Posts in Category: reflections

Another View of Autumn at Old Falls Pond. Happy Sunday!

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It has been a good fall in Maine, despite a week of wind and rain at just the wrong time.  We lost some of the early color so that when I returned from a week of travel I thought, from the evidence right around home, inside the tidal zone, that fall had passed me by. A photoprowl inland cured me of that misapprehension. Even 10 miles from the coast, the full color show is on. 

This is Old Falls Pond, which some of you have already seen this week in another view. I photograph the pond in all seasons, but it is especially attractive in autumn. This view, with the bright bush in the foreground, the fog over the water, the wispy clouds and reflections, and the line of vivid foliage across the way makes a dynamic composition with a lot to look at.

Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Rich Tone mode (in-camera HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.

And for the Sunday Thought. I have 100s of images of Old Falls Pond taken over the past 5 years. I have probably shared 10 or more just from various autumns. This view is only a variation on the theme…taken only moments and yards from other popular images…and yet I was so compelled to try the effect of the bright bush in the foreground that I actually went looking for it.

I don’t think I will ever tire of trying to capture the beauty of Old Falls Pond in fall. And I think that is a good thing. I think when I can no longer find beauty I am compelled to share in Old Falls Pond in its autumn splendor, when I stop looking for new angles and stop seeing the possibilities in new skies, then…well then something essential will have died in me. I don’t think that is going to happen.

It won’t happen because I fully intend to find and share the beauty of everyday, every season, everywhere I am. As I have said often in these Sunday posts, that is my act of worship…my homage to the Creator, the way I express my love, my gift back to the one who has gifted me with life…with eyes to see and a heart to feel and a mind to make sense of it all..with a spirit that can participate in the on-going act of living, loving, creation that is all we know and are.

So I expect you will see other views yet of Old Falls Pond in fall…for as long as I can get there. Happy Sunday!

Coming on Fall at Old Falls Pond: Happy Sunday!

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There are a few places locally that bring out the best in the autumn color. It is early yet, but this time of year is when the birding festival circuit heats up again and, this year, I have no weekends free at all in October, so I have been trying to fill myself with early fall color, just in case.

And there is no where more reliable for color than Old Falls Pond on the Mousam River. Add an autumn sky overhead to reflect in the water and frame the shot with a fringe of turning leaves and it is a sight to behold, and a joy to capture.

Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone Mode (HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.

And for the Sunday Thought. Someone posted a slightly malicious comment on my new adventure over at gobirding.us overnight. Something about my having too much time on my hands since I was running too many boring and redundant blogs. This gentleman has posted similar, just slightly nasty, comments on this page in the past. Hurtful. Intended to hurt. I can generally roll on past them, and I will this one, but that too much time on my hands remark hits home…and not , probably, in the way the writer intended. I have never been more aware of just how little time I have on my hands. I am, for the first time in my life, seriously thinking about retirement, looking ahead and counting the years I might have left, and wondering how best to redeem them. What will I do when I can do what I want, at least to the extent my retirement budget allows? How many more falls will I be able to get out to photograph the autumn leaves? Etc.

I can not, of course, know, but I do know, in a way that is new to me (and as old as mankind) that they are limited. Finite. Numbered, perhaps in the single digits. I can, and do, of course, hope. I hope for lots more falls. I hope for the health to enjoy them…but one thing I know is that I do not have too much time on my hands.

And that is somehow an appropriate Sunday Thought, here in the autumn of the year. I would like to go out like a New England fall, full of bright color under amazing skies. I hope my work over at gobirding.us is just the early fall show, and that the real season of brilliance is still to come. And I have a faith, as well as a reasoned confidence based on all my experience in life so far, that my time is in the hands of one who has all the time there is.

So, today, I will do my best to enjoy and celebrate what is…today, the early fall color at Old Falls Pond, and the changing foliage framing an infinite sky. Happy Sunday!

Fall is coming…

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The leaves that are falling now, in mid-September, are that dull brown of leaves that have died of simple old-age. The brilliance of frost killed leaves is still several weeks away. Still a little scene like this is a clear reminder that the summer is about to go out in its usual New England blaze of glory. That is a little of what I have captured here, but of course the image is really about the play of light over the various textures and the reflected patterns in the moving water. 🙂

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone mode (in-camera HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.

