Posts in Category: brook
Broken Ice
Astronomical high tides corresponding with unusual cold and a foot of fresh snow produced some interesting effects along our more tidal streams. This is Branch Brook about a mile in a straight line, and maybe five miles if you follow the stream course, from the sea. The broken slab ice is a foot thick.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Currier and Ives
No. This is not my house. But it such a classic view that I could not resist framing it. So Currier. So Ives. So Currier and Ives. Actually, a little wiki research this morning informs me that Currier and Ives were only the print makers. The New England winter scenes I associate with the name were actually drawn and painted by George H. Durrie, and in the mid to late 1800s, the Currier and Ives catalog of hand colored Lithographs included everything from scenic landscapes to hunting scenes, portraits of prominent Americans, renderings of important moments in American history, and even political cartoons. Anything and everything that the aspiring American housewife of the period might want to hang on the living room wall. Their speciality was sentiment.
And this is certainly a sentimental scene. It has that “over the river and through the wood” look (and quite literally at that :-). It speaks of Thanksgivings and Christmases in simpler times. It is, in fact, more like an idealized painting than a photograph…though I assure you the scene is very real.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Smart Auto. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using the HDR Scene filter, Ambiance, Shadow, Sharpen, and Structure. It was cropped from the top for composition.
Cascade Falls take 2
Last Wednesday, in honor of #waterfallwednesday, I posted an image of Cascade Falls and some info on the location…a local picnic and photo-op spot since, well, since before there were cameras. That image was all about the rush and tumble, the splash and splatter, the raw energy of the falling water.
This is the alternative view, taken on a tripod with the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F’s waterfall mode, which takes a very long exposure (30 seconds or more) to blur the water to silk. This kind of shot generally involves neutral density filters on a DSLR, but the Samsung manages it all it’s own, using some kind of digital trickery to slow the shutter without burning out the highlights. 🙂
You are either a fan of the silky water effect or you are not. Anyone who has ever stood in front of a waterfall knows that the effect is purely a photographic artifact. Falling water just does not look like that. Still, the effect is so common in waterfall shots that some people apparently think that water can actually do that. I have mixed feelings. I can appreciate the beauty and the sense of peace that the silky water images capture and project…but I am under no illusions that they are real. They use a photographic technique to produce a mood that is simply not there, as a painter might. And that’s okay, I think. And they have a certain nostalgia to them…I mean, back in the days of slow film emulsions and 8×10 view cameras, any photograph of a waterfall in anything but full sun produced silky water. It was simply all the medium was capable of. Not so today. Silky water is now an artistic choice. And I think, at least on occasioin, a valid one.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Cascade Falls
There aren’t many waterfalls in Southern Maine, so when I decided I wanted to find a waterfall to photograph I had to Google “waterfalls in York County” to see if there were any I was not aware of. I knew about Cascade Falls, just north of Saco of course, and we had made an effort to find it once soon after moving back to Maine. Without success. However, the land surrounding the falls has changed hands since, and the new owner gave the falls to the town of Saco to develop as a park. There is now a sign, parking lot, and rudimentary trails providing access to the falls. Of course people have been visiting Cascade Falls since the early 1800s, and the town has yet to improve the trails all that much. It is interesting to see the rocks where people have climbed for two centuries showing definite signs of wear.
This is a conventional 3 exposure HDR. Well, not quite conventional. I took the three exposures using Auto Bracketing on the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F, and transfered them wirelessly to the my Nexus 7. Google+ Auto Backup uploaded them to Photos, where Auto Awesome identified the sequence as a potential HDR, assembled the three into one HDR file, and tone mapped the result for display. Then it sent me a notification that it has done so. 🙂 Since the editing tools in the Android G+ app are, so far, rudimentary, I downloaded the Auto Awesome HDRs back to my Nexus, had a final pass at them in Snapseed, and uploaded them to G+ using PicasaTool. It sounds more complicated that it was.
Opening in the forest.
On my Sunday morning photoprowl, I discovered that the folks at the Kennebunkport Land Trust have installed all new signage at Emmon’s Preserve. The new trail maps alerted me to sections of the Preserve I never suspected existed, and trails I had, obviously, never walked. Well, there is a fix for that! 🙂
I picked a new trail, largely because it included what was labeled on the map as “the Batson River Bridge.” I like rivers and I like bridges. And the bridge was impressive: A long arch of shaped aluminum, very modern and very efficient, and just wide enough for two hikers to pass abreast. The trail on the other side of the Batson is called “The Learning Trail” and is a cooperative effort of the Land Trust and the Alternative Education Program at Kennebunk High School. It is a great trail, with lots of interpretative sings and its own website, which you can access via QR codes on each of the signs. How great is that!
This is the view down a little brook, complete with its own boardwalk, that makes an opening in the forest canopy about half way around the loop of trail. It is a vertical sweep panorama taken with the Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. I love the effect! Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.
Fall is coming…
The leaves that are falling now, in mid-September, are that dull brown of leaves that have died of simple old-age. The brilliance of frost killed leaves is still several weeks away. Still a little scene like this is a clear reminder that the summer is about to go out in its usual New England blaze of glory. That is a little of what I have captured here, but of course the image is really about the play of light over the various textures and the reflected patterns in the moving water. 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone mode (in-camera HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.
