Posts in Category: forest
Found on the forest floor. Happy Sunday!
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Photography is essentially the art of putting the world in frames. All the technical stuff matters…exposure, white balance, focus, image quality, etc…but it does not matter nearly as much as what is and is not inside the frame, and how the elements inside the frame work together to fill the frame. The frame is our focused attention…it says “look at this and see what I am seeing.” The only talent a photographer has is his or her vision…the rest is skill, and can be learned with enough teaching and practice…but the ability to see what needs framing, and how it fills a frame…that is the gift that sets the photographer apart from the casual snapshot shooter. (And the world being what it is, even those who consider themselves casual snapshot shooters may have the gift, and many who consider themselves very skilled in the techniques of photography may, apparently, lack it.) It is a gift…it can be developed like any talent…but it can not be acquired or learned.
Dr. Suzuki, creator of a well known system of music education, believed that musical talent is a gift that is given to all children, and that it only needs to be developed from an early age, to allow every person to enjoy and to make beautiful music. To him, hearing music is equivalent to seeing beauty…to seeing how the world fills the frame of our attention…and the skill of actually playing an instrument can be taught and learned. It only requires practice.
I believe photography is the same. Everyone, as part of his or her birthright, has the ability to see beauty, to appreciate the harmony and energy of the world, and if given a frame can place it effectively it to say “look at this and see what I am seeing”. Being a man of faith, I believe that gift is part of our birthright as children of God…part of the “created in God’s image” truth that can and should shape our lives. It is part of the generous eye…part of the light within us. And, again, looking with a generous eye, I see evidence of the gift of God at work in people around me, whether they are aware of it or not, in every effective photograph. Whether on Facebook, or Google+, or Instagram (or wherever you look) the digital stream today is full of images that testify to the light within us.
It is a common complaint among “skilled photographers” that today, anyone with a phone thinks they are a phtographer. Isn’t it rather, that today everyone has a frame, and more and more people are discovering that if they put it around the the things they see and value, others can share that value. And isn’t that something to celebrate…and to enjoy?
I saw this apparently random arrangement of sticks and leaves on the forest floor, on a wet fall day. The textures, the colors, the angles formed by the white birch branches caught my eye, so I took the frame of my camera and put it around what I saw, being careful to fill the frame so that you could see what I saw. That is my only gift. And now it my gift to you. Happy Sunday!
November forest floor
Fungi, Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells, Maine
My wife and I took a walk around the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge near our home in Maine yesterday. The day was overcast, a real late November fall day…no snow yet here in Southern Maine (like most of the nation). The forest was largely bare. Even the oak leaves were all off. The fungi on fallen birches and maples showed easily with all the undergrowth died back. This found still-life was just off the trail. I like the mix of textures here, the way the wintergreen pokes out beneath the fungi, the way the small maple leaf rests, and the richness of the damp colors.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 200mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet. Cropped for composition.
Shadow Darner?
Shadow Darner? Smith’s Preserve, Kennebunkport Maine
Here at the height of a unusually hot summer in Southern Maine, we have fewer dragonflies than I remember from last year. I went to Emmon’s Preserve in Kennebunkport yesterday in hopes of finding Mosaic Darners patrolling the meadows, but there were none at all. Lots of mosquitoes…probably, in part at least, because there were no dragons. The Mosaic Darners are among my favorite dragons. They big and generally boldly marked, and there is a certain elegance to their wasp wasted look and elaborate male appendages.
When I found little to photograph (and the sun very hot) in the open meadows at Emmon’s, I decided to drive the mile or so to Smith’s Preserve, where the trails are shaded by the forest. Parking is limited at Smith’s, and sometimes completely taken up by SUVs with bike racks, as the trails are very popular with mountain bikers. (SUVs with bike racks…that is a sad comment on our times.) I did find a place to park (the last one). It was quiet at Smith’s as well, though there was more bird song, and it was considerably cooler, and I did spot this Mosaic Darner patrolling a section of the trail. It hung up on a small pine along the side, and I was able to work my way close enough for a photo. I am thinking this is a Shadow Darner, but I could be wrong.
The light was not ideal in the deep shade, so this image is taken at ISO 1250. (1/250th @ f4 @ 541mm equivalent, zoomed back a bit to fit the full bug in). During processing in Lightroom, I ran it through the NIK Define 2 filter to eliminate some of the noise.
Solstice Light in Forest
Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells Maine
I have never been so aware of the light as I am these weeks in December, just at the solstice. Our odd weather maybe is helping…as I am out, and further out, than I generally am at this time of year. The light, even at noon, is just skimming the earth…coming in a such a low angle that it illuminates things I do not normally see, and turns the mundane magical. Take this random pile of tree sections beside the trail at Laudholm Farms. I suspect they are piled and waiting for staff to come and haul them out, but the solstice light turns them into a study in shape and texture, color and form. On any other day I would have passed right by…but in this light I was stopped in my tracks and forced to record the scene.
