Posts in Category: weather
1/1/2012: Horizons, Happy Sunday, Happy New Year
One of the advantages of living near the ocean is that you can, most days, go look at the horizon. I have taken a lot of pictures of the horizon over the ocean over the years…because I love the light that happens there, especially on stormy days…on days when fronts pass and the weather is changing. This shot, taken at East Point in Biddeford Pool on my Snowy Owl prowl the other day, has an early morning feel to the horizon light but it was taken in early afternoon. The sun was still high above the clouds and the warmth along the horizon was due only to the distance and the amount of air between. You can also, if you look closely, see the curtain of light breaking through about half way to the horizon..showing in the image against the clouds as what we call drawing water lines.
On the days when I need to see the horizon, it is because I need that apparent distance to give scale to whatever is cluttering my mind and clogging my spirit. I need to be able to look to the limits of vision and know there is something beyond that is not bounded by my day.
I have never sailed far enough to know days on end where the horizon is all there is to see. I am always standing on some shore when I look, so the horizon is a promise, not a threat. When I have my fill of horizon I can turn around and walk back into my day…with the challenges, generally, reduced to manageable size…or at least with the promise that something from beyond the horizon might change everything (and I can still believe that will be for the better).
And a horizon is an appropriate image for the new year, for today, the first day of 2012.
/////////////////////////////////////// Gap detected /////////////////////////////////////////////
(I am just back, in fact, from a quick dash to the beach to photograph the sunrise of the new year. I will post images in a while as a special New Year’s Day edition.)
But to finish the original Sunday, New Year’s thought, it is that horizon thing. Facing the new year, it is good to see it as a horizon experience, both in the mundane and in the spiritual…something to give scale to the whatever has cluttered your mind and clogged your spirit this past year. The horizon is always there. The good days are the days when we have it in sight.
12/31/2011: Cape Porpoise Harbor in Green
The final pictures for 2011.
When I was about to leave Cape Porpoise the other day on my Snowy Owl prowl, I turned to see that a shaft of sun had come in under the cloud over to light up the harbor and the town. It was not the usual warm low sun shaft that sometimes leaks under the cloud cover at sunset, but a shaft of mid-day winter light…it turned the water of the harbor bright green, and picked out every detail in the boats and houses of the village. It was stunning. I hurried across the parking lot and out on to the deck at the (closed for the winter) clam shack to catch a few shots before the clouds closed in and shut off the light. This shot is zoomed in to frame the village and the church.
Canon SX40HS at 112mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
And here is the side shot (24mm equivalent).
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Auto color temperature adjustment to match the green in the two shots. Some extra Recovery and some exposure and brightness adjustment in the second shot to tame the highlights.
12/30/2011: Cape Porpoise Light
After my fruitless search for a Snowy Owl at East Point yesterday (see previous post), I continued down the coast with, as they say, one eye pealed for anything white on the rocks of Fortune’s Beach. Nothing. The amazing clouds were still happening though, so when I got to Cape Porpoise I swung out to the fishing peer that overlooks the harbor and the Light. As I got out of the car, the sun broke through and spotlighted the little island with the Lighthouse under the dark sky. I had just time to grab a couple of shots before the clouds moved and it went back into shadow.
These two, at 285 and 100mm equivalent fields of view, catch the effect well.
Though the sun was pretty much obscured by the cloud mass, I was shooting into the sun, as you can see in this full harbor shot at 24mm equivalent. This was a tricky exposure and required some work with the Graduated Filter effect in Lightroom to balance the foreground and the sky.
1) f5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. 2) f4.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. 3) f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Some tampering with the color temperature was needed, as well as cropping on the second shot for composition.
12/29/2011: East Point and Wood Island Light
Yesterday was a good day to look for Snowy Owls. I had to go north on a shopping expedition so on my way back I worked my way out to East Point Sanctuary at the tip of Biddeford Pool. I have seen Snowys before on the the rocks and stony beaches of the point, as well as on Wood Island, which is visible from the point across the Saco River channel. In fact I saw my very first Snowy there.
As it turns out, yesterday was a very good day to look for Snowy Owls…it just was not a very good day for finding them. 🙁
The goodness of the day is due to the weather. There was a front passing and the clouds and the sea and the light all along the coast south from Casco Bay was spectacular. This is the view across the channel to Wood Island Light. I love the hammered steal of the sea, and that mass of cloud slanting in over Wood Island, with the Lighthouse standing against the ranked clouds out over Cape Elizabeth and the far shore of Saco Bay.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
The seas coming into Saco Bay were huge. In this second shot, I zoomed in for more detail on the Lighthouse, but also to catch one of those breaking swells. Coming in against the wind, when the swells broke on the underwater ledges between the Point and the Light, the spray made for some fantastic shows.
Canon SX40HS at 77mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. To capture this shot I took a burst of images at 4 fps when the wave began to break and selected the best of them.
