Posts in Category: winter: snow and ice
Maine! Snowy day bonus
Two HDR snowy landscapes from behind the dunes at our local beach, and a forest panorama (three HDR shots stitched). OM Systems OMD E-M5mkiii and the Olympus 12-45mm zoom. Program mode with HDR. Processed in Photomator and stitched in Panorama Stitcher. Assembled in FrameMagic.
Mousam River in the snow…
Kennebunk, Maine, USA, January 2023 — It is very rare indeed for the snow to stay on the trees in southern Maine for more than a few hours. We are into our third day of this winter wonderland now…and it looks good to hold until we get some “wintery mix” late this evening into tomorrow. There are downed trees and branches all over town, and there will be more by morning tomorrow. Still, it is undeniably beautiful. This is two more iPhone 13 shots. One with the ultra-wide lens and, of course, a panorama. The computing power of the phone makes these kinds of photos possible and even easy.
Clinging snow…
Kennebunk, Maine, USA, January 2023 — We had one of those days on Friday. Heavy wet snow overnight, with, thankfully, no wind, and we woke to a world frosted in white. (The thankfulness is about broken branches, downed trees, and power lines…which would have been a major problem with any wind at all…as it was the lawn is littered with fallen branches buried in the snow.) I was out clearing the drive with the snowblower, and still had the energy when I finished for a few phone photos. I have a “new” iPhone 13 with the ultrawide lens to try out. If you follow my Day Poems on Tumbler or Facebook, that graze on the big pine is where the truck hit it a few nights ago…during the last snow storm. Anyway, it makes a change from constant photos of tropical birds and wildlife. 🙂
Not a bleak mid-winter
We will take a break, this winter Sunday, from our ongoing converge of the birds and nature of Costa Rica to bring you this special report from snowy southern Maine. We have not had all that much snow yet this winter and, to be honest, a nice gentle 8 inch fall is just what we needed to make the cold and damp feel worth it all. (It won’t last. A wintery mix is predicted for today, without much accumulation.) Still, I got out yesterday as far as Laudholm Farms to find a nice snowy scene. Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent. Program mode with auto HDR. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent exposure: ISO 100 @ f5 @ 1/1000th.
Nature Phone
Today marks a new photography adventure for me. I have decided to explore just how far you can push a phone camera in nature photography. This is my first attempt at serious phone photography with my modest iPhone SE 2020 and a Surui 18mm equivalent clip on lens. I used the ProCamera app to shoot and then process in HDR. I have a couple more Surui lenses to play with, and a small 50mm spotting scope for phonescoping on its way. We will see how this goes. This the forest across the road from our yard after Friday’s gentle snow. This new adventure needs a title, since I plan to chronicle my experiences on the web and maybe in at least an ebook. After long pondering, I think maybe “Nature Phone” will do. 🙂
Winter Sunrise
It was, going by the images posted already on Facebook, a particularly glorious sunrise yesterday all across Maine. This is just from our back deck, looking out over the yard, with the fringe of icicles from our metal roof sliding down over the door. Beauty is where you find it…and a good thing that is in this year of limited mobility. Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent. Program mode with auto HDR. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos. Nominal exposure: ISO 200 @ f2.5 @ 1/60th.
Ice bells
We will take a break from the birds (and wildlife) of Florida this morning for this shot of ice bells on the Mousam River here in Kennebunk. I went out with my new ultra wide landscape camera to see what I could see along the Mousam, and had to walk back to the car for my RX10iv with its longer lens to get a close-up these ice bells several feet out into the stream. So it goes 🙂 Sony RX10iv at 378mm equivalent. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 160. Processed in Polarr.
Ice in the stream…
I went out on a cold January morning to see what I could see before the promised snow the following day. It was a perfect day for ice sculptures to form in the spray and splash of rapidly moving water. I found this in the outflow of one of the little ponds along Rt. 9. I am always amazed at the shapes water can get into. Sony RX10iv at 140mm equivalent. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr.
Maine Winter Morning
The neighborhood, Kennebunk Maine
Yesterday was one of the most visually beautiful days I have ever experienced in Southern Maine. We had 3 feet of snow on the ground, and another 6 inches fell over-night…wet, clingy snow that stuck where it first touched, so every tree and bush had its frosting of snow. Unfortunately that meant that the snow in our drive was a mix of snow and not quite frozen water…heavy to lift in the shovel, and a real chore for the snowblower. My first project was to get the drive cleared and the cars out, but then I took a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the beauty. My neighbor was out with his snowblower and saw me walking by. “Beautiful,” he said, “but a pain in the butt.” “Beautiful,” I said, “but a pain in the lower back.” Certainly beautiful though. By noon the sun was coming out, there was some blue in the sky, and the scenery went from beautiful to spectacular. If you follow my “For the love of landscape…” on Facebook or Google+, you will see some of the images from a drive I took in the afternoon…or maybe I will have one left to share here tomorrow. 🙂
Sony Rx10iii in-camera HDRs. Processed in Polarr on my iPad Pro. Assembled in Framemagic. These shots were taken early, about an hour after first light.
