Monthly Archives: August 2011
8/11/2011: Phoenix Airport Sunset
As an experiment I did not bring my laptop on this short business trip to Portland Oregon and back. Just my Xoom tablet, and a EyeFi SD card for the camera. With the EyeFi card I can transfer images wirelessly from the camera to the Xoom. I can do light processing on the tablet with apps like PicSay Pro and PhotoEnhanse…neither of which are Lightroom by a long stretch but which are surprisingly capable editors on the Android platform. PicSay’s only major limitation, in fact, is that it can not yet save full resolution files. PhotoEnhanse does save full res but it is a one trick pony…doing a tone mapping and blackpoint adjustment to stretch dynamic range.
I am also writing and posting this from the Xoom using the Android WordPress app, Quickpic, and Google+ and Hootsuite for Android.
Okay so the image already. I had an unexpected 3 hour layover in Phoenix on my way to Portland and I could not resist playing with the sunset out the window of the terminal. The Phoenix skyline makes an interesting backdrop and there are interesting ray patterns in the dark clouds. I placed the setting sun right behind the tail of an airplane, which also produced an interesting effect.
Nikon Coolpix P 500 at 40mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Camera with Quick Retouch. Processed on the tablet in PicSay Pro.
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8/10/2011: Batson River at August Ebb
The river at Emmons Preserve barely deserves the name in any season, but by August its spring rush is just a memory…a song sung far away and in a minor key by the trickle of water that flows down rock to rock and moistens an abundant growth of moss. Still it has its alure. One thinks of ferries and elves making the most of deep summer evenings. Indeed the Ebony Jewelwings over dark water, catching the sun flash on their irridescent blue and sometimes green tails could easily be the originals of more than one supernatural dweller in the glades.
Nikon Coolpix P P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. F3.4 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting. 2) 283mm, f5.5 @ 1/20 @ ISO 200. Close Up mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
8/9/2011: Bee on a Blanket
Nothing says high summer like bumble bees in the Blanket Flower in the sun. And, of course, the bee adds interest to what would otherwise be just another portrait of a flower…not that a Blanket Flower portrait would be without interest in itself…I love the range of reds and oranges. Taken in our yard one morning last week.
This is a telephoto macro, taken in the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Close Up mode with the zoom setting overridden to 320mm equivalent field of view. The reach is good when working with bees, as I am somewhat allergic, but it also offers better separation from the background. With a small sensor camera you need all the background help you can get.
f5.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Close Up Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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8/8/2011: Kennebunk Plains panorama
This 4 shot, full resolution panorama, done with the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Assisted Panorama mode, covers just over 180 degrees. I was, so to speak, back to back to myself for the first and last shots. I has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow, which should happen if you click the image and open the Smugmug lightbox. (My Smugmug uploads are limited to 4000 pixels wide…the original is 11834×3030.
In an image this wide, I find that the normal horizon placement rules don’t apply. This image is almost equally split between sky and landscape, and yet to my eye, it works. Certainly the level of interest in the clouds helps, providing a effective balance for the details of the plain.
This is the Kennebunk Plains again and you can see Northern Blazing Star on the left and right in the immediate foreground. What you see here, by the way, is about 3/4 of the whole Plain. My back, in the center of the image, is to the road that divides the Plain and separates the smaller quarter on the other side, and if I had included any more on either end of the image you would have seen the road and its telephone poles.
Assisted Panorama displays the leading edge of the first shot in transparent form so you can lay it over the landscape to take image two, etc. It makes even tripod-less panos pretty easy. Here each exposure was at 32mm equivalent field of view, and nominal exposure was f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. The image was stitched in PhotoMerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for Clarity, Intensity, and Sharpness in Lightroom.
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8/7/2011: Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains
Happy Sunday! The Kennebunk Plains is the largest remaining sand-grasslands habitat in New England. The last of the glaciers left behind a natural, open plain without forest cover. It supports several rare and endangered species of animals and plants, but, in reality it is the habitat itself that is threatened. The area around it is rapidly being built up…transforming from rural to suburban…with housing developments nibbling at the edges. It is a good thing that its unique value was recognized early enough to save it. The main body of land was purchased by the Nature Conservancy, and with addition parcels added by the local Conservation Land Trusts, it is now jointly managed by the NC and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. You can read more about the plains in the Kennebunk Plains and Wells Barrens Focus Area (pdf).
Yesterday, after an interesting few hours with the dragonflies at Emmons Preserve (see An Afternoon Amble Among the Odonata and Insects), I drove out to the Plains chasing big skies. It is one of the few places in Southern Maine away from the coast with an unobstructed view. This is blueberry season and my wife had been to the Plains picking berries earlier in the week (most locals know the area as the Blueberry Plains, and gathering of wild blueberries is allowed there during August…at one time, indeed, they were commercially harvested), but she failed to mention that the Blazing Star is in bloom. Northern Blazing Star is one of the endangered plants that gives the Plains conservation status, and one of the reasons the Nature Conservancy was interested enough to invest in the land. A Thistle-like flower that grows on tall stalks, it is especially abundant (as abundant as it gets in its endangered state) along the sand tracks that run through the Plains.
