Posts in Category: Pic of the Day
Mocking December. Happy Sunday!
Mockingbird, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
The warm December in Maine (and the whole east coast) continues…setting all kinds of temperature records. If all the rain we are getting was falling as snow, we would already have huge snow-plow piles in every drive…but as it is, the fields are still bare, and the forests are still skeletal. Worse yet, the birches are already red at the tips.
I spent a few hours at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms yesterday, walking the trails to see what I could find. Not much was moving. In that, and nothing else, it was a typical December day. I did come on this lonely Northern Mockingbird and a few Blue Jays, and of course there were gulls on the dunes on the back side of the beach (the front side too, I am sure, but I did not get that far).
We were talking about all this, the unseasonable warmth etc., at dinner, and one of my daughters said, “yes, our earth is certainly deteriorating.” I replied, “Our earth is certainly changing…there is lots of evidence of that…but there is no evidence that it is deteriorating.” I am not one of those “climate change deniers” but I am also not convinced we fully understand what we are observing. Of course I do see that part of what is going on is very likely tied to our dependence on fossil fuels and our sheer numbers on the planet…but the earth is a living thing…incredibly complex…and with its own immune system and sources of healing. I think we know way too little to say that the earth is deteriorating…that it is sick. Changing, yes. Sick, maybe. Able to heal itself, undoubtedly. And we, of course, will be part of that healing. If we are part of problem, we are also part of the immune system. Hopefully the intelligent part…the creative part…the problem solving part. The part that embodies the creative love that created the earth and the universe, and that sustains it now.
And, of course, all the long range forecasts predict another abnormally cold and snowy winter for Maine this year. A month from now, things at Laudholm Farms might look totally different.
The generous eye sees hope, because hope is in the light that fills us. Like the Mockingbird on an unseasonably warm December day, we may be confused by the weather, but that dose not mean we are not storing up songs for the spring.
Redwings in the Cattails
Young male Red-winged Blackbirds, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
This is a rather odd photo…but I like it. There were 30 or more young male Red-winged Backbirds in the stand of cattails along the boardwalk over the diving duck pond at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, just before dawn, making a total racket. They were well hidden, so this is the best I could do for a shot. Still, I think it is effective, capturing the situation pretty well…and a graphics…as an image…it has a lot of visual interest, between the colors, textures, and shapes. Or that is what I think 🙂
Nikon P610 at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/80th @ ISO 400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Christmas Edition: 12/24/2015
Merry Christmas
We have this Christmas cactus that has faithfully bloomed twice a year for the past 5 years at least. It blooms just before and through Christmas, and then it blooms again, just before and through Easter. We don’t do anything special to it. It just does it. I take pictures of the blooms each year, both seasons. It is certainly a faithful reminder of the miracle of Jesus…the great gift of God to us in the Son of God and Son of Man, who came so that we could believe, and choose life and love. As I post this Christmas Eve (or coming up to it), I am thinking of the day tomorrow, when our family, and families all around the world, will celebrate both life and love by gathering, by exchanging gifts…in their worship and their fellowship together. Christ is born! And, for those of us who choose, that makes all the difference.
This is my Christmas post. I will joining in the celebration tomorrow. Have a very Merry Christmas, and I will see you all on the 26th.
Cloud peppered with Snow Geese
Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
Our first day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Festival of the Cranes, there were very few Snow Geese. I saw a few hundred during the day. The next morning it was no better, but as I arrived back at the Visitor Center to begin my day’s work, at about 8:45 am, I heard geese coming in from the north and looked up to see the sky literally full of Snow (and undoubtedly many Ross’) Geese. And I mean full. Thousands. Maybe 10,000 Geese coming in a huge flock. At first it looked like they might overshoot the Refuge, but they did spiral down and settle on the ponds inside the tour loop. I grabbed the closest camera and took some stills and video from the parking lot. This relatively wide angle shot catches a bit of the feeling.
Nikon P610 at 30mm equivalent field of view. 1/1600th @ ISO 100 @ f5. Processed in Lightroom.
Tree Sparrow
American Tree Sparrow. Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
Like most of the US, we only get American Tree Sparrows in Maine in the winter…and, even though winter weather has not yet arrived in Maine, the Tree Sparrows have. We are right at the northern edge of their winter territory, but get them migrating through to points south, so it is hard to say if this one stuck around or if it is now somewhere in the Carolinas, but it was a treat to see it as I walked the paths on am otherwise very quiet day at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Center).
