Monthly Archives: July 2009
7/11/2009
There used to be an island...
This is what remains of Strawberry Island. Folks still living remember picking strawberries out at the end of this remaining causeway, on the island that used to be there. Storms made the major changes, but compounded by unenlightened management of the shoreline north of here. Breakwaters. Beach creation. Sea walls. We interfered with the currents along the coast, and the island went away. In living memory. So, okay, we only triggered the huge power of the ocean…but it goes to show you…no one messes with the ocean without major consequences.
Enough of that.
The image itself: I have always liked the sinuous shape of the causeway reaching out to sea with no apparent termination. Given a clear day and the proper clouds to expand the horizon toward infinity and you get something like this.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, my usual added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen preset. Recovery for the sky. Some Fill Light for the foreground.
7/10/2009
Abstract in Marsh Foam
Given the heavy and frequent (incessant) rains we have had this summer in Maine, it is not surprising that all the streams are running full and fast. They are also picking up a lot of sediment and organics along the way. This leads to some interesting foam where the water eddies, especially where the fresh water meets the salt and some interaction (possibly even of a chemical nature) takes place.
This was a huge patch of stream/sea foam along the shore where an unnamed tributary empties into the Mousam river, just yards from where the Mousam empties into the sea.
I was struck by the swirling patterns, and took several shots attempting to make something of them.
Sony DSC H50 at about 90mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/640 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, just added Vibrance, Clarity, and Landscape sharpen preset. I also increased the contrast to bring out the pattern more.
A second shot: which shows the variety of color and texture in the mass.
Marsh Foam Abstract 2
7/9/2009
Pointing Out The Boat
The boat and the boater caught my eye. Classic boat. I took more conventional shots, but this seemed like an opportunity too good go pass up. I had to hurry and just about missed it, since the boat was moving up river.
One of the advantages/disadvantages of a P&S with its small sensor size is the exaggerated depth of field. This shot makes good use of it. Taken at only f5.6, it still has enough depth for both the near roots and the far boatl.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky and clouds, blackpoint to the right, added Vibrance and Clarity, and Landscape sharpen preset. Finally, I used a graduated filter effect pulled down from the top to darken the sky further, and to increase contrast in the trees.
From Around Home, Kennebunk ME
And here is the boat:
7/8/2009
Reflect on This
I am always struck by this stand of trees, and on a day like this, when the reflection is at least as interesting as the trees themselves, it makes a powerful, but peaceful image.
Sony DSC H50 at about 60mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Cropped heavily from the bottom and, mostly, top in Lightroom for composition. Recovery for the sky. Much Fill Light to bring up detail in the shadows of the trees. Blackpoint to the right more than usual. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen preset.
7/7/2009
And White Campion for my Banner!
This is another shot that is easy to visualize and difficult to do. I tried several times, with the Campion which was standing tallest and with the Vetch which was equally dramatic. This is what I was after.
Take a good long look at the image, because what I am about to tell you will change your perception of it, and I want your original impression well fixed.
Tell-tale shadow
Only when I got it all processed and uploaded to Wide Eyed In Wonder (my smugmug site) did I notice that there was a dark shadow across the lower petals. I had hopefully attributed it to the petals being folder under in processing, but now that I looked closely I saw it for what it was…the shadow of my lens.
Unacceptable. I can stand natural obstructions, and often leave them in when others might edit them out, but I do not want something that I put there to spoil the image.
I tried some Local Adjustment brush work in Lightroom, but the petals have a texture that was destroyed by adjustments in brightness or exposure. The only option to save the image (imho) was to take it into Photoshop Elements for some work with the clone tool. It is rare that I have to resort to anything beyond the tools available in Lightroom, but this was the exception. The clone tool allows you to pick up a piece of the image…color, texture…the whole thing…and paint it over another section of the image. It is the way you magically remove those protruding branches, bits of grass in front of faces, etc. In this case all I wanted to do was remove the shadow. To do that I selected the petal right above the shadow, and carefully painted its texture and exposure over the darkened areas. This works so well that on the left petal, I was able to paint in a water droplet at the tip of the petal.
Is this cheating? I don’t have a good answer for that. Certainly I would have preferred not to have gotten the shadow in there in the first place, but given the tools at our disposal today, I saw no reason to leave it there and let it spoil a shot that I really liked.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Besides the processing outlined above, in Lightroom I cropped slightly from the right to eliminate a distraction and improve composition. Recovery for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen. I was able to retain all those edits when exporting the file to Photoshop Elements, so the find version includes those changes and the editing I did in PE.
