Posts in Category: flowers
8/22/2011: Purple Blazing Star with Goldenrod bokeh
Okay…after yesterday’s post, we have an image containing a real weed. To anyone who suffers from allergies to tis pollen, Goldenrod is most certainly a weed. Still, it is a very attractive plant in bloom, and here makes a lovely frame for the lone stalk of Blazing Star. I saw this shot in my mind before I found the angle to capture it…with the camera well below waist level and using the flip-out LCD for framing.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at full zoom, 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/21/2011: Purple Vervain
Happy Sunday. I am not sure if Vervain is classed as a wildflower or as a weed, but it certainly makes an attractive show along the shores of Plains Pond at the edge of the Kennebunk Plains. Plains Pond was evidently once considerably larger. The damn seems well broken, but it is still an interesting place…a wide, somewhat marshy, spot in Cold Brook as it flows down into the Mousam River.
This is a different kind of macro…taking advantage of the wide angle macro mode on the Coolpix to frame the tiny flowers against the backdrop of the pond and the pines behind.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 32mm equivalent field of view, Close-Up mode, f3.7 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: well, obviously, one man’s weed is another man’s wildflower, and the setting is all important. Put this where I have commonly seen it…in cracks in asphalt sidewalks or pushing up through paved driveways…and it certainly is a weed, no matter how pretty the tiny flowers are. Out here a pond-side, it’s beauty is enough to make it precious. The eye of spirit sees it the same in either setting, of course. Wide eyed in wonder is the way to see the world.
8/20/2011: Bee in Blazing Star Heaven
Back to the Kennebunk Plains for more Blazing Star action. Of course the bloom of Blazing Star attracts bees from whatever a reasonable bee-flight around is. Their buzz is the music of the Plains this season.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 176mm equivalent field of view, f5.4 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160. Close-Up mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped for composition.
8/16/2011: Monarch and Blazing Star
Driving back through the Plains from my excursion to Plains Pond last Saturday, I caught a butterfly in the Northern Blazing Star out of the corner of my eye. It was headed away from me, but I pulled up, grabbed the camera, zoomed out, pointed it out the open window of the car and got off one shot. The contrast in color is pretty dramatic here, and the telephoto end of the zoom throws the background into pleasing bokeh. Cropped from the right for composition.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 538mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/14/2011: Blazing Star against the Sky
Happy Sunday!
I went back out to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday (see 8/7. 8/8, and 8/13) ostensibly to find Plains Pond which I had seen on the maps, but of course I got distracted again by the stands of Northern Blazing Star. Yesterday’s sky was much smaller than last Saturday’s, more homey and friendly somehow…but it still made a nice backdrop for this low angle shot of the Blazing Star. Something a bit different. Not a view you would see unless you intentionally bent down to ground level and looked up. (Which is why I won’t own a camera without an articulated LCD view 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 46mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting, –1/3EV exposure compensations, and program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought…it is not a view you would normally see…unless you bent down to ground level and looked up. And what a lot of spiritual truth there is in that! Sometimes, for the seeker, those are the two most important, and sometimes most difficult, directives. Get down to ground level. I am pretty sure that is what Jesus was talking about when he said you had to lose yourself, die to yourself, if you find yourself and live. Lose yourself, die to yourself, get down to ground level. The finding and the living parts are all in the look up, of course. And what do you see? Blazing Stars against a friendly sky. Beauty. Life. Possibility. Promise. Hope. And ultimately, love. Blazing Stars against a friendly sky.
Oh, and I did find the pond too, but that is a story for another day.
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8/8/2011: Kennebunk Plains panorama
This 4 shot, full resolution panorama, done with the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Assisted Panorama mode, covers just over 180 degrees. I was, so to speak, back to back to myself for the first and last shots. I has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow, which should happen if you click the image and open the Smugmug lightbox. (My Smugmug uploads are limited to 4000 pixels wide…the original is 11834×3030.
In an image this wide, I find that the normal horizon placement rules don’t apply. This image is almost equally split between sky and landscape, and yet to my eye, it works. Certainly the level of interest in the clouds helps, providing a effective balance for the details of the plain.
This is the Kennebunk Plains again and you can see Northern Blazing Star on the left and right in the immediate foreground. What you see here, by the way, is about 3/4 of the whole Plain. My back, in the center of the image, is to the road that divides the Plain and separates the smaller quarter on the other side, and if I had included any more on either end of the image you would have seen the road and its telephone poles.
Assisted Panorama displays the leading edge of the first shot in transparent form so you can lay it over the landscape to take image two, etc. It makes even tripod-less panos pretty easy. Here each exposure was at 32mm equivalent field of view, and nominal exposure was f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. The image was stitched in PhotoMerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for Clarity, Intensity, and Sharpness in Lightroom.
