Monthly Archives: April 2013
Quintessential Singing Wren Shot
You well may get tired of wrens over the next few days and weeks. It only happens once a year, when I visit the Godwit Days spring migration festival in Arcata California…world capital of Marsh Wrens. There is a trail at Arcata Marsh Wildlife Center where, on a good day in April, the male Marsh Wrens compete from the cattail tops every 30 feet. Three way duels are common. And, since the trail runs right along the edge of the cattails, and the birds are perched, for the most part, against the blue of water behind, it makes for some spectacular opportunities.
Like this one. I only had to wait about 5 minutes for him to hop up on that cattail. I used full zoom and the 1.5x digital tel-converter function to fill the frame (1800mm equivalent field of view). In processing I cropped a bit from the left for composition.
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent as above. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Trillium West Coast Style
I wait impatiently every spring for the Trillium to flower in Maine. We have the Painted Trillium variety. Growing up in Upstate New York we among the first signs of serious spring was the red Trillium. Here, where I am visiting, among the redwoods of California, they have the larger White Trillium. I was delighted to find this specimen right next to the trail at the Big Tree site in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park just north of Orick CA. Though the Painted is shower, and the Red brighter against the forest green, the big White has its own beauty. I love the water drop there too…though I will admit I did not see it until processing the image.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. Macro Mode. About 60mm equivalent field of view using 1.5x digital tel-converter. f3.5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sun in Tree Tops
Yesterday I drove from Ukiah California to Arcata California, up 101 and the Avenue of the Giants, with a short side trip to Victorian Ferndale (more about which later). This is a shot from the first rest area on 101. It is deep in a sharp valley in the little range of hilly mountains just north of Ukiah, and though the sun had been up for hours, it was just then reaching the depths and lighting the tops of this great tree.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 55mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Downy vs. Hairy :)
The number of birds using our back deck thicket feeding station has increased dramatically over the past week. Both Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers are frequent visitors. When seen together, or in rapid sequence, at least here in New England, there is no mistaking one for the other. The size difference is dramatic. However, when seeing either without the other present or recently seen, it is always a bit tricky. Even the bill size “field mark” can be very hard to distinguish when only one bird is there to look at.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1) f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. 2) f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intlensity, clarity, and sharpness, with a bit extra because taken through glass.
Laudholm House
An in-camera HDR of the house at Laudholm Farms at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center. Laudholm Farms was one of the original salt farms in Maine. They actually grew hay and other crops on the salt marsh. For me, the shadow of the tree makes the image!
Canon SX50HS in HDR mode. Recorded exif: 24mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Beach Panorama with Runner
This is one you have to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow, though, unlike some panoramas I have done, it works well at this size too. (Click on the image to open it auto-sized for your machine.) This is, of course, all about the drama of the sky. When the runner walked into the 4th frame, I thought, “ah! I will have to start over.” But I took the image anyway, and I am glad I did. It would not work nearly as well as a pano without his anchor…without the sense of absolute scale the runner provides.
I generally produce flat panos, by just putting the images side by side and overlapping and blending. All the lines are straight, but the effect is like standing much further back and using a superwide angle lens. This pano was stitched in PhotoShop Elements as though the images were wrapped around a cylinder. Then in Lightroom I cropped the edges straight and used the distortion tools to pull the horizon more or less level. The effect is to produce a pano that mimics the sweep of the eyes as you turn your head to take in the full length of the beach. Try it. Sweep your eyes from left to right. In may ways it is a more natural view than most of my panoramas. And, as I say, with the runner in the foreground, there is no way you can fool yourself into thinking this is only a stretched out view of the world. I am not sure I could produce the effect again if I tried, but I certainly like it!
Canon SX50HS. 5 in-camera HDR shots from my Fat Gecko carbon fiber, shock corded tripod. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PSE. Final processing for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom, as well as some distortion work.
April Ocean: Kennebunk/Kennebunkport. Happy Sunday!
We did not see any sun until yesterday evening, and the temperatures hovered in the mid-40s, but I still had to get out on my new scooter for at least a short photo prowl. I mean, that is what the scooter is for! Long-johns and a fleece vest under a windproof jacket, and my winterized scooter helmet and gloves kept me barely warm enough…as long as I kept my speed down 🙂
Both the ocean and the sky were gray, as only a grey day in April can be, but full of subtle drama. I tried a few in-camera HDR shots to see if I could catch the feeling. With a bit of extra processing in Lightroom this image comes close. We are looking out over Gouch’s Beach and the beach front summer cottages of Kennebunk and, across the Kennebunk river, the Colony Hotel and the first of the summer mansions on Old Fort point in Kennebunkport.
Though HDR with water is always a problem (the three exposures never quite overlap because the water moves), it works here. If you look carefully you will see three separate surf lines where the water meets the sand.
Canon SX50HS. In-camera HDR Mode. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom with my hyper-real preset, and then tweaked for black clipping point and contrast.
And for the Sunday Thought: What with the new scooter and all, I have a bad case of spring fever. It is generally my April mood. I am ready for the wildflowers and dragonflies of late May and early June (this is Maine after all), and we are still stuck with melting snow piles in the parking lots and maple buds still not fully open to flowers. Generally I am gone two weeks in April, to the more mild, and further advanced (but no warmer) spring of Northern California, and then to the riot of spring in Northern Florida around St. Augustine. I am a little sad this year that two events are the same week…and I was forced to choose Northern California. I will miss spring in St. Augustine!
On the other hand, perhaps it is for the best. Coming back to April in Southern Maine from Florida was always a shock, and probably made my spring fever worse instead of better. I am about to find out.
Of course, I know the cure for my spring impatience. It is the same cure that cures so many ills. Presence. Note that I said “presence” not “patience.” I need to be more present to the moment, to each moment of every day. I need to make myself totally available to whatever is happening now! and not be always living a week or a month or a season ahead of myself. God is in the now. Always completely invested in the now. Or so I have come to believe. We can not experience awe in some future that has not happened yet. Awe is the appropriate response to right now, where God is. And, of course, that is the feeling I was trying to catch in the grey clouds over and grey ocean under Kennebunk.
Almost Goldfinch!
Another visitor to our back deck thicket feeders. I would prefer to catch them in the branches around the feeders, but this young gentleman just has so much finchenality that I will forgive him his choice of perch. Besides, a bird’s gotta eat, especially a bird coming into what might well be it’s first adult breeding plumage. I think that, in part, because this bird has been “sparing” with the other adult males that come to the feeder. The molt on this bird makes for an interesting bedraggled look. Almost a Goldfinch. 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Crease in Old Falls
When I went, on Monday, to pick up my new scooter in Sanford, I stopped on the way back at Old Falls on the Mousam River to see what was up. Not much was up but the water. The Mousam is still loud with the last of the snow melt from a very Snowy February and March. There is a crease in the center of Old Falls that produces some interesting effects. It is always fun to see what I can catch.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 105mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Confluence at High Tide
Which is a high-flaunting way of describing where little old Back Creek meets the Mousam River behind the barrier dunes on their way to the sea. 🙂 I have a lot of versions of this view. It is a great place, as on this day earlier this week, to catch the clouds of a passing front. And, of course, I really like the driftwood in the foreground.
Canon SX50HS. In-camera HDR Mode. 24mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.I really like the In-camera HDR files from the Canon. They are very easy to work with in Lightroom to produce a very satisfying extended range image. I took a comparison image in Program, and while I could have worked with it, the HDR simply has more life and more pop…especially in the foreground.