Monthly Archives: March 2013
Calla Lily. Happy Easter
I went to the store yesterday, at least in part, to buy an Easter Lily. I take the celebration of Easter seriously, with great joy! The resurrection of Jesus, and his living presence in us and among us is the core of my faith. Our traditional Easter Lilies generally catch an aspect of what I feel, but this year, their big showy trumpets just did not appeal. I think our local grocery giant may have ordered in the super-giant variety on the theory that if big showy lilies are good at Easter, bigger showy lilies would be better. Very American! I was, however, attracted to the smaller Calla Lilies they also had on display, and bought one to take home.
Part of the plan all along had been to photograph the lily for my Easter post, and I took it, with a black fleece jacket for background, out on the newly swept back deck for a session. The sun was at an interesting angle, there were half a dozen blooms in various stages, and I took a lot of exposures, from all angles, and processed the best.
It was only after processing the images that I thought to look up the Calla Lily and find out what I had brought home. It turns out (but many of you already knew this) that the Calla Lily is also known as the Easter Lily, especially in Britain and Ireland. In Ireland it is also associated with the fight for independence, a memorial to those who died in, and as a result of, the Easter Rising of 1916.
For me, the attraction was the quiet, but totally self-assured, grace of the blooms…and in this variety, the subtle shades of the rich royal purple. These images, I hope, catch just that.
Right now, the Calla Lily speaks to my faith more than the showy trumpets. I’d like to think of my faith that way. Quiet, totally assured, and full of grace. Approachable as the Calla Lily, and, in its own right, just as rich and beautiful. At least that is how I see it on this Easter Morning, as I watch the sunrise behind the trees of the back yard, and let the joy fill me!
Red Bird! Whipple OH
We have a little more action the past few days at our feeder’s in Maine, but it has been a slow winter for feeder birds in yard. Not so in Ohio. Visiting Bill Thompson of Bird Watcher’s Digest at his home last Thursday, it was clear that feeder birds are healthy in Whipple. Either that or I am doing something very wrong in Maine. 
Bill had to pry me away from the windows. I could have stood all day and taken pictures of the birds. Bill and his wife, the artist and writer Julie Zickefoose, must be used to all the birds outside their windows, but I am not. The close views of active birds were a real treat.
The Northern Cardinal was known as the Red Bird on both sides of the Appalachians (and still is), and Whipple is, at least according to the title of one of Julie’s books, a Appalachian town, so the title is apt in more than one way. This was taken from the Thompson/Zickefoose kitchen, through the living-room and the glass doors out on to a small deck.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, contrast (because of the window glass), and sharpness.
Catalina Current
From still snow bound southern Maine, I reach back to my week in San Diego for a touch of spring brightness. Catalina Current, a native flowering shrub from the Visitor’s Center Loop Trail at Mission Trails Park. The busy ant is just a bonus.
Canon SX50HS in macro at 24mm plus 1.5x digital tel-converter. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Correct. –1/3EV exposure compensation. f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Long-eared Owl. Surprise!
My friend and coworker Rich Moncrief and I were visiting Bill Thompson and the staff at Bird Watcher’s Digest in Marietta Ohio yesterday. We finished our meetings by early afternoon and asked for directions to some likely spots to find birds. They sent us up the Ohio river to a place called Newell’s Run…a little backwater of the river where Newells Run (brook, river?) flows in. We enjoyed the ducks, grebes, and herons there, but then decided to head further up-river to see what we could find. When we came to the big yellow-brown bridge to St. Marys, of course we had to go across into West Virginia, just for the experience of crossing the bridge and the Ohio. We had a little one page guide to the local birding areas published by Back Road Birding, a small start up tour company that Kyle Carlson of BWD runs on the side, and about half way across the bridge Rich remembered seeing some spot mentioned in St. Mary’s. The Ohio River Islands Refuge. Bridge to an island. Trails and Tour Road. Sounded good.
