Posts in Category: Pic of the Day
Sanderlings in Reflection
Sanderlings. The Beach, Kennebunk ME
My wife and I took an after dinner walk long the local beach. The summer evening light was lovely, the sky was full of interesting clouds, and the waterline was littered with shore birds and gulls. I did not have my long lens with me, just the tiny Sony HX90V, as I was looking mostly at landscapes…but the zoom on the camera reached out far enough for these Sanderlings standing on their reflections. As I said, the light was lovely! I especially like the line of bubbles along the surf. 🙂
Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 89 @ f6.4. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom.
Viceroy on the Kennebunk Plains
Viceroy Butterfly, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
When I left the house yesterday on my photoprowl, I was thinking of butterflies, wondering if I could find any on the Kennebunk Plains. Often when the Blazing Star is in bloom, there are butterflies nectaring on the blossoms. When I got to the Plains, it did not look likely as the wind was blowing a gale. I did see a few butterflies. This one was sheltering in the lee of a small birch sapling, low to the ground. Photography was difficult because the tree branches were bouncing around in the wind so hard that it shook the butterfly off several times. I, of course, assumed it was a Monarch, until I came to post it, when I thought I had better make sure it was not a Viceroy…and, of course, it appears to indeed be a Viceroy. 🙂 The black intersecting line on the hindwings is the give away.
This is a composite image, assembled from three separate shots in Coolage. Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 200 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Northern Leopard Frogs Rule!
Northern Leopard Frog. Alwive Pond, Alwive Pond Woods, Kennebunk Land Trust
There may have been no Moose at Alwive Pond in the Alwive Pond Woods Preserve of the Kennebunk Land Trust, but there were certainly a lot of Northern Leopard Frogs. I do not know what the tipping point is, but there are ponds in Southern Maine where the Bull Frog predominates to the exclusion of Leopard Frogs, and there are ponds where the Leopard Frog appears have displaced all the Bulls. Alwive Pond is Northern Leopard Frog territory! They were everywhere along the pond edge in the boggy peat. You can actually get pretty close to a Northern Leopard Frog…much closer, in my experience, than you can get to any Bull Frog. 🙂 I love the pattern on the skin, and I find the Leopard Frog elegant, when compared to a Bull Frog. I am glad to find that they have their strongholds, places where the Northern Leopard Frog rules, and that one is in Alwive Woods.
This is a collage of 4 views, representing 3 frogs, assembled in Coolage. All images with the Sony HX90V at various equivalent fields of view, from 50mm to 200mm. Processed in Lightroom.
Day Lily Illustration Effect. Happy Sunday!
Day Lily, Kennebunk Light and Power, Factory Pasture Road, Kennebunk ME
Yesterday my wife asked me to take the electric payment to the office (we have a municipal power company that serves the town) on my way to the store. I was reluctant to do it, but she shamed me into it :). While I was dropping it off, I saw the mixed stand of Day Lilies at the corner of the parking lot. The Day Lilies all over town this year are spectacular. There must have been a town “beautification” project sponsored by someone that featured Day Lilies at a bargain, and these yellow lilies in particular…because there are plantings of them along the brick sidewalks, in the median of streets, around banks and other businesses…everywhere! I have been meaning to stop and photograph some of the more impressive spreads, and here was one right at hand in the electric company parking lot. And, of course, I had my Sony HX90V with me. Life is good.
This is not quite a photograph…or maybe rather, it is slightly more than a photograph. The HX90V has a range of Picture Effects built in. I have never been one for such “features”…I like my photography straight-up mostly…but I have been experimenting with a few of the HX90V’s effects. This is the Illustration effect…it attempts to turn the photo into a drawing…simplifying colors, emphasizing edges, etc so that the image looks like something drawn, perhaps with markers and bright inks, rather than a photograph. This is all done in-camera, before the image is saved to the card, so that when you first open it, it already looks like this. It can be very interesting with the right subject. As I say, not a photograph exactly, but an interesting image.
It worked particularly well here. The simplification of the yellow petals is striking, and the background has an artfully rendered look. I like it a lot. I think it is actually beautiful.
