Posts in Category: Pond
Mid-winter thaw…
Pond along Rt 9 in Kennebunk Maine
It got up to 47 degrees yesterday, on January 11th, after night of rain. The combination had every creek in flood, ponds melting, and the tide, already a King tide, running abnormally high. They were practicing hockey here on the little pond by Rt 9 in Kennebunk only the day before. You can see the mounds of snow that marked the edge of the shoveled area in two different storms. I like the light and shadows here, and the reflections.
Sony Rx10iii in-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr on my iPad Pro. My own shadow removed from right center at the bottom with TouchRetouch.
Winter pond…
Fernald Brook Pond #2, Kennebunk Maine.
If you follow my work at all, you will recognize this pond as one of my favorite locations around home…in any and all seasons. Here, at the beginning of winter, with first ice. It was a difficult exposure, with the sky too bright and the landscape in shadow, but worth the effort.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed for a somewhat high key effect in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
In-town Black-crowned Night Heron. Happy Sunday!
Black-crowned Night Heron, Factory to Pasture Pond, Kennebunk ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I am pretty sure this Black-crowned Night Heron has nested at Factory to Pasture Pond for at least four years. At the very least, I have seen it (or another BCNH) there, spring and summer, for each of those years. Now Factory to Pasture Pond is my own name for the place, and it makes it sound much grander than it is. It is actually just a little wetland caught between Factory to Pasture Road and two paved parking lots…the remnant, perhaps of a more extensive wetland that was bisected by the road and contained by pavement years ago. I visit it regularly for dragonflies in the summer. There are turtles, and, at least arguably, Black-crowned Night Herons, and a variety of other common nesting birds…but it is surrounded by factory buildings on 3 sides. By August, in a hot dry summer, it can shrink by a third, but it is a year round pond. And it is only a few blocks from Main Street Kennebunk…definitely “in-town”…not exactly urban, since we are talking a village of 5612 here, but pretty close. 5612 humans and at least two Black-crowned Night Herons. 🙂
I am always amazed at how resilient the creation is. We can pave it. We can cover it over with factory buildings and our houses. We can till it and plant all manner of intensive crops. We can ditch and drain wetlands. We can channelize rivers. We can rearrange and manage the landscape to meet our needs and purposes. But creation, what we call nature, always finds a way back in. Roots crack pavement. Water seeps under roads. Silt fills channels and willows and cattails grow. Great Horned Owls nest in cemeteries. Black-crowned Night Herons nest in parks and on golf courses…and in tiny remnant wetlands right in town. The generous eye sees all this reclaiming of the space we think of as our own, as human space, as a good thing. Creation refusing to take no for an answer. Creation reminding us, always, that we a part and parcel of all that lives, and that all that lives is essential to our being…to our being filled with light and life and hope.
So, seeing the Black-crowned Night Heron at Factory to Pasture Pond in down-town Kennebunk delights me. It is what the generous eye delights to see. Happy Sunday!
He is risen! Happy Easter Sunday.
floating ice skim on one of the ponds along Rt. 9 in Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Happy Easter! I am not sure why this is my Easter image this year. I admit it is abstract, and visually challenging (what is it?). But it is also full of life…full of mystery…full of grace and wonder. It is also highly unlikely. It is a super thin patch of floating ice on a pond along Route 9 in Kennebunk Maine. It was above 40 and had been for several hours when I found it, and this pond has been open for weeks, so I was not expecting ice at all. And the sweeping feather like patterns are more like rime ice on a car window than anything I have seen on the surface of water. And then there are the straight lines, the pattern of triangles among the feathers, like the leading in a stained glass window. And it is so thin, so fragile, so unlikely. Altogether strange and wonderful. It challenges my understanding of what is physically possible.
Then you add the colors of the reflected sky and clouds and trees and it really comes alive. It becomes not just an image of floating ice, but a image in its own right, containing a beauty of its own. Looking at it is almost meditative…it puts my mind into a state of open wonder and receptivity…and something very like peace. Something very like hope. Something very like joy. And so, after all, it is not so strange a choice for Easter Sunday!
What is more unlikely than the resurrection? More challenging to our sense of what is possible? More full of grace and wonder? What greater source of hope and joy?
He is risen. Against all odds. Against every expectation. He is risen and with him hope and joy. And though 2000 years of Christian history have not always given testimony to his truth, yet his truth lives on, and is there to be received by every generous eye. Unlikely as rime ice on open water. Unlikely as perfect triangles in floating ice. And more beautiful than the reflected colors of sky and cloud and trees. Jesus is risen! He lives. He lives in me.
Happy Easter!
