Posts in Category: sunset
Cranes against the Sunset. Happy Sunday!
 Sandhill Cranes. Bosque del Apache NWR
Yesterday promised to provide one of those amazing Bosque del Apache sunsets…there were just enough clouds along the horizon to light up as the sun sank behind the mountains. We set up at the ponds along Route 1 to watch the Sandhill Cranes fly in for the night, and to wait for the sky. Bosque performed as expected. This is a classic Bosque del Apache shot, with the Cranes framed against the flaming sky. There were probably 100 other photographers lined up along the dyke by the ponds trying for this, or a very similar, shot. And that was just yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of images of Sandhill Cranes against the sunset have been taken at Bosque over the years. I have taken quite a few myself 🙂 Still, that does not keep me from trying again every chance I get. There is a beauty and a wonder that persists…that is just as intense the 100th time you experience it as was the first. A beauty and a wonder so rich and rewarding that you are compelled to try to capture and share it every time. Or at least I am. Moments like these put us in touch with both who we really are, and, as I see it, with the loving creator of all that is (including us). They are bridge moments…open window moments…moments of profound connection with all that is and to the meaning…the message being written…the life being lived. Beauty, wonder, and meaning written large and bold in Cranes against the sunset at Bosque del Apache. Happy Sunday!
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. Processed in Lightroom.
All in a Day in the Backyard.
From dawn to dusk in our backyard yesterday. From an awesome -11 degree sunrise to a 5 PM blizzard. We do it right in Maine 🙂 The way life is supposed to be. (And as I get the snowblower out of the basement to deal with 8 inches of fresh snow this morning I am thinking, “yeah, maybe not so much 🙂
Still, it is good discipline to find the beauty where you are, and to celebrate it. Keep those eyes open and those cameras clicking! It is good for the soul.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 24mm equivalent. Sunrise: ISO 1000 @ 1/160th @ f4. Blizzard: ISO 500 @ 1/160th @ f4. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver, and assembled in Pixlr Express on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Wood Stork, Great Egret, White Ibis Populate the Dawn
This is another shot from my Sunday dawn stop on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. As the sun came up the birds came in to feed in the small pools below Stop #2, and the light, coming low over the misty marsh behind them, made for wonderful images. Here we have a Wood Stork (the only one in this mixed flock of birds), one of several Great Egrets, and one of hundreds of White Ibises just entering the frame. I like this image for the light, but also for the dynamic tension between the three birds, and the “caught in action” pose of the Stork. The image would not work, with the Stork walking out of the frame, if not for the strong anchor of the Egret at the bottom center.
Canon SX50HS at about 360mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Pelican Sunset: Happy Sunday!
I went out to the Flight Deck at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, just at sunset, to catch the geese and cranes coming in. Though it was already crowed (as it was every night during the Festival of the Cranes), I found a likely place to park beyond the platform where there is a break in the trees that shows an expanse of the pond.
I had only been there long enough to get out of the car when I looked up and saw a skein of white birds with black wing-tips coming from the north. “Ah,” I thought, “just in time.”
I think I was on my second burst of shots before it hit me. They were not geese. When compared to Snow Geese, American White Pelicans have a superficially similar pattern of white and black…white body…black in the wings, and when the flocks are flying high you have to look twice. The shape is all wrong of course, with that heavy bill pushed out in front. But still, add the fact that the Geese are expected at the flight deck at sunset, and the Pelicans are not…and you can understand my mis-identification.
It was a flock (not a skein after all…as a “skein” is literally “ducks or geese in flight”) of about 50-75 birds. After a long slow glide in, they settled on the pond and began to feed.
The woman next to me said, “What are those? Those aren’t geese!” No, just Pelicans borrowing some of the Snow Geese Sunset at the Flight Deck. Pelican Sunset.
Canon SX50HS. Flight shots in Sports Mode. The others in Program. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: I wonder how often we see what expect to see when it comes to matters of the spirit? Are we conditioned by the place and the time and our expectations to see what we came to see? Do we miss the spiritual Pelicans in the sunset because we are looking for Snow Geese? I think of Abraham climbing the mountain with his son for sacrifice and his faith trailing behind him the dust…only to have God change the rules, pull the faith forward, and provide his own sacrifice. I think of the Pharisees confident expectations of a messiah to free them from Rome, and how again, God changed the rules and sent them a savior sacrifice to save them from themselves…to save us from ourselves. I wonder, sometimes, how conditioned I am to see God through that story, and if I am mis-identifying the spiritual when I see it…then I remember that God is able to change the rules…is bigger than the story we tell about him and delights to prove it. I might think Snow Goose, but God will be faithful to reveal himself in the Pelicans if that is what is there!
It is, after all, the Pelicans that make a Pelican Sunset.
