Posts in Category: brook
Rainforest Waterfall
Above Rio Santiago, Honduras
There is more to Honduras than birds and bugs, of course. While hard to capture, the rainforest is full of lush growth, rushing water, and occasional vistas from a ridge where the trees thin. This is a waterfall on a feeder stream to the Rio Santiago, 6 km up the side of the mountains from the main route, which is already up on the shoulders of the mountains surrounding Pico Bonito. Our birding group paused here for photos and to enjoy the scene.
Sony HX400V. About 50mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure: ISO 200 @ 1/50th @ f3.5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Winter Brook. Happy Sunday!
Batson River at Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunkport, ME
Yesterday, it was in the single digits at dawn, and only 9 degrees by 8 AM, but I decided to suite up and go looking for Snowy Owls and Eagles anyway. No Eagles at Roger’s Park. And no Snowy Owls in Biddeford Pool…though I put my hood up and walked all the way out to East Point. I thought I might find some interesting ice bells on the Batson River on the way back, so I drove into Emmon’s Preserve and hiked down to the stream. Evidently conditions have not been right for ice bells this winter. The river (brook really) was almost completely ice bound, with just the most vigorous water at the small falls still flowing free. There was only one set of tracks into the river since light snow on Thursday, and I found that someone had ridden up the river on the ice with a mountain bike, once I got to the water…other than that it was pretty quiet in the woods at Emmon’s. Even the sound of the water was muted by the ice and snow.
There is, of course, a beauty to such stillness…winter has its charms. I maneuvered out to the edge of the stream and the snow and ice covered rocks…being very careful were I placed my fur-lined Crocs. For this shot I got as far out on the rocks as I dared, and then held the camera out at arms length over the water to get the angle on the falling stream. Then I retreated just as carefully. If anyone came into Emmon’s after me yesterday and studied my tracks as I studied the tracks of the day before, I am sure they wondered what in the world I had been doing. 🙂
Being retired, I have more time to enjoy the Maine winter this year. I got myself a set of snowshoes and poles with Christmas money and gift cards, and had already bought a set of Under-Armor like foundation thermal under-garments for my time in Bosque del Apache. I call it my winter ninja suit, since it is close fitting and solid black from the toes of the sock-liners all the way to my neck. Of course, when I put the rest of my clothes no one knows I am a winter ninja underneath. I have an LLBean dual season parka with a removable fleece lining and a wind and waterproof shell, hooded, that is simply the warmest coat I have ever owned, and I have my trusty Tilly wool winter hat, and couple of different weight pairs of gloves. If it were not for having to keep the driveway clear, I might even enjoy the Maine winter this year…and actually, I am making a commitment to enjoy it despite having to keep the driveway clear. If we get too much snow I can always hire a plow and do my part for the local winter economy. Though we don’t have enough snow yet to make them necessary, I can see how the snowshoes will make the winter much more accessible. I had them in the back seat of the car at East Point and Emmon’s just in case, and no amount of snow will keep me from visiting. I plan to visit many of my summer haunts right through winter this year. It should be good.
It will be good. Having the right gear has already changed my attitude toward the Maine winter…which I will admit, I was not looking forward to. You could say I am settling into the mind of winter, coming to terms, and beginning to look forward to its unique opportunities. Even if we don’t get Snowy Owls and Eagles this winter, I will find something to celebrate in the season.
This seems like a purely physical accomplishment…dependent on having, finally, the right gear for winter…but it feels like a spiritual achievement. Getting my body and my stuff prepared has allowed my spirits to rise…and it is the rise in spirit that is the important, that is the significant part. This whole winter attitude thing is another example of why I believe that it is impossible to separate the spiritual and the physical. We make an error when think that the divine and the eternal happen somewhere different, on a different plane, than the space and time where we spend our fleshly lives. More and more I think it is all one…that the spiritual and the physical are not two realities but two ways of looking at one reality…and that the closer we get to living a life of the spirit in the flesh, the less meaning that distinction will have.
Or to put it another way…my spirit has always been ready for the beauty of winter…it just took some doing to get my flesh to the same point. And now that we are all in sync, things are going to be good. It is going to be a beautiful winter. Happy Sunday!
