Posts in Category: bokeh
Form and Light (otherwise Flower)
Sometimes it really is about form and light and how they interact more than about the subject itself. Abstract is too angular a word, too, well, abstract, to describe the pure play of light we occasionally see and catch in nature, but I can not, off hand, come up with a better.
What I like here are the big bold colors obviously, orange on green with spikes of red…but it is more about the range of the orange, the shadings and shadowings, the texture of the orange surface, the burning translucency, contrasted with the solid points of the furled petals. And running through it, the single filament of spider web, catching the sun. (If you look closely you can see the author of that thread on the third spike from the left 🙂
This is, I believe, some sort of giant exotic iris from the demonstration gardens at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle Washington. It is part of at least 3 blooms, stacked by the telephoto perspective.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view, taken from about 15 feet. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Turtlehead in the Rain
I have a new camera. I replaced my Canon SX40HS with a newly released SX50HS…longer zoom (50x, 24mm to 1200mm equivalent, faster focus, etc). It came on Wednesday and it has rained non-stop ever since. Still I had to brave the drips to take at least a few shots around the yard. This is a shot at 1200mm from about 8 feet away. ISO 800. Not bad at all.
I like the total wet look, the depth of the color, and the extreme bokah.
f6.5 @ 1/100th. Program with iContrast and – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/28/2012: 4-Spotted Skimmer Head-on ;-)
Though I am still in Virginia, we will drop back to my last trip down to the dragon ponds on the Kennebunk Bridle Path for this Four-Spotted Skimmer head-on shot. Shooting in full zoom plus digital tel-converter gives the shot interesting bokah.
Canon SX40HS in Program with – 1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @1/400th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/25/2012: Gravel Pit
While I wait for my replacement electric scooter, I am without transportation for my photoprowels when the girls have both cars, so yesterday I decided to explore the semi-abandoned gravel pit more or less next door. A rising water table is fast turning the pit into a wetland. There are two sizable ponds in the bottom and even on the upper levels, cattail marshes are forming in every wet spot. It is an interesting process to watch… Nature reclaiming and transforming a disturbed area right before my eyes.
The plant above is Wild Bergamot, or bee plant, which I have always assumed was an non-native invasive. A quick look at the wiki for the plant shows that it is indeed native. I love the way the clear morning light has pulled out all the details and subtle color is the the blossoms. This is a long telephoto macro, 1240mm equivalent field of view at 5 feet, and that contributes to the effective bokah. f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Canon SX40HS in Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/10/2012: Snowy Against the Sun. Happy Sunday!
I took a late ride on my scooter down to the Kennebunk Bridle Path after supper yesterday to see if there were any dragonflies flying late. I found a Seaside Dragonlet, which is always a treat, but that was about it. However, there was an egret working the marsh pools along the Path, just inside the Rachel Carson National Wildlife boundary. I could not resist a few shots. I was not until I got back to the computer that I saw the effect of the late sun behind the bird and across the water. Ahaaa.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: I was thinking yesterday on my two photo-prowls about just how aware looking for dragonflies makes you! It pushes the boundaries of what is possible. You have to be tuned to any motion, any fleeting shadow across the marsh grass, any tiny thing that moves. You have to check the likely bushes for dragons to hang up in. You have to scan every pool. You become hyperaware. And because of that you see more of everything. More birds. More flowers. More other bugs. More everything.
I requires constant effort. You drift. Or at lest I do. I catch my self just walking again, watching the trail ahead where my feet will fall and not much else, thinking about…whatever! And then I have to push my awareness back out of my head and start looking again.
And then there is an Egret standing against the low afternoon sun. It is not a reward for your attention. It would have been there whether you saw it or not. And I can’t claim much credit. After all I did not see the miracle of the sun behind the bird until I got home and looked at the image.
I know there is a correspondence to the spirit here…that my spiritual attention is not often at the pitch of my physical attention when looking for dragonflies. What if I looked for angels? What if I looked for miracles? What if I just looked for Christ in everyone I pass, in everyone I touch? What if I pushed by spiritual attention to see the spiritual in the world around me with that same intensity I devote to dragonflies? Is there such a thing as spiritual hyperawareness? Is that what means to be a saint?
