Posts in Category: hdr
Ah the Winter Shore
We are expecting 8-12 inches of fresh snow, and up to a quarter inch of ice, in the next 24 hours, so I went out yesterday while the sun was shining on a short photo-prowl. The light has changed over the past week. There is more warmth in the sun, and it does interesting things with the snow. Here, where the wind off the sea has thined and sculpted what was about 4 inches of fresh snow on Monday, the contrast with the warm tones of the exposed rock makes a striking composition. The clouds over the sea complete the picture. I walked out along Gouch’s point through drifts in my winter Crocs to get the shot, but it was worth a slightly damp ride home.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 24mm equivalent. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f16. Processed in Snapseed for HDR effect on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Fine tuned in Photo Editor by dev.macgyver.
Back Creek with Fresh Snow
Fresh snow is something we have had a lot of this winter. I think dirty, worn snow is one of the least attractive sights (all things being relative of course) that you can see. So far this winter, we have not had to put up with it long. Just about when things are getting ugly, we get 4-14 inches of new snow to make the landscape winter-beautiful again. And several of those snowfalls have been clingy enough to frost the pines, in classic northern winter fashion.
The only trouble, photographically speaking, is that the piles of snow make accessing the likely places for photography more and more difficult. Trails are hazardous, with layers of compacted snow and ice under the new cover. Parking at the places I like to go in the summer is not plowed out. Etc. So I find myself returning to the same winter scenes over and over again…simply because I can get there. 🙂
Back Creek, where it meets the Mousam River, just a few hundred yards from the ocean is one of them. It has open marsh for snow fields, great pines to be frosted, blue reflective water, and an expanse of open sky. These elements can almost always be arranged into a pleasing composition…in almost any weather, including, of course, fresh snow.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 52mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f16. Processed for mild HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Winter Marsh at High Tide
My weekend photo-prowl took me along the Kennebunk Bridle Path at high tide on a winter’s day. These are two panoramas taken, back to back, from the bridge over this unnamed little stream a few hundred yards from where it flows into the Mousam River. Each image stands on its own as effective panorama of an interesting and atmospheric winter scene. Stacked one on top of the other, as they are here, I am hoping it truly evokes the place and time.
I am still experimenting with the Sony NEX 3NL’s implementation of sweep panorama. Because the Sony has a electro-mechanical shutter and I cut my sweep panorama teeth, so to speak, on cameras with electronic shutters, I am having a bit of learning curve. Electronic shutter cameras (with smaller sensors) use the rolling shutter from the video function to “paint” the image to memory one line at at time. The operation is very smooth…just as though you were panning a video across the scene. The Sony is more like taking a series of photos which then have to be to stitched in camera to form the panorama. The shutter goes kachunk, kachunk, kachunk all the way across the pan. It is somewhat disconcerting, but now that I have had some practice, I can not argue with the resluts. The files are huge and the detail is awesome!
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom, at 24mm equivalent, in Sweep Panorama mode. Both images processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 and then assembled in Pixlr Express.
Winter Tide on the Marsh. Happy Sunday!
Yesterday, for my Saturday morning photo-prowl, I went down by the river, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where I have not been all winter. It is still snow and ice covered, but between people walking dogs and sublimation of the snow, it is quite passible…you just have to walk carefully with a mind to the slippery patches. I found all kinds of interesting little bits to photograph in the worn snow and lacy ice, but the winter vistas across a particularly high tide on the marsh also caught my eye. I am still experimenting with the Sony NEX 3NL to see what I can do with basic exposures in Snapseed. This was shot in Superior Auto, and then processed as an HDR Scene in Snapseed. The image is really all about the light on the water…from its power to penetrate to the texture of the flooded marsh grass in the foreground, to the crisp reflections of the trees in the mid. And I like the level of detail in the trees and buildings and the way the clouds are brushed across the sky. It is a humble scene…nothing grand or showy…but compelling, I think, none the less.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom @ 25.5mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f16. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought: After a week in Florida, surrounded by some of the most amazing birds and palm-studded, exotic landscapes, it was just a bit of a challenge to return home to Maine, where we are in the dirty, old compressed snow phase of winter. Temperatures are still too cold to be outside for long, and certainly not at all without bundling up. And it is, on the face of it, so uninspiring. Home, and glad to be there, but it took most of a week to get me out the door to find something to photograph in this dregs of winter landscape.
