Posts in Category: ocean
Beach Panorama with Runner
This is one you have to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow, though, unlike some panoramas I have done, it works well at this size too. (Click on the image to open it auto-sized for your machine.) This is, of course, all about the drama of the sky. When the runner walked into the 4th frame, I thought, “ah! I will have to start over.” But I took the image anyway, and I am glad I did. It would not work nearly as well as a pano without his anchor…without the sense of absolute scale the runner provides.
I generally produce flat panos, by just putting the images side by side and overlapping and blending. All the lines are straight, but the effect is like standing much further back and using a superwide angle lens. This pano was stitched in PhotoShop Elements as though the images were wrapped around a cylinder. Then in Lightroom I cropped the edges straight and used the distortion tools to pull the horizon more or less level. The effect is to produce a pano that mimics the sweep of the eyes as you turn your head to take in the full length of the beach. Try it. Sweep your eyes from left to right. In may ways it is a more natural view than most of my panoramas. And, as I say, with the runner in the foreground, there is no way you can fool yourself into thinking this is only a stretched out view of the world. I am not sure I could produce the effect again if I tried, but I certainly like it!
Canon SX50HS. 5 in-camera HDR shots from my Fat Gecko carbon fiber, shock corded tripod. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PSE. Final processing for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom, as well as some distortion work.
April Ocean: Kennebunk/Kennebunkport. Happy Sunday!
We did not see any sun until yesterday evening, and the temperatures hovered in the mid-40s, but I still had to get out on my new scooter for at least a short photo prowl. I mean, that is what the scooter is for! Long-johns and a fleece vest under a windproof jacket, and my winterized scooter helmet and gloves kept me barely warm enough…as long as I kept my speed down 🙂
Both the ocean and the sky were gray, as only a grey day in April can be, but full of subtle drama. I tried a few in-camera HDR shots to see if I could catch the feeling. With a bit of extra processing in Lightroom this image comes close. We are looking out over Gouch’s Beach and the beach front summer cottages of Kennebunk and, across the Kennebunk river, the Colony Hotel and the first of the summer mansions on Old Fort point in Kennebunkport.
Though HDR with water is always a problem (the three exposures never quite overlap because the water moves), it works here. If you look carefully you will see three separate surf lines where the water meets the sand.
Canon SX50HS. In-camera HDR Mode. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom with my hyper-real preset, and then tweaked for black clipping point and contrast.
And for the Sunday Thought: What with the new scooter and all, I have a bad case of spring fever. It is generally my April mood. I am ready for the wildflowers and dragonflies of late May and early June (this is Maine after all), and we are still stuck with melting snow piles in the parking lots and maple buds still not fully open to flowers. Generally I am gone two weeks in April, to the more mild, and further advanced (but no warmer) spring of Northern California, and then to the riot of spring in Northern Florida around St. Augustine. I am a little sad this year that two events are the same week…and I was forced to choose Northern California. I will miss spring in St. Augustine!
On the other hand, perhaps it is for the best. Coming back to April in Southern Maine from Florida was always a shock, and probably made my spring fever worse instead of better. I am about to find out.
Of course, I know the cure for my spring impatience. It is the same cure that cures so many ills. Presence. Note that I said “presence” not “patience.” I need to be more present to the moment, to each moment of every day. I need to make myself totally available to whatever is happening now! and not be always living a week or a month or a season ahead of myself. God is in the now. Always completely invested in the now. Or so I have come to believe. We can not experience awe in some future that has not happened yet. Awe is the appropriate response to right now, where God is. And, of course, that is the feeling I was trying to catch in the grey clouds over and grey ocean under Kennebunk.
San Diego from Cabrillo NM
![Cabrillo-XL[1]](https://i0.wp.com/psnp.info/p4td_/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Cabrillo-XL1.jpg)
I always try to get out to Cabrillo National Monument on the tip of Point Loma on every visit to San Diego. There are birds there, but it is not the birds so much as the view that attracts. You are high above San Diego Bay, looking over the whole city, and deep into Mexico behind. Awesome.
