Monthly Archives: September 2011
9/30/2011: New Boardwalk at Saco Heath
Another view of the new boardwalk and the first fall foliage at Saco heath. This one has much stronger composition than yesterday’s, but the sky is less well exposed. Strong sun just out of the frame made the clouds very bright, and a balanced exposure was impossible without HDR treatment, and a challenge even then. Still this works for me. I like the curve of the variegated boardwalk and the way it disappears into the forest, and I like the tree leaning in from the left. The clouds at center are nicely textured and the sky so blue…over the touch of red maple leaves.
The new boardwalk is a project of the Nature Conservancy. The boardwalk has been deteriorating rapidly the past few years, and this summer they evidently decided it was past repair. The new boardwalk is Wood-Composite, good for the environment, and considerably more durable…not to mention slightly psychedelic.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/29/2011: First of Fall on Saco Heath
I spent a few hours at Saco Heath recently. Fall is coming. The maples along the edge of the heath have felt the change in day-length most strongly and, with the slightly cooler transition temperatures along the edge, have responded. Green chlorophyll is dying. The red chlorophyll is becoming dominant. This is the beginning of the fall foliage show in New England.
This is a 3 shot HDR, with the center shifted .7 EV toward the dark side, tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, and final processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. I prefer subtle HDR. If you notice the effect, then, in my opinion, it is too much already. Every time I revisit HDR I have to learn the lesson over again. My first efforts are always over cooked. This is a second pass…and I think I got it just about right 🙂
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent, f6.3 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160 for the nominal exposure.
And for fun…here is another shot from the same day.
9/28/2011: Great Egrets in Bad Air: Wildlife Wednesday
When you are working with a spotting scope, with a digital camera behind the eyepiece, where you can reach ridiculous equivalent fields of view…1000mm to 5000mm…it is tempting to reach out for those far birds, and occasionally, when the air is just right, you get a reasonable shot. More often, the air between you and the bird, or the heat shimmer and moisture in the air between you and the bird, produce a shot that is not quite satisfying. Astronomers call it “bad air”, and it limits observational astronomy and astro-photography just as it does bird photography. Most of the bird photography you see on the internet and in books and magazines was done at very close range. There is no other way to capture that feather detail. But still…sometimes the light is so fine, and the bird so elegant (or ugly, or cute, or just so full of itself) that you have to try. Sometimes, despite the bad air, it works.
This Great Egret was in an impondment on the Wetlands Trail at East Harbor State Park in Port Clinton OH, just over the first ridge of beach from Lake Erie, in mid-afternoon of a late summer day. The wind was brisk, and through the scope, you could easily see the heat shimmer in the air…so I did not have high hopes. In the first shot it is the lighting, and the posture of the bird that saves the shot. In the second, I really like the delicate reeds in front of the bird.
Then, crossing half the continent to a morning a few days earlier, we have another Great Egret, this time in the marshes of Southern Maine, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. This image is really about the early morning light on the marsh grasses, already touched with fall, and the way it molds the Egret…folds the Egret…in its golden warmth. The pose helps, beak just parted, and alert, but not yet nervous. Way too much shimmer…bad air…between me and the bird, and little hope of a sharp shot, but still…gotta try, and for me, as an image (in distinction from a bird shot) this works.
All three with the Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) about 2000mm equivalent field of view, 1/1000th @ ISO 160, f5.5 effective. 2) about 3500mm, 1/500th @ ISO 160, f9.6 effective. 3) about 1000mm equivalent, 1/320th @ ISO 160, f3.4 effective. All Programmed Auto, and auto focus.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/27/2011: Lakeside vignettes…
Before it drifts too far into the past, I want to share a few last shots from Lakeside Ohio. Lakeside is a closed community of summer homes, a Chautauqua…and the Lakeside Owner’s Association holds members to a high standard of appearance. Chautauqua, from the name of the first site in Upstate New York, was a Christian Adult Education movement, emphasizing the crafts, music, and the fine arts…summer assemblies, often in tents…at its height from the 1880s through the 1920s. In a few locations summer communities grew up around the Chautauqua, and these have endured. In fact, there are six well recognized Chautauqua sites, including the original, that carry on the tradition, and Lakeside Ohio is among the most vibrant. An additional seven long running summer education programs trace their roots to the Chautauqua movement.
These shots are from a single street a the end of the green, just beyond the miniature golf course inside its white board fence. All very quaint and elegant. And colorful.
I used the zoom to frame details, textures, color contrast, etc.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 1) 215mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. 2) 76mm equivalent, f4.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped for composition.
9/26/2011: Just a touch of fall on the marsh…
Another shot from Saturday’s fotoprowl®…just to prove I did eventually get out of the yard (see yesterday’s post). The trees, as of Saturday, had just been touched with the earliest color of fall. Things will progress rapidly now, and indeed, by Sunday morning the color had advanced far enough to leave no doubt that the season is upon us. In this shot, an in-camera HDR, I tried to catch the marsh at this delicate balance between the seasons, with maybe the last of the Beach Rose among the Asters and Goldenrod in the foreground, the unique fall greeny-yellow-brown of the marsh grass, and the few red maples in the background. As you see, it was fully overcast, so I also worked to bring out at least a little detail in the clouds. If I were a purist I would edit out the dead branches obtruding from the left…but I am a realist…and I actually prefer to leave them in.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Backlight/HDR mode. 23mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure f3.4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160 (nominal because an in-camera HDR is the sum of several very rapid exposures with different settings).
