it certainly makes an attractive show along the shores of Plains Pond at the edge of the Kennebunk Plains. Plains Pond was evidently once considerably larger. The damn seems well broken, but it is still an interesting place…a wide, somewhat marshy, spot in Cold Brook as it flows down into the Mousam River.
This is a different kind of macro…taking advantage of the wide angle macro mode on the Coolpix to frame the tiny flowers against the backdrop of the pond and the pines behind.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 32mm equivalent field of view, Close-Up mode, f3.7 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: well, obviously, one man’s weed is another man’s wildflower, and the setting is all important. Put this where I have commonly seen it…in cracks in asphalt sidewalks or pushing up through paved driveways…and it certainly is a weed, no matter how pretty the tiny flowers are. Out here a pond-side, it’s beauty is enough to make it precious. The eye of spirit sees it the same in either setting, of course. Wide eyed in wonder is the way to see the world.
8/14/2011: Blazing Star against the Sky
Happy Sunday!
I went back out to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday (see 8/7. 8/8, and 8/13) ostensibly to find Plains Pond which I had seen on the maps, but of course I got distracted again by the stands of Northern Blazing Star. Yesterday’s sky was much smaller than last Saturday’s, more homey and friendly somehow…but it still made a nice backdrop for this low angle shot of the Blazing Star. Something a bit different. Not a view you would see unless you intentionally bent down to ground level and looked up. (Which is why I won’t own a camera without an articulated LCD view 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 46mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting, –1/3EV exposure compensations, and program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought…it is not a view you would normally see…unless you bent down to ground level and looked up. And what a lot of spiritual truth there is in that! Sometimes, for the seeker, those are the two most important, and sometimes most difficult, directives. Get down to ground level. I am pretty sure that is what Jesus was talking about when he said you had to lose yourself, die to yourself, if you find yourself and live. Lose yourself, die to yourself, get down to ground level. The finding and the living parts are all in the look up, of course. And what do you see? Blazing Stars against a friendly sky. Beauty. Life. Possibility. Promise. Hope. And ultimately, love. Blazing Stars against a friendly sky.
Oh, and I did find the pond too, but that is a story for another day.
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7/24/2011: Wood Nymphs and Grace: Happy Sunday!
Tempting as it was to stay inside and lie low on another abnormally hot day in Southern Maine, by 2PM I realized that if I did not break free, I would have spent the whole day at the computer. On Saturday! Not good. Still, it is summer in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, so there are places we locals don’t go, especially on a hot Saturday afternoon (like anywhere with sand and water, shopping, views, etc…anything which might attract the tourist horde). My choices were limited.
I always manage to find something of interest at the short trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, and that can be reached without entering tourist territory.
It was, as expected, hot and still in the woods at Rachel Carson. We never get what you would call “high noon sun” here in Maine. Even at mid-day and mid-summer the angle of the light is never more than 60 degrees, and by 2PM it is already easing down toward 45, so the shadows in the woodland are interesting. And there were lots of Wood Nymph Butterflies. Gray patterned with prominent eye spots in cream-yellow patches on both sides of the leading wing, these guys flit through the forest, keeping, in the heat at least, mostly in the deeper shade. I chased a few with the camera, but, again with the heat, they were rarely still for more than a second, and with the deep shade, they were hard to photograph at the telephoto end of the zoom.
So I was surprised when I caught motion out of the corner of my eye as I left the lower deck on the Little River, to look up and see 8 or 9 of them massed on a tree trunk about 15 feet in and up. I watched and shot for 20 minutes as the butterflies clustered in this one spot, then dispersed, only to return, one, two, three, and soon a whole mass of them again. I could not see the attraction. I don’t know what they were doing. And it was still difficult to get a decent shot of butterflies in constant motion in the low light and at that distance with the zoom run all the way out. A tripod might have helped.
And finally, of course, I remembered to switch to video. You can shoot video in light that limits still imaging, and I found a spot on the rail of the deck where I could prop the camera for a fairly still view. The video required some post processing in Sony Vegas…adjusted brightness and contrast.
And I went away from that deck marveling once again at the gifts we are given when we take a camera (or binoculars for that matter) in hand and go out to intentionally look at the world. I have still have no idea what the butterflies where doing on that tree (if one of you don’t tell me, I may take some time this afternoon for a little research) but just finding them, having the opportunity to see them doing whatever it was, was such a gift. I did not bring back great images…and even the video could be better…but that I saw it at all is a thing of wonder and delight. Once more, since it is Sunday, it is grace. I did not deserve it. I could not have earned it. I had no right to expect it. I was a gift outright. Grace.
7/10/2011: Happy Sunday Morning Backyard Sky
I was half way through writing this morning’s post…on a shot of Burdock flowers (which you will now see later this week)…when I went to the kitchen to pour hot water over my tea and was caught by the sky above the back yard. It sucked me right out the sliding doors on to the deck, camera in hand, to catch it before it passed. A moments work to pop the card into the laptop and do a bit of process in Lightroom, press publish to put it on the web, and a moment more to copy it in here. So this is really a pic 4 today…a pic of today…of this morning, a few (not more than 15) moments ago as I begin to write this.
