Posts in Category: autumn
11/8/2011: Balancing the Sky.
Sometimes the sky is so big that it dominates the landscape. It takes a foreground full of visual interest and a midground rich in detail to balance it. For me, this shot works. The fine mass of beach grass in the foreground. The details where the creek meets the river. The drift log. Etc. And the contrast between the blue blue sky and the autumn tones of the landscape. It all just works. And yet some will say that it is a picture of nothing…that it lacks a center of focus. To me that just draws me in. I can wander in the image and enjoy it as I would the actual scene.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/6/2011: November Light on Oak Leaves, Happy Sunday!
It is November. In Southern Maine the show of fall maples is long past. People have raked their yards and bagged the leaves, and hopefully they are their way to some composting center. Now we wait for snow.
But there is still a show in town. This is the season of November light and oak leaves. The oaks are slow to turn, tenacious on the trees, and the reds are muted, but before they turn brown (often still on the tree) they go through red to bronze to copper and, when the clear low sun of November lights them, they are, in their own way, as much a wonder as any maple ever hoped to be.
Where they fall in water, the water steeps the tannin out. The leaves go yellow and the water turns tea brown…a rich brew that makes still waters in November highly reflective. Where the leaves lie on the surface they make patterns on a reflected sky.
I especially love the way the light passes through the oak leaves, revealing an inner life, an inner fire, even at the end.
And sometimes you find one almost edge on to the sun, with light on both sides, illuminating unsuspected contours.
November light on oak leaves.
Canon SX40HS. All of these are medium to long zoom shots, to frame the leaves against an out of focus background, in Program with iContrast. ISOs range is from 125 on the lighter leaves to 320 on the last dark leaf, but with the Canon I just let it do its own exposure thing. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
I don’t think there is much more to say for the Sunday thought. Except maybe: I hope when I am near my end, to be as tenacious as the oak leaves, and that a light as clear as November will be as revealing of my inner life…my inner fire…as this.
10/30/2011: Weather Coming, Cape May NJ. Happy Sunday!
Cape May on Friday was all atwitter…migrating birds filled the bushes, feeding frantically, in an attempt to get over the Delaware ahead of the storm. There was a Nor’easter coming up the coast, due to hit the Cape by mid-night. Cape May was also atwitter with birders, making the most of the day of good light and light winds to see as many of those birds as possible before retiring (mostly) to hotel rooms to ride out the storm on Saturday. They stayed in Cape May, since Sunday was predicted to be sunny again, and stands (even from where I set this morning still) to be a great day for birding. There should be unusual numbers of birds (even for Cape May in autumn) backed up by the storm which has now passed away to the north.
All that to introduce this image: the leading edge of the weather front coming ashore. You can see the sharp sheer line where the warm moist air pushes up against the cooler, dryer air over the land. You don’t often see the transition that clearly.
I like this image where the sky dominates the land and the line of the storm is reflected in the line of the dunes…both leading away upstage left beyond the buildings of Cape May itself, just visible on the horizon.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We often think of weather as being something purely temporal…of this earth. The realm of the spirit we think of as eternally peaceful…every day in heaven will be, we think, 74 degrees, with just enough breeze to cool our faces, and just enough puffy clouds in the blue sky to provide visual interest. But I suspect we are wrong. I suspect there are weather fronts in the spirit, and storms. I mean, what would eternity be without weather? The peace of the spirit is an attitude of the heart that is the same no matter the weather. In that sense we get to practice it right here, right now, in this world. We learn to keep our heads and our hearts up in the wind and the rain, the snow and the sleet, as well as on the peek days of blue skies and puffy clouds. We are all atwitter with the birds on Friday in Cape May, feeding our souls on their slightly frantic beauty…and hunkered down processing images and listening to the storm and watching it out our windows on Saturday as the Nor’easter passes. We might even suit up and go out for a while, just for the experience. And I suspect that is all part of our training for eternity.
