Posts in Category: abstract
The Wide View. Happy Sunday!
Parker River NWR, south end looking north north-west.
This is a portrait orientation Sweep Panorama from the Sony HX400V. Is is about 120 degrees of sweep, from just south of west to just east of north. Winter light on the marsh and snow squalls under those clouds as they come in. Patchy sun highlights the foreground while the tree line is still in shadow. And the massive clouds over all. Not a compelling image…but pleasant, and rewarding.
Sweep Panoramas, especially the more natural looking panoramas taken with the camera held vertically during the sweep, provide, still within the frame, something very close to the naked eye view of the world. We are used to looking at photos that range from normal wide angle to tight telephotos…photos that approximate our “focused area of attention”…photos that frame just as much of the world as we generally pay attention to. In a sense, every photographer offers a digest of the world…with the focus…the area of interest…preselected for us as something worth looking at. A portrait Sweep Panorama like this one challenges our photographic senses. We don’t know quite what to make of it. Where are we supposed to look? And that is the whole point. Sometimes there is interest in looking at the whole thing…the sweep of the landscape…the play of light across the land under, as in this case, a dramatic sky. Sometimes the attention needs a wider focus…sometimes there is reward in a wider view.
We tend to go through our spiritual lives in the same way…recording a digest of the high points…paying attention to what has obvious interest and meaning…when all the time the sweep of the spirit through our lives is like the sun playing across the landscape under a dramatic sky. There is reward in pulling back to enjoy the wider view. And challenge. We are such focused creatures. When the view becomes too wide we struggle to make sense of it…but it is, I think, worth the extra effort. It returns us to our point of true perspective, where we are, relatively speaking, pretty small in the grand landscape. This is good. Humbling, but good. God would not have given us eyes to see the wider view if God did not intend us to use them. Yes, we are in our focused attention…but yes we are also in the sweep of life around us. It is good to be reminded. I think. Happy Sunday!
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.
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!
Apple Ice
Ice on one of our small Apple trees in the yard.
We had a few inches of wet snow overnight on Saturday into Sunday. After dawn it warmed just enough so the last of it fell as rain, but not warm enough to melt the existing snow…and it stayed just above freezing all day. By Monday morning, the snow was still there, and had a solid coating of ice. There was just enough snow to try my new snowshoes in the yard, and as I did I was captured by the ice on the Apple tree: strange, delicate sculptings, standing almost free of the branches. I had to go back in for my camera (shedding snowshoes and reattaching them on the way back to the tree.)
As I post this morning, I realize that what I am seeing here is the shell of ice that was on top of the snow that built up on the branches. Wind and sun have removed the snow layer, but the ice was too hard and now it floats apparently free in space. It looks, to me, like something from a gallery of modern sculpture…something both intentional and free…something crafted to capture and express the flow of the universe. And I have no trouble believing that it is. 🙂
And of course I offer it here, nicely framed, as just such an expression. With all credit to the original artist.
Sony HX400V in camera HDR/macro. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Graveyard of the Lobster Traps
Lobster Traps on Timber Island, ME
Saturday mornings growing up we watched those old black and white African adventure films on TV, the ones where they were always looking for the Elephant Graveyard and imagined Ivory wealth. Our walk on Timber Island this week made me think of them…not the black and white part…though the winter palette of grays and blues was pretty basic…but the graveyard part. Timber Island is evidently the place old lobster traps come to die. There are piles of them on the shore. Might be intentional piles…as in someone piled them up to get them out from underfoot…and might be current piles, just as they were deposited by the sea as it churns around the island at high tide. Hard to tell. For sure, there are, as yet, nothing equivalent to Ivory hunters looking to claim the wealth of twisted metal and bright plastic. More’s the pity. I’d be happy to play the part of the native boy and lead them too it…if for nothing else that to get them out from underfoot. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 24mm equivalent. In camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Christmas Day Secrets
Lobster Trap on the Beach: Kennebunk ME
We went out, after Pumpkin Roll and presents, for a short Christmas Day walk on the beach. The sun had come out for the first time in the better part of a week, and it was a very unseasonable 50 degrees. Who could resist? Despite the warm temperatures we still had the December sun in Maine…low in sky…slanting, glancing light with little warmth, and long, long shadows. This lobster trap had washed up in the high tides and heavy seas of the past few days, and provided a spot of brilliance on the sands. Tight framing turns it into a found abstract…all color and line. An unexpected present for Christmas Day.
