Monthly Archives: June 2011
6/10/2011: Pitcher Plant in Bloom
Continuing what appears to be developing into a theme: something different in the way of flowers. The Pitcher Plant is one of a very few carnivorous plants world-wide, and, as far as I know, the only one to grow in Maine. It is restricted to the few peat bogs that remain in odd corners. I am privileged to live about 15 miles from one of those corners: Saco Heath, and I try to visit it several times a year. June is mandatory as the Rhodora are in bloom, making a brave pink show over the upland sections of the bog. Due to my travel schedule this year, I missed the main bloom of the Rhodora, but I managed to catch the Pitcher Plants in full cry. I counted about 30 in bloom, that I could see from the boardwalk. I am certain there were more out of sight. They grow at the very edges of the raised areas that support the Jack Pine and Rhodora in the bog.
What we have above is a view of the flower from underneath, close up, and looking almost straight up. (This is when I appreciate the flip out LCD on the Nikon most.) Below you will see a more conventional view, showing the pitcher part of the plant and the intense maroon of the top of the flower.
The pitcher collects a bit of water, in which insects drown and decompose, providing essential nutrients to the plant in this nutrient poor environment. I told you it was different.
And here is a more conventional close up of the flower.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) Close Up Scene Mode, 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) 190mm equivalent, f5.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, Program mode, 3) Close Up Scene, 32mm equivalent, f3.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Some color temperature adjustment.
6/9/2011: Really Different, Kinda Abstract
Okay, if yesterday’s Wings on Wednesday was different…this is really out there! Sitting at my desk on a sunny morning, the sun was just up enough to hit the screen in the open window directly, highlighting the spider web tracks across it. They are invisible under more normal circumstances. I have looked for them since, and I can’t see them. After some experimentation I found that I had to back away from the window with the camera, and zoom in to focus on the screen, leaving the yard behind it as vague shapes and colors. Really different, kinda abstract!
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 215mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/60th @ ISO 160. Close Up Scene Mode (assisted macro).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/8/2011: Wings on Wednesday with a Twist
I am preparing this post on my Xoom tablet, as an experiment, since I am wondering if I have to take my laptop on vacation next week. And of course that is not the only different thing about it. Generally my Wings on Wednesday posts are birds. 🙂
This is, unless I am mistaken, a Silver Spotted Skipper. I have always said butterflies are hard to learn in New England since you don’t see the numbers or the variety you see in, say, the Rio Grand Valley, but when attempting to identify this one I discovered that there are in fact a lot of different skippers in Maine. That was after, of course, I figured out it might be a Skipper. I have a lot to learn.
I especially like the light in this shot…how the sun and shadow conspire to show off the Skipper.
Nikon Coolpix P 500 at 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly to show the beasty to better advantage.
6/7/2011: Lady Slippers Reprise (the first movement)
I posted this pic on the left, taken at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells ME, on 5/24, exactly two weeks ago. The shot above is the same stand of Lady Slippers, now in full bloom. All of the Lady Slippers this year seem a bit paler than last…as well as being almost three weeks late blooming…but this clump in particular is unusually pale. The light coming through them still brings out the delicate pinks in a way that reflected light never could.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro) at 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And just a slightly closer view.
6/6/2011: Merriland River Spring Panorama
Of course, this has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow for full effect. Click the image and it should open in that format.
This is the Merriland River where it flows down to meet the Little at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters.
When I took this shot, three shots actually, I had little expectation of its working out. It was simply a why not, digital is free experiment. What caught my eye was the delicate spring foliage, the sweep of the river, and the light on the trees on the left. I liked the way the two relatively close trees framed the view, and I liked the look of the diagonal branch. It had to be a pano though, since any single view out through the foreground obstructions would make them just that…obstructions. The foreground branch, I think, works in the pano because it has the room it needs to look natural, and the larger context to make sense of it. This is my second experiment with Panorama with foreground objects. I am liking them.
Three 23mm equivalent fields of view, overlapped and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9, using the reposition tool. Nikon Coolpix P500, f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO160. Program with Active D-Lighting, for dynamic range, and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
6/5/2001: White Rugosa Rose, Happy Sunday!
Beach Rose, or Rosa Rugosa, is common along coast of New England, and especially on the dunes of southern Maine. It is not native. It was introduced for dune control and sea-side landscaping from Asia, where it is 
native to coasts of northern China, Korea, Japan, and southern Siberia. Rose Hip Jelly, a regional specialty, is made from the hips or pips (fruit) of the Beach Rose. Like many other introduced plants, it has been a mixed blessing…it certainly holds the dunes down and makes a bold show in lawns and boarders, but where it grows wild it has almost completely displaced native dune grasses and wildflowers.
Mostly you see the red variety. The white is a cultivar, and through I found it growing wild along the abandoned Bridle Path in Kennebunk, it almost certainly escaped from someone’s garden, or perhaps there was once a house along the Path just there, as there is evidence of ditching and draining and possible cultivation in the marsh near-by, and several other introduced ornamentals (including Hawthorn and Japanese Barberry) on the Bridle Path within sight of the patch of white roses.
The big showy white petals do, as I see it, very interesting things with light 
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro). Both main shots at f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And, for the Sunday thought…
If, as I strongly suspect, what we have along the Bridle Path just there, where the white Rugosa Rose blooms, are the remnants of someone’s gardening efforts from the last century (or even the one before…there is a particularly Victorian aspect to the mix of plants) it just goes to show how much power there is in the human intention…the power to alter the landscape for generations…well beyond the lifetime of the particular person of intent. And, of course, the problem status of the Rugosa Rose on New England dunes testifies to our inability to completely foresee the consequences of our intentions. We, as children of the creator, have, indeed a measure of the creator’s power…certainly enough to create our own versions of Eden where ever we go…but as creatures of time, who lack, while we are here on this earth, the eternal perspective, we can not see far enough ahead to know what exactly we do.