10/29/2011: Intimate Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Cape May New Jersey during migration is one of magical places in North America where the birds “stack up.” They do it before and after crossing the great lakes at Magee Marsh in Ohio. and they do it before and after crossing Delaware Bay in New Jersey and Delaware. In the fall going south in Cape May (and going north in spring at Magee Marsh) birds spend 24 hours or more “stoking up” before the crossing…feeding so avidly that they pay little or no attention to human beings. You can get close to birds that are, at normal times, very elusive.
Like this Ruby-crowned Kinglet feeding within 6-8 feet of the boradwalk at Lighthouse State Park. Like most of the birds in Cape May in the fall, this bird was moving continuously, feeding and looking for food, so the primary challenge was getting him in the frame. Well filtered light from an overcast sky, along with the excellent high ISO performance of the Canon SX40HS and its super long zoom, yields images so intimate that you can see my reflection in the bird’s eye.
But what I really enjoy about these images is the Kingletness of the bird…the Kingletality that comes through. This is the bird!
Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-extender). 1) and 2) f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 640. 3) and 4) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 320. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. (By the way, you are welcome to pixel peep these images on my Wide Eyed in Wonder site by using the size controls across the top of the page. They hold up well through the largest display sizes…but they break down considerably at full resolution (O or Original in the controls). You can see a lot of digital artifacts and “over” processing…necessary to get any image at all from a tiny Point and Shoot sensor at 1680mm equivalent (twice the optical zoom) and in low light. I am not a pixel peeper, and as long as the Canon SX40HS can produce images like these for viewing at normal resolutions, I find its size and flexibility, when compared to a DSLR rig, to be worth the hit in absolute image quality. But that is just me.)
10/28/2011: Fall Yellow-rumped Warblers, Cape May NJ
As I have mentioned, I get to experience most seasons several times each year. Fall color is about gone in Maine (it snowed last night), but I am in Cape May, New Jersey today, and fall color is just about at peak. But Fall in Cape May means warblers, and the end of October means Yellow-rumped Warblers…in such abundance you can not believe. I stopped to take a photo of a pond in the rain and the woods were full of Yellow-rumps. I walked the boardwalk at Lighthouse State Park, and the bushes and scrub pines were full of Yellow-rumps. I stood at a corner of the boardwalk with my scope and camera at the ready and watched 30 or more YRWs feed…probably more as they were moving through pretty fast. It is a pretty amazing show.
Of course what they are all doing in Cape May NJ is stoking up for the Delaware River crossing and the journey south. While I try to catch the warblers posing, most of the time they are actively feeding. Yesterday it was coming on to rain too, so they were especially busy, and the light was pretty dim…high ISO territory.
The first two images are take with a Canon Powershot SD100HS Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece on a 65mm ZEISS DiaScope FL spotting scope. The last shot is with the Canon SX40HS at full zoom and 1.5x digital tel-extender.
1) 1680mm equivalent field of view, 1/100th @ ISO 320, f5.9 effective. 2) 1680mm, 1/100th @ ISO 800, f5.9 effective. 3) 1260mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. All in Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/14/2011: Mousam run in Fall Foliage
This is the run of the Mousam above Old Falls at this year’s leaf-peak this past Monday. Gotta celebrate it while it is here. By the time I get back to Maine on Sunday, this show will have packed its tents and moved on south.
Shots like this, if you are not going to get very wet and muddy, require the flip out LCD on some of today’s superzoom and advanced P&S cameras, so you can hold the camera right down on the ground to frame. I will never willingly buy another camera for my landscape efforts that does not have a good articulated LCD. For one thing I am well past the age when it is easy to get up, once you get down in the mud. 🙂
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast (dynamic range enhancement).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/12/2011: Old Falls Pond, West Kennebunk ME
I have quite a few images of this pond, mostly in the fall when it really comes to life. I would have preferred some clouds in the sky…but I took this on my last day home before a week away, and by the time I see it again, the leaves may be completely off the trees. We shall see, but for now this is my Old Falls Pond pic of the year. The UFO above the tree line on the left is actually, if you look closely, a leaf.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f7.1 @ 1/160th @ ISO 125. Program with program shift for the smaller aperture, and iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/10/2011: Oh me of little faith…fall comes to Southern Maine
I forget what a difference 24 hours can make. It is like someone pulled the stopper out of the color bottle overnight. We woke this morning to sudden fall. Still a bit muted by best year standards, but full-on fall color none the less. The leaf-peepers who reserved for Columbus Day weekend foliage are not going to be disappointed after all. 🙂
This is my favorite bow in the river at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. I have several panoramas of this view, but I could not resist another yesterday with the color. To do it justice you need to see it larger. Click the image to open to it your full monitor width on WideEyedInWonder.
