Posts in Category: Lake Erie
So much depends on the red fire-plug…
Lakeside Chautauqua maintains a slightly Victorian air, in part, because residents take pains with paint and plantings to make it so. You may know the Chautauqua movement from history lessons, but few are aware that there are still two in full swing: the original in Chautauqua NY, and this one in Lakeside OH. Lakeside offers a full summer program of art, music, and cultural enrichment, and its thousands of privately owned homes and cottages are rarely empty for more than a day during the season.
We are here for the Midwest Birding Symposium, an every other year event that draws pretty much the full who’s who of the birding world and thousands of interested birders to Lakeside for several days of workshops and lectures and networking 🙂
I could not resist this little snippet of the Victorian air. The house and the flowers would have been enough but the bright red fire hydrant makes it a mandatory shot. (And perhaps you recognize the oblique reference to the poem by William Carlos Williams in the title.)
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone Mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Google Nexus 7.
9/27/2011: Lakeside vignettes…
Before it drifts too far into the past, I want to share a few last shots from Lakeside Ohio. Lakeside is a closed community of summer homes, a Chautauqua…and the Lakeside Owner’s Association holds members to a high standard of appearance. Chautauqua, from the name of the first site in Upstate New York, was a Christian Adult Education movement, emphasizing the crafts, music, and the fine arts…summer assemblies, often in tents…at its height from the 1880s through the 1920s. In a few locations summer communities grew up around the Chautauqua, and these have endured. In fact, there are six well recognized Chautauqua sites, including the original, that carry on the tradition, and Lakeside Ohio is among the most vibrant. An additional seven long running summer education programs trace their roots to the Chautauqua movement.
These shots are from a single street a the end of the green, just beyond the miniature golf course inside its white board fence. All very quaint and elegant. And colorful.
I used the zoom to frame details, textures, color contrast, etc.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 1) 215mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. 2) 76mm equivalent, f4.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped for composition.
9/23/2011: Great Blue Portraits
There is nothing so photogenic as a great blue heron…or at least no bird that poses so well! For a digiscoper, trying to capture images through the eyepiece of a spotting scope, that is half the battle. These shots are from a dull, overcast morning in Ohio, a few hundred yards back from the shore of Lake Erie, in the ponds at East Harbor State Park near Port Clinton. I am still learning to use the Nikon Coolpix P300 in this application, and I had a new adapter for the scope as well…so I needed a bird that would sit. I took maybe 35 images of this bird, slowly working my way closer, before the demands of the day pulled me away. It was still sitting where I found it when I left.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) about 4500mm equivalent field of view, 1/30th @ ISO 400, f12 effective (limited by the scope), 2) 1050mm equivalent, 1/80th @ ISO 400, f4.5 effective (limited by the camera).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/20/2011: Summer’s Gone :(
This is a case where the built in HDR on the Nikon Coolpix actually worked! I took the shot without, and of course, in this lighting, the tree went black and the clouds went featureless white. The built in HDR produced a result that was a bit flat, but toning up in Lightroom produced a good rendering of the range of the scene.
The racks of resting boats at the Lakeside Sailing Club and School testify to the lateness of the season, and the tree and building provide a compositional frame.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 (nominal) @ 1/1000th (nominal…this is the sum of several exposures), @ ISO 160. Backlight HDR mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness, with special attention to the intensity of the scene.
9/18/2011: Late Lake Erie Dawn: Happy Sunday
I went out early yesterday to see if I could find some birds and maybe digiscope a few before the Midwest Birding Symposium vendor area opened. Birds were in fact somewhat scarce, at least where I was, but I got to East Harbor State Park and the shore of Lake Erie just as the sun made its first brave attempt to break the hold of the overcast. Though it was well past actual sunrise, the horizon was streaked with orange, and contrasted sharply with the cold grey waves of the lake.
I took a number of shots. These three move from a wide angle view to zoom in on the details of the dawn.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm, 100mm, and 300mm equivalent fields of view. ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: that bit of warm light forcing its way under the edge of the solid cap of cloud and out over the cold waves speaks of hope and the irrepressable surge of day. The light of life has come into the world and the darkness can not extinguish it, as John wrote, thinking of that other light of the world…and mornings like this it is that much easier to believe. Happy Sunday!
9/16/2011: Lake Erie Morning
The Midwest Birding Symposium is at Lakeside Ohio and, as you might guess from the name, it is right on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio’s resort belt. I always forget that Lake Erie is a major body of water…an inland sea in fact. The “lake” label obscures the actual nature of the experience. It is, in my experience, a pretty wild stretch of inland sea at that…with its own weather even.
A front was passing yesterday morning as I was headed out from Lakeside to Magee Marsh and Ottawa NWR, and I had to run down to the lake to catch a bit off the action before getting in the car for the drive. Amazing waves and clouds.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. 1) f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 2) f3.4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/1/2011: Rose-breasted Grosbeak, wings on wednesday
As a birder, I will admit that I think almost all birds are beautiful…as in the eye of the beholder if nothing else…but I find the Rose-breasted Grosbeak particularly striking. This Grosbeak, incidentally, shows exactly what Magee Marsh is all about. Magee is a major stop-over for birds waiting for favorable winds to cross Lake Erie in Ohio. They stop there to fuel up, and the rich habitat of the mid-west spring provides the fuel. Every bird you see there is actively feeding (note the seeds on that massive beak)…even those who are not moving on in the morning…since the residents are busy at nest building and also need their energy.
I like this shot, even-though the bird is mostly obscured. It is pretty much what most birders get to see of most birds they encounter in a woodland setting. However I did manage a few full frontal portraits of Rose-breasted Grosbeak while at Magee as well.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) f5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. User selected Flight and Action program.
User Flight and Action mode:
full size (12mp)
fine image quality
8 fps for 5 frames
center and continuous focus
center metering
auto ISO and a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 second
hybrid Vibration Reduction
LCD off
zoom fully extended (810mm equivalent)
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/25/2009
The Great Blue Heron and the Great Big Fish
Immature Great Blue Heron with a Great Big Fish at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in Ohio. I wanted to catch the heron with the fish lifted its full length off the ground (it could not lift it any higher than it is in this image), and the new Zeiss PhotoScope made it possible. The bird is a hundred yards or more across a pond, with a good deal of heat motion in the air, so I am pretty happy with these results.
Zeiss Photoscope at 1800mm (35mm equivalent). F5.7 @ 1/150 @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
Blackpoint to the right in Lightroom. Added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscapes preset.
I should say that the imaging software in the PhotoScope is still under active development…though near final (we hope). The product is not yet on the market…due in late October.
This clip which shows more of the action of the GBHeron and GBFish was taken with a small Sanyo HD camcorder hand-held behind the eyepiece of the PhotoScope.
9/19/2009
Sailing at Lakeside
The season is over at Lakeside, and the little boats idle, the dock empty, under a big Lake Erie sky. This is about shape and color: one of several attempts at this row of boats, with the clouds massed on the horizon as background.
Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the sky, added Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel, Sharpen landscapes preset. I might, if in the mood someday, go in with Photoshop and clone out the bare branches at the top, leaving only the leafy ones.
From Lakeside OH.
9/18/2009
View from Marblehead Light
Lake Erie was showing a good chop on my visit to Marblehead. Truly grey water. Massive clouds. Stick a little bit of tree in one corner for scale, and you have an interesting (imho) lakescape.
Sony DCS H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Recovery in Lightroom to pull back the clouds and sky. Added Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel. Blackpoint just to the right. A touch Fill Light for the tree.
From Lakeside OH.