Posts in Category: landscape
Beach Roses in the view
The beach roses (Rugosa Rose) are in bloom in southern Maine. Beach Rose is an invasive species, originally from the Asia, that was imported and planted to stabilize dunes all along the Atlantic coast. You see it everywhere through most of the summer here in Maine. The flowers develop into Rose Hips…and are made, not so much in Maine, but in other Atlantic states, into a jam or jelly. They do make a great foreground for the skies of June…or this June at any rate. We have had a lot of these days lately. iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm lens. Auto with intelligent HDR turned on. Processed in Apple Photos.
Wild Iris at the Pond
I photograph this scene almost every year…some years I have been traveling and missed Iris season altogether, and some years I just get the timing off, but most years I manage at least one stop by the little pond along Rt. 9 between the end of Brown Street and the Wells Town line, while the Iris is in bloom. Some years I hit it on a sunny day with amazing clouds behind the trees. Some years, like this one, the sky is mostly overcast and the light subdued. It is always beautiful. iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm equivalent lens. Processed in Apple Photos.
Not a bleak mid-winter
We will take a break, this winter Sunday, from our ongoing converge of the birds and nature of Costa Rica to bring you this special report from snowy southern Maine. We have not had all that much snow yet this winter and, to be honest, a nice gentle 8 inch fall is just what we needed to make the cold and damp feel worth it all. (It won’t last. A wintery mix is predicted for today, without much accumulation.) Still, I got out yesterday as far as Laudholm Farms to find a nice snowy scene. Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent. Program mode with auto HDR. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent exposure: ISO 100 @ f5 @ 1/1000th.
That birch…
This might be another story about Japanese Barberry, which provides the red understory here, but the photo is really about the birch tree…which I have photographed in every season. The ultra-wide lens makes it look less substantial than it is in person. It is s a big birch tree, and standing alone in the middle of a mostly maple forest at Laudholm Farms as it does, it is very impressive. iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos.
Little River Marsh
This is looking across from the Little River Marsh overlook at Laudholm Farms toward the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, on a late fall day. iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos.
Flood
We had a lot of rain with this last storm. The neighbor’s yard had a small pond in it, which I have not seen in at least 10 years, the pond along Route 9 south of Brown Street was over its banks, which I have never seen before, and, as you see from the photo, the Branch Brook Marsh right on the Wells Town line was completely under water…and though I don’t have a photo of the other side of the road, it was completely flooded as well, as far as you could see out toward the sea. That is a lot of water. In this shot, which is a short sweep panorama with the iPhone SE and the Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens, if you did not know better you would think you were looking at a lake. The water is only inches, a foot at most, deep over the matted grasses of the marsh. 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. )
Autumn over marsh
If you stand on the bench at the Webhannet Marsh overlook at Laudholm Farms, in the fall, you can see over the reeds to the border of trees in their full autumn splendor. Add a spectacular October sky and there you go! iPhone SE with Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR engaged. Processed in Apple Photos.
The ledges…
Another celebration of autumn in Southern Maine. The ledges on the Batson River at Emmon’s Preserve in Kennebunkport. The low flow of water has the leaves to contend with as well as gravity. iPhone SE with the Sirui 18mm ultra-wide lens. Apple Camera app with Smart HDR. Processed in Apple Photos.