It is three shots stitched and blended in Photoshop Elements, and then processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. (I have my WideEyedInWonder site set to a maximum of 4000 pixels wide, but the original is about 8,000 pixels wide.)
Each shot, Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 200. Program, with My Color set to Vivid. (My Color is a Canon feature that applies various processing presets, among them: sepia, b&w, vivid, vivid blue, vivid green, etc. There is a Vivid mode under the scene modes, but that is over-the-top in most situations. Super-saturated. See yesterday’s post. Vivid in My Color, however, just perks the image up enough to bring out the fall color nicely.)
And here is a closer view of the center of the image above. About 37mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program, with My Color set to Vivid. Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness and cropped for composition. Again, you can see it larger by clicking the image and using the size controls (if needed) across the top of the window.
10/9/2011: The year there was no fall, Kennebunk ME
Happy Columbus Day Weekend Sunday!
Columbus Day weekend is, traditionally, the height of the fall foliage season in Maine and New England. It is impossible to find accommodations unless you reserve well in advance. I don’t know how other areas of New England are faring this year, but it is pretty dull season in Maine so far. We have had no hard frost, and the trees are hanging on to their green. Only uniquely exposed trees have turned. This scene, my favorite place for fall foliage shots, is a mere shadow of its normal self a year ago, two years ago, three years ago…within my memory. Maybe the leaves will still turn…just late…but the most exposed trees have already started dropping leaves. They just turned brown and fell. Our yard, well shaded by maples, is littered with brown leaves. Not a good sign.
This image was taken using the Vivid mode on the Canon SX40IS…the saturation is over the top for most scenes, but here it brings out every last bit of fall color. For comparison, here is the scene in normal program mode from this year and an HDR shot from last year on 10/3/2010.
Keep in mind that the shot on the left is pretty much what the eye sees this year, and the shot on the right was a week earlier last year.
Folks who reserved early and came north for the foliage show this Columbus Day are going to underwhelmed.
Canon SX40is at 24mm equivalent field of view. Main shot, f4 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Vivid mode. Comparison shot f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program. Last year’s shot with Canon SX20is at 28mm equivalent.
All processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Not much processing at all on the Vivid mode shot.
And for the Sunday thought: The seasons come and the seasons go, without fail, but how they come and how they go, and the shape of the actual days that make them, well, that is anything but certain. We make our plans, but ultimately we can not know, beyond the most general outlines, what will come. No two falls are the same. And this is good. It teaches us that no matter what comes, it is up to us how we respond. A photographer, a nature photographer, is bound to look for the beauty in every season and to make the most of it. And isn’t that the best course for every human being? If we meet every day, in every season, with gratitude and appreciation, then, though the seasons are different year to year, each comes as a blessing, with its own unique beauty…and while we may remember and compare, we will live without regrets. Even if we did reserve a motel room in Maine for Columbus Day Weekend 🙂
10/8/2011: Virginia Frost
Ah yes…a touch of winter in old Virginia already. Did a bit of fotoprowl before work on Thursday, just a few moments around the industrial estate where our office is located in Chester VA. I could not resist the frost n the barberry hedge leaves…both as a sign of the season (unusually cold for VA this past week), and as an abstract design and texture study…gotta love what the low sun does with the frost crystals.
For this shot I backed away and framed using the 840mm equivalent field of view on the Canon SX40is from about 8 feet. f5.8 @ 1/250 @ ISO 125. Program.
Processed in Lighroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness. (just as a note: I am finding the Canon SX40is takes much less processing than the Nikon P500.)