Posts in Category: flowers
Tickled. Happy Sunday!
So, I have been in Virginia for a week of marketing meetings, with limited photo opportunities. I got a very itchy shutter button finger! First thing Saturday morning I gassed up my scooter and headed out for a photoprowl. First stop, the Kennebunk Plains to check the Blazing Star bloom…more on that one day soon…and then on to Old Falls Pond and the stretch of the Mousam River there to check for dragonflies, etc. etc.
At Old Falls Pond I was delighted to find a stand of Cardinal Flower. I am pretty sure I have never seen it in Maine before, though it was common in the Southwest when I lived there. I find that it is actually native to the East Coast, from Canada to Florida. The southwest variety is a different species, though essentially the same flower. It is, of course, a stunning plant. In the right habitat it is both tall and showy, and there is nothing in nature quite so red as the red of the blooms. I was on my way over to the stand, which was right on the edge of the river, with my camera all set to macro, when I saw the Slaty Skimmers and Blue Dashers buzzing around it. Wouldn’t it be perfect, I thought, as I drew closer, if a dragonfly landed on the Cardinal lower…and just then a Slaty Skimmer did! Of course I had the wrong camera in hand, and the wrong setting on the camera I had. By the time I fumbled through menus and got the setting changed, the bug was gone. There is one good thing about Slaty Skimmers (all Skimmers) though. They return to a favored perch many times. I got the camera set (I did not dare to take time to get out my long zoom…and I was really too close anyway…so I stuck with the Samsung Smart Camera’s limited reach), and the dragonfly did indeed return and pose on the Cardinal Flower for a few shots. After I had my shots, I got out the Canon SX50HS, but, though I waited 10 minutes, and returned to the stand of Cardinal Flowers on my way back upstream and waited some more, the Slaty Skimmer never perched on the flowers again.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Macro focus setting. 416mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 d@ 1/90th @ ISO 400. Processed in PicSay Pro on the 2013 Google Nexus 7.
And for the Sunday thought: I sometimes think our creator God has to enjoy the delight we show when we are surprised by the unlikely beauty of moments like a Slaty Skimmer perched on Cardinal Flower beside a stream in Southern Maine. These things happen too often to be any kind of accident. And though I do go out consciously and eagerly looking for them, I would not do that without some measure of confidence, based on past experience, that they do happen…that it is reasonable and right to go looking for them. Cardinal Flowers. Blue dragonflies. What kind of theory of randomness would bring them together just as I walked up with a camera in hand? And yet…there it is!
And, honestly, what can you be if not thankful? Okay God. Yes, you got me again. Tickled me good. Thank you.
And doesn’t most of the fun in tickling, belong to the tickler?
Lily in the rain
Raindrops on petals…as the Sound of Music has it…are certainly one of my favorite things…and the fact that they made it into song lyrics, and the lyrics of that particular song, is a pretty strong indicator that the feeling is at least arguably universal. 🙂
This is a Day Lily from our yard one rainy morning. Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Macro mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Galaxy S4 smartphone.
Strange Beauty. Happy Sunday!
Or maybe the beauty of the strange. This Great Golden Digger Wasp was one of many insects enjoying the thistle blooms yesterday at my local dragonfly ponds. It is certainly interesting for its contrasting color alone. And then the textures: furry and hard and gossamer wings. And the form. Those huge black eyes, the waving antennas, and that unlikely waist. None of it is conventionally beautiful, but the sum is certainly eye-catchingly compelling.
I did not always see the beauty in wasps. I am coming to it though, through my study of dragonflies and damselflies. After two years with the Odonata, now I look closely at every bug!
Canon SX50HS. Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent field if view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday thought. In order to see the beauty of the Great Golden Digger Wasp you have to get beyond the fact that it is a bug. And a wasp at that. For many humans that is simply too much to ask. Our horror of the creepy crawlies is too deep-seated. And any wasp is seem as a potential threat. And I mean, let’s face it: The Great Golden Digger Wasp is just so strange…so alien…so very other. The eyes alone are the stuff of nightmares. And yet I am convinced that being able to see the beauty of this creature is a spiritual “step in the right direction.” It is an act of insight that prepares us to see the beauty in each other…which is, of course, a spiritual necessity. (And sometimes that is no harder than seeing the beauty in this wasp.) On a deeper level it prepares us for the realization that all that lives is beautiful because it lives…because it is an expression of the one creative life that lives all creatures…another expression of the loving life that creates us all.
