Posts in Category: meadow
Laudholm Farms with Sky, Wells ME
This was going on two weeks ago now. Hurricane Sandy did for most of the remaining leaves on Monday, so it would look a little different today. They mowed the field in the foreground for the first time I can remember, at least in the fall, so it is an unusual view of the buildings at Laudholm Farms in several ways.
This is an in-camera HDR from the Canon SX50HS. The University of New Hampshire has placed a “picture post” at the spot where I am standing as part of an ongoing 360 degree panorama project they are running. The idea is to put your camera on the post, lined up with the guides, take 8 images while rotating around the post, and then upload them to their picturepost site. You can find out all about the picture post project and see some of the results at the picturepost site. I just used the picturepost as a tripod for the HDR. As you might imagine I have several different seasonal variations on this shot.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Mt. Rainier from above Sunrise. Panorama
Getting out of the car at Sunrise Lodge, with the view across the valley to Rainier in all its glory is one of those awe inspiring moments that define what is to be really alive. And then you see the trails up through the meadows to the ridge on the other side, and you know, if you are a photographer of any kind, that you have to get up there. It is not a bad climb, even for my 65 year old lungs and knees. I just go slow. and it was everything I imagined it to be.
This is a two shot panorama, handheld and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements. To do it justice you need to click on it to see it full width in the lightbox.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Two 24mm equivalent field of view shots. f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Stitched as above. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
10/17/2011: Again the Water Meadow
This is one of my favorite views along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. Yesterday was the highest tide I have seen this year and the meadow was brim full…standing water under much of the grass…shore birds taking refuge in the highest pools. Fall foliage is just about past, but there is still a touch of color. But of course it is the sky and the reflection in the stream that makes the image.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast. –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/1/2011: Rainy Day Water Meadow
There are only two things to do with a rainy Saturday in Maine: 1) Stay inside and look at sunny pictures taken on other days…the antidote method, or 2) Go outside and find some good rainy images…the embrace the day method. Last Saturday I chose embracure. (It remains to see what I will choose today :), but posting this image puts me already on the path to an embrace.)
This is a watery marsh/meadow that I have imaged many times over the past few years, just off the Kennebunk Bridle Path. In this shot I really like the swirl of the foreground grasses in their first fall brown and what the light is doing in the trees along the edge…all under that moody sky. Not a high energy shot, but one that I find I can look at for quite a while without running out of content.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22mm equivalent field of view, Backlight/HDR mode. Nominal exposure f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160 (nominal as the image is an in-camera tone mapped series of images.)
I applied the Coolpix’s in-camera Quick Retouch before uploading to my laptop, and then final processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/6/2011: And with Goldenrod all along.
My last several posts have been from the Kennebunk Bridle Path. This accidental water meadow is on the north side of Route 9. It may, in fact, back in the era of salt-farms (decreasing through the early 1800s) have been an intentional water meadow for salt-hay. Hard to tell along the banks of Southern Maine’s tidal rivers. Certainly the meadow/marshes and drainage ditches on the other side of 9 have a very intentional look about them.
I like the way the Goldenrod has colonized the immediate banks of the stream to form a boarder on its twisting path. I have many wide angle shots of this meadow, but here I zoomed in to emphasize the stream and its yellow boarder.
Here it is, the same day, with the sky as a primary interest.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 53mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 2) 23mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
12/4/2010: Bosque morning
Time for some straight up Bosque del Apache scenery. Mid-morning layered landscape HDR. The temporarily flooded fields are a Bosque feature, a way of managing where the geese and cranes feed. The geese, in particular, love to feed on the seeds and roots that flooding makes available. In this case either the field was newly flooded and the geese had not discovered it yet, or it was flooded long enough already that the geese had eaten everything they could find. Still…it adds the mirror layer to the landscape.
Three exposure HDR, Canon SX20IS at about 70mm equivalent, autobracketed around –2/3 EV exposure compensation, assembled in Photomatix Pro using the Lightroom plugin and final processed in Lightroom.
8/12/2010
Water Meadow
Along the Mousam River near its mouth, several little streams come in from the north, generally winding, as this one does, through an open area of tidal mash. These meadows were actually a big attraction for early settlers, who put cattle and sheep on them, and even harvested the hay. They are the reason for the salt water farms of colonial times.
Of course my interest in them is that they remain rich in both plant diversity and wildlife. Many, like this one, are protected by one conservation organization or another. They are one of my favorite summer haunts (despite the mosquitoes!).
This is another Canon SX20IS and Photomatix HDR. Two exposures, at full 28mm wide angle equivalent, one dialed down on the Exposure Compensation dial for the sky, and one dialed up for the foreground. Combined in Photomatix using the Enhanced Detail: Tone Mapping Mode with tweaked controls. Final processing in Lightroom for sharpness, Clarity, Vibrance, and Blackpoint (slightly right). Cropped at the top to eliminate some clouds that were moving too fast for the two exposure technique (they looked shadowed…almost 3D…when over-laid in Photomatix). The sky, of course, makes it (along with the bit of reflection in the stream)! Look at it large on Wide Eyed In Wonder.
From Around Home 2010.
