Posts in Category: flowers
4/14/2010
Park Ave at 39th South
Though I still have a stock of recent Maine images to share, I am in NYC for three days. I am training staff at B&H Photo and Adorama in my real job. I was pleasantly surprised to see the full length of Park Avenue in bloom when we came up out of the tunnel and headed for Grand Central. It was a gloomy day, but still, the trees are beautiful, and somehow more beautiful in this setting. This is, as the title says, Park Avenue looking south from 39th Street.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Because of the distortions of the Canon zoom at 28mm setting, and the perspective of the shot….looking up….the first step in processing had to be opening the image in PhotoShop Elements and correcting for both perspective and distortion. Mostly perspective. The Correct Camera Distortions filter works wonders and is both quick and intuitive. Then, in Lightroom, I used Recovery for the sky, thou there was not significant detail there, and then Fill Light for the foreground, with added Clarity and Vibrance, and the Blackpoint to the right just slightly. Sharpen landscape preset. Finally I cropped slightly from the bottom to include as little pavement as was practical. Still had ot leave the man in the lower left room to stand. 🙂
From the so far brief set of NYC 2010.
4/8/2010
This Bud is for You!
So, I am getting really impatient for spring here in Maine. I think I may have said that before. To ease my pain I have been collecting buds of various kinds…photographically collecting that is. Once we get beyond yesterday’s maples, though, I am not good enough with local plant life to identify buds, but that does not keep me from enjoying their shapes and colors.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm and Super-macro, with manual focus. F2.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto. I am finding, on occasion, that the SX20 fails to find focus on Super-macro. Other times it works fine??? It does have an excellent manual focus mode with an enlarged display that, for macros, is good compensation. This was taken, by the way, according to the exif data, at .09 of an inch. The bokeh on these macro shots is interesting as well.
Just basic Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpen in Lightroom. Cropped just slightly for composition.
And of course, here are a few more from the bud collection, all taken the same day at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, ME.
Okay…this next one is, apparently, a flower. It was tiny. As seen here it is at least 4x life size.
And this one is plainly a Catkin, but it fits the theme. I looked it up. A Catkin is a pendulant cluster of flowers, mostly without petals.
4/7/2010
Maple Flowers
You might not have noticed Maple Flowers. They are small. They come early. They are generally high off the ground in the unreachable tops of tall trees. And they don’t last long. But they are beautiful and, for me, one of the delights of spring.
I have been watching the Maple flowers more closely than usual this year for some reason. I noticed them on the trees in the back yard when they were still just tiny hard red balls on the branches. It took over three weeks, in our tidal zone with its still ocean-cold nights, for them to progress from that stage to full flower. I know. I was watching. I was waiting.
The trick with maple flowers is to find a tree mature enough to make them, but short enough so you can reach them for a picture. This tree literally pulled me up short as I was driving by on my way back from Rachel Carson NWR last weekend. It was right beside the road at the head of Fernald Pond, and the lower branches were in easy reach. I turned around and drove back, parked at the pond, and took quite a few shots. The wind was blowing, and this shot is cropped from the side because I had to hold the branch down and still, with the camera one-handed in the other, and on 28mm and Super-macro I could not keep my fingers out of the frame. Crop crop. I also used Exposure Lock and Program Shift to set a smaller aperture for increased depth of field. I wanted to keep the whole cluster in focus.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F7.1 @ 1/100th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto with Exposure Lock and Program Shift.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the sky and background, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape preset.
And, just for interest, a few more maple flower shots. After all, they only come once a year. The last shot is how you generally see them…just a kind of red haze on the branches of tall maple trees.
4/5/2010
Wildflowers of Citie of Henricus Historical Park
Common Violet above.
Citie of Henricus Historical Park is a reconstructed colonial settlement on the banks of the James River in Chester VA. While it does not compare to the Williamsburg and Jamestown reconstructions in the area, it has its own charm, and is pretty impressive for a county effort. It preserves and celebrates the 2nd successful English settlement in North America, founded in 1611. A resident staff of reinactors play various roles, maintain colonial farming and gardening demonstrations, a carpenter shop, tobacco barns, etc. Henricus has an interesting history, both in Colonial and Revolutionary times, and one that somehow has not made it into any history book I read in school. More info is available here.
As fascinating as the history is, the real draw for me is accessible public land, with extensive marshes in a backwater of the James with lots of birdlife, and a stretch of riverside forest in the Dutch Gap Conservation Area with some rough trails. I visit it in spare moments when I am in Virginia at our corporate offices. I was especially eager this year to photograph the Redbud trees, and to see what spring wildflowers were out.
So what we have today is a random sampling of wildflower close-ups. All were taken with the Canon SX20IS and all but number three (Star Chickweed) and the Common Violet at the end were taken at the wide end of the zoom and macro. The Chickweed was off the trail and only accessible with the 560mm macro of the SX20, and I intentionally backed off, got down to ground level, and framed the Violet with the long macro to isolate it in an out-of-focus background.
Virginia Spring Beauty.
Star Chickweed
Henbit
Ground Ivy
Common Violet
4/4/2010
Easter Crocus: Maine
Happy Easter!! And for Easter, the first Crocus of spring from our yard in Kennebunk, ME.
