Monthly Archives: March 2011
3/31/2011: A Different Panorama (just fooling)
An odd sort of panorama: my first attempt with a major foreground object. I was amazed that it worked as well as it did and I will definitely be trying it again when the opportunity presents itself. Three shots of the main pool at Emmons Preserve in the somewhat harsh early spring light, stretched a ways down the stream on the left behind the tree trunk, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 9’s Panorama tool.
Canon SX20is, each shot at 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/325 @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
(This post was prepared completely on my Motorola Xoom tablet, mostly just to see if it could be done. Also, I am aware of the incorrect dates on this and the last post. Happy April Fools Day!)
4/1/2011: Coulda Fooled Me
So, okay, the title has nothing much to do with the image, but, given the date, I could not resist. I have photographed this display in other seasons, but in the harsh light of early spring in Southern Maine, it has a particular vividness…somewhat emphasized in processing. These are, of course, lobster pot (trap) buoys or floats, which Lobstermen worldwide have used since the dawn of lobstering (or maybe just after…along about when there were two boats in the water) to distinguish one man’s trap from another’s (and, of course, to keep the rope on the surface). They are displayed on the stair leading up to entrance to the Ramp Bar and Grill at the Pier 77 Restaurant in Cape Porpoise Maine.
Canon SX20IS at about 250mm equivalent field of view, f5.0 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80, Landscape Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for more than usual intensity and clarity.
3/30/2011: Avocet Elegance, Wings on Wednesday
For Wings on Wednesday we have the the American Avocet, one of the most elegant of birds. It stands, often on one leg, with its classic coloring and long upturned bill…it feeds by sweeping that bill horizontally through shallow water (see video below)…altogether elegant.
This bird is at Famosa Slough in San Diego California.
Canon SD4000IS behind the new 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope for the equivalent field of view of approximately a 3000mm lens. 1/500 @ ISO 125, f8.5 effective.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
And the video. Also taken with the Canon through the spotting scope.
3/29/2011: Cape Porpoise, ME
If you stand on the fishing pier at Cape Porpoise, Maine and look back down the harbor toward town, this is what you see. Certainly one of the classic Maine fishing village vistas, with the white church steeple and the white clapboard houses, the lobster boats floating on a ultra-blue sea under a spring blue sky. And, in this hard spring light, if you turn right around and look out to sea, you are confronted by the Goat Island Light on the stone ledge that guards the entrance to the harbor and the extensive shallows.
All together classic for Maine. These views make Cape Porpoise, otherwise a sort of sleepy neighbor to far more touristy Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, just about as well visited in the summer. It is still spring here, and I was all but alone out there last Saturday. And look what they all missed!
Canon SX20IS at 1) 125mm equivalent field of view @ f4.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80, Landscape Mode, and 2) 150mm equivalent @ f4.5 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 80, Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
3/28/2011: Color Blind Lobsters?
Maybe this is a #Mystery for Monday. Lobsters are indeed color blind (I looked it up), but that seems little excuse for this excess of color in a lobster trap! And such colors. Do you suppose there is any method behind this madness? Certainly it will make it harder for the lobsterman to lose his trap. Maybe it repels some predator? Ah, I have it, it is to discourage summer tourists from taking the trap home to decorate the lawn!
As an abstract it is certainly eye-catching. I stepped back and framed this segment with approximately an 180mm field of view…which provided some compression as well to emphasize the abstract aspect. I really like the random rope-end, which, to my eye, sets off the calculated geometry of the constructed trap.
Canon SX20IS at 180mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode (just because that is what I had it in for the previous shot).
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom (but the color is all the trap-makers!)
3/27/2011: Spring Snow Morning
Happy Sunday!
Before the season slips behind us and is forgotten…here is a shot from just a week ago, when we woke to fresh spring snow. We might yet see another storm. We have had snow in April within my memory of this place…quite a few times at that. This snow was typical of spring, with big furry flakes, but exaggerated enough to be interesting, as chronicled on 3/20 and 21.
