Posts in Category: bokeh
Bluebird in the rain…
Eastern Bluebird: Kennebunk, Maine, USA — Sometimes it all comes together. The slightly wet bluebird, the rain drop on the green hook, the greenish yellow bokeh, and the classic pose. This is a shot I might frame for the wall. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photo. ISO 1000 @ f4 @ 1/500th. +1 EV exposure compensation.
Crabapples in winter…
Crabapples, Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk Maine
I found these Crabapples still hanging in a tree along the Kennebunk Bridle Path down by the lower reaches of the Mousam River, a half mile in from the sea. They, and the red berries of Winterberry (Bog Holly) and the few remaining Beach Rose hips, inspired yesterday’s Day Poem.
Down by the Mousam River in its last
mile run to the sea, on a cold, snowless,
December day (snow in the forecast
after mid-night), ice in the drainage, ice
smooth on the marsh pools, the world
done in browns and grays…mostly
texture in the slanting winter light…
the red of winterberries (bog holly),
beach plums, withered crab apples,
startles the eye, arrests the attention,
forms the color axis around which the
winter landscape and the dull sky turns.
In this image, I like the apples, of course…the delicate shadings of the red…but it would not be the image it is without the background…the bokeh. I played with angles until I got the effect I wanted. I have a slightly closer view, but I like the context the bare branches give this image.
Sony RX10iii at 407mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode. 1/60th @ ISO 125 @ f8 (program shift). Processed in Polarr on my Android tablet.
Milkweed. Happy Sunday!
“If your eye is generous, then your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Hope is a puff of Milkweed silk, blowing in the wind, carrying the future. And not the future only of the plant, but the future of the Monarch Butterfly, and in a very real sense, our own as well. It might all rest on where some single Milkweed seed falls to earth.
Hope is a dangerous thing to base a life on, unless, of course, you know where your hope resides…unless there is a huge power of good backing your hope. The generous eye lives in hope. The generous eye sees in the frail beauty of Milkweed silk, all the strength and beauty of the universe…all the loving care of a creator who works through love.
If you can see the beauty in this image, then carry it inside…into your heart and let it grow. Sometimes it really does all hinge on where the Milkweed seed lands. Happy Sunday!
White-necked Jacobin
White-necked Jacobin
I sat for most of an hour in the little gazebo-like tower on the back of the Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, in a chair at one of the tables, and photographed hummingbirds as they rested in the trees between me and the feeders. This is a White-necked Jacobin. You can just see the white patch at the nape of the neck that gives it its name. Besides being a portrait of the bird, I like the out of focus branches which provide a frame and a context for the bird.
Nikon P900 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 280 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Ground Squirrel at Prayer :)
Ground Squirrel, Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum , Tucson AZ
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of Ground Squirrels on the grounds of the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum near Tucson. There might be that many in any equal sized area of Sonoran desert, but I suspect the population is inflated by easy access to the food put out for the other critters actually on display at the museum. If you have not been there, the AZ Sonoran Desert Museum is a cross between a botanical garden and a modern, natural habitat, zoo…with at least one important geological display. It is one of the best displays of the natural history of an area that I have ever seen. And, as I said, the Ground Squirrels seem to enjoy it too. 🙂
I really like the bokeh in this shot, and the pose. All in all it lends the Ground Squirrel a very “spiritual” aspect. Maybe the Ground Squirrels at the ASDM think of it as a monastery…but one that invites whole families. 🙂 Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 400 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Everglades Zebra Heliconian
Zebra Longwing (Heliconian). Flamingo area, Everglades NP
We did not have a huge number of butterflies the second week in December in south Florida. The temperatures were unseasonably cool, for the area, and most butterflies, even if active in December, were tucked in tight somewhere keeping warm. The exception was the Zebra Longwing (or Heliconian). They were pretty much everywhere we went and flying by mid-morning. Maybe “fluttering” would be more accurate with this bug, as their flight is about as floppy and hesitant as a butterfly gets. I chased a few down when we saw them for photos. This one is on the Coastal Prairie / Bay Shore Loop Trail just at the far edge of the Flamingo campground, about as far south in the Park as you can get. I like the background here (it has, as they say, good bokeh), and I like the exposure, which preserves the saturation in the yellow bands…too often a picture of this bug will show white bands due to the contrast between the black and yellow and the difficulty of exposing for both.
Sony HX400V at just over 1200mm equivalent field of view. Going just slightly into the Clear Image Zoom (digital) zoom range decreases the minimum focus to something in the 6 foot range and gives the best tel-macro effect on the Sony. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Fall is Coming!
”
When I was out by Day Brook Pond I could not miss the first touches of fall color. I have seen a few other patches of exposed forest edge that are beginning to turn, and the temperature this morning is hovering right around the freezing mark…but we are still a few weeks out from true fall color in Southern Maine. This branch, isolated against the dark surface of the pond, is a real reminder, though, that fall is certainly coming, and coming fast.
Sony HX400V. 285mm equivalent field of view. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Chickadee Dee Dee
We had another day in our slow-coming spring yesterday when the sun was warm enough to stand out on the back deck (still in fleece and coat, gloves and winter hat of course) while the birds were at the feeding station, waiting, practicing patience, with my camera balanced on top of the home-made bean-bag head on my monopod. Chickadees, of course, a few Titmice, and the female Downy woodpecker. The male was around, but I never caught it on the feeding station, and, for the first time in months, we had a male Hairy for a few seconds at the suet, and for 30 minutes or more in the trees around the yard.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 320 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. If you look very closely you might be able to see where I edited out obtrusive out-of-focus branches with the Retouch tools in Handy Photo.
Sitting Pretty
Bird-life at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge seems to be somewhat sparce this year…but there are still lots of Tricolored and Little Blue Herons. The area around the restrooms, half way around Black Point Wildlife Drive, is a good place to look for the Tricoloreds perched up…and when the light is right you can get some wonderful shots. This is early morning light, and it is around the corner on the way out of the Refuge, so the light was coming over my shoulder as I set up the digiscoping rig. I was photographing a Tricolored in the Mangrove in the small pond there by the turn, when this one flew in to the top of another Mangrove up on the dike. Perfect placement. Great light! I just swung the scope around, refocused, and took a whole series at different zoom setting for framing from full body to intimate portrait.
Canon SD320HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL using the Digidapter for ZEISS mount. Approximately 2000mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/160th @ an effective f5.8 based on the scope. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. (For those unfamiliar with the technique, digiscoping is taking a photo through the eyepiece of a spotting scope with a digital camera…high magnifications are possible, so you can fill the frame with a bird from much greater distances than you could using conventional photographic lenses.)
Snow Geese Rising in a Cloudy Dawn
On every trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, you need to plan to be at the Refuge, or at least at the ponds along the road in, before dawn. The Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes rising for the day is one of the classic sights of the Bosque. It is seldom, during November and December, that a dawn does not find the pond dikes lined with photographers, many of them with their huge 600mm lenses and cameras on tripods. The spectical is the same, no matter how you attempt to catch it. This dawn, I happened on a friend, who was part of a photo-workshop, which, itself, was part of the Festival of the Cranes. They had been assigned to try to capture the blurred motion of the Geese as they came up off the water, so I decided to try as well. Actually, in the low light of an overcast dawn, blurred motion was making virtue of necessity…this shot is at ISO 1600, and that was still not fast enough to freeze the beating wings. I like the effect.
Processing for HDR in Snapseed brought a richness to the background colors that would not have been otherwise possible, and almost turns the image to tapestry. Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/60th @ f6.5.