Posts in Category: forest
I don’t know where to look…
Fall is passing rapidly in Maine…I think the last of the maple leaves came off the trees in our yard during the storm on Friday, but we are still at the point where there the forests and wooded neighborhoods are alive with color. So much beauty. I don’t know where to look. 🙂 That might be the theme of this photo as well. I am sometimes accused of taking photos of nothing…or photos with no “center of interest”…but the truth is, I like photos where the photo itself is the center of interest…not photos of some “thing” but photos that attempt present the scene as it is seen…with all the clutter, color, texture, detail that fascinate the eye…or at least my eyes. This is a scene from the woods at Laudholm Farms, in Wells, Maine, along the trail at the south edge of the property. Sony a6500 with the 18mm equivalent ultra-wide lens combo. Program mode with HDR. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
More of Maine Autumn
We are into our second day of pretty constant rain here in southern Maine…and we certainly need the rain. I went to Emmon’s Preserve on the Baston river in Kennebunkport, Maine, to see about some fall foliage shots with running water…but there was, for the first time in my memory, no water running down the ledges between the pools on the river. That is low water! You can see the standing water mark on the bolder, and the high water mark. Way low. Still, the pools were beautiful with the fall leaves. Sony a6500 with the 18mm equivalent ultra-wide combo. Program mode with HDR. Nominal exposure: ISO 100 @ f7.1 @ 1/100th. -1EV in an attempt to hold some detail in the overcast sky, and Program Shift for depth of field. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Fallish
We have lost the sun this week as we move deeper into fall. We need the rain, so I am trying hard not to begrudge the light 🙂 You can see the sea mist coming up and inland at the end of this marshy isle where a little stream flows through. Highly atmospheric. Fallish indeed. Sony a6500 with 18mm equivalent ultrawide combo. HDR. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Tiger Swallowtail
I have been seeing Tiger Swallowtails in the forest for several weeks now, and not been able to get one to light long enough for a photo. I have pretty much stopped chasing them. Yesterday, this one was sipping minerals on Gravely Brook Road near Emmon’s Preserve in rural Kennebunkport. I have had success in similar situations in the past, so I stopped my ebike and, with patience, caught it several times in several different poses. Since we are here in Maine, at the northern edge of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail range, and the southern edge of the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail range, it is impossible for me to tell which it is. It might be possible for someone who really knows…but not for me. Canadian is supposed be, on average, smaller than Eastern…but with a single specimen size is hard to judge. All I know is that it is big and bright and beautiful! Sony RX10iv at 1200mm equivalent (600 optical plus 2x Clear Image Zoom). Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr.
Pink Lady Slipper Orchid in the sun
As I mentioned in my previous Lady Slipper post, I do know of a few scattered and more isolated areas where the Pink Lady Slipper blooms here in Southern Maine, besides the reliable clumps along the trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquaters. There are always a few along the edge of the pond on the Kennebunk Plains…and these are the only ones I know of that are growing in full sun (at least part of the day). This an in-camera HDR shot with the Sony Ultra Wide, 18mm equivalent lens on the Sony a5100…and it puts the Lady Slipper in context. The flower is about 8 inches from my lens, and I used selective focus to focus on it, but the extreme depth of field of the ultra wide renders a scene rich in texture and detail. It would make an excellent 16×20 print to dominate a wall! Processed in Polarr.
Pink Lady Slipper, first of season
Yesterday I biked down to the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters trail to check on the Pink Lady Slipper orchids, which were just budding out the middle of last week, several weeks late. There is a large patch on the inside (land side) of the trail right behind the buildings, and there is a small patch below one of the overlooks where they maintain an opening onto the marsh view. The ones on the inside were still in bud, but at least two of the flowers on the sunnier marsh side had opened. There are more to come, clearly, in both spots and if we get a few warm days here they will all be open. The first blooms to open this year are pale compared to other years. Only time will tell if that is the trend this year, or just characteristic of the early bloom. The Lady Slippers are wonderful, ornate, delicate blooms…endangered due to habitat loss, and protected. I know of a few other more isolated spots where they bloom in the area, but the ones along the headquarters trail are certainly the most reliable and accessible. Sony RX10iv at 365mm equivalent. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr.
