Monthly Archives: December 2016
Titmouse. Happy Sunday!
Tufted Titmouse, back deck feeding station, Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Yet another shot from my productive moments with the mixed feeding flock at the back deck feeding station the other day. The Tufted Titmouse is the Eastern and New England variety of the Titmouse clan, and a common bird at our feeders all year long. Titmice are perky birds at the worst of times…alert, apparently cheerful, and active. The crest helps with the impression, but there is no disguising the attitude. This bird, small as it is, appears ready to take on whatever comes…confident and hopeful at the same time.
Jesus, as he is recorded in the Bible, only rarely used wildlife in his teachings. But he did use birds…as an example of the attitude toward life we, as children of God, should adopt. And it is exactly the Titmouse brand of confidence and hope, cheerful expectation, that Jesus taught his deciples to value. We should, he said, take a lesson from the birds, who do not worry, but have a cheerful expectation that God will take care of them. He is not teaching, so much, about birds, or about us, but about God. God takes care of the birds. Surely God will take care of God’s sons and daughters…of the children made in God’s image. That is something we can believe, absolutely. It can, and should be, the ground for confidence and hope to take us through our days without anxiety or worry.
Easily said, and so hard to do! So, today, when you find yourself challenged by all that does not seem to be going well…or dwelling on the potential for disaster this year, and every year, displays…turn your inner, and most generous eye, on the Titmouse. Remember this image, and this attitude. I sincerely hope it will ease your way, and make the day more enjoyable. Happy Sunday!
Chickadee, dee, dee…
Chickadee, back deck feeding station, Kennebunk Maine
This is another shot from my productive session with the feeding station on our back deck the other day. The Chickadees, of course, are totally fearless, and will land on the station while I am actually out on the deck. This is only slightly less than full frame at 600mm equivalent field of view. I especially like the bright eye on this bird, and the natural feather detail.
Sony RX10iii. Program Mode. 1/160th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet. Distracting branch in upper right corner removed in Handy Photo.
Downy Woodpecker in winter…
Downy Woodpecker, back deck feeding station, Kennebunk Maine
Yesterday’s Day Poem was about a mixed feeding flock that came to the back deck feeding station at noon.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker at the back
deck feeder sent me scurrying for my
camera. We don’t see them often, though
they are obviously around. Of course
it was just flying off when I got back,
but still, it was the harbinger of a large
mixed feeding flock, and I stood, propped
up in the open back door, and shot birds
for 15 minutes as they came and went.Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Chick-
adees and Titmice, a Nuthatch, and several
Jays (who would not come close while I
stood there). Even a lone and lonely Junco,
apparently desperate for feathered company.I stood until I heard the furnace kick in,
and noticed my ears were getting cold.By then it was mostly Chickadees and
Titmice anyway…and I never did see
that Red-bellied Woodpecker again.
This is one of the Downy Woodpeckers and one of the resulting images 🙂 It is this kind of image that I was hoping for when I built and rebuilt the feeding station.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode. 1/250th @ ISO 125 @ f4. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
Heron in the winter…
Great Blue Heron, Mousam River at Roger’s Pond, Kennebunk, Maine
The other day, with our first snow on the ground, I went to Roger’s Pond, a little park on the Mousam River, to look for ice bells on the willow wands at the water’s edge. The Willows evidently had a hard summer, as there were not nearly as many as I remembered, and the water was probably still too warm. No ice bells. There was, however, this lone Great Blue Heron sitting on a snow covered rock in mid-stream in the early December light. A tricky exposure to say the least…attempting to get good feather detail without blowing out the white snow. I dialed the Exposure Compensation down to -1 EV and hoped for the best. I already had DRO (Dynamic Range Optimization) set to maximum. With a bit of highlight recovery in Snapseed, it is about as good as I could have hoped for.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode adjusted as above. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet. Cropped for scale.
Winter pond…
Fernald Brook Pond #2, Kennebunk Maine.
If you follow my work at all, you will recognize this pond as one of my favorite locations around home…in any and all seasons. Here, at the beginning of winter, with first ice. It was a difficult exposure, with the sky too bright and the landscape in shadow, but worth the effort.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed for a somewhat high key effect in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
Snow in the forest…
Snow. 120 Brown Street. Kennebunk Maine.
Carol and I were in New Mexico when the first snow fell in Maine, but we were home yesterday and watched, Frost like, the woods fill up with snow. It snowed most of the day, but never heavily, and by late afternoon we had about 2 inches on the ground. Gentle snow, and very little wind, so even that little bit built up on the evergreens to look like a much heavier fall. This is a little patch of mostly second growth forest (or 10th growth for all I know) just across the road from our house. It is posted, but I worked my way just far enough into the woods for this pic of the newly fallen snow, about 2:30 in the afternoon, before the light failed completely. There is always a quiet beauty to freshly fallen snow.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 24mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/100th @ f2.5 @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
One of the best effects of HDR is maintaining green where it would otherwise go dark. Add a bit of shadow recovery in post processing, and the effect is very life-like. 🙂
Winter flag over the bog…
Grass head, The Bog at the National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm, Wells Maine
The subtle colors with glints of reflected light in the emerging peat bog at Laudholm Farm (Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells Maine) form and interesting backdrop for this dried grass head growing up through what looks like it might have been Meadowsweet. One corner of a wet field at Laudholm is slowly turning into a bog, or remains a bog, while the rest of the field dries out. I am not sure which way it is going. In early winter, yesterday when Carol and I visited, it is just an empty stretch of boardwalk, but this little still-life caught my eye.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 234mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.
