Posts in Category: forest
Branch Brook, Kennebunk ME
I continue my search along the streams of York County Maine, for the American Redspot…an so far elusive broadwinged damselfly that might or might not be found in York County. I want to see one. I have not. Yet.
The search, however, has taken me some interesting places. I feel compelled, when the road crosses any stream or river, to, if at all possible, park the car and climb down to the water. I am often surprised by what I find.
This is Branch Brook, which forms part of the water supply for the Village of Kennebunk, a mile or two upstream from the Water Works. It runs in a fairly deep and steep cut through most of the last part of its course, but where Wells Branch Road crosses it, you can, if you are careful, climb down to the mossy banks and the peat brown water.
This is one of those scenes that is very difficult to capture. The range of light is well beyond the ability of even the best digital sensors. Even traditional HDR techniques, in this kind of scene, too often result in a flat imitation…something very different than what the eye sees.
I started by dialing down the exposure compensation by one and one third stops (which, visually, brought the highlights in the water just in range), and letting the exposure system do its worst for the rest of the scene.
Then, in Lightroom, I brought up the shadows, toned down the highlights, shifted the backpoint to add depth, and finally added clarity and vibrance to give some life to the moss. Finally I used the Auto Color Temperature tool to remove a bit of the shadow blue. The result is about as close as I hope to come to the impression the scene would make if you were standing there.
I did try an sudo HDR treatment using Dynamic Photo HDR…and the result was interesting…with brighter greens and more open shadows…but it produced a different impression than I remembered.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –4/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom as above.
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.
5/15/2012: Just a little tree. Humboldt Redwoods State Park
After nearly a month on the road, I am home from my travels for a while. If you have been following you know I have been in Northern California for the Godwit Days in Arcata, in Northern Florida for the Florida Birding and Photo Fest in St. Augustine, in Northern Ohio for The Biggest Week in American Birding in and around Oak Harbor (Magee Marsh, Ottawa NWR, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, etc.), and, this past weekend, in Southern New Jersey for the World Series of Birding in Cape May and the environs. While I have posted from each of these places, over the next few days (weeks?) I will be playing some catch up on images from my travels.
This, in honor of Tree Tuesday on Google+, is from Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California. I always, time allowing, take the scenic route on my drive from San Francisco to Arcata, along the Avenue of the Giants, through the redwood groves. This is a double trunk tree, and that is my Tilly Endurable hat sitting on a gall for scale.
I am awed and amazed on every visit to the redwoods. Inspired. Uplifted. Delighted. Stilled in some part of me that needs stilling.
And, for contrast, we can take a vertical view.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 33mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 400. 2) 140mm equivalent, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 800. 3) 24mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/50th @ ISO 200. 4) 24mm equivalent, f2.7 @ 1?100th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4/20/2012: Redwoods!
My day driving through the Redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants was less than ideal. A misty rain fell most of the time, and the skies were white where they showed through the canopy…but still…REDWOODS.
There is nothing like the experience of standing in these groves of huge, ancient, trees. And the Avenue of the Giants takes you through grove after grove, for miles.
Of course it is next to impossible to capture anything like the experience with a camera. The lead shot, with the car for scale, just hints…and the next with road winding between massive trunks…adds a bit more…but really no image or set of images will convey the feeling of being there.
The last shot in this set is of the Founders Tree. 346 feet tall, 12.7 feet through at the base. Those branches you see are 190 feet off the ground. While this was once thought to be the tallest three in the forest, taller trees have since been measured a few miles away.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Some color temperature adjustment needed because of the dark day.
4/15/2012: Wonder Brook Park, Kennebunk ME, Happy Sunday
Happy Sunday. I have lived in Kennebunk 17 years, and I have passed the sign for Wonder Brook Park probably thousands of times. It is, after all, still in the village proper, on Summer Street, which is the main route between Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, and the beaches. It is an unassuming sign that simply says “Wonder Brook Park, Hiking Trails.” I have wondered from time to time what Wonder Brook is all about, and I think we even set out to explore it one afternoon 17 years ago, but got rained out. Yesterday, as part of my Saturday photo-prowl, I decided it was high time for Wonder Brook Park.
