Monthly Archives: October 2013
Autumn Goldfinch in Golden Light
There was a tinge of gold in the late afternoon light as I made my way around the boardwalk at Cape May Lighthouse State Park. When a Goldfinch popped up 15 feet from the boardwalk and sat, apparently thinking about finishing off whatever it had in its beak, I had to get off a few shots. I had time to zoom to frame a bit of the autumn oak leaf as well as the bird…just about…it was off on its way seconds later. I love the way the oblique light outlines the detail in the feathers on this bird…but mostly it is the classic pose, the strong diagonal, and the accent of the leaf that make it more than just a random bird shot. Or that is what I think.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. 1100mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Close Encounter of the Rabbit Kind
I was taking a turn on the boardwalk behind the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Lighthouse State Park when a young man with a digiscoping rig set up motioned me to join him. There in the tall grasses, a few feet from the boardwalk, a rabbit was doing its best to look like “oh nothing…just a shadow in the grass…move along…nothing to see here”. It was so close I do not know how the digiscoper was getting anything more than the eye in frame. This shot is at 1200mm equivalent. You can clearly see both of us humans reflected in the eye. Close encounter of the rabbit kind. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. f6.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
The living logic of trees…
I am pretty sure these are Persimmon trees. We don’t have them in Maine, but in Cape May NJ, in the little patch of forest behind the dunes at Cape May Lighthouse State Park, they are among the most common trees. In summer all you see is the green crown, but fall shows off the fantastic forms the limbs take, in their living reach for the sky and light. There is a logic all its own the the growth of trees, and something to be learned from observing them. Unfortunately their lifetimes are considerably longer than ours. We never see anything but the latest episode, and have to use our own logic to trace back to what might have come before…the the forces, internal and external, that shaped the tree we see. And, when considering trees, our logic has to be suspect. Trees have a living logic all their own.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
American Ladies in the Daisies
The American Lady butterfly suffers an interrupted migration. They head north in millions to repopulate North America, well up into Canada, each spring, and in fall they turn around and head south. The fact is none of them make it back to Mexico. Once upon a time they probably did. It is a classic migration pattern still followed by the Monarch. But American Ladies repopulate North American with a new generation each year.
This past weekend in Cape May, the American Ladies were everywhere, and that is not an exaggeration: Anywhere there was a flower still in bloom…from the humble Goldenrod to the giant dasies in front of the hotel where I stayed. Many were well worn…missing trailing wing edges…but still eagerly feeding, not yet ready to give up the fight. Clearly they have no idea that they won’t see Mexico again.
And, among the dasies, they certainly make a brave show, and some interesting images.
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f7.1 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Tree Swallows Swarm. Happy Sunday!
In the fall of the year the Tree Swallows mass for migration, and at major migration stop-overs, like Cape May NJ, the swarms of Swallows can take on impressive proportions. I caught one in action at Cape May Meadows Migratory Bird Sanctuary yesterday. The Swallows filled a fair patch of sky with an intricate dance of rapid flight and high speed maneuvers, and then, suddenly, they all took the notion, at exactly the same second, to settle on a single bush. The motion of the swarm was like water going down a drain. The birds coalesced and spiraled down toward the bush, settling for seconds in its branches, 500 or more of them covering the bush like a living blanket, and then just as suddenly, they would break away and spiral up, to disperse to their arial maneuvers again. They did this, not once, but at least ten times as I watched. It was impressive!
This shot is just as they decided to take to the air again: actually toward the end of the departure. The Swarm had thinned enough to see individual birds. I like it particularly because of the way the low morning light illuminates the spread wings, and because so many of the individual birds are sharply caught. It has a powerful sense of arrested motion, and as your eye travels over it, many interesting patterns emerge. I have a whole sequence of this leap to flight, and of them this shot best captures the effect of coordinated chaos.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought. We have very little understanding of how the intricate, and tightly coordinated, flight maneuvers of a flock of Swallows happen. These tight spirals in particular are hard to explain. What kind of communication is required to tame the apparent chaos, and how do the birds keep from hitting each other and knocking each other out of the air?
I know that when I see the Swallows in their spiral I feel a thrill, an amazement, an awe. Later on I come to the questions about how it is possible, but while I am watching, I am simply flooded with delight. In fact, I am not sure I want to know how it happens. I have a certain intellectual curiosity about how it is possible, but that curiosity is way overwhelmed by the joy in the fact that it does…and the sense of privilege in being there to see it. I don’t actually have to know how it happens.