Of course, this morning we have 7-8 inches of fresh snow on the ground…so everything will be very different today!
In-camera HDR. Sony HX90V at 24mm equivalent field of view. 1/60th @ ISO 80 @ f5. Program shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom.
Feisty Red Squirrel
Red Squirrel, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
This might actually be the same Red Squirrel I encountered on the Laudholm Farms boardwalk a few weeks ago. It was certainly in about the same area. However, if you remember, on that encounter the squirrel was relatively shy, if determined. It would allow me to approach to within about 20 feet, and then it would lose its nerve and scamper on down the boardwalk to find another seed to eat further away. I moved it probably 150 feet down the boardwalk before it scampered off into the forest. This time, the squirrel seemed determined to defend its stretch of boardwalk. I felt like the Borlog and the squirrel was Gandalf. He would leap up to a tree and threaten me, than he would plant himself firmly on the little 3 inch tall rail of the boardwalk and glare a clear message “you shall not pass!” Then he would charge me. Me. He charged. The squirrel. Tail twitching. Ears erect. Eye to eye. He charged down the rail to within six feet of me before thinking better of it and flying off into the forest…only to land right back on his tree and then the rail where he had started: 20 feet from me and glaring.
Not only that, when I first saw him he was eating, relatively speaking, a log. You see it here. He was sitting up, holding this stick in his paws like a giant cob of corn, and was breaking it up and extracting something from the pulp. In his first few charges at me he carried the log with him, and even after he dropped it, it might have been what he was defending.
Eating his log like corn.
Finally, he had already been in the wars. When I got the images home, you can clearly see in many of them that there is a fresh wound in front of his right eye. I suspect he got it scrapping with other Red Squirrels, but it might have been from a unsuccessful predator attack (unsuccessful from the predator’s standpoint). I told you. A veritable borlog of a Red Squirrel! (Oh wait…he was supposed to be Gandalf 🙁
Wounded
The first two shots are with the Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. The last shot is with the Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. I switched cameras because on his close approach the squirrel was inside the closest focus on the Nikon. 🙂 Processed in Lightroom.
Ebony Jewelwings
Ebony Jewelwings, Batson River rapids, Emmons Preserve, Kennebunkport ME
It is just about Ebony Jewelwings time of year again. After my encounter with the River Jewelwings a few weeks ago (here), I went back to the rapids on the Batson River on Saturday to check for early Ebonys, and there were indeed a number of males dancing over the rapids and pools. All Ebonys, no River…which is, I think, an interesting thing to note. And I found no females, either near the river in the forest, or in the meadows. Maybe next week. There is, of course, nothing like the iridescent blue/green of the Ebony Jewelwing’s body…sometimes bright blue and sometimes bright green, depending on the angle of the light.
The center image is from the Sony HX90V and the surrounding images are from the Nikon P900. All are processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage. Coolage is such a great program for this kind of panel!
Introducing The Willing Eye. Happy Sunday!
Batson River at Emmons Preserve, Kennebunkport Land Conservancy, ME
I love the little stretch of the Batson River (more a large brook) that passes through the Kennebunkport Land Conservancy’s Emmons Preserve. The meadows above the river behind the Headquarters building are a good spot for butterflies, dragonflies, and birds, and the shaded rapids and small falls and pools of the river as it passes through the forest are always a delight. This time of year, the Ebony Jewelwings dance over the rapids, and I am always attracted to the water where it tumbles down over a rocky bed between moss-grown banks, singing all the way. I have photographed this little run hundreds of times, but I am compelled to photograph it again on every visit.
This shot is an in-camera HDR with the new Sony HX90V, a camera I a trying out for just such scenic views and macros.
I have been thinking a lot, over the past week or so (inspired by a dream I had one night) about a name for the aspect of my photography that extends beyond the technical stuff and photographic inspiration of Point and Shoot Nature Photography (psnp.lightshedder.com). I am about to embark of a series of tours and workshops…group trips to photogenic locations…where I will attempt to help others to get the most out of their Point and Shoot cameras photographing nature…but there is more to my photography than that…more I have to share. There is a way of seeing…there is the underlying motivation for my photography…the act of seeing, celebrating, and sharing…that is a akin to worship…and that gets recorded often in these Sunday posts.
