Posts in Category: Rachel Carson NWR
Lady Slipper Light
Sometimes it is just about light, no matter what your subject is. This Lady Slipper, along the tail at Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters, is as lovely as any of its kind, and particularly symmetrical, but it is the light in the background that makes the shot, along with the translucency of the bracts at the top, and the light caught in the tiny hairs that coat the bloom along the edges.
I used my favorite macro combination. Full wide angle (24mm equivalent) for the 0 cm focus, and 1.5x digital tel-converter for image scale and working distance. The combination managed to give me effective bokeh in the bright background. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. f4 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
It is that Lady Slipper time of year…
Spring in Maine may be catching up with itself. We were running 4 to 5 weeks later than last year, and a week or two behind a normal year. The Lady Slippers were in full bloom on May 23rd in 2009, the 20th in 2010, the 21st in 2011, and the 19th in 2012 (no, I do not keep a journal. It is as easy as looking at the exif data on my images from previous years :). This year close to full boom was yesterday, on the 27th. That is a week difference yet, but we are catching up.
I am, of course, obliged to photograph the Lady Slippers along the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters every year. I should say, I am privileged to photograph the Lady Slippers every year. This year there are fewer than in past few years, with one prominent clump missing altogether, and the blooms are not as bright as they are most years. Still, it is magnificent plant! I would certainly miss photographing them. (I will be in Acadia National Park this weekend, and I hope to find the Yellow (Canadian) Lady-Slipper in boom there as well.)
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 1.5x digital tel-converter (my preferred macro setting). Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Trillium: Rachel Carson NWR
I included a Trillium in my set of “yard” flowers last week, not because it grows in my yard, but as a true touch of wildness in an otherwise pretty tame set of wildflowers. Still, the Trillium deserves a post all its own. The Trillium of the Maine woods is the Painted Trillium, with it’s delicate purple veining. This is a telephoto macro, taken at 1800mm equivalent from the safety of the path. The lighting on this flower is, I think, particularly effective.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Branch Brook Sweep Panorama
I have done several panoramas in different seasons here at the “S” curves in Branch Brook at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It is a tempting scene in any season. This is spring coming on…and it is my first “sweep” panorama at the spot. I generally build panoramas one shot at time, and stitch the shots later in PhotoShop Elements. For this shot I used my Samsung Galaxy S4’s Sweep Panorama mode. You just open the camera app, set it for Panorama, point at one edge of the scene, touch the shutter button, and slowly sweep the phone around however many degrees you want in a continuous motion. The screen displays a little track and gives you pointer arrows to correct when you drift too far off a horizontal line (or a vertical line if you are shooting a vertirama). It is easy, fast, and it works. And with the Galaxy, unlike some smartphone sweep panorama apps which automatically downsize the sweep, you capture the full resolution of the sensor times however long your sweep is. Holding the phone in portrait mode gives you relatively tall and and as wide as you want panorama. Once you touch the shutter button a second time, the processor in the phone “stitches” the panorama. If you look closely here you will see that it could not quite handle the rail that is parallel to the motion of the sweep. There are some jaggies there where the image was stitched. But in general, and with less challenging lines, the app does amazingly well!
With a little tweaking, either right on the phone in Snapseed, or in Lightroom on my laptop, the results can be pretty amazing. (Though Snapseed is an amazingly capable editing app it does downsize the results…this is a Lightroom version. You can see it as wide as your screen will allow by clicking the image to open it in the lightbox on my WideEyedInWonder galleries.) This is about 200 degrees of sweep.
And from a phone camera!
Emerging Green. Rachel Carson NWR
I went to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, primarily to practice with my new Panasonic HX-A100 head mounted action camera, but also to see where spring has gotten to along the loop trail. Trillium are still blooming in small numbers, and I found a few Two Bead Lilies open, and many more in bud. There were more visible Lady Slipper plants, but none near blooming. Still a very late spring.
The emerging spruce needle bunchs caught my eye. The contrast of color and texture and form demanded a close up.
Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 2x digital tel-converter. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Rachel Carson NWR Vista: via phone. Happy Sunday!
This is one of my favorite views at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, along the short headquarter’s loop of trial. It overlooks the Merriland River, which becomes the Little River for the rest of it’s run t the sea, just beyond those ponds where Branch Brook joins it on the left. The view is exceptional in every season. If you pursue my back trail of posts, you will find many views of this scene over the years. Here the new, emerging foliage of spring gives the trees and forest a delicate look. The sun penetrates deeper and brings out textures in the wood, and in the scene overall. The wide, 6×9 ratio of the image makes it a real vista shot. I like it as well as any shot from this spot I have ever taken!
And now I have to tell you it was taken with my phone. I have new Samsung Galaxy S4, my first Galaxy and my first Samsung, but not my first phone with a camera. I had, a few phones ago, the iPhone 4, which had an excellent camera. Its range was extended in all kinds of useful and interesting ways by clever software from the vast iPhone ecosystem. I was impressed. My first HDR photos were, in fact, taken with the iPhone and the HDR Photo app. Still, it was a phone camera, and not quite good enough to tempt me chose it in any situation over my Canon P&Ss.
