Posts in Category: mountain
Volcano Junco
Volcano Junco: Almost every birder who visits the paramo in Costa Rica wants to see the Volcano Junco, and not because it is the only Junco in Costa Rica. Mostly they want to see it because it is one of the few birds exclusively limited to the area above tree line, so its range in Costa Rica is very limited. It is not endemic to Costa Rica, but almost. You can see it on the highest peaks in Northern Panama, just over the border. Fortunately it is very easy to see (unlike the other iconic bird of the paramo, the Timberline Wren which can be very elusive). If you drive up to the top of Cerro Buenavista and park under the first antennas you are likely to see one as soon as you get out of the vehicle…feeding on the ground or in the bushes around the buildings there. There have been days when I have visited that were so bad…cold, windy, and misty, with a visibility of just a few yards…that the Volcano Junco was the only bird we saw on the paramo, but we have always seen at least a few. Sony Rx10iv at 320mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f6.3 and 4.5 @ 1/1000th.
Sooty Thrush
Sooty Thrush: Cerro Buenavista, Talamanca Mountains, Costa Rica — Cerro Buenavista at 11,453 feet, is not the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, but it might well be the tallest you can drive to the top of. It is just off the Pan-Am Highway south of Los Quetzales National Park and the turn down into San Geraldo de Dota and its lodges. There is an array of antennas on top of the mountain, and the service road gives about the best access to the Paramo you could want. It is a regular stop on my trips to the Costa Rica, and I am sure, on many other birding trips as well. The Sooty Thrush is not restricted to the paramo (the short grass, bamboo, and shrub habitat above tree-line in the tropics) but it is common there (and down as low as the lower edge of the humid (cloud) forest). This one was waiting for us when we hopped out of the bus for our first “scenery” break on the mountain. On a clear day, you can see both the Caribbean and the Pacific from the top of Buenavista, and of course it is the place to look for Paramo speciality species like the Volcano Junco and Timberline Wren. Not that we were not delighted with our first bird there! Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 640 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
American Three-toed Woodpecker!
American Three-toed Woodpecker: Sandia Crest, New Mexico, USA — On our final day in New Mexico we visited our two daughters who live in Albuquerque, and since the smoke from the fires to the west was dense in the valley, we decided to do some birding, photography, and hiking up on Sandia Crest above the city and the smoke. We hiked out along the cliff-tops on the Sandia Crest Nature Trail and then turned back through the forest just behind the cliffs. There was considerable bird activity, and among several more “to be expected” species, we tracked down this pair (perhaps and adult and juvenile or a male and female) of woodpeckers. Three-toed Woodpeckers…a somewhat rare and hard to see bird that is known to haunt the Crest. The birds were a good way back in the forest from the trail, besides being partially obscured by foreground trees. I used the full 600mm equivalent of the Sony RX10iv’s zoom, along with my custom birds and wildlife modifications to Program mode…then cropped heavily…down to maybe 1/8th of the frame and processed using my normal birds and wildlife presets in Polarr. Then I saved the images and reopened them in Pixelmator Pro to use the Machine Learning super-resolution tool to increase the file size back up to about 2/3s of a full frame, then recropped to give me something like the equivalent of a 2400-3000mm lens on a full frame camera. I mean these birds were tiny in the original frames, and only really identifiable in binoculars. Finally I used the AI processing tool in Apple Photos to add a little presence. Given the challenges, I am pretty happy with the results. At least you can see the three toes in the first shot. 🙂 ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/640th.
Off Mount Agamenticus. Happy Columbus Day!
Mount Agamenticus facing north.
Mount Agamenticus, at a majestic 692 feet, would be barely a hill anywhere but on the southern coastal plain of Maine. In fact, it would take 5 Mt. As, stacked, to meet the British standard for a mountain, and Britain is not known for its tall mountains. Still, sitting where it is, with its far flung toes in the sea on one side, and the relative flat of the coastal plain all around it, it provides impressive views. On a clear day you can see Boston to the south, the coast from the Isles of Sholes off Portsmouth New Hampshire as far north as Cape Elizabeth, and the Presidential Range, including Mt. Washington, far to the north and west. I, along with several hundred other folks, was inspired to brave Route 1 Columbus Day weekend traffic and the twisty drive up the mountain to see what fall was looking like from Mt. A. When I left the mountain at about 11, there were cars circling the parking lot looking for a space. Two things to note in the sweep panorama above. 1) we do not have a lot of maples in Maine, and therefore not a lot of color, compared to, say, Vermont, and 2) southern Maine, the most populated area of the state, anywhere in-land from the coast, looks pretty much like unbroken forest as far as the eye can see. It is almost, even on Columbus Day, as though Columbus had never sailed…or that is the way it looks from the majestic heights of Mount Agamenticus (ignoring, of course, the parking lot). 🙂
Sony Alpha NEX 5t with 16-50mm zoom. Sweep panorama. Processed in Lightroom.
