Monthly Archives: October 2011
10/11/2011: Northern Leapord Frog in Fall
I was out catching the fall foliage at one of my favorite places, Old Falls on the Mousam River, when this fellow popped out from under my feet. He sat just long enough, half hidden by the fern, for me to get off a few shots. This isbwhere the 4.5 foot close focus on the telephoto (840mm equivalent) comes into its own.
Canon SX40HS St 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/10/2011: Oh me of little faith…fall comes to Southern Maine
I forget what a difference 24 hours can make. It is like someone pulled the stopper out of the color bottle overnight. We woke this morning to sudden fall. Still a bit muted by best year standards, but full-on fall color none the less. The leaf-peepers who reserved for Columbus Day weekend foliage are not going to be disappointed after all. 🙂
This is my favorite bow in the river at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. I have several panoramas of this view, but I could not resist another yesterday with the color. To do it justice you need to see it larger. Click the image to open to it your full monitor width on WideEyedInWonder.
It is three shots stitched and blended in Photoshop Elements, and then processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. (I have my WideEyedInWonder site set to a maximum of 4000 pixels wide, but the original is about 8,000 pixels wide.)
Each shot, Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 200. Program, with My Color set to Vivid. (My Color is a Canon feature that applies various processing presets, among them: sepia, b&w, vivid, vivid blue, vivid green, etc. There is a Vivid mode under the scene modes, but that is over-the-top in most situations. Super-saturated. See yesterday’s post. Vivid in My Color, however, just perks the image up enough to bring out the fall color nicely.)
And here is a closer view of the center of the image above. About 37mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program, with My Color set to Vivid. Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness and cropped for composition. Again, you can see it larger by clicking the image and using the size controls (if needed) across the top of the window.
10/9/2011: The year there was no fall, Kennebunk ME
Happy Columbus Day Weekend Sunday!
Columbus Day weekend is, traditionally, the height of the fall foliage season in Maine and New England. It is impossible to find accommodations unless you reserve well in advance. I don’t know how other areas of New England are faring this year, but it is pretty dull season in Maine so far. We have had no hard frost, and the trees are hanging on to their green. Only uniquely exposed trees have turned. This scene, my favorite place for fall foliage shots, is a mere shadow of its normal self a year ago, two years ago, three years ago…within my memory. Maybe the leaves will still turn…just late…but the most exposed trees have already started dropping leaves. They just turned brown and fell. Our yard, well shaded by maples, is littered with brown leaves. Not a good sign.
This image was taken using the Vivid mode on the Canon SX40IS…the saturation is over the top for most scenes, but here it brings out every last bit of fall color. For comparison, here is the scene in normal program mode from this year and an HDR shot from last year on 10/3/2010.
Keep in mind that the shot on the left is pretty much what the eye sees this year, and the shot on the right was a week earlier last year.
Folks who reserved early and came north for the foliage show this Columbus Day are going to underwhelmed.
Canon SX40is at 24mm equivalent field of view. Main shot, f4 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Vivid mode. Comparison shot f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program. Last year’s shot with Canon SX20is at 28mm equivalent.
All processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Not much processing at all on the Vivid mode shot.
And for the Sunday thought: The seasons come and the seasons go, without fail, but how they come and how they go, and the shape of the actual days that make them, well, that is anything but certain. We make our plans, but ultimately we can not know, beyond the most general outlines, what will come. No two falls are the same. And this is good. It teaches us that no matter what comes, it is up to us how we respond. A photographer, a nature photographer, is bound to look for the beauty in every season and to make the most of it. And isn’t that the best course for every human being? If we meet every day, in every season, with gratitude and appreciation, then, though the seasons are different year to year, each comes as a blessing, with its own unique beauty…and while we may remember and compare, we will live without regrets. Even if we did reserve a motel room in Maine for Columbus Day Weekend 🙂
10/8/2011: Virginia Frost
Ah yes…a touch of winter in old Virginia already. Did a bit of fotoprowl before work on Thursday, just a few moments around the industrial estate where our office is located in Chester VA. I could not resist the frost n the barberry hedge leaves…both as a sign of the season (unusually cold for VA this past week), and as an abstract design and texture study…gotta love what the low sun does with the frost crystals.