I am, to be honest, of two minds about this. One part of me recommends caution…that we ought, given our limitations, to take a “hands off” stance…to leave nature to her own devices, and not meddle with the landscape.
But part of me feels that managing the ever changing landscape is what we are here to do…that in fact…we will always be gardeners in the Eden the creator is creating…and that is right that we exercise our little bit of creativity in the moment…every moment…to tend and expand the landscape of creation. If the Rugosa Rose has run beyond any intention, it will require creative intent on the part of the children of the creator reign it in.
Too often, I think, we set man and nature against each other. Man made is unnatural. A garden is not nature. Too often, I think, we forget that man is part of nature…that our creative intent is force of nature as sure as wind and sun and rain. It is, as I see it, only by remembering that all the time, and passing it generation to generation, that we can overcome the limitations of our time-bound perspectives. We are children of the creator, charged with creation in the moment. If the Rugosa Rose is a problem, we need to get creative about it. In this moment.
Or that’s what I think this Sunday morning.
Happy Sunday. Enjoy what the light does with the petals of the White Rugosa Rose!
6/4/2011: Upper Pool at Emmon’s Preserve
I have posted quite a few shots over the past two and a half years from Emmon’s Preserve, a little Kennebunkport Land Trust property on the Batson River. The Batson, despite its name, is actually something between a brook and a river. In August it might only be a trickle between moss covered stones, but other times its pools are full and its falls and rapids are wild, it is never, however, what I would call a river, even at its fullest.
This, in particular, is a shot I have taken often…I like the sculpted wood of the fallen tree…but I particularly like the quality of the light in this one. The Nikon’s Active D-Lighting renders scenes like this in a strikingly natural way, and the 22.5mm equivalent lens opens the view wonderfully. I love the depth. This is an image that draws me in. I could look at it for a long time.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 22.5mm equivalent field of view, f3.4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Program with Active-D Lighting (to extend dynamic range) and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
6/3/2011: Dandelion Relapse
It grieves me to report that brother Ingraham has suffered a dandelion relapse, or in the more colorful vernacular, “fallen off the dandelion wagon.” It turns out that even as he was writing yesterday’s moving dandelion confession (which I am certain moved you as much as it did me)…he was surreptitiously watching the sun creep toward a particularly lush patch of dandelion that grows in the corner of the yard where the neighbors walk their dog, and almost as soon as he hit the publish button, he threw on some clothes, unshowered, and ran out with his camera for another fix. Oh the weakness of the human flesh. Which is why, brothers, we need each other. Staunch friends, let Brother Ingraham be a lesson, and let us rally round and support him as he returns to sanity and sobriety after yet another dandelion binge. It could happen to any of us. Guard yourselves and each other. There are weeks yet until we are safe from temptation. Just as brother Ingraham so eloquently confessed…only yesterday. One day at a time!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up (macro) scene mode, 32mm equivalent field of view. 1) f7.1 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160, 2) f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. The sun is directly behind the head of the dandelion in both shots. The flip out LCD came into play of course…they really do walk their dog there. 🙂
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness (with a touch of extra recovery and some fill light to balance the difficult exposure…but still the camera really did very well). Until next time. One day at a time!
6/2/2011: Dandelion Days
Is there really anything new to say about dandelion puffs? Still, who, with a macro capable camera in hand, can resist photographing them every year? There is always something in the light, or the background, or the ambiance to justify another shot. Oh shutter buttons! No one really needs any justification for another dandelion puff shot! They are reason unto themselves…sure as summer coming…sure as we love symmetry…sure as June rains which leave them shattered or June winds that send them sailing as single parachutes to plague the lawn-keepers of future summers…sure as the grass stained knees and aging backs that make every years’ harder to catch! Dandelion puff is. Therefore: dandelion puff pictures!
These are two very different shots, from a technique standpoint. Both use the Close Up scene mode on the Nikon Coolpix P500, which is a kind of assisted macro. 1) is at closest focus and the camera selected best macro setting on the zoom at 32mm equivalent field of view…taken from less than an inch away, in open shade. f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) is zoomed out to 340mm equivalent (overriding the auto setting but still macro), taken from about 5 feet, obviously in full sun. f5.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
I will not claim that these satisfy my dandelion puff addiction for this year…we still have weeks of temptation facing us…but for today they are sufficient.
6/1/2011: Rose-breasted Grosbeak, wings on wednesday
As a birder, I will admit that I think almost all birds are beautiful…as in the eye of the beholder if nothing else…but I find the Rose-breasted Grosbeak particularly striking. This Grosbeak, incidentally, shows exactly what Magee Marsh is all about. Magee is a major stop-over for birds waiting for favorable winds to cross Lake Erie in Ohio. They stop there to fuel up, and the rich habitat of the mid-west spring provides the fuel. Every bird you see there is actively feeding (note the seeds on that massive beak)…even those who are not moving on in the morning…since the residents are busy at nest building and also need their energy.
I like this shot, even-though the bird is mostly obscured. It is pretty much what most birders get to see of most birds they encounter in a woodland setting. However I did manage a few full frontal portraits of Rose-breasted Grosbeak while at Magee as well.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) f5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. User selected Flight and Action program.
User Flight and Action mode:
full size (12mp)
fine image quality
8 fps for 5 frames
center and continuous focus
center metering
auto ISO and a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 second
hybrid Vibration Reduction
LCD off
zoom fully extended (810mm equivalent)
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.