Water’s Way
I return frequently to the little stretch of the Batson River protected by the Kennebunkport Land Trust as Emmons Preserve. It is a peaceful spot where the sound of the water descending over rock ledges soothes the soul and let’s the spirit surface. Or so it does for me.
This is an in-camera HDR from the Samsung Smart Camera WB750F. Since the camera has no flip out LCD I had to hold the camera low and shoot blind. It required some trial and error, but the stream, though running musically, was not going anywhere, and I had time. 🙂
Processed on the 2013 Nexus 7 in PicSay Pro.
A shady spot on a hot day.
Emmon’s Preserve is one of my favorite local spots for photography. It is just a stretch of forest along a river where it tumbles down through pools over ledges, but there is always beauty there, in every season. This is one of the pools from yesterday.
The range of light and shadow at Emmon’s almost demands HDR treatment. This is a traditional 3 exposure HDR…well, maybe not totally traditional :). I shot it on my Samsung WB250 Smart Camera, then transferred the 3 images to my Galaxy S4 smartphone where Google+ uploaded them as part of an Auto-Backup. The Auto Awesome engine at Google+ recognized them as 3 sequential exposures differing only in exposure value, and made them, without my intervention, into an HDR. I then opened the image in what used to be the Picnic Photo Editor, and is now part of the Google+ Photos tools, and gave it a little extra boost. So, no, I guess not any kind of traditional HDR…but certainly what HDR is coming to in this age of instant sharing. 🙂
Branch Brook Sweep Panorama
I have done several panoramas in different seasons here at the “S” curves in Branch Brook at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It is a tempting scene in any season. This is spring coming on…and it is my first “sweep” panorama at the spot. I generally build panoramas one shot at time, and stitch the shots later in PhotoShop Elements. For this shot I used my Samsung Galaxy S4’s Sweep Panorama mode. You just open the camera app, set it for Panorama, point at one edge of the scene, touch the shutter button, and slowly sweep the phone around however many degrees you want in a continuous motion. The screen displays a little track and gives you pointer arrows to correct when you drift too far off a horizontal line (or a vertical line if you are shooting a vertirama). It is easy, fast, and it works. And with the Galaxy, unlike some smartphone sweep panorama apps which automatically downsize the sweep, you capture the full resolution of the sensor times however long your sweep is. Holding the phone in portrait mode gives you relatively tall and and as wide as you want panorama. Once you touch the shutter button a second time, the processor in the phone “stitches” the panorama. If you look closely here you will see that it could not quite handle the rail that is parallel to the motion of the sweep. There are some jaggies there where the image was stitched. But in general, and with less challenging lines, the app does amazingly well!
With a little tweaking, either right on the phone in Snapseed, or in Lightroom on my laptop, the results can be pretty amazing. (Though Snapseed is an amazingly capable editing app it does downsize the results…this is a Lightroom version. You can see it as wide as your screen will allow by clicking the image to open it in the lightbox on my WideEyedInWonder galleries.) This is about 200 degrees of sweep.
And from a phone camera!
Old Mission Dam, San Diego CA. Happy Sunday!
A week ago today I was still in San Diego. It was the last day of the San Diego Birding Festival and my 6th way from home. Every day in San Diego had been strenuous. Birding, photography, and hiking in the morning (or work on the company website and then out), then the afternoon and early evening being social and showing ZEISS optics to birders at the Marina Village Conference Center, then a late supper and some image processing before bed. By Sunday, I was tired. So tired I was tempted to sleep in and take an easy morning before the last day of the Festival.
But then I made the mistake of asking where to find dragonflies, and was told about Mission Trails Park and Old Mission Dam. A look at Google Maps and the park website showed that Mission Trails was only 15 minutes inland from my hotel, and very likely worth the visit. So I was up again on Sunday morning and out to be at the park when it opened at 8 AM.
In Mission Trails Park the San Diego River (there barely more than a good sized creek) has carved its way through some rugged little hills…just short of mountains…to form what is known as the Mission Gorge. It is not a gorge by real gorge standards, but it is a narrow, twisty little valley with rocky heights above and a good band of riparian habitat along the river at the base. In the early 1800s missionaries built a dam and a flume in Mission Gorge to supply water to the main mission, 3 miles down stream. The flume is long gone, but the dam still stands. (For an excellent history of the region and the park, visit the park website.)
This is an In-camera HDR Mode shot…3 exposures stacked and merged in camera to create a single extended range jpg file. I find that the HDR mode on The Canon SX50HS produces files that can be processed in Lightroom to excellent natural looking images with more shadow and highlight detail than would otherwise be possible. It is a subtitle effect compared to some of the In-camera and post-proeceesed HDR you see around the internet…but I like it!
24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought: You know, I might just as easily have slept in last Sunday, tired as I was, and missed Mission Trails Park and Old Mission Dam. And that would have been a shame. And of course, I have every reason, based on many such mornings, and many such decisions…on a lifetime of such mornings and such decisions…to be confident that if I make the effort to get out, then God will meet me there with blessing! It happened day after day in San Diego, and it happens day after day where ever I am. Green pastures and still waters, or something equally as refreshing to my soul. All I have to do is get myself moving in the morning!