Posts in Category: light
Maine! October Woodland Path
Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve), Wells, Maine, USA, October 2023 — There is nothing quite like a mixed forest in Southern Maine in October. This is a trail at Laudholm Farms, down along the border with the on section of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Glorious light and glorious fall color. OM Systems OMD EM5Mkiii with 12-45mm zoom at 24mm equivalent. Program mode with in-camera HDR. -.3EV. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos.
You have snow in your needles :)
Pine tree, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W Kennebunk Maine
After a wet snow, ending in fairly heavy rain, I did not expect the snow to last into yesterday, but I woke to temperatures in the teens and bright sun on a snow covered landscape. Photoprowl! It was up in the mid 20s by the time I got out, but the sun was still shinning and the snow, with a hard crust from the rain, glistened everywhere. I knew the rain had washed all the snow away on the coast, so I headed inland just on the chance that someone with a heavier 4 wheel drive vehicle had been into the pull-offs on the Kennebunk Plains. And someone had indeed driven into the Day Brook Pond parking all the way, and left such a good trail that I felt safe trusting the Ford hybrid to it. It might be my last chance to walk into Day Brook this winter, if we get much more snow.
This little pine is on the edge of the pond. I looked up as I passed it, and could not resist the sun coming through on the burdened branches.
Sony RX10iii at 62mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr on my Android tablet.
Late light of April
Mouth of the Mousam River, Kennebunk ME
It is amazing how fast the length of the day is progressing now that the clocks have been set ahead. We went out last night after supper to catch the last of the sun on the beach near our home at the mouth of the Mousam River. This is a sweep panorama showing Great Head and the river mouth, but mostly it is about the spreading cloud tree above…and the light.
Sweep panorama. Sony HX90V. Processed for HDR effect in Lightroom. This is as close to the natural look of the scene as I can make it.
NM Sunflower! Happy Sunday.
Sunflower, just over the NM border from OK.
There is a substantial stone sign to mark the border crossing between Oklahoma and New Mexico on Route 56, and a more subtle shift in the landscape from high plains to volcanic plateau, but the real difference, at least this year, is sunflowers. Evidently New Mexico distributed tons of sunflower seeds this spring, and sprayed them along roadsides all over what I have seen of the state so far this trip. And it has been a wet (by NM standards) summer…with enough rain so that the sunflowers, watered by runoff from the roads, have prospered. Big, bold, beautiful sunflowers provide a foreground for the volcanic uplands and mountains of this section of New Mexico. It is great! It is wonderful. It is an act, intentional or otherwise, of worship and praise…guaranteed to lift the spirits of everyone who lives in, or visits the state.
We had to stop a few miles into New Mexico at a little roadside rest to take in the view, and I was compelled to photograph a few of sunflowers. The glancing, high altitude light of late morning, with in-camera HDR to keep the shadows and highlights in range, contribute to image that makes me smile…and I hope it does you too. It is just so cheerful. And yet it is authentic. This is not a pampered garden sunflower. You can see the wear and tear of life on the roadside all over the plant…and the great green hairy fist of the new bud adds a contrasting element and another dose of reality. This is cheerfulness in the face of adversity. This is a great big simile despite the challenges. This is praise for the good life even when that life is not easy. It says to me: God is great. God is good. And nothing life can throw at me will change my mind.
All that from a sunflower on the roadside? Certainly! Happy Sunday! And may it be a sunflower day for you!
Wild Iris
Wild Iris, Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk ME
Our late spring means that the Wild Iris, normally blooming the first of June, is, most places it grows, just stands of spear-like leaves this week. I did find this one specimen in a particularly sunny spot along the Bridle Path in Kennebunk. There is nothing quite so intense as purple, and no purple more intense than that of the Wild Iris in the sun. The contrasting white and yellow, and the pit of pattern in the white, just make the purple more purple. 🙂 It is all together a beautiful flower.
