Posts in Category: prairie
6/17/2012: Prairie Birding Dawn. Happy Sunday!
Birding the high prairie in North Dakota this week has been a real blessing! Such an amazingly diverse area, with all shapes and sizes of watery (and wildlifey) gems hidden in the folds of the landscape, and that prairie sky with all its drama overhead. This is birders at dawn, out towards Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge. We piled off the bus to walk this prairie track and look for Grasshopper Sparrow and Upland Sandpiper. Marbled Godwits circled over head. A muskrat floated like a log in a small pothole watching us. Black-crowned Night Herons and White Pelicans did fly-bys at hill top on their way from one small lake to another.
It was miraculous. Miraculously alive and miraculously beautiful. The image just maybe catches a bit of the miracle. Canon SX40HS in program with – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. I exposed for the sky and counted on being able to bring the foreground up in Lightroom. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, as well as exposure balance.
And for the Sunday thought: we are always tempted to call such moments “magical”.. I suppose we mean that they awake a sense of mystery and wonder in us… and we are aware of that the are things going on that defeat the rational mind. But of course there is another word that attempts to catch that sense of wonder and mystery. ” Miraculous.” Miraculous includes the awareness of a specific power for good in action, an attempt, not to mystifying and impress, but to enlighten and uplift. And it is certainly the sense of miracle that fills me in the prairie dawn!
8/14/2011: Blazing Star against the Sky
Happy Sunday!
I went back out to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday (see 8/7. 8/8, and 8/13) ostensibly to find Plains Pond which I had seen on the maps, but of course I got distracted again by the stands of Northern Blazing Star. Yesterday’s sky was much smaller than last Saturday’s, more homey and friendly somehow…but it still made a nice backdrop for this low angle shot of the Blazing Star. Something a bit different. Not a view you would see unless you intentionally bent down to ground level and looked up. (Which is why I won’t own a camera without an articulated LCD view 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 46mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting, –1/3EV exposure compensations, and program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought…it is not a view you would normally see…unless you bent down to ground level and looked up. And what a lot of spiritual truth there is in that! Sometimes, for the seeker, those are the two most important, and sometimes most difficult, directives. Get down to ground level. I am pretty sure that is what Jesus was talking about when he said you had to lose yourself, die to yourself, if you find yourself and live. Lose yourself, die to yourself, get down to ground level. The finding and the living parts are all in the look up, of course. And what do you see? Blazing Stars against a friendly sky. Beauty. Life. Possibility. Promise. Hope. And ultimately, love. Blazing Stars against a friendly sky.
Oh, and I did find the pond too, but that is a story for another day.
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8/13/2011: Prairie Sky (in Maine)
My post on Blazing Star early last week covered the providence of the Kennebunk Plains. I sometimes forget how special they are here in the east. A little bit of the great prairie…a pocket prairie so to speak…and right in my back yard. And like true prairie, they allow the clouds of summer full expression. This is the shot I drove out to the plains for before being distracted by the Blazing Stars and Calico Pennants. I included just enough of the Plains to give context.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 53mm equivalent field of view. f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness.
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8/8/2011: Kennebunk Plains panorama
This 4 shot, full resolution panorama, done with the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Assisted Panorama mode, covers just over 180 degrees. I was, so to speak, back to back to myself for the first and last shots. I has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow, which should happen if you click the image and open the Smugmug lightbox. (My Smugmug uploads are limited to 4000 pixels wide…the original is 11834×3030.
In an image this wide, I find that the normal horizon placement rules don’t apply. This image is almost equally split between sky and landscape, and yet to my eye, it works. Certainly the level of interest in the clouds helps, providing a effective balance for the details of the plain.
This is the Kennebunk Plains again and you can see Northern Blazing Star on the left and right in the immediate foreground. What you see here, by the way, is about 3/4 of the whole Plain. My back, in the center of the image, is to the road that divides the Plain and separates the smaller quarter on the other side, and if I had included any more on either end of the image you would have seen the road and its telephone poles.
Assisted Panorama displays the leading edge of the first shot in transparent form so you can lay it over the landscape to take image two, etc. It makes even tripod-less panos pretty easy. Here each exposure was at 32mm equivalent field of view, and nominal exposure was f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. The image was stitched in PhotoMerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for Clarity, Intensity, and Sharpness in Lightroom.
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8/7/2011: Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains
Happy Sunday! The Kennebunk Plains is the largest remaining sand-grasslands habitat in New England. The last of the glaciers left behind a natural, open plain without forest cover. It supports several rare and endangered species of animals and plants, but, in reality it is the habitat itself that is threatened. The area around it is rapidly being built up…transforming from rural to suburban…with housing developments nibbling at the edges. It is a good thing that its unique value was recognized early enough to save it. The main body of land was purchased by the Nature Conservancy, and with addition parcels added by the local Conservation Land Trusts, it is now jointly managed by the NC and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. You can read more about the plains in the Kennebunk Plains and Wells Barrens Focus Area (pdf).
Yesterday, after an interesting few hours with the dragonflies at Emmons Preserve (see An Afternoon Amble Among the Odonata and Insects), I drove out to the Plains chasing big skies. It is one of the few places in Southern Maine away from the coast with an unobstructed view. This is blueberry season and my wife had been to the Plains picking berries earlier in the week (most locals know the area as the Blueberry Plains, and gathering of wild blueberries is allowed there during August…at one time, indeed, they were commercially harvested), but she failed to mention that the Blazing Star is in bloom. Northern Blazing Star is one of the endangered plants that gives the Plains conservation status, and one of the reasons the Nature Conservancy was interested enough to invest in the land. A Thistle-like flower that grows on tall stalks, it is especially abundant (as abundant as it gets in its endangered state) along the sand tracks that run through the Plains.
