Posts in Category: flowers
6/8/2012: Beach Rose in the Morning
Yesterday on my early scooter jaunt to the beach, the roses were looking rather tattered from the days of rain and wind. The fully open blooms were almost all missing at least one petal. The partially open blooms had weathered the storm in better trim. The low angle of the morning sun really picked up the water remaining on the roses from a night of rain, as well as bringing out all the warmth of the deep pink petals. I like this shot for the wet rose, but also for the detail in the sky behind. Alright…there is not a lot of detail in the sky behind, but the fact that there is any at all adds a lot to the image, imho. In fact, I was amazed when I got the image up in Lightroom to see any there at all. The sensor and the processing engine in the Canon SX40HS continues to amaze me.
For contrast, I provide a white beach rose, also wet, also with a bit of detail in the sky behind it. Here you see how yellow the center is in the morning sun.
Both shots use the Tel-Converter Macro trick. They are taken at the 24mm Macro end of the zoom for extreme close focus, but with the 1.5x digital tel-converter function engaged. That pushes the equivalent field of view to 36mm for a larger image scale. I like the effect a lot. You still get great depth of field and rich detail, but without pushing the lens so close to what you are photographing that you see the wide angle distortions (and risk getting water on your lens).
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. As above. Both at f4 and ISO 100. 1) at 1/250th and 2) at 1/1250th. I love that the Canon can maintain a full range of detail in this white flower!
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
A note on the rose since I got some questions on it yesterday. It is Rosa rugosa, an import form the far east, planted originally as an ornamental and to stabilize san dunes. It is now invasive all through New England along the sandy sections of coast. It forms low dense thickets on the land side of dunes, often extending for miles. It has been here long enough so most people think it is native. On Cape Cod, they make “Beach Plum Jelly” out of the hips. Just as an added note, it is super hardy and salt resistant, and hybridizes easily, so it is used extensively by rose culturist in the development of new varieties.
6/7/2012: Morning at Back Creek
Rain is in the offing again today, starting by 10am, so I got out early and took my electric scooter to the beach. That is what I bought it for, after all. The sky was interesting and the morning light was amazing. Well worth the ride. Here we have Back Creek behind a bank of Beach Rose under that interesting sky with reflections. What more could you ask?
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And here is the scooter in it’s intended milieu. 
5/27/2012: Unknown Beauty, Kennebunk Bridle Path. Happy Sunday
Every spring I find a few of these flowers growing near one of the old bridges on the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it crosses land owned by Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge along the Mousam River. I can’t identify it. It looks so familiar, so like I ought to know its name. Again today, I have spent way too long looking…in my wildflower guides and on-line, but it eludes me yet…once more. I suspect it is closely related to Canada Mayflower and False Lily of the Valley, though it is not either of those. Canada May Flower grows further down the path in the more shaded areas, and the leaves are the wrong shape for False Lily of the Valley. There are a lot of flowery bushes right along there, including Barbarry, which I know is not native, so I have come to suspect it might be a garden flower left over from when the Path, which was, in fact, a trolley line connecting Kennebunk proper with Kennebunk Port at the turn of the century, was landscaped. But which one?
No matter what it is called, I love the delicate white flowers and the strong bold curves of the veined leaves, especially as they are shown off here in the spring sun. The sunlit brush in the background is, I think, just far enough out of focus to provide framing and balance for the strong leaves in the foreground, and the slightly radial lines of the dry plant stems actually draw the eye downward to the flower at the center. This is a ground level shot. I have a slightly tighter framing that focuses more on the flowers, but I really like what the light is doing in the lines of the leaves.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro, plus 1.5x digital tel-extender for the field of view of a 36mm lens, f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. I am not sure why it bothers me so much to have to post this beauty without a name. The flower is beautiful. The image is strong. It needs, I think, no apology. It is a thing of beauty in itself, whole. A name would not make it any better, or even any more complete. And yet, there is a vague sense that I am failing in my duty when I publish it without a name attached. And that is it exactly. I am not feeling ashamed at my ignorance, or my lack of diligence. We can’t know everything, and I have spent a reasonable (some would say unreasonable) amount of time trying to find out. And yet I do feel that it is part of my job as one who celebrates the creator’s creation to supply the name we humans have given this plant. As though that mattered. Strange.