The final shot is from a bit further down the channel, looking past the light and out to sea, at an intermediate zoom between the first two. Again, I was after the braking wave in front of the Light.
Canon SX40HS at 30mm equivalent. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
All processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I used Graduated Filter effects to balance exposure on the sea and sky, and adjusted color temperature to warm the sea to its visual gray, rather than the blue-grey the the camera rendered.
12/23/2011: Kennebunkport Sky
This year Southern Maine does not seem to be able to decide what season it is in. This morning we are having freezing rain just thinking about turning to snow. This on the 23rd of December. November I could understand. But December?
The overcast was beginning to blow over in this shot from a few days ago across the mouth of the Kennebunk river in Kennebunkport Maine. I like the leading lines of the clouds and that patch of blue, and the roughness of the sea rolling in.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
12/20/2011: Peach Promise on the Horizon, Kennebunk ME
I was surprised to find this lovely peach color along the horizon over the ocean yesterday. The morning held no such promise. A few moments of sun early, and then overcast moved in and looked set to stay the day. Even the weather reports said the same. Still there was no denying the peach…and indeed by an hour after this shot, the overcast had blown over and the sun was shining. It was a peach promise…or a promising peach. On the horizon. (If you view it at larger sizes you will see a “drawing water” effect along the center.)
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent. f4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I also used the dueling Graduated Filter effects trick, with a graduated filter pulled down from the top to darken the sky and graduated filter pulled up from the bottom to lighten the beach.
12/18/2011: Happy Sunday! Home for the Holidays
I have done a lot of travel in the last 30 days. I spent significant time in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas (Harlingen to McAllen), in New Mexico (Albuquerque, Gallup, Bosque del Apache), and at Wildcatter Ranch in Graham Texas. But now I am home in Southern Maine for 3 weeks…one already past…and vacation time the next two. I still have a few images from Texas and New Mexico to post, but I forced myself away from the computer yesterday long enough to get out on the local patch and see what was happening photographically.
It was chancy day…little balls of ice falling off and on, trying to convince us it was snow…and massive rolling cloud cover doing its best to make a gloomy December day. I drove down toward the ocean and my favorite walk along the Kennebunk Bridle Path through the marshes beside the Mousam river. The landscape was, indeed, dull…a winter landscape without the saving grace of snow. Brown grasses, bare trees, and, under the overcast, steely waters…as chill as the wind on this 30 degree day.
But the sky was impressive. And behind those clouds the sun was making every effort to break through. The clouds were shot through with light, and full of form and shadow. It was truly a dimension sky and pulled the otherwise dull landscape out of its doldrums.
This is looking toward the sea from the Route 9 bridge over the Mousam. Now that is what I call a sky, and I composed with just enough land in the foreground to give it scale.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent. Program and iContrast, with –1/3EV exposure compensation. f8 @ 1/1600th @ ISO 200. This was great exposure for the sky (and I tipped the camera up when metering to bias it for the sky) but it left the foreground dark and lifeless. Fill Light, rather heavy, in Lightroom restored some life to the landscape, and a blackpoint adjustment restored it even more. Finally I used Auto Color Temperature to offset the under-corrected blue bias from the camera’s Auto white balance setting. All of which brought it pretty close to what I saw standing there.
So, for the Sunday thought: no matter where you roam, and no matter how dull by comparison, it is always good to be home for the holidays. As a photographer I am not really anywhere until I can see the beauty and experience the wonder of the landscape I am in…and that can be a challenge at home. But it must be done. You do have to come home, all of you, everything that is you, for the holidays. In the house, we have been listening to Christmas music (and I have bought my limit of three new Christmas albums), and last night we put up the tree and decorated it and set up the crèche. Packages have been arriving all week from Amazon. The kids are gathering in or setting arrival schedules. The season is in gear. But until I went out yesterday to find the beauty and wonder in the winter dull landscape, I was not really home. We will, of course, have sunny days sometime in the next two weeks, and I can still hope for snow for Christmas, but whatever happens now is okay…I am home for the holidays. And glad to be here.
11/27/2011: First Sun at Bosque del Apache, Happy Sunday
This is another shot from the delayed sunrise last Sunday at Bosque del Apache. Clouds closed the eastern horizon and it took the sun an hour or more to make its way up behind them before there was any direct sun on the ponds and fields. While the Geese were up and away at first light, many of the Cranes remained in the overnight ponds well past their normal departure for the feeding fields. The combination of subtle indirect light with a touch of dawn color made the morning unique.
