Posts in Category: waterfall
Painted Cascade Falls
I found a program in the Google Play Store the other day called Photo Painter. As the name suggests, it takes a photograph and renders it in various artistic styles…quite a few painting styles, and several sketching styles. You can then apply a realistically rendered 3D frame. I have used a similar program on the laptop called Dynamic Auto Painter. I am still exploring the features of Photo Painter, but the results so far are promising…if you like this kind of thing.
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, you can produce some nice effects…on the other what you have created is neither a painting or a photograph. At best it is a photograph processed to look something like a painting. “Ah,” you say (or at least I think) “but is it art?”
Then too, I am fresh from an encounter with a software expert for one of the makers of image processing plug-ins, who claimed that he turned his images into paintings using the software he was demonstrating because he was such a bad photographer. He seemed proud of the fact. That is just sad, and I, personally, do not want to go there. I promise I will never try to save an image by processing it as a painting.
This image, however, stands on its own as a photograph (imho). Processing it as a painting does not make it better…only different.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. Processed in Snapseed and rendered as a painting in Photo Painter the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Oh, and it is Cascade Falls in Saco Maine.
And for those who are wondering, here is the image with standard processing.
Cascade Falls take 2
Last Wednesday, in honor of #waterfallwednesday, I posted an image of Cascade Falls and some info on the location…a local picnic and photo-op spot since, well, since before there were cameras. That image was all about the rush and tumble, the splash and splatter, the raw energy of the falling water.
This is the alternative view, taken on a tripod with the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F’s waterfall mode, which takes a very long exposure (30 seconds or more) to blur the water to silk. This kind of shot generally involves neutral density filters on a DSLR, but the Samsung manages it all it’s own, using some kind of digital trickery to slow the shutter without burning out the highlights. 🙂
You are either a fan of the silky water effect or you are not. Anyone who has ever stood in front of a waterfall knows that the effect is purely a photographic artifact. Falling water just does not look like that. Still, the effect is so common in waterfall shots that some people apparently think that water can actually do that. I have mixed feelings. I can appreciate the beauty and the sense of peace that the silky water images capture and project…but I am under no illusions that they are real. They use a photographic technique to produce a mood that is simply not there, as a painter might. And that’s okay, I think. And they have a certain nostalgia to them…I mean, back in the days of slow film emulsions and 8×10 view cameras, any photograph of a waterfall in anything but full sun produced silky water. It was simply all the medium was capable of. Not so today. Silky water is now an artistic choice. And I think, at least on occasioin, a valid one.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Cascade Falls
There aren’t many waterfalls in Southern Maine, so when I decided I wanted to find a waterfall to photograph I had to Google “waterfalls in York County” to see if there were any I was not aware of. I knew about Cascade Falls, just north of Saco of course, and we had made an effort to find it once soon after moving back to Maine. Without success. However, the land surrounding the falls has changed hands since, and the new owner gave the falls to the town of Saco to develop as a park. There is now a sign, parking lot, and rudimentary trails providing access to the falls. Of course people have been visiting Cascade Falls since the early 1800s, and the town has yet to improve the trails all that much. It is interesting to see the rocks where people have climbed for two centuries showing definite signs of wear.
This is a conventional 3 exposure HDR. Well, not quite conventional. I took the three exposures using Auto Bracketing on the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F, and transfered them wirelessly to the my Nexus 7. Google+ Auto Backup uploaded them to Photos, where Auto Awesome identified the sequence as a potential HDR, assembled the three into one HDR file, and tone mapped the result for display. Then it sent me a notification that it has done so. 🙂 Since the editing tools in the Android G+ app are, so far, rudimentary, I downloaded the Auto Awesome HDRs back to my Nexus, had a final pass at them in Snapseed, and uploaded them to G+ using PicasaTool. It sounds more complicated that it was.
