Posts in Category: river
Evening at Back Creek
Back Creek is a tidal creek that flows into the Mousam River a few hundred yards from its mouth in Kennebunk Maine. The beach homes you see are on Great Head, across the Mousam. It had been a day of rain, heavy at times, and the front was still moving off the coast…but the sun broke through just for an hour or so before setting. Great light. Great sky. Landscapes are never better, I think, than when the sun breaks through under a stormy sky. You have drama on the land and drama in the sky. What is not to like?
This is a sweep panorama from the Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. I really like the fact that you can hold the camera vertically and sweep it around horizontally…producing a panorama that is fully as wide as a conventional panorama (this one is about 200 degrees), but much taller…not nearly so “pinched”. These tall panoramas also fit computer displays much better…if you click the image above on any computer with a reasonably sized display, it should fill your screen.
As I say, Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Panorama mode. f4.6 @ ISO 100. I discovered a Panorama trick for these cameras that have sweep pano modes. You pick the part of the view that has either 1) average brightness for your planned sweep, or 2) the brightness you want for the whole sweep (you might, for instance, want to expose for the sky rather than the land), point the camera at that section of the sweep and half press the shutter release to lock in exposure, then swing the camera, holding the shutter half pressed, to the where you want your pano to begin, and fully press the shutter. That way the whole sweep has the exposure you intend, and not the exposure that happened to be at the start of the sweep. 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.
Mind-bending in Kennebunk
Sweep Panorama is a very strange thing. This is a about a 180 degree view of the dam on the Mousam River in Kennebunk Maine, taken from the middle of the bridge over the river. The dam is, of course, a straight line in reality, and the railing is both straight and continuous. I have attempted this pano with conventional stitched panorama techniques and it is next to impossible. The buildings on the left, in particular, never match up in any two shots. Sweep panorama renders what is perpendicular to the motion of the camera very well, as it records one thin line at a time…and the distortions in the other dimension are interesting. On the camera itself, you can view the panorama as a sweep, which is also interesting. Someone needs to create a panorama viewer for the computer. 🙂
Samsung WB250F in Panorama Mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Silky Water: Happy Sunday!
Back in the day of slow film emulsions, taking a photo of a waterfall, or water falling over ledges as in this image, especially in deeply shaded glens where waterfalls are likely to be found, resulted in the “silky water effect.” During the long exposure required to capture the image, the moving water painted itself on the emulsion as blur, with all detail submerged in a smooth flow like a cascade of silk. As it happened, the result was very like how some painters rendered falling water, attempting to capture a feeling of motion in the blur. As film speeds and quality increased, it became possible to “freeze” the flowing water, even catching ripples in their run and splashes in mid-air. However, the “silky water effect” never lost its appeal. Photographer’s today go to great lengths, internationally undermining the strengths of their equipment with neutral density filters and the like, to recreate the painterly, traditional, silky water effect.
The engineers at Samsung, when designing the software for their Smart Camera family, included a “waterfall” mode among the Smart Camera Modes. If you have the camera mounted on a tripod, it will take a very long (90 seconds or more) exposure of moving water…resulting in what I would call a “super silky water effect.” I find that the longer I am away from the actual scene…as the sound of the rushing water and the play of the play of the light in the ripples and falls recedes into memory…the more I like the effect. I have to break away from memory and look at the image for what it is, not what was there. For sure, this is not the way I see rushing water…but I can understand the attraction of the image, as an image. I can understand that that rush and tumble and joyful confusion of water in constant motion can be reduced to the calm rendering of silk, and that it captures a different, and equally valid, emotional response to the falling water than I might otherwise feel. I get it. I am still uncertain as to whether I totally approve. 🙂
And that leads to the Sunday Thought. Silky water is not real. It is a photographic artifact, or the imaginative impression created by a painter’s mind and brush. And yet it captures a real emotion…or at least one among many emotional responses to reality. It speaks to a calm in the center of confusion that appeals to us all. In a way, it is, from a traditional point of view, the more spiritual response…a seeing through to the assumed essence of what is behind the rush of our daily reality.
