Posts in Category: autumn
10/2/2011: Still life with water, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
On my visit to Saco Heath a week ago, the day started overcast. The sun did not break out until I had already passed through the forest part of the trail. I found interesting fungi along the way, and the subdued light and persistent damp made for kind of “fall in the rain forest” mood. Still after sunny couple of hours on the heath I was hoping the sun would persist on the way back through the forest to the car…and that it might waken more lively colors along the path.
This is just a little random collection of leaves, moss, and water to one side or the other of one of boardwalk sections through the forest. We have had a lot rain this late summer/early fall, and the wetter portions of the forest are brim full. The boardwalks were definitely needed. I take a lot of these found still life shots, especially in the fall, attempting to find significant patterns by framing them carefully. They are primarily exercises in composition…which is one thing I value about the long zooms on the bridge cameras that I choose to use. Generally I can set the frame just as I want it, simply by zooming in or out. In this case I took some care to include just enough of the decaying branch to ground the bottom of the frame. And since the floating red leaf is what catches the eye first, I put it at one of the rule of thirds power points within the frame.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not stand and study, figure and plan. I just pulled up above this scatter of leaves along the branch, saw a possibility, put the frame around it, zoomed until it looked right to me, and squeezed off the shot. I do keep the rule of thirds grid turned on in my finder as a compositional reminder, and I am certainly conscious of the composition as I frame and zoom, but it is not in the forefront of my mind. I shoot more by eye than by mind. I see the image and capture it…I don’t plan the image and make it. That is just me of course. Your method may be quite different.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 176mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
So I am thinking this Sunday morning, about creativity. I read an article this week on the psychology and personality of creativity. It was one of those wiki type things that is more a digest of what other people think and have said (minus the need for footnotes and proper attribution :) ), with no real original thought or even a recognizable thesis…but still it got me thinking. As usual the idea of inspiration came into it. And as usual some pains were taken to explain the moment of inspiration as a sudden convergence of experience and experiment that yields an unexpected result…or something of that sort…anything to avoid the notion that some greater creative spirit at large in the world occasionally touches those with open minds and willing hearts with quite unearned bursts of liberating vision…as though for a second we are allowed to see through to the underlying reality where everything makes sense and is as it should be, and bring just a fragment of that vision back with us to apply to whatever problem or process is in hand.
Taking a picture for instance.
And as usual, the idea that creative genius and madness are closely linked…that the creative person walks a fine line with the balance of the mind…was presented as more or less historical fact. That has me thinking about gratitude. Thankfulness. I suspect…I do not know but I do suspect…that gratitude is a key element in the creative personality in maintaining the balance of the mind. You have to be thankful for every insight…for every inspiration…for every gift of vision that comes from that spirit of creativity greater than yourself. If you are not genuinely thankful…it you take those sudden convergences of experience and experiment as something that belongs to you, that you deserve or have earned…well, I have a strong feeling that that way lies madness.
And, as is not usual in these Sunday ramblings, that is a lot of weight to hang on a found still-life, a few leaves scattered in moss and water, over a decaying branch, along the boardwalk at Saco Heath. I scroll back up to look again at the image. Yup. Still thankful. So maybe it does work.
10/1/2011: Rainy Day Water Meadow
There are only two things to do with a rainy Saturday in Maine: 1) Stay inside and look at sunny pictures taken on other days…the antidote method, or 2) Go outside and find some good rainy images…the embrace the day method. Last Saturday I chose embracure. (It remains to see what I will choose today :), but posting this image puts me already on the path to an embrace.)
This is a watery marsh/meadow that I have imaged many times over the past few years, just off the Kennebunk Bridle Path. In this shot I really like the swirl of the foreground grasses in their first fall brown and what the light is doing in the trees along the edge…all under that moody sky. Not a high energy shot, but one that I find I can look at for quite a while without running out of content.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22mm equivalent field of view, Backlight/HDR mode. Nominal exposure f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160 (nominal as the image is an in-camera tone mapped series of images.)
I applied the Coolpix’s in-camera Quick Retouch before uploading to my laptop, and then final processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/30/2011: New Boardwalk at Saco Heath
Another view of the new boardwalk and the first fall foliage at Saco heath. This one has much stronger composition than yesterday’s, but the sky is less well exposed. Strong sun just out of the frame made the clouds very bright, and a balanced exposure was impossible without HDR treatment, and a challenge even then. Still this works for me. I like the curve of the variegated boardwalk and the way it disappears into the forest, and I like the tree leaning in from the left. The clouds at center are nicely textured and the sky so blue…over the touch of red maple leaves.
The new boardwalk is a project of the Nature Conservancy. The boardwalk has been deteriorating rapidly the past few years, and this summer they evidently decided it was past repair. The new boardwalk is Wood-Composite, good for the environment, and considerably more durable…not to mention slightly psychedelic.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/29/2011: First of Fall on Saco Heath
I spent a few hours at Saco Heath recently. Fall is coming. The maples along the edge of the heath have felt the change in day-length most strongly and, with the slightly cooler transition temperatures along the edge, have responded. Green chlorophyll is dying. The red chlorophyll is becoming dominant. This is the beginning of the fall foliage show in New England.
This is a 3 shot HDR, with the center shifted .7 EV toward the dark side, tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, and final processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. I prefer subtle HDR. If you notice the effect, then, in my opinion, it is too much already. Every time I revisit HDR I have to learn the lesson over again. My first efforts are always over cooked. This is a second pass…and I think I got it just about right 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent, f6.3 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160 for the nominal exposure.