I don’t know how much Apple managed to improve the camera in the later generations of iPhones, as I lost my enchantment with all things Apple when my iPhone 4 died a way too early death, and the good folks at the Apple store wanted to charge me $140 to replace it with a reconditioned unit. I went Android. The camera in my first Andriod phone was certainly no temptation, as a photographic tool.
However, I do, already, find myself putting out the Galaxy S4, with its high resolution sensor; fast, wide lens: and built in software for all kinds of special effects (including an excellent HDR) even when I am carrying my Canon SX50HS. Take this shot. The Samsung HDR software (which appears to work off a single exposure), did as well with the range of light as I could have done with a full fledged 3 exposure HDR from my Canon, and way better than the in-camera HDR on the SX50HS. With my standard tweaking in Lightroom, or even processed in Snapseed right on the phone, the results are very satisfying. And, embarrassed as I am to be seen by anyone actually using my phone to take a picture, I can not, and do not, argue with the results. My Galaxy S4 pictures get uploaded to my WideEyedInWonder albums right along side my Canon shots.
Embarrassed? Well, yes. I mean, it’s a phone. And it is a thing. I mean the “everyone with a smart phone is photographer” thing. A “teen-girls snapping everything and mostly each other and posting every shot to Facebook” thing. It is, maybe, a “generational” thing. I am too old, and much too experienced as photographer, to be taking pictures with my smartphone. Aren’t I?
Apparently not.
So, it is Sunday, and somewhere in this story there has to be a spiritual truth, or at least segue to the spiritual. The spirit, of course, neither ages or gains experience. The spirit in us is always young. It is that inner child thing. The spirit in us is always looking for and fining new ways to experience and to share the wonder that is life…to express itself and to impress itself on the world of time and matter. The spirit in me is just simply delighted with the new toy/tool that that the wizards at Samsung have put in my hands. Any embarrassment is purely in the flesh (of matter and time), and, therefore irrelevant.
So, in obedience to the spirit, I will continue to joyfully enjoy taking pictures with my smartphone. I may have to vigorously suppress a twinge of embarrassment when the guy with the Canon D7000, a bag of lenses, and a tripod sets up beside me for an HDR session, but I can do that. It is only the flesh. And I will, of course, resist the temptation to turn and show him the pic I just took, processed, and posted to my social net on the brilliant high resolution screen of my smartphone. That would flesh too. Wouldn’t it? (It might be fun though…and my theory is that fun (good clean, non-malicious, fun) is always a segue to the spirit!)
🙂
Designer Ice: Branch Brook
For the recently new year, I am trying a new theme which allows a larger view of the main image. What do you thinK?
This is the strange ice that forms along the edges of Branch Brook at Rachel Carson NWR, a mile of river channel from the sea, where the water is, according to the tide, a mix of salt and fresh. I love the long fibers, the arrowheads and the spears. It is so designed! I know there is a chemistry and a physics of water behind it…a whole crystal science…but it certainly does not look random to me. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Big Bend on Branch Brook: Winter
This is a slightly mind-bending panorama that you really need to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox on WideEyedInWonder, auto-sized for your display. It is just about a full 180 degrees. You can see two ends of the same straight rail sticking out about 1/6 of the way in from each corner. Though the perspective looks natural when stitched together like this, you would have to relax your vision, or at least your attention, to see this in real life. It could be done if you are one of those people who can process your peripheral vision without falling over. 🙂
It is 4 fames, each frame an In-camera HDR, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 11’s PhotoMerge tool, and then final processed in Lightroom. I shot it off my Fat Gecko walking-about tripod.
Canon SX50HS. Four overlapping 24mm equivalent field of view frames. Recorded exif: f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Winter Vista: Rachel Carson NWR
There is a small viewing platform around the backside of the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters that, if you only visit in summer, you will certainly ask yourself, “Why there?” There is, in summer, when the leaves are on the trees, nothing to see. There is, in spring, a nice stand of Lady Slipper below the platform, on the slope leading down to the marsh, but that came after the platform, as a result of the added light and space clearing a few of trees provided.
It is only in winter that you see what the trail designers were thinking (or seeing) when they put the platform there. In winter you have a view through the bare trees out across the river and the marsh that is quite attractive…even more attractive for the thin screen of trees between you and the marsh. And in winter, the light on the trees in the foreground is wonderful.
This is another In-camera HDR from the Canon SX50HS, and the Mode, plus some post-processing in Lightroom, produces an image very close to what the eye sees here.
45mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f6.3 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
7/2/2012: Rachel Carson Overlook
This is a scene I return to time and time again. It is one of the overlooks at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, on the walk through the forest between the Little River (Branch Brook) and the Merriland Rivers. It is always a tricky shot, balancing the dark forest and the bright river going out to the sea beyond. This shot, with some processing in Lightroom, works well. The early morning light, slanting in from the east, also helps!
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 320.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, and exposure balance.