Of course, once out there (and properly equipped with hat and gloves, fur-lined Crocs, long-johns and fleece vest under my coat and pants) I found my inspiration right where it always is…just behind my eyes, and waiting for the least little thing in the landscape to let it out. Yesterday it was exactly the subtle details of weathered snow and ice that I just disparaged that did the trick…along with the crisp light of a sun that has definitely turned the corner toward spring, flooding a flood-tide landscape with chunks of floating ice.
The thing about inspiration is: it is never in the landscape you find yourself in…it is not even in the self you find yourself to be…it is in the act..whatever action is your way (and it could be paint, or pencil, or poetry, or piano…or dance, or macrame as easily as photography). Inspiration is in the doing.
I sometimes (my best times) see the universe as this great flood of living creative engery, working itself out in time and space and matter…working itself out lovingly in all that is. There is personality there, intelligence, intent, a unending will for good, a love that will not be denied. There is artistry there. And I know that by grace I am, not just born, but twice born, to be a part, to play a part, to create a part of what is being so lovingly expressed. When I act, that life acts in me. It is in-sprit-ation after all. The breath of life, breathing in me, whenever I decide to do. It is easier to remember when I have a camera in my hand…not so easy when I am selling binoculars, or dealing with the corporate tangle, or blowing snow in the driveway…but it is no less true. Inspiration is in the doing.
I am thankful, then, that when I forget too long, I can take up my camera and be reminded. No matter how apparently uninspiring is the landscape of my life.
The Poinsettia that ate the kitchen :-)
So, I was looking through the manual for my Sony NEX 3NL the other day (I know, it diminishes my manliness to admit to looking at the instructions, but I am old enough not to care anymore…when I want to know something I do resort to the manuals!), when I came across the HDR Painting Mode.
What?
Yup, my new camera will automatically produce the over-the-top, over-cooked, surreal, badly done HDR effect…just set it and forget it 🙂 So of course I had to try it. I grabbed the camera and went in search of a suitable subect. It was 5 degrees outside (or something equally dire) so my search was limited to the insides of the house. I found this Poinsettia in the kitchen. I had seen it there before of course. It was there when I got back from my week in Florida, dominating the corner of the kitchen and blocking a good portion of the sliding glass door. As you might expect, it has a story. It was rescued from the Christmas church decorations when it’s time as a decoration was up, and brought home by a family we know. It outgrew their kitchen. They still have kids in the house and need the space, so my wife took it off their hands, rather than seeing it end it’s life at the local landfill. She is kind that way. And besides, our kids are now all exploring life elsewhere, and we do, presumably, have room for a giant Poinsettia in the kitchen.
So I put the camera on HDR Painting Effect and shot the Poinsettia. I tweaked the image somewhat in Snapseed, but this is basically what it looks like…over-the-top, over-cooked, surrealish paintingish. And automatic too! But it is, I think, kind of interesting for all that. I like the crazy mix of colors here (the blue milk carton really makes it), the patterns in the snow and ice left on the deck outside the window, and the texture of the faux-wood floor, and the angles of the chair. It might not work as a photograph…but as an image it maybe has something to say for itself. 🙂
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
I do suppose I will wake one morning to find that it has completely swallowed that corner of the kitchen…but, all things considered, I can’t consign it to an ignoble death by landfill either. 🙂
(And now we return you to your regularly scheduled program of nature photos.)
Handsome Couple
Yesterday, when we made one last visit to Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands in Melbourne (aka Viera Wetlands, in the rain, as it would happen)…this pair of Great Blue Herons had the nest all built and were actively mating. The light was a challenge for digiscoping, but I managed a whole sequence of mating behaviour. This is, clearly, the stand and stare phase. Which is followed by bill clicking, which is followed by his mounting her…which is followed by making the new generation.
Digiscoped with the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL with the Canon SD320HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece using the Digidapter for ZEISS. ISO 400 @ 1/160th @ f5 (determined by the camera). Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using, among other things, the HDR Scene filter.
Fan Palm. Happy Sunday!
