Monthly Archives: September 2012
September Skies. Happy Sunday!
I have posted two other shots taken under this magnificent September sky, both featuring ponds and reflections of the sky and the first fall color. This was taken just up the road from the ponds, where Rt 9 crosses the Mousam River. I love the drama of the heavy clouds over the landscape, and the line of the river and the fall touched trees running at a slight diagonal across. I like the way the small pool anchors the marsh in the foreground.
Unless you want to shoot sea-scapes, there are only three places within easy drive of my home to catch a big sky. You can go to Laudholm Farm and shoot from the crest of the hill above the farm buildings, or you can go the the Kennebunk Plains, or you can go here to this view up-river on the Mousam. This view has the most potential because you can always play with the marsh and the river to add interest to the foreground, and balance the sky somewhat. But of course a shot like is really all about the sky! September skies.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness…using my hyper-real preset to bring up the full range of light values in the image.
And for the Sunday Thought: Every photographer struggles with the simple fact that the technology we work with is simply not capable of capturing or displaying the full range of light we see with our eyes. Digital sensors have improved dramatically, and the best of them, coupled with some automatic in-camera processing, do a very good job of stretching what can be recorded…to the the point where we now can catch a range that was impossible in the days of film. And, with some work in post processing, we can turn that digital data into a representation of reality that, when viewed on our LCD monitors, gives the impression of catching the full range of light that we would see if we were standing before the view in the flesh. But it is still only an impression. The range of light and dark is still considerably compressed. It is a rendering of reality, not reality itself.
And yet it is very satisfying. So satisfying that almost no one, beyond photographers themselves (and maybe some artists) is aware of the compression. A good digital image, correctly captured and intelligently processed for display on an LCD monitor looks amazingly real. When a photograph is well done today, the average viewer will see something very like what the photographer saw in landscape and the sky…and share something very like the same experience. For all it limitations, digital imaging works.
So is there a spiritual side to this?
I don’t think any human being, bound as we apparently are, in time, can come close to capturing or displaying the eternal reality that is present to us in the spirit. There is a light that is love, and love that is light. There is a landscape of unending possibility, with wonder moving up over the horizon like clouds in a September sky. Like the digital imaging of light, our ability to express the light of the spirit, the landscape of the spirit, is limited by the technology. We are the technology. We are too small to hold it all. The best we can do is to capture a compressed range of what we experience in the spirit and process it through our lives to present, and to share, our best rendering.
And the wonder is that it can be so good, so satisfying. I can’t give you September skies over the reach of the Mousam…but if I try, if I do my best with the technology I have, I can come close. I can’t give you the infinite love that is the light of the eternal landscape, but if I try, if I do my best with what I have, I might come close.
There might even be a bit of that eternal light caught in these words and in this image of September skies!
Back Creek Pond #2, First Fall Color
This shot was taken the same day as the Tall Fall Pond shot, just a few hundred yards down the road at the second of the ponds that feed Back Creek. For this one I got down as low as possible to use the rushes in the foreground as a frame. I actually sat down on the edge of the pond since I wanted to use Program Shift to select a smaller aperture for depth of field, and every time I use PS, since I use it so rarely and it involves a combination of buttons, I have to figure it out all over again. Which two buttons?
I found it eventually (you half press the shutter and then press the control wheel as though turning on exposure compensation…logical in its own way), and shifted the Program to get an aperture of f7.1, which looked, on the LCD, to be enough to bring the foreground rushes into focus. Then I framed and shot.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f7.1 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, using my HyperReal preset.
Turtle Head Revisited
You may remember that, two Friday’s ago, I posted a shot from our yard of purple Turtlehead blossoms. I mentioned at the time that from my casual research that morning it looked like the tall purple, garden variety, Turtlehead might be a cultivar of the native, wild, white Turtlehead that grows right at the water’s edge in the eastern half of the US. A bit more research this morning shows that the tall purple-pink Turtlehead is actually a different species than the shorter white…and both are both native and wild in the eastern US.