We found the sign directing us to the bridge…which turned out to be the strangest and scariest bridge I have ever crossed…involving driving up the height of a 4 story building on the first segment of an abandoned bridge, taking a complete right angle turn, and driving down a kind of steep ramp to the island…all rusty iron and crumbling concrete and looking very elderly and frail. Still we made it.
We drove the tour road to its end, and stopped at the maintenance sheds where there is a trail out to a blind and had a good time with a whole bunch of robins and a Hairy Woodpecker, and then Bill Thompson called to see were we were and finalize dinner plans. I told him we had gone on up to St. Marys and the Island Refuge. “Oh great,” he said, “are you looking for the Long-eared Owls?” As it ensued, we had unwittingly stumbled right to one spot in the area where Long-ears were known to be roosting. I mean, what are chances? Kyle gave us detailed directions, and after two attempts we found the owls, right where he said they would be…ten feet into the woods and ten feet up the tree! What a treat.
They were your usual views of Long-eared Owls…tucked well back in a thick tangle of branches and brush, close to the trunk of a pine…photographically very difficult…but very satisfying in binoculars. If you have seen a Long-eared Owl on its day roost, you know that any view at all is a wonderful thing.
Still I had to try with the camera. With a lot of peeking and poking, I found a few lines of sight to the birds’ eyes.
I am always amazed that the auto focus on the Canon SX50HS can focus through such a tangle, and seems to know that I am looking at the bird, not the branches. It generally takes a few tries, half presses of the shutter button before it locks on, but it almost always get the results.
So, like I say, what are chances? And what a treat!
Canon SX50HS in program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Correction. –1/3 EV Exposure compensation. 1200mm, 1800mm, and 750mm equivalents. f6.5 and f5.6 @ ISO 800 @ 1/320-!/500th. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Fence Lizards of Cabrillo
There are always lots of lizards at Cabrillo National Monument out at the end of Point Lomas above San Diego Harbor. They like the warmth of the sidewalks and walls in the sun. This first specimen was seeking the shade, not for coolness sake, but for camouflage.
Then we have the calisthenic lizards doing push-ups on the edge of a wall. I think it was some kind of dominance play for another males down below.
And finally a close up.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and auto Shadow Correction. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm (1) and 1200mm equivalent fields of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 125-320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Immature Male Anna’s Hummingbird
One of the things I love about Super-zoom Point and Shoot cameras in general, and the Canon SX50HS in particular, is how fast and easy it is to shift gears from expansive landscapes and intimate macros to extreme telephoto close-ups. Since I am interested in birds and butterflies and dragonflies, all of which require the extreme telephoto, I have set both of the “Custom” scene modes to telephoto. One automatically puts the camera in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill and –1/3EV Exposure compensation, sets the shutter to continuous (about 3 fps) …and zooms the lens from where ever I was working to full zoom (1200mm equivalent field of view) faster than you can read this sentence…and the second does the same but adds 1.5x digital tel-converter function for 1800mm equivalent field of view. In either Custom mode, I can focus to under 5 feet, so I use these modes for distant birds, but also for frame filling portraits of closer birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and even flowers. And I can be there as fast as I can turn the control dial.
This shot of an immature male Anna’s Hummingbird in Palm Canyon in the Anza Borrego Desert is a case in point. It is what I would have considered a hopeless shot a few years ago. The bird was deep in brush, and, being a hummingbird, was not staying still for more than a few seconds at at time. Getting it in the frame, let alone getting it in focus, before it is somewhere else…not going to happen. Even having the right lens on the camera when you saw it…or having a telephoto lens that focused close enough was highly unlikely. However I have begun to realize that the Canon SX50HS often surprises me by catching the impossible shot, so I spun the control dial to Custom 2 for 1800mm, framed, half pressed the shutter to catch focus, and shot off a burst. And, what do you know!
Gotta love those tiny feet!
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Snail in Paradise
I may have (actually I know I have) mentioned before how much I enjoy the Bird of Paradise plants and flowers that are always in bloom when I visit San Diego in early March. I always come back with lots of pictures of the colorful, striking blooms. And occasionally I catch something out of the ordinary. Like this snail, firmly attached to the underside of one of the petals (braches?).