Before uploading to my laptop, I also used the in-camera Quick Retouch, which, when applied to an in-camera HDR, restores some of the contrast, brightens the foreground, and sharpens the whole image. The combination, while not as good as a three exposure HDR processed in Photomatix, is pretty satisfying. Final processing in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly at the right to eliminate a half post leaning out of the frame.
9/25/2011: Fotoprowl, The Yard. Happy Sunday!
Though it was raining heavily when I wrote yesterday’s post, by 10AM the rain had become light enough to get out for a Satruday fotoprowl. Fotoprowl®. I coined that word yesterday on Google+ in describing my adventure. Or I think I did 🙂 Someone may well have come up with it before me. Fotoprowl: an exploratory walk or ramble with camera in hand, intentionally hunting for images. I think it describes what many of us do. There comes a moment when the hunger for an image overtakes us, and we pick up the camera and head out the door…only thinking of destinations as we go…as likely places for pics…not setting out to see any particular thing or place, but going in search of whatever might make an image.
Yesterday I was headed for our back marsh and my pocket sanctuary along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, but it took me a half hour to get from the front door of the house to the car door. Now that the Japanese Beetles are gone, we are getting our first really good roses of the season. This giant pink was just begging for a pic.
And this yellow was growing right next to it, head hung over and still dripping from several days of rain, but still striking.
Then, only a few steps away, the tiny massed flowers of the Sedum caught my eye and the camera’s lens. The rain water still sitting in the flowers and the subtle light of an overcast day deepened the pinks toward red.
Then on the way to the car I looked up to see the first touches of fall color, literally touches, across the street. The flow of cooler air along the pavement touches the exposed leaves of Maples earlier than the season. And I have always suspected that the higher levels of carbon monoxide above the road have something to do with it too. Later in my fotoprowl, I found trees more fully touched, but I like the way the partial color here is framed against the pine needles.
And finally, reaching the car, I found that fall had gotten there before me.
I eventually did get in the car and get on with my fotoprowl behind the beach and along the Bridle Path…but that is a story for another day.
So what is the Sunday point? Those of us who have chosen photography as a way of celebrating the world around us…as our creative medium for sharing our vision…are driven by the creative urge to our occasional or habitual fotoprowls. That fact, simple as it is, never ceases to fill me with joy, and with a deep and abiding quiet satisfaction that is indistinguishable from deep gratitude. Not every fotoprowl results in a great image…in a image that takes on a life of its own…a true creative capture…but that does not diminish the satisfaction, or the gratitude. The satisfaction is in the prowl itself. We do not hunger so much for the image as for the hunt…for the state of mind…for the intentional openness and heightened awareness that is the essence of the prowl. In the fotoprowl, the photographer is fully alive. And that is why we do it…and what we are thankful for.
9/24/2011: Antidote for the Rain, Monarch on Aster
I woke this morning to rain. Still raining. It rained most of the day yesterday and it’s raining now. Rain is predicted for this morning, and then thundershowers this afternoon. So, as an antidote for the rain, I offer this Monarch Butterfly on wild Aster from last Sunday’s excursion to Meadowbrook Marsh Sanctuary in Port Clinton OH.
The monarch is a big bright butterfly at any time, but put it against the contrasting purples of the Aster and it really pops. I chased this specimen along the edge of one of the grassy walks at Meadowbrook for 10 minutes or more, hoping for this shot.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode with the default zoom setting overridden. 669mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/23/2011: Great Blue Portraits
There is nothing so photogenic as a great blue heron…or at least no bird that poses so well! For a digiscoper, trying to capture images through the eyepiece of a spotting scope, that is half the battle. These shots are from a dull, overcast morning in Ohio, a few hundred yards back from the shore of Lake Erie, in the ponds at East Harbor State Park near Port Clinton. I am still learning to use the Nikon Coolpix P300 in this application, and I had a new adapter for the scope as well…so I needed a bird that would sit. I took maybe 35 images of this bird, slowly working my way closer, before the demands of the day pulled me away. It was still sitting where I found it when I left.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) about 4500mm equivalent field of view, 1/30th @ ISO 400, f12 effective (limited by the scope), 2) 1050mm equivalent, 1/80th @ ISO 400, f4.5 effective (limited by the camera).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/22/2011: Everybody’s got one, this is mine. (sunflower)
Take one giant sunflower, add camera toting human being, give it about a minute, and you will have one pic of a sunflower. Everybody’s got one. This is mine.
I like the way the backlight on this allows the full play of the various textures and more subtitle colors. And I like it that, even in its own shade, it just looks so cheerful! That’s sunflowers for you.
Meadowbrook Marsh Sanctuary between Port Clinton and Marblehead OH.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode. 32mm equivalent field of view (CU default), f3.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
9/21/2011: Face to face with a Dragon
For Wings on Wednesday, lets go with dragonflies. There were a lot of dragonflies in Ohio, but they would not sit for me. I saw Common Green Darners in great numbers, and a couple of Black Saddlebags. No pics! I think this is a worn and weary Ruby Meadowhawk sitting on the rail of the boardwalk at Magee Marsh. Worn because its color is dull and the face plate is dingy rather than white. Weary because it sat for its portrait at 32mm equivalent field of view and with the camera inches from its tail (second shot).
And I was so close here I had to crop out the shadow of the camera behind the bug.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close UP mode: 1) 60mm equivalent field of view. f4.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 2) 32mm equivalent (the auto setting for Close UP mode), f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.