Color Pocket
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Continuing the theme of autumn color…which will very likely continue well into October :)…here is a little pocket of color along the edge of a pool were a small brook enters Old Falls Pond on the Mousam River. One of my readers informed me yesterday that the trees along the water’s edge are more susceptible to an early turn because the wood is saturated with water. Certainly that and the fact that cold air pools along edges and in little coves like this, accounts for much of the early color we are seeing in Southern Maine. I like the contrast here between the layers. Peat-brown water, green vegetation, golden cattails, and the greens, reds, and oranges of the small saplings.
Sony HX400V at 24mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
At the Mouth of the Little River
This is another shot from my photoprowl the length of Laudholm Beach at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. The Little River is formed when the Merriland River meets Branch Brook about a three quarters of a mile inland, already well out into the tidal marsh. It has to flow at least twice that far, in a huge S curve, to actually reach the ocean. A recent study of the watersheds of the Merriland and Branch Brook shows that both are actually surprisingly healthy and productive streams. You can see here the clarity of the water as it flows the last few yards across the sand to the sea. It is a somewhat static composition, with the horizon splitting the frame, but I tried crops both top and bottom and this actually works best to my eye. I think the rushing water and the dramatic sky, with its own strong focused pattern give it enough tension to save it. 🙂
This is a low angle shot with the Sony Alpha NEX 5T and the ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8. In-camera HDR. Processed for further HDR effect in Snapseed on my tablet.
Falls on the Batson. Happy Sunday!
I went to Emmons Preserve, and down the trail to the falls on the Batson River in particular, to look for Ebony Jewelwings…the darting, dancing, electric sometimes blue, sometimes metalic green, set-winged Damselflies that prefer rapid water…but of course the rapid waters have their own attraction. The place is beautiful…almost other-worldly…elven…with the still shadowed pools connected by falling runs of peat-brown water, the moss and rocks, the dappled light through the covering trees…a feast for the senses. I try, again and again, to capture it…but the true essence of the place is very difficult to catch.
This is a three exposure in-camera HDR with the exposures separated by 6 EV, with the Sony NEX 5T and the ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8. I put the camera right down at water level and only inches from the falling water. Nominal exposure, as determined by the Program, was ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/60th. The file was further processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on my tablet. And it is getting there. It is satisfyingly close to the visual impression…or at least to the emotional impression…of the place.
And for the Sunday Thought: there are lots of places, like the falls on the Batson River, that have such a rich emotional impact…such a rich spiritual impact…that any attempt at photography is bound to fall short. That does not, and should not, keep us from trying. We reach, and in reaching, pay homage to the creative spirit of love that shapes both the beauty of the world, and our sense of beauty. Like the Ebony Jewelwings, we dance…our intention dances above the falling water of creation…and we take pleasure in the dance…as we were made to do. Such beauty can not be caught and held…but it can be pointed to…celebrated in the beautiful gesture of the attempt.
Feeding Time for the Fledgling
Fledgling Barn Swallow being fed.
Yesterday I walked the section of the Kennebunk Bridle Trail on either side of Rout 9 looking for Dragonflies. The bugs were few and far between. However it is fledgling time at the bridge over the unnamed creek that flows into the Mousam through the marsh on the ocean side of the the road. Barn Swallow fledglings rest on the warm stores of the bridge each year, and the adults hunt over the creek and Marsh and come back, not often enough for the fledglings, but often.
I managed to catch this sequence at 1200mm equivalent (full 600mm optical plus 2x digital extender) on the Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. In this case the adult landed for a split second next to the fledgling, but often it seems the parent makes the pass while still in flight. The touch on the stone was so brief, that without photographic evidence, I might have taken this for hovering feed as well.
Processed in Snapseed on my tablet and assembled into the panel in Pixlr Express.
Rainy Day at Winter’s End
On Sunday, it rained all day, sometimes hard, sometimes just a spattering, but always wet. There were aerial and coastal flood warnings from the National Weather Service office in Grey. But, at least in part, because I had only that morning written about finding the wonder in every season and every day, I forced myself to pick up my cameras and head out to see what I could see. If I can’t take my own good advice, well then it is not that good, is it? I took an umbrella, but the wind was blowing hard enough so that I knew I would mostly photograph what I could see from the car. I drove down to our local tidal marsh behind the dunes at the beach, and then down past the Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters to Laudholm Farm and the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, then back up the coast to sit at Mother’s Beach in Kennebunk and shoot gulls out the window of the car. I took a few scenics along the way, trying to capture the wet day/late winter/early spring atmosphere, and hoping for some interesting HDR effects.