Old Falls Panorama
One of the fun things about a camera with sweep panorama is that, even when you are not after a true panoramic effect, you can still quickly and easily break out of the bounds of your widest zoom to catch more of the scene in front of you. At 23mm equivalent field of view, I had to choose the center, left of center, or right of center view of Old Falls and the foliage. With sweep panorama on hand it was a simple matter of flipping the camera up on end and sweeping it around from left to right to capture the whole scene. This is only about 100° and the vertical camera makes the image unusually tall for a panorama, so the effect is more super-wide. I like it. It gives the falls scale and includes more of the fall color.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Panorama mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7 and then reprocessed for a bit more impact on the laptop usinge the edit tools in Google+ Photos.
Silky Water: Happy Sunday!
Back in the day of slow film emulsions, taking a photo of a waterfall, or water falling over ledges as in this image, especially in deeply shaded glens where waterfalls are likely to be found, resulted in the “silky water effect.” During the long exposure required to capture the image, the moving water painted itself on the emulsion as blur, with all detail submerged in a smooth flow like a cascade of silk. As it happened, the result was very like how some painters rendered falling water, attempting to capture a feeling of motion in the blur. As film speeds and quality increased, it became possible to “freeze” the flowing water, even catching ripples in their run and splashes in mid-air. However, the “silky water effect” never lost its appeal. Photographer’s today go to great lengths, internationally undermining the strengths of their equipment with neutral density filters and the like, to recreate the painterly, traditional, silky water effect.
The engineers at Samsung, when designing the software for their Smart Camera family, included a “waterfall” mode among the Smart Camera Modes. If you have the camera mounted on a tripod, it will take a very long (90 seconds or more) exposure of moving water…resulting in what I would call a “super silky water effect.” I find that the longer I am away from the actual scene…as the sound of the rushing water and the play of the play of the light in the ripples and falls recedes into memory…the more I like the effect. I have to break away from memory and look at the image for what it is, not what was there. For sure, this is not the way I see rushing water…but I can understand the attraction of the image, as an image. I can understand that that rush and tumble and joyful confusion of water in constant motion can be reduced to the calm rendering of silk, and that it captures a different, and equally valid, emotional response to the falling water than I might otherwise feel. I get it. I am still uncertain as to whether I totally approve. 🙂
And that leads to the Sunday Thought. Silky water is not real. It is a photographic artifact, or the imaginative impression created by a painter’s mind and brush. And yet it captures a real emotion…or at least one among many emotional responses to reality. It speaks to a calm in the center of confusion that appeals to us all. In a way, it is, from a traditional point of view, the more spiritual response…a seeing through to the assumed essence of what is behind the rush of our daily reality.
However, I can’t help but feel that it is, at least a bit, a cheat. I think there is as much spirit in the rush and tumble and churn of detail that is our immediate response to falling water (and to life). I appreciate the peace of the long view, but I am not willing to give up the excitement of the moment. My instinct is that they are both elements of the spiritual view. Joy in the confusion. Joy in the underlying calm.
Interestingly enough, by happy accident (if you believe in such things), Google+ assembled two images of the same tumble of water into an animated gif…one taken in waterfall mode, and one taken in Rich Tone / HDR. Hopefully your browser will display it properly. Joy in the confusion. Joy in the underlying calm. Happy Sunday!
Falls on the Baston. HDR
The falls on the Baston in Emmon’s Preserve in Kennebunkport are, like the Redwood Forest, another subject that has always proved difficult to capture. The falls lack the scale of the Redwoods, but they are well shaded by trees, and present the added difficulty of bright white highlights from sun on the foaming water. Once more, a subject that demands deeper HDR than my in-camera HDR can provide.
Which is why my last Sunday photo-prowl found me down by the Baston with my Fat Gecko, carbon fiber, shock-corded tripod. As I had suspected, 3 exposure HDR also gives a nice understated silky look to the rapids, without the need to resort to long shutter speeds.
This is not the falls at their most difficult. The leafless state of the mostly maples that combine with the pines to shade this stretch of stream let more light in than there will be later in the season. I will go back in 6 weeks and try that challenge.
Canon SX50HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. -2 1/3, -2/3, and +1/3 EV exposures. Blended and tone mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing in Lightroom. This is one of those HDRs that challenges the eye, or at least my eye. The range of light is so natural that the image looks a bit painted. We just do not expect this effect in a photograph.