Sandhills in Silhouette: Bosque del Apache
One of the reasons you get up before dawn and go stand in the cold by some patch of water at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge…or at the other end of the day, stand in the same spot on feet that are way too tired, ignoring the urgent summons to supper your tummy is broadcasting…is the silhouettes of the Cranes against the early or late day sky. Cranes in flight at any time are a primal, almost a prehistoric site, and when reduced to their most basic and cast against a sky in various shades of sunrise or sunset, they speak directly to the layer of the mind that is under the civilized and the socialized. There is something attractively wild, primeval, in a Crane in silhouette. (Do click these first two images to see them as large as your monitor or screen will allow.)
This year, with my new Canon SX50HS, I was able to catch the best Bosque silhouettes of my photographic life so far…and even some semi-silhouettes that still hold detail in the cranes like the dawn shot above.
The first image is three shots of the same Crane as I panned with it in Sports Mode at 5 frames per second. After trying a triptych, which did not quite work, I used PhotoShop Element’s PhotoMerge tool in Panorama Mode to hand place and blend the images at the edges…and then evened the exposure even more using the dodge tool. The rest are just straight Sports Mode shots processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. The next to last one is cropped at the left to eliminate a half bird.
The Fawn and The Crane: Bosque del Apache NWR
After we closed up the vendor tent at The Festival of the Cranes, I generally managed to get a bit of observation and photography done before the sun set. The light at Bosque del Apache is lovely at that time of day. On Sunday, in my final loop of the refuge on this visit, I drove up on three Mule Deer fawns (maybe two fawns and a yearling), feeding in the short grass at the edge of one of the “farm” fields at the north end of the tour loop. There was a group of Sandhill Cranes deeper in, among the green clover crop that had been planted for the Snow Geese, but a few had strayed out looking for bugs in the short grass with the deer.
I took lots of pics of the deer, but what I really wanted was at least one fawn and a crane in the same shot. Though the light was rapidly going, and I hade a few more spots I wanted to get to before full dark, I waited until the deer got far enough out in the field to frame the shot I was after. 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. -1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And a couple of bonus shots.
Sunset on the Flight Deck: Bosque del Apache. Happy Sunday!
For me Bosque del Apache has always been a very special place. I love the water and the mountains, the concentration of wildlife, the feeling of community among staff, the Friends of Bosque group, and the large group of full and part time volunteers. I like the small college town feel of Sucorro, which overlays the essential Hispanic cowboy and farming culture.
I like the fact that, year after year, the spectacle of the geese and cranes at dawn and sunset continues to attract crowds of people…not so much birders…as regular folk who make the drive down from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, or who include the Bosque in their vacation plans, just to stand to the edge of the road, the edge of a pond, or on the Flight Deck as the sun rises or sets and watch and listen. It is often cold, and people are bundled up, with hats and scarves and gloves…cold even in heavy winter coats…but they are there, waiting for the cranes to come in or the geese to rise.
And when it happens there is an energy that sweeps the crowd…a kind of glee…an obvious and overflowing delight. I love to watch the people coming off the Flight Deck…the uniformity and yet the vast variety of grins! You see the grin in the eyes of even those most muffled in scarves.
And that is just the spectacle of the birds. If you are at Bosque for a week in November (or almost any month) you are just about guaranteed one spectacular dawn and one spectacular sunset: the kind that touch the very deepest places of awe in us. The sun rises and the sun sets everyday…but there are sunrises and sunsets that are simply something to see! And you hear it in the crowd. “Now that is really something!” That is about as close as we can get to describing what such a sunrise or sunset does to us. Something. Something universal and powerful. Something that makes us glad to be alive. Something that fills us with thanksgiving. Something very close to the root of awe in us.
I finished at the vendor’s tent (I am, after all, at Bosque to work) just in time on Friday to get out to the Flight Deck for the sunset fly in of the geese. The Deck itself was already packed shoulder to shoulder with people and I had no intention of attempting to worm my way to a spot on the rail. I parked further down and planned to shoot the incoming geese and cranes from the edge of the pond. But then the sky happened, and the sunset bloomed. I took several shots from the road, out over the cars, but it really needed the reflecting water of the pond, and the only way to get that was get out on the Flight Deck. I found a spot at the rail on the boardwalk leading out to the deck that worked…that gave me the expanse of water and sky I had seen in my mind’s eye.
The Canon SX50HS has a hand-held night scene mode which I am experimenting with for sunrises and sunsets, and I used it here. It takes three very rapid shots and combines them in-camera. There is just enough exposure blending to extend the range of the image…to capture a realistic foreground as well as the drama of the sky. Just my normal processing in Lightroom produces among the most natural sunrise and sunset shots I have yet managed. Of course I had to try it here.
I took a lot of shots and worked hard to keep the Flight Deck itself out of the images, but actually, it this one where I intentionally included the end of the deck and the people on it as part of the composition that really captures the experience best for me.
And for the Sunday thought: for me awe is an essential element of faith…I don’t believe I could believe in, or put my faith in, a Creator who was not awesome in every way…who did not inspire a feeling of root awe in me in every encounter…in every aspect of the Creator’s person, presence and works…and in relationship to me. Wonder is required, and wonder is my most basic emotion. Followed closely by thankfulness. “I have seen the face of God and yet I live!” The most wonderful thing about the awe of God is that we can experience it, more that than, we can participate in it, in its full awesome glory and yet live to tell about it. The most wonderful thing is that we are made to tell about it…that telling about it is, at least in part, what we are created to do.