Sony HX400V in camera HDR. 560mm equivalent field of view. ISO 80 @ 1/500th @ f5.6 (program shifted for greater depth of field). Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Snowy with great bokeh
Snowy Egret. Shark Valley. Everglades National Park
I used this image in a post on Point and Shoot Nature Photographer yesterday as an example of the background making the shot…but it deserves the full Pic 4 Today treatment. And, yes, to my eye, the background does make the shot. The swirling highlights in the dark water elevate an ordinary portrait of a Snow Egret to something really special. And the thing is, this is one of those images that I did not see, could not see, coming. Through the viewfinder or on the LCD the water in the background was in sharp focus and the highlights were still in motion. It was only in Lightroom, when I punched up the image with my standard Sony preset, that the background jumped out! Of course, I love the feather detail in the white bird as well, and the bright yellow of the eye and ceres (skin between the eye and beak). But it is the background that makes the image.
I found the Egret, and a lot of other great birds, in the first mile and a half of the West Road at Shark Valley, in Everglades National Park. West Road is my new most favorite bird photography location!
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 320 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
First Everglades Sunset
Everglades National Park Sunset
I did not get to Homestead until 4 pm, and I considered just resting after a long day of travel, but by 5:30 I had caught up with the day and decided at least to go find a sunset over the Everglades. I barely made it at that. The sun sinks fast here in the tropics (all things being relative, South Florida is our tropics 🙂 It was worth the effort, I think. This is just barely into the Everglades National Park, just past the entrance station…but it is as far as I got.
Sony HX400V. In-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Bittersweet. Happy Sunday!
This is somewhat a reprise of yesterday’s theme…though yesterday the Bittersweet was the ornament in the landscape (seascape?) and today it is the subject itself. 🙂 It would not be too much to say that East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool is a riot of Bittersweet right now. This composite image catches both the mass and the macro effects.
I was inspired to do a little Bittersweet research this morning. Bittersweet is a vine that grows over and eventually dominates other bushy plants and small trees, and, as such, deserves it’s name. It certainly puts on a striking show in late fall when nothing else is very showy, but at a price to it’s hosts. There are actually two varieties in Maine: native American Bittersweet, and invasive Oriental Bittersweet. While both are climbing vines, and both will kill the vegetation they grow on, I suppose it might, from our standpoint, be preferable to be strangled by a native. ?? The berries, while pretty, are poisonous to most mammals…which is why they are still on the vine in late autumn. Birds to eat them, though I doubt they derive much nourishment from them.
This, unfortunately, is most likely Oriental Bittersweet, and therefore (except for beauty) has no real redeeming value. You can tell because the berries grow along the vines as well as at the tips. Most stands of Bittersweet today are actually a mix to the two species, or even a hybrid of the two. This could well be hybrid Bittersweet.
To complicate matters, neither of the common Bittersweet plants are actually Bittersweet at all. Both American and Oriental Bittersweet are more properly called “False Bittersweet” as the name Bittersweet belongs to Bittersweet Nightshade, also an invasive plant introduced to North American from Europe. While false bittersweets have a red berry in a yellow husk, Bittersweet Nightshade has berries that begin yellow, turn orange, and end up red. I found a few plants of Bittersweet Nightshade growing at East Point as well. And, like all Nightshades, Bittersweet is poisonous.
By the way…all of the Bittersweets get their name from the taste of the bark…which has been used in herbal medicine as a diuretic.
So what is the spiritual dimension to all this Bittersweet talk. It is Sunday. I will admit I got distracted in my research…but there is just so much to know. And knowing is such fun. Bittersweet fun, certainly…always…since looking deeply into anything is likely to turn up both the bitter and the sweet. That is the way of this world…or at least the way we humans see this world. And I think that is okay. As long as the world is…as long as life is…both bitter and sweet I think we are okay. We need to be able to taste the sweetness so that we do not despair…and we need to be able to taste the bitterness, so that we do not forget our capacity for causing pain. Sweetness is our delight. Bitterness keeps us humble. This is good. Bittersweet is good. You might say Bittersweet, like the plant, is beautiful. And beauty is always its own redemption.
Icy Fantasy
Ice coating moss and grass in the front yard
We woke yesterday to a layer of ice over everything. I hurried my breakfast to get out as soon as there was light enough, and before the layer melted. I might as well not have hurried. When I went out at 6PM to run an errand I still had to chip a half inch of ice off the car before I could go. 🙂 I took lots of subjects, lichen covered branches, leaves, etc…as I walked around the front yard, but I particularly liked this set of macro shots of grass and moss.
Sony HX400V at about 60mm equivalent field of view from inches away. Using Program Shift, I dialed the f-stop down for greater depth of field and counted on the image stabilization built into the lens to cover the resulting slow shutter speeds. I also took a burst of images on each subject to ensure I got at least one critically sharp.
Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Photastic Pro on my Surface Pro 3 Windows tablet.