As to why…well we have the framing trees with the early sun just hitting the tops of the tallest, and spread of the wispy clouds out over the blue of the sky…the suggestion that this is, somehow, a swirl of motion frozen…it just draws me into the image…up and out of my self a bit.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. A touch of Fill Light and cropped slightly from the bottom for composition.
So, for a Sunday morning, a spontaneous composition leading to a spontaneous capture and what I hope is a spontaneous response. Spontaneous has come to mean “natural, unforced, impulsive, without forethought, in and of the moment” and I hope it applies to this image in all those ways…but a little research yields the fact that the word spontaneous entered the English language from late Latin in 1653, derived from sponte…meaning ”of one’s free will.”
I like that.
I like that spontaneous should mean an act of will…not just something that happens unexpectedly and without forethought…but an active response, a willed response, to whatever comes, to whatever happened. There is a sense in which I was compelled to capture an image of the sky over the back yard this morning, but there was also a moment when I willed myself to do it. It would have been so easy to let the moment pass…not to go find the camera…not to frame the sky with trees…not to juggle camera settings (minimal as I keep them) in my head…not to press the shutter release…not process the image…not to post it here. So much easier really, not to respond to the spontaneous sight of clouds against the morning sky. So much hangs on the gap between vision and image…on the acts of will inspired by the spontaneous display of beauty, pathos, or power that always catches the eye and mind.
And yet, it all feels spontaneous…unforced, natural…of my own free will…because, at the root, it is just the way I am made. Learned skills and camera technique aside, that impulse to participate in the acts of creation around me by recording and sharing them is just part of who I am…my own creative impulse…and I recognize it as a gift from the same oh so very free will that spontaneously arranged the sun and clouds and trees this morning above my backyard. Happy Sunday.
6/5/2001: White Rugosa Rose, Happy Sunday!
Beach Rose, or Rosa Rugosa, is common along coast of New England, and especially on the dunes of southern Maine. It is not native. It was introduced for dune control and sea-side landscaping from Asia, where it is 
native to coasts of northern China, Korea, Japan, and southern Siberia. Rose Hip Jelly, a regional specialty, is made from the hips or pips (fruit) of the Beach Rose. Like many other introduced plants, it has been a mixed blessing…it certainly holds the dunes down and makes a bold show in lawns and boarders, but where it grows wild it has almost completely displaced native dune grasses and wildflowers.
Mostly you see the red variety. The white is a cultivar, and through I found it growing wild along the abandoned Bridle Path in Kennebunk, it almost certainly escaped from someone’s garden, or perhaps there was once a house along the Path just there, as there is evidence of ditching and draining and possible cultivation in the marsh near-by, and several other introduced ornamentals (including Hawthorn and Japanese Barberry) on the Bridle Path within sight of the patch of white roses.
The big showy white petals do, as I see it, very interesting things with light 
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro). Both main shots at f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And, for the Sunday thought…
If, as I strongly suspect, what we have along the Bridle Path just there, where the white Rugosa Rose blooms, are the remnants of someone’s gardening efforts from the last century (or even the one before…there is a particularly Victorian aspect to the mix of plants) it just goes to show how much power there is in the human intention…the power to alter the landscape for generations…well beyond the lifetime of the particular person of intent. And, of course, the problem status of the Rugosa Rose on New England dunes testifies to our inability to completely foresee the consequences of our intentions. We, as children of the creator, have, indeed a measure of the creator’s power…certainly enough to create our own versions of Eden where ever we go…but as creatures of time, who lack, while we are here on this earth, the eternal perspective, we can not see far enough ahead to know what exactly we do.
I am, to be honest, of two minds about this. One part of me recommends caution…that we ought, given our limitations, to take a “hands off” stance…to leave nature to her own devices, and not meddle with the landscape.
But part of me feels that managing the ever changing landscape is what we are here to do…that in fact…we will always be gardeners in the Eden the creator is creating…and that is right that we exercise our little bit of creativity in the moment…every moment…to tend and expand the landscape of creation. If the Rugosa Rose has run beyond any intention, it will require creative intent on the part of the children of the creator reign it in.
Too often, I think, we set man and nature against each other. Man made is unnatural. A garden is not nature. Too often, I think, we forget that man is part of nature…that our creative intent is force of nature as sure as wind and sun and rain. It is, as I see it, only by remembering that all the time, and passing it generation to generation, that we can overcome the limitations of our time-bound perspectives. We are children of the creator, charged with creation in the moment. If the Rugosa Rose is a problem, we need to get creative about it. In this moment.
Or that’s what I think this Sunday morning.
Happy Sunday. Enjoy what the light does with the petals of the White Rugosa Rose!