I was thinking about language this week (probably in the shower where all my deep thinking takes place…I think the quality of thought in the world may have diminished in direct proportion to the conversion from bath-taking to shower-taking 🙂 Words are really just our way of indexing experience and memory. When I say “Canada Mayflower” I instantly tap into a whole complex of connected memory and experience stored somewhere in the biologic cloud that is my brain, and going back in time to my earliest experiences. And now, today, it is so easy to type that name into the browser of my computer, and be instantly connected to the vast web of human memory and experience that resides in the digital cloud that spans the world, and reaches infinitely further back into time than I can go myself. But the words themselves, “Canada Mayflower” are just the index key that pulls all that information together. It is the way our minds work. It is the way we humans work.
Which is way I always smile when I remember that, according to the story that comes along with my faith, our first job was to name the animals (and presumably the plants, and even the rocks, too). It is our most inherent duty. And this is good, because the other aspect of the job is caring. We were to care for creation as well as name it. They are deeply linked in the way we are made. Both logic and faith tell me this is so.
This is a beautiful flower, I think, beautifully framed to share with you. But I still have the vague feeling that if I don’t care enough to know beauty’s name, then I do not care enough.
Happy Sunday.
5/21/2012: Jack-go-to-bed-by-noon, all gone by.
Jack-go-to-bed-by-noon is a rather strange common name of Meadow Salisfy. It is also known as Yellow Goat’s Beard, which is just about as strange. It this the tall yellow flower of path and road-side and weedy meadows here in New England, looking like an industrial grade dandelion, with fewer and heavier petals. The Purple species (Western Salisfy) is common elsewhere. The root is edible, and it is actually grown as a vegetable by some . When it goes to seed, it forms a seed head like a giant dandelion…again the industrial grade version of a dandelion ball.
While out on my Saturday photo-prowl this weekend, the Salisfy seed heads were everywhere along the Kennebunk Bridal Path. I found one in the sun, and tried several macro approaches. Because the Canon SX40HS will focus to 0cm at the wide end of the zoom, a very close approach is indeed possible. However 24mm even at 0cm does not give a very large image scale, so the macro effect is diminished. I have found though, that using the digital tel-converter function with macro works very well. Digital tel-converter on the Canon is NOT the same as digital zoom on most cameras. Additional image processing is applied to avoid the artifacts generally associated digital zoom. This shot is at 2x digital tel-converter for a 48mm macro effect. One advantage of this combination is that you keep the depth of field of the short zoom setting (4.3mm before conversion to 35mm equivalence) while getting the image scale of a 48mm lens. Best of both worlds for macro.
And, of course, I would not attempt this kind of thing if I had to lay on my stomach to do it. I use the flip out LCD of the Canon and can take shots like this by bending from the waist. I would never willing buy another camera that does not have an articulated LCD!
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
5/20/2012: Season of the Slippers. Happy Sunday!
It is Lady Slipper season once more. Every May the Lady Slippers in our local woods bloom. They are predictable. I know where they grow and, within a week or so, when they bloom. I begin looking for them on Mother’s Day, though they often don’t bloom until the last week in May. I was expecting them early this year, as most everything has been, due to our mild winter and early warm weather, but they are right on schedule. The first of them are only just now open at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, on the sunny bank facing the river where they often bloom first. There are others, in less favored spots, that don’t look likely to bloom for a week or more yet. That means those in the woods by our home, two miles inland from Rachel Carson, where the spring is always a bit delayed, will probably not be blooming until well into June.
I photograph them every spring, often the same plants, spring after spring. I can’t help myself. It would not be May without a few shots of these stunning, brief, flowers.
The images change subtly year to year. Some years, for some unknown reason, the flowers will all be on the pale side, some years a much deeper pink. Some years, for equally mysterious reasons, I only get to see them on cloudy days.
And, of course, my equipment changes, year to year. The sensor technology in the small super-zoom Point and Shoot cameras that I choose to use has developed rapidly over the past few years, and the particular camera I have in hand in May certainly influences my Lady Slipper shots. Last year’s shots, for instance, were a bit flat (lacking in subtle variations in the pink hues) and not quite the right pink at that…and my disappointment was a factor in my decision to retire that Nikon camera early when a (possibly) more promising Canon model came out. The Canon has lived up to its promise. This year’s shots use an unconventional combination of features of my Canon SX40HS (one almost certainly not foreseen by the maker)…and are, I think, among the best Lady Slipper shots I have ever captured.