So take another look at the Great Golden Digger Wasp. Seeing its beauty is a small step, but it is a step in the right direction.
Goldenrod Forever!
I have never seen so much Goldenrod as is growing on the Kennebunk Plains this summer. A great spread of yellow under the sun. Of course, for allergy suffers, among which I am one, this is not good news 🙂 What we suffer for beauty…and it is a beautiful plant. I can almost forgive it my itchy eyes.
Here I have used moderate telephoto to compress the layers, and cropped both top and bottom for a wider effect…to emphasize the spread of the Goldenrod.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Rich Tone Mode. 85mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exif: f4.4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
Weekly Blazing Star Bloom Update
Time for what is becoming my weekly Northern Blazing Star bloom update. Still not quite there. The bloom on the south side of the Kennebunk Plains is well advanced, with some blooms moving on toward seed, but there are only individual plants in bloom on the north side of the Plains…and even on the south many plants are still in bud.
Yesterday, however, the Goldenrod was in full cry! I was able to find this lovely stand of Blazing Star isolated against a backdrop Goldenrod. What a contrast in color. I may mess with this later in Dynamic Auto Painter to see what it would look like as a painting. 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Action Freeze Mode (the wind was blowing a gale, and the flowers were never still). f5 @ 1/750th @ ISO 200. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
Wet Rose Visitor
I went out early on Saturday, just to the yard, to see what a day and night of steady, and sometimes hard, rain had done to the flowers, and to poke around generally looking for photo-ops in the lovely early light. The rain drops clinging to the rose petals, of course, just had to be done. It was not until processing the image that I saw the Visitor. It seems like, this year, you can hardly take a flower shot without catching an insect of some kind. Good year for the bugs! I believe this is a tiny Hoverfly of one kind or another.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Program with -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Telephoto Macro at 432mm equivalent field of view from about 5 feet. f5.8 @ 1/180th @ ISO 100. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4. Cropped slightly for scale.
Northern Blazing Star: Happy Sunday!
I scootered out to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday, since it was an amazing summer day in Southern Maine, to see if, by any chance, the Northern Blazing Star was coming on to full bloom. I saw a few plants blooming on the south side of the highway a week ago, but only just a few. The main mass of Blazing Star is on the north side of the road, in the bigger section of the plains, but the plants on the south side always bloom earlier. I am not sure why. Alas, even on the south side, the Blazing Star is far from full bloom. And it looks to be a good year for Blazing Star. The plants are full of flower heads and the stands are particularly lush compared to last year. As it happens, I will probably miss the best bloom this year. i have only one more Saturday before I am off for several weeks of travel. This time next week I will be doing my final packing for a trip to Virginia for meetings, and then, as soon as I get back, I will be packing for two weeks of Bird Fairs, product testing, and birding in England, Germany, and Holland. And the Blazing Star will be going on without me 🙁
There is nothing quite like the Blazing Star show on the Kennebunk Plains in a good year. The intense purple of the thistle like flower heads crowds out the greens and browns of the grasses and fills the foreground of any view. Bees and butterflies feed on the pollen and nectar, and dragonflies hunt the smaller insects attracted to the Blazing Star. It is a lovely and lively show. Not to mention intensely beautiful! You can get at least a hit of it in these early shots.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Macro and Rich Tone Mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
And for the Sunday Thought. The Blazing Star show is all the more precious for being brief, rare, and endangered. The stands on the Kennebunk Plains are one of the last strongholds of the plant in New England. It is one of fire dependent plants of open grasslands…grasslands kept open by regular wildfire…or in the case of the Kennebunk Plains…by carefully controlled burns that simulate the wildfire cycle. There is not much of that habitat left in New England. And the flowers bloom only a few weeks in August, when there isn’t, in fact, much else in bloom.
In a way the Blazing Star bloom is like a moment of true spiritual awareness. Such moments are precious partially because they too are brief, rare, and in this very material world, always endangered. Blazing Star needs wildfire to sweep the plains clear of the thatch of dead grasses, stubble, and aging blueberry plants, and the invasive saplings of pine and birch, poplar and maple. What do you suppose is the spiritual equivalent…the spiritual wildfire? Perhaps we all need something to clear the thatch and stubble and invasive saplings that would choke out the Blazing Stars of our spiritual awareness.