Wonder and thanksgiving are the compounded elements of love…and ultimately it is love I feel in a sunset like this one…and it is the Creator’s love I am inspired to tell about. I have been overwhelmed by beauty and splendor, and yet I live! That is love in its most essential form. Or that’s what I think.
Sandhills Landing at Sunset
One of the things you do at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge during the Festival of the Cranes is to attend the sunset fly-in of the Cranes. The Sandhills spread themselves up and down the length of the refuge during the day, and beyond its boundaries to the fields of cooperative farmers who are paid to leave a certain percentage of grain in the fields after harvest to feed the Cranes, but just before and just after sunset the Cranes fly in to a few chosen ponds and fields on the refuge to spend the night. For the most part they stand in water all night, as protection from predators. The high desert light of the upper Rio Grande valley, and the surrounding mountains make the incoming flight of the Cranes into a spectacle that rarely fails to draw a crowd to the parking lots and overlooks provided by the refuge.
If you look up and down the levee, you can see a fair fraction of the Canon’s recent production of 600mm lenses 🙂 as well as everything from phone cameras to superzoom Point & Shoots. It seems that everyone is compelled to attempt to capture the vision of the cranes coming in in the pre-sunset light.
I try it every year, with mixed success, but this year my new Canon SX50HS made job much easier. Sports gives me almost instant focus on moving subjects, and 5 frames per second capture for up to 10 frames with focus between frames. It also pushes the ISO up to provide higher shutter speeds. It is brilliant for birds in flight and, as it happens, Cranes landing in the last pre-sunset light.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1-3) 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640-1/100th @ ISO 800. 4) 600mm equivalent. f5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Except for 3), cropped top and bottom for effect.
I am not sure I am going to get back for another sunset on this trip to Bosque, but even if I don’t, I am really happy with these images! They are all linked to the full screen lightbox versions…and they look even better there. 🙂
Kennebunk Plains Sunset HDRs
Nothing is harder than capturing a “natural” looking sunset. If you expose for the drama in the sky then the foreground goes unnaturally dark (to total black), and every allowance you make for the foreground robs the sky of drama. I think sunsets were the original inspiration for HDR. HDR is a technique where three or more images captured at different exposures are combined in software to extend the range of the resulting image…so that, for instance, you take the foreground from the lightest sunset exposure, and the sky from the darkest, and the in-between stuff from the middle exposures. It can be quite effective given the right scene, the right set of exposures, the right software, and a delicate hand with the processing.
HDR can also be way overdone…producing an image that is either flat…with all values given equal weight…so that it looks like an etching, or an image that is so intense and unnatural that it looks like a surreal painting.
With each generation of cameras more and more come with HDR built in. One of the benefits of the fast CMOS sensors today is that these kinds of multiple exposure tricks are much easier. My new Canon SX50HS has the HDR mode right on the main control dial, and the software to combine the images built right into the processing engine. Making an HDR is as easy as setting the dial, holding the camera really still (it is taking three exposures), and pressing the button. The three images are combined before being written to the card.
I have tired auto HDR on other brands of cameras I have owned and found it pretty useless. All the software in the camera could manage was one of those flat, etched, images…and no amount of processing in Lightroom could redeem them.
Canon, however, got it right. The three images are intelligently combined to lighten the dark parts and darken the light parts to produce a very natural and pleasing range of light. With no more than my normal processing in Lightroom, the Canon auto HDRs produce excellent images. Even of sunsets.
If you want a more vivid, over the top, eye-popping sunset, you can turn on both HDR and the Vivid color effect.
Having stood there only last night, I can tell you that the first shot is more natural than the second, but there is no denying that the second version has more impact.
Both shots Canon SX50HS, HDR mode. 24mm equivalent. ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4/29/2012: Happy Sunday! Sunflower in late sun. St. Augustine FL
The sun does not set in North Florida in late April until 8PM, so you have these long golden hours between supper and sun down. The light is at its best. There is often the first breeze of the day off the ocean. It is altogether an enchanted time of day.
This sunflower was along the boardwalk leading into Ocean Hummock Park in St. Augustine Beach. I could not resist the way the low sun was illuminating it. I did not see the passenger on the left petals until I got it back on the computer and was processing it. That is a tiny, tiny little fly or bee…one or the other. I especially like the detail maintained I the green back of the flower and the way the bright flower is framed against the dark background.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-extender). f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. If I could stand this transparent, no more no less, so that the full character of me was revealed in the one light of all that is, I would be a happy man. And that is how I think it should work. We don’t loose our identity, our individual persons, when we stand in union with the light of creation…we are just completely illuminated, filled with light, and more completely ourselves than we can ever be elsewise.
I am not sure what the tine bee has to say in all this, but he is still there.