Thin Ice
ice on Back Creek Pond, Kennebunk ME
Though I have hundreds of images left, we will take a break from the birds and critters of Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge this morning to visit one of my favorite local Maine ponds. The pond is ice-covered, but just…and the ice still has a lot of character: bubbles, ripples, strange patterns where it froze around things, etc. It looks almost as though the ice formed instantaneously…the whole surface freezing in one second…catching whatever was going on…freezing motion. In this case…the stress lines formed by a bit of floating debris.
In-camera HDR. Sony HX90V at 148mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/250th @ ISO 2000 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Fall Fog!
Fernald Brook Pond, Kennebunk ME
Yesterday, after posting my pics, but before breakfast, I looked out the window at the new day to find that the fall colors were muted by fog. Great stuff! I grabbed my camera and drove down to the ponds along Route 9. Of course, by the time I got half way there it was raining hard enough to have to turn the wipers on. I reached the pond during a lull in the rain and did my best to keep the camera under the overhang of my hat. If l leaned forward from the waist and used the flip up LCD, I could keep it fairly dry. I love the muted colors of the trees in the fog and the way it thickens with distance, turning everything indistinct. Add the floating leaves and a few circles from falling rain, and it makes a classic autumn scene.
In-camera HDR. Sony Alpha NEX 5t. 16-50mm at 24mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
Fall Fatigue? Happy Sunday!
Along Route 9 in Kennebunk ME
“If your eye is generous then your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
Are you getting tired of fall color yet? Buck up! In Maine we have two fall color seasons. Right now the color is mostly maple and a little birch. Just about when the last maple leaves fall to the ground, the oaks will turn a brief red, and than shade to deep cooper. We have weeks to go 🙂 This is a favorite stop for photography. While I was there, for 10 minutes on a Saturday morning, at least 3 other cars stopped. They did not all have out of state plates either. This pond is not on the main route through southern Maine. You have to know it is there, or have taken the scenic route to Kennebunkport from Wells. Once you see it during any decent fall, though, you will very likely be back for more! I check back often (it is only a few miles from the front door) just to see the changes in color day to day and what the sky is doing. What is happening here is a narrow front passing through, pushing out a film of cloud ahead of it. I like this scene best with clouds in the sky to balance the landscape. I have toyed with the placement of that single tall pine on the right. For this shot, I angled the camera up to get the full height in…sometimes I keep the shot level and lop the top of the pine off…that keeps the angles more natural…but then you have to deal with the truncated pine. Dilemma. The color is the star of the show anyway. I will probably go back a few more times this week, so you may see other pine variations…and certainly the color will change, as trees loose their leaves and others turn. And I can always hope for new skies.
The generous eye…the eye that sees the light and beauty…the spirit…in everything and everyone, can look at the same scene day after day and always find something new. No such thing as fall fatigue. You can never have too much fall color, anymore than you can have too much beauty. We are full of light in the way a bucket under a flowing tap is full, water splashing over the edge and always making room for more. If I catch a splash and share it in this image…well, that is just what I do. That is generosity in my eye. Praise be to the Creator, the one light, infinitely generous. Happy Sunday!
Reflected Glory
Fernald Brook Pond, Route 9, Kennebunk ME
If I live to be a hundred (and we stay in Maine) I imagine I will still be visiting this pond every fall to see what the color looks like in reflection. Sheltered as the pond is, it has to be blowing a gale before anything disturbs the mirror of the surface. This still autumn afternoon the trees are, if anything, even more brilliant in the polarized reflection in the pond.
Sony Alpha NEX 5t in-camera HDR. Nominal exposure 1/200th @ ISO 100 @ f9. Processed in Lightroom.
Fishing Old Falls Pond
Old Falls Pond on the Mousam River, West Kennebunk ME
Yes, fall is coming on strong now here in southern Maine. I drove out to the Kennebunk Plains and Day Brook Pond yesterday, and then around to Old Falls and Old Falls Pond on the Mousam River. There was a friendly fisherman at Old Falls Pond and I asked if I could include him in the view. He makes it a classic calendar or magazine cover shot. Maybe on the Post, painted by Norman Rockwell. 🙂
Sony Alpha NEX 5t with 16-50mm zoom @ 24mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f9. Processed in Lightroom.
Autumn Geese
Canada Geese, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
We are only just now getting the first of the colors of fall. It is a good two weeks late. We should be at peak in northern Maine and only 3 weeks from peak here in Southern Maine. There is just enough color along the edge of Day Brook Pond to set these Canada Geese, part of a flock of about 50 birds that had settled out on the pond, floating in color. I worked my way down to the pond edge through the pines and birches to an opening that gave me clear shots, and worked this patch of color as the Geese shuffled back and forth at the end of the pond.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 180 @ f6.5. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.