Carol and I were in New Mexico when the first snow fell in Maine, but we were home yesterday and watched, Frost like, the woods fill up with snow. It snowed most of the day, but never heavily, and by late afternoon we had about 2 inches on the ground. Gentle snow, and very little wind, so even that little bit built up on the evergreens to look like a much heavier fall. This is a little patch of mostly second growth forest (or 10th growth for all I know) just across the road from our house. It is posted, but I worked my way just far enough into the woods for this pic of the newly fallen snow, about 2:30 in the afternoon, before the light failed completely. There is always a quiet beauty to freshly fallen snow.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/100th @ f2.5 @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
One of the best effects of HDR is maintaining green where it would otherwise go dark. Add a bit of shadow recovery in post processing, and the effect is very life-like. 🙂
Yesterday’s Day Poem was about waking to a heavy frost. What I did not say is that I got dressed and went out into the yard to capture the event in photos, just as the sun was rising. These four images catch some of the feeling of the frost on the oak leaves and grass.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. Processed in Snapseed to bring out the frost effect, and assembled in PicStich on my Android tablet.
And the poem:
Under the street lights this morning before dawn, it looked like it had snowed in the night…the lawn was white, and the cars looked covered. I had to go to the back deck and turn on the light to see that it was only heavy frost. I have been fooled before. I am ready for snow…oh I know, once it comes I will remember it is always, at best, a mixed blessing. I could be out there right now with the snowblower in all my winter gear clearing the drive. No, I guess I won’t hurry the season. And there is much to be admired, after all, in a heavy frost.
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Yesterday, when I was in the kitchen beginning to think about supper, I slid back the screen on the back deck sliding-door to chase a squirrel away, and then, when the birds at the feeding station came back almost immediately (including our female Ruby-throated Hummingbird) I left the door open and went for my camera. The light was lovely, with filtered sun after a brief rainstorm on the feeding station and the apple branches we have bolted to the deck for perches around it, and the background of dark trees 25 feet behind the station already in shadow. There was a fairly constant flow of Chickadees and Titmice, and the hummingbird came in for a drink from the feeder several times and perched out on the apple branches. I had a very enjoyable 30 minutes standing and watching and taking pictures. Small active birds are always a challenge, photographically, and there was the added test of getting exposure on the sunlit birds right against the dark background. And of course, there were the birds themselves, going about their business only a dozen feet from me. Thoroughly enjoyable, and perhaps more so, since I was propped up in back door of my own home. When I bolted the apple branches to the deck, it was times like this that I was thinking of…hoping for.
This Tufted Titmouse came several times. The image has almost a “studio” feel to it, a portrait, as though I posed and lit the bird for best effect. The lighting and the background gives the bird unusual dimension…and that, along with the level of detail in the feathers and in the bark of the branch, makes it look uncommonly “real”…alive and present. And of course, it was images like this that I was thinking of when I bolted the apple branches to the deck. 🙂
Still, for all my forethought (or hope) and what little skill I can claim with the camera, it is the bird that makes the image. The bird, bold enough to perch on my apple branch, close, while I stood completely visible in the open door. The bird with its little spark of life, trusting that little spark of life to me in exchange for a sunflower seed or two.
I think it is bred into us, even stronger than our hunting instinct, this desire for the peaceable kingdom…for an Eden-like experience where we are surrounded by all that lives…by every living creature, neither threatened by, or a threat to it…at peace with life itself. I think it is part of our heritage as children of God…the overflow and outflow of the creative love, the caring heart, that made the whole of the natural world we are part of. Our kinship with all that lives is an expression of our kinship with God, who created all in love.
And yes, it was to celebrate that kinship that I built the feeding station on our deck…and the foresight expressed was one instance (still too rare) of my eye being generous, and the light within me reaching forward in time to encounters and images like this. Happy Sunday!
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the yard, Kennebunk Maine
After I got back from Honduras early this month, I went out and bought a hummingbird feeder, as a kind of antidote to hummingbird withdrawal. We have a few Ruby-throated Hummingbirds coming now, but this the first one who is making him/herself at home. It is most likely an immature female. It allowed me to work my way to about 6 feet from it, and then only took off because it was ready to go. Not the best light as the sun was behind a cloud, but still… There is a poem.
We have, maybe, a “resident” hummingbird
coming to our feeder, and resting on the
apple branches we bolted to the deck for
perches round the feeding station. It might
be a young bird…it has that look about it,
and it let me within six feet today…buzzing
up into the trees overhead not because I was
there, but just because it was ready to go.
It was back again a dozen times in the next
few hours, always perching near the top of
the apple branch, spending sixty seconds
at a time at the feeder, sipping up the red
nectar. Of course I have photos, which I
will share tomorrow. I feel privileged to
play host to such a special creature…Ruby-
throated, though its chin is yet bare…still
I could get lost in the iridescent beauty of
of its green back, in the intricate detail
of its breast and wing feathers. Lost, I say,
or found in beauty. What a way to go!