And then too, my processing software continues to evolve. We are on Lightroom 4 now…it was Lightroom 3.5 last May. In Lr4, the “clarity” (local contrast) function has been refined and improved. That contributes, along with the better sensor, and the unconventional camera settings, to the kind of “hyper-real” look of these shots. Improved technology and software allow me to capture what I like best about the Lady Slipper…which is the way sunlight interacts with the bladder, and with the fine hairs that cover the whole plant. I like this year’s shots, taken in early morning light, a lot.
I can not honestly say that I am a better photographer this year than last. While I am always learning, and finding new ways and new tools, new tricks, to produce better images, the visual engine that is behind my eye, maybe buried as deep as my heart and soul, and maybe even a physical manifestation of my spirit, which is by nature and by grace, twice over, one with the wonderful creative spirit that all in all…that changes much more slowly. In may ways it is still the same engine that made the world wonderful when I was a child. It is more refined now, more reflective, with a higher measure of respect, and a deeper knowledge of just how blessed I am each day, and have been all these years…but it is still, essentially, the eye that saw my very first Lady Slipper so many years ago. It is the same eye that found my first camera so useful, so much fun, such a great way of putting a bit of frame around what I saw and saying “look at that!” I don’t know why I have able to keep the wonder alive. I know I am no more deserving than the next. I truly hope that that there are none who have not, in some secret center of themselves, been able to hold the wonder all life long. I hope to never lose it. And to that end, I use it. Every day. Every spring. Every season of the slipper.
And I will continue as long as I am able…out in the world with my little frame…and here, and elsewhere, everywhere, saying “look at that!” I owe it to my creator. And I it is a debt I pay with joy. (Oh, how true that is in every sense you can make of the statement!)
It is the season of the slippers once again. Look at that! Feel the wonder. Feel the joy. Know you are blessed. Give thanks.
5/18/2012: Dew on the Rose, Washington Oaks Gardens, FL
Washington Oaks Gardens has an extensive formal water garden, and, inside a wrought iron fence with trellis gates, a great collection of carefully tended roses. Since I am often there early for the birds, I often catch the dew on the rose in all its glory.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. This is a digital tel-extender macro…with the lens at 24mm and macro where I can focus to 0 cm, and 1.5x digital tel-extender engaged for an equivalent focal length of 36mm and larger image scale. This is a use of the digital tel-extender feature I an sure Canon did not foresee, but results, I think, are convincing. f4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
5/11/2012: Red Clover, along US101 in N.CA
Seems like I have posted a lot of birds recently, from Arcata CA, St. Augustine FL, and Magee Marsh OH, so lets take a step back for some flowers. This is red clover from the hills of Northern California, right along route 101 somewhere south of Ukiah. I suspect what I saw was only the first bloom…and that this is a massive show of red by now.
Still these are impressive enough.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. 2) 272mm equivalent. f5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4/29/2012: Happy Sunday! Sunflower in late sun. St. Augustine FL
The sun does not set in North Florida in late April until 8PM, so you have these long golden hours between supper and sun down. The light is at its best. There is often the first breeze of the day off the ocean. It is altogether an enchanted time of day.
This sunflower was along the boardwalk leading into Ocean Hummock Park in St. Augustine Beach. I could not resist the way the low sun was illuminating it. I did not see the passenger on the left petals until I got it back on the computer and was processing it. That is a tiny, tiny little fly or bee…one or the other. I especially like the detail maintained I the green back of the flower and the way the bright flower is framed against the dark background.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-extender). f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. If I could stand this transparent, no more no less, so that the full character of me was revealed in the one light of all that is, I would be a happy man. And that is how I think it should work. We don’t loose our identity, our individual persons, when we stand in union with the light of creation…we are just completely illuminated, filled with light, and more completely ourselves than we can ever be elsewise.
I am not sure what the tine bee has to say in all this, but he is still there.
4/27/2012: Spiderwort, Ft. Matanzas National Monument
Spiderwort is not an attractive plant, even in bloom, but the blossoms themselves are amazing. This specimen is at Fort Matanzas National Monument on Matanzas Inlet south of St. Augustine Florida. It is a super tel-macro, taken from about 5 feet at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-extender).
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And, as a bonus, here is a wider shot with some kind of berry blossom.
4/24/2012: California Poppy
This is the time of year when the roadsides of California are alight with bright orange poppies. It is always quite a show. In Arcata they were just opening for the most part, but the closer I got to San Francisco on the way back yesterday the more I saw. This specimen was in a particularly sunny spot along one of the trails at Arcata Marsh.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. 840mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.