Monthly Archives: June 2013
The Universe in a Spider Web: Happy Sunday!
I don’t know why, but this simple image of water drops on a spider web covering grasses and leaves from my photoprowl around the yard yesterday morning seems to contain the whole universe…from the tiny detail among the grasses, to the vast expanse of the starry sky. I could look at it for a long time. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox where you can view it as large as your monitor allows.
Samsung Galaxy S4 in Rich Tone / HDR mode. Processed on the phone with PicSay Pro.
And for the Sunday Thought: The universe in every atom of the universe, eternity in every second of time, is a thought as old as thinking itself. It has occurred to poets, certainly…to philosophers…to scientists…to anyone who has closely observed life and being. It is, according to the universal testimony of people from all religions, an essential element of the “mystical experience”…of transcendence…of any intimate contact with the spirit of all that is…any contact with a God worthy of the name. There are only two responses available to us in such contacts: fear and awe. And fear is just awe without hope…without the feeling of overwhelming love which makes such an experience of the all in all both bearable and glorious. Fear drives us down. Awe lifts us up. Fear causes flight or fight response…and a tightened hold on our lives and our selves. Awe causes us to let go of ourselves, and fly willingly to an embrace in infinite love. Fear holds tight to what is. Awe lets go to the beauty and rightness of what will be.
Just occasionally that experience gets caught in an image, as, for me, it does here…in the water droplets covering the spider web over wet grass and leaves, in my yard, on an ordinary morning after a night of rain.
Vesper Sparrow: North Dakota
My last field trip at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival in Carrington North Dakota was a small van trip with just a few of us on Sunday. It provided some of the best bird photo ops of the trip. It was, as I say, a small van, and the driver was the leader of the trip and an avid and skilled birder, so we tended to stop for birds that a bus would have whipped right on buy on its way to presumed greener pastures and scheduled stops. It was all very relaxed, but it the course of the day we pulled up beside a lot of birds, and stopped long enough for some pics. Even if we could not get out of the van, I was often able to shoot across and out the open window of the driver’s side. For this Vesper Sparrow, when the van was not well placed for a driver’s side shot, I opened my door and stood up, hanging out, clinging somewhat precariously, and shot over the roof. Whatever works!
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent field of view. My usual modifications to Program. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity and sharpness.
Rose, with Transient
With our very strange weather here in Maine this spring/summer, only one of our roses is blooming, and so far it has produced only one flower. But what a flower! It even survived the last three days of heavy rain. Not only beautiful, but strong. I think, on closer look, the transient of the title (on the left) might be a mosquito…any port in a storm…I will grant even a mosquito that. Especially after three days of heavy rain.
This is an Rich Tone / HDR shot from my Samsung Galaxy S4’s excellent camera, as I was walking around the yard seeing what the storms had left standing. It was processed on the phone with PicSay Pro.
Nesting Grebes: North Dakota
Several of the field trips at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival in Carrington North Dakota seem to end the day at the same spot: the little rise overlooking the end of Mud Lake, where 50-75 pairs of Western Grebes, and few pairs of Clark’s Grebes, have formed a nesting colony. Grebes build floating nests, loosely anchored to reeds and cattails or underwater vegetation. Nest colonies are probably common among Westerns and Clarks, but the Mud Lake colony is the only one I know of. The first shot is of a pair of Western Grebes.
As you see in the second shot, Grebe eggs are among the largest, relative to body size, of any bird. I visited several weeks ago. By now, the colony must be full of zebra striped baby grebes. Because the nest materials slowly sink, the Grebes are always adding new materials to the top of the nest and rearranging the eggs.
Finally we have a Clark’s Grebe on a well hidden nest. Note the line of black on the face is well above the eye, and the bright yellow of the bill (as compared to the greeny-yellow of the Western’s). In the water, the Clark’s gives an impression of a lighter bird overall, gray where the Western is black, but it is hard to see unless you have the two species side by side.
Canon SX50HS in Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent flied of view. Processed in Lightroom.
Industrial Strength Green Heron
Last year I was amazed to find Green Herons living and nesting at two ponds within the village limits of Kennebunk. This is one of a pair that nests in the drainage ponds on an industrial estate (now converted to a hospital and fitness complex), a few hundred yards from US1, and right behind one of the two shopping centers in town. They have returned this year, and are, if anything, even more active and visible around the ponds. If, in my dragonfly hunting, I get too close to one at the pond edge, they just fly up to these snags in the a mini-wetland that has formed behind the berm that protects the parking lots of the estate.