Rebirth! If we need a reminder: He lives! And these flowers express the joy of it better than words.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
A touch of Recovery in Lightroom. Added Fill Light, Clarity, and Vibrance. Blackpoint right. Sharpen landscape preset.
From The Yard.
These last two at 28mm equivalent, macro and super macro.
4/3/2010
Redbud!
Another spring shot from my recent visits to Virginia. Last week there many flowering trees, mainly ornamentals, were in bloom in our industrial park. This week, as soon as I hit the highway south of Richmond, I saw these amazing purple shruby trees along the roadside, generally tucked back in behind, in the shade of the larger trees. Purple blossoms massing all along slender limbs, and no leaves in sight yet. Magical.
I went out on Thursday afternoon in a moment of free time specifically to see if I could find one where I could safely photography it. Beautiful or not, I was not about to pull off on the margin of I295 for a picture. 🙂
There were several on the grounds of Henricus Citie Park, near the visitor center, and out under the really big trees that shade the reconstructed colonial village itself. Close up they are more pink than purple. A little research on the web this morning pined the tree down as Eastern Redbud, Cercis canadensis. While authorities say it is common from Florida to Canada, the ones in Virginia were the first to catch my eye.
Canon SX20IS. 1) 560mm macro @ F5.7 @ 1/400 @ ISO 80, 2) 28mm super-macro @ F3.2 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125, cropped from the left for composition, 3) 560mm macro @ F5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
All processed in Lightroom using Recovery, Fill Light, Blackpoint, Clarity and Vibrance, and the Sharpen landscape preset.
From First Canon VA.
4/2/2010
Irresistible Spring
While you have to look hard yet to find any signs of spring in Maine (or maybe that is just me being impatient), the season is in full cry in Virginia where I have spent the past two work weeks at meetings at the ZEISS offices.
We are in a 15 year old industrial park just off 295 in Chester, and the park landscapers planted the road dividers and margins with flowering trees of several varieties. They are all in full bloom, and it is quite a sight. This tree, not content to burst at every branch tip, was pushing out blossoms in clusters from the trunk itself. I could not resist the contrast of textures and colors here. This is another long tele macro, taken from 5 feet from the trunk. I used the flip out display to hold low, pointed up at the cluster, to get a shot into the blossoms and frame against the bark.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, a bit of Fill Light and Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen Landscape preset.
From First Canon VA.
And, for the opposite effect…but still expressing the same vigor of spring in Virginia.
3/28/2010
Skunk Cabbage
Happy Sunday!
It is the season of the year when about all this is blooming in Maine is the Skunk Cabbage. In places the wet forest floor is thick with the purple flower cases, which appear ahead of the leaves. The cases are as hard as they look. Inside there is an ugly knob which I assume (without any real knowledge) is the stamen. It would not be an attractive plant at all, if it were not for the amazing shapes the flower cases take as they unfold.
For this shot, I flipped out the LCD on the Canon SX20IS and hung the camera down over the edge of the boardwalk almost to the very wet ground. After taking a few shots of the whole cluster, I zoomed in using the Macro setting to get this tight framing. That is an emerging leaf in front of the flower cases. Being able to shoot at 560mm equivalent and macro is, I am finding, one of the best features of the SX20.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and Macro. F5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, Blackpoint slightly right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
And here is the whole cluster. This shot at about 450mm equivalent, F5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 80, and with very similar processing to the shot above.
And another plant, showing the typical overlapping curve of the flower cases: this one from a higher angle and also about 450mm. F5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 200.
3/14/2010
Ornamentals over the Pacific
Happy Sunday
This shot is appropriate to the day. It is a rainy Sunday in Maine and this was taken on a rainy Sunday in San Diego exactly a week ago. An I am not letting the rain dampen my spirits today either!
An ornamental hedge that surrounds the Visitor Center at Cabrillo National Monument. I sat the camera more or less on top of the hedge, using the flip out LCD and Super Macro, and shot across the top to frame this cluster of blossoms against the stormy Pacific sky. I would have used Exposure Lock and Program Shift for better depth, at 1/250 I had plenty of room for a slower shutter speed and smaller aperture, but it was raining and I did not want to risk the camera out from under cover for more than the time it took to grab this shot.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super Macro. F2.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
A bit of Recovery for the sky in Lightroom. Fill Light for the foreground. Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and some Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped from the bottom to eliminate out of focus foliage and for composition.
From San Diego 2010.
3/12/2010
Pepper Tree
Last year when I was in San Diego I asked what this flowering tree was, and was told it was a Pepper Tree. Research since has shed some doubt on that id. It is a large tree, maple size at full growth, and the flowers come out before the leaves. This is a shot of one of the flower clusters, which form at the ends of branches. This cluster is about 4-5 inches in diameter. I could only get this close due to the 560mm equivalent lens on the Canon.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm eqivalent. F5.7 @ 1/60th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
Blackpoint just barely right in Lightroom. Added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped slightly for composition.
Here are a few more images. If anyone can positively identify the tree, I would appreciate the info.
