Parker River Dunes in Winter

Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, Plum Island MA

I drove down to Newberryport and Plum Island…Parker River National Wildlife Refuge…to look for reported Snowy Owls yesterday. It is about an hour from home, pretty much a straight shot down I95 and then in through Newberryport to the refuge. I could not find any owls, but was definitely captured by the snowy dunes and the winter marsh. I parked and hiked over the dunes and out into the marsh on the Hellcat boardwalks, and on just about all of the dune side boardwalks. With the light snow cover, and a winter sky, the landscape was transformed.

A Snowy Owl was reported on the dunes yesterday…but I did was not there, apparently, at the right time. Still I am happy with the snowscapes 🙂

Sony HX400V at 24mm equivalent field of view. In camera HDR on auto. Program shift to keep the whites in range of the sensor. Nominal exposure: 1/800th @ f5 @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Besides the normal Lightroom preset for the Sony, I also applied two graduated filter effects: up from the bottom to increase exposure and bring up the snow, and down from the top to darken slightly, add some Clarity, and to increase Saturation of the blues slightly to increase pop in the sky.

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