I had ulterior motives. Last weekend, at Emmon’s Preserve, I saw more Trout Lily plants, not yet in flower, than I have ever seen in the Maine woods, and I was looking for a place closer to home where I could check to see how they were advancing. I would like to catch the bloom if possible. My instinct was sound. The trails at Wonder Brook lead out through a relatively old pine forest (with some of the biggest Pines I have seen in Maine, like the multi-trunked giant above), caught in an angle between Wonder Brook itself and the Kennebunk River, and, here too, the Trout Lilies were thick on the ground, though nowhere near blooming.
The trails themselves are well marked and maintained, with little bridges over the many streams that feed into Wonder Brook, and split-log walks in the wet places. After about a mile, you come to an overlook on a tidal section of the Kennebunk River (where I saw a Belted Kingfisher), and then the trail turns north along the bluff over the river, providing some views through the trees of the rocky run above the tide’s reach.
I was also on the lookout for birds. I have been following the radar images of the migration and a small wave of birds was promised for Southern Maine this weekend. Evidently it had not crested over Kennebunk by noon yesterday. I saw the Kingfisher, a few Robins, Chickadees, and Titmice…but that was it. I did walk up on a Common Gartersnake crossing the path, who posed nicely for me.
Wonder Brook is amalgamation of Kennebunk Land Trust properties, set aside under conservation easements. I am always impressed at the efforts local Land Trusts in Maine make to open these properties to public enjoyment. The Wonder Brook trail system, with at least 5 miles of trails on various loops, clearly took considerable resources to construct, and must still take considerable resources to maintain.
Personally, I was delighted to find this pocket experience of the Southern Maine woods right here, right in Kennebunk, only a few miles from my front door. Now that I have found it, I am certain to return on a regular basis. I need to catch those Trout Lilies in bloom for one thing.
And for the Sunday thought. Well, I have to be thankful, when faced with a little gem like Wonder Brook, for spirit of conservation that moves people to set aside some land just to be…to be whatever it is and whatever it will be…with only enough human intrusion to keep people to a trail so the forest itself does not get trampled. I need to be able to get out in the woods, or to hike the Kennebunk Plains, or to walk along the little waterfalls of the Baston River at Emmon’s Preserve, or to stand on the rocks at Parson’s Park along the ocean in Kennebunkport. It is important. As important to me as church. I enjoy corporate worship, and I certainly find God in the praise of his people, but I also find my creator in the woods of Wonder Brook. I am pretty sure I need both to keep my faith a living faith.
And, with such thankful thoughts I am in a forgiving enough mood to overlook the tick I just found attached to my wrist. Another souvenir of my visit to Wonder Brook 🙂
4/9/2012: Trout Lily? Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunkport ME
My Saturday photo-prowl took me to Emmon’s Preserve, a Kennebunkport Land Trust property along the banks of the Batson River, with a couple of loop trails through forest and along the stream. Though our season is advanced, due to the abnormally mild winter, things were still pretty quiet in the forest along the Batson. Which is why these small green and brown mottled leaves, in colonies, caught the eye. Now, I am not absolutely sure, but this looks like the beginnings of Trout Lily or Adder’s Tongue Violet (the same plant). If so we are going to have a lot of Trout Lily in southern Maine this year, if the deer don’t eat them all before they flower. Though I may have seen individual plants in Maine in the past, this kind of abundance is unique. They bloom early, so I will have to get back to Emmon’s soon to find out if these really are Adder’s Tongue. Any of the spreads of new leaves I saw, if matured to full bloom, would be quite a sight!
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, and macro. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity and sharpness.
As you see, I was right down on the ground for this shot, and only centimeters from the leaf. I focused on the leaf and then reframed to put it off center in the image.
4/5/2012: An abstract found among the fallen leaves
When I go out on a photo-prowl, I look for the obvious photo-ops: birds, butterflies, dragonflies, landscapes with clouds, the play of the light on water or leaves…but I also look for little details along the trail that might make an interesting abstract. This pile of fallen leaves caught my eye mainly because of the color and the twisted shapes of the leaves, but when I zoomed out and framed it, I saw the pale weathered lines of the pine needles radiating from the corner. The pine needles make the image for me.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent field of view. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 400.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped from the left to eliminate distracting out of focus elements and to emphasize the radiating needles.
