Monthly Archives: August 2015
NM Sunflower! Happy Sunday.
Sunflower, just over the NM border from OK.
There is a substantial stone sign to mark the border crossing between Oklahoma and New Mexico on Route 56, and a more subtle shift in the landscape from high plains to volcanic plateau, but the real difference, at least this year, is sunflowers. Evidently New Mexico distributed tons of sunflower seeds this spring, and sprayed them along roadsides all over what I have seen of the state so far this trip. And it has been a wet (by NM standards) summer…with enough rain so that the sunflowers, watered by runoff from the roads, have prospered. Big, bold, beautiful sunflowers provide a foreground for the volcanic uplands and mountains of this section of New Mexico. It is great! It is wonderful. It is an act, intentional or otherwise, of worship and praise…guaranteed to lift the spirits of everyone who lives in, or visits the state.
We had to stop a few miles into New Mexico at a little roadside rest to take in the view, and I was compelled to photograph a few of sunflowers. The glancing, high altitude light of late morning, with in-camera HDR to keep the shadows and highlights in range, contribute to image that makes me smile…and I hope it does you too. It is just so cheerful. And yet it is authentic. This is not a pampered garden sunflower. You can see the wear and tear of life on the roadside all over the plant…and the great green hairy fist of the new bud adds a contrasting element and another dose of reality. This is cheerfulness in the face of adversity. This is a great big simile despite the challenges. This is praise for the good life even when that life is not easy. It says to me: God is great. God is good. And nothing life can throw at me will change my mind.
All that from a sunflower on the roadside? Certainly! Happy Sunday! And may it be a sunflower day for you!
Somewhere high plains Kansas
Somewhere in southwest Kansas.
My daughter picked me up at the Airport car rental counter in Pittsburgh on Thursday morning. We drove into the City to pack the van, and then headed out across country on her move to Santa Fe NM. She drove the interstates until just after mid-night to just short of Topeka Kansas, then we tried, without much success, to get a couple of hours of sleep at a rest stop. By 4 I was driving, and dawn found us out on the back roads of Kansas cutting down across the southwest corner headed for the narrow slice of Oklahoma and then on into New Mexico to hit the Interstate again about 200 miles from Santa Fe. Since we were on a tight schedule (having to do with the rented van), we did not stop very often, and I developed my technique of rolling down the window and shooting off an in-camera HDR of the passing prairie. It should not have worked, since were generally traveling over 60mph when I did it…but the Sony managed to make sense of the three exposures and, most of the time, pull them together into an acceptable image. Amazing technology.
And the prairie sky put on an irresistible show for us…with huge clouds in the morning and then something of interest all the way across Kansas and Oklahoma. I saw this cluster of trees on the horizon and the plume of cloud above it just in time to get the window down and grab the shot. In Lightroom processing, I cropped out the motion blurred foreground, which left me with, I think, a very satisfying image. (We did stop several times for more studied photography. I will post a link to my trip album when I get home.)
Little Dawn on the Kansas Prairie
Not processed as well as I would like since I had to do it on my phone with Snapseed, but you get the idea! Dawn on the Kansas prairie. In camera HDR, Sony HX90V. 24mm equivalent field of view. Just this morning. 🙂
Blaze of Blazing Star
Northern Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
For the next two days I will be in a van with my daughter Sarah, helping her move from Pittsburgh to Santa Fe, NM, and then we move on from there to Tucson for a birding festival. It seems I am always traveling at the height of the Blazing Star bloom on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. This year I might have just caught the forward edge to of the peak. 🙂 It will not get much better than this, but it will get better. I shot this at a fairly long telephoto to compress the mass of blooms.
Sony HX90V at 520mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Sanderlings in Reflection
Sanderlings. The Beach, Kennebunk ME
My wife and I took an after dinner walk long the local beach. The summer evening light was lovely, the sky was full of interesting clouds, and the waterline was littered with shore birds and gulls. I did not have my long lens with me, just the tiny Sony HX90V, as I was looking mostly at landscapes…but the zoom on the camera reached out far enough for these Sanderlings standing on their reflections. As I said, the light was lovely! I especially like the line of bubbles along the surf. 🙂
Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 89 @ f6.4. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom.
Viceroy on the Kennebunk Plains
Viceroy Butterfly, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
When I left the house yesterday on my photoprowl, I was thinking of butterflies, wondering if I could find any on the Kennebunk Plains. Often when the Blazing Star is in bloom, there are butterflies nectaring on the blossoms. When I got to the Plains, it did not look likely as the wind was blowing a gale. I did see a few butterflies. This one was sheltering in the lee of a small birch sapling, low to the ground. Photography was difficult because the tree branches were bouncing around in the wind so hard that it shook the butterfly off several times. I, of course, assumed it was a Monarch, until I came to post it, when I thought I had better make sure it was not a Viceroy…and, of course, it appears to indeed be a Viceroy. 🙂 The black intersecting line on the hindwings is the give away.