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 200 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Crane in Millet
Sandhill Crane, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is managed for wildlife. The Refuge has enough area to grow crops to feed the thousands of birds that winter there. Along the backside of the tour loop, they plant millet, and then flood the fields so that Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, and dabbling ducks of all kinds can feed on the seeds. This year, the corn crop failed, so the Cranes are depending more on the millet. Generally the millet is knocked down so it will be more accessible to the birds, but a small stand was left standing along the edge of the field, and it was interesting to watch the big cranes delicately picking millet seed above their heads. They seemed to have most success coming in from underneath. It has to take a lot of millet to feed a Sandhill Crane. 🙂 (The corn crops both north and south of the Refuge did not fail, so the Cranes are spending more time off the refuge, feeding in the fields where the NWS has contracted a portion of the crop.)
I love the light of early morning here, picking out all the details.
Nikon 900 at 1400mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Blue Goose on Top
Snow Geese (one Blue), Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
I spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, at Bosque del Apache attempting flight shots. It is a lot of fun…a bit of challenge…but with the proper settings on your camera, it is quite possible to have enough success to make it satisfying. I experimented all week with settings, and finally resorted to Target finding Auto Focus and Shutter Preferred Auto Exposure. That seemed to work best. This group of Snow Geese, with one Blue variety at the top of the frame, was taken when a large group of geese were in the process of moving down the refuge a few fields. There were geese in the air continuously for close to an hour. I got lots of practice. 🙂
Nikon P610 at 1440mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f8.2. Processed in Lightroom.
Sunset through Beach Rose. Happy Sunday!
Sunset through beach rose, Kennebunk ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
The Beach Rose, in December, going on for Christmas, looks brittle and broken…a tangled mass of hairy, thorny stems without much redeeming beauty…but put it in front of the setting sun, and suddenly it is alive again, and full of light. It is all a matter of perspective…of attitude. I find it interesting that these two words, which name the physical relationships between objects, have come to also mean our mental, or even spiritual relationship to the world around us. Perspective names the effect of distance on the apparent relative size of objects between us and the visual horizon…and attitude, in its physical sense, names the angle of incline of objects relative to a plane (a ship on the sea has an attitude measured in degrees, relative to the sea). In the mental/spiritual sense, when we say we have perspective on something…we mean we are viewing it in right relationship to the really important things in our life. If someone says you need an attitude adjustment, they mean that that you need to change your “slant” toward the world. Instead of measuring it in degrees, we say there are bad attitudes and good attitudes…cheerful attitudes and sour attitudes. It is a matter of how you are holding yourself in relation to the world.
The generous eye, the eye that both open to let in the beauty and wonder of the world around us, and open wide enough to let the light within illuminate the beauty and wonder without…which is really saying the same thing twice…determines both our perspective and our attitude.
You can choose how you see the tangled mass of Beach Rose stems. At least at sunset, when the light is shinning in your eyes.
Happy Sunday! And a blessed season, as we approach the celebration of the rising, the birth, of Jesus, son of God and son of man…who taught us to look with generous eyes, and whose light fills our whole beings.
Nubble Light, Winter Sky.
Nubble Light, Cape Neddick Maine.
I was coming up the coast from a abortive search for Snowy Owls on the beaches of New Hampshire and could not resist, despite the intermittent cold December rain, swinging out along the coast to see how Nubble Light was doing. They had the Christmas wreath up on the pump-house and a stiff wind was blowing the flag out. The light was dull enough so the beacon was lit and showing as it turned its circuit out to sea. The sea was steel gray reflecting green. Somber, but attractive in its own way.
In-camera HDR. Sony HX90V at 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/500th @ ISO 80 @ f3.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Evoking Cranes in the Dawn
Sandhill Cranes before dawn. Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
This is, to my eye, an “evocative” image…it evokes the experience of watching the Sandhill Cranes taking flight in the pre-dawn light at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge more than it “portrays” it. High ISO, low shutter speed, and a rapid pan with the birds in flight leads to an impressionistic background…water (including the two cranes standing) and landscape suggested rather than detailed…stripped down to a basic layering of color and texture. The relatively sharp cranes are laid over the background, but even they have a bit of the motion blur. Overall it looks more like a painting than a photograph. Generally I do not like that…but here, I think, it works. This would stand up to a fairly large print…and viewed from normal viewing distance, it would be quite striking on the wall. Evocative!
Nikon P900 at 400mm equivalent field of view. 1/60th @ ISO 560 @ f5. Processed and cropped slightly at the bottom for composition in Lightroom.