Posts in Category: evening
Sanderlings in Reflection
Sanderlings. The Beach, Kennebunk ME
My wife and I took an after dinner walk long the local beach. The summer evening light was lovely, the sky was full of interesting clouds, and the waterline was littered with shore birds and gulls. I did not have my long lens with me, just the tiny Sony HX90V, as I was looking mostly at landscapes…but the zoom on the camera reached out far enough for these Sanderlings standing on their reflections. As I said, the light was lovely! I especially like the line of bubbles along the surf. 🙂
Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 89 @ f6.4. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom.
Snowy Stare
Okay, you have your icy stares of some repute…but there is nothing like the snowy stare of the Snowy Owl. Despite the photographs you see, those yellow eyes are not seen often in the field. Most of most days, at least here in the southland in this invasion winter, the Snowy sits with its eyes hooded staring out at the world through a thin crack…if not with eyes completely closed. Certainly in the best light for photography, the Owl is likely to have its eyes tight shut. 🙂
Still, patience has its rewards, and if you spend enough time with a Snowy Owl, you will catch it with its eyes open and glaring yellow. In flight shots of course the eyes are always open…and late in the day, when the sun sinks low to the horizon, the Owls open up to begin hunting. This late afternoon/early evening was the first time I have caught our local Snowy Owl in a period of relative activity. You might have seen the flight shots posted a few days ago.
Even when sitting, this day the Owl had its eyes pretty much wide open…open enough to appreciate the signature Snowy Stare.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent plus the 2x digital tele-converter built into the E-M10 for 1200mm equivalent. ISO 200 @ 1/1250th @ f11. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
A Bit Of England
Not exactly England in its native state as this is the very managed landscape of a golf resort, but the sky at least is all England. 🙂 And who can resist an upturned boat in such a display?
This is a vertical sweep panorama from the Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. A normal 24mm shot would end about halfway up the tree at the right on the skyline. I certainly do enjoy the options sweep panorama brings!
Processed in PicSay Pro and Photo Editor on the 2013 Nexus 7.
Parting with Rainbows! Good-by Holland.
I am back from Holland. This is from my final evening there…appropriate. With the chancy weather I had been looking for a rainbow for 2 days, but it was just hanging there when we walking back to the car on Sunday.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 51mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Snowy Egret in the Maine Evening
On one of my after supper photoprowls this week, enjoying the late summer sun, I was photographing a Snowy Egret, well out from the Kennebunk Bridle Path in one of the marsh pools near the river where they generally hang out, when I caught a flash of white through the trees and up the Path 50 yards or so. I edged out around the small pines that shade that part of the Path, and, indeed, there was another Snowy Egret feeding within 20 yards of the path just up from me. While I expect to see them like that in Florida in winter, I never see them that close in Maine. Just does not happen. Or so I thought.
By staying mostly hidden by the trees I as able to observe and photograph the Egret as it fed for 15 minutes. However, as soon as I went back to the Path and took even one step closer to where it was feeding, it was off. Now that is more like Egrets in Maine. 🙂
50 yards is still a goodly distance for bird photography (I have been within 20 feet of Great and Snowy Egrets in Florida and Texas on many occasions) so these shots are maximum optical zoom on the Canon SX40HS, plus 2x digital tel-converter function for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens. The summer evening light, is, of course, what makes the shots.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/800 and 1/1000th @ ISO 200 and 250.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. A good deal of highlight, white, and blackpoint adjustment was needed to render the contrasty light. (I could have dialed in more exposure compensation in the camera…I considered it at the time…but I have found that I don’t like the unnaturally dark background that produces. I would rather deal with some overexposure in Lightroom than try to pull up muddy shadows, at least with this camera.)
And who is afraid to Friday the 13th anyway!
Evening Light on Back Creek Pond #1
This is one of those “magical moments” shots were the light is just amazing, and almost totally beyond the ability of the camera to capture the effect. Early evening, about 6PM, in southern Maine in July…with the sun still well up, but with a slant to the light that casts long shadows, and a color that is just warm enough to caress and draw up all the warm detail, without, as yet, any touch of orange. Clear blue sky. Very English light! The contrast between sunlight and shadow is what catches the eye…and what confuses the sensor.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200.
Way more than my usual processing in Lightroom. Full shadow fill, black point well left, added clarity and just a touch of vibrance for a start. Then a Graduated Filter effect from the top left to darken the sky slightly, a GFE from the bottom to lighten the foreground and add clarity and warmth, and a GFE from the right to left to remove a bit of warmth from the sunlit trees. Close 🙂
Close enough, I hope, to convey what I saw in the scene.
