Posts in Category: forest
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.
10/2/2011: Still life with water, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
On my visit to Saco Heath a week ago, the day started overcast. The sun did not break out until I had already passed through the forest part of the trail. I found interesting fungi along the way, and the subdued light and persistent damp made for kind of “fall in the rain forest” mood. Still after sunny couple of hours on the heath I was hoping the sun would persist on the way back through the forest to the car…and that it might waken more lively colors along the path.
This is just a little random collection of leaves, moss, and water to one side or the other of one of boardwalk sections through the forest. We have had a lot rain this late summer/early fall, and the wetter portions of the forest are brim full. The boardwalks were definitely needed. I take a lot of these found still life shots, especially in the fall, attempting to find significant patterns by framing them carefully. They are primarily exercises in composition…which is one thing I value about the long zooms on the bridge cameras that I choose to use. Generally I can set the frame just as I want it, simply by zooming in or out. In this case I took some care to include just enough of the decaying branch to ground the bottom of the frame. And since the floating red leaf is what catches the eye first, I put it at one of the rule of thirds power points within the frame.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not stand and study, figure and plan. I just pulled up above this scatter of leaves along the branch, saw a possibility, put the frame around it, zoomed until it looked right to me, and squeezed off the shot. I do keep the rule of thirds grid turned on in my finder as a compositional reminder, and I am certainly conscious of the composition as I frame and zoom, but it is not in the forefront of my mind. I shoot more by eye than by mind. I see the image and capture it…I don’t plan the image and make it. That is just me of course. Your method may be quite different.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 176mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
So I am thinking this Sunday morning, about creativity. I read an article this week on the psychology and personality of creativity. It was one of those wiki type things that is more a digest of what other people think and have said (minus the need for footnotes and proper attribution :) ), with no real original thought or even a recognizable thesis…but still it got me thinking. As usual the idea of inspiration came into it. And as usual some pains were taken to explain the moment of inspiration as a sudden convergence of experience and experiment that yields an unexpected result…or something of that sort…anything to avoid the notion that some greater creative spirit at large in the world occasionally touches those with open minds and willing hearts with quite unearned bursts of liberating vision…as though for a second we are allowed to see through to the underlying reality where everything makes sense and is as it should be, and bring just a fragment of that vision back with us to apply to whatever problem or process is in hand.
Taking a picture for instance.
And as usual, the idea that creative genius and madness are closely linked…that the creative person walks a fine line with the balance of the mind…was presented as more or less historical fact. That has me thinking about gratitude. Thankfulness. I suspect…I do not know but I do suspect…that gratitude is a key element in the creative personality in maintaining the balance of the mind. You have to be thankful for every insight…for every inspiration…for every gift of vision that comes from that spirit of creativity greater than yourself. If you are not genuinely thankful…it you take those sudden convergences of experience and experiment as something that belongs to you, that you deserve or have earned…well, I have a strong feeling that that way lies madness.
And, as is not usual in these Sunday ramblings, that is a lot of weight to hang on a found still-life, a few leaves scattered in moss and water, over a decaying branch, along the boardwalk at Saco Heath. I scroll back up to look again at the image. Yup. Still thankful. So maybe it does work.
9/30/2011: New Boardwalk at Saco Heath
Another view of the new boardwalk and the first fall foliage at Saco heath. This one has much stronger composition than yesterday’s, but the sky is less well exposed. Strong sun just out of the frame made the clouds very bright, and a balanced exposure was impossible without HDR treatment, and a challenge even then. Still this works for me. I like the curve of the variegated boardwalk and the way it disappears into the forest, and I like the tree leaning in from the left. The clouds at center are nicely textured and the sky so blue…over the touch of red maple leaves.
The new boardwalk is a project of the Nature Conservancy. The boardwalk has been deteriorating rapidly the past few years, and this summer they evidently decided it was past repair. The new boardwalk is Wood-Composite, good for the environment, and considerably more durable…not to mention slightly psychedelic.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/15/2011: High Summer Forest
The dappled light and shade of the forest at high summer afternoon in Southern Maine. This is the forest that edges the Kennebunk Plains, ferny and open. Not an old forest as it has grown up since 1947, the year Maine burned. In 1947 wildfires consumed hundreds of thousands of acres from one end of Maine to the other, and villages as well. If compared to a mature forest like those at Rachel Carson and Wells Reserve, which did not burn, the difference is immediately obvious.
But that is history. What attracts me here is the sandy track leading the eye deeper and deeper into the forest, and the play of light and shadow.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. The Active D-Lighting handled the range of shadow and shade just about perfectly, providing an exposure that I could easily tweak in Lightroom for a very realistic effect.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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8/10/2011: Batson River at August Ebb
The river at Emmons Preserve barely deserves the name in any season, but by August its spring rush is just a memory…a song sung far away and in a minor key by the trickle of water that flows down rock to rock and moistens an abundant growth of moss. Still it has its alure. One thinks of ferries and elves making the most of deep summer evenings. Indeed the Ebony Jewelwings over dark water, catching the sun flash on their irridescent blue and sometimes green tails could easily be the originals of more than one supernatural dweller in the glades.