No matter the setting, the Green Heron is a handsome bird! This one appears to fully aware of it too.
Canon SX50HS with my usual modifications to Program. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
Prairie Grasses
Somewhere out towards Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge from Carrington North Dakota, we stopped here in the early light to look for Upland Sandpipers and whatever else we could find. This is not native prairie grasses…it is a mixture of timothy and blue, but that does not diminish the beauty of the prairie morning.
Samsung Galaxy S4 in Rich Tone / HDR mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the phone.
Wet Blanket!
Today’s micro theme on #macromonday, is “liquid”, and, since our Super Moon was blotted out by thunder storms last night, and everything in the yard is still soaking wet, I went out early to see what I could find to match the theme. This is Gaillardia…commonly known as Blanket Flower, hence the title 🙂 It is a showy flower under any circumstances, and here the colors, in the indirect light of a foggy morning, are particularly rich. Add the water drops and it qualifies for a wet macro…or a wet blanket.
Canon SX50HS. Program with my usual modifications. 24mm macro setting, plus 1.5x digital tel-extender. f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 250. This could not be done without the excellent Canon IS!
Processed in Lightroom. Cropped for composition.
Hard to impress. Happy Sunday!
I did not actually see this frog through the electronic viewfinder of my Canon SX50HS. I was just framing the luminous water lilies with the long end of the zoom, for effect. When I edited the image in Lightroom, the frog was there, making his frog face, big as life.
Some critters are just had to impress. I mean, there he is, surrounded by exceptional beauty…I love the way the light is cupped in the pink lilies and the patterns the pads make in the water…and Mr. Frog still has his business-as-usual frog-face on.
Canon SX50HS with the usual modifications to Program. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday Thought: We are already half way there. Some critters, and people, are hard to impress. There were lots of people…boaters, fishermen and women, joggers, dog walkers, and picnicers…at Roger’s Pond yesterday. I wonder how many of them gave more than a glance to the water lilies? I wonder how many of them, like froggy here, were too absorbed in the day-to day to take time to admire what the sunlight was doing with the lilies?
Or am I being unfair to the frog (which clearly is a more important question to me than it is to the frog). Frogs just have that unfortunate face, from our particularly human point of view. We read misery, displeasure…boredom at the best…into those bulging eyes and that down-turned mouth, because, obviously, in humans that is what it would say. We attribute feelings to froggy which, in fact, he almost certainly does not share. For all I know, froggy was as enraptured as I was by the light in the lilies. Or not. Probably not. Enrapture might well be one of the perks of the particularly human point of view. It might in fact, be part of our common inheritance as children of the Creator God. I suspect it is.
But then, am I being unfair to all the other people at Roger’s Pond that day (which is clearly a question that is more important to me than it is to them)? If enrapturement…a deep and satisfying appreciation, an arresting appreciation, of beauty…is a human characteristic, then certainly more my fellow humans around the pond might have been experiencing it in the presence of the luminous water lilies. Yes? Despite appearance to the contrary.
I can’t read anything into the attitude of the frog. Maybe I should avoid reading too much into the attitude of the humans.
After all, I did not even see the frog in the image until I looked closer in processing. Some people are just hard to make an impression on!
Happy Sunday.
Chipper Strikes a Pose
There is nothing quite so cute as a Chipmunk striking a standing pose…with those little feet, hands even, and that big eye. This fellow seemed to know he was on camera. At Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk ME…where I was photographing Clubtail Dragonfies.
Canon SX50HS at about 1000mm equivalent field of view. My usual tweaks to standard Program. f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom.
Prairie Wildflowers
Spring on the Prairies of North Dakota, like spring all across the US, was late this year. Flowers that were in full bloom when I was in North Dakota last year, were not even in bud this year. The season is 10 days to two weeks behind. Even so there were many flowers blooming on the prairie.
This is White Onion. It only grows a few inches tall and is easy to miss in the much taller grasses around it. It is an actual onion, with a small swelling on the root that has a delicate onion odor and taste… more like chives that actual onion.
Then you have the Puccoons. Hoary followed by Fringed.
And to finish off the yellows, this is Wallflower, with a Hover Fly in attendance.
And of course, no post on Prairie wildflowers would be complete without Prairie Smoke. First the actual flowers (which really shows how late the spring is) and then the seed hears from which the plant takes its name.
All with the Canon SX50HS with my usual modifications to Program. Macro at either 215mm or 25mm plus 1.5x tel-converter. Processed in Lightroom.