6/23/2010

Seawall Beaver Pond

The active beaver pond behind the Seawall at Acadia National Park is always picturesque. Here the beach roses set off the foreground and enough of the pond peeks over the hedge to make an interesting composition. Since the sky was largely featureless on this overcast day, I cropped most of it out, which gives an intimate feel to the landscape.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.

Besides the crop, in Lightroom 3, Recovery for the sky (though it did not help much on this day), Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint just barely right, added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.

From Acadia 2010.

6/20/2010

Lupine Love

Happy Sunday! Again this year on my way up to Acadia I could not miss the masses of Lupine growing on banks along the interstate, and again, I determined to find a good stand in Acadia to photograph. The trick is not fining them…they are all over Mount Desert Island…the trick is finding them when they are not obliviously in someone’s yard, where it would be awkward at best to get out of the car to spend any time photographing them. Of course I need a good background too.  Last year’s stand, near Southwest Harbor, was pretty sparse (I checked), but I found this field of them just off Route 3, near my motel. Good enough!

Of course, Lupine is not native to New England, or even to the Americas. [Note: further research, prompted by some viewer comments, yields the fact that while the Lupines most common in New England are not native to New England, they are native to North America. The Blue-pod Lupine, which is what you see in these tall mass stands generally, was introduced from the Northwest. Other cultivars have escaped from gardens, and there has been some inevitable cross-breeding. There is also a Wild Lupine, considerably shorter on the average, which is native to New England.] There is a children’s book about the lady who actually, like Johnny Appleseed, is responsible for their proliferation in Maine and adjoining states. IMHO we owe her a debt of gratitude. They are strikingly beautiful in the spring.

Subdued afternoon light on an overcast day. Hence the white sky, but otherwise perfect for photographing the color and the details of this striking plant.

Canon SX20IS. 1) 28mm equivalent @ f5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160, 2) 215 mm @ f5.6 @ 1/250 @ ISO 125, 3) 28mm and Super-macro @ f5.6 @ 1/800 @ ISO 160. I was experimenting with aperture preferred.

Similar treatment for all in Lightroom. Recovery for the sky (though it did not help much), Fill Light and Blackpoint just barely right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.

From Acadia 2010.

6/17/2010

Pitcher Plant in Bloom

Sieur de Mont Springs, at Acadia National Park features the Wild Gardens of Acadia maintained by local volunteers. In a small corner of the grounds they have recreated all of the major habitats, from the bogs to the peaks, on Mount Desert Island and planted them with representative plants.  Few plants are more bazaars than the Pitcher Plant. Bog dweller. Carnivorous. Strange in shape. And with a particularly complex (looking) flower structure. This is the bloom. I got down practically to ground level to shoot low enough to see into the flower head, using Macro and the long end of the zoom on the Canon SX20IS. Generally what you see is more like the image below, also taken from a distance with the tel zoom, this time because they were in a wet area with no direct approach.

Canon SX20IS. 1) 425mm equivalent @ f5.0 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200. 2) 560mm equivalent @ f5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 400. Programmed auto.

Recovery for the highlights in Lightroom 3, some Fill Light and Blackpoint right to extend apparent tonal range, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen Narrow Edges preset.

From Acadia 2010.

6/14/2010

Yearling among Flowers

This looks to me to be a late season fawn from last year. It was feeding with two adult female Whitetails, one of which was obviously pregnant.

There is a story behind the images. I was 90 minutes early for a bird walk I was coleading last Saturday at the Acadia Birding Festival in Acadia National Park (misread the schedule), so I shouldered my digiscoping rig and was hiking along the shoulder of the road between the Seawall proper and the Seawall Campground entrance, looking for cooperative birds. A huge, industrial scale, white dump truck approached at speed, and hit is hydraulic breaks hard just as it came parallel with me. It literally skidded to a stop about 100 feet beyond me, and this huge hairy arm dropped from the driver’s window, up there 10 feet in the air in the cab, and snapped its fingers. I could see the driver looking at me in his rear view mirror. He was a dump truck driver: sleeveless tee, a bit tattered and smudged, beard and a fringe of longish hair around a bald plate. Big as his truck and just as tough. He snapped his fingers again, and, getting impatient, jammed his truck into reverse and started back. I hustled over.

“Hay,” he said, “There’s deer in the field about 200 yards down the road on the left, right out in the open. Great shot!” And he grinned and nodded. “Well thank you,” I said, and he jammed into first and rumbled on.

Humm? Deer? Whitetails would be nice, but, honestly, what were chances of 1) their still being visible when I got there, and 2) their not running off as soon as they saw me?

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I hurried down the road, trying to remember where the first open meadow was, and wondering if I would be able to see the same deer from road level he could see from 10 feet up in his cab? Turned out to be closer to 400 yards, but eventually I came up to an obvious meadow opening on the left. I could not see any deer from the angle I had. I crossed the road and edged up to the last blocking shrub and peaked around into the meadow.

And, of course, as you can guess from the images above, there they were: the two adults and this obvious yearling, the two adults together and this guy ranging ahead of them further into the back of the meadow.

So, down tripod, up scope, focus, camera in, camera on, zoom to eliminate vignetting and take the first shot. (Not one of the ones above 🙂 ) I was able to work the three deer for 20-30 minutes, taking hundreds of exposures. The light was great: gentle under light cloud cover. When I had enough to think I might have some keepers (my rule is 10 exposures for every keeper you hope for) I backed away and left them to their feeding. When I passed in the car 30 minutes later they were gone.

