Monthly Archives: January 2013
Snow Fence
There is something about a snow fence that has always captured my eye and my imagination. I like the color of the worn wood. I like the curves the fence makes…especially as it ages. I like the shows the slats throw. Add some actual snow, on a bright sunny morning, and a snow fence can make the perfect still-life/abstract. Or that is what I think anyway.
I have photographed this particular fence, which is along an access road to a beach and beach houses near our home, often. I used moderate zoom on SX50HS (275mm) to frame just the curve at the end of the fence against its shadows. The texture of the snow, caused my melting and refreezing at the surface, just adds more interest to the shot. f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode, with –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightrtoom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Designer Ice: Branch Brook
For the recently new year, I am trying a new theme which allows a larger view of the main image. What do you thinK?
This is the strange ice that forms along the edges of Branch Brook at Rachel Carson NWR, a mile of river channel from the sea, where the water is, according to the tide, a mix of salt and fresh. I love the long fibers, the arrowheads and the spears. It is so designed! I know there is a chemistry and a physics of water behind it…a whole crystal science…but it certainly does not look random to me. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Big Bend on Branch Brook: Winter
This is a slightly mind-bending panorama that you really need to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox on WideEyedInWonder, auto-sized for your display. It is just about a full 180 degrees. You can see two ends of the same straight rail sticking out about 1/6 of the way in from each corner. Though the perspective looks natural when stitched together like this, you would have to relax your vision, or at least your attention, to see this in real life. It could be done if you are one of those people who can process your peripheral vision without falling over. 🙂
It is 4 fames, each frame an In-camera HDR, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 11’s PhotoMerge tool, and then final processed in Lightroom. I shot it off my Fat Gecko walking-about tripod.
Canon SX50HS. Four overlapping 24mm equivalent field of view frames. Recorded exif: f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Winter Vista: Rachel Carson NWR
There is a small viewing platform around the backside of the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters that, if you only visit in summer, you will certainly ask yourself, “Why there?” There is, in summer, when the leaves are on the trees, nothing to see. There is, in spring, a nice stand of Lady Slipper below the platform, on the slope leading down to the marsh, but that came after the platform, as a result of the added light and space clearing a few of trees provided.
It is only in winter that you see what the trail designers were thinking (or seeing) when they put the platform there. In winter you have a view through the bare trees out across the river and the marsh that is quite attractive…even more attractive for the thin screen of trees between you and the marsh. And in winter, the light on the trees in the foreground is wonderful.
This is another In-camera HDR from the Canon SX50HS, and the Mode, plus some post-processing in Lightroom, produces an image very close to what the eye sees here.
45mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f6.3 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Shell in the Beach Rime.
I am not actually quite sure how these large crystals of ice formed where they did, in little foot square patches along the high water mark on the beach near our home. There was a large stretch of open sand above these patches, where previous high tides had cleared the snows of last week off the beach, and, at low tide yesterday, close to 70 yards from the here to the water. It looks like rime, which is generally frozen mist or spray, and indeed may be frozen spray from the high edge of the surf hours ago, but I just don’t know. It is the extreme localization and specialization of the patches that has me wondering. Why just there, and why not elsewhere? What I do know is that these patches really caught my eye…those long, almost fibrous crystals, and the jumble of them, with the sand showing through. I had to find a shell set among them for a still life.
Canon SX50HS at 632mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Rachel Carson in the Snow: Happy Sunday!
Last Sunday, when I went out to photograph the fresh snow that fell on Saturday and through the night, they had not plowed out the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters drive, so I did not get in for any images there. By yesterday, the Rachel Carson trails were packed down by cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and just plain hikers in snow boots, to the point where I could have walked them in my furry winter Crocs and come back dry.
This is one of my favorite views at Rachel Carson, looking down on the junction of Branch Brook and the Merriland River to form the Little River for the final run to the sea. I have pictures taken here in every season and in many different lights. It is always beautiful.
Here I like the crystalline character of the light. I like the reflections of the trees in the open water of the river. The Merriland is tidal here, and regular infusions of salt water keep the ice fragile enough so that it breaks on every tide. I like the band of low clouds over the sea, the leading lines of the stream, and the natural framing of the landscape. Chill, but beautiful.
This is an In-camera HDR, taken at about 56mm equivalent field of view with the help of my lightweight Fat Gecko tripod. Recorded exif: f7.1 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness using my HyperReal preset.
And for the Sunday Thought: It is my hope, that when you look at the photograph above, it carries some of the wonder, and some of the joy…some of the delight that I experience in a day like like yesterday. I hope that it just a little window into my sense of awe before the Creator. Taking it and sharing it is both an act of worship, and the necessary-to-life-itself exercise of the Creative Spirit that lives in my by faith. It is not a perfect picture. If I look closely I can see all kinds of short-comings where I have pushed up against the limits of what the technology I have chosen to work with can do. I hope that those short-falls are buried deep enough so that they do not detract from the experience. Which is, of course, my hope for my self, and for my life…that there is enough of the glory of Creation in my face and in my going so that I am a reason for delight (even when not quite a thing of beauty 🙂
Happy Sunday!
Jay on Suet
It was cloudy and dark most of the day yesterday despite the Weather Channel’s promise of partial sun, but the birds are becoming more active at my new feeding station. Yesterday we had a lot of Blue Jays in the neighborhood. I watched them forage not only our feeders but all the yards I can see from the house…whether or not they have feeders out. We are also getting Titmice everyday, and a few Chickadees and Juncos. I put up a thistle feeder yesterday…hoping for some of the rumored winter finches. We shall see.
Blue Jays are always handsome…and they are prettier in a photograph than in real life. In real life it is hard to get by their constant fuss and bother to see the beauty. And it really requires a close view…binoculars or camera…to being out the subtle shades and the fine feather detail that make them more than a big noisy blue bird.
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent field of view. Bad light. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Program with –1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Kennebunk River in Snow
This stretch of the Kennebunk River, behind Roger’s Pond, is excellent trout water. They have a fly-casting derby here every summer. It looks a little different after two good December snows. I like the shadows on the snow here, as well as the contrasting strong diagonals of the dark water and the white, snow-coated trees.
Another In-camera HDR from the Canon SX50HS. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Winter Waters: Kennebunk River
Another attempt, out early, to capture the cold beauty of fresh snow in Southern Maine. Here the clinging snow is contrasted with the swift waters of the Kennbunk River at the Roger’s Pond access.
This is another In-camera HDR, and you can see the slight blurring of the water due to the three exposures.
Canon SX50HS in HDR Mode. 110mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. I shot the three exposures off my Fat Gecko, 1 pound, carbon fiber, shock-corded tripod, and, as you see, it was plenty steady enough even at the longer focal length.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Winter Road: Laudholm Farm
Ah the delights of a Maine winter (when we have one in Southern Maine, which is about 1 in 3 years in my experience). Of course, by winter I mean feet of snow and cold and wind that makes you eyes water and your tears freeze on your face! Foot stamping, glove pounding weather. No half measures here. No freezing rain and slush. No wimpy high 30s days. I mean a real winter. Slightly life-threatening and awesomely beautiful!
Finally, we have winter in Southern Maine.
This is the long drive in to Laudholm Farms and the Wells National Estuarine Research Center in Wells Maine, just down the road from me. It is a great place to cross-country ski, and everyone else there this morning was on skis or snowshoes. Me…I was just taking pictures.
Canon SX50HS in HDR mode. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif data: f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped to eliminate the burned out image of the sun at the top.