Posts in Category: rock
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!
Palm Canyon, Anza Borrego Desert
This is the lower reaches of Palm Canyon at Anza Borrego Desert State Park in Borrego Springs California. As you can see, the desert landscape is littered with palm trunks that have, over centuries, washed down from the oasis above. In the dry desert air, they last just about forever. The number of them lying about might be a matter of concern to anyone hiking up the canyon…can there really be any palms left standing at the oasis?…but I can testify that the grove is healthy. This seems to be a completely natural accumulation of trunks.
There is a stark beauty to the Anza Borrego landscape. The mountains, practically bare, well broken, deeply eroded yet still sharp, rise up imposingly on either side of the canons…the reddish tones of the stone contrasting sharply with the blue blue sky.
Canon SX50HS. 24mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR Mode. Recorded exif: f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
White River (really)
On the way out from Seattle to Mt Rainier National Park and Sunrise, I drove for miles along the White River. There were precious few spots where it was safe to stop for a view of the river, but there were pull-outs at both ends of Federation Forest State Park. This shot looks vaguely east toward Chinook Pass.
The “white” in White River, and the odd look to the river in the image, comes from fine particles of clay suspended in the rushing water. It makes a difference from the tannin tea colored brook waters and crystal clear mountain streams of the east (and the Rockies for that matter).
There was no avoiding the haze in the air, which solidified almost to mist over the darker trees up river, but it is still, as I see it, a wonderful mountain scene.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 58mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I also used a Graduated Filter Effect from the top to increase clarity in the mountains slightly.
12/16/2011: Church Rock Revisited
I already shared one set of images from the hike my wife Carol and my daughter Kelia and I did in the red rocks near Gallup New Mexico, but it is worth a revisit. And besides, I still have a lot of images from that hike. In this shot you can see the drop off to the canyon floor from the the next ledge of hard stone above it. This shelf is being slowly worn back toward Church Rock itself. Above the ledge the character of the canyon changes…it becomes narrow and more resembles the famous slot canyons of Arizona.
And the way the water carves the rock is always interesting. This is a pot-hole, dug in solid stone by a swirl of water over centuries.
And as always, the red of the rock contrasts dramatically with the the high blue New Mexico sky…especially with a few wispy clouds to set it all off.
Church Rock in Red Rocks State Park is a fascinating place for a hike.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1) and 2) 24mm equivalent field of view, 3) 28mm, 4) 60mm.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/17/2011: Church Rock
While in New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, we visited old friends in Gallup, where we lived for 12 years before moving to Maine 16 years ago. The formation in the distance is Church Rock, in Red Rocks State Park, just east of Gallup in the amazing red Chinle sandstone formations of the area.
It was a brilliant November New Mexico day, cool enough for hiking with a jacket, with just enough clouds in the deep blue sky for interest, and with the clear light across the landscape that only the seems to fall in the high elevations of the Land of Enchantment in the fall. My wife Carol and daughter Kelia along the trail. Kelia was born a few miles from this formation, but we moved when she was 1 month old, so this was her first experience of the enchantment.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. The images show off the versatility of the zoom on this camera, and the accuracy of the exposure system. These are not HDRs though they could pass for the more subtle variety. 🙂
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
8/4/2011: Rocking the Beach
Depending on the season and the tide, this corner of the beach where the Mousam River meets the sea is either pebble or sand, as the pebble bed is alternately exposed and covered. This summer there is an extensive reach of pebble showing, here somewhat exaggerated by the low angle and the tight crop on the sky. The sky was blank blue…not a cloud in sight…so there was no temptation to keep it in the image any more than was necessary to provide scale. I like the somewhat radiating lines of the pebbles, combed by the tide, and the lone lady in the camp-chair on the right. (This was very early on a Saturday morning. Even by the time I left, the beach was a lot more populated than it is here.)
The second view features one of the larger pebbles…a rock by almost anyone’s standards…in an even tighter crop.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. Shot with the flip out LCD out, from a few inches above the pebbles and sand. Both shots.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
{_;_;_;_}
6/20/2011: Wet Wood with Stream
On the way back from a very wet hike up South Bubble in Acadia National Park, we stopped at the Bubble Pond parking because I wanted a picture of a brook. This is Bubble Brook as it leaves the pond begins its run down to Eagle Lake. I love the wet woodland, the colors of the decaying leaves and the green foliage, and textures of bark and stone, and the curve of the stream, the parallel placement of the diagonal downed tree, the bow of the pine on the right, the roughness of the birch bark on the left, etc. etc. There is a lot going on in this image, but I think it is held firmly together by the sweep of the water, and well anchored by the base of wet stone and last years oak leaves. It is another image I could see printed, framed, and hanging on my wall.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
By the way. My morning posts are offset in time this week as I am on the west coast 
6/4/2011: Upper Pool at Emmon’s Preserve
I have posted quite a few shots over the past two and a half years from Emmon’s Preserve, a little Kennebunkport Land Trust property on the Batson River. The Batson, despite its name, is actually something between a brook and a river. In August it might only be a trickle between moss covered stones, but other times its pools are full and its falls and rapids are wild, it is never, however, what I would call a river, even at its fullest.
This, in particular, is a shot I have taken often…I like the sculpted wood of the fallen tree…but I particularly like the quality of the light in this one. The Nikon’s Active D-Lighting renders scenes like this in a strikingly natural way, and the 22.5mm equivalent lens opens the view wonderfully. I love the depth. This is an image that draws me in. I could look at it for a long time.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22.5mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Program with Active-D Lighting (to extend dynamic range) and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
4/7/2011: Saco Bay
I was feeling the old theme was a bit too busy, and it seemed to have some display problems at certain page widths on certain browsers, so…something new for today. 🙂
And this is Saco Bay, taken from East Point in Biddeford Pool, Maine, looking back along the course of the Saco River northeast of the pool itself, between the point and Wood Island. A classic early spring Maine scape featuring some interesting clouds.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, f4.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode. Tipped up for metering to bias for the sky.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. (see page link above for processing details.)
3/12/2011: Point Loma, Cabrillo National Monument
Looking back north along the Pacific shore of Point Loma from the area above the Tide Pools at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego California under a layered sky. A little scenery for Saturday! I always enjoy this area, and try to get out here at least once on each yearly trip to San Diego.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125, Landscape mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Slight distortion adjustment for the horizon.