Monthly Archives: May 2013

Bar Harbor from Cadillac Mountain

I am in Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, and the environs for a few days for the Acadia Birding Festival. This is the classic view from the top of Cadillac Mountain, out over Bar Harbor, Frenchman’s Bay, and the Porcupine Islands. This is the kind of view that draws millions of visitors a year to Acadia National Park and Mt. Desert Island.

To make the most of not totally clear day, I used a 3 exposure HDR, processed and tone mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR, with final tweaking in Lightroom.

Canon SX50HS. 24mm equivalent.

Eastern Screech Owl: Magee Marsh

Each year I have been, there have been a few owls in the mix at Magee Marsh during the Biggest Week in American Birding in May. This year there were three. This Eastern Screech Owl. It, or another like it, have been along the same section of the boardwalk each year. In past years it has been pretty reliable, but this year it was only found once that I am aware of.

We also had Great Horned Owl chicks again this year, though at the extreme far end of the marsh from where they were last year. And we had a surprise visit from a Long-eared Owl. Considering his reception (a crowd of several hundred birders gawking at him over several hours on the boardwalk under him), he is unlikely to return any time soon. 🙁

My Screech Owl tested the limits of the Canon SX50HS. It was a ways off, and in poor light. I am happy of have gotten this good a shot. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Lady Slipper Light

Sometimes it is just about light, no matter what your subject is. This Lady Slipper, along the tail at Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters, is as lovely as any of its kind, and particularly symmetrical, but it is the light in the background that makes the shot, along with the translucency of the bracts at the top, and the light caught in the tiny hairs that coat the bloom along the edges.

I used my favorite macro combination. Full wide angle (24mm equivalent) for the 0 cm focus, and 1.5x digital tel-converter for image scale and working distance. The combination managed to give me effective bokeh in the bright background. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. f4 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

It is that Lady Slipper time of year…

Spring in Maine may be catching up with itself. We were running 4 to 5 weeks later than last year, and a week or two behind a normal year. The Lady Slippers were in full bloom on May 23rd in 2009, the 20th in 2010, the 21st in 2011, and the 19th in 2012 (no, I do not keep a journal. It is as easy as looking at the exif data on my images from previous years :). This year close to full boom was yesterday, on the 27th. That is a week difference yet, but we are catching up.

I am, of course, obliged to photograph the Lady Slippers along the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters every year. I should say, I am privileged to photograph the Lady Slippers every year. This year there are fewer than in past few years, with one prominent clump missing altogether, and the blooms are not as bright as they are most years. Still, it is magnificent plant! I would certainly miss photographing them. (I will be in Acadia National Park this weekend, and I hope to find the Yellow (Canadian) Lady-Slipper in boom there as well.)

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro with 1.5x digital tel-converter (my preferred macro setting). Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Sky drama over the sea

I went out yesterday looking for dragonflies, but I could not resist a short side-trip to the beach to catch the amazing sky over the ocean. This is another shot from my new Samsung Galaxy S4’s camera…using the built in Rich-Tone HDR mode. It has then been tweaked using my one of my normal processing presets in Lightroom. The result is high drama indeed!

Yeah. A phone camera. The thing is, it works. At first I found myself using it, even when I had my Canon with me, simply for the novelty. New toy. But, the thing is, I continue to pull the phone out when faced with a scene like this…because it works. Especially the HDR mode. I would have needed a tripod for even the Canon SX50HS’s in-camera HDR, since it takes three images…and it would have blurred the waves for sure, since they are moving. The Galaxy manages to do capture a decent HDR effect in one shot..or it shoots the multiple exposures so rapidly that there is no lag between. It works. 🙂

 

 

Swan in Flight: Happy Sunday!

To me there is a “wild beauty” in the lone Tundra Swan flying against the massed clouds of a gloomy Ohio day along the Erie shore, that simply lifts my spirit. (To get an idea of just how big a swan is, this is a 24mm equivalent wide angle shot, and the swan was actually on my side of the trees.)

The image was taken while at The Biggest Week in American Birding, on the “other” trail at Magee Marsh, off the boardwalk. The Crane Creek Estuary Trail, during the festival, was open all the way from Lake Erie, along Crane Creek, across the marshes, deep into Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. During the slow days between the two waves of warblers that hit while I was there, Crane Creek Estuary Trail became very popular, as there still were a few birds happening there each day . 

