Posts in Category: afternoon light
The Physics of Ice?
Ice covered cobble at the beach.
I have been trying to get my head around the physics of this ice covered cobble, found on our local beach, yesterday. If you look closely you will see that the whole cobble, which was about the size of a grapefruit, is coated in a smooth shell of ice about 3/8 of an inch thick…very uniform…very tight. Though it appears clear at first glance, as though the stone had been dipped in poly-carbonate or liquid glass, looking even closer shows that the shell is made up of a lacework of tiny ice bubbles fused into the tight shell. This was not the only one. The stone had to be within a certain size range…not much bigger or smaller than this…and it had to be pretty much perfectly round and relatively smooth itself. As you see from the photo, other stones near this one were not effected the same way. I still can not imagine the mechanics of the process. It was very cold the night before…but, still, how did the receding tide produce this effect? (If you know the answer, feel free to post it in the comments.)
Sony HX400V at 45mm equivalent field of view and macro. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure (Program shifted for greater depth of field) ISO 80 @ 1/1000th @ f6.3. For scale, the snow drift at the edge of the sand is at least 5.5 feet tall. 🙂
Icy Panorama
Back Creek as it enters the Mousam River a few hundred years from the ocean.
We will take a break from hot Honduran hummingbirds today. This is an unintentional panorama, stitched in Photoshop Elements from two images. I was going to post only one or the other, but in looking at them I wondered if Photoshop could make a seamless pano from them. No sooner thought than tried. It took two tries but PE, using the Auto setting on Photomerge Panorama, did the trick wonderfully well, and even automatically filled out to the edges of the rectangle. Impressive software…and, switching gears, an impressive winter we are having. We had maybe 4 inches of fresh snow by morning yesterday, but it got to the low 30s. We are back in the teens today, with below zero temps for tonight. People are hiring bucket-loaders to pile the snow next to their drives, as conventional pick-up plows can no longer push the snow high enough. Two story houses have two story driveway piles. After the first storm, we have been blowing ours so we have a whole yard to fill…but it is indeed filling up. This shot, with the broken ice (broken by the tide), gives you a good feel for our Maine winter this year. 🙂
Two 24mm equivalent field of view, in-camera HDRs, from the Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom and stitched into a pano in Photoshop Elements Photomerge tool.
Snowshoe Vistas
Snowshoeing at Rachel Carson NWR
Yesterday the temperature crept up into the 20s and the sun peaked out, so after a good long rest when I finished blowing the 4 inches of fresh snow out of the drive, after lunch, Carol and I decided to go snowshoeing at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. The loop trail there is just about the right length for snowshoeing novices…and popular enough with snowshoers that you practically never have to break trail. We have something in neighborhood of 4-5 feet of snow on the ground, where it has not drifted, so the woods and marsh have a totally unique aspect. The Merriland River, which runs along one side of the trail, and Branch Brook, which bounds another side and meets the Merriland, are both tidal rivers this close to the sea, so the river ice, which is at least 3 feet thick at points, is fractured by rise and fall and stained by the mixture of fresh peaty waters and salty sea waters.
These are 4 in-camera HDRs. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet, and assembled in Phototastic.
I love Reddish Egrets!
Reddish Egret. Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island NWR, FL
Yes I do love Reddish Egrets. The way the dance about while hunting. The improbable aspects their bodies assume. The thing they do with their wings just before striking a fish (not always…but often…called “canopy feeding” as they make a shadow in the water so they can see through the surface). Their speed and awkward agility. They are fun to watch. Late yesterday, out on Blackpoint Drive, a group of birders and photographers were treated to a classing Reddish show as two Egrets hunted across a pool the size of a basketball court. The late afternoon light was spectacular. I tried Sports Mode on the Egrets…and it made catching the wing thing and fish strikes almost easy. The camera locked focus on the Egret and all I had to do is keep the bird near the center of the field as it pranced and posed and wait for the action I wanted. The camera kept the bird in focus. Totally amazing! And it yielded my best shots of Reddish action yet…and not just one shot…but a dozen or more definite keepers! You have to know how fleeting these poses are to appreciate how well the camera did…at least in my hands 🙂
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. 991mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. I plan a post on Point and Shoot Nature Photographer on shooting active birds in Sports Mode that will undoubtedly feature more of the Reddish Egret shots. Keep your eye open.