Nikon Coolpix P P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. F3.4 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting. 2) 283mm, f5.5 @ 1/20 @ ISO 200. Close Up mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/28/2011: Log Walk with Cedars, Jordan Pond
We never, if we can help it, miss a chance to walk the loop of trails around Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park on any visit. It is sometimes the only hike we have time for, but if we have time for only one, it is it. This last visit we got rained on a lot (see Acadia from under and Umbrella: shooting in the rain) and we hiked around Jordan with rain gear on and umbrellas in hand…but still we did it. The subdued light and the rain wet woods provided interesting variations on our normal views. I always find the Atlantic Cedar forest at the south-west corner of the pond fascinating…dark and deep and dense and mysterious (even though in reality it is only a narrow remnant strip of trees in the semi flooded area next to the pond itself). The park service has built a raised “log-walk” (as opposed to “boardwalk”) the length of the habitat to keep hikers’ feet dry…and off the delicate roots and mosses.
This image captures the leaning Cedars right a the water’s edge, the log-walk, and a whole range of interesting textures and forms, from the ripples of the water to the grain of the wood in the logs, to the bark of Cedars, to fine green of the grasses and the feathery green of the Cedar foliage and the brown riot of fallen pine needles. I like the way the log-walk leads off, pulling the eye deeper into the image and the mystery of the forest.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto with Active D-Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/20/2011: Wet Wood with Stream
On the way back from a very wet hike up South Bubble in Acadia National Park, we stopped at the Bubble Pond parking because I wanted a picture of a brook. This is Bubble Brook as it leaves the pond begins its run down to Eagle Lake. I love the wet woodland, the colors of the decaying leaves and the green foliage, and textures of bark and stone, and the curve of the stream, the parallel placement of the diagonal downed tree, the bow of the pine on the right, the roughness of the birch bark on the left, etc. etc. There is a lot going on in this image, but I think it is held firmly together by the sweep of the water, and well anchored by the base of wet stone and last years oak leaves. It is another image I could see printed, framed, and hanging on my wall.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
By the way. My morning posts are offset in time this week as I am on the west coast 
5/26/2011: Stranger than Fiction
While out looking for Lady Slippers in one of the two places where I know they grow last Saturday, I came across these…growing on a dead birch sapling in the deep forest. Never seen the like, but some research on Google, and a not so inspired guess considering how they look, identified them as Jelly Fungus.
Honestly…you just could not make these things up! It is called Witches’ Butter in eastern Europe, and compounds extracted from it have proven effective in stopping the growth of certain cancers in white mice. Stranger and stranger.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode (macro) at 32mm equivalent field of view. 1) f3.7 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160. 2) 1/80th.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. #2 was cropped from the left for composition.
Oh…and the Lady Slippers were just poking through the ground.
5/7/2011: Vaill Point HDR
One of the tricks made possible by the speed of the Back-illuminated CMOS sensor of the Nikon Coolpix P500 is in-camera HDR. The camera takes 3 or more shots when you press the shutter release and then combines them into a single image with extended range. I don’t actually like the results straight out of camera, but then I also postprocess my Photomatix HDRs in Lightroom when I have done all I can do in Photomatix. With judicious Lightroom processing, and a suitable scene, the Nikon HDR effect is actually pretty good, and it is far easier than shooting three exposures and combining them in Photomatix after the fact.
This shot is from the observation deck at Vaill Point Park (Sanctuary) near St. Augustine Florida. As you see, the HDR mode opens the shadows while maintaining the intensity of the greens and the blue of the sky. This is not an easy shot, exposure wise. I intend to experiment more with in-camera HDR when I find appropriate scenes.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, nominally f3.4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Backlight HDR mode.
Processed for levels, intensity, and clarity in Lightroom.
4/21/2011: Light, line, texture and angle
I have actually attempted this shot several times over the past few years. I see it every time I go to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge early in the morning…or at least some variation of it. This line of trees which are slowly slipping with the land under them, further down the steep cutting of the Merriland river. They are well rooted and the slant is all the landslide has achieved so far. But of course, it is as much about the light as the slant…the way the light, strikes down just here and illuminates the trunks, bring out both line (modeling) and the contrasting textures of the bark. I shot this twice, but this tighter crop using more of the zoom works better for me…and this is the best of my many tries over the years. I think that is a matter of the particular character of the early spring, early morning light of this particular day.
Canon SX20IS at 70mm equivalent field of view, f3.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160. Program Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom, with special attention to the balance of highlight and shadow and a bit of color adjustment.
And, since someone else is probably already thinking it, this is an image that might work well in Black and White. So, with some judicious conversion in Lightroom, this is my attempt at the B&W version. I was surprised by the different B&W effects I could produce by altering the color temperature of the original.