Canon SX40HS. 1) 107mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. 2) 246mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/250 @ ISO 200. 3) 717mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125. Programed Auto with iContrast. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, light balance, and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: Too often we think that clouds on the horizon spoil the dawn…and they certainly mute the sunrise and delay full light…but there is a beauty in that more subtle light, and you have much longer to appreciate it…to study the effect…to absorb the wonder of it. This is good, or can be if we we can see the delay for what it is and let go of our impatience. Taking it as a metaphor, of course, clouds on the horizon delaying our dawns are all too common in our lives…both our worldly lives and our spiritual lives (for those still making that distinction). When we commit to living with eyes wide open and full of wonder, we let go of our expectations of speedy dawns every day…we commit to giving the sun time to climb up behind the clouds, and we commit to enjoying every moment of the wait. In fact, we commit to not waiting at all. We commit to being in the moment and appreciating each one for what it is. That’s not waiting for anything. That is the life of the creator in us through spirit of his son, enabling us to be as we are intended to be. A long slow dawn, below the mountains, with majestic birds walking on reflected light…makes it easy to be wide eyed in wonder and belief…but that’s call for each day…no matter what shape the dawn takes.
Now if I could only remember that!
10/30/2011: Weather Coming, Cape May NJ. Happy Sunday!
Cape May on Friday was all atwitter…migrating birds filled the bushes, feeding frantically, in an attempt to get over the Delaware ahead of the storm. There was a Nor’easter coming up the coast, due to hit the Cape by mid-night. Cape May was also atwitter with birders, making the most of the day of good light and light winds to see as many of those birds as possible before retiring (mostly) to hotel rooms to ride out the storm on Saturday. They stayed in Cape May, since Sunday was predicted to be sunny again, and stands (even from where I set this morning still) to be a great day for birding. There should be unusual numbers of birds (even for Cape May in autumn) backed up by the storm which has now passed away to the north.
All that to introduce this image: the leading edge of the weather front coming ashore. You can see the sharp sheer line where the warm moist air pushes up against the cooler, dryer air over the land. You don’t often see the transition that clearly.
I like this image where the sky dominates the land and the line of the storm is reflected in the line of the dunes…both leading away upstage left beyond the buildings of Cape May itself, just visible on the horizon.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We often think of weather as being something purely temporal…of this earth. The realm of the spirit we think of as eternally peaceful…every day in heaven will be, we think, 74 degrees, with just enough breeze to cool our faces, and just enough puffy clouds in the blue sky to provide visual interest. But I suspect we are wrong. I suspect there are weather fronts in the spirit, and storms. I mean, what would eternity be without weather? The peace of the spirit is an attitude of the heart that is the same no matter the weather. In that sense we get to practice it right here, right now, in this world. We learn to keep our heads and our hearts up in the wind and the rain, the snow and the sleet, as well as on the peek days of blue skies and puffy clouds. We are all atwitter with the birds on Friday in Cape May, feeding our souls on their slightly frantic beauty…and hunkered down processing images and listening to the storm and watching it out our windows on Saturday as the Nor’easter passes. We might even suit up and go out for a while, just for the experience. And I suspect that is all part of our training for eternity.
10/9/2011: The year there was no fall, Kennebunk ME
Happy Columbus Day Weekend Sunday!
Columbus Day weekend is, traditionally, the height of the fall foliage season in Maine and New England. It is impossible to find accommodations unless you reserve well in advance. I don’t know how other areas of New England are faring this year, but it is pretty dull season in Maine so far. We have had no hard frost, and the trees are hanging on to their green. Only uniquely exposed trees have turned. This scene, my favorite place for fall foliage shots, is a mere shadow of its normal self a year ago, two years ago, three years ago…within my memory. Maybe the leaves will still turn…just late…but the most exposed trees have already started dropping leaves. They just turned brown and fell. Our yard, well shaded by maples, is littered with brown leaves. Not a good sign.
This image was taken using the Vivid mode on the Canon SX40IS…the saturation is over the top for most scenes, but here it brings out every last bit of fall color. For comparison, here is the scene in normal program mode from this year and an HDR shot from last year on 10/3/2010.
Keep in mind that the shot on the left is pretty much what the eye sees this year, and the shot on the right was a week earlier last year.
Folks who reserved early and came north for the foliage show this Columbus Day are going to underwhelmed.
Canon SX40is at 24mm equivalent field of view. Main shot, f4 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Vivid mode. Comparison shot f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program. Last year’s shot with Canon SX20is at 28mm equivalent.
All processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Not much processing at all on the Vivid mode shot.
And for the Sunday thought: The seasons come and the seasons go, without fail, but how they come and how they go, and the shape of the actual days that make them, well, that is anything but certain. We make our plans, but ultimately we can not know, beyond the most general outlines, what will come. No two falls are the same. And this is good. It teaches us that no matter what comes, it is up to us how we respond. A photographer, a nature photographer, is bound to look for the beauty in every season and to make the most of it. And isn’t that the best course for every human being? If we meet every day, in every season, with gratitude and appreciation, then, though the seasons are different year to year, each comes as a blessing, with its own unique beauty…and while we may remember and compare, we will live without regrets. Even if we did reserve a motel room in Maine for Columbus Day Weekend 🙂