6/20/2010
Lupine Love
Happy Sunday! Again this year on my way up to Acadia I could not miss the masses of Lupine growing on banks along the interstate, and again, I determined to find a good stand in Acadia to photograph. The trick is not fining them…they are all over Mount Desert Island…the trick is finding them when they are not obliviously in someone’s yard, where it would be awkward at best to get out of the car to spend any time photographing them. Of course I need a good background too. Last year’s stand, near Southwest Harbor, was pretty sparse (I checked), but I found this field of them just off Route 3, near my motel. Good enough!
Of course, Lupine is not native to New England, or even to the Americas. [Note: further research, prompted by some viewer comments, yields the fact that while the Lupines most common in New England are not native to New England, they are native to North America. The Blue-pod Lupine, which is what you see in these tall mass stands generally, was introduced from the Northwest. Other cultivars have escaped from gardens, and there has been some inevitable cross-breeding. There is also a Wild Lupine, considerably shorter on the average, which is native to New England.] There is a children’s book about the lady who actually, like Johnny Appleseed, is responsible for their proliferation in Maine and adjoining states. IMHO we owe her a debt of gratitude. They are strikingly beautiful in the spring.
Subdued afternoon light on an overcast day. Hence the white sky, but otherwise perfect for photographing the color and the details of this striking plant.
Canon SX20IS. 1) 28mm equivalent @ f5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160, 2) 215 mm @ f5.6 @ 1/250 @ ISO 125, 3) 28mm and Super-macro @ f5.6 @ 1/800 @ ISO 160. I was experimenting with aperture preferred.
Similar treatment for all in Lightroom. Recovery for the sky (though it did not help much), Fill Light and Blackpoint just barely right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Acadia 2010.
6/14/2010
Yearling among Flowers
This looks to me to be a late season fawn from last year. It was feeding with two adult female Whitetails, one of which was obviously pregnant.
There is a story behind the images. I was 90 minutes early for a bird walk I was coleading last Saturday at the Acadia Birding Festival in Acadia National Park (misread the schedule), so I shouldered my digiscoping rig and was hiking along the shoulder of the road between the Seawall proper and the Seawall Campground entrance, looking for cooperative birds. A huge, industrial scale, white dump truck approached at speed, and hit is hydraulic breaks hard just as it came parallel with me. It literally skidded to a stop about 100 feet beyond me, and this huge hairy arm dropped from the driver’s window, up there 10 feet in the air in the cab, and snapped its fingers. I could see the driver looking at me in his rear view mirror. He was a dump truck driver: sleeveless tee, a bit tattered and smudged, beard and a fringe of longish hair around a bald plate. Big as his truck and just as tough. He snapped his fingers again, and, getting impatient, jammed his truck into reverse and started back. I hustled over.
“Hay,” he said, “There’s deer in the field about 200 yards down the road on the left, right out in the open. Great shot!” And he grinned and nodded. “Well thank you,” I said, and he jammed into first and rumbled on.
Humm? Deer? Whitetails would be nice, but, honestly, what were chances of 1) their still being visible when I got there, and 2) their not running off as soon as they saw me?
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I hurried down the road, trying to remember where the first open meadow was, and wondering if I would be able to see the same deer from road level he could see from 10 feet up in his cab? Turned out to be closer to 400 yards, but eventually I came up to an obvious meadow opening on the left. I could not see any deer from the angle I had. I crossed the road and edged up to the last blocking shrub and peaked around into the meadow.
And, of course, as you can guess from the images above, there they were: the two adults and this obvious yearling, the two adults together and this guy ranging ahead of them further into the back of the meadow.
So, down tripod, up scope, focus, camera in, camera on, zoom to eliminate vignetting and take the first shot. (Not one of the ones above 🙂 ) I was able to work the three deer for 20-30 minutes, taking hundreds of exposures. The light was great: gentle under light cloud cover. When I had enough to think I might have some keepers (my rule is 10 exposures for every keeper you hope for) I backed away and left them to their feeding. When I passed in the car 30 minutes later they were gone.
So, I want, right here, to thank that dump truck driver for the extraordinary kindness of stopping his rig to tell me about the deer he had just seen. I never would have known.
Canon SD1400IS behind the zoom eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 65FL for an equivalent focal length of about 2200mm (first two) and 3400mm (last one). Exif f5.9 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160 and 200. Real f-stop closer to f12 (based on the scope).
In Lightroom 3, Fill Light and Blackpoint considerably right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Narrow Edges preset. Auto White-balance to remove yellow cast.
And, once more time. Thank you.
6/5/2010
Plantain
Laudholm Farm manages old farm lands, as you might guess from the name, and the open meadows are home to all kinds of plants…both native and foreign. This is English Plantain, which is a weed in a yard, but part of a natural and nutritious mix of plants in a meadow. Song-birds eat the seeds (it is actually grown commercially for cage bird feed). Rabbits love the leaves. One man’s weed is another man’s treasure.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. Lens-hood touching the stem and the flowers inside. F4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
And here is another view.
This one at F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. This one, to me, has a feel of the open prairies…though it is only a hill top meadow in New England.
Both processed in Lightroom using my standard touch of Recovery, Fill Light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen landscape preset.
From Laudholm Farms.