Snowstract
Snow detail. Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk ME
This is another deep HDR experiment from my trip out to look for owls the other day. I love the texture of the snow, the way the shadows play across the frame, and the contrasting hard shapes of the cluster of leaves and brush stubble. It is a snowstract…an almost abstract made of snow. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 56mm equivalent field of view. In camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/600th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Shadows in the snow…
Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk ME
Even though it was still only 12 degrees at 2 in the afternoon, I had to get out yesterday. After looking, unsuccessfully, for the Snowy Owl at the beach again, I decided to experiment with some snowscape HDR, using more aggressive settings on the Sony HX400V than my normal HDR settings. I like to capture the texture of the snow, while keeping both shadows and highlights looking natural. Not an easy task for a digital sensor, especially one as small as the sensor in the HX400V. I set the Exposure Compensation to -1 to keep the sun on the snow from burning out, and then set the in camera HDR to level 6 to bring the shadows back into range. It worked fairly well. I had to lighten the overall image in Lightroom, but I am happy with the results. On the other hand, Auto HDR and -1/3 EV did almost as well. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 52mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/800th @ f6.3 @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. (I used TouchRetouch to remove a small branch that intruded into the lower left part of the frame.)
Snow Storm!!!
Snow Geese (and Ross’ Geese). Bosque del Apache NWR
This is this year’s mandatory Snow Geese panic shot from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes. Appropriately it was our last afternoon tour of the loop around the refuge. In the morning I had filmed the best panic I have seen at Bosque ever…but I did not get any stills, so I was really hoping for this shot in the afternoon. (video at Snow Storm.)
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. 1/250th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
November Light. Happy Sunday!
November Light
The season between leaf fall and snow fall in southern Maine is not the most attractive of seasons. The weather is often raw, even on sunny days, the birds are silent or already absent, and there is little to attract the eye…little, at least in the landscape, it sometimes seems, to keep the spirits up. And it is hunting season, so the woods are not safe. As it happens I miss most of it. I have a festival in New Jersey in late October, and two in November…in Texas and New Mexico. I am only home like 9 days between mid-October and Thanksgiving. The one redeeming feature of the season is the light. It is not the warmth, though we are thankful for the sun these days, but the angle as the sun drops lower in our Maine sky. Mid-day light in November is the equivalent of early evening light in July. The shadows never do get short. They remain long, molding all they touch. Though the landscape attempts to deny it, the light is even just about the same color as a mid-summer evening.
And yet it is unique. There is no mistaking November light across the landscape for the light of any other season.
I suppose, in a way, my whole life is in just such a season. I had a heart attack in April and I retired in July, but I am still active with ZEISS on the festival circuit. I have made some moves toward the next phase of my life, putting out feelers, making tentative plans, but I am mostly coasting, enjoying this interval when there is nothing much happening, this time between. Trying to find enough in the slant of the light across the landscape to keep my spirits up while I settle into my winter…trying to imagine a winter that I might enjoy. No worries really. As long as I can appreciate the light of November, I think December and January will pretty much, spiritually, take care of themselves.
Sony HX400V in camera HDRs. Processed in Lightroom. Assembled in Phototastic. On my Lenovo Miix 2 tablet.
Hard Working Tricolored Heron
Tricolored Heron and Black-necked Stilt
The light (for photography) was miserable all day yesterday. It rained off and on…only twice hard enough so we had to seek cover…but hard enough so we were continuously damp. Still it was my friend Paul’s first day in the Rio Grande Valley, and I had promised to find him Egrets and Herons to fill his “big bird” desires (there is clearly a story there, but that is for another time). It took all day to find big birds within reach of Paul’s measly little 400mm f2.8, but we did finally find a group of Great and Snow Egrets, Tricolored Herons, Black-necked Stilts, and a single of both Little Blue and Great Blue Herons, feeding at a sharp bend in the canal at the Civic Park next to the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands World Birding Center. Eventually the Little Blue found a shoal of small fish right up against the shore, and his avid feeding attracted a Tricolored, a Snowy, and a group of Stilts. The Tricolored was a particularly effective fisher. While we watched, the bird caught and ate between 20 and 30 fair sized fish. The Snowy had a few, and the Little Blue a few more, and even one of the Stilts successfully caught and ate one…though it looked very large in that thin bill…but the Tricolored was easily the champ.
Like I say, very poor light. Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/400th @ ISO 2000 @ f6.3. Paul probably did better with his 400mm f2.8. He certainly was working with lower ISOs, but this is not bad considering the conditions, and the reach of the Sony. Processed in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
American Goldfinch Feeding
American Goldfinch. Higbee Beach, Cape May NJ
It was a great few days for bird photography in Cape May last weekend. I did not get out to Higbee Beach until Sunday evening after we had closed the show and packed up the booth. (I was working the Cape May Autumn Bird Festival for ZEISS.) The late day light warmed everything, including this American Goldfinch busy feeding in the overgrown meadows at Higbee.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 640 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Lenovo MIIX tablet. (The Surface Pro fell off the podium while I was doing a program in Cape May and smashed the screen 🙁 The Lenovo is an emergency substitute.)