For this shot I backed away and framed using the 840mm equivalent field of view on the Canon SX40is from about 8 feet. f5.8 @ 1/250 @ ISO 125. Program.
Processed in Lighroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness. (just as a note: I am finding the Canon SX40is takes much less processing than the Nikon P500.)
10/7/2011: Carolina on my mind (wren that is ;)
On my last stop on the way out of Henriticus City Park in Chester VA, on the deck overlooking the only open water in the old oxbow marsh, I heard this Carolina Wren singing up a storm in the trees on either side, but, though I tried several times, I could never locate it. Carolina Wren is one of my challenge birds. I don’t see them often, and, though I have several shots and a bit of video, I still don’t have a shot that really satisfies me. Still there was lots to take in on the sunset marsh, and I was using the zoom to frame everything from the broad expanse to little bits of marshy abstract pattern. When I turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of movement down low in the trees under the deck. Sure enough the wren was skulking in fairly dense cover down there. Then it finally popped up in the open and I zoomed out to 840mm equivalent and got on it. I had little hope the new camera would be able to lock focus. It was dark in there, and there was no shot clear of some obstructions in the foreground, so I was surprised when the green focus indicator popped up on the second try with the bird sharp beyond the foreground twigs. Life is good. I took several shots, and then remembered to shoot a bit of video. Handheld video at 840mm equivalent…right! I am totally amazed at how good the image stabilization on the Canon SX40is is. Though I wandered a bit, there is no camera jitter. Amazing.
Canon SX40is at 840mm equivalent field of view. Both shots f5.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. (Again, impressive to be able to hand-hold 840mms at 1/100th of a second…and I am really pleased with the image quality at ISO 800 in relatively difficult lighting.)
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, Clarity, and Sharpness. Cropped slightly for image scale and composition.
And here is the video, after processing for Sharpness and Contrast in Sony Vegas. The original is full HD. You can see this in 720p.
10/6/2011: Dragonfly at the limits
On my short visit to Henriticus City Park (a historical reenactment site near Chester VA, and the main offices for ZEISS Sports Optics) after work yesterday, I found this dragonfly sitting on the tip of a stripped willow branch out over the marsh…too far away. But, with my new fascination with dragonflies, I had to try.
I like it as an image. I like the arch of the branch and the final wispy twist isolated against the sky…and the way the dragonfly (I think just a well aged Ruby Meadowhawk) in its sun-posting pose echoes it. I like the evening light of the low sun.
And that I got the image at all is somewhat amazing to me. The Canon SX40is locked on focus on the first attempt and I shot several images at the long end of the zoom, 840mm equivalent field of view. The Canon’s image stabilization is amazing. Even at 840mm this is a heavily cropped image…well over 50%, down to 2700×1560 from 4000×3000…leaving about 4.2mp out of 12. That is a pretty heavy crop for a Point and Shoot super-zoom! Clicking the image will take you to my WideEyedInWonder site where you can see an even larger version.
Canon SX40is at 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/5/2011: Eisenhower Bee
While at Eisenhower Park on Sunday, there were multitudes of bees working the flower borders. They munst know how short the season is now, and must be driven to harvest while the harvest is still here.
And I was practicing with the new zoom. It has a great close focus, even at the long end. With the Nikon P500 I have been using, I would put the camera in Close Up mode to engage close focus and then be able to zoom out to about 600mm and maintain macro focus. With the Canon, in my experiments so far, macro does not appear to work well above about 2 feet at the tele end (though it focus down to 0 cm at the wide end…you can focus on something that is touching the outer surface of the lens)…but normal close focus at the long end of the zoom is 4.6 feet (and very fast)…which certainly gives you a tele-macro effect.
This shot was at 840mm equivalent field of view from about 5 feet. Not bad!
