Monthly Archives: July 2012
7/11/2012: Water Hyacinth at Roger’s Pond
There is, as I mentioned yesterday, a small bathtub sized ornamental pond (or what looks like one…it may be accidental) a few yards from the banks of the Mousam River at Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk Maine. It has a lush growth of Water Hyacinth and Arrowroot, and is attracting more than its share of dragonflies, considering the main pond is only a few yards the other side. Yesterday the Water Hyacinth was coming into bloom, throwing up its spikes in the bright noon-day sun. This low angle shot shows the spike against the bright foliage of the trees across the river and the blue of the sky. I was able to pull the clouds back to show some detail even there.
Following that is a closer shot, showing more detail in the flowers. I have to admit, I had never looked closely enough to see the little yellow dots until I got these images up for processing on the laptop.
Water Hyacinth has its beauty, of course, but it is a totally invasive weed which is choking waterways in many parts of the country.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm wide angle macro with 1.5x digital tel-converter function. 1) f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 320 and 2) f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/10/2012: Common Whitetail
According to Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Dennis Paulson, the Common Whitetail lives up to its name…it is both common and widespread across the US, and it certainly has a white tail. I have seen it briefly and from afar at the Dragon Ponds down in the river marsh here in Maine, and then close up in Virginia by a pond on a gulf course at the resort my company was using for a training. It was real treat to find two males disputing over the little Arrowroot pond between Roger’s Pond and the Mousam River…a pond the size of a bathtub…and a female laying eggs in a corner. Great afternoon light and effective perches made for my first really good shots of the bug.
They call that effect on the abdomen (tail) of the dragonfly pruinosity, from the Latin for “frost”…as in “frosted with a white powder”. It happens to many species of dragonflies on various parts of their bodies, but is most pronounced here on the Whitetail.
And then we have the female ovapositing…laying eggs in the water. She bounded up and down in one spot, striking the surface with her abdomen over and over. The final image is of the male in a somewhat defensive posture. There was, as I said, another male attempting to dislodge this one from the pond. This one seemed to be protecting the female from the other male as she did her thing.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240 and 1680mm equivalent fields of view. f5.8 @ 1/500 to !/1000th sec. @ ISO 125-200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/9/2012: Happy Anniversary Carol
Today my wife Carol and I celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. The last two years and a third year 2 years before that, we have visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens as part of our celebration. We love the whole place, but the Children’s Garden, which we saw for the first time last year, is very special. All kinds of the best quality whimsy going! This is Carol in the little reading house in the center of the garden. All cedar on the inside and shingled on the out…with a grass roof. I am certain she wants to take it home and plant it in our backyard as a sanctuary from my untidy habits. You can see it here in the wider view, on the other side of the ornamental pond.
But this is really to celebrate Carol, who for 29 years has been my companion on many such adventures. I am still amazed to find we share so much…that there is so much of the world we can enjoy together. That has to be special.
And here she is braving the rope walk in the tree house beyond the Children’s Garden, getting in practice for next year’s trip to the Canopy Tower in Panama. 🙂
Happy Anniversary Carol. I may not have brought you flowers, but I brought you to a garden. And here is an Azalea just for you. All my love.
7/8/2012: RiBBit. Coastal ME Botanical Gardens. Happy Sunday!
On our visits to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens I always spend some time at the Amphibian Pond shooting frogs and Water Lilies. After-all, that is what it is there for.
You can always hear the pond before you see it. As you come up the rise from the Rose Gardens or across the clearing from the Event Lawn you are greeted by the improbably loud calls of the bull frog. “RiBBit”, though the conventional representation of the sound, does not really do it…at least for the bull frog. There is a deeper, darker undertone that gives the sound its character…a characteristic fall and rise…with just an hint of the echo of deep wells and damp caves at the bottom.
r
i it!
BB
You can not even say it properly without a frog in your throat.