This is a composite image, assembled from three separate shots in Coolage. Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 200 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Northern Leopard Frogs Rule!
Northern Leopard Frog. Alwive Pond, Alwive Pond Woods, Kennebunk Land Trust
There may have been no Moose at Alwive Pond in the Alwive Pond Woods Preserve of the Kennebunk Land Trust, but there were certainly a lot of Northern Leopard Frogs. I do not know what the tipping point is, but there are ponds in Southern Maine where the Bull Frog predominates to the exclusion of Leopard Frogs, and there are ponds where the Leopard Frog appears have displaced all the Bulls. Alwive Pond is Northern Leopard Frog territory! They were everywhere along the pond edge in the boggy peat. You can actually get pretty close to a Northern Leopard Frog…much closer, in my experience, than you can get to any Bull Frog. 🙂 I love the pattern on the skin, and I find the Leopard Frog elegant, when compared to a Bull Frog. I am glad to find that they have their strongholds, places where the Northern Leopard Frog rules, and that one is in Alwive Woods.
This is a collage of 4 views, representing 3 frogs, assembled in Coolage. All images with the Sony HX90V at various equivalent fields of view, from 50mm to 200mm. Processed in Lightroom.
Day Lily Illustration Effect. Happy Sunday!
Day Lily, Kennebunk Light and Power, Factory Pasture Road, Kennebunk ME
Yesterday my wife asked me to take the electric payment to the office (we have a municipal power company that serves the town) on my way to the store. I was reluctant to do it, but she shamed me into it :). While I was dropping it off, I saw the mixed stand of Day Lilies at the corner of the parking lot. The Day Lilies all over town this year are spectacular. There must have been a town “beautification” project sponsored by someone that featured Day Lilies at a bargain, and these yellow lilies in particular…because there are plantings of them along the brick sidewalks, in the median of streets, around banks and other businesses…everywhere! I have been meaning to stop and photograph some of the more impressive spreads, and here was one right at hand in the electric company parking lot. And, of course, I had my Sony HX90V with me. Life is good.
This is not quite a photograph…or maybe rather, it is slightly more than a photograph. The HX90V has a range of Picture Effects built in. I have never been one for such “features”…I like my photography straight-up mostly…but I have been experimenting with a few of the HX90V’s effects. This is the Illustration effect…it attempts to turn the photo into a drawing…simplifying colors, emphasizing edges, etc so that the image looks like something drawn, perhaps with markers and bright inks, rather than a photograph. This is all done in-camera, before the image is saved to the card, so that when you first open it, it already looks like this. It can be very interesting with the right subject. As I say, not a photograph exactly, but an interesting image.
It worked particularly well here. The simplification of the yellow petals is striking, and the background has an artfully rendered look. I like it a lot. I think it is actually beautiful.
And there is a lot to work with in the image and the situation for The Generous Eye and the Sunday Thought. If I had remained stubbornly stingy when my wife asked me to run the errand, well…I never would have seen this Lily. The Generous Eye begins with a generosity of spirit that leaves you open to the needs of others…and to any and every adventure. Then there is the generosity of the town and their lily planting program that inspired me to look at lilies more closely this year. I equate The Generous Eye, at least in part, with “having vision”…in the sense of being able to visualize a better tomorrow and do something about it. Someone, or some group, in the town had to have “seen” with a generous eye what the town would look like this summer patterned with yellow lilies. And then there is the generosity of the Sony engineering team, who worked to include this effect in the camera’s software. I always wondered why they bothered. I am sure not many people use the Picture Effects at all…most who buy the camera will never discover that they are there…and yet a lot of time and energy must have gone into creating them, and refining them to work as well as they do. That was generous of Sony in both senses I have already highlighted. Finally there is an element of “willingness to try new things” in the Generous Eye. As I already suggested, an adventurous spirit is necessary for a generous eye. If I had stuck to my prejudices (stingy prejudices) then I would not have tried the Illustration effect…and missed this image.
Finally, I have to believe in The Generous Eye of the creator of all, who embodies generosity in all its forms and who loved every circumstance that lead to this image into existence. I am not who I am because I see God…I am who I am because God sees me…and God’s eye is always and all ways generous. Happy Sunday!
Northern Blazing Star on Goldenrod
Northern Blazing Star in the foreground, Goldenrod in the back. Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
As though the Northern Blazing Star were not purple enough already, I found spots on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area where it was growing in association with Goldenrod. I made several attempts to capture the effect. 🙂 The Blazing Star is, as predicted, doing well this year.
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at about 300mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.