And there is a lot to work with in the image and the situation for The Generous Eye and the Sunday Thought. If I had remained stubbornly stingy when my wife asked me to run the errand, well…I never would have seen this Lily. The Generous Eye begins with a generosity of spirit that leaves you open to the needs of others…and to any and every adventure. Then there is the generosity of the town and their lily planting program that inspired me to look at lilies more closely this year. I equate The Generous Eye, at least in part, with “having vision”…in the sense of being able to visualize a better tomorrow and do something about it. Someone, or some group, in the town had to have “seen” with a generous eye what the town would look like this summer patterned with yellow lilies. And then there is the generosity of the Sony engineering team, who worked to include this effect in the camera’s software. I always wondered why they bothered. I am sure not many people use the Picture Effects at all…most who buy the camera will never discover that they are there…and yet a lot of time and energy must have gone into creating them, and refining them to work as well as they do. That was generous of Sony in both senses I have already highlighted. Finally there is an element of “willingness to try new things” in the Generous Eye. As I already suggested, an adventurous spirit is necessary for a generous eye. If I had stuck to my prejudices (stingy prejudices) then I would not have tried the Illustration effect…and missed this image.
Finally, I have to believe in The Generous Eye of the creator of all, who embodies generosity in all its forms and who loved every circumstance that lead to this image into existence. I am not who I am because I see God…I am who I am because God sees me…and God’s eye is always and all ways generous. Happy Sunday!
Northern Blazing Star on Goldenrod
Northern Blazing Star in the foreground, Goldenrod in the back. Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
As though the Northern Blazing Star were not purple enough already, I found spots on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area where it was growing in association with Goldenrod. I made several attempts to capture the effect. 🙂 The Blazing Star is, as predicted, doing well this year.
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at about 300mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
Wren Song!
House Wren, Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
There is a nesting box near the junction of two trails at Laudholm Farm, still within sight of the farm buildings, where House Wrens have nested for years. This year is no different, and the resident Wren was out singing on the roof-top when I passed on my late afternoon photoprowl. The light was difficult but I got off a few shot anyway, before seeking a better angle… good thing, since the wren was off into the tree-line across the trail before I got my angle.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 400 @ f6.5. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
Cedar Waxwing Bookends
Cedar Waxwings. Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
There is always something happening at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area in West Kennebunk. I was on the Plains to check the progress of the Northern Blazing Star bloom, which is coming on nicely, and, of course, I had to take a turn around the pond. There is a little grove of pines and birches near the east end that always has birds feeding. These Cedar Waxwings were eating berries. I like the pose here, with the birds in opposition… and, of course, the light… late afternoon light slanting through the grove.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 400 @ f6.5. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
Are you done yet…
Chipmunk, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
My late afternoon photoprowl at Laudholm Farm a few days ago was particularly productive. Just down the trail from the Common Yellowthroat with the bugs from yesterday’s post, I heard a chip close by and looked up into the branches of a small tree to find this Chipmunk posing. He was patient with my photography, giving me different sides, and letting me work around for angles for several minutes. He was inside the close focus on the Nikon P900 (16.5 feet) so I could not use full zoom. I even switched cameras for this shot, which uses the Sony HX90V’s Clear Image digital zoom for 1440mm equivalent field of view and a nice close-up. By this time the Chipmunk seemed to be wondering if I was done yet. 🙂 I moved on.
Camera as above. 1/250th @ ISO 160 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Uncommon Yellowthroat
Common Yellowthroat, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
Oh, Common Yellowthroats are common enough this year. They are another bird that seems to have benefited from the late spring…if numbers are any indication. They are everywhere I go and in good numbers. On a late afternoon photoprowl on the trails at Laudholm Farm yesterday, I saw at least a dozen. Birds were uncommonly active for a late afternoon, perhaps because it had been rainy and gloomy until the sun broke out at about 3PM. This Yellowthroat had taken a grasshopper/beetleish thing, and was, perhaps, in retrospect, waiting until I passed on to take it to its nest. It hopped around in the branches of a tree overhanging the trail for several minutes as I photographed it. In fact I left it still hopping there when I moved on. I did not see the prey in its beak until I got the images up on the monitor at home.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 360 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
First Day Lilies
Day Lily, The Yard, Kennebunk ME
It is one of the mysteries of our life here on Brown Street in Kennebunk is that our Day Lilies bloom a good two weeks after Day Lilies both up and down the street from us. We might live in a tidal trough…just slightly depressed enough so that the tide blows and draws the breath of our cold sea, two miles downriver, right through our yard. And it might be the shade of our big maples and oaks, that make our yard, our whole neighborhood, look like unbroken forest from the air (easily verified with Google Earth). And it might be when they were planted, or the particular variety, or something in our soil, or…
Whatever it is, I have to wait patiently to photograph my own lilies weeks after they have appeared even 10 houses away. Sigh. 🙂
But when they do bloom, one whole side of the yard are double blooms. Instead of a single, simple, swirl of petals around the anthers, there are two…the outer fairly normal, and the inner smaller and more ornate. Again…who knows why? Close in like this, it looks almost like an abstract of itself.
Sony HX90V macro at about 35mm equivalent field of view. 1/160th @ ISO 80 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.