Posts in Category: marsh
Snowy Stare
Okay, you have your icy stares of some repute…but there is nothing like the snowy stare of the Snowy Owl. Despite the photographs you see, those yellow eyes are not seen often in the field. Most of most days, at least here in the southland in this invasion winter, the Snowy sits with its eyes hooded staring out at the world through a thin crack…if not with eyes completely closed. Certainly in the best light for photography, the Owl is likely to have its eyes tight shut. 🙂
Still, patience has its rewards, and if you spend enough time with a Snowy Owl, you will catch it with its eyes open and glaring yellow. In flight shots of course the eyes are always open…and late in the day, when the sun sinks low to the horizon, the Owls open up to begin hunting. This late afternoon/early evening was the first time I have caught our local Snowy Owl in a period of relative activity. You might have seen the flight shots posted a few days ago.
Even when sitting, this day the Owl had its eyes pretty much wide open…open enough to appreciate the signature Snowy Stare.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent plus the 2x digital tele-converter built into the E-M10 for 1200mm equivalent. ISO 200 @ 1/1250th @ f11. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Shy Snowy (not really). Happy Sunday!
People I meet at our local (private) beach have been telling me for weeks that they are seeing a Snowy Owl there…in the marsh where Back Creek meets the Mousam River behind the dunes. I have been there 30 times tlooking…but yesterday morning, while out testing a new camera, there it was, sitting in the very tip-top of a tall pine just at the land-side edge of the marsh. This Digiscoped image makes the bird look shy…but it was anything but…it sat there for an hour while I took, oh, maybe, 500 exposures with 3 cameras…and it was still there an hour later when I brought my wife back to the beach on the chance of her seeing it. During that time it fought off two attacks by crows…so it was firmly perched. I went back in late afternoon to see if I could see it fly…but it was, by then, no where to be seen.
ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 15-56x Vario eyepiece. Digidapter for ZEISS. Canon SD320HS camera. ISO 400 @ 1/640th. This is totally pushing the limits of what can be done photographically. Doing the math, it was shot at over 5500mm equivalent field of view at an effective aperture of f16. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Though: The camera I was testing is a new purchase, bought in anticipation of my first ever, and quite possibly once-in-a-lifetime, trip to Africa. Odd how that works. My wife and I were talking about things that are on my bucket-list…things I would like to do in my remaining time on the planet. Going to Africa is high on that list, but I had pretty much resigned myself to Africa never happening. Only a number of days later I found out that I will be “required” to go on a birding safari to Kenya in June as part of my work for ZEISS. Required. Paid to do so. Africa!
It is like the Snowy Owl in many ways. I went looking for it at the beach often since hearing it was hanging out there…and found it when I was not looking for it at all. In fact I had finished my testing and was literally had the door of the car open to depart when I spotted the Owl in the tree on one last sweep.
How can I feel anything but blessed! How can I not be aware that there is someone, someone in charge, who cares…who loves me, and who delights in giving unexpected (and totally undeserved) gifts? The Owl is a gift…a grace…a blessing. The trip to Africa is…oh just whow!!…such a gift.
And the thing about gifts is that they do, indeed, keep on giving. I get to share the Snowy Owl with all of you. That increases the blessing. And, I have found over the last few days, the absolute best thing about the Africa trip is that I was given the privilege of inviting 12 others…of being the intermediate agent in bestowing the gift of an all-expenses-paid birding safari in Kenya…on 12 other people! How totally amazing is that? All I can say is Thank you times twelve, Thank you to the twelfth power! And then, I am going to get to share the experience with those 12 people. Better and better. Bester and bestest and bestalicious times 12 to the 12th power and onward toward infinity!
And, to top it all off, I get the perfect justification to buy another new camera! (And for this photo-geek that is not a minor blessing in its own right!)
Thank you God. Happy Sunday.
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.
Wild Chickadee.
We get Chickadees at our back deck feeders all the time. They are the most constant, the most faithful visitors, and they are incredibly bold. They will perch on one feeder while I am filling the other. And of course, I know the stories about people teaching them to eat out of their hands. It is easy to see how it might happen.
This is not, however, a feeder Chickadee…it is (or appears to be) a wild Chickadee…caught on a winter day in the wilds of the marshes beside the Mousam River, at least 1000 yards from the nearest feeder! Notice how much more handsome the wild variety is…how full of vim and vigor. Almost like the difference between a domestic dog and a wolf…there is that air of mystery…that sense of almost danger…that only the truly wild creatures possess. Yes, this is definitely a wild Chickadee. (Of course, when he, as he surely does, visits the feeders in the housing development that is just across the marsh, he certainly loses all that 🙁
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. ISO 640 @ 1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
I know there are folks out there who are totally immune to irony, so, just to ward off the well meant comments: just kidding!