And, aside from the difficulty of designing any kind of experiment to determine how it happens in a scientific way, that awe is maybe why we don’t know.
There are some things, I think, that are just too wonderful to yield to analysis. Like love for instance. Or joy itself. I am certain that there is a miracle of coordinated chaos in the chemistry of the brain that mimics the spiral of the swallows, that outdoes the spiral of the swallows, when we settle into delight. And a chemical energy just as restless and irresitably amazing as our thoughts take flight once more. Some things I don’t have to understand. Some things are enough to experience. For some experiences the privilege of being there is all you need to know.
Happy Sunday!
Fall Yellow-rumps!
There can’t be many places that are better for Yellow-rumped Warblers in the fall than Cape May, New Jersey. The birds are abundant, and the birds, busy feeding before crossing Delaware Bay, are fearless. Not that Yellow-rumps ever show much fear. Tom Dunkerton and I stood side by side in a sheltered spot in the shadow of the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Lighthouse State Park and shot Yellow-rumps at 15 feet, feeding in the sun and dappled shade of the trees in front of us. At one point I expressed the opinion that I now probably had enough fall Yellow-rumps shots to last me a lifetime! Of course, if I encounter an easy Yellow-rump today, I will undoubtedly shoot some more!
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Front Passing. Cape May NJ
This is the time of year when New Jersey Audubon has someone stationed on the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Lighthouse State Park every day, counting the passing hawks. It is a long-standing research project, and the scientific community uses the data from this site, and others like it in Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin and many other states, to assess the health of the environment as it is reflected in the numbers and distribution of migrating hawks. Besides…what could be more fun than standing on a open platform all day counting hundreds, sometimes multiple hundreds, of hawks of a dozen species coming over? The official counter is rarely alone…and on weekends there can be an actual crush on the platform…and it s a big platform.
I can also be a beautiful place to be, looking out over the marsh and Lighthouse Pond, north up the coast of New Jersey. And on a day with weather, it can be spectacular. While I was there yesterday, the first cold front of the year was passing, piling up the sky with massive clouds, and shadowing the windy landscape. Drama!
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Autumn Vineyard
Jack London State Park kind of wraps around his vineyard, which is still in private hands. That does not stop the vineyard from dominating the view from his farm house, as the vineyard wraps around the house and outbuildings just as the park does around the vineyard. I had been there in the spring when the vines were lush…they have a totally different aspect in October. The regimented, trained growth of the vines on their supports fascinates me, and makes a strong graphic statement.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Cascade Falls take 2
Last Wednesday, in honor of #waterfallwednesday, I posted an image of Cascade Falls and some info on the location…a local picnic and photo-op spot since, well, since before there were cameras. That image was all about the rush and tumble, the splash and splatter, the raw energy of the falling water.
This is the alternative view, taken on a tripod with the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F’s waterfall mode, which takes a very long exposure (30 seconds or more) to blur the water to silk. This kind of shot generally involves neutral density filters on a DSLR, but the Samsung manages it all it’s own, using some kind of digital trickery to slow the shutter without burning out the highlights. 🙂
You are either a fan of the silky water effect or you are not. Anyone who has ever stood in front of a waterfall knows that the effect is purely a photographic artifact. Falling water just does not look like that. Still, the effect is so common in waterfall shots that some people apparently think that water can actually do that. I have mixed feelings. I can appreciate the beauty and the sense of peace that the silky water images capture and project…but I am under no illusions that they are real. They use a photographic technique to produce a mood that is simply not there, as a painter might. And that’s okay, I think. And they have a certain nostalgia to them…I mean, back in the days of slow film emulsions and 8×10 view cameras, any photograph of a waterfall in anything but full sun produced silky water. It was simply all the medium was capable of. Not so today. Silky water is now an artistic choice. And I think, at least on occasioin, a valid one.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Light in the forest
In a Redwood forest that has been cut, besides the rings of trees growing from the old roots of one of the fallen giants (see my previous post on the trees of Jack London State Park), you also find many of these double, tripple, quadruple trees, again, clearly, growing from a single root. The rings I think are essentially healty. All the trees in a ring, if it is big enough, have a chance to live. I am not so sure about the triple trees.
At any rate, this image is not about the trees, or only incidentally at any rate…it is about the light…the unique layered, filtered, highly patterned light of the forest floor. The challenging light, from a photographer’s point of view, of the forest floor. The beautiful light on the forest floor, from almost anyone’s point of view.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode (in-camera HDR). Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.