However, I can’t help but feel that it is, at least a bit, a cheat. I think there is as much spirit in the rush and tumble and churn of detail that is our immediate response to falling water (and to life). I appreciate the peace of the long view, but I am not willing to give up the excitement of the moment. My instinct is that they are both elements of the spiritual view. Joy in the confusion. Joy in the underlying calm.
Interestingly enough, by happy accident (if you believe in such things), Google+ assembled two images of the same tumble of water into an animated gif…one taken in waterfall mode, and one taken in Rich Tone / HDR. Hopefully your browser will display it properly. Joy in the confusion. Joy in the underlying calm. Happy Sunday!
Falls on the Baston. HDR
The falls on the Baston in Emmon’s Preserve in Kennebunkport are, like the Redwood Forest, another subject that has always proved difficult to capture. The falls lack the scale of the Redwoods, but they are well shaded by trees, and present the added difficulty of bright white highlights from sun on the foaming water. Once more, a subject that demands deeper HDR than my in-camera HDR can provide.
Which is why my last Sunday photo-prowl found me down by the Baston with my Fat Gecko, carbon fiber, shock-corded tripod. As I had suspected, 3 exposure HDR also gives a nice understated silky look to the rapids, without the need to resort to long shutter speeds.
This is not the falls at their most difficult. The leafless state of the mostly maples that combine with the pines to shade this stretch of stream let more light in than there will be later in the season. I will go back in 6 weeks and try that challenge.
Canon SX50HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. -2 1/3, -2/3, and +1/3 EV exposures. Blended and tone mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing in Lightroom. This is one of those HDRs that challenges the eye, or at least my eye. The range of light is so natural that the image looks a bit painted. We just do not expect this effect in a photograph.
Old Falls Maple Red: Happy Sunday!
One of the reasons I invested in a gas powered scooter this year (as opposed to the electric scooter I had last year) was to have the range to reach Old Falls on a regular basis this summer. I want to be able to check this stretch of water at least once a week for dragonflies. I found two unique ones there last fall and I suspect there will be more that I have not seen this summer. Of course, I enjoy photographing the falls in all its seasons. They are not much in the way of waterfalls by any imaginable scale…but they are one of the few falls within a day’s drive of my home in Kennebunk. Southern Maine is worn pretty flat.
I like the way this HDR treatment brings out the red of the maple blossoms, and the intense greens of the young pines and spruces…against the dark water, and under this intense sky, with the boiling white of the falls in the foreground.
Canon SX50HS. Three exposure HDR at -2 1/3, -1/3 and + 2/3s EV. Blended and Tone Mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday Thought. It is the red of the maple blossoms that really makes this image stand out for me…it is also what I was trying to catch. Most people don’t realize, or don’t really notice, that Red Maples are red twice a year…not just in the fall but in the spring as well. I will include a shot from a few days ago in our back yard which shows where the red in the Old Falls shot is coming from.
Our back yard maple flowers are a bit more advanced that the ones on the trees at Old Falls, but you get the idea. The Maples of New England are fire in the fall and fire in the spring. And all summer that fire burns in them, obscured by the green of the busy leaves making food for a season’s growth, for a crop of winged maple seeds to sow the future, and to survive another winter. It is easy to miss the fire in the summer, but it is there.
I would like to think our lives are like that. Fire in the bud, fire in the flower, and fire at last in the fall. If the fire in us is obscured in the summers of our lives by the busy green of making a living, of raising children, of laying up our stores, surely it will rise up in us once more before the final winter. As the world dies out of us, so the spirit should show through more and more. Perhaps that is what we are really seeing when we say a man is in his second childhood. Red in the bud, red in the flower, red in the end. That’s what I hope.