There are generally a few frogs basking in the shallow water were the stone path crosses a corner of the pond, or hauled out on the rocks sunning themselves, if it is early morning yet. This specimen is, apparently, considering the wisdom of climbing out…especially with me standing there. I am not really that close. I was using the 1.5x digital tel-converter function and full zoom so this is at 1240mm equivalent from about 6 feet. He had his space.
The other thing about frogs is that, even at the best of times, if you look them in the eye as we are here, they seem to be thinking the dark thoughts their voices express. It is all projection of course. We project human feelings based on a similarity of the frog’s countenance to the human expression associated with the emotions. Still I can hear some mother saying, “Oh stop making that frog face and cheer up! Things are not all that bad!”
And for a frog in the Amphibian Pond on the grounds of the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden, a pond teaming with just what a frog eats…barring an encounter with a member of the heron race (who I have never seen in the gardens)…life is indeed pretty good. It just comes down to who has the loudest and most convincing riBBit (at least for the males).
And where do we go from here for the Sunday thought now? This is the kind of whimsical rabbit trail that must lead to some significant insight…the, shall we say…frog leap to enlightenment at the end. ??
Or is it that sometimes a frog is just a frog?
What I really like about this photo is that it makes me smile. There it is. I can’t look at it without smiling, at least just a little bit. It tickles me somewhere I need tickling. And really, I have come to expect that of nature, whether in the face of a frog, the majesty of a mountain, the intensity of a storm, the beauty of butterfly wings, the awesome ingenuity of the structure of a dragonfly, the promise of sunrise, or the benediction of sunset…I always feel lifted up toward joy…in touch with significance…just a bit more alive…and happy about it. And thankful. Always thankful to the spirit that is all in all for every expression of grace.
And that is what I am always trying to photograph. RiBBit!
7/7/2012: Song Sparrow
On one of my lunch-time photoprowls this week this fellow popped up a ways down the trail and challenged me not to take his picture. I was not up to the challenge! Such a bold singer. Such a tease.
I like the bird here, of course, but I also like the bokeh and the balanced framing with the leaves in the corners.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view 840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/6/2012: The Hillside, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
As I mentioned a few days ago, my wife and I spent a day at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine this week. It is becoming an anniversary tradition, although next year we may try to vary the timing to see the garden in another flowering season. The CMBG always amazes me. It is so unlikely that it is there at all. Boothbay is quaint and touristy, and a bit up-scale for the Maine Coast, but it is hardly a metropolitan hub with resources for something like a world class botanical garden. And yet, there it is.
The light was particularly good this trip, for some reason, or maybe my camera is just that much better at capturing it. This is a white Penstimon from the Hillside Gardens which feature a blend of more natural wild-flower plantings on a relatively steep landscaped slope with many rock ledges. I really like the way the flower is illuminated from inside by the shaft of sun through the overhanging pines.
This is a good example of what the Canon SX40HS can do in 24mm macro (close focus to 0 centimeters) when you also use the 1.5x digital te-converter function. The resulting 32mm field of view and magnification gives a very natural macro, with great depth of field and image scale.
At the other extreme, the Stonecrop that follows was taken at 840mm equivalent field of view, plus 1.5x digital tel-converter for a 1240mm macro effect. Here it is as much about the bokeh as the subject. Shooting at high magnification allows for an intimate approach to followers (bugs, etc) that you could not otherwise approach. This flower was poking up over a ledge behind other plantings 8 feet away.
What follows, still from the hillside gardens, is a mass planting of purple Penstimon, framed at about 50mm equivalent for a natural view…and then a close up of the blooms, again using the wide-angle macro plus digital tel-converter function.
I have lots more flowers, which you will see over the next days.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. ISO 125-200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/5/2012: Mousam at High Tide, Kennebunk ME
On my way to the Dragon Ponds the other day I had to pull over where the fishermen park by the Route 9 bridge over the Mousam River to catch this view. That is one of the unforeseen advantages of Froggy the Scoot (the electric scooter I bought for my local summer photoprowls, in case you have not been keeping up). You can stop on a dime on a whim on a view, anywhere there is sufficient shoulder to prop a kickstand. No excuses for missing any photo-op. On this day, a storm front was coming over, the clouds were spectacular, the river was brim full and just rippled enough for interest, there was this enticing little island of grass, and, on closer inspection, a rose in foreground. What could be better?