6/26/2012: Sunset Heron
I am in Virginia for a few days doing a corporate retreat thingy for work. We are at the Wyndham resorts Virginia Crossing facility which has a golf course and associated ponds, so, there being no official activities the first evening, after supper I took a walk down to the water to see what I could see. There was, surprisingly, a Kingfisher calling over the far pond, lots of dragonflies in the last of the sunlight (perhaps not so surprisingly), and eventually this Great Blue Heron standing against the setting sun reflected in the water. What could be finer?
Canon SX40HS in Program with – 1/3EV exposure compensation and ISO manually set to 800. f5.8 @1/125th. 1080mm equivalent field of view.
Processed on my Xoom Android Tablet in PicSay Pro for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/10/2012: Snowy Against the Sun. Happy Sunday!
I took a late ride on my scooter down to the Kennebunk Bridle Path after supper yesterday to see if there were any dragonflies flying late. I found a Seaside Dragonlet, which is always a treat, but that was about it. However, there was an egret working the marsh pools along the Path, just inside the Rachel Carson National Wildlife boundary. I could not resist a few shots. I was not until I got back to the computer that I saw the effect of the late sun behind the bird and across the water. Ahaaa.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: I was thinking yesterday on my two photo-prowls about just how aware looking for dragonflies makes you! It pushes the boundaries of what is possible. You have to be tuned to any motion, any fleeting shadow across the marsh grass, any tiny thing that moves. You have to check the likely bushes for dragons to hang up in. You have to scan every pool. You become hyperaware. And because of that you see more of everything. More birds. More flowers. More other bugs. More everything.
I requires constant effort. You drift. Or at lest I do. I catch my self just walking again, watching the trail ahead where my feet will fall and not much else, thinking about…whatever! And then I have to push my awareness back out of my head and start looking again.
And then there is an Egret standing against the low afternoon sun. It is not a reward for your attention. It would have been there whether you saw it or not. And I can’t claim much credit. After all I did not see the miracle of the sun behind the bird until I got home and looked at the image.
I know there is a correspondence to the spirit here…that my spiritual attention is not often at the pitch of my physical attention when looking for dragonflies. What if I looked for angels? What if I looked for miracles? What if I just looked for Christ in everyone I pass, in everyone I touch? What if I pushed by spiritual attention to see the spiritual in the world around me with that same intensity I devote to dragonflies? Is there such a thing as spiritual hyperawareness? Is that what means to be a saint?
Of course, I am cheating on myself here. I know that. I stopped separating the spiritual and the physical, in theory, some time ago. My search for dragonflies is a spiritual search. And I do experience the full impact, now that I have noticed it in the image, of the Egret against the sun on my spirit. Still…I have a feeling I am still missing too much…that my awareness needs to be kicked up a notch or two before I walk the miracle walk all the time. I have a feeling I have failed too often to see Christ in those I touch, just as I must have missed a thousand Egrets against the sun.
7/29/2011: Up the Mousam Evening
It had rained most of the day, but by evening all that was left was a dramatic sky. This is from the bridge on route 9 over the Mousam River, between Kennebunk and the sea, looking inland. I like the little arm of marsh in the foreground and the light overall.
Not an easy exposure. Active D-Lighting on the Nikon P500 brought the foreground up some, but I also used the in-camera post processing, Quick Retouch in this case, and then final processed in Lightroom. I tried an HDR but the greens came out too saturated. I actually prefer this.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. As above, Program with Active D-Lighting.
7/26/2011: 101 in the Shade
We had a run to three days last week when the temperatures were over 95 degrees. That is unusual weather for Kennebunk and Southern Maine…so unusual that most year-round folks, like us, do not have air conditioning. We are Mainers. We suffer through the few days each summer when we need air conditioning using window fans…taking drives in our air conditioned cars…and, of course, sneaking down to the beach when we can find parking. That generally means later in the day, in our long summer evenings. This day, the one in the pic above, the temperature was still over 100 degrees at 5PM, and there was little relief at the beach. You see a few people, in absolute desperation, out in the water. (Average summer water temperatures in the ocean off Maine beaches are between 50 and 60 degrees…and that is cold!)
I like this shot for the bright yellow slide framing the sky blue umbrella, and the general atmosphere, and the next one for the color.
Around the corner, a evening and a bit later, about 7:30PM, on Gooch’s Beach. Still in the upper 90s. Notice that the surfers are all in wet-suits.
And we will finish off with a sweep panorama of the whole beach. View it large by clicking on the image. (It is a sweep panorama, done in camera, not a stitched panorama made from individual exposures, so the resolution is not what you would expect from a stitch job…but is certainly is a lot easier 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500. Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.