Old Falls Maple Red: Happy Sunday!
One of the reasons I invested in a gas powered scooter this year (as opposed to the electric scooter I had last year) was to have the range to reach Old Falls on a regular basis this summer. I want to be able to check this stretch of water at least once a week for dragonflies. I found two unique ones there last fall and I suspect there will be more that I have not seen this summer. Of course, I enjoy photographing the falls in all its seasons. They are not much in the way of waterfalls by any imaginable scale…but they are one of the few falls within a day’s drive of my home in Kennebunk. Southern Maine is worn pretty flat.
I like the way this HDR treatment brings out the red of the maple blossoms, and the intense greens of the young pines and spruces…against the dark water, and under this intense sky, with the boiling white of the falls in the foreground.
Canon SX50HS. Three exposure HDR at -2 1/3, -1/3 and + 2/3s EV. Blended and Tone Mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday Thought. It is the red of the maple blossoms that really makes this image stand out for me…it is also what I was trying to catch. Most people don’t realize, or don’t really notice, that Red Maples are red twice a year…not just in the fall but in the spring as well. I will include a shot from a few days ago in our back yard which shows where the red in the Old Falls shot is coming from.
Our back yard maple flowers are a bit more advanced that the ones on the trees at Old Falls, but you get the idea. The Maples of New England are fire in the fall and fire in the spring. And all summer that fire burns in them, obscured by the green of the busy leaves making food for a season’s growth, for a crop of winged maple seeds to sow the future, and to survive another winter. It is easy to miss the fire in the summer, but it is there.
I would like to think our lives are like that. Fire in the bud, fire in the flower, and fire at last in the fall. If the fire in us is obscured in the summers of our lives by the busy green of making a living, of raising children, of laying up our stores, surely it will rise up in us once more before the final winter. As the world dies out of us, so the spirit should show through more and more. Perhaps that is what we are really seeing when we say a man is in his second childhood. Red in the bud, red in the flower, red in the end. That’s what I hope.
Crease in Old Falls
When I went, on Monday, to pick up my new scooter in Sanford, I stopped on the way back at Old Falls on the Mousam River to see what was up. Not much was up but the water. The Mousam is still loud with the last of the snow melt from a very Snowy February and March. There is a crease in the center of Old Falls that produces some interesting effects. It is always fun to see what I can catch.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 105mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Under the Kennebunk Bridge
As I may have mentioned before, my active search for an American Ruby-spot in York County has taken me places I would not otherwise go. For instance, I have crossed the bridge north of Kennebunk, where Route 1 goes over the Kennebunk River, thousands of times…multiple thousands of times…but I have never even thought to stop and climb down to the river to see what is under the bridge.
No American Ruby-spots unfortunately, but some interesting rapids and small falls where there evidently once, a long time ago, was a dam. I suspect there might have been a mill there back in the water-power days…that, or I am mistaking old bridge abutments for a dam.
I have done a bit more editing on this shot than normal. It got my usual “Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.” but then I took into PhotoShop Elements for a bit of work with the clone tool to remove a set of power-lines that stretched across the sky and through the trees.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Black-shouldered Spinylegs at Old Falls Pond: Happy Sunday!
With my new interest in Odonata (dragon and damselflies), I am beginning to look at the landscape of Southern Maine in a different way. I know where most of the good “classic” photo ops are, and I know, pretty much, where to go for most of the birds that either live here or pass through. But I am only learning where to go for dragons and damsels.
This is the season when the American Red-spot flies…and I really want to see one. American Ruby-spot is a close relative of the Ebony Jewelwing, a broad-winged damselfly, which I featured recently, but it has clear wings with bright “ruby” spots close in to the body.
Unfortunately it is not listed on Odonata Central as occurring in York county, nor is it featured in range maps covering the county in the USGS data base of Odonata, and notes I have read elsewhere place American Ruby-spot in Maine but not on the coastal plain. I live on the coastal plain. Still, there are places in York county that have the kind of “clean” swift running rivers with lots of exposed rocks that the American Ruby-spot likes. (I am confident of all of the above but the “clean” part.) So it is worth looking.