Fall fungus in the forest…
Fall has produced an abundant crop of interesting scale fungi on the fallen limbs at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. There is a beauty in the patterns and the shapes, at least to my eye. Sony RX10iv at 489mm equivalent. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr.
The tree that holds up the sky… #2
Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunk Maine
This is my second shot of “the tree that holds up the sky…” for this year. It is, of course, just a particularly attractive, and big, tree at Emmon’s Preserve along the Bascom River in Kennebunkport, Maine. But it definitely has a “the tree that holds up to sky” feeling to it, or so I think. 🙂 Sony RX10iv in-camera HDR at 36mm equivalent. Auto HDR mode. Nominal exposure 1/160th @ f3.2 @ ISO 100. Processed in Polarr.
Under the winter pines. Happy Sunday!
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Wells, Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
It snowed all day yesterday. After clearing the drive (lunch and a rest) I decided to brave the snow covered roads at least as far as Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters where I was pretty sure I could get in to park and walk in the snowy woods. I was all suited up for the adventure…longjons base layer to high snow boots and a fleece lined parka. I took my umbrella as I hoped to take some pictures and I wanted to keep the camera relatively dry.
The woods were quiet. I was the only one foolish enough to brave the roads and the unplowed Rachel Carson driveway. The light was subdued. Snow fell steadily, in big flakes, to continue to fill the wood. Every tree and bush carried its burden of white. It was…I am tempted to say “magical”, but I don’t, on principle believe in magic.
We hear a lot about “magical thinking” today. Many people seem to believe that results can be achieved without effort if you just know the right thing to say. And many more seem willing to believe that our leaders will be able to achieve what they want, and have promised, just by saying it so and waving a hand (or wand as the case may be). And apparently there are those who want to be deceived by slight of hand, for the entertainments’ sake. They find it amusing, and admire the skill of the trickster. If you stop to think about it, magical thinking explains a lot about what has happened recently in American politics.
So “magical” is out as a way of describing the silent woods with the snow falling. Even this slightly other-worldly “under the snowy pines” scene. We need another word for what the generous eye sees. It has to catch the sense of awe…wonder…the sense that we are experiencing something out of the ordinary, beyond ordinary…the sense we are glimpsing the work of forces and intelligence larger than we are. It has to imply that we are touching the divine. And yet none of the words suggested: awesome, wonderful, extraordinary, supernatural, divine…at least in common usage, quite catch my meaning either. Maybe all of them together, but no one alone. If I were writing this in German I could just string them all together into one long unpronounceable word…or in English I could hyphenate them, or use the modern “/” (as in awesome/wonderful/extraordinary…which basically says I don’t know which word to use.) Though it still is not quite right, as it depends on this contrast with “magical” for part of the meaning, “blessed” or “full of blessing” comes close. The silent snowy woods with the snow still falling in big flakes was full of blessing.”
But then, everything we see is if we look with the generous eye. Happy Sunday!
Snow in the forest…
Snow. 120 Brown Street. Kennebunk Maine.
Carol and I were in New Mexico when the first snow fell in Maine, but we were home yesterday and watched, Frost like, the woods fill up with snow. It snowed most of the day, but never heavily, and by late afternoon we had about 2 inches on the ground. Gentle snow, and very little wind, so even that little bit built up on the evergreens to look like a much heavier fall. This is a little patch of mostly second growth forest (or 10th growth for all I know) just across the road from our house. It is posted, but I worked my way just far enough into the woods for this pic of the newly fallen snow, about 2:30 in the afternoon, before the light failed completely. There is always a quiet beauty to freshly fallen snow.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/100th @ f2.5 @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
One of the best effects of HDR is maintaining green where it would otherwise go dark. Add a bit of shadow recovery in post processing, and the effect is very life-like. 🙂