So, of course, I had ideal subjects to fill the foreground of my big sky shots. The leading image here is a low angle shot, using the flip out LCD on the Coolpix, to frame a fairly dense stand of Blazing Star against some towering clouds.
And this is the flower itself…
I am always thankful (and never more so than on Sunday) for the foresight of the people of the Nature Conservancy, Land Trusts, and State and Federal agencies that works together, when it works at all, to save a place like the Kennebunk Plains. A place like the Kennebunk Plains should speak to us of the wonder of creation…it should be a place we treasure…and where we can see and experience God in way that is just as powerful as any experience of worship. The Blazing Star of the Kennebunk Plains should inspire us…should move us…should motivate us to do what we can to make sure it is still there to delight another generation.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 32mm equivalent field of view. f5.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. 2) 32mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f3.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 3) 810mm equivalent (Close Up mode). f5.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, intensity, and Sharpness.
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8/6/2011: Sundrops, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
One of the wonderful things about the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is that they have room to do massive beds of flowers…like this display of Sundrops. I like this shot, which was carefully composed to set off the taller stack of flowers against the chaotic background of blooms. It is one of those “look twice” images…as the subject does not jump right out at you…but once you see what is going on, I think it is effective.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 130mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. Program shift for the smaller aperture and greater depth of field.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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8/5/2011: Big Sky over the Marsh
On my little pic-amble last Saturday, out to my pocket sanctuary along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it passes through a chunk of Rachel Carson NWR, I waited about an hour for these clouds to move out over the marsh. (There was plenty to keep me busy…see An Afternoon Feast of Odonata.)
The 23mm wide end of the zoom on the Nikon Coolpix P500 seems better corrected for horizontal than vertical distortion, so when you lay the camera over on its side for a wide portrait view, as here, distortion is really noticeable. I used the distortion tools in Lightroom to correct it some, but critical viewers will still notice that the house is not perfectly plumb. So it goes. I still like the shot.
Camera and lens as above. f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting and –.3 EV exposure compensation. I continue to be impressed with how well the Active D-Lighting captures high dynamic rage. The clouds are, to my eye, just about perfect.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, Sharpness, Distortion, and color balance (slight warming).
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8/4/2011: Rocking the Beach
Depending on the season and the tide, this corner of the beach where the Mousam River meets the sea is either pebble or sand, as the pebble bed is alternately exposed and covered. This summer there is an extensive reach of pebble showing, here somewhat exaggerated by the low angle and the tight crop on the sky. The sky was blank blue…not a cloud in sight…so there was no temptation to keep it in the image any more than was necessary to provide scale. I like the somewhat radiating lines of the pebbles, combed by the tide, and the lone lady in the camp-chair on the right. (This was very early on a Saturday morning. Even by the time I left, the beach was a lot more populated than it is here.)
The second view features one of the larger pebbles…a rock by almost anyone’s standards…in an even tighter crop.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting. Shot with the flip out LCD out, from a few inches above the pebbles and sand. Both shots.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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8/3/2011: Make a wing. Piping Plovers
A wing, literally, for Wednesday. This endangered Piping Plover clearly does not realize its status, as it was on the open section of the beach in Kennebunk Maine, in among the early fishermen and the very early sun bathers…though it was hanging out in the relative safety of a bit of sand in the rocky section of the beach.
For this full frame shot I was experimenting with the digital zoom on the Nikon Coolpix P500, running it out to 1296mm equivalent field of view (810mm optical x whatever digital). Prior accidental experiments had indicated that it might actually work, and I am quite pleased with the results. Not equal to a behemoth lens on a DSLR, but pretty good! thank you, for a camera and lens that just about fits in a photo vest pocket.
The following shot was taken at the normal 810mm optical, and then cropped slightly for composition and scale. It is also very satisfying, considering. (If you are pixel peeper, you can view them as large as you like up to full resolution by clicking the image and using the controls across the top of the Smugmug lightbox page.)
Nikon Coolpix at the stated equivalents, 1) f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160, 2) f6.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. #2, as stated, cropped slightly from full frame.
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8/2/2011: Flowers, etc.: Happy Birthday Carol
It is my wife, Carol’s, birthday today, and this flower, a single hollyhock from a huge stalk from our anniversary visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, is for her…for you, my love.
And I know you would like to live in the this tree house (for about 2 months, on the warm days only, during the summer.) That is not in my power, but at least I can say you are always on a throne in my heart (not The Throne, which is where Jesus sits, but a pretty big throne none the less).
I love you Carol.
Nikon Coolpix P500
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
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