Monthly Archives: April 2011
4/20/2011: Full Alert, wings on wednesday
Great Blue Herons are one of my favorite birds to photograph. They have great plumage. They get into interesting shapes. And they are easy! They pose. This bird, caught looking at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville Florida, held this unlikely pose (unlikely unless you have spent much time with Great Blues) for long enough so that I had no trouble catching it, even in the limited field of view of my digiscoping rig. There is a lot of tension in the shot, highlighted by the light in the bird’s eye, which is rotated forward to look along the bill. Something certainly had this bird’s attention.
Very careful observers will see that I was shooting through reeds, and there are two in the far foreground, so out of focus as to be little more than a shadowy wash of color, which cross right at the bill.
Canon SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 1200mm lens on a full frame DSLR, 1/1250th @ ISO 125, f4 (camera limited).
Processed for intensity and sharpness in Lightroom. Cropped for composition.
4/19/2011: Lichen and ???
The flaky growth on a fallen branch at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge is lichen, and I think the little miniature pine-tree-thingy is too. I think, from a bit of googling, it may be a fruticose lichen related to Spanish Moss. I was struck by the contrast in form and color, and framed this with the long end of the zoom and macro on the Canon SX20IS, which provided the attractive bokeh. The early morning light of early spring picked out the detail and gave the image some warmth it would not otherwise have had.
Canon SX20IS at 356mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 80. Program Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
4/18/2011: Phragmites and Bokeh
Back when I used to think of Phragmites as an invasive weed, destroying our wetlands, I could not see its beauty. Now that I know that most Phragmites in Maine (and much of it elsewhere) are actually a native species, and that what is spoiling our wetlands is our own land use practices and chemical agriculture with spread of Phragmites just an optimistic symptom of the problem, not its cause…I can begin to appreciate the reed (not weed). It certainly has its beauty, as here, with a single weathered fond caught against the forest bokeh behind.
Shot at a 560mm equivalent field of view to isolate the reed and send the trees behind well out of focus.
Canon SX20IS, f5.7 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Cropped slightly for composition.
4/17/2011: Where the Merriland meets the Little
Happy Sunday! I spent an hour yesterday morning at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters area, walking the little nature trail through the woods down to the Little River and the Merriland, as the sun was trying to warm a cold early spring day. There is little sign of spring at Rachel Carson beyond the light, the first hard leaf buds, and the earliest signs the intention to blossom on the Hobblebush.
This is where the Merriland River, in the foreground, meets the Little River, on the left. It is a 4 shot panorama and really needs to be seen as large as your monitor will allow. It is, in fact, considerably wider than you would be likely to take in at one view. By relaxing your attention and, so to speak, stepping back behind your eyes, you would be able to see this sweep, but generally our attention is more focused and we would only see this as a series of impressions. I like the way the early light is playing across the marsh and bringing up the blues in the water, when there are none in the sky.
Canon SX20IS, four 28mm equivalent fields of view, stitched using the Panorama tool in Photomerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Average exposure was in the f4 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80 range. Landscape mode.
And,for Sunday…I think about that focused attention we bring to bear on the world around us, limiting our natural 180º plus, to between 15º of truly focused attention, and 60º-90º of operational attention. We call the rest peripheral. And yet, we could all benefit, I suspect, from the habit, say, once or twice a day, of stepping back behind our eyes, relaxing, and taking in the full width of our vision. It is certainly so in spiritual things. One of the most profound insights of any spiritual journey is just how focused on our limited view of things we all are, and what a change it makes to step back and look out of larger eyes than our own. Doing so does not diminish in any way the particular that is the focus of our attention…it just puts it in perspective. What is my own salvation, precious as it is, in comparison to the salvation of mankind and the redemption of creation? There is a kind of prayer that seeks that experience…not petition (necessary focused on the particular)…but a reverent approach to unity through love that is sometimes called meditation. Unfocused attention, while I would not argue that it is the highest form of vision, or of prayer, is undoubtedly good for us.