My smugmug gallery is called WideEyedInWonder, and the name is taken from one of my favorite sayings of Jesus: “The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore if you eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.” (I should warn you there is a little scripture lesson coming…but persevere!) In my favorite, non-literal, translation it reads “If you go through life wide eyed with wonder and belief, then your whole being will be filled with light.” That actually might come closer to what Jesus meant than the traditional translation. We have what he said already in translation…in Greek (which he certainly did not speak)…and the gospel writer used a word for what your eye needs to be that is translated several different ways in different contemporary texts. It could be “single” as in “single minded…focused on one thing.” (as the King James version has it) or it could be “simple, as in uncomplicated” (as several modern translations have it), or it could be “generous, as in giving and forgiving, open to the needs of others.” (which, oddly, no translator has used). Some modern translations say “if your eye is” “clear”, or “healthy”, or “sound.” I think it is a combination of the literal meanings of the Greek word…single, simple, generous…that inspired the “wide eyed in wonder and belief” translation. And the word translated “body” is definitely the Greek work that implies the whole being, body and soul.
However, Point and Shoot Nature Photography is already a long name for what I do. Wide Eyed In Wonder is another long name. I need something (or so the dream said), short and pithy, but something that still captures what the eye needs to be if we are to be filled with light, and if we are going to have light to share with the world. Single, simple, generous.
That is where “The Willing Eye” comes from. It means to me: willing to see, and to see good in all we see, willing to believe (to see the divine in all we see), willing to celebrate, willing to help, willing to share. It is a active seeing…a willful seeing…a vision that celebrates. The Willing Eye.
So it is with this photograph of the rapids on the Batson River. It is seen with The Willing Eye…and if fills my whole being with light…as I can only hope it does yours. Happy Sunday!
Chipper on the edge!
Chipmunk. Timber Point / Timber Island Trail, Rachel Carson NWR, Bidderford Pool, ME
The chipmunks were not as evident along Rachel Carson NWR’s Timber Island / Timber Point Trail on Saturday as they were in the fall. In the fall they were everywhere and everywhere active collecting acorns. On Saturday I only caught one out in plain sight, and he was so startled that he clung frozen to the side of the tree where I first saw him for several moments…hanging on, as they say, by his toenails. 🙂
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 400 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Angel Wings (Fringed Polygala)
Fringed Polygala, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
We are having a very odd spring. There were no Angle Wings (Fringed Polygala) along the trail at Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters, where they are generally common…and yet, the very next day, the woods at Laudholm Farm were full of them. The two spots are separated by less than a mile as the crow flies. I can think of no good reason to explain why they would be in bloom one place and not the other…but that is nature…ever mysterious 🙂
Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode at 95mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom. Cropped for scale.
Jack-in-the-pulpit in the wild! Happy Sunday.
Jack-in-the-pulpit, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
My photographer friend Robert, who lives in Australia, liked yesterday’s picture of a Pink Lady Slipper, because it was a chance to see a plant he only sees “caged” (his word) growing in its natural habitat. Until yesterday, though it is native to Maine, I had only ever seen the Jack-in-the-pulpit, so to speak, in “captivity”…at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay Maine, and at Wild Gardens of Acadia at Sieur de Mont Springs in Acadia National Park. You can imagine my surprise, and delight, when I looked down off the edge of the boardwalk yesterday at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm in Wells Maine and caught sight of the unmistakable hood of a Jack-in-the-pulpit. It was almost completely buried in its own foliage, and in the foliage of other plants growing with it. Further investigation showed 4 Jack-in-the-pulpit plants (also called bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip, American wake robin, or wild turnip) in a cluster within a foot of the boardwalk. I kept my eye peeled, and found another cluster of five plants, similarly placed, before I came to the end of the long boardwalk. The second cluster, two of which are shown above, were younger, with the leaves not completely unfolded and the hood stripped inside and out and lower on the jack. The first cluster were mature plants, fully flowered with the hood completely green on the outside and drying at little at the tip.
Jack-in-the-pulpit
According to the wiki article, the Jack is actually covered in tiny, both male and female, flowers. The male flowers on any one plant dominate early and then die, leaving more female flowers, so the plant is not self pollinating. I also read that it takes 3 years for the plant to mature enough to flower for the first time, so these Jacks have been growing beside the boardwalk for at least that long. There is more in the wiki, and as you might suspect from some of the alternate names, the tuber of the plant is edible…and has been used in traditional herbal medicine.
Finding a something new to me in nature always delights me. To know that I have walked by these plants for at least 3 years, and to have finely “chanced” on them, is simply wonderful…so wonderful that I totally reject the notion that there was any “chance” involved. I could so easily have walked by them again this year. To have found them is a gift outright, an undeserved and unearned gift, the very definition of a blessing. And “wonderful” too in the literal sense of the word…filling me with wonder…with that sense of awe at the beauty of nature and the love of the creator. That they are there is wonderful…to have found them, to have been lead to glance down just at the right second, is awesome! And then to be rewarded with a second cluster…such love!
And now I get to share them with you! How awesome is that? Happy Sunday!
All photos Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode. 80-100mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom and the panel assembled in Coolage.