Posts in Category: tree
Oak in winter…
Oak Tree, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W Kennebunk Maine
This little oak tree, along the edge of Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area in West Kennebunk Maine is one of my favorite local trees. I took the opportunity, as someone had been ahead of me from the road to the parking area in the new snow and made a way for the car, to walk into the pond to see it in the snow. We had rain for the last few hours after the snow fell, so the snow on the branches of the tree is pretty much frozen in place. This was early morning, and I assume that after two days of sun now, the branches will be bare again, but catching it at the right moment made for an interesting contrast with the Grey bark of the tree.
Sony RX10iii at 30mm equivalent field of view. 1/1000th @ f4.5 @ ISO 100. Program Mode. Processed in Polarr on my Android tablet.
You have snow in your needles :)
Pine tree, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W Kennebunk Maine
After a wet snow, ending in fairly heavy rain, I did not expect the snow to last into yesterday, but I woke to temperatures in the teens and bright sun on a snow covered landscape. Photoprowl! It was up in the mid 20s by the time I got out, but the sun was still shinning and the snow, with a hard crust from the rain, glistened everywhere. I knew the rain had washed all the snow away on the coast, so I headed inland just on the chance that someone with a heavier 4 wheel drive vehicle had been into the pull-offs on the Kennebunk Plains. And someone had indeed driven into the Day Brook Pond parking all the way, and left such a good trail that I felt safe trusting the Ford hybrid to it. It might be my last chance to walk into Day Brook this winter, if we get much more snow.
This little pine is on the edge of the pond. I looked up as I passed it, and could not resist the sun coming through on the burdened branches.
Sony RX10iii at 62mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr on my Android tablet.
A picture about nothing. Happy Sunday!
White Birch, Laudholm Farms, Wells Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
On my photoprowl out to the snowy fields and forest a few afternoons ago, I was on the boardwalk at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms in Wells, looking for whatever spoke to me of winter. It was early afternoon and the light was already almost horizontal, but where, in the days before the snow, it seemed to pick out the warmth and texture of the world…now it cast blue shadows and drew the detail sharp. The contrast between the texture of the bark on this birch, standing a foot from the boardwalk, and the fine grained texture of the snow behind it caught my eye. There was something in the shadows, the way they lay across the snow and behind the birch, that added interest, and the little shattered stump, so pointy, fell in place as an accent. It was the matter of seconds to lift the camera, already set for great depth of field, frame, placing the diagonal just so, and shoot. In-camera HDR and processing in Lightroom brought up the shadows on the trunk and in the snow to make them look natural, subtly molding the surfaces the textures where they fell.
And still it is a picture of nothing in particular. It is a composition about composition…an image about imagery. I could look at it forever. I am tempted to make a really large print of it and hang it where my eye could discover it again, sometimes, in passing, and pause to see what is new in it. It would make a great picture for the wall of a doctor’s office. 🙂
It is, so to speak, a playground for the generous eye…inviting vision…inviting the light inside to come out and play. I think it brings the spirit to the surface, so it fills the eye, brimming like water in a spring. I think it wakes the wonder that is the life of our souls and tempts us to touch what is eternal in us and in the world. Ah, but it is just a picture, you say…a picture of nothing in particular. Yes, I say, and that is what is so wonderful about it! But it takes a generous eye to see. Happy Sunday!
Autumn Birches
White Birch, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk ME
The leaves of the Birches, here, are just turning, pale green and yellow, but the trunks are framed against the blaze of the autumn maples behind. Morning light. Such beauty! Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine.
Moderate telephoto at 135mm equivalent field of view compresses the distance. In-camera HDR, Nikon P610. Nominal exposure: 1/250th @ ISO 140 @ f5. Processed in Lightroom.
Birch Boundary
Birches at the edge of Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
In summer, walking the lower fields of Laudholm Farm, you would think you were on the edge of a deep forest. In winter it becomes apparent just how thin the boarder of trees between fields and marsh is. Really just a few birches and pines and some underbrush is all that separates the two. As I have said before, birches have always been among my favorite trees, and I find this “hedge” of birches and pines irresistible.
The top panel is another accidental panorama…or rather it is two sweep panoramas, taken with the camera in vertical orientation, neither of which caught quite the full sweep I was after. At home it occurred to me to try stitching them for that last bit of sweep. Photoshop Elements PhotoMerge tool to the rescue! The bottom panel is the same birch boundary at 24mm equivalent in an in-camera HDR from further out in the field. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom, panorama stitched in Photoshop Elements, and collage assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Winter Trees. Happy Sunday!
Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, ME
Yesterday the temperature got up into the high teens so we threw our snowshoes in the trunk of the car and drove down to Laudholm Farm (The Wells National Estuarine Research Center) for a couple of hours. The Friends group there rents snowshoes so the trails are, by now, well packed and pretty easy going. We climbed the snowbank around the parking lot and headed out parallel to the woods that line the drive coming in. I was immediately struck by the shapes of the winter trees against the snow…certainly not skeletal, and not quite nude…but something very like both. The birch is one of my favorite trees at Laudholm…birches in general, and this particular majestic birch that lives along the boardwalk trail. I have photographed it now in every season. The birch shot is a vertical sweep panorama, sweeping the camera from fully over my head pointed straight up, down the trunk of the tree to the base…pretty tricky while standing on 5 feet of snow in snowshoes. 🙂
Sony HX400V, sweep panorama as above, and in-camera HDR for the other shots. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
As I surmised after my first slog around the yard with them, I am really enjoying being able to get out into the snow covered landscape on my snowshoes. I have not gotten out as often as I might like, since the temperatures, often with significant wind chill, have not been inviting, but each experience has been both rewarding and refreshing. I am not very adventurous on them. I stick pretty much to the established trails and don’t do a lot of trail-breaking, but even so, they take me to places I just could not get to without them, and it has (again as I surmised) made a difference in my attitude toward this winter. The temperature might keep me housebound but the snow does not. This is good.
Because of course there is a stark, is might be so bold as to say, a spiritual, beauty to the winter landscape. Skeletal is wrong word for the trees exposed in winter because the trunks and branches are so obviously still alive, waiting, biding their time, resting even…and we don’t see skeletons until after death. There is nothing dead about winter trees. Naked comes close…since, at a stretch, they have shed their summer clothing of leaves…but that is not quite right either because the leaves are way more than clothing for the tree…they are way too alive…way too much the tree itself to be considered merely clothing. It is perhaps, as though we are seeing the spirit of the tree…the strong solid core that will burst out, in weeks, with new life. And we are seeing the spirit trees against the backdrop of landscape transformed and simplified by its blanket of snow…again as though the clean clear spirit of the land itself is exposed. We might have to bundle up in layers and strap snowshoes to our feet to get out, but if we bring our winter eyes we see the beauty…and is so alive! We see through to the spirit, and have reason to give thanks and praise to the creator, in this winter landscape. Happy Sunday!
Madrone Curls
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I love the bark of Madrone. I only get to see it when visiting California, but it is always a treat. It is such an unlikely bark for any tree to have. I can’t believe it is actually very functional, but there it is.
Sony HX400V at 38mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/60th @ f4.5. Program shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro tablet.
Smith’s Preserve
I have been exploring the local Land Trust/Conservancy properties in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport this month. This week I visited Smith’s Preserve in Kennebunkport. It is the largest Preserve in the Kennebunkport Land Conservancy and has a number of well developed trails. If the day I visited was typical, it is popular with mountain bikers. There is a small stream, some marshy areas, and, as far as I got, some shady second growth forest with large exposed bolders and rock ledges. It makes a change from our typical Coastal sand plain forest.
I took a number of in-camera HDRs, trying to catch the atmosphere. Here I like the slight rise from the trail, the lay of the rocks and ledges and the dappling of the light and shadow. Sony Alpha NEX 5T with ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8. Processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on my tablet.
Eagles in Early Light
Not quite dawn, actually. We (it was my wife’s first successful trip to see the eagles at Roger’s Pond) had to wait for the sun to get up over the trees, but still very early. Not your typical Digiscoped shot, either…but I wanted both eagles in the frame. The 15x setting on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL’s Vario eyepiece, and zooming up just far enough to eliminate vignetting on Canon SD320HS’ zoom gave me about 750mm equivalent…and kept both eagles in. As it turns out, this image is as much about the bare limbs of the old maple tree against the backdrop of pines. The eagles are ornamental 🙂
Scope and camera as above. ISO 400 @ 1/200th. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
The Pearl
I love macros, and I sometimes remember to take them 🙂 There is a definite discipline about looking closely enough to even see the possibilities. I find it takes and effort to shift my focus to macro, and, once there, an equal effort to shift out again, so my macros come in bunches. (I am not speaking of the camera focus here, but my internal vision’s focus.) This was a macro morning, with fresh ice on the trees.
One of my tests of any walk-around-camera, for me, has to be how well it does macro. The Sony NEX 3NL with the 16-50mm zoom can be tricked into being quite a satisfying macro machine. You just have to use macro mode, and Clear Image Zoom. That gives you something above 1 to 1 macro, and the results are pretty good. This pearl of ice was actually quite a bit smaller than you are seeing it, if you are looking at the image on anything bigger than a phone. 🙂
Sony NEX 3NL. 16-50mm zoom. Macro mode. 75mm equivalent plus 2x Clear Image Zoom. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.