Nikon P900 at 700mm equivalent field of view. 1/1250th @ ISO 800 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Winter Tide on the Marsh. Happy Sunday!
Yesterday, for my Saturday morning photo-prowl, I went down by the river, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where I have not been all winter. It is still snow and ice covered, but between people walking dogs and sublimation of the snow, it is quite passible…you just have to walk carefully with a mind to the slippery patches. I found all kinds of interesting little bits to photograph in the worn snow and lacy ice, but the winter vistas across a particularly high tide on the marsh also caught my eye. I am still experimenting with the Sony NEX 3NL to see what I can do with basic exposures in Snapseed. This was shot in Superior Auto, and then processed as an HDR Scene in Snapseed. The image is really all about the light on the water…from its power to penetrate to the texture of the flooded marsh grass in the foreground, to the crisp reflections of the trees in the mid. And I like the level of detail in the trees and buildings and the way the clouds are brushed across the sky. It is a humble scene…nothing grand or showy…but compelling, I think, none the less.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom @ 25.5mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f16. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought: After a week in Florida, surrounded by some of the most amazing birds and palm-studded, exotic landscapes, it was just a bit of a challenge to return home to Maine, where we are in the dirty, old compressed snow phase of winter. Temperatures are still too cold to be outside for long, and certainly not at all without bundling up. And it is, on the face of it, so uninspiring. Home, and glad to be there, but it took most of a week to get me out the door to find something to photograph in this dregs of winter landscape.
Of course, once out there (and properly equipped with hat and gloves, fur-lined Crocs, long-johns and fleece vest under my coat and pants) I found my inspiration right where it always is…just behind my eyes, and waiting for the least little thing in the landscape to let it out. Yesterday it was exactly the subtle details of weathered snow and ice that I just disparaged that did the trick…along with the crisp light of a sun that has definitely turned the corner toward spring, flooding a flood-tide landscape with chunks of floating ice.
The thing about inspiration is: it is never in the landscape you find yourself in…it is not even in the self you find yourself to be…it is in the act..whatever action is your way (and it could be paint, or pencil, or poetry, or piano…or dance, or macrame as easily as photography). Inspiration is in the doing.
I sometimes (my best times) see the universe as this great flood of living creative engery, working itself out in time and space and matter…working itself out lovingly in all that is. There is personality there, intelligence, intent, a unending will for good, a love that will not be denied. There is artistry there. And I know that by grace I am, not just born, but twice born, to be a part, to play a part, to create a part of what is being so lovingly expressed. When I act, that life acts in me. It is in-sprit-ation after all. The breath of life, breathing in me, whenever I decide to do. It is easier to remember when I have a camera in my hand…not so easy when I am selling binoculars, or dealing with the corporate tangle, or blowing snow in the driveway…but it is no less true. Inspiration is in the doing.
I am thankful, then, that when I forget too long, I can take up my camera and be reminded. No matter how apparently uninspiring is the landscape of my life.
Found in the Storm. Happy Sunday!
We got several inches of clingy wet snow yesterday. It fell in such huge flakes…clumps really…that all day I thought it would amount to more than it did in the end. Still, in a few moments I will get the snow blower out and clear the drive. 🙂 It is enough snow for that.
Anyway, yesterday afternoon I suited up, took my umbrella to keep the camera dry, and took a walk around the neighborhood looking for images. This is the last picture I took on my rounds. The shapes of the curling berry-whips are elegant enough in themselves to warrant an image…but I suspect I might not have seen them at all if not for the clinging snow. I danced around a bit, under my umbrella, looking for the right angle to catch the effect, and zoomed in out for the right framing. This one does it, I think.
Sony NEX 3NL-B with 16-50mm power zoom. Superior Auto. ISO 500 @ 1/160th @ f5.6. 75mm equivalent field of view. HDR processing in Snapseed on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 brought up the detail in the background water, and highlighted the texture of the snow.
And for the Sunday Thought: as I said above, I probably would have missed this photograph if not for the clinging snow…and even if I had see the elegant curls, it would have been a very different image without the contrast of the snow.