Of course, I am cheating on myself here. I know that. I stopped separating the spiritual and the physical, in theory, some time ago. My search for dragonflies is a spiritual search. And I do experience the full impact, now that I have noticed it in the image, of the Egret against the sun on my spirit. Still…I have a feeling I am still missing too much…that my awareness needs to be kicked up a notch or two before I walk the miracle walk all the time. I have a feeling I have failed too often to see Christ in those I touch, just as I must have missed a thousand Egrets against the sun.
2/26/2012: Redbuds, Swamp Maple. Happy Sunday!
The Eastern Redbud Tree is common in Virginia around our offices there, and it is a truly beautiful tree in bloom. This is not it. The Redbud blooms purple. In early spring Redbuds look like purple smoke in the understory of Virginia forests and the margins of Virginia lawns.
This is the humble Swamp Maple, which really does have red buds, growing in an untended area along the catchment ponds of our industrial park. It was taken in the soft light of dusk, barely enough light for the camera to focus, at the long end of the zoom, from about 5 feet, which accounts for the interesting bokeh, and the slightly magenta cast to the reds. In fact, the light was low enough already to push the ISO to 800, which puts this shot in the “not possible a year ago with a Point & Shoot” category. It is great when the technology catches up to your vision, even by tiny steps.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent field of view, f5.8 @ 1/40th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and –!/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. I love Maple blossoms. They appear on the branches well before the leaves, taping the last of last summer’s store of energy, braving late frost and spring winds, to stain the Maples with a tinge of the red they will carry in abundance at season’s end. They are always such a hopeful sign of the coming spring, among the first. And, close up, they are delicately beautiful…tight scaled buds, almost like tiny red pine cones, that open to miniature roses with long lacy filaments of red or yellow (depending on the species)…so small you have to be within inches to realize they are flowers at all. And of course, these tiny blooms are, most often, at the branch tips of massive maple trees, 4 stores high, and spreading over whole yards…or, in mass, shading acres of forest. The contrast could not be sharper.
They are brief…having seen these open in Virginia I can now see them, since I am looking, already formed on the branch tips of the Maple outside my window here in Maine, but they will not open here for several weeks yet. They will open, bloom a day, or a week at most, and be gone, as the leaves push right in behind them. (You will probably see more shots of them before long.)
I like them too, because, at winter’s end, they match the little blooming of my spirit. While we are here on Earth we are as much seasonal creatures, and creatures of the season, as is the rest of life around us…and this is true in the spirit as well. There is a spirit of winter, a spirit of spring…a spirit of each season. No, not that kind of “spirit of spring”…some kind of green leafy lady with a flower face…in the pagan sense. There is only one spirit…but that spirit is, in my experience, colored by the season. The hue of spring is hope. The hue of spring is quickening. The hue of spring is awakening. I feel it in my spirit as the days lengthen and the sun climbs…as the Maples bloom. Early and brave, despite the fact that winter storms are yet due, the Maples bloom. And so do I.
2/24/2012: Crab Apples in Bloom, Virginia
I arrived in Virginia in a mini-blizzard, and spent my first morning trying to keep my feet dry and still get out to see a bit of the snow shrouded landscape. Of course the snow was mostly gone by the end of the day, and by Thursday, yesterday, the temperatures were in the more seasonable upper 60s. When I left work at the sun was still a half hour from setting, birds were calling, and the pansies in the industrial park plantings were bright. I had to take a little photo-prowl.
I am pretty sure these are ornamental Crab Apple blossoms. There are many of these trees in the industrial park, and, since the park is about 30 years old now, the trees are well grown and put on a brave show every spring. This is one of those industrial parks with landscaping. There are lawns and hedges, pine groves, a whole series of catchment ponds with fountains, rock walls, gazebos, ornamental reed beds, etc. And I would love to have the pansy concession! Here is another view of the Crab Apple blooms.