Canon SX40is at 840mm equivalent, f6.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/4/2011: Eisenhower Park Veterans Memorial HDR
Eisenhower Park in Nassau County New York on Long Island is beautiful park filled with war and civic memorials. There is a 911 memorial there, and this is the Veterans Memorial. As you see, a series of terraced wall fountains and pools bordered with flowers runs down the hill toward the lake.
This is a 3 exposure HDR, from –2.6EV to +1.4EV. The Canon SX40IS has a very flexible auto bracket, though it is limited to 3 shots. The shots were blended and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro and final processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
Canon SX40IS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.
And just for fun…here is a single shot comparison, processed only in Lightroom. Which goes to show, you don’t always need HDR.
10/3/2011: Still life with fungi
Another shot from Saco Heath, along the boardwalk on the way out through the forest. There was a great variety of fungi along the path. This little grouping in the moss caught my eye both going in and coming out. Coming out it was in a little patch of sun. Bonus!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in close up mode. 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/60th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/2/2011: Still life with water, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
On my visit to Saco Heath a week ago, the day started overcast. The sun did not break out until I had already passed through the forest part of the trail. I found interesting fungi along the way, and the subdued light and persistent damp made for kind of “fall in the rain forest” mood. Still after sunny couple of hours on the heath I was hoping the sun would persist on the way back through the forest to the car…and that it might waken more lively colors along the path.
This is just a little random collection of leaves, moss, and water to one side or the other of one of boardwalk sections through the forest. We have had a lot rain this late summer/early fall, and the wetter portions of the forest are brim full. The boardwalks were definitely needed. I take a lot of these found still life shots, especially in the fall, attempting to find significant patterns by framing them carefully. They are primarily exercises in composition…which is one thing I value about the long zooms on the bridge cameras that I choose to use. Generally I can set the frame just as I want it, simply by zooming in or out. In this case I took some care to include just enough of the decaying branch to ground the bottom of the frame. And since the floating red leaf is what catches the eye first, I put it at one of the rule of thirds power points within the frame.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not stand and study, figure and plan. I just pulled up above this scatter of leaves along the branch, saw a possibility, put the frame around it, zoomed until it looked right to me, and squeezed off the shot. I do keep the rule of thirds grid turned on in my finder as a compositional reminder, and I am certainly conscious of the composition as I frame and zoom, but it is not in the forefront of my mind. I shoot more by eye than by mind. I see the image and capture it…I don’t plan the image and make it. That is just me of course. Your method may be quite different.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 176mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
So I am thinking this Sunday morning, about creativity. I read an article this week on the psychology and personality of creativity. It was one of those wiki type things that is more a digest of what other people think and have said (minus the need for footnotes and proper attribution :) ), with no real original thought or even a recognizable thesis…but still it got me thinking. As usual the idea of inspiration came into it. And as usual some pains were taken to explain the moment of inspiration as a sudden convergence of experience and experiment that yields an unexpected result…or something of that sort…anything to avoid the notion that some greater creative spirit at large in the world occasionally touches those with open minds and willing hearts with quite unearned bursts of liberating vision…as though for a second we are allowed to see through to the underlying reality where everything makes sense and is as it should be, and bring just a fragment of that vision back with us to apply to whatever problem or process is in hand.
Taking a picture for instance.
And as usual, the idea that creative genius and madness are closely linked…that the creative person walks a fine line with the balance of the mind…was presented as more or less historical fact. That has me thinking about gratitude. Thankfulness. I suspect…I do not know but I do suspect…that gratitude is a key element in the creative personality in maintaining the balance of the mind. You have to be thankful for every insight…for every inspiration…for every gift of vision that comes from that spirit of creativity greater than yourself. If you are not genuinely thankful…it you take those sudden convergences of experience and experiment as something that belongs to you, that you deserve or have earned…well, I have a strong feeling that that way lies madness.
And, as is not usual in these Sunday ramblings, that is a lot of weight to hang on a found still-life, a few leaves scattered in moss and water, over a decaying branch, along the boardwalk at Saco Heath. I scroll back up to look again at the image. Yup. Still thankful. So maybe it does work.