Posts in Category: foliage
2/3/2012: Palm to Infinity, Merritt Island NWR
Taking a break from birds today. This palm fond along the boardwalk behind the Visitor Center at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge caught my eye for what the light was doing to shape…caught it and lead it a merry chase toward infinity down that spiral. I zoomed in pretty tight for emphasis.
Canon SX40HS at 260mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly on the left to eliminate a distracting element.
1/2/2012: Candied Rose Leaves, Kennebunk ME
The very first warm rays of New Year’s sun brought up the red under the frost in these beach-rose leaves, giving them the look of a confection. I backed off and used the long end of the zoom from 4.5 feet to throw the background well out of focus and –isolate the arrangement of leaves and berries. I used a Canon SX40HS super-zoom point and shoot camera with a real focal length only 150mm…so I got the depth of field of a moderate telephoto and the image scale of an 840mm lens. Best of both worlds.
This was just at dawn, so the exposure was f5.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. This kind of shot is not possible without the excellent image stabilization of the Canon lens (handholding 840mm equivalent), and the excellent high ISO performance of the sensor which maintains color and detail without adding a lot of noise.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
12/26/2011: Winter Still-life
A vernal pool in the woods of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, fallen oak leaves of several shades of warm brown, and just cold enough to freeze the surface into crazy patterns which catch the light in interesting ways. It must be that the patterns are caused by variations in surface tension (or perhaps even water temperature) due to the barely submerged leaves. I am sure there is science behind it, but the effect is, at least to me, captivating, especially when it is contrasted with the shapes of the leaves themselves.
This is a long zoom shot, at 520mm equivalent field of view, to provide just enough isolation to emphasize the patterns, and just enough magnification to clearly delineate them. Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/160th @ ISO 500. It is so nice to be able to leave the Canon in Program, with auto ISO, and just shoot, with confidence that the results will be excellent no matter how high the ISO goes to maintain decent shutter speed for handholding long zoom shots! If I had had to dance around ISO and shutter speed considerations for this shot, it would have difficult to impossible, and the result would not, certainly, have been either so sharp or so vibrant.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
2/9/2011: Bosque del Apache Scenic
One of the things I love about Bosque in November is the light. It is great on the birds and it is great on the mountains and the fields that line the Rio Grande. I always come back with 1000s of bird shots…and at least a few scenics. This was taken early one morning from the backside of the driving loop looking to the west. The Rio Grande is behind me.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent. Program with iContradt and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/6/2011: November Light on Oak Leaves, Happy Sunday!
It is November. In Southern Maine the show of fall maples is long past. People have raked their yards and bagged the leaves, and hopefully they are their way to some composting center. Now we wait for snow.
But there is still a show in town. This is the season of November light and oak leaves. The oaks are slow to turn, tenacious on the trees, and the reds are muted, but before they turn brown (often still on the tree) they go through red to bronze to copper and, when the clear low sun of November lights them, they are, in their own way, as much a wonder as any maple ever hoped to be.
Where they fall in water, the water steeps the tannin out. The leaves go yellow and the water turns tea brown…a rich brew that makes still waters in November highly reflective. Where the leaves lie on the surface they make patterns on a reflected sky.
I especially love the way the light passes through the oak leaves, revealing an inner life, an inner fire, even at the end.
And sometimes you find one almost edge on to the sun, with light on both sides, illuminating unsuspected contours.
November light on oak leaves.
Canon SX40HS. All of these are medium to long zoom shots, to frame the leaves against an out of focus background, in Program with iContrast. ISOs range is from 125 on the lighter leaves to 320 on the last dark leaf, but with the Canon I just let it do its own exposure thing. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
I don’t think there is much more to say for the Sunday thought. Except maybe: I hope when I am near my end, to be as tenacious as the oak leaves, and that a light as clear as November will be as revealing of my inner life…my inner fire…as this.