So, I want, right here, to thank that dump truck driver for the extraordinary kindness of stopping his rig to tell me about the deer he had just seen. I never would have known. 

Canon SD1400IS behind the zoom eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 65FL for an equivalent focal length of about 2200mm (first two) and 3400mm (last one). Exif  f5.9 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160 and 200. Real f-stop closer to f12 (based on the scope).

In Lightroom 3, Fill Light and Blackpoint considerably right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Narrow Edges preset. Auto White-balance to remove yellow cast.

And, once more time. Thank you.

6/8/2010

Name this Flower: Ragged Robin!

[Thanks to Dan Huber who came through almost instantly with the ID!]

Though I have searched my references and the internet I have not been able to identify this flower, two isolated clumps of which were growing in fairly deep  forest along a path at Laudholm Farms in Wells Maine. It reminds me of a lot of different flowers but is not them. 🙂 The deeply forked petal structure and the color should be distinctive. ?? I am certain when someone names it I am going to go “Of course!”

Another view. This time hit by a shaft of sun.

Canon SX20IS. Both at 28mm and Super-macro. F2.8 @ ISO 100. The shade shot at 1/160th and the sun shot at 1/400th. Programmed auto.

Similar processing in Lightroom. Fill Light, Blackpont right, added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. The shade shot required auto white balance correction in Lightroom to warm the overly blue tone. It was also cropped slightly for composition.

From Laudholm Farm.

6/5/2010

Plantain

Laudholm Farm manages old farm lands, as you might guess from the name, and the open meadows are home to all kinds of plants…both native and foreign. This is English Plantain, which is a weed in a yard, but part of a natural and nutritious mix of plants in a meadow. Song-birds eat the seeds (it is actually grown commercially for cage bird feed). Rabbits love the leaves. One man’s weed is another man’s treasure.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. Lens-hood touching the stem and the flowers inside. F4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.

And here is another view.

This one at F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. This one, to me, has a feel of the open prairies…though it is only a hill top meadow in New England.

Both processed in Lightroom using my standard touch of Recovery, Fill Light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen landscape preset.

From Laudholm Farms.

5/31/2010

Brief as the Dew on a Rose

Rugussa Rose, or Beach Rose, is an invasive plant all along the seaside in the northeast: so typical of the dunes in New England that most people assume it is native and natural. This is Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk, Maine, while I was out early one morning last week to digiscope Song Sparrows and Yellow Warblers, who feed and nest in fair numbers in the roses and Honeysuckle of the dunes. The dew had just touched this rose, and was not going to last long.

Somewhere in there is a reason why this might be an appropriate image for Memorial Day.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F5.6 @ 1/30th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto with Exposure Lock and Program Shift for greater depth of field.

In Lightroom, some Recovery for the highlights, Fill Light and Blackpoint to the right. Had to be careful with the blackpoint which tended to block up deeper pinks of the rose really quickly. Added Clarity and and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped from both sides for composition.

From Around Home 2010.

5/23/2010

Lady Slipper Lineup

Happy Sunday.

Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge is the only place I have ever seen Lady Slippers growing in groups. There are two clusters there which have been spectacular the past two springs. I went out late afternoon to catch the light on these. The flip out LCD on the Canon makes these low shots easy.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F2.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.

In Lightroom, some Recovery for the hot pink highlights. A touch of Fill Light to compensate for Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.

By the time I got to the second cluster, the direct sun was no longer on them, but the color is so vibrant that it hardly matters. 🙂 Settings and processing just about identical, with the exception that this shot is at ISO 400 (and pretty good at that!) and I used Auto White Balance in Lightroom to warm the open-shade tones.

5/20/2010

Found Still Life

Another shot grabbed in passing during the rush of the World Series of Birding. Grabbed is, of course, an misnomer. There is a state you get too in your photography where a lot can happen in the second it takes to frame and shoot. A whole set of complex decisions are compressed so tightly that it feels like instinct or reflex. See photo, shoot photo. Move on. It can happen in a second, and in the middle of doing something else altogether…like documenting the World Series of Birding. 🙂

I liked the big leaves. I liked the yellow flowers. Then I saw them against the fallen log with the vines. I saw what the light was doing. I stepped off the side of the camp road, zoomed in a bit for framing, and shot.

Canon SX20IS at 112mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/13th @ ISO 200. Landscape program.

In Lighroom, a touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint just right. Added Clarity and a very small amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

From World Series of Birding 2010.

5/14 – 5/15/2010

I will be doing a chase car for Team Zeiss at the World Series of Birding, beginning at midnight tonight and going trough midnight on Saturday, so…this post will most likely have to cover two days. (You can follow my adventures, and the adventures of Team Zeiss, on Twitter, @singraham or @zeissbirding_us, or see both twitters and blog posts at zeisssports.wordpress.com.)

That said, these are Pink Lady Slipper Orchids from Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, ME, taken last Sunday. The top shots are from a sunny patch facing the river, right at the edge of the forest, which bloomed early…most of the flowers at Rachel Carson looked like the bottom shot last Sunday. I was there early, and the low sun was in and out behind clouds, so the light on the full blooms is quite different than the light on the unopened buds.

All were taken with the Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. Exposure varied with the light but was mostly at ISO 80 and ISO 125. The top three at F2.8, and the bottom one at f5.

For the sunny shots, a bit of Recovery in Lightroom. A touch of Fill Light, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen landscape preset. For the bottom shot, similar but, clearly, different amounts, plus cropping for composition.

From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.