I framed this scene twice, once with more sky for drama and once with the rose. Only in looking at the two this morning, trying to decide which one to post, did I realize that what I really wanted was both…rose and sky. The two frames did not line up perfectly, as, of course, I was not thinking of a vertical panorama when I took them, but they were close enough to give it a try in PhotoShop Elements 10’s PhotoMerge tool. I expected to loose a lot on both edges where the images did not overlap, but PSE’s auto fill did an excellent job of projecting the content to fill the corners. If you want the challenge, try to see what is real and what is generated in the top left and bottom right corners. Amazing software. And I ended up with the image I wanted, even when I didn’t know what I wanted until too late. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Two frames merged vertically as above. Final processing in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/4/2012: Twelve-spotted Skimmers, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Happy 4th of July to you all.
You may have noticed that I am going through a dragonfly phase(or more properly, an odonata phase, since I am equally interested in damselflies). Though I had taken a few dragonfly images before, I mark a particular photograph of a Twelve-spotted Skimmer taken at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens almost exactly a year ago as the beginning of the phase.
Yesterday my wife and I took a trip back to the CMBC (it is somewhat of an anniversary tradition), and there were hundreds of Twelve-spotted Skimmers patrolling the ponds and the walks of the gardens. The TsS is a spectacular dragon at any time, but turn a hundred of them loose in a world-class botanical garden on a bright summer day and you do get some pretty interesting photo ops!
The lead two images are the male (I saw only three females the whole day). The following image is the female, and the third is a female in flight, as she deposited eggs in the water of one of the ornamental pools. The blur to her right is a male diving on her. Then a head on shot of a perched female.
Some of the males were showing their age. You can see the nick out of the edge of the wing in the 7th shot and evidently the 8th is the survivor of a bird attack. Still, I could not resist him on the furled iris.
And last but not least, two shots of unusual poses: on a giant rose blossom, and decorating the Hillside 8 sign.
Finally I can’t resist adding this dragonfly…not a Twelve-spotted Skimmer as near as I can tell…but impressive none the less. It has a 6 foot wing-span and is mounted about 10 feet from the ground at the Azalea gardens. The avid dragonfly collector can take it home (well, can have it shipped home) for only $14,000.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Various combinations of zoom and digital tel-converter for equivalent fields of view from 840mm to 1680mm. f5.8 at ISOs ranging from 100 to 320 and shutter speeds from 1/100th to 1/1000th.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/3/2012: Fledgling Barn Swallows
We will have an early post this morning as Carol and I are off for a day at the Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens north of us in Bath.
Two days ago, there was a medium sized pine tree along the Kennebunk Bridle Path that was boldly decorated with barely fledged Barn Swallows. They were so young, and so fresh from the nest, that many of them looked not to have their eyes fully open, but they were out on the branches, making a great noise as they waited for mom to come with food.
I circled the tree a few times, on the side not backed by marsh, to find lines of sight through the leaves of the small oak growing under the pines.
They were comically cute as only fledgling swallows can be…and very intent on being first in line for whatever food mom brought.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Various combinations of zoom and digital tel-converter for equivalent fields of view from 840mm to 1680mm. f5.8. ISO ranged from 100 to 320.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/2/2012: Rachel Carson Overlook
This is a scene I return to time and time again. It is one of the overlooks at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, on the walk through the forest between the Little River (Branch Brook) and the Merriland Rivers. It is always a tricky shot, balancing the dark forest and the bright river going out to the sea beyond. This shot, with some processing in Lightroom, works well. The early morning light, slanting in from the east, also helps!
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 320.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, and exposure balance.