This is a two shot panorama…an accidental panorama as I took the two shots with no thought of combining them. Yet it works.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. -1EV exposure compensation (not needed for this shot). 2 50mm equivalent shots stitched in PhotoShop Elements PhotoMerge tool. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom.
5/4/2012: Coquina Beach, Florida. Washington Oaks Gardens
One of the most striking features of the Atlantic Coast South of St. Augustine Florida is the Coquina rock and shell sand beaches of Washington Oaks Gardens State Park. Coquina is a sedimentary rock made of loosely bound shells and shell bits…very soft in its native state…and easily carved by the waves into fantastic shapes. It is also easily broken up by those same waves, so the “sand” on the beach is actually mostly broken shell fragments.
Coquina Stone is only exposed in half a dozen places along the coast from the Carolinas South. It can be used for construction and was a common building material along the coast during colonial times. It has to be cured by stacking it to sun dry until it gets hard enough to use.
It is attractive stone and never more attractive than as the natural sculptures the waves carve…especially as the clear sea light of the Florida coast plays with the forms.
Even in its final form, as sand, it holds its appeal.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4/10/2012: Brim full on Back Creek, Kennebunk ME
This another image from my Saturday photo-prowl. As I mentioned on Sunday, the tide was abnormally high over the weekend and Back Creek was brim full, right up to within a foot of the road. Getting dowm low and using the flip out LCD I was able to catch the clarity of the sea water standing over the normally dry marsh. And of course the drama of the sky and the finely detailed line…thin line…of the landscape across the frame as a divider. Normally I would not have put the horizon so near the center of the frame, but I think it works here. I find that I am unwilling to lose enough of the detail of the clear water at the bottom or the drama of the sky at the top to make a difference in where the horizon cuts the frame.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/27/2012: Black Skimmers, Merritt Island
The Black Skimmer’s range map in North America is a thin colored line just along the coast in summer from southern Maine south, around Florida and the Gulf, and then back up the other side of Mexico about as far north as Santa Barbara in California. In winter it retreats on the east coast to the waters of Carolinas and south. Apparently in South America the Black Skimmer frequents the rivers of the greater Amazon basin far inland year round, but it is pretty much a salt water bird here in the US. I have seen them in Cape May, New Jersey, in Georgia and Florida, in Texas on the Gulf Coast, and in Southern California. And every sighting is a treat. They are such unlikely birds. Black and white with bright orange feet and bright orange band at the base of the miss-matched bill…miss-matched since the lower mandible is an inch or more longer than the upper.
The bird in the second shot is actually yawning, but it shows how the bill is held while hunting, with the lower mandible cutting the water to locate food.
These shots are from the base of the bridge on the Merritt Island side, where the fisherman gather. There are mussel or oyster beds just off shore and the birds gather to rest and hunt in large numbers.
I could watch them for hours!
1) and 2) Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for an equivalent field of view of 3400mm, 1/640th and 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 3) and 4) Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 3) 840mm equivalent field of view, f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200, 4) 1680mm equivalent (2x digital tel-converter), f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/5/2012: Wave off East Point, Biddeford Pool ME
This is another shot from my unsuccessful Snowy Owl Prowl down the coast from Biddeford Pool to Kennebunk last week. Unsuccessful in finding an owl that is. From a photographic point of view I found much of interest in the massive waves and lowering sky as a front passed over and out to sea.
Directly off the point at East Point in Biddeford Pool waves coming in from the north east met waves coming in from the south east to create a cross wave effect that I could have watched for hours. The dynamic and the energy of the water was breathtaking. I did my best to catch a bit of that energy in images like the one above.
Canon SX40HS at about 90mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom. Besides my usual Intensity (fill light and blackpoint) and Sharpness adjustments I applied a Graduated Filter Effect from the bottom to bring up brightness and contrast…and then a second GFE from the top to pump up Clarity and Contrast to give the clouds slightly more definition. This is on the edge of being hyper-real, in the way many HDR treatments “go reality one better” and create a scene that is more dramatic than what the naked eye would actually see. (Some HDR treatments, in my opinion, boarder on the surreal. I don’t go there.) I think this image strikes a good balance.