Found on the forest floor. Happy Sunday!
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Photography is essentially the art of putting the world in frames. All the technical stuff matters…exposure, white balance, focus, image quality, etc…but it does not matter nearly as much as what is and is not inside the frame, and how the elements inside the frame work together to fill the frame. The frame is our focused attention…it says “look at this and see what I am seeing.” The only talent a photographer has is his or her vision…the rest is skill, and can be learned with enough teaching and practice…but the ability to see what needs framing, and how it fills a frame…that is the gift that sets the photographer apart from the casual snapshot shooter. (And the world being what it is, even those who consider themselves casual snapshot shooters may have the gift, and many who consider themselves very skilled in the techniques of photography may, apparently, lack it.) It is a gift…it can be developed like any talent…but it can not be acquired or learned.
Dr. Suzuki, creator of a well known system of music education, believed that musical talent is a gift that is given to all children, and that it only needs to be developed from an early age, to allow every person to enjoy and to make beautiful music. To him, hearing music is equivalent to seeing beauty…to seeing how the world fills the frame of our attention…and the skill of actually playing an instrument can be taught and learned. It only requires practice.
I believe photography is the same. Everyone, as part of his or her birthright, has the ability to see beauty, to appreciate the harmony and energy of the world, and if given a frame can place it effectively it to say “look at this and see what I am seeing”. Being a man of faith, I believe that gift is part of our birthright as children of God…part of the “created in God’s image” truth that can and should shape our lives. It is part of the generous eye…part of the light within us. And, again, looking with a generous eye, I see evidence of the gift of God at work in people around me, whether they are aware of it or not, in every effective photograph. Whether on Facebook, or Google+, or Instagram (or wherever you look) the digital stream today is full of images that testify to the light within us.
It is a common complaint among “skilled photographers” that today, anyone with a phone thinks they are a phtographer. Isn’t it rather, that today everyone has a frame, and more and more people are discovering that if they put it around the the things they see and value, others can share that value. And isn’t that something to celebrate…and to enjoy?
I saw this apparently random arrangement of sticks and leaves on the forest floor, on a wet fall day. The textures, the colors, the angles formed by the white birch branches caught my eye, so I took the frame of my camera and put it around what I saw, being careful to fill the frame so that you could see what I saw. That is my only gift. And now it my gift to you. Happy Sunday!
Tarantula!
Tarantula. Slot Canyon. Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti New Mexico
We did not see much wildlife at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument near Cochiti New Mexico when we visited last month…a Townsend’s Solitaire, a Jackrabbit, and, as we walked up Slot Canyon, this lovely Tarantula. Now I know there is a slight risk in positing this image, as some of my followers surely will react negatively, but the Tarantula is, as I see it, a lovely bug. As spiders go, it is furry and friendly looking. It is, of course, also very large. This one was maybe 5 inches leg-tip to leg-tip. One of the (many) things I love about my wife Carol is that it did not send her clawing her way up the side of the canyon. We both watched it scuttled along the Canyon floor working its way around us on its way down. Tarantulas live solitary lives, mostly out of sight, but they do come out in search of mates in season. This one may have been on that errand. And though they are big, they rarely bite (they have to be really provoked to bite a human) and the bite is more irritating than harmful. People (not people I know personally, but people nonetheless) keep them as pets. I was happy to see this one, free and on about its Tarantula business, in Slot Canyon.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode. 1/1000th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Just a duck or two…Ducks Away!
Pintail and Mallard Ducks (mostly), Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Socorro New Mexico
The first days at the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro New Mexico, the fields behind Coyote Deck were still dry. On Thursday they began to pump water in, and by Saturday there were at least 5000 ducks, mostly Mallards and Pintails, gathered to feed on the floating seeds and shoots. They flood those fields to bring Ducks and Cranes and Geese within easy viewing of Willow and Coyote Decks on the Festival weekend every year. Bosque del Apache is intensively managed all year for the wildlife, but during the Festival of the Cranes, yearly, for close to 30 years, they also manage for the people who come to view the wildlife. And, just as I always hope for a Snow Geese rising shot at Bosque, I have come to appreciate the “Ducks Away” experience off Coyote Deck. I watched the field flood daily and stopped along the road when I finally saw the congregation of ducks, and waited. Most years the ducks just continue to feed while I am watching, but they rise often enough to give me hope…like once in past 6 years 🙂 This year, as I stood there hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, a Refuge truck came down the dike road on the inside of the tour loop and, as it passed, the ducks startled and took to the air. I had an intense few moments there until they settled again.
Sony RX10iii at 580mm equivalent field of view. Action and Flight mode (my own saved program). 1/1000th @ f4.5 @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet.