Posts in Category: Virginia
10/15/2011: Simple
The Carl Zeiss Sports Optics offices are in an industrial park just off 295 in Chester, Virginia south of Richmond. It is a nice park, with lots of well landscaped catchment ponds and fountains, small groves of trees and well shaded walks. Flowers are everywhere you could plant flowers. All in all, a nice place for offices if you have to be in an industrial park. Many of the ponds are planted with decorative reeds and grasses. This is a simple shot of the seed head of a decorative grass, framed against the surface of the pond with a longish zoom. I like the lines and the colors. I like the bokeh…enhanced by sparkles of sun on surface of the water. Elegant. Simple.
Canon SX40HS at about 570mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/160th @ ISO 400. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/8/2011: Virginia Frost
Ah yes…a touch of winter in old Virginia already. Did a bit of fotoprowl before work on Thursday, just a few moments around the industrial estate where our office is located in Chester VA. I could not resist the frost n the barberry hedge leaves…both as a sign of the season (unusually cold for VA this past week), and as an abstract design and texture study…gotta love what the low sun does with the frost crystals.
For this shot I backed away and framed using the 840mm equivalent field of view on the Canon SX40is from about 8 feet. f5.8 @ 1/250 @ ISO 125. Program.
Processed in Lighroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness. (just as a note: I am finding the Canon SX40is takes much less processing than the Nikon P500.)
10/7/2011: Carolina on my mind (wren that is ;)
On my last stop on the way out of Henriticus City Park in Chester VA, on the deck overlooking the only open water in the old oxbow marsh, I heard this Carolina Wren singing up a storm in the trees on either side, but, though I tried several times, I could never locate it. Carolina Wren is one of my challenge birds. I don’t see them often, and, though I have several shots and a bit of video, I still don’t have a shot that really satisfies me. Still there was lots to take in on the sunset marsh, and I was using the zoom to frame everything from the broad expanse to little bits of marshy abstract pattern. When I turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of movement down low in the trees under the deck. Sure enough the wren was skulking in fairly dense cover down there. Then it finally popped up in the open and I zoomed out to 840mm equivalent and got on it. I had little hope the new camera would be able to lock focus. It was dark in there, and there was no shot clear of some obstructions in the foreground, so I was surprised when the green focus indicator popped up on the second try with the bird sharp beyond the foreground twigs. Life is good. I took several shots, and then remembered to shoot a bit of video. Handheld video at 840mm equivalent…right! I am totally amazed at how good the image stabilization on the Canon SX40is is. Though I wandered a bit, there is no camera jitter. Amazing.
Canon SX40is at 840mm equivalent field of view. Both shots f5.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. (Again, impressive to be able to hand-hold 840mms at 1/100th of a second…and I am really pleased with the image quality at ISO 800 in relatively difficult lighting.)
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness. Cropped slightly for image scale and composition.
And here is the video, after processing for Sharpness and Contrast in Sony Vegas. The original is full HD. You can see this in 720p.
10/6/2011: Dragonfly at the limits
On my short visit to Henriticus City Park (a historical reenactment site near Chester VA, and the main offices for ZEISS Sports Optics) after work yesterday, I found this dragonfly sitting on the tip of a stripped willow branch out over the marsh…too far away. But, with my new fascination with dragonflies, I had to try.
I like it as an image. I like the arch of the branch and the final wispy twist isolated against the sky…and the way the dragonfly (I think just a well aged Ruby Meadowhawk) in its sun-posting pose echoes it. I like the evening light of the low sun.
And that I got the image at all is somewhat amazing to me. The Canon SX40is locked on focus on the first attempt and I shot several images at the long end of the zoom, 840mm equivalent field of view. The Canon’s image stabilization is amazing. Even at 840mm this is a heavily cropped image…well over 50%, down to 2700×1560 from 4000×3000…leaving about 4.2mp out of 12. That is a pretty heavy crop for a Point and Shoot super-zoom! Clicking the image will take you to my WideEyedInWonder site where you can see an even larger version.
Canon SX40is at 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
4/5/2010
Wildflowers of Citie of Henricus Historical Park
Common Violet above.
Citie of Henricus Historical Park is a reconstructed colonial settlement on the banks of the James River in Chester VA. While it does not compare to the Williamsburg and Jamestown reconstructions in the area, it has its own charm, and is pretty impressive for a county effort. It preserves and celebrates the 2nd successful English settlement in North America, founded in 1611. A resident staff of reinactors play various roles, maintain colonial farming and gardening demonstrations, a carpenter shop, tobacco barns, etc. Henricus has an interesting history, both in Colonial and Revolutionary times, and one that somehow has not made it into any history book I read in school. More info is available here.
As fascinating as the history is, the real draw for me is accessible public land, with extensive marshes in a backwater of the James with lots of birdlife, and a stretch of riverside forest in the Dutch Gap Conservation Area with some rough trails. I visit it in spare moments when I am in Virginia at our corporate offices. I was especially eager this year to photograph the Redbud trees, and to see what spring wildflowers were out.
So what we have today is a random sampling of wildflower close-ups. All were taken with the Canon SX20IS and all but number three (Star Chickweed) and the Common Violet at the end were taken at the wide end of the zoom and macro. The Chickweed was off the trail and only accessible with the 560mm macro of the SX20, and I intentionally backed off, got down to ground level, and framed the Violet with the long macro to isolate it in an out-of-focus background.
Virginia Spring Beauty.
Star Chickweed
Henbit
Ground Ivy
Common Violet
4/2/2010
Irresistible Spring
While you have to look hard yet to find any signs of spring in Maine (or maybe that is just me being impatient), the season is in full cry in Virginia where I have spent the past two work weeks at meetings at the ZEISS offices.
We are in a 15 year old industrial park just off 295 in Chester, and the park landscapers planted the road dividers and margins with flowering trees of several varieties. They are all in full bloom, and it is quite a sight. This tree, not content to burst at every branch tip, was pushing out blossoms in clusters from the trunk itself. I could not resist the contrast of textures and colors here. This is another long tele macro, taken from 5 feet from the trunk. I used the flip out display to hold low, pointed up at the cluster, to get a shot into the blossoms and frame against the bark.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, a bit of Fill Light and Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen Landscape preset.
From First Canon VA.
And, for the opposite effect…but still expressing the same vigor of spring in Virginia.
2/20/2010
Sweet Gum Burrs in Early Morning Light
Low sun on the moss, and these Sweet Gum seed pods. The flip out, rotating LCD on the Canon SX20 works just as well as the flip up display on the Sony H50 for these low angle shots. An articulated display was one of my major requirements in a new camera, and kept me from purchasing cameras that I might otherwise have considered (like the new 30x zoom models coming out in the next month or so). I am addicted to the low view…or at least the possibility of capturing it when I see the potential. As here.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F2.8 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
Blackpoint slightly right, added Clarity and Vibrance (much less Vibrance than I was in the habit of adding with H50 shots…added Vibrance turns the Canon images yellow very fast). Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped at the bottom to eliminate out of focus foreground.
From First Canon VA.