The difference between the shots is that the first was taken at the long end of the zoom, at 840mm equivalent from about 4.5 feet, for a telephoto macro effect…with the subject well isolated against a soft background. The second shot is a wide-angle macro, taken from less than a quarter inch, and I had to find a clump of flowers that I could catch sharp against the mass of flowers above and behind.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) f5.8 @ 1/125th @ ISO 800. As you see, the light had already about gone by the time I got to the trees. 2) f4 @ 1/50th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
2/10/2012: Intimate Great Blue Heron, Merritt Island NWR
Intimate portraits of Great Blue Herons are not difficult at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in January. Great Blues are abundant along Black Point Wildlife Drive, and they are used to people stopping to photograph them. They simply go on about their business (which sometimes seems to be exclusively posing for photographers) and ignore the audience. This bird was perched in the top of a mangrove, perhaps 40 feet from shore, ideally placed against a semi-distant back ground for good bokeh in close-ups.
I have, honestly, a LOT of images of Great Blue Herons already, but who could resist this poser?
All three shots are with the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) 2565mm equivalent field of view, 1/200th @ ISO 100. f6.9 effective. 2) 855mm equivalent, 1/640th @ ISO 100. f2.8 effective. 3) 1900mm equivalent, 1/500th @ ISO 160. f5 effective. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
This is actually a very good demonstration of range of a good Point and Shoot behind the eyepiece of a scope. I had to crop out the dark corners (vignetting) on the 855mm equivalent shot, but that I could get that low an equivalent from a 30x eyepiece is pretty good okay any day. And then the other two framings are from the same spot, just by twiddling the zoom on the camera. Not bad!
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped as needed for composition.
11/25/2011: Kiskadee Corner, Edinburg Wetlands WBC
Kiskadees (technically Great Kiskadees) are hard to resist. They are very present and very vocal residents of the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and I have already posted a set from Sabel Palms Sanctuary near Brownsville. This bird, who posed for a portrait through the spotting scope, was at Edinburg Scenic Wetlands World Birding Center in Edinburg Texas. This shot was taken at an equivalent focal length of almost 4000mm with a Canon SD100HS camera behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. The extreme magnification yields fine feather details, but also creates a attractive bokah behind the bird. Indirect lighting also helps maintain detail. The catch light in the eye is a bonus!
1/100th second at ISO 500. f11 effective (limited by the 65mm aperture of the scope). Program with –1/3EV exposure compensation.
And, just for interest, a little googling shows that there is indeed a Lesser Kiskadee, resident in South America and the Caribbean islands. Who knew?
And a few bonus shots.
11/6/2011: November Light on Oak Leaves, Happy Sunday!
It is November. In Southern Maine the show of fall maples is long past. People have raked their yards and bagged the leaves, and hopefully they are their way to some composting center. Now we wait for snow.
But there is still a show in town. This is the season of November light and oak leaves. The oaks are slow to turn, tenacious on the trees, and the reds are muted, but before they turn brown (often still on the tree) they go through red to bronze to copper and, when the clear low sun of November lights them, they are, in their own way, as much a wonder as any maple ever hoped to be.
Where they fall in water, the water steeps the tannin out. The leaves go yellow and the water turns tea brown…a rich brew that makes still waters in November highly reflective. Where the leaves lie on the surface they make patterns on a reflected sky.
I especially love the way the light passes through the oak leaves, revealing an inner life, an inner fire, even at the end.
And sometimes you find one almost edge on to the sun, with light on both sides, illuminating unsuspected contours.
November light on oak leaves.
Canon SX40HS. All of these are medium to long zoom shots, to frame the leaves against an out of focus background, in Program with iContrast. ISOs range is from 125 on the lighter leaves to 320 on the last dark leaf, but with the Canon I just let it do its own exposure thing. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
I don’t think there is much more to say for the Sunday thought. Except maybe: I hope when I am near my end, to be as tenacious as the oak leaves, and that a light as clear as November will be as revealing of my inner life…my inner fire…as this.