This is Back Creek where it crosses Route 9 just before the end of Brown Street, and is always a pleasant view, even here where the snow is doing its best to obscure it. I actually took the shot out the window of the car, keeping the camera dry. Moderate telephoto zoom framed the little curve in the creek and the gap in the trees, and emphasized the falling snow.
Canon SX20IS at 60mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Sports Mode to catch the falling flakes in mid-air.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
When picking a shot for Sunday, I always look for something that speaks, however faintly, to the spiritual side of things. I am a firm believer that the spiritual is in everything…that it underpins everything and every moment…and that we can (and should) see it wherever we look. I am not talking about a Platonic reality here, where the eternal cast a shadow that is the temporal reality we experience, but a world of experience that is, moment by moment, and second by second, the living expression of the creative spirit of all. This instance of spring snow is a single character in a single word in a single sentence of one paragraph of a chapter of one volume of the endless story that is being told. It is being spoken. Here I have written that character down, caught it in a pictograph, and it has meaning beyond me, only because we are all part of that same story being told. Spring Snow Morning. From my piece of the story…now into yours.
3/26/2011: Beach Panorama
For Scenery on Saturday, this is another three shot Panorama, this time the ocean side of the dunes at Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk Maine. It will benefit from the largest view you can manage, and should open automatically to the width of your monitor if you click the image. I am really liking what the cylindrical stitching does in PhotoShop Elements 9. The view is expansive and yet natural looking…as opposed to what I have done before which always looks to me like a horizontal slice out of a normal image. This is, imho, unmistakably a panorama.
And, of course, the image itself has a lot of interest, beginning with the amazing clouds, the expanse of sand, the tiny people further up the beach, and the cluster of houses on the right. It is not the usual view of the beach, taken, as it is, looking more or less inland, but I like it.
Three exposures from the Canon SX20IS handheld. F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Stitched and cropped in PhotoShop Elements 9 using the cylindrical mode. Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
3/25/2011: Black-chinned Hummer with attitude
Feathers on Friday! While digiscoping shore birds at Famosa Slough in San Diego a few weeks ago, there were several Black-chinned Hummingbirds patrolling the margins. That is, in my very limited experience, somewhat odd, in that, until then, every hummingbird I have ever seen in San Diego has been an Anna’s.
This is likely a separate individual, since he was well around the corner and down the long narrow south arm of the Slough, but I can not be sure. Black-chinned Hummers are aggressive and protective. One could have decided he wanted the whole Slough to himself. Certainly both these birds show the same attitude…or if it is a single bird, he certainly has enough attitude for two!
Canon SD4000IS behind the new 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for 1) 1700mm equivalent field of view, 1/500th @ ISO 125, f4.5 effective, and 2) 3000mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 125, f8 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and sharpness.
3/23/2011: Low down on the beach
I really like a camera with a rotating LCD. I like to be able to get down low for shots like this without kneeling in the wet sand, or snow, or straining my aging knees in any situation. And for me, the “on the ground” point of view often adds enough impact to the shot to make it worth the effort. Here the sky reflections in the wet sand and pooled water add to the effect.
This Parson’s Beach, about 2 miles from my front door, on the ocean side of the dunes from the past two days’ shots. Great Hill on the other side of the Mousam, and Lords Point in Kennebunk sticking out beyond. If you view it large enough you will see Cape Arundel on the horizon.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. I also used the Distortion tool to flatten the horizon and correct for some vertical perspective distortion from the low angle.
3/23/2011: Mousam HDR
This is a section of yesterday’s panorama taken at the mouth of the Mousam River behind Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk Maine…not literally a section as in one of the three stitched images…but a section as in a piece of the same view. This time it has received the HDR treatment. For a scene with this kind of sky drama already happening, about the only thing HDR adds (the way I use it) is a bit of detail enhancement in the foreground, some extra detail in the cloud cover, and greens you can see. In a normally exposed image of this scene, the greens would be going toward black (or the sky would be pale and lifeless), especially the evergreens in the distance. They might hold a bit of green, but HDR brings them back up to normal visual levels while preserving the cloud detail.
Canon SX20IS. Three bracketed exposures centered around –2/3EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.