Woodies in Company
This is another shot from the pool of mixed waders I had the privilege of observing at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge last week. As I mentioned in a few posts, I lost a good deal of my respect for Wood Storks on my visit to Gatorland in Orlando. At Gatorland the Storks have turned into the kind of panhandlers that make you uncomfortable on the streets of a major city. They walk right up on the boardwalks with the tourists, and are aggressive in their attempts to cage a handout. Out on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, in their natural habitat, surrounded by the other birds of the marsh, they are much more attractive…if the word attractive can in any way be applied to such a magnificently ugly bird! It is a case of their being so ugly they are beautiful, if you know what I mean.
Digiscoped with the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 15-56x Vario eyepiece. Digidapter for ZEISS. Canon SD320HS. ISO 160 @ 1/1000th. 1230mm equivalent field of view. f5 as determined by the camera. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver 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.
Three in a tree. Odd man out.
I could not resist “three in a tree”, but “odd man out” also seems too apt to pass up, so I used them both 🙂 This is Viera Wetlands (Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands) near Melbourne Florida, and we have, of course, two White Ibis and a Little Blue Heron. And a tree. And a curiously cloud-dappled sky, for that matter. Apart from the interesting birds, and bird behavior, the 4 elements against the sky make a pleasing composition. Or that is what I think.
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 125 @ 1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Late Winter Light Across the Marsh
Getting a new camera, in many ways, is like having new eyes…or at least like seeing all the familiar scenes once more as though they were new. (On the other hand, maybe I just buy too many cameras 🙂 I always like to have a new camera several days around home before I take it traveling, because shooting a few of my favorite scenes gives me the measure of the machine much more quickly than shooting thousands of images in less familiar surroundings. I have a few test shots I take with every new camera, and then a set of standard scenics. This week I am getting to know a Sony NEX 3NL-B, one of the compact mirror-less cameras with interchangeable lenses. I have been looking at them for a while, mostly because of the promised improvement in image quality that is supposed to come with the larger sensors…but most of the kit zooms that come with them are just not wide enough to satisfy, and most of the entry level models do not have an articulated LCD. And even the entry level models are just a bit too expensive to justify the experiment. The Sony came with a compact 16-50mm zoom (24-75mm equivalent field of view) and a filp out LCD…and Amazon had really good, one-day-only, deal on it. Like I say, maybe I just buy too many cameras!
This is one of of my standard test scenes…the view from the deck on the back side of the Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters trail, overlooking the final loops of Branch Brook before it joins the Merriland to become the Little River…the scene is never ordinary…and here it is the light that elevates it. The final rays of the low winter sun across the marsh…the contrasting cold shadows of the season and the ice on the brook…it is an ideal HDR subject, and indeed, I used some HDR processing in Snapseed to bring out the character of the scene. Still the Sony had to deliver the raw materials for Snapseed to work on…and it did that very well! I will write more extensively elsewhere on my conclusions as to the promised improvement in image quality…but suffice it to say here that I can see the difference in comparison shots with this camera and my Samsung Smart Camera WB800F…though one thing the exercise has demonstrated is just how well today’s small sensor compacts actually do most of the time (and the Samsung in particular). That said, I will definitely be keeping the Sony NEX, and it stands a good chance of completely displacing the Samsung as my day to day landscape and creative tool 🙂
Sony NEX 3NL-B, 16-50mm zoom at 24mm equivalent field of view. Superior Auto. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f13. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Fresh Snow and Early Morning Sun
With the little electric, very managable, snowblower in the basement, I find that my whole attitude toward this winter has changed. I can look forward to snowy days again. 🙂 On Thursday we had 3-4 inches of fresh snow (4 in our yard). I cleared the drive in about 45 minutes just before dark with energy to spare. So before breakfast the next morning, when the sun began to touch the tops of the trees in the yard, I was out the door with my camera. The early sun on the fresh snow was exceptionally beautiful. The new snow was highly textured. It had fallen near the end in huge flakes, and the cold in the night had preserved, and even accentuated the ragged surface. Behind the beach here, there was a layer of frost added to the snow. I have photographed this bit of old snow fence…actually, it was not all that old when I started photographing it…in various seasons and weathers…but, of course, it has its true character only in the snow.
The Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Smart Auto did an exceptional job of exposure here, and processing in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 brought out the full range of light and shadow. ISO 100 @ 1/750th @ f3.9. 95mm equivalent field of view. Cropped slightly at the top for composition.