Posts in Category: tree
Emerging Green. Rachel Carson NWR
I went to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, primarily to practice with my new Panasonic HX-A100 head mounted action camera, but also to see where spring has gotten to along the loop trail. Trillium are still blooming in small numbers, and I found a few Two Bead Lilies open, and many more in bud. There were more visible Lady Slipper plants, but none near blooming. Still a very late spring.
The emerging spruce needle bunchs caught my eye. The contrast of color and texture and form demanded a close up.
Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 2x digital tel-converter. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sun in Tree Tops
Yesterday I drove from Ukiah California to Arcata California, up 101 and the Avenue of the Giants, with a short side trip to Victorian Ferndale (more about which later). This is a shot from the first rest area on 101. It is deep in a sharp valley in the little range of hilly mountains just north of Ukiah, and though the sun had been up for hours, it was just then reaching the depths and lighting the tops of this great tree.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 55mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Arrested Development: Maple Buds
I am quite amazed at how far this spring season is behind last year. Of course, last year was probably advanced, but coming one after the other, the contrast is dramatic. I first noticed the red on the Maple outside the window where I work all day many weeks ago, but then it was like the tree had second thoughts. The buds remain, but they are no further along than when I first noticed them. It is pretty amazing that trees can do that. The flowers will come…they will just come in the tree’s own good time…when conditions are right.
For comparison, this is the same tree on March 23rd last year.
That was March 23rd, or over two weeks earlier. Amazing.
Top shot: Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Last year’s shot. Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent.
The Palms of Borrego Palm Canyon
The oasis a mile and a half up Borrego Palm Canyon attracts many thousands of visitors every year, and, of course, people have been drawn to the spring and the palms for as long as there have been people. In the desert, water, and reliable shade, will do that. These are the native California Fan Palm, with their trunks buried in massive sheaves of old fibrous fronds, now found only in scattered oases across the dryer regions of Southern California (and as ornamental plantings in dry regions nation- and world-wide). Palm Springs and Twenty-nine Palms probably have the largest remaining groves, but, according to the information that Anza Borrego Desert State Park provides, the Borrego Palm Canon oasis is the third largest remaining.
Impressive as they are from a distance, when you get right up under them, they are truly amazing. These are big trees!
These shots are all at 24mm equivalent field of view, on the Canon SX50HS. Either Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill, –1/3EV exposure compensation or In-Camera HDR Mode. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Snow and Light
I am San Diego this morning, for the San Diego Birding Festival, but I have to drop back a day to yesterday morning before I left Maine. Yesterday I shared a shot from soon after sunrise, with the heavy wet snow of winter storm G blanketing every limb of the trees in the backyard. As the sun rose higher some of the effects were too good not to try to catch. Here the sun is still low, well behind the trees. I was not sure what I could catch of the effect. In-camera HDR and a moderate telephoto setting on the zoom actually worked far better than I could have hoped for. This is a rather abstract image…but I love what the light is doing with the snow laden branches!
It is a race of course…that same sun on the trees is warming the branches and very soon, the snow in the upper branches will slide free and cascade down taking all the snow below it with it. By the time I got to the airport, about 9:30AM, a lot of snow on the trees was already gone
Canon SX50HS. In-camera HDR Mode. Recorded exif: f5.6 @ 1/200th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom with my standard preset for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Titusville Sunrise with Palms: Happy Sunday!
Every year when I visit the Space Coast Birding Festival, I stay at the Quality Inn on Rt. 50, and almost every year I take some version of this view. It is looking from the second floor balcony to the east, out over I95, toward Cape Canaveral and the Atlantic. There seem to be a fair number of dawns like this (at least one a visit so far)…with low lying fog cloaking the trees, and clouds catching the gold of the rising sun over the horizon.