I was watching Bones last night, and Sealy, the main male character, and the religious foil for Dr. Brennan’s hyper-rationalism (if you don’t know the show, just the contrast there is enough to carry the point…religion vs rationalism) made a comment about God in the face of a serious cancer in a young colleague. Dr. Brennan, struggling to cope with her feelings about telling the young colleague that he has cancer, asks Sealy something to the effect of…”but doesn’t your belief in God imply that there is someone good behind what happens in this world?” Sealy replies along the lines of…”yes, but God tests us to see what we are made of…and so we will appreciate what we have.” That is pretty conventional wisdom in the Religious world.
I have to say, though, that it is, in my opinion, bad theolgy. When bad, and often genuinely undeserved, things happen to good people, I can not…I will not…believe that they are tests from God…or that God is trying to teach us to appreciate good. What does that say about who God is? I can not pretend to understand this, and even when I try to explain it to myself I get into snares and balls of contradiction…but my faith tells me that God is good…all good…with no shadow or turning. And that God is there with us, working for good, no matter what bad things happen to us in this world. The goodness of God is the ground of reality, and all that happens, happens against that ground.
It is not the snow in this image, in fact, that makes it…nor the berry whips of another season growing from the mulch under the snow…it is the light…always the light. To put it another way then, God’s good is the light in which we see all that happens to us. There will be shadow and shape and texture to our lives, things we consider good, and things we consider bad, beautiful peace and outrageous, senseless storm…but overall and through all and in all is the goodness of God, the light of this world. That is not, maybe, what religion says, and it may never satisfy a rationalist, but it is word of faith. God is good. God works for good in all things. End of story.
And yes, perhaps that truth is, like the beauty of berry whips, easiest to see in a storm.
Happy Sunday!
Late Winter Light Across the Marsh
Getting a new camera, in many ways, is like having new eyes…or at least like seeing all the familiar scenes once more as though they were new. (On the other hand, maybe I just buy too many cameras 🙂 I always like to have a new camera several days around home before I take it traveling, because shooting a few of my favorite scenes gives me the measure of the machine much more quickly than shooting thousands of images in less familiar surroundings. I have a few test shots I take with every new camera, and then a set of standard scenics. This week I am getting to know a Sony NEX 3NL-B, one of the compact mirror-less cameras with interchangeable lenses. I have been looking at them for a while, mostly because of the promised improvement in image quality that is supposed to come with the larger sensors…but most of the kit zooms that come with them are just not wide enough to satisfy, and most of the entry level models do not have an articulated LCD. And even the entry level models are just a bit too expensive to justify the experiment. The Sony came with a compact 16-50mm zoom (24-75mm equivalent field of view) and a filp out LCD…and Amazon had really good, one-day-only, deal on it. Like I say, maybe I just buy too many cameras!
This is one of of my standard test scenes…the view from the deck on the back side of the Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters trail, overlooking the final loops of Branch Brook before it joins the Merriland to become the Little River…the scene is never ordinary…and here it is the light that elevates it. The final rays of the low winter sun across the marsh…the contrasting cold shadows of the season and the ice on the brook…it is an ideal HDR subject, and indeed, I used some HDR processing in Snapseed to bring out the character of the scene. Still the Sony had to deliver the raw materials for Snapseed to work on…and it did that very well! I will write more extensively elsewhere on my conclusions as to the promised improvement in image quality…but suffice it to say here that I can see the difference in comparison shots with this camera and my Samsung Smart Camera WB800F…though one thing the exercise has demonstrated is just how well today’s small sensor compacts actually do most of the time (and the Samsung in particular). That said, I will definitely be keeping the Sony NEX, and it stands a good chance of completely displacing the Samsung as my day to day landscape and creative tool 🙂
Sony NEX 3NL-B, 16-50mm zoom at 24mm equivalent field of view. Superior Auto. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f13. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Snow Light. Happy Sunday!