In fact, since that first post, I have found the short white Turtlehead growing along two streams in York County, and I am sure it is more common than I thought. This specimen was right at the water’s edge along the Mousam River between Old Falls and Old Falls Pond. In the wild, it is not an easy plant to photograph, with its feet in the water on steep banks so to speak, and most often in deep shade.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Tall Fall Pond Shot
We are still at least a week, maybe two, from full colors here in Southern Maine, but the curtain is up and the show has certainly begun! A couple of days ago I set out on my scooter at lunch time, thinking I would go hunt the last of the dragonflies, but this sky immediately caught my attention, and I turned around to head for the coast and the Back Creek ponds and the Mousam river crossing, where I could catch the sky over a landscape. I took several conventional wide angle views of Pond #1, but as I am always just a little disturbed by having to cut to top off the tall pine on the right, I tried a two shot vertical panorama. This is two 24mm views stitched one above the other to catch more of the tree and more of the sky. When you do vertical panos the perspective issues with a wide angle lens are dramatic. Even if you hold the camera out and try to keep the image plane parallel to the scene you end up with a lot of vertical perspective distortion. Looking at the two images your immediate thought it that there is no way you are going to be able to stitch them into one. I am always amazed at how well PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements does the job. I know it is all math, but most of time it makes very intelligent decisions about which parts of each image to retain and which to let go, and how to blend the two. The layer maps before blending look like jigsaw puzzle pieces…but when it works (and it does not always work) it produces a seamless image. Like this one. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Two 24mm shots. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I used my HyperReal preset…which is designed for scenes like this with maximum tonal range and bright colors.
Toad in the Road
On my scooter on the way down to the Kennebunk Bridle Path on Sunday, I saw something in the road as I passed. It did not register that it was a toad until I was by, but the scooter makes a very easy Uey, and I circled around for a better look. It was one of the lager toads I have seen in Maine, a real grandfather by the look (or grandmother for all I know). It was sitting, apparently warming itself on the sunlit asphalt, right in the track of the next oncoming tire. If I had been driving a car instead of my scooter (on which I stay on the pedestrian side of the white line at the edge most of the time), I would have hit it myself. It was not eager to move either. I stamped petty close without getting a hop. I finally had to nudge it over the white line with my toes. Then of course, I took some pictures. 🙂
Before I got back on my scooter I did move the toad completely off the road and into the pine needles and small plants on the far side. I have no idea if the toad will thank me for that, since I don’t actually know which direction it was headed in when it stopped to sun, and I am sure it was not as warm in the pine needles as it had been on the asphalt. Still, I was not about to leave it for the next passing tire.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 630mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. And a second, more intimate shot at about 1000mm equivalent.
Fall Grass in the Wind and the Sun
On my way back from Old Falls on Sunday, I swung by the Kennebunk Plains to see what was happening there. The Blazing Star, of course, is all gone to seed, and the tall prairie grasses have ripened and turned that color…something between brass and gold. There was a stiff wind blowing, so the grasses were in constant motion, but I really liked the way the low afternoon sun was caught in the grain heads. I tried several zoom settings, shooting bursts into the most dense stands. Of course the wind was in charge of the final composition. I like the effect of this with the glow of soft grain framed by sharper seed heads.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Fall in a ball… Old Falls on the Mousam
Though mushrooms of some kind are out pretty much all summer, I always associate the real abundance of fungi on the forest floor with fall. This emerging Fly Amanita, found along the Mousam River at OId Falls, is presented here a little over life-sized. Unlike some of its fellow deadly mushrooms, this one has always looked as poisonous as it really is to me.
The low angle shot was facilitated by the flip out LCD on the Canon SX40HS, and the close view by the 24mm macro setting plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f2.7 @ 1/30th @ ISO 500. A real forest floor exposure. I would have used the flash if I had been thinking. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. A bit of Local Adjustment Brush to darken and soften the background slightly.
Dog on the edge of Autumn. Happy Sunday!
Despite the weather app, which called for a partially sunny day all yesterday, it rained in the morning and we did not see any sun at all until after 2 in the afternoon. Even then, the coast was still under the cloud layer, so I headed inland to Old Falls on the Mousam River…hoping for dragonflies and maybe a touch of fall color.