4/1/2012: Tree Tops and Self Portraits. Happy Sunday!
And a happy April Fools Day to you too!
Yesterday I set out in the morning for a photo-prowl, trying to fill my out my diminishing stock of images for this column, and, you know, just poking around to see what I might be missing. It was a dull day, with heavy overcast, and, since it is also that dull season between winter and the real onset of spring in southern Maine, I did not have high hopes. I was pleasantly surprised to find a few early birds (Song Sparrow and Eastern Phoebe) already on territory and setting up for nesting, as well as a rich variety of fungi along the trails. I will feature a few fungi for tomorrow’s Macro Monday post.
I was called back early by a daughter needing the car and retired to my computer to do the post-processing, and when I looked up, the sun had broken through and what had been overcast was now a smattering of clouds adding interest to the sky. So back out I went for a loop around the trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.
It was not spring there either but the forest without leaves was full of geometry, texture, and light…the clear crystalline light of a late March afternoon. There was beauty there. The super rough bark of a tree caught my eye as that light picked out every intricate detail I and began to think about how to capture the effect. I had been messing, earlier, in the Yard, with the swivel LCD on the Canon SX40HS…pointing it forward on the camera and getting down under Forsythia flowers to shoot up. I decided to try it there in forest, on that tree. Wooo. Strange geometries. And that lead to a whole series of tree top images, taken with the camera at waist level, looking straight up. Notice the red maple flowers in the second tree top shot.
I had to keep leaning back out of the image to keep my hat from getting in…and that made we wonder if I was missing a self-portrait/profile pic opportunity. Mostly my face was completely in shadow, but I noticed that if I stood in an open area of the path, enough light reflected from the ground to make an interesting effect. So in the spirit of April Fools Day, here I am, framed against the tree tops.
My wife Carol says it is frightening and my daughter Kelia says it is somewhat disturbing. I just think it is funny. When I posted it as my profile pic on Google+ someone commented that it made them think of Tolkien 🙂 My response was that I am already bigger than a hobbit, and even than most dwarfs, and not near wise enough to be a wizard. April Fools.
And for the Sunday thought. Self portraits. Well, I am thinking that we are defined more by the things we look at than we are by how we look. This series of images that I post here every day, taken as a whole, is my best self portrait. It is a record of the things, over time, that I find beautiful, interesting, worthy of celebration and sharing. That is much more me than the shape of my nose or the luxury of my beard.
Paul said, in his chapter on love, that today we see only dimly as in a darkened mirror…we see and know only in part…but that a day will come when we will see clearly…when we will know in full, even as we are known. And that day is linked, inescapably, with the persistence of love…a love that is not defined by our ability to love, but by the perfection of the Creator’s ability to love. I have said many times that these images are one way I express the love of creation and the Creator that is working its way out in me, day to day. I would like to think they provide a glimpse of the me you now see only dimly, and know only in part. Of, in fact, the me I only see dimly, and know only in part. The me that is capable of the enduring love which we celebrate this Easter season.
And that is a lot, for an April Fool, or otherwise, to say.
1/13/2012: Snow!! And a road in the wood.
We finally got our first significant snow yesterday in southern Maine. They predicted 1 to 3 inches, and we got 6 to 8 🙂 Heavy wet snow finishing off in little pellets of ice late afternoon. The roads were as bad as I have ever seen them in Maine. Still that did not stop me from getting out mid-storm to get a few pics. This is a wood road that runs through Rachael Carson National Wildlife land between us and the coast.
This is not sensor friendly light…levels are low in a storm like this…and exposing to hold highlights in the snow almost always results in greens that are grey at best, and mostly verging on black. I was really pleased to be able to pull up the greens while processing the image in Dynamic Photo HDR without losing the white of the snow. This is very much a naked eye view.
Canon SX40HS at 126mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed as a single jpg HDR in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing and a slight crop from the top in Lightroom.
And just for fun, here is the same image processed in Dynamic Auto Painter as a painting.
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.