This is along the road into Laudholm Farm, where it passes through a thick stand of second growth firs and pines. With the rain, the little brook that passes under the road in a culvert, was brim full. The wet leaves, blown in there from last year, the reflective water, the evergreens and patches of old snow, all framed against a background made soft by the water in the air…well, I liked it enough on the way in to pull over and get out of the car on the way back out, sheltering the camera for a couple of shots. HDR processing and some image tuning in Snapseed brings up the effect very nicely. Or that is what I think.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 24mm equivalent. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f4.5. Processing as above.
Spring Flood: Happy Sunday!
Yesterday was the first day you could really feel spring in the air here in Southern Maine. It got, eventually, up to 50 degrees, but it was not so much that, as the lack of wind and the power of the sun that made the day feel springy. We have two days of constant rain (beginning at mid-night last night) promised now, which should put finished to the considerable amounts of snow and ice still on the ground, and then, hopefully, the winter dam will break and spring will come rushing in. Impatient birds are already moving in and through. I saw a pair of Song Sparrows along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, one lone Great Egret, and an Eastern Phoebe…as well as a Bluebird in the fields leading in to the beach. The buds are just beginning to show red on the maples. Maybe spring will come afterall.
This is a flood tide on Mousam River. All but a tiny bit of what you see here is normally marsh and well above water. I liked the green of the deepest water (backed up against the old dyke and path where an unnamed tidal creek passes through toward the Mousam) in the foreground, the variations of blues beyond, and the wispy clouds over the sea. The Sony NEX 3NL caught it all in this 24mm equivalent view, and HDR processing and image tuning in Snapseed brought it out, so the image is pretty much what I saw with my naked eye at the time.
And for the Sunday Thought: I have had to learn to appreciate the last-dregs-of-winter / before-spring-really-comes time in Southern Maine. It sometimes seems to stretch on for months. Mud season. Each year for several years now though I have found more of interest in that interval. I watch the birds come back. I watch the last drying of the grasses and reeds of last summer, their final turn toward gold, before the new green shoots come out. I watch for the first dragonflies in the pools where the sun warms them in the marsh along the river. And the changing skies of the season have their own attraction. This year we may actually miss much of that, since we stand to pass directly from winter into spring without that long pause. I might even actually miss it.
I have found that the more closely you look at any season, the more intimately involved you are in its development and passing, the more interesting it is…so that there is interest in any season and in all seasons, if you will only look. It requires a bit of discipline actually. You have to make your self look beyond, deeper than, the apparent dullness of the days. And that is, of course, a spiritual discipline that will repay itself where ever you apply it. Dull is what I am when I don’t look. It has nothing to do with the world around me. Certainly the Creator lavishes the same amount of attention and love on each day. There is always wonder to be found. Even in mud season in Southern Maine.
Back Creek with Fresh Snow
Fresh snow is something we have had a lot of this winter. I think dirty, worn snow is one of the least attractive sights (all things being relative of course) that you can see. So far this winter, we have not had to put up with it long. Just about when things are getting ugly, we get 4-14 inches of new snow to make the landscape winter-beautiful again. And several of those snowfalls have been clingy enough to frost the pines, in classic northern winter fashion.
The only trouble, photographically speaking, is that the piles of snow make accessing the likely places for photography more and more difficult. Trails are hazardous, with layers of compacted snow and ice under the new cover. Parking at the places I like to go in the summer is not plowed out. Etc. So I find myself returning to the same winter scenes over and over again…simply because I can get there. 🙂
Back Creek, where it meets the Mousam River, just a few hundred yards from the ocean is one of them. It has open marsh for snow fields, great pines to be frosted, blue reflective water, and an expanse of open sky. These elements can almost always be arranged into a pleasing composition…in almost any weather, including, of course, fresh snow.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 52mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f16. Processed for mild HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
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.