Old Falls is my classic Autumn shot…with the rushing white water in the foreground and generally a smooth expanse of reflective water behind, receding into the flaming maples and the dark green pines. With the right sky, it is spectacular, and I will certainly get back the over the next few weeks to try to catch the colors at their peek (and the right sky :).
Yesterday though was special in its own way. Though the trees are just beginning to turn, there was enough color to make it interesting. I parked and walked across the road to stand at the rail of the bridge over the Mousam for a picture, and there was this dog there, swimming in the water. As I watched, it climbed out and walked to the end of a point of rock and stood, or eventually sat, and watched the river flowing by. It must live in the house above the river on that side. It looked perfectly at home, and it was certainly unattended. No one was throwing sticks in the water for it to fetch. It was just there, right were it needed to be for my images.
I have several different shots, with alternative framing. You will probably see at least one more as the week goes on.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 280mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. More than usual work on balancing the light for best effect. Cropped slightly at the bottom for composition.
And for the Sunday Thought.
A couple of things actually. Shots like this continuously remind me of how dependent I am, as a photographer, on circumstance for my best images. I don’t say chance. I don’t believe in chance. If such encounters, such circumstances, are intended, then certainly our response must be thankfulness…even as we enjoy them. I nearly laughed out loud when I saw the dog there, framed in the first reflections of autumn foliage, perfect on his rock. I mean, what a gift!
I feel it every time I go out to take pictures, but, of course, the intention behind my photographic encounters must operate in every circumstance of my life. Sometimes that is harder to remember (and harder to appreciate).
Then too, I think that each photographic encounter, intentional as it is, is only as good as I make it. The dog, the foliage, the flowing water, the rock were all a gift. The images I made of them, and my sharing them with you, are my gift back…the tangible expression of my appreciation. The images depend on how well I respond to the circumstance. When I do well, and that is affirmed by the response of others to the images, then that just increases my thankfulness. It is a privilege to part of the intention…for in the end…the intention was not to show me the dog on the rock in the river framed in fall reflections…but to show how I saw it to you. It is all the gift. It is all a single flowing act of creation.
And now I am thinking how it might change my life if I could see every circumstance that way…if my first thought was, “What can I do with this to show my appreciation and make it a gift to others?” What if every interaction with the world around me were as intentionally creative as my photography? Words spoken at the checkout at the grocers. Every conversation on every car ride. Every trip to the post office or the mail box. Every phone call received and every ppt written for work. What if I could see every circumstance of my life as part of the flow of creation: see the gift in every encounter, turn it to gift of my own, and pass it on.
I think that might be what it means to be a saint. I have a ways to go yet, myself, but I see the possibility, in a dog on a rock in the river surrounded by autumn color and light.
Dutch Sky
Before it slips too far into the past, let’s revisit Holland at least a few more times. I love the Dutch skies. The few days I was there, they were ever-changing and, except when it was raining sideways, always beautiful…filled with drama. They made me what to be landscape painter.
This is out on the wildlife trail at the Oostvaardersplassen refuge. In Holland you are never more than a few hundred yards from water: pond, lake, canal, river, sea, or ocean. In fact, until the 1970s, where this was taken was sea bed…the area around Lystadt is the newest land in the Netherlands. There are forests, but they are all fast growing trees, willows, linden, and pine. Most places there is nothing to block your view right out to the horizon. Hence the drama of the sky. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 40mm equivalent field of view for framing. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
What the light did to the wet Petunia
This is another shot from the back deck on that Sunday morning when the sun was reflecting off the glass of the sliding doors to provide natural fill light for the flowers we keep there, balancing the strong sun coming from behind. The water drops, left over from rain the night before, only add interest to the unique light. I especially like what the light from the back is doing with the center of the flower.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 1.5x digital tel-converter function for image scale and working distance. f4 @ 1/125th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I also cropped this shot from the right to get the flower out of the center, and used the Selective Adjustment Brush in Lightroom to carefully paint the backgound in darker.