Posts in Category: bokeh
Bittersweet
Bittersweet must flower, but I can not honestly remember ever seeing the flowers. The fruit, on the other hand, is a feature of Thanksgiving and fall table arrangements and door wreaths. I don’t think it is a common plant anymore in Southern Maine: A victim of its own popularity. There used to be a massive stand of it on the Nature Conservancy’s East Point Preserve in Biddeford Pool, but they have aggressively bush-hogged it to the ground (I am not sure what the have against bittersweet…it is a native plant). These were still growing along the trail that leads back along the river toward the Pool.
I like a lot in this image. Shape and high contrast color, the way the light molds the fruit, of course, but also the texture of the dying leaves, and the out of focus accents of the fruit behind. And it is, really, a classic rule of thirds composition, with the added strong diagonals of the stems. Lots to like, in its own quiet still-lifey way.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in macro mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.
Snipe! Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival
I try to avoid posting birds for #wildlifeonwednesday, but sometimes I just get carried away. This Wilson’s Snipe was sitting on a post right beside the road, and a van load of birders at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival just pulled up beside it. I took pics from the passenger seat, across the driver and out the driver side window. The light was perfect. The bokeh was attractive. It just does not get any better than that. 🙂
I have never seen a snipe on a post in Maine. I have seen snipe, but mostly in flyovers and fleeting glimpses at marsh edges. In North Dakota sitting on posts is apparently the snipe thing to do. During the course of 4 field trips I saw at least half a dozen snipe on poles. Fence poles. Power poles. Short poles and tall. The North Dakota snipe like to sit on top. ??
Canon SX50HS. My usual modifications to Program (see Program Modifications page above). 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 500. Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom.
Rhododendron Abstract: The Yard
The Rhododendrons in our yard, and on the boarder between our yard and the yard next door, are in full bloom these past few days. The weather was variable yesterday so I got two series of images of the flowers…one in the subdued light of the overcast morning, and one in direct sun, a little after noon. This is from the sunny shoot, and is close enough to turn the image, almost, into an abstract. I like the way the light is just catching on the two anthers and the tip of the stigma, which stand out against the bokeh of the petals in the background.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. In order to create this effect, I backed away and shot at 1800mm equivalent field of view, from about 5 feet. f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
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.
Cape May Warbler: Magee Marsh
Sunday morning at Magee Marsh was cold, but we had intermittent sun, and therefore pretty good light for photography. There was one tree, just beyond the west entrance to the boardwalk, right over the parking lot with the sun on it, that had at least 10 species of warblers actively feeding. The long lens crew made a solid semi-circle around it…tripod city.
This Cape May Warbler was among the birds, and it was putting on quite a show. The Cape May was named for spot where it was first observed, but it actually only passes through Cape May, New Jersey during migration to it’s breeding grounds, which, except for Northern Maine and the extreme upper Mid-West, is all in Canada. That did not keep this handsome fellow from singing in Ohio!
I like this composition, with the bird at the powerpoint of the rule of thirds, and the rich bokeh behind. And the morning sun certainly brought out the color of the bird!
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent field of view. (It was a tall tree.) Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sir Song: Arcata Marsh
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There is just no place like Arcata Marsh for Marsh Wrens and Song Sparrows. This year the Song Sparrows were there in greater abundance than I have seen them before, and more vocal. And certainly easier. They were popping up and singing all along the trails. This gentleman popped up right beside me, maybe 10 feet away, on a misty, almost raining morning, and sat and sang while I snapped a series of images at point blank range. This is 1200mm optical zoom.
I like the subtle, overcast day, light in the eye, and the deep bokeh,
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Redwood Lupine
I associate Lupine with Maine, mainly because of the children’s book, The Lupine Lady (one of my children’s favorites), and because of the magnificent spring displays of Lupine along I95 from Freeport north, and all over Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park. I have made several trips to Acadia during Lupine season, and photographed it there with some success. But, of course, it is native to the Pacific Northwest as well. I found this stand between the parking for the Trillium Falls Trail and the trail itself in Redwoods National Park north of Orick California. And yes, the color was this intense.
I have more conventional, and wider, shots, but I found this tel-macro composition compelling. The selective focus and the placement of the plants are intentional, and I think it works well (though I did have to fip it horizontally to accommodate my dominant eye :). Somehow this goes a bit beyond a photograph. It is almost the flower itself!
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Fairy Duster
I went to Anza Borrego Desert State Park last month looking for early spring wildflowers. I found a few plants in bloom, but I was really too early by several weeks. This Fairy Duster bloom is in the watered garden around the Visitor Center. For some reason I always want to call it Feather Duster…but it is Fairy.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro, plus 1.5x digital tel-converter. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Who knew? A macro.
Who knew a flower petal hid within the anther, folded as in a tiny furry coat of pollen? Who knew?
Probably lot of people actually. Botanists. Serious cultivators of flowers of all kinds. Maybe even observant gardeners. The point is, of course, that I did not. I had never looked closely enough, or perhaps, never caught the anther at just this stage of development.
This is my wife’s valentine lily, and I was using wide-angle macro (24mm equivalent, focus to 0 cm) plus the Digital Tel-converter function on my Canon SX50HS to get as close as I could. At 2x the DTC gives a 48mm equivalent field of view with better working distance and larger scale…and with an image like this that is “all detail” you loose very little quality. I might have gotten just a bit closer, but not without seriously getting in my own light. Already, on my HD 14 inch laptop display, the anther is 8 times life size.
Camera as above. f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Hand held (great IS on the SX50HS). Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. Processed in Lightroom for intnesity, clarity and sharpness.
The Phoebe and the Bokeh
I am still learning the virtues (and limitations) of my new Canon SX50HS. It is not that much different than the SX40HS it is replacing, but there are some added features that are worth exploring. Like framing lock. There is a button on the left side of the lens near the body which, when pressed, turns on optimized image stabilization while you are framing the image. At extreme telephoto, where even the steadiest hand can have difficulty holding the camera still enough for effective framing, it is a really a helpful feature.
Last week I went out to look for some cooperative birds to try it on. As it happens all I found were a few Eastern Phoebes along the Kennebunk Bridle path, and, wouldn’t you know it, they were between me and the low fall sun.
Still, I really like the way the bird is framed here, against the sunlit marsh grasses, and what the longer focal length is doing to the grasses behind.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.