Mt. Agamenticus Fall
Presidential Range from Mt. Agamenticus
Mount Agamenticus is the tallest mountain (well, really more of a hill, if you have ever seen a real mountain) in Southern Maine. It is only 692 feet, but it is so close to the coast and sea level that can seem much taller. It is the center of a unique Conservation Area…a coalition of state, federal, county, town, and private land owners and managers to protect the largest track of unbroken coastal forest between Acadia National Park in Maine and the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. The old ski lodge on the summit now houses a learning center and a conservation center. Trail development is on-going, and Mt. A has become a major resource for those studying the ecology of coastal forests. It has the one of the largest concentrations of vernal pools, including several floating kettle bogs, in the US, and supports endangered species that depend of wet springs. Yesterday, as we near the peak of fall foliage in Southern Maine, there were 30 or more cars in the parking at the trail head at the foot of the mountain, and another 40 or more in the parking at the summit. This is on a Friday morning. Clearly it is a popular destination for recreation in Southern Maine.
Many of those people, like me, had driven up to see the foliage. Like I say, not quite peak, but this is a good demonstration of a point I made a few days ago. Our mixed forest in Maine runs heavily to Oak and Pine, with Maples, for the most part, scattered thinly. We don’t get the solid hillsides of color they get in Vermont. In the image above, those are the Presidential Range mountains in New Hampshire on the horizon.
This is a moderate telephoto shot: about 130mm equivalent field of view, to compress the bands of color and bring the mountains closer. It is also an in-camera HDR. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Bar Harbor from Cadillac Mountain
I am in Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, and the environs for a few days for the Acadia Birding Festival. This is the classic view from the top of Cadillac Mountain, out over Bar Harbor, Frenchman’s Bay, and the Porcupine Islands. This is the kind of view that draws millions of visitors a year to Acadia National Park and Mt. Desert Island.
To make the most of not totally clear day, I used a 3 exposure HDR, processed and tone mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR, with final tweaking in Lightroom.
Canon SX50HS. 24mm equivalent.
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.
3/26/2012: Mt. Washington and the Whites from the car.
My daughter Kelia drove on the way back from Burlington Vermont, a few weeks ago now, and I had the opportunity to enjoy the views of the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I also, for lack of a better option, tried some “through the windshield” photography. This is as close as we got to Mt. Washington, the highest point in the Northeast. I zoomed in to avoid the top of the steering wheel on one edge of the frame and the rearview mirror on the other, shooting just one side of the windshield mounted GPS, at an angle out the little bit of windshield right in front of the driver. Sometimes you just get a better image than you have any right to expect! I even like the car on the other side of the interstate, caught in dynamic tension entering the frame.
This is, of course, one of a sequence of shots taken at 4fps. I would watch for a gap in the median vegetation and the oncoming traffic, and shoot off a burst. This image is from one of several sequences attempting to catch Mt. Washington as it passed. The picturesque Vermont dairy farm was just a happy accident…or an example of my amazing skills…whichever.
I did crop slightly at the left, bottom and top to improve composition and to eliminate a distracting power station just out of the frame on the left, and the shadow of the rearview mirror at the top.
Shooting through windshield glass required some creative color correction…and I would like to take credit, but honestly just hitting the Auto Color Temperature button in Lightroom did the trick. I did adjust shadows and blackpoint more than for a normal image.
Canon SX40HS at 153mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Interestingly enough, there is probably no other vantage point where you could get this particular image of the farm against the mountains. You have to be in a passing car.
6/25/2011: Denver and the Front Range, panorama
You should click the image above to open it to the width of your monitor or screen. It is a thee shot panorama, each shot at 215mm equivalent field of view, with the tops of the Denver skyline on the left and the sweep of the Front Range mountains behind. I took it from the plateau above the city where they have developed the airport hotel complex, near Aurora. I caught a crow in passing, just as a bonus. I used the “assisted panorama” scene mode, hand held, on the Nikon Coolpix P500. After you take the first shot, about 1/3 of it is displayed on the left side of the finder, in transparent mode, so you can lay it directly over the live scene and line up the second shot, and so for the second, etc. for as many shots as you want to attempt. You need a program like the PhotoMerge function in PhotoShop Elements 9 to stitch the individual shots. PSE’s PhotoMerge is very sophisticated and does a excellent job of masking and tonal adjustment to make a seamless composition. It will even automatically fill in edge gaps left in the alignment.
Due to the heavy haze over the city this shot took some extra processing in Lightroom after assembly in PSE. I did my usual Clarity and Sharpness adjustments, plus some extra Recovery, Fill Light, and Blackpoint adjustment. I also did a general contrast boost, trying to offset that haze, and finally dragged a Graduated Filter effect down from the top for a local brightness and contrast adjustment (- brightenss and + contrast).
I think it captures the naked eye view pretty well.
6/23/2011: Rocky Mountain Hazy Majesty
I am spending a few days at the foot of Rocky Mountains near Denver Colorado (or near the Denver Airport, which is not quite the same thing). So close and yet so far! If I walk out between the hotels to the edge of the development, I can see the sweep of the southern Rockies behind the haze over the city…a haze so deep it almost swallows the foothills. For this shot, I moved back and used the long end of the zoom to compress the image and frame the high peaks, so the snow fields float mysteriously over the landscape, challenging our perception.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 466mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active-D Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly from the bottom for composition.