Posts in Category: forest
Understory Autumn
The leaves are all pretty much off the maples and birches, leaving the understory to carry on autumn alone. This is a mass of Barberry…Japanese Barberry, and unfortunately invasive and well established along the trails at Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farms. Or maybe not so unfortunately, as it turns out. Tom’s of Maine is currently studying the plant to see if they can make an old herbal recipe for throat care from it, as our ancestors did from the once native Common Barberry. We still have isolated clumps of Common Barberry, but after a concerted effort by the CCC to eradicate it as a “wheat rust” host, and the success of the Japanese Barberry invasion, there is not much left…certainly not enough to harvest for a throat spray. It is Barberry root that contains the active ingredient, so maybe Tom’s will solve the Barberry problem at Laudholm over the coming years. They have already funded the removal of thousands of plants and their replacement with Mountain Laurel and Red Cedar (depending on how wet the soil is). Maybe in 10 years this autumn understory color will be no more. We can hope. And untold thousands of throats will thank us (or Tom’s at any rate). iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos.
Bucolic
The sun was already behind this bank of oncoming clouds by the time I was on my way back to the car on my last hike at Laudholm Farms. I have never known exactly if those farm buildings just down the hill from the big yellow house and barns that is now home of the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve were part of the original Laudholm Farms, or just a neighbor. When looking at the photo this morning the word that came to mind was “bucolic”…so of course I had to look bucolic up to make sure I was using it right…and because that is just me. (I used to have difficulty looking up the spelling of words in a dictionary, which, as a hopeless speller, I spent a lot of time doing before spell-check was a thing, because I would get literally lost in the words. I would get caught on a definition (often not the definition I was looking for) and have to trace back all its associations and roots…and that of course would lead me to the discovery of new words, which I would have to explore, etc. I could loose a half hour between “thistle” and its spelling. Any day.) So bucolic. “Ox keeper” or “ox herd”…by extension “shepherds” and “herdsmen” of all sorts. And by further association, the countryside in an idealized fashion. The way we would see it in a painting or in this photo. The beauty, the quaintness, the charm, without the awkward barnyard smells and the stinging wind in our face and the chapped lips…if you know what I mean. The sanitized version of country life. So yes, the farm seen from the hill under the racing clouds over the cleared fields and against the backdrop of the forest with its fall colors is bucolic. iPhone SE with the Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos.
Alwive Pond
I posted a few shots of the Red Squirrel I encountered on the way out of Alwive Pond Preserve, but I did not post any photos of the pond itself. 🙂 iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos. Alwive Pond is part of the the Alwive Pond Preserve, maintained by the Kennebunk Land Trust, in Kennebunk, Maine, USA. (There seems to be some dispute as to how to spell “Alewife”. Kennebunk Land Trust, the owner of the property, spells it Alewive, which is also the name of a road in the area. The State of Maine spells it Alewife and that is how it is on Apple and Google Maps…except that the Department of Inland Fisheries spells it Alewive when referring to the fish. ?? Apparently I am the only one who spells it Alwive. It is, by the way, when referring to a human, a female brewer, or the wife of a brewer, as in ale wife…when referring to fish, it is a species of herring that runs up rivers and books in the spring, and is harvested with standing cone shaped nets…we see them in the spring here in Southern Maine on some of our rivers. )
Cheating on Red
Red-Squirrel, Alwive Pond Preserve, Kennebunk, Maine, USA — So this is totally cheating. This is the same Red Squirrel I posted twice already (different pose in a different section of the tree, but still from the same encounter). The problem was that the background was totally washed out…I mean so white that I could not recover any detail in it. Still, I like the pose so I thought, lets have a little fun with it. I took it into Pixomatic for some MagicCut work, refined the results, and pasted in another forest photo, taken with the iPhone at Laudholm Farms. Adjusted the brightness and contrast to make it fit better. Took the result back into Polarr and worked on it some more. Finished it off in Apple Photos. It is not perfect, but I put as much time into it as I was willing to give this morning, and it makes for an interesting image (and an interesting exercise). I think 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed as above. Just for fun.
getting surreal at Laudholm Farms
As I have said a few times before, it is being a very strange fall here in southern Maine. Still no frost in the third week of October, and the trees are struggling with the change…exposed trees, alone in the field, or on the edge of the forest are turning late and we are not getting the reds of a normal year…and inside the forest many leaves are just turning brown and falling. Still you find scenes like this one…taken into the sun as patches of sun and shadow raced across the field, spotlighting the colors. The sky was so intense I had to tone it down to keep the image from looking too surreal. iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Looking into Autumn
Looking into Autumn, and into the sun, down another long alley of marsh, this time just over the hill from the Kennebunk town line on Rt. 9. I really like the perspective of the Sirui 18mm ultra-wide for this kind of of shot, especially since it is wide both ways…vertically as well as horizontally. It gives the scene a very natural look. At least to my eye. The high contrast light picks out every detail, and the Apple Camera app’s Smart HDR renders the range of light effectively, producing another memorable image of fall. Or that is what I think. Processed in Apple Photos.
Flag of fall…
Just above eye-level in forest along the stream above Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains, where the trees are slowly turning in our frostless fall, this small shoot on the trunk of a large maple, caught by the sun behind it, appears as the flag of the fall that is still coming…the banner of autumn. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Apple Photos. ISO 160 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Fall coming on…
Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farms, Wells, Maine, USA — Early signs of fall. The leaves have begun to change over the past 3 days and I can see autumn coming…feel it too in the mornings. Sony Rx10iv at 567mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos. ISO 800 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Fringed Polygala and Trailing Pine
Fringed Polygala and Trailing Pine, Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Kennebunk, Maine. — Sometimes nature arranges the most wonderful still-lives. This juxtaposition of color and texture certainly looks intentional…artistic in every sense. Nikon B700 (which I bought as a backup camera for trips and for a knock-about camera on my trike adventures, and with which I am having a lot of fun) at about 500mm equivalent. Program mode. Still experimenting with Picture Control modes for the best results with this camera. This was shot in Vivid, with Active-D lighting set to low, and -.3 EV exposure compensations. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Lady Slipper Orchid season
It is, at long last, Lady Slipper Orchid season here in southern Maine. I have been watching my spots for two weeks waiting for the bloom. Last year a gentleman I met walking pointed me to the most amazing spread of Orchids that I have ever seen…several hundred plants, at the very least, spread along a hillside in the woods above a stream. The exact location will remain undisclosed as some Lady Slippers were dug up nearby last year. Lady Slippers are almost impossible to transplant, as they rely on a symbiotic fungus in the soil, but it does not stop people from trying. So, despite my broken wrist and various deep bruises and a well tweaked back from my walking encounter with a truck on Saturday, I went out with three cameras to see how they were doing this year. I was not disappointed. The shot above is with my go-to Sony Rx10iv at 31mm equivalent. (Program mode for ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/250th). The following shot is with my new Nikon B700, which I bought as a back-up camera to carry on trip (and which might become my preferred dragonfly camera). I am reacquainting myself with the Nikon way of doing things. It was also taken in Program at 68mm equivalent with macro engaged, ISO 100 @ f4.1 @ 1/1000th, -1 EV.
And finally here is a shot with my iPhone SE2020, the Moment thin case, and the Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Standard Camera app on Auto. I really like the “in context” effect of the ultra-wide perspective.