Crease in Old Falls
When I went, on Monday, to pick up my new scooter in Sanford, I stopped on the way back at Old Falls on the Mousam River to see what was up. Not much was up but the water. The Mousam is still loud with the last of the snow melt from a very Snowy February and March. There is a crease in the center of Old Falls that produces some interesting effects. It is always fun to see what I can catch.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 105mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Confluence at High Tide
Which is a high-flaunting way of describing where little old Back Creek meets the Mousam River behind the barrier dunes on their way to the sea. 🙂 I have a lot of versions of this view. It is a great place, as on this day earlier this week, to catch the clouds of a passing front. And, of course, I really like the driftwood in the foreground.
Canon SX50HS. In-camera HDR Mode. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.I really like the In-camera HDR files from the Canon. They are very easy to work with in Lightroom to produce a very satisfying extended range image. I took a comparison image in Program, and while I could have worked with it, the HDR simply has more life and more pop…especially in the foreground.
Ice Bound Mousam: Happy Sunday!
As I write we are awaiting the arrival of the 3rd weekend winter storm in three weeks. This one held off until Sunday, and is only forecast as 6-8 inches, but still! It is raining now, in Kennebunk, and has been for about 14 hours, but my weather app shows that we are just at the edge a small band of rain along the coast. This is snow falling a few miles inland.
This is a shot of the Mousam River behind Roger’s Pond, right after Nemo passed and left 29 inches of fresh snow behind. The Mousam here is rapid, and almost never gets ice bound. It was simply so overwhelmed with that amount of snow that the open channel was limited to the fastest water.
Canon SX50HS in Snow Mode. f5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. About 90mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness…with some extra attention to the highlights.
And for the Sunday Thought: I am getting old enough so that the part of me that looks forward to winter storms is well submerged…or at least well counterbalanced by the part of me that does not look forward to winter storms.
I will admit to a bit of a thrill, a tendency to check the weather radar to track the storm…and a bit of almost competitive interest in snow fall totals. I will admit to still feeling more than a bit of wonder and appreciation for its beauty when I face the landscape with its fresh blanket of snow. I can even revel in the raw energy of the storm, especially a good Nor’easter with the snow falling sideways and the wind loud in the trees.
But I no longer enjoy driving in such weather, and I certainly no longer enjoy shoveling out. I find the big mounds of dirty snow pushed up by plows and left to melt simply depressing. I am not a downhill skier, my cross country skis are stacked in seldom visited corner of the basement, and I have always been convinced that those who claim to actually enjoy snowshoeing are just working out some complex emotional issue.
So, on balance, the third winter storm in as many weekends does not fill me with joy.
And that is actually a little sad. There is a YouTube video going around of some young men just up the street from us who used the last two storms to produce a 15 foot tall snowman (search for Stanley the Snowman). Maybe I should go look at it…before the spiritual balance is forever tipped toward snow-dread and winter-phobia. Maybe I should keep a better hold on my winter wonder. I have a feeling that would be the healthy choice…unless I really am ready to move to Florida.
And of course, it is also a matter of faith. You can’t thank God for the weather when it suits you, and then blame God for the weather when it doesn’t. Not if you believe in a God who is love. If it is God blessing you with a sunny day…it must certainly be God blessing you with a snowy one. This might not stand to reason…but it certainly must be your stand in faith. 
And as I write this sentence, the rain is definitely turning to snow outside the window…drops morphing into flakes…flakes drifting down at an angle…getting bigger as I watch. 6-8 inches is suddenly believable.
Yes, winter storm G is upon us. I guess it is up to me how I feel about it.
Cold Duck
When I went out on Sunday to find some images of the snow Nemo dropped on us here in Southern Maine, I found a pair of Mallard ducks in the half-frozen Mousam River behind Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk. They had found themselves a little eddy against the drift that came right down to the water on the far shore. They did not look all that comfortable…or maybe that was just a projection on my part. I know I would not have been comfortable in their situation. This is the female. The male was hunkered down, head under wing the whole time I watched them, but the female was moving around, testing different spots…perhaps the male already had the only good one. 
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.