7/6/2009
High-tide in the Tidal marsh, With flowers.
The first sunny Saturday morning, after 2 weeks of steady rain, found me down at the beach before my shower. Pics to be taken.
I tried several variations of this shot, with the wildflowers blooming up out of the sea-rose hedges and clumps in the foreground, and various backgrounds. This is the tidal-marsh on a little tributary of the Mousam River which apparently has no name (not that I can find on maps anyway). The stream drains freshwater wetlands just back from the coast, across Rt. 9.
Lots for the eye to play with in this image, from the flowers in the foreground, to the lone grass head breaking the horizon, to the folded marsh covered in a pelt of grasses, to the intense blue of the tidal pond, to the tall centered stand of pines, to the clouds painting the blue of the sky. Almost too much, but, for me, the tall clump of pines anchors it enough to give the eye some ease and let it all hang together. I would prefer to have the clump of trees on one of the power lines (rule of thirds lines), but no crop with the trees there is successful, and they would not move for me.
You might want to click on the image to view it larger. What fits in the blog-space does not do it full justice.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F8.0 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Programed auto with program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky and clouds. Blackpoint slightly to the right. Added Vibrance and Clarity, and Landscape sharpen preset. This is a candidate for dual graduated filter effects, top and bottom, but it does not, considering the brilliance of the light, really need it. Cropped slightly from the bottom for composition.
7/5/2009
Who Knew? Green Bee on Blanket Flower
Who knew? There are green bees! Tiny. Very strange. Maybe even the original of the Green Hornet (though, outside comics, there is not such actual insect.) It took me an hour of searching to find a name for this critter on the internet…or rather to confirm the name that popped immediately to mind. Green bee. Genius Agapostemon. Appears there are many species and I am not certain which this is, but it is without doubt, a green bee…tiny and jewel like in its metalic splendor, posed on this Blanket Flower, right in our front yard.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F3.2 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, just a slight crop from the right for composition, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset.
And here without the bee, an even closer view of the Blanket Flower.
Extreme Blanket Flower
7/4/2009
Pink Pogonia Orchid
Happy 4th of July!
On the way back from my Fernald Brook adventure, I ran into an area where the road I had to walk was completely under water…not much water…a few inches. It was an old road that, near as I could tell, skirts the edge of a disused gravel pit, now turned into a kind of sumpy wetland. Not exactly where you would go to search for an increasingly rare orchid in Maine. But there it was, a patch of well over a hundred fragile plants, all in bloom.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly in Lightroom for composition. Recovery for the highlights. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint to the right. Landscape sharpen preset. I also used the Local Adjustment Brush to paint a mask over the background and then decreased Clarity and Sharpness to the max, and Contrast slightly, to give the effect of a shallower depth of field. One of the issues with small Point and Shoots on macro is that the physical size of the aperture gives greater depth of field than the corresponding lens on a DSLR, which makes it harder to separate the subject from a potentially distracting background. LAB in Lightroom to the rescue.
And, for contrast, just a few yards away where the moss was taking over I found a whole cluster of these Sweet White Violets blooming the gloom of the overhanging trees and bank very late in the season.
Sweet White Violet
F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100 in the more subdued light.
7/3/2009
Fernald Book: in context
This the fullest context shot of the series. It would have taken a wider wide to get the full height of the trees, and I actually zoomed in a bit for better framing.
Sony DSC H50 at about 35mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/25th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, added Clarity and Vibrance, and blackpoint just to the right. Landscape sharpen preset.
7/2/2009
Sky and Trees Paint Tea-Brown Water
If nothing else this latestes series of Pics should illustrate my often repeated principal of shoot all around the subject. (Why take just one… and Lupine Lessons from Point and Shoot Landscape). All of these shots were taken from one spot. I did not move, but the camera did, and so did the zoom (for framing).
In this shot, what caught my eye was the strong reflections of the trees against the sky in the water…as well what the sun was doing with the water color and the sand on the bottom of the brook.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F4.0 @ 1/20th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with program shift (to slow the shutter speed for the best reflection effect).
In Lightroom, heavy recovery for the highlights on the foliage and to cut some of the glare from the water. Added Clarity and Vibrance and the blackpoint moved just slightly to the right. Landscape sharpen preset. I also used the Local Adjustment brush to tone down the brightest highlights on the ferns and skunkcabbage leaves along the stream.