Posts in Category: architecture
1/3/2012: Lafayette Building, Kennebunk ME
I don’t do a lot of architectural photography, but I could not resist this view of the Lafayette Building in Kennebunk ME. I drive past it, most days, at least once. This was taken from the Cumberland Farms at our end of the bridge over the Mousam River where I stopped to get gas on my way out on a picprowl. The sky, of course, makes the image.
It was taken at 24mm equivalent field of view with the Canon SX40HS, and while the Canon image processing engine processes out most of the expected wide angle distortion, I was still left with considerable vertical perspective distortion. Lightroom’s distortion controls allowed me to pull the building back to vertical. I cropped out some of the road way (bridge surface actually) at the bottom and there we have it. Warm brick with lots of interesting details, the blue sky with massive clouds, and the touches of green from the Christmas decorations, make for a pleasing architectural shot. Or so I think. Feel free to view it at a larger size on WideEyedInWonder. Just click the image and use the size controls at the top of the window.
f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed, as above, for vertical perspective distortion, Intensity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
12/31/2011: Cape Porpoise Harbor in Green
The final pictures for 2011.
When I was about to leave Cape Porpoise the other day on my Snowy Owl prowl, I turned to see that a shaft of sun had come in under the cloud over to light up the harbor and the town. It was not the usual warm low sun shaft that sometimes leaks under the cloud cover at sunset, but a shaft of mid-day winter light…it turned the water of the harbor bright green, and picked out every detail in the boats and houses of the village. It was stunning. I hurried across the parking lot and out on to the deck at the (closed for the winter) clam shack to catch a few shots before the clouds closed in and shut off the light. This shot is zoomed in to frame the village and the church.
Canon SX40HS at 112mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
And here is the side shot (24mm equivalent).
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Auto color temperature adjustment to match the green in the two shots. Some extra Recovery and some exposure and brightness adjustment in the second shot to tame the highlights.
10/4/2011: Eisenhower Park Veterans Memorial HDR
Eisenhower Park in Nassau County New York on Long Island is beautiful park filled with war and civic memorials. There is a 911 memorial there, and this is the Veterans Memorial. As you see, a series of terraced wall fountains and pools bordered with flowers runs down the hill toward the lake.
This is a 3 exposure HDR, from –2.6EV to +1.4EV. The Canon SX40IS has a very flexible auto bracket, though it is limited to 3 shots. The shots were blended and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro and final processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
Canon SX40IS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.
And just for fun…here is a single shot comparison, processed only in Lightroom. Which goes to show, you don’t always need HDR.
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.
9/19/2011: Lakeside Tree of Vines
And the wonder of it is that this tree itself seems healthy and well despite its burden of vines. It provides a name (and shade) for the Bed and Breakfast behind it. I looked for an angle that would show the texture of the twisted vine cover and the vigor of the leaves, contrasting with the yellow siding of the house. The exposure needed to maintain the blue of the sky.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at about 50mm equivalent field of view, f4.2 @ 1/200 @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/17/2011: Marblehead Light
A couple of classic postcard views of Marblehead Light in Marblehead Ohio. What can I say? The Light is there. The Light is way picturesque. You shoot the Light. It is photographed so often that all that angles are taken, but still you just have to do it. (I think they might actually keep the arch of tree brancbes in the first shot trimmed just for this shot 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 36mm equivalent field of view. f4 @1/1250th @ ISO 160. 2) 36mm, f8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. -.7 EV exposure compensation for the white of the light.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/15/2011: Saint Anne’s Angles
I am in Ohio for the Midwest Birding Symposium and digging back to share this shot from August. Saint Anne’s church on Old Fort Point in Kennebunkport ME is a favorite for upscale weddings. I love the stonework, which in many lights is spectacular. Here it is late on a Maine summer day. I intentionally framed an odd set of angles and then cropped close.
Nikon Coolpix P 500. 68mm equivalent field of view. f4.7 @1/800 @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
7/17/2011: Whimsy, The Children’s Garden. Happy Sunday!
The Child’s Garden only opened a year ago the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden, after at least 2 years of development. It is hard to imagine a more whimsical place. White bordered yards with cat picket fences, grass roofed Victorian sheds, tall hollyhocks and red roses, giant sunflowers, old fashioned water pumps, a windmill, a pond with the boats from Wind in the Willows and a life sized brass statue of the bear from Blueberries for Sal, William Carlos William’s Red Wheelbarrow (an actual red wheelbarrow with the poem on the side), a tiny bog with carnivorous plants, a tree house and a wigwam, a bear cave, a windmill, Farmer Macgregor’s vegetable patch and the first annual gourd Olympics. And that is without mentioning the Gnome Shed with its rounded door and a roof of blueberry plants. Whimsy, pure and simple.
Like most attempts at whimsy, this is a very adult production. The attention to detail, the hyper-inventiveness, the elaboration is very unchildlike. It is not simple, not innocent, but very calculated…calculated to appeal to a child.
It certainly appeals to the child in me. I love it! I appreciate the whimsy and admire the inventiveness. I have no real idea, though, how a child would see it. If the children in attendance on a Friday in July were any evidence, then it certainly has at least a quiet appeal…but then I suspect that the children in attendance were already a select group…as in the children of parents who would appreciate a day at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden and expect their children will enjoy it too. Children who have been read Wind in the Willows and Peter Rabbit, Peter Pan, and Blueberries for Sal. Children with lovingly fed imaginations. Rare children, I suspect, these days. Then too, it is hard to say how much of the children’s enjoyment of this truly magical place is a simple reflection of the obvious joy their parents take in it.
Ah…but it does not really matter, in the end. Certainly part of our love of whimsy is spiritual, and was succulently captured by Jesus when he told us that it is the children, and those who have (as we say it today) maintained their inner child, who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Not a childish faith, but a childlike faith is what we all need. And adult whimsy is certainly one of the best approaches to that inner child, and to that faith.
The whimsical Children’s Garden at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden succeeds, largely, because its creators believed that if they could touch the inner child in themselves, then true children would enjoy it. And that is indeed a childlike faith, and that puts the Children’s Garden half way to heaven as far as I am concerned.
Happy Sunday.
5/30/2011: Memorial Day
When I took this photo a week ago, on a rainy, foggy day in Bar Harbor Maine, I was not thinking of Memorial Day, but it seems appropriate this morning, when we honor those who have died in service to our country…and, while I do not believe in war as a solution to any conflict…I recognize the genuine personal sacrifice of our honored dead. I am sure the bells in that bell tower are tolling long and slow this morning, and it is right that they should.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
5/19/2011: Night at the St. Francis, St. Augustine FL
Experimenting with the Night Landscape mode on the Nikon Coolpix P500. Night Landscape uses the fast capture capability of the Back-illuminated CMOS sensor to take a number of exposures in extreme low light and then stack them in camera to produce a single shot with increased sharpness, better color detail, and somewhat lower noise. There is also a Tripod setting, which uses a single exposure and aggressive noise reduction. The handheld mode is more attractive for general shooting, but it does require some processing time in camera.
This old inn in St Augustine was on my way back to the car after the opening festivities at the Florida Birding and Photo Fest. Besides the interest of the scene itself, I wanted to see how the camera would cope with the mix of bright lights and ambiance. The shot did require some additional noise reduction in Lightroom, and some fiddling with shadows and highlights…but I am impressed by the camera’s ability to get this shot handheld at all!
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ a nominal 1/15th second @ ISO 280. Night Landscape mode.
Processed in Lightroom as noted above.