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 45mm macro. f3.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Great Blue Heron on the Wing: Happy Sunday!
I mentioned yesterday that the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus OH, where I am working the first ever Birding Optics and Gear Expo, turned out to be a much better birding spot than I would have expected. They have a large observation deck built out over a backwater of the Scoito River where, if appearances are anything to go by, there is an active heron rookery in late spring. It is early yet but there were at least 10 Great Blue Herons feeding within sight of the deck and at least one pair were actively working on a nest in a tall tree above the river. Because the deck is at least 30 feet above the surface of the water, it is an excellent place to attempt flight shots of the herons. The only challenge is that the window on the backwater is relatively narrow, and and closed in by tall trees and brush on either side, so you have to be quick to catch the herons in the gap.
As you can see in this image, for this bird, I was actually shooting through the branches of the trees on the left side of the window (note the straight dark bands which are out of focus limbs, and if you look closely you will see some smaller circular patches and arcs left by smaller brush.) But of course, in this case, the imperfections almost don’t matter. They are overwhelmed by the sharply focused spread of those majestic wings and the bright eye of the bird. In fact, to my eye, the out of focus foreground clutter adds an element of inescapable reality that improves the image. I could not have planned and executed this image if I had tried, but I am very happy to have caught it. 
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly for composition. ,
And for the Sunday Thought. Spiritual vision, I am thinking, should be a lot like this image. It should be so sharply focused on what is wonderful and amazing, majestic and awesome, that the foreground clutter all but disappears. And yet, while we are in this world, it is out of focus inescapable clutter that helps us to properly value the objects of our spiritual sight. This gives even the clutter value. The only tragedy would be to focus on the clutter, so that we miss the awesome vision that feeds our souls.
And I needed that reminder. I have been, this past week, way too focused on the clutter. It is not good for me. I need to get my spiritual eyes back on the awesome, if for no other reason, so that I can properly value the inescapable clutter.
Which is why I am particularly happy to have caught, just in time, so to speak, this Great Blue Heron on the wing!
Downy Woodpecker in Ohio
I am in Columbus Ohio for the first annual Birding Optics and Gear Expo, organized by Bird Watcher Digest and Eagle Optics, at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center. The Audubon Center is beautiful multi-function building on the banks of the Scioto River, surrounded by Scioto Audubon Park, a reclaimed landfill and one of the birdiest acreages you are likely to find in any American city. It has riverfront, chunks of woodland, two large old oxbow ponds, open grasslands, and emergent thickets: ideal habit for a wide variety of birds. Yesterday, as we set up for the Expo, there were lots of birds working the feeders and lots of bird song in the air everywhere you went. Nice! And all within walking distance of the quaint, very gentrified, German Town section, and clear sight of the skyscrapers of downtown Columbus.
This female Downy Woodpecker was working the suet feeder on the river side of the building. I watched as she made a circuit from the feeder, up into the tree above close in to the trunk, working her way out branch by branch until she was over the feeder again, and then dropping down to feed. She made at least 10 circuits in the time I watched…perching on the same branches, or very close to it, on each go-round. I managed to get a few shots of her in the tree and several close-ups at the suet cage.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Chuparosa, Anza Borrego Desert
There were not many flowers in bloom in the Anza Borrego Desert in the last days of February when I had the chance to visit. Chuparosa was a brilliant exception. It was ablaze in the lower reaches of Palm Canon. Chuparosa is hummingbird in Spanish, and the plant is sometimes called Hummingbird Bush…but there are a lot of bushes called hummingbird, including the more widespread Flame Acanthus, and only one Chuparosa. And besides, Chuparosa is such a great sounding name!
I took quiet a few pictures of the flowers, but settled on this one, the most extreme close up, for today’s post because it shows the subtle texture of the petals and stems. As you might expect from a desert plant, both are lightly furred to retain as much moisture as possible.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 1.5x digital tel-converter. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.