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8/7/2011: Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains
Happy Sunday! The Kennebunk Plains is the largest remaining sand-grasslands habitat in New England. The last of the glaciers left behind a natural, open plain without forest cover. It supports several rare and endangered species of animals and plants, but, in reality it is the habitat itself that is threatened. The area around it is rapidly being built up…transforming from rural to suburban…with housing developments nibbling at the edges. It is a good thing that its unique value was recognized early enough to save it. The main body of land was purchased by the Nature Conservancy, and with addition parcels added by the local Conservation Land Trusts, it is now jointly managed by the NC and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. You can read more about the plains in the Kennebunk Plains and Wells Barrens Focus Area (pdf).
Yesterday, after an interesting few hours with the dragonflies at Emmons Preserve (see An Afternoon Amble Among the Odonata and Insects), I drove out to the Plains chasing big skies. It is one of the few places in Southern Maine away from the coast with an unobstructed view. This is blueberry season and my wife had been to the Plains picking berries earlier in the week (most locals know the area as the Blueberry Plains, and gathering of wild blueberries is allowed there during August…at one time, indeed, they were commercially harvested), but she failed to mention that the Blazing Star is in bloom. Northern Blazing Star is one of the endangered plants that gives the Plains conservation status, and one of the reasons the Nature Conservancy was interested enough to invest in the land. A Thistle-like flower that grows on tall stalks, it is especially abundant (as abundant as it gets in its endangered state) along the sand tracks that run through the Plains.
So, of course, I had ideal subjects to fill the foreground of my big sky shots. The leading image here is a low angle shot, using the flip out LCD on the Coolpix, to frame a fairly dense stand of Blazing Star against some towering clouds.
And this is the flower itself…
I am always thankful (and never more so than on Sunday) for the foresight of the people of the Nature Conservancy, Land Trusts, and State and Federal agencies that works together, when it works at all, to save a place like the Kennebunk Plains. A place like the Kennebunk Plains should speak to us of the wonder of creation…it should be a place we treasure…and where we can see and experience God in way that is just as powerful as any experience of worship. The Blazing Star of the Kennebunk Plains should inspire us…should move us…should motivate us to do what we can to make sure it is still there to delight another generation.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 32mm equivalent field of view. f5.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. 2) 32mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f3.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 3) 810mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f5.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, intensity, and Sharpness.
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8/6/2011: Sundrops, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
One of the wonderful things about the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is that they have room to do massive beds of flowers…like this display of Sundrops. I like this shot, which was carefully composed to set off the taller stack of flowers against the chaotic background of blooms. It is one of those “look twice” images…as the subject does not jump right out at you…but once you see what is going on, I think it is effective.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 130mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. Program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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8/2/2011: Flowers, etc.: Happy Birthday Carol
It is my wife, Carol’s, birthday today, and this flower, a single hollyhock from a huge stalk from our anniversary visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, is for her…for you, my love.
And I know you would like to live in the this tree house (for about 2 months, on the warm days only, during the summer.) That is not in my power, but at least I can say you are always on a throne in my heart (not The Throne, which is where Jesus sits, but a pretty big throne none the less).
I love you Carol.
Nikon Coolpix P500
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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7/31/2011: Yucca with Pearls On
Happy Sunday.
I am not sure how, but this image, from our yard in Kennebunk, seems right for Sunday. We are in Southern Maine, but we lived in New Mexico many years, where Yucca is quite at home. It was somewhat surprising to find a Yucca planted in one corner of the tiny front garden of the home we bought when we moved to Maine, but there it was. Over the years it has gown to good size, and now produces an amazing show of flower stalks and blossoms every summer. This shot is from the morning after a day of rain. The rain had only cleared off at first light, and the yard, and all it plants, were still very wet…but for some reason the water had beaded spectacularly on the Yucca blooms.
Here is a second perspective.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode (macro), 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/160th and 1/320th @ ISO 160.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. As the blooms are so white, the shadows on them showed a lot of reflected green, and I had to deal with that with the selective saturation control. Our eye/brain in real time view auto adjusts for colored shadows…the camera does not.
And for a Sunday thought. I don’t know how a plant of the desert southwest ended up in our garden in Maine, but brings enough of the desert with it to remind me of how biblical the blessing of rain is. The psalms, written in a desert land, are full of rain imagery, as is the whole old testament. It is easy to forget that rain is a blessing in Southern Maine in the summer, when a rainy week means less beach time, and a rainy weekend means lost tourist dollars, but, of course, even here it is. We are green and lush because of the rain, not rain forest lush, but vibrant and alive in way desert dwellers can only dream of. Water beading on the Yucca blossoms brings that sense of blessing even here. Grace and grace abounding. We live by grace.