For us northerners (or at least for me), there is nothing more emblematic of being in the south-land, in the sub-tropics, in Mediterranean climes, than the Palm tree. I feel it in, say, San Diego, but it is especially evident (again, to me) in the forest understory of fan palms in the dappled winter sun filtered through live oak draped in hanging fern. (Of course, in the Southeastern sub-tropics, there is sweet tea too 🙂
This is an HDR treatment, to emphasize what the light is doing with the palm. Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 70mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought. I am always reminded, when I see palms, of the Palm Story Sunday, and how much of the visual imagery of the Bible we northerners can so early miss. The land where Jesus walked is Mediterranean, and as he was fully man, it had to have gotten into his thought. It certainly influenced the words and images the Gospel story is told in. How different would the Bible be, not in its essential truths, but in the telling, if it had been written in England…or, say, Maine? Not that it would matter. Still, the imagery of the Bible is an exotic to me, upstate New York born and bred, and New Englander by choice, as the Fan Palms in the understory, in the filtered winter light of a live oak glade.
Found in the Storm. Happy Sunday!
We got several inches of clingy wet snow yesterday. It fell in such huge flakes…clumps really…that all day I thought it would amount to more than it did in the end. Still, in a few moments I will get the snow blower out and clear the drive. 🙂 It is enough snow for that.
Anyway, yesterday afternoon I suited up, took my umbrella to keep the camera dry, and took a walk around the neighborhood looking for images. This is the last picture I took on my rounds. The shapes of the curling berry-whips are elegant enough in themselves to warrant an image…but I suspect I might not have seen them at all if not for the clinging snow. I danced around a bit, under my umbrella, looking for the right angle to catch the effect, and zoomed in out for the right framing. This one does it, I think.
Sony NEX 3NL-B with 16-50mm power zoom. Superior Auto. ISO 500 @ 1/160th @ f5.6. 75mm equivalent field of view. HDR processing in Snapseed on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 brought up the detail in the background water, and highlighted the texture of the snow.
And for the Sunday Thought: as I said above, I probably would have missed this photograph if not for the clinging snow…and even if I had see the elegant curls, it would have been a very different image without the contrast of the snow.
I was watching Bones last night, and Sealy, the main male character, and the religious foil for Dr. Brennan’s hyper-rationalism (if you don’t know the show, just the contrast there is enough to carry the point…religion vs rationalism) made a comment about God in the face of a serious cancer in a young colleague. Dr. Brennan, struggling to cope with her feelings about telling the young colleague that he has cancer, asks Sealy something to the effect of…”but doesn’t your belief in God imply that there is someone good behind what happens in this world?” Sealy replies along the lines of…”yes, but God tests us to see what we are made of…and so we will appreciate what we have.” That is pretty conventional wisdom in the Religious world.
I have to say, though, that it is, in my opinion, bad theolgy. When bad, and often genuinely undeserved, things happen to good people, I can not…I will not…believe that they are tests from God…or that God is trying to teach us to appreciate good. What does that say about who God is? I can not pretend to understand this, and even when I try to explain it to myself I get into snares and balls of contradiction…but my faith tells me that God is good…all good…with no shadow or turning. And that God is there with us, working for good, no matter what bad things happen to us in this world. The goodness of God is the ground of reality, and all that happens, happens against that ground.
It is not the snow in this image, in fact, that makes it…nor the berry whips of another season growing from the mulch under the snow…it is the light…always the light. To put it another way then, God’s good is the light in which we see all that happens to us. There will be shadow and shape and texture to our lives, things we consider good, and things we consider bad, beautiful peace and outrageous, senseless storm…but overall and through all and in all is the goodness of God, the light of this world. That is not, maybe, what religion says, and it may never satisfy a rationalist, but it is word of faith. God is good. God works for good in all things. End of story.
And yes, perhaps that truth is, like the beauty of berry whips, easiest to see in a storm.
Happy Sunday!
Broken Ice
Astronomical high tides corresponding with unusual cold and a foot of fresh snow produced some interesting effects along our more tidal streams. This is Branch Brook about a mile in a straight line, and maybe five miles if you follow the stream course, from the sea. The broken slab ice is a foot thick.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Winter Wood
This is another shot from my Friday exploration of the fresh snow fall. The loop of trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters never disappoints. On this day, the woods were still, and the fresh snow was over everything…even piled on the branches of the baby Pines and the sapling Furs. The early light of mid-winter, with its long shadows and touch of warmth, keeps the scene from being frigid…and an HDR treatment brings up the vivid green of the evergreens and the rich browns of the tree-trunks. This is a winter where life is very possible…a winter a human can still enjoy 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. ISO 100 @ 1/180th @ f3.2. 45mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.