10/28/2011: Fall Yellow-rumped Warblers, Cape May NJ
As I have mentioned, I get to experience most seasons several times each year. Fall color is about gone in Maine (it snowed last night), but I am in Cape May, New Jersey today, and fall color is just about at peak. But Fall in Cape May means warblers, and the end of October means Yellow-rumped Warblers…in such abundance you can not believe. I stopped to take a photo of a pond in the rain and the woods were full of Yellow-rumps. I walked the boardwalk at Lighthouse State Park, and the bushes and scrub pines were full of Yellow-rumps. I stood at a corner of the boardwalk with my scope and camera at the ready and watched 30 or more YRWs feed…probably more as they were moving through pretty fast. It is a pretty amazing show.
Of course what they are all doing in Cape May NJ is stoking up for the Delaware River crossing and the journey south. While I try to catch the warblers posing, most of the time they are actively feeding. Yesterday it was coming on to rain too, so they were especially busy, and the light was pretty dim…high ISO territory.
The first two images are take with a Canon Powershot SD100HS Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece on a 65mm ZEISS DiaScope FL spotting scope. The last shot is with the Canon SX40HS at full zoom and 1.5x digital tel-extender.
1) 1680mm equivalent field of view, 1/100th @ ISO 320, f5.9 effective. 2) 1680mm, 1/100th @ ISO 800, f5.9 effective. 3) 1260mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. All in Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/17/2011: Again the Water Meadow
This is one of my favorite views along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. Yesterday was the highest tide I have seen this year and the meadow was brim full…standing water under much of the grass…shore birds taking refuge in the highest pools. Fall foliage is just about past, but there is still a touch of color. But of course it is the sky and the reflection in the stream that makes the image.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast. –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/16/2011: Goodbye to Fall Foliage
I was tempted to call this post “Goodbye to Fall” but that would not be accurate. We have weeks, maybe months, of fall ahead of us in this long slow slide to winter. Rain and wind have pretty well put out the fire of fall in Southern Maine this past week, and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. Still the trees will be bare a good long time before they are loaded with snow. We might even have an Indian Summer in between. So this is just goodbye to fall foliage…the brief weeks of stunning color here in New England.
Canon SX40HS at about 155mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and Vivid set in My Color.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. Maybe is just the hang-over from a week of intense meetings and late nights, but I can feel my mind shifting out of summer gear today, settling in to the more studious mode of fall and winter, turning inward. I feel the need of a fire in the fireplace. We don’t actually have a fireplace of course, but I still feel the need to huddle down to warmth and light, inside, and think deep thoughts. The thoughts of summer are all external, bright days and doing, life so fast and vital you can barely catch it, and never catch enough. The thoughts of fall and winter are internal. The days may be as bright and as full, and I may be outside just as much, but I become more alive than the world outside. I take my life out to experience fall and winter. Summer just breaks in and overwhelms me. And I am ready for fall…ready even for winter.
In my job fall and winter are busy seasons. Over the next month I will experience fall at least 4 times more in trips to the south and west, and even at the depth of winter in New England, I will be taking brief vacations into the shallows of what passes for winter in Florida and other points south. So it is more a thing of the mind and spirit, this inward turning. But I recognize the beginnings of it today, here in Southern Maine. It might be goodbye to the flame of fall foliage, but it is hello to the mind of fall.
10/14/2011: Mousam run in Fall Foliage
This is the run of the Mousam above Old Falls at this year’s leaf-peak this past Monday. Gotta celebrate it while it is here. By the time I get back to Maine on Sunday, this show will have packed its tents and moved on south.
Shots like this, if you are not going to get very wet and muddy, require the flip out LCD on some of today’s superzoom and advanced P&S cameras, so you can hold the camera right down on the ground to frame. I will never willingly buy another camera for my landscape efforts that does not have a good articulated LCD. For one thing I am well past the age when it is easy to get up, once you get down in the mud. 🙂
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast (dynamic range enhancement).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/13/2011: Reflections of Fall
I was taken with the way the little wind waves distorted the reflections of the fall foliage in the corner of this small pond and attempted to capture it several times. It was a natural abstract. Auto focus was tricky but it locked on the reflection if I caught a still moment. I also shot a short video clip which captures more of what the eye would see…and makes it less of an abstract.
Canon SX40HS at 112mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
The video is just as it came from the camera (and as processed by YouTube on upload). The sound is a mixture of wind and cars on the road behind me. You might want to mute it.