Might this be a spark?
Wet Rose
We are having another 24 hours of rain to end the week. This was taken near sunset on our last rainy day, when the storm finally moved out to sea and the sun broke through for a few moments. The sun was already gone by the time I got to the beach roses covered in rain water, but they still made a good study in the soft light of early evening. The colors are never richer than when wet, and the drops add interesting highlights. And, of course, Rosa rugosa petals always have that crushed silk texture that catches the eye.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Macro mode. 32mm equivalent (the Macro default). f3.4 @ 1/45th @ ISO 160. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. Auto Enhance by Google+.
Awesomeness on wings!
You might remember from yesterday’s Sunday Thought post, that I was about to set out on my scooter in search of whatever awesome I could find…most likely having to do with waterfalls, dragonflies, and deep forest. I was thinking of Emmons Preserve along the Batson River where it tumbles down over some ledges in the forest in Kennebunkport. This time of year, there are Ebony Jewelwings there, one of our most striking damselflies, and you just never know what you will find along the trails that wander down from the dirt road to the river and back through the woods. And I decided, on the ride there, that I would poke around the meadows that boarder the preserve, since the dragonflies are moving away from the water to hunt the fields these summer days.
When I got there, of course, the folks at the Kennebunkport Land Trust, who manage Emmons Preserve, had anticipated me. I had forgotten that they had made a trail around the meadows that surround the Land Trust Office. It was perfect: a nice wide mown strip along the edge of the meadows, all the way around, with little side trails surrounding isolated copses, or up along the edge of a little pond I had not known was there. There were lots of dragonflies: Meadowhawks mostly, but a good variety, including a Mosaic Darner (that’s a family of dragonflies) that I have yet to positively identify.
And there was this amazing butterfly. I was well over 2/3s of the way around the meadows and had seen it in flight many times. Big and orange and very fritilleryish. I had about despaired of its ever landing, when I came back out of a side trail to the forest on the far side of the far meadow and found it on the Knapweed.
I believe it is a Great Spangled Fritillery, though it could considerably be an Aphrodite Fritillery. Both are about the same size, and have very similar patterns, and both are possible in southern Maine. I settled on Great Spangled as simply being the more likely.
Canon SX50HS. Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom.
Oh, and clearly I did find the awesomeness I sought. Lots of dragons…Ebony Jewelwings as expected and a new an new Darner!…Great Spangled Fritillery!…several tiny toads and Wood Frogs, a smorgasbord of mushrooms in odd shapes and all sizes, and the water tumbling down in the dappled light of the deep forest among moss and ferns. Very awesome!
Wood Lily in the Sun (bonus!)
Can you stand another Wood Lily? Yesterday, after posting my Wood Lilies in the morning, I began to regret not having seen them in full sun. For one thing, more light would give me greater depth of field, and, with the length of the petals and the tall anthers, that would be a good thing :). For another it would bring out the vibrant color of the blooms. Of course I would have to deal with harsher shadows…but…all in all more light light on the Wood Lilies seemed a thing to be desired. So I got on my scooter at lunch time and took a run out to where I had seen them on Sunday.
Of course, they were all gone. Ah well…next year.
But then, as I found some dragonflies to keep me busy, I was still there when two birders drove up, looking for the specialties of the area. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned photographing the the Wood Lilies and my disappointment that they were gone. “Oh there’s lots of them over on the other side of the road.” They described where to look, and I did, and they were, indeed, lots of them…several stands of 30 or more plants…and those were just the ones I found.
I like this shot for the two lilies, for the depth, and for the tiny Green Metallic Bee down at the base of the petal on the far right. 🙂 Of course I did not see the bee until this morning when selecting an image to post. But any Green Metallic Bee is a bonus not to be passed by. Or that’s what I think. (If you want a good look at the bee…click here for the Google+ lightbox. When it opens, place your pointer over the bee, and rotate the mouse wheel forward. The image will zoom in. You can get an even larger view by clicking on the upper right corner of the image to open it in full screen mode and doing the same zoom trick. It requires a delicate touch to do with a two finger drag on a trackpad, but it can be done.)
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Macro Mode. 34mm equivalent field of view. f3.4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.