And for fun…here is another shot from the same day.
9/6/2011: And with Goldenrod all along.
My last several posts have been from the Kennebunk Bridle Path. This accidental water meadow is on the north side of Route 9. It may, in fact, back in the era of salt-farms (decreasing through the early 1800s) have been an intentional water meadow for salt-hay. Hard to tell along the banks of Southern Maine’s tidal rivers. Certainly the meadow/marshes and drainage ditches on the other side of 9 have a very intentional look about them.
I like the way the Goldenrod has colonized the immediate banks of the stream to form a boarder on its twisting path. I have many wide angle shots of this meadow, but here I zoomed in to emphasize the stream and its yellow boarder.
Here it is, the same day, with the sky as a primary interest.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 53mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 2) 23mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
4/6/2011: Snow Geese, Wings on Wednesday
For Wings on Wednesday, a brief return to Bosque del Apace National Wildlife Refuge from last November. I have lots of shots of geese in flight from each trip to Bosque (who can resist?), but this one, with the geese set off by the fall foliage of the cottonwood behind and the natural pattern drawing the eye to the center, is among my favorites.
The fact that it is digiscoped…taken through the eyepiece of the spotting scope with a small digital camera…adds to the magic. The relatively small real aperture of the system increases the number of geese in focus beyond what would be possible with a conventional lens at this image scale and distance.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DisScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 1800mm lens on a full frame DSLR, 1/200th second @ ISO 125, f8 effective (camera limited).
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
11/6/2010: Morning flight, Cape May nJ
One of the great migration shows is the Morning Flight at Higbee Beach, in Cape May NJ. Most mornings during fall migration the birds wake up in Cape May after a 24 hour rest and a good stoking among the fall seed heads of the point and fly north…yes, north…up the shore of Deleware Bay, presumably looking for a narrower stretch of open water to cross. This northward flow along the shore concentrates the birds something wonderful. Thousands of some species pass every day. For many years now CMBO and ZEISS have put counters on the dyke at Higbee to count the passing birds, beginning a hour before sunrise and ending two hours after. These days here is also an observation tower below the dyke and, on weekends, an interpretive naturalist there to tell folks what is going on.
A week ago today was one of those high days when Cape May was alive with birds. The best migration day, some said, since 1999. Before dawn the dyke at Higbee was populated with birders waiting for the show, cars were parked all up and down the road, and it was standing room only on the observation tower.
This is a three exposure HDR, with some extra processing in Lightroom to bring up the foreground. Canon SX20IS.
10/28/2010: second helping of fall
One of the advantages of my travel schedule is that I get to experience extended springs and falls. Just as the foliage show is over in Maine, the last week in October, I always travel to Cape May, New Jersey, and, most years, the foliage in South Jersey is just at peak. Next month, just before Thanksgiving I will be in the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico. Fall is more variable in New Mexico than it is in New England, but about 3 out of 5 years, my visit catches the cottonwoods along the Rio Grande at their golden best. Spring is even more stretched for me, beginning in January in Florida, Feburary in Southern California, etc. I even occasionally catch Arizona’s second spring in August. 🙂
This is, according to my map, Ludlum’s Pond. Route 347, just north of where it comes back into 47 in Dennis, crosses the west end of it, and I have stopped several times on the way from Philadelphia to Cape May to photograph the foliage. This year the weather was chancy…with rain, thundershowers, and even a tornado warning in effect…but when I passed by the pond, it was no more than heavy overcast and a kind of watery light. With an HDR treatment, the weather actually shows the foliage to better advantage than full sun would have. Good thing, since that is all I had to work with.
HDR, in this kind of light, allows for a richly textured sky, while keeping enough light on the foliage and reflections to make for a very satisfying image. IMHO.
Canon SX20IS zoomed to about 48mm field of view for framing. Three exposures, auto bracketed, with the center moved down 2/3s EV. ISO 160.
Exposures blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix. My tone mapping in Photomatix is never extreme because I know I am going to do final processing in Lightroom: A bit of Recovery for the sky, some Fill Light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
And here is a more open, wider angle view, of the other shore. Another three exposure HDR.
10/26/2010: Down the Mousam to the sea
This is another autumn HDR, looking down the Mousam from the Route 9 bridge toward Great Hill and the sea beyond. The sky is interesting, but for me, it is the light on and in the water that makes the shot, especially balanced against the fall foliage behind the marsh. I like the way wind and current draw patterns in the water. The two posts redeem what would otherwise be a rather ugly patch of mud and stone, and, for me, draw the eye to the transparency of the water along the shore.
Canon SX20IS. Three exposures, auto bracketed over 2EV with the center moved down 2/3rds EV. ISO 160.
Exposures blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix. A touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint just right in Lightroom. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
10/25/2010: old falls on the Mousam
Old Falls and an old fall combine in this HDR shot of the Mousam River in West Kennebunk Maine. This is right across the road from Old Falls Pond of a few days ago, but here the ravages of wind and rain and late October are more obvious. Now we just hunker down and wait for snow. 🙂
If you click the image above you will see a different view of the larger shot. If you just click the Info button on the right a panel will drop down with full exif data.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent, three exposures auto bracketed around a center shifted –2/3 EV. ISO 160.
Blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix. Processed for Fill Light, Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpen in Lightroom.