Which is maybe why every photographer needs to experiment with panoramas once in a while. 🙂
4/16/2011: Miniature Mountains, Forests, in a Stump
On my photo walk last Saturday, spring just was not happening all that much, but I found a brave display of moss and lichen along a new trail through a little patch of public use land donated to the town recently. This is a rather small stump, in the scale of things, but well decorated. In the light of an early spring morning it builds possibilities in the mind. Kind of an alternative scenery for Saturday.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and super-macro. F7.1 @ 1/30th @ ISO 80. I used Program Shift to select the smaller aperture for added depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity (see Lightroom Processing page above).
4/15/2011: Sandhills in Flight, feathers on Friday
This is another flight shot from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and my visit there last November. Sandhills in flight are amazing. So prehistoric. So majestic. And there is nowhere like Bisque to photograph them (well nowhere I have been).
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 320. Sports mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
4/14/2011: Catkins, Flowers, and Leaf buds.
Spring is slowly unfolding here in Southern Maine. Catkins are hanging and at least a few trees are in flower. New leaves are just emerging. Nothing showy mind you. We are still weeks from dog-woods and the ornamental cherries in front yards, but a few of the most hardy natives have begun to think about reproduction.
This is a tel-macro shot, at the limits of its depth of field, but I like the colors in the catkin and the form of the flowers and was determined to frame them both. The composition is pretty classic at that. The branches in the back were just far enough away to be pleasingly out of focus. It will actually benefit from a lager view.
Canon SX20IS at 300mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
4/13/2011: Sandhill take off, Wings on Wednesday
For Wings on Wednesday: If you are trying to capture a Sandhill Crane taking off, this is what you look for…the bird stretches in the direction of take off, and assumes what can only be called an intent posture. Then…
the head drops and you might be fooled into thinking the bird has thought better of it…but…
the next second, with run and a flapping of those huge wings, the bird is in the air. These three shots were taken with a small digital camera behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope, at the equivalent field of view of about 1800mm on a conventional full frame DSLR so tracking the bird was not easy. The final shot is at the limits of the auto focus of the camera through the scope.
Canon SD4000IS and ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Kids and Pets mode for higher shutter speeds (1/1000th) which pushed the ISO up to 160. An effective aperture of about f5.0.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
And here, from the same morning, is the video that shows a similar sequence. Also taken with the SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope. You can see some heat shimmer in the air, even though this was just after dawn. The rapidly warming water gives off a lot of vapor in the dry upland desert air.
4/12/2011: Waiting for Footfall
This needs to be seen larger, and clicking the image will open it on its SmugMug page as large as your monitor will support. You may need to scoot back in your chair, away from the computer, to really catch the effect. An exaggerated perspective on the path in the forest shot, from ground level…and with the trees still bare in spring. This shot is about line and light…the lines of the bare trees outlined in light, and the light receding at the far reach of the tunnel. The few evergreens and the leafy floor anchor the eye and help the eye and mind to make sense of it. In addition to the low angle, I used some telephoto compression to emphasize the effects. Cropped from the bottom and top for composition and to eliminate distracting out of focus foreground.
Canon SX20IS at 330mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. I took it into PhotoShop Elements to clone out a twig that was protruding upward into the frame from the bottom.
4/11/2011: Last of Winter HDR
Hard to believe this was only a week ago here in Maine, after what I sincerely hope was the last snow of the season. This is a nothing shot…just a little moderate-telephoto crop of the landscape…but I like it. I like the bare branches against the sky, the clouds, the water and the leading line of melt in the foreground…I like the balance and the detail.
Canon SX20IS at 75mm equivalent field of view, three shots bracketed around –2/3rds EV, blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
I did shoot this as a standard Landscape Mode image just for comparison. All the HDR did was to bring up the relative brightness of the mid-tones in the trees, giving them more dimension, and bring out the green of the conifers. I might, with careful levels work and some masking, have been able to achieve these same results working with the single exposure. 🙂