Just for comparison, here is the same image with more intense tone-mapping in LightZone and final processing in Lightroom. This one is hyper-real…but it certainly has impact.
12/29/2011: East Point and Wood Island Light
Yesterday was a good day to look for Snowy Owls. I had to go north on a shopping expedition so on my way back I worked my way out to East Point Sanctuary at the tip of Biddeford Pool. I have seen Snowys before on the the rocks and stony beaches of the point, as well as on Wood Island, which is visible from the point across the Saco River channel. In fact I saw my very first Snowy there.
As it turns out, yesterday was a very good day to look for Snowy Owls…it just was not a very good day for finding them. 🙁
The goodness of the day is due to the weather. There was a front passing and the clouds and the sea and the light all along the coast south from Casco Bay was spectacular. This is the view across the channel to Wood Island Light. I love the hammered steal of the sea, and that mass of cloud slanting in over Wood Island, with the Lighthouse standing against the ranked clouds out over Cape Elizabeth and the far shore of Saco Bay.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
The seas coming into Saco Bay were huge. In this second shot, I zoomed in for more detail on the Lighthouse, but also to catch one of those breaking swells. Coming in against the wind, when the swells broke on the underwater ledges between the Point and the Light, the spray made for some fantastic shows.
Canon SX40HS at 77mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. To capture this shot I took a burst of images at 4 fps when the wave began to break and selected the best of them.
The final shot is from a bit further down the channel, looking past the light and out to sea, at an intermediate zoom between the first two. Again, I was after the braking wave in front of the Light.
Canon SX40HS at 30mm equivalent. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
All processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I used Graduated Filter effects to balance exposure on the sea and sky, and adjusted color temperature to warm the sea to its visual gray, rather than the blue-grey the the camera rendered.
7/9/2011: Summer Evening 2, Kennebunk ME
The most hardy of tourists and summer folk, with a scattering of locals down to the beach late in the day. You really have to view this as large as your monitor will allow. (Just click the image) This is Gooch’s Beach in Kennebunk ME (most tourists think it is in Kennebunkport, and the point on the right, beyond the Kennebunk River, is…but the beach is solidly in Kennebunk :). This matters to summer folk with houses there and to us locals).
Not an easy pano…four shots using the Nikon’s Assisted Panorama Mode so the second shot is laid over the first, etc. I tried to work as quickly as possible to minimize movement of people and boats…not to mention the ocean…but it works for the most part.
Four 32mm equivalent field of view exposures @ f3.7 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160, stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9 using manual positioning. Final processing in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. It is cropped from the bottom as there was a family in beach chairs in the shade of the wall that drew the eye down from the horizon.
This is a huge sweep. When taking the left-most exposure my back was pretty much completely to the exposure on the far right.
7/4/2011: Tide’s Out. Happy July 4th
Okay…except for its quintessential summerness, this shot has noting to do with July 4th. It is another from my late evening loop down by the ocean Saturday, which happened to be at extreme low tide. You can see, from the anchor cable on the boat on the right, just how deep the water is in this little cove at high tide.
Though deceptively simple, there is actually lots going on in this shot. It is mostly about layers, lines, and light…with the bright yellow of the center boat anchoring it. To really see the textures that form the lines you need to view it lager in the Smugmug lightbox by clicking it.
Nikon Coolpix P500 @ 130mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto, with Active D-Lighting and Normal Image Optimization.
I experimented with the Nikon’s in camera post processing on this image…applying Quick Retouch…which apparently adds some dynamic range (D-Lighting), sharpens, and adjusts the blackpoint or contrast slightly…before taking it into Lightroom for final processing. I have been surprised to find that on some shots the Nikon’s in camera post processing can improve the result while introducing less noise than achieving the same effects in Lightroom. Not all images…but some.
And I pray that your July 4th (whether it is a holiday for you or not) will be blessed.