Last Rose of Summer

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I went down to the beach yesterday to see if there were any birds around to digiscope, and got honestly and seriously distracted by the amazing sky 🙂 And it was cold at the beach! Not jacket cold, but chill enough in the wind so that I was not truly comfortable in my shirt, birding vest, and shorts. Fall is coming on way too fast.

As I say, I could not resist the sky, and there were just a few Beach Roses blooming very late right in front of one of my favorite views. Okay! Pic-op.

I used the Samsung Smart Camera’s in-camera HDR mode (Rich Tone), and then processed the image for maximum impact in Snapseed on the Nexus 7 v.2. Snapseed has matured since I last tried it. It now works with full resolution files. I like several of the editing features: Ambience and Structure in particular, and I like the slide to adjust metaphor. It is as close to Lightroom as Android is likely to get 🙂

And for this image I got the effect I was after. The last rose of summer, with fall coming on too fast!

Pool in the woods

The Batson River makes a long loop through Emmons Preserve, with many pools, overhanging rock ledges, tumbling falls, and gentle stretches of water reflecting trees. It is really an amazingly varied stretch of river considering it can’t be more than a quarter mile of it included in the Preserve. This is one of the far pools, beyond the main, and most visited, section of the trail. The river splits here, with the main channel rushing through a narrow gap between standing stones, and a smaller side channel feeding this still pool. I love the play of light here, and the ripples leading out to the still water with its reflections and lily pads. Perhaps because of the depth and the odd angle, it has a kind of abstract feeling to it.

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone (HDR) mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4. Auto Enhance by Google+ Photos.

So much depends on a few reeds in dappled water…

I am not sure why, but this little snippet from Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk Maine has a very oriental feeling to it. At the same time it reminds me of William Carlos Williams Red Wheelbarrow poem.

so much depends
upon

the red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain water

beside the white
chickens

There is that sense of much depending on the close observation of a fragment of reality: here the reeds standing in the dappled water among the distorted shadows of the trees around the pond. It is a very simple composition…but there is a lot more to it, somehow.

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Rich Tone (HDR) mode. 41mm equivalent field of view. Nominally f3.6 @ 1/1225 @ ISO 100. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.

On the shore of the Mousam

I went out on my scooter on several photoprowls yesterday, covering the compass points so to speak. It was one of those days when the sky was irresistible. This is a sweep panorama from the shore of the Mousam River, below the new bridge they are building on Route 9, in Kennebunk.

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Panorama mode. f4.6 @ 1/500th (nominal since it was a sweep), ISO 100. 24mm equivalent field of view, swept around with the camera vertical 270 degrees. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4. The image is linked to a larger version for your viewing pleasure.

 

Florida Sky. Viera Wetlands

Viera Wetlands, as I have mentioned before, is a municipal sewage treatment plant that has been converted to attract wildlife and bird watchers. There are many such facilities around the country today, but Viera is a particularly good example of the class. It includes miles of dyke roads…some of which are permanently open…and some of which are closed to vehicles except on special occasions (like the Space Coast Birding Festival). There are two observation towers overlooking ponds. But the general attractiveness comes from it just being Florida. Natural growths of palms and native grasses and reeds make the treatment ponds look like any wet section of Florida. It is very easy to forget where you are.

This is a two frame HDR panorama, using In-camera HDR Mode. I shot two overlapping HDR images from my tiny Fat Gecko carbon fiber tripod and stitched them together in PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool. Florida, on days with clouds, has magnificent clouds!

Canon SX50HS. As above. Recorded exif: 24mm equivalent field of view (for each exposure). f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Vegas Morning

I am making an effort to “keep my eye in” while in Vegas…attempting to find and take at least a few images a day. Not easy, since I am spending 10 of my daylight hours sequestered deep inside the Sands Expo Center. This is part of the view out my window yesterday, soon after sunrise. In the right foreground is the other wing of the Treasure Island, where I am staying. Center is the Encore with the classic reflection of the Wynn and the Strip beyond in its windows. I say classic, because I can not imagine that the architects of the Wynn and Encore did not pre-visualize exactly this mutual reflection when they designed the buildings. In front of the Encore is the strange space ship like structure of the Fashion Mall. The building at the far left is under construction and looks to be another play on reflections building project…or at least another building with an all glass exterior.

Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill.  70mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/50th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Sunset on the Flight Deck: Bosque del Apache. Happy Sunday!

For me Bosque del Apache has always been a very special place. I love the water and the mountains, the concentration of wildlife, the feeling of community among staff, the Friends of Bosque group, and the large group of full and part time volunteers. I like the small college town feel of Sucorro, which overlays the essential Hispanic cowboy and farming culture.

I like the fact that, year after year, the spectacle of the geese and cranes at dawn and sunset continues to attract crowds of people…not so much birders…as regular folk who make the drive down from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, or who include the Bosque in their vacation plans, just to stand to the edge of the road, the edge of a pond, or on the Flight Deck as the sun rises or sets and watch and listen. It is often cold, and people are bundled up, with hats and scarves and gloves…cold even in heavy winter coats…but they are there, waiting for the cranes to come in or the geese to rise.

And when it happens there is an energy that sweeps the crowd…a kind of glee…an obvious and overflowing delight. I love to watch the people coming off the Flight Deck…the uniformity and yet the vast variety of grins! You see the grin in the eyes of even those most muffled in scarves.

And that is just the spectacle of the birds. If you are at Bosque for a week in November (or almost any month) you are just about guaranteed one spectacular dawn and one spectacular sunset: the kind that touch the very deepest places of awe in us. The sun rises and the sun sets everyday…but there are sunrises and sunsets that are simply something to see! And you hear it in the crowd. “Now that is really something!” That is about as close as we can get to describing what such a sunrise or sunset does to us. Something. Something universal and powerful. Something that makes us glad to be alive. Something that fills us with thanksgiving. Something very close to the root of awe in us.

I finished at the vendor’s tent (I am, after all, at Bosque to work) just in time on Friday to get out to the Flight Deck for the sunset fly in of the geese. The Deck itself was already packed shoulder to shoulder with people and I had no intention of attempting to worm my way to a spot on the rail. I parked further down and planned to shoot the incoming geese and cranes from the edge of the pond. But then the sky happened, and the sunset bloomed. I took several shots from the road, out over the cars, but it really needed the reflecting water of the pond, and the only way to get that was get out on the Flight Deck. I found a spot at the rail on the boardwalk leading out to the deck that worked…that gave me the expanse of water and sky I had seen in my mind’s eye.

The Canon SX50HS has a hand-held night scene mode which I am experimenting with for sunrises and sunsets, and I used it here. It takes three very rapid shots and combines them in-camera. There is just enough exposure blending to extend the range of the image…to capture a realistic foreground as well as the drama of the sky. Just my normal processing in Lightroom produces among the most natural sunrise and sunset shots I have yet managed. Of course I had to try it here.

I took a lot of shots and worked hard to keep the Flight Deck itself out of the images, but actually, it this one where I intentionally included the end of the deck and the people on it as part of the composition that really captures the experience best for me.

And for the Sunday thought: for me awe is an essential element of faith…I don’t believe I could believe in, or put my faith in, a Creator who was not awesome in every way…who did not inspire a feeling of root awe in me in every encounter…in every aspect of the Creator’s person, presence and works…and in relationship to me. Wonder is required, and wonder is my most basic emotion. Followed closely by thankfulness. “I have seen the face of God and yet I live!” The most wonderful thing about the awe of God is that we can experience it, more that than, we can participate in it, in its full awesome glory and yet live to tell about it. The most wonderful thing is that we are made to tell about it…that telling about it is, at least in part, what we are created to do.

Wonder and thanksgiving are the compounded elements of love…and ultimately it is love I feel in a sunset like this one…and it is the Creator’s love I am inspired to tell about. I have been overwhelmed by beauty and splendor, and yet I live! That is love in its most essential form. Or that’s what I think.