The nearest likely spot is about 10 miles inland, on a little stretch of the Mousam between Estes Lake and Old Falls Pond. The Mousam tumbles down over rock ledges and through boulders for a quarter mile or so, all in a rush. It is one of my favorite places for fall foliage, with the overhanging maples and the white water of the falls and rapids.
But now, with my new Odonata eyes, I have to look at it as possible American Ruby-spot habitat as well! Like I say, a whole new layer to the landscape.
Unfortunately the American Ruby-spot does not seem to see this little stretch of the Mousam the same way I do. There were none.
Not that it was not a worthwhile trip. The view and the music of the falling waters would be enough, but I found Palm Warblers, a tiny Northern Leopard Frog, an even smaller Toad, and several new or seldom seen dragons and damsels. The lead image is, as you might have guessed from the title, a Black-shouldered Spinylegs. It is a member of a large family of dragons (Gomphidae) which all have more or less broad tips on their abdomens (tails)…clubtails, snaketails, spinylegs, etc. The Black-shouldered Spinyleg favors waters very similar to the American Ruby-spot, though it will tolerate slower moving “muddy” streams, and oxygen-rich ponds and lakes, where you would not find the damsel.
The full body shot shows off the broad tail.
I had a job identifying this dragon…made more difficult by the fact that Odonata Central does not list Black-shouldered Spinyleg for York County, Maine either, nor does the USGS data base. In fact I posted pics to the North-east Odonata Facebook group just to me sure of my id.
In researching for this piece this morning, however, I visited the Maine Dragon and Damselfly Survey site. Maine is one of only a few states to have such a comprehensive, scholarly survey of Odonata, conducted over several years by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. I have not used the site much, since it makes few (as in no) concessions to the amateur dragon and damselfly fancier. It uses only Scientific names, and cryptic codes for distribution. Still, with a bit of Googling Latin names and a bit of common sense on the codes, I found that the Black-shouldered Spinyleg is indeed recorded for York County Maine. It was not seen in the first round survey in the late 90s…but it was added a more recent 2006 follow-up. So there!
And for the Sunday thought: My own knowledge of dragon and damselflies is miniscule. I am humbled by every encounter with the folks who really know…which is most of the regular posters on the North-east Odonata Facebook group, the authors of the guides I use, and those who maintain the web-sites…to name a few. But I have to consider that even the experts admit to knowing very little, comparatively, about Odonata…compared, of course, to what there is to know…compared to what we have yet to learn. Odonata from an interesting, highly visible and certainly vital layer in the life-scape, and yet even the authorities are not sure if something as striking and identifiable as Black-shouldered Spinyleg lives in York County Maine (or at least not in agreement).
I love learning new stuff. I love discovering new bugs and new birds and new frogs and new ways of seeing the landscape in which I live. It makes me feel more alive to have found a Black-shouldered Spinyleg along the Mousam between Estes Lake and Old Falls Pond. And everything I learn brings me closer to the Creator of All Things. The love of learning, the love of discovery, is a vital aspect of the love the God. When we stop learning, when we stop discovering, then love is dead. This is a true of the love between people as it is of our love of creation. We have one eye…it is either open or closed. If I am not discovering a new way to look at the landscape around me, then it is likely I am not discovering new things to love about the people around me. That is death.
And that, this morning, hits me right in the face! That challenges me. That makes me wonder what I don’t know about the people around me…it makes me wonder if I am not seeing the Black-shouldered Spinylegs of their souls…of their spiritual landscapes?
One thing gives me hope. That same Maine Dragon and Damselfly Survey that lists the Black-shouldered Spinyleg for York County Maine, also lists the American Ruby-spot! That is enough to keep me checking likely spots in the landscape.
And this morning’s Sunday thought, is, I hope, a timely reminder to check the spiritual landscape of those around me to see what I am missing that I might love (and better love). That is what it means to be alive. And that is what it takes to keep love alive.