If nothing else, there were swans, gulls, herons, egrets, shorebirds, and various other open water birds in the Estuary itself, and in the larger enpondments on the other side of the dyke. Tundra Swan winters in Ohio, and, of course, there are increasing numbers of the unambitious, invasive, and troublesome Mute Swans. I was happy to see, when I looked closely, that this swan is a native Tundra.

Canon SX50HS. Sports Mode. -1/3 EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. A little extra attention to the sky with the healing brush set to clone to moderate a few spots where the white burned through. 

And for the Sunday Thought. I took this image several weeks ago now, and consciously set it aside for a Sunday post (and then, of course, forgot to use it until now). It is, to my eye, one of those evocative images that sets the spirit yearning for release. Not release from “this earthly coil…this too encumbering flesh”…no hint of death-wish here. Release from gravity. Release from everything and anything that keeps our spirits from cutting across the cloudy skies in beauty, from wringing every drop of significance and substance from each day. Freedom from the habits and passive acceptance of compromise that fog our days with mediocrity. A wild desire to soar, to unfurl our hidden wings, and leap into the sky to meet the future that is growing from our days. From days like this, with swans aflight against the drama of a stormy Ohio day.

Black-throated Blue Warbler: Magee Marsh

Compared to the Black-throated Green Warblers, which were everywhere and very visible…often right in your face, the Black-throated Blue Warblers at Magee Marsh during The Biggest Week in American Birding, were scarce and very hard to see. They were especially hard to photograph as they feed deep in the foliage, not at the edges like the BTGW. I did manage a few half way decent shots over the course of the 11 days I spent at Magee. On the other hand, I have lots of shots of where the bird was when I started to press the shutter. 🙂

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV Exposure compensation (unneeded for this shot!). 1200mm equivalent field of view. F6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Trillium: Rachel Carson NWR

I included a Trillium in my set of “yard” flowers last week, not because it grows in my yard, but as a true touch of wildness in an otherwise pretty tame set of wildflowers. Still, the Trillium deserves a post all its own. The Trillium of the Maine woods is the Painted Trillium, with it’s delicate purple veining. This is a telephoto macro, taken at 1800mm equivalent from the safety of the path. The lighting on this flower is, I think, particularly effective.

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Baltimore Oriole: Magee Marsh

Baltimore and Bullock’s Oriole got lumped a few years ago into Northern Oriole…only to be split out again to the two familiar species. This is the eastern variety: Baltimore Oriole, captured visiting the orange halves some helpful soul put out along the edge of the parking lot at Magee Marsh. I would say, at a rough estimate, several hundred other photographers have shots of this same bird on this same orange (or its replacement…it looks about gone in this shot). Still, who can pass up a Baltimore Oriole on an orange? 🙂

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

Branch Brook Sweep Panorama

 

 

I have done several panoramas in different seasons here at the “S” curves in Branch Brook at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It is a tempting scene in any season. This is spring coming on…and it is my first “sweep” panorama at the spot. I generally build panoramas one shot at time, and stitch the shots later in PhotoShop Elements. For this shot I used my Samsung Galaxy S4’s Sweep Panorama mode. You just open the camera app, set it for Panorama, point at one edge of the scene, touch the shutter button, and slowly sweep the phone around however many degrees you want in a continuous motion. The screen displays a little track and gives you pointer arrows to correct when you drift too far off a horizontal line (or a vertical line if you are shooting a vertirama). It is easy, fast, and it works. And with the Galaxy, unlike some smartphone sweep panorama apps which automatically downsize the sweep, you capture the full resolution of the sensor times however long your sweep is. Holding the phone in portrait mode gives you relatively tall and and as wide as you want panorama. Once you touch the shutter button a second time, the processor in the phone “stitches” the panorama. If you look closely here you will see that it could not quite handle the rail that is parallel to the motion of the sweep. There are some jaggies there where the image was stitched. But in general, and with less challenging lines, the app does amazingly well!

With a little tweaking, either right on the phone in Snapseed, or in Lightroom on my laptop, the results can be pretty amazing. (Though Snapseed is an amazingly capable editing app it does downsize the results…this is a Lightroom version. You can see it as wide as your screen will allow by clicking the image to open it in the lightbox on my WideEyedInWonder galleries.) This is about 200 degrees of sweep.

And from a phone camera!