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 250. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom.
Our small yellow Day Lilies have been in bloom for a week in the front garden, but these showy blooms at the end of the drive just bloomed yesterday. We were trying to figure out where they came from. I might have bought them last year, and they might have been transferred from another bed where they were not doing well, but at any rate, they are new at the end of the drive this year…and doing very well there. 🙂 Greeting guests. Like the folks at the Walmart door. Maybe. Certainly just as cheerful as the best of them. They were in deep afternoon shadow when I got around to photographing them.
Sony RX10iii at 88mm equivalent. 1/40th @ ISO 250 @ f5.6. Program Shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom (cropped slightly and a small amount of vignette added).
We are having a strange spring…but then I am beginning to believe that strange is the normal for southern Maine. No two springs in the two decades I have lived here have been remotely the same. This year the Maple Flowers are at lest 2 weeks early…but when, on the strength of that, I checked for Trout Lily in the forest, it was barely sprouting leaves above the leaf litter. Last year I photographed both Maple flowers and Trout Lily on the same day around the first of May. Go figure.
The lowest Maple Flowers in our back yard are just far enough above my head so I need a strong telephoto to reach them, and yet too close for my Nikon P900’s minimum focus of 16.5 feet…so I got out the P610 for this shot (and many others 🙂 This is at about 2000mm equivalent field of view, using the P610’s full 1440mm optical and bit of Perfect Image digital zoom. 1/250th @ ISO 100 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
American Goldfinch, back deck feeding station. Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
We are having a minor spring snow event today and tomorrow. No significant accumulation (well maybe an inch by tomorrow night), and nothing compared to what they got from this storm further west…but still enough to remind us that we don’t put our snow boots and winter coats away until May 1st here in Maine. My wife had to find her mittens to get to church this morning. This American Goldfinch was one of several birds hanging close to the feeders in the snow. I expect we will get lots of traffic on the back deck today and tomorrow as birds try to find enough sustenance to keep warm in the unseasonable weather.
Jesus reminds us that God takes care of the Goldfinch, no matter what the weather does, and that we should take that as evidence that God will care for us…that we should not be anxious for how we will stay alive, but, the implication is, devote ourselves to living in a way that demonstrates our faith in God, our thankfulness for the blessings of God, and a generosity of spirit that embraces our fellows and all that lives.
The Goldfinch in the snow reminds me of God’s blessings in my life…but it also challenges me to take a look at how well I live…how well I embody faith, thanksgiving, and generosity. The answer today is the same as it always is, and always will be…not well enough…or at least not as will as I think I ought to. The hardest lesson of all to learn, far harder than trusting God for our daily bread and shelter, is trusting God for our goodness. If God takes care that I stay alive…surely God will also take care that I live well…with faith, thanksgiving and generosity. Being anxious about how good I am is just as misguided as being anxious about what I will eat or what I will wear.
God is good. Only God is good. We live by faith in God or we do not live at all. When I look at this Goldfinch in the snow, I do not see a trace of anxiety…no fear…no worry…just the impulse to get on with it…to get on with life…no matter what the weather does. Yes, you say, easy for the Goldfinch…that is just the way it is made. But isn’t that what Jesus was saying? That is the way we are made. We only have to let ourselves live that way. By faith. All else follows.
I had to look it up, but the plural of Crocus is, as I might have expected, either “crocuses” or “croci”…both are accepted forms. We have had a single crocus blooming for several days, and lots of buds showing, but yesterday it got up to 70 degrees in your yard and the whole little bed burst open. The crocus is such a cheerful flower, and I find our variegated variety is particular festive.
Sony HX90V macro. 37mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 80 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
The Titmice came back to our feeders about a week ago, after a late winter absence. This Tufted Titmouse shot was taken on the second day of spring 🙂 and is a celebration of our spring nor’easter. I think he looks very stoic there on his branch. Every few moments he would fly across to the feeders and take a seed, then return to this same branch to digest.
Nikon P610 at 1440mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 220 @ f6.5. Processed and cropped for composition in Lightroom.
Carol came running
early to the bedroom,
“turkeys in the yard,”
and I went running
barefoot and still wet
from the shower, camera
in hand, out the front door.
Indeed, four big birds
in full spring finery…
feathers aglisten in the
morning sun with
colors rarely seen,
(barely imagined).
They strutted mindlessly,
as only turkeys strut,
(I know they call it
a trot but it’s not…
something between
a strut and a stroll)
up the middle of the
road to the neighbor’s
yard where they circled
back just in time
to be a Turkey heart
attack for the lady
in the SUV taking the
corner on Brown
Street a tad too fast.
They scuttled (again
a better word than trot)
through another yard
into the relative safety
of a patch of forest
and where gone.
Ah to be as mindless
and a carefree as a
Turkey in the spring.