The images have changed over the years, as camera technology has improved. On my first visits, the palms in the foreground were stark black silhouettes, with no detail. This shot is the Canon SX50HS’ Hand-held Night Scene Mode, which uses three stacked exposures to reduce noise and process out camera motion. I find that, with some additional processing in Lightroom, it also produces relatively natural sunrises and sunsets…certainly with more foreground color than a normal exposure…while maintaining the intensity of the sky.
Recorded exif: 130mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought. It happens that this was taken on the very last day of my Florida trip, on the morning when I was packing up for the drive to the airport and the flights home. I was on my way back from breakfast, without my camera, of course, enjoying the dawn, when I realized that I had not taken this picture this trip. I went back to my room, got my camera, and hustled back down the balcony to find a shot between the pillars, before the sun broke the horizon and the colors faded away. To me this image is full of peace, promise, and potential. In fact, it works, for me, because of the tension between the peace and the potential. It is, as every sunrise is, a still point, a dynamic point of balance, between the rest of night and the bustle of day. I am very glad to have stopped to catch it, but it would have been enough just to stop…to stand a breathe and feel the world tip over into day.
I hope, on my spiritual journey, to learn to live at that still point…at the point of tension…of perfect balance between peace and action, where all things are possible, and many are likely! I like this image because whenever I look at it it takes me back to that time and place. I hope to learn to be as sure of where that place is in me as I am that, if I spend a week in Titusville, I will find this view. And I would like to be able to step back there whenever I needed, any time of day, and any place.
Trees Softly Dreaming in Water
This is another shot I went, for better or for worse, out looking for. I needed a “Trees on Tuesday” entry for Google+ and this kind of shot seemed about the best I could do in this season between leaves and snow. Besides, I had not done on like this in a while.
So this is Old Falls Pond on the Mousam River in late afternoon on a November day. I took quite a few shots from this spot, with different effects in the gently moving water, before a gust of wind completely fractured the surface and I lost the reflections.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 250mm equivalent field of veiw. f8 @ 1/40th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Some color adjustment to taste.
Oak’s Autumn Song
Much as I like the boisterous autumn symphony of the maples as they turn, I find myself giving ear to the more subtle melodies of the oaks that follow. Oak leaves mostly never make it to the deep reds and bright yellows of the maples. You see the reddest color in leaves just as they begin to turn, while still mottled green. From there to a solid more-brown-than-orange is a short step…and they are very soon a deep old-brass brown. Even then, in the right light, they show a touch of warmth under the darker skin.
And of course, when the light is behind, as here, you do see (or hear, to extend the metaphor of the title) what the leaf is really capable of. The orange rings like a bell, a single clear note in the autumn air.
I stood well away from the leaf and famed tight with a longish zoom…gotta love that bokeh.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 700mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
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.
5/15/2012: Just a little tree. Humboldt Redwoods State Park
After nearly a month on the road, I am home from my travels for a while. If you have been following you know I have been in Northern California for the Godwit Days in Arcata, in Northern Florida for the Florida Birding and Photo Fest in St. Augustine, in Northern Ohio for The Biggest Week in American Birding in and around Oak Harbor (Magee Marsh, Ottawa NWR, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, etc.), and, this past weekend, in Southern New Jersey for the World Series of Birding in Cape May and the environs. While I have posted from each of these places, over the next few days (weeks?) I will be playing some catch up on images from my travels.
This, in honor of Tree Tuesday on Google+, is from Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California. I always, time allowing, take the scenic route on my drive from San Francisco to Arcata, along the Avenue of the Giants, through the redwood groves. This is a double trunk tree, and that is my Tilly Endurable hat sitting on a gall for scale.
I am awed and amazed on every visit to the redwoods. Inspired. Uplifted. Delighted. Stilled in some part of me that needs stilling.
And, for contrast, we can take a vertical view.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 33mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 400. 2) 140mm equivalent, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 800. 3) 24mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/50th @ ISO 200. 4) 24mm equivalent, f2.7 @ 1?100th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.