Posts in Category: abstract
Milkweed. Happy Sunday!Â
“If your eye is generous, then your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Hope is a puff of Milkweed silk, blowing in the wind, carrying the future. And not the future only of the plant, but the future of the Monarch Butterfly, and in a very real sense, our own as well. It might all rest on where some single Milkweed seed falls to earth.
Hope is a dangerous thing to base a life on, unless, of course, you know where your hope resides…unless there is a huge power of good backing your hope. The generous eye lives in hope. The generous eye sees in the frail beauty of Milkweed silk, all the strength and beauty of the universe…all the loving care of a creator who works through love.
If you can see the beauty in this image, then carry it inside…into your heart and let it grow. Sometimes it really does all hinge on where the Milkweed seed lands. Happy Sunday!
Male and Female Giraffe
Female (front) and Male Giraffe, Kruger National Park, South Africa
This shot shows off one of the “tells” that helps us humans to separate male and female Giraffes in the field. The female in the foreground has tufts of hair on the tops of the bony protrusions on her head. They are not “horns” as such, since they are still completely covered by skin. The male, in contrast, has no tufts. His protrusions end in a smooth point…sometimes spreading to form a bit of a ball. Aside from the id aspect, I just like the graphic impact of this image…which is all, actually, I was looking at at the moment I took it. 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Tandem Zebras
Zebras, Kruger National Park, South Africa
I had a lot of fun photographing the Zebras in Kruger National Park and the surrounding Game Reserves. They are easy. They just stand most of the time, most of the time in pairs, and the patterns their patterns make when they collide are always interesting…from a purely graphic point of view. This pair (and I use the term not in its familial sense but just as a numerical designation) show the erect manes of healthy Zebras, despite the drought in Kruger. According to our guides, the patterns on Zebras are as unique as fingerprints…and you can see the subtle variations in this image.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Harvest Moon -1
Harvest Moon -1, Columbus Ohio.
My Facebook feed is full of moons this morning…Harvest Moons. I took this shot 2 nights ago, before I had been reminded of the significance of this particular full moon, so one day shy of full…just because it was so beautiful emerging from a layer of clouds over Columbus. Grange Insurance Audubon Center, Columbus Ohio.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Hand-held Twilight Mode (multiple exposures processed down to one in-camera). Post-processed in Lightroom.
Abstract of sun, shadow, tree bark…
Shadows on a tree trunk. Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells Maine
The green filtered light of shadows on a tree trunk at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters paints an abstract design. It is all about texture and light. Sometimes it is enough to just put a frame around it. 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 192mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure: ISO 1000 @ 1/200th @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Morning shells
Shells, Velano Beach, St. Augustine FL
We are in St. Augustine Florida for the Florida Birding and Photo Fest where I will lead a series of Point and Shoot Nature Photography workshops. This is shells in the dawn light on the beach across from our Airbnb…a lovely house which we share with a few other guests.
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom.
The wacky world of wood…
Weathered roots on driftwood. Timber Point, Rachel Carson NWR.
Every once in a while I see something in the field and realize that it has more interest as a graphic design than as an actual photograph. The Sony HX90V which I carry for HDR landscapes has a Picture Effect called “Illustration” which reduces an image to its graphical elements and attempts to render it as a color drawing, pen and ink style with airbrush style. Often it produces surprisingly attractive results, so much so that I have it set to one of the three memory slots on my camera. I just have to remember to use it. Generally, once I have used it on a photoprowl, I will try several shots during that adventure…only to forget it until the next time some really apt object or subject catches my eye to remind me it is there.
This is the root end of a huge driftwood log on the beach at Timber Point (Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge) across from Goose Rocks Beach in southern Maine. It has been exposed for many years, and the wood, especially around the roots, has weathered into something very like a modern abstract sculpture. Just the thing for the Illustration Picture Effect. Once in Lightroom, I applied some HDR-like adjustments to bring up the shadowed areas deeper into the log. What do you think?
He is risen! Happy Easter Sunday.
floating ice skim on one of the ponds along Rt. 9 in Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Happy Easter! I am not sure why this is my Easter image this year. I admit it is abstract, and visually challenging (what is it?). But it is also full of life…full of mystery…full of grace and wonder. It is also highly unlikely. It is a super thin patch of floating ice on a pond along Route 9 in Kennebunk Maine. It was above 40 and had been for several hours when I found it, and this pond has been open for weeks, so I was not expecting ice at all. And the sweeping feather like patterns are more like rime ice on a car window than anything I have seen on the surface of water. And then there are the straight lines, the pattern of triangles among the feathers, like the leading in a stained glass window. And it is so thin, so fragile, so unlikely. Altogether strange and wonderful. It challenges my understanding of what is physically possible.
Then you add the colors of the reflected sky and clouds and trees and it really comes alive. It becomes not just an image of floating ice, but a image in its own right, containing a beauty of its own. Looking at it is almost meditative…it puts my mind into a state of open wonder and receptivity…and something very like peace. Something very like hope. Something very like joy. And so, after all, it is not so strange a choice for Easter Sunday!
What is more unlikely than the resurrection? More challenging to our sense of what is possible? More full of grace and wonder? What greater source of hope and joy?
He is risen. Against all odds. Against every expectation. He is risen and with him hope and joy. And though 2000 years of Christian history have not always given testimony to his truth, yet his truth lives on, and is there to be received by every generous eye. Unlikely as rime ice on open water. Unlikely as perfect triangles in floating ice. And more beautiful than the reflected colors of sky and cloud and trees. Jesus is risen! He lives. He lives in me.
Happy Easter!
Avant Guard
Ice along the Mousam River at Roger’s Pond.
So, due to the press of time (I am posting during a layover in DC) this is going to be both the Pic for Today and my Day 6 Nature Photography Challenge on Facebook. 🙂 And keeping to my theme, it is a challenging image. Ice gets into all kinds of strange shapes, given the right weather! This is along the Mousam River at Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk Maine. It is a ground level macro shot, taken with the LCD flipped out.
Sony HX90V. In-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom.
Drawn in ice…
Mousam River at Roger’s Pond, Kennebunk Maine
While looking for ice bells along the Mousam, I could not ignore the sheet ice at the edge of the river. I should say that the Mousam at Roger’s Pond is a long stretch of rapids…the last long stretch before the long slow slide to the sea. The river freezes right up to Roger’s Pond, and above the rapids and the dam in Kennebunk for miles. It is a popular spot for fly-fishermen year round. So the ice at the edge of the river is sculpted…or drawn in this case…by the rapidly moving water. I always find the forms that frozen water can take fascinating. The regularity, and the symmetry of the patterns speaks of an inherent order in the water that is certainly not evident when it is tumbling down the rapids of the river. (There is a poem in that sentence if I can let it out!).
Sony HX90V at 200mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.