Snow Fence. Happy Sunday!
Snow fence along a beach house access road. Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
This little stretch of snowfence protects a corner in an access road for a group houses on our local beach, where the wind across the marsh might drift the snow across the road. As you can tell from its condition, it has stood there at least since I moved here over 20 years ago, and I can’t honestly remember it looking any better then. This is after about a foot, maybe 8 inches right along the coast, within the sound of the surf, of fresh blowing snow. We expect another 12-24 inches in next 24 hours, a real nor-easter. The snowfence does its job, more or less. There is, every nor-easter, a sizable drift in front of it. Because, of course, that is the way it works. It is not so much a snowfence as wind fence. By slowing the passing wind, it causes the snow to drop out on the downwind side. In this next storm I expect the snow will backfill to cover all but the tips of the slats. It does not prevent drifts so much as to encourage them to form somewhere short of the road.
I like the line and curve of it against the snow, and what the wind does with the surface of the drift…the carving, the light and shadow, and in this shot, the brooding bank of cloud and the touch of blue sky above.
As I started to post this image for yesterday’s Pic for Today, just because I like the beauty of it, the whole concept of erecting a snow fence to fence out the snow…or a wind fence to tame the wind…stuck me as having a spiritual dimension, and I decided to save it for the Generous Eye today.
Now that I reflect on it a bit more, I not sure what to do with it. The wind, in the new testament, is, very often, the spirit. They are the same word in the language Jesus most likely spoke, and, if I remember right, in Hebrew as well. Jesus, speaking to an honest and devout Jew come to inquire of him, said “No one can see the Kingdom of God who is not born again.” When the questioner questioned the possibility of anyone being born twice, Jesus went to to say, “Turely I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of the wind (spirit). You must be born of water and the wind. Flesh is born of flesh, but wind is born of wind.” (Or flesh is born of flesh, but the spirit is born of spirit.) “Don’t be surprised that I said you must be born again. The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound of its passing, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with anyone born of the wind…born of the spirit.” That, of course, only confused the questioner more. And that, of course, was Jesus’s point. He was saying that something has to happen to you, before you can see God’s Kingdom…before you can see God at work in the world and in eternity. Something has to change in you. I am pretty sure he was also paying the questioner, who had already admitted that he saw God and God’s presence in the things Jesus was doing and saying, a compliment. He was telling this honest, devout Jew, that if he saw God in what Jesus was going, he was already born again…born of the wind, born of the spirit…whether he knew it or not. But that is straying pretty far from snowfences. Or is it?
My first thought was about the futility of trying to fence out the snow, or the wind. At the very most, all we do is slow the wind and reposition the snow. It is equally impossible of course to fence out, or to fence in, the spirit. It is an odd thought, but building a church, or establishing a doctrine (building a fence) might slow the spirit enough so you get a drift on the down wind side, a congregation or a denomination, but it does not stop the spirit from blowing where it will. And I am not at all sure I want to be part of the drift. If I am going to be snow in this metaphor, I want to be the snow still blowing in the wind…I want to part of the movement, the force, the power and unknowable purpose of the spirit. And maybe Jesus was telling his devout Jew that too…not to settle in the drift, behind the snowfence, but to get up into the wind again and get moving. The Kingdom of God is not a place, it is a movement like the wind…a way of being suspended…lifted out of yourself and part of the great wind that is God acting in love in the world. You have to be born of the wind, born on the wind (I don’t know if Jesus had that pun to play with in his language, but we do in ours 🙂 Our mother’s carried us in a womb of flesh…the spirit carries us on the wind of loving creation. Born of and in the flesh and born of and on the spirit.
So yes, when I look at this snowfence I see beauty, but I am also amused. A snowfence? As though anyone could fence in the snow. A wind fence, as though anyone could fence in the wind. And who are you in this metaphor? I know who I want to be. I want to be God’s creative love in action. I want to be a particle of snow, a paricle of water, a particle of flesh, born on the mighty breath of God in this world and eternity. Happy Sunday!