So, of course, I had ideal subjects to fill the foreground of my big sky shots. The leading image here is a low angle shot, using the flip out LCD on the Coolpix, to frame a fairly dense stand of Blazing Star against some towering clouds.
And this is the flower itself…
I am always thankful (and never more so than on Sunday) for the foresight of the people of the Nature Conservancy, Land Trusts, and State and Federal agencies that works together, when it works at all, to save a place like the Kennebunk Plains. A place like the Kennebunk Plains should speak to us of the wonder of creation…it should be a place we treasure…and where we can see and experience God in way that is just as powerful as any experience of worship. The Blazing Star of the Kennebunk Plains should inspire us…should move us…should motivate us to do what we can to make sure it is still there to delight another generation.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 32mm equivalent field of view. f5.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. 2) 32mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f3.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 3) 810mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f5.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, intensity, and Sharpness.
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6/30/2011: White-tail at a Distance, CO
At the end of the day at the shooting range in Byers Colorado, after spending the odd free moments between workshop sessions Shooting the Clouds, there was a barbeque, and during the barbeque two White-tailed Deer decided to risk ambling across the range, behind the bunkers. They were obviously young deer and maybe did not know any better. You would think the strong smell of cordite and the recent thunder of the guns would have deterred them!
They were not really all that close…the shot above is at the full 810mm reach of the Nikon Coolpix P500 (actually in looking at the exif data I apparently zoomed a bit into digital zoom, 972mm is the recorded figure), and cropped…and heat shimmer from the long day of prairie baking in the sun was a real problem…but I like the early evening light and the layers with the flowers setting off the foreground. View it larger by clicking the image.
In this shot, where the deer are lower down and closer to the open expanse of the shooting range itself, you see more of the heat shimmer effect…which softens the whole…but I really like the light on the deer here.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 972mm equivalent field of view. f5.7 @ 1/800th and 1/500th @ ISO 160. User programed Flight and Action mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/26/2011: High Plains Sky, Happy Sunday!
I had forgotten how big the sky is on the High Plains of Colorado. The Rockies push up amazing clouds that drift (or drive as the case may be) out over the gently rolling prairie. This is near Byers Colorado, about 90 miles east of the cloud factory of the Front Range peaks. It is a 4 frame panorama. Click on it to open it to the full width of your screen or monitor.
I spent an afternoon and early evening at a shooting range north of Byers demonstrating spotting scopes (work), and had an ideal opportunity to watch (and, between sessions, capture) the variety of High Plains clouds that you can see in a single day.
All these shots make use of the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Active D-Lighting to maintain detail in the clouds, and Lightroom’s Graduated Filter Effect to bring up the foregrounds. If you click the image to open it at WideEyedInWonder, and then click the Show Details button at the top right, you can see complete exif data on any of the images.
And for the Sunday thought: I really did not expect much from a shooting range on the high plains…in fact I was disappointed when I found out that our one day outside was to be further from the mountains than we already were at our hotel. I forget that no matter how flat the landscape of our lives at any given moment, the creator can, and very often does, fill the sky above with glorious evidence. We just have to look up and notice.
6/25/2011: Denver and the Front Range, panorama
You should click the image above to open it to the width of your monitor or screen. It is a thee shot panorama, each shot at 215mm equivalent field of view, with the tops of the Denver skyline on the left and the sweep of the Front Range mountains behind. I took it from the plateau above the city where they have developed the airport hotel complex, near Aurora. I caught a crow in passing, just as a bonus. I used the “assisted panorama” scene mode, hand held, on the Nikon Coolpix P500. After you take the first shot, about 1/3 of it is displayed on the left side of the finder, in transparent mode, so you can lay it directly over the live scene and line up the second shot, and so for the second, etc. for as many shots as you want to attempt. You need a program like the PhotoMerge function in PhotoShop Elements 9 to stitch the individual shots. PSE’s PhotoMerge is very sophisticated and does a excellent job of masking and tonal adjustment to make a seamless composition. It will even automatically fill in edge gaps left in the alignment.
Due to the heavy haze over the city this shot took some extra processing in Lightroom after assembly in PSE. I did my usual Clarity and Sharpness adjustments, plus some extra Recovery, Fill Light, and Blackpoint adjustment. I also did a general contrast boost, trying to offset that haze, and finally dragged a Graduated Filter effect down from the top for a local brightness and contrast adjustment (- brightenss and + contrast).
I think it captures the naked eye view pretty well.
6/23/2011: Rocky Mountain Hazy Majesty
I am spending a few days at the foot of Rocky Mountains near Denver Colorado (or near the Denver Airport, which is not quite the same thing). So close and yet so far! If I walk out between the hotels to the edge of the development, I can see the sweep of the southern Rockies behind the haze over the city…a haze so deep it almost swallows the foothills. For this shot, I moved back and used the long end of the zoom to compress the image and frame the high peaks, so the snow fields float mysteriously over the landscape, challenging our perception.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 466mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active-D Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly from the bottom for composition.
6/11/2009
Prairie Lake with Storm
The North Dakota Prairie sometimes seems as much water as land. There are potholes, ponds, marshes, and fair sized lakes dotting the landscape wherever you look. This small lake is on the edge of Chase Lake NWR, again, on a day full of intermittent rain and glowering skies.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F5.6 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Dual graduated filters in Lightroom. From the top to darken the sky to its natural tone, and from the bottom to increase brightness and contrast. General Vibrance and Clarity and Landscape sharpen preset.