I took a walk around the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters Friday morning after our last 4 inches of snow. It was early. The forest was still, the snow lay undisturbed, and the shadows were long. It was altogether wonderful.
This image needs to be viewed full screen to see what I saw in it. It was the light coming through the sharp drift of snow on the branch that caught my eye, but then, as I lifted the camera, some minor movement higher in the trees…maybe just a branch flexing as the sun touched the cold center of it…shook loose a million tiny frost crystals which fell through the light. I was not at all sure that the camera would catch them…or even the primary light through the snow on the branch…but it did. A little processing in Snapseed clarified the effects.
And for the Sunday Thought: I woke this morning from one of those dreams that feels like it has larger significance, and lay there, as I sometimes do (as you probably sometimes do) in that plasma state between waking and sleep where the mind examines the dream and pushes it out along its streams of significance…making sense of it…or, as it sometimes happens…rearranging our sense of reality just enough to contain the significances of the dream. I had reached one of those points of singular illumination, where many things that I had thought and done before were connected by a web of light, and where the web stretched at least a little way past where I am…before I shook off sleep completely and turned over. I then lay there and wondered what I was supposed to do with it? How could I share it? How could I even begin to weave a conscious web of insight and words that would convince anyone else…or even connect with anyone else’s experience enough to be understood? And yet I felt, and still feel, a deep conviction that I am supposed to share…not the message of the dream, specifically…but the message of my life so far…that sharing it is what I am tasked, asked, and expected to do.
About then was when I remembered that it is Sunday. That it is is time for the Sunday Thought. That my first task of the day would be to find an image from the past few days to post that would carry the freight of a Sunday Thought.
This image. This is one of the places where the spirit shows through…where it is more than usually obvious that life is matter animated by spirit…that the world we live in is alive…and that it is all a great dance of being. Snow on a branch. Frost crystals falling. Light and shadow. Image and reality. Dreams and waking. Knowing and sharing.
It is all about the light shining through.
Joy to the World! Happy Sunday!
We waited to decorate the house for Christmas until my youngest daughter came home from college. We don’t do a lot. A tree with its collection of ornaments built up over our life together, a few creches, each with its own history, and a string of lights…but it makes the house festive and fills it with memories of Christmas past…and hope for the future 🙂
This is a hand-carved creche we found in Albuquerque’s Old Town, years ago, and it is still one of my favorites. It came from a Christmas Shop that was, litterally, filled with creches and was, at the time, one of the few we could afford. One of the wise men has gone missing over the years, but we still put it out every Christmas. It is elegant in its simplicity. And here, where the girls happened to place it this year, it forms an interesting tableau with the Christmas Cactus hanging over it. Interesting enough for a natural light photo.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Smart Auto set the exposure to its Low Light mode and captured the scene at ISO 200. Processed as an HDR in Snapseed and then fine tuned using the Tune Image and Detail tools. Cropped slightly at the sides.
And for the Sunday Thought: The image is both exotic, highly unlikely, with the ornate blossoms of a cactus native to the coast of south-eastern Brazil, grown now, for many years, here in Southern Maine, hanging over a creche bought in Albuquerque New Mexico, and carved, if I remember rightly, somewhere in Asia…and homely in its simplicity. The carving is rough…simple…suggesting the subjects more than rendering them, and the composition is casual but studied, with each figure placed to please. The whole reaches toward, and is charged with, a celebration of the birth in the stable…which was certainly both exotic in its unlikely juxtaposition of the earthly and the divine…and humble in itself. The light here, spilling in at the edges, catches every detail, and makes the colors burn with intensity. It is a fitting image, I think, to convey at least a little of the totally unlikely birth that changed the world…and goes on changing it, one person at a time, as individuals identify with the story, and are touched by the loving reality behind it…as the light breaks in at the edges, and makes the colors of love burn with a transforming intensity.
Happy Sunday! And a Joyous Christmas to you and yours!