2/13/2011: Who Goes There

Happy Sunday!

Snow had fallen heavily the day before, but people had already cross-country skied and snow-showed the trails at Rachel Carson NWR, so, with care, a booted photographer could get back pretty far in the woods. These tracks must have been made just before the snow ended. Though I thought I was capturing the tracks, it turns out this is mostly about what the light is doing with the texture of the snow. A Black and White conversion brings that to the forefront.

Canon SX20IS at about 285mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.

Processed in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness. Converted to B&W using the Green filter effect.

And, being Sunday: Like the image itself, our spiritual journey is often more about what the light does with the snow than it is about the tracks we, or others, leave. And yet, without the tracks, what is there to draw another’s eye? We are much more likely to stop to see the light on the snow if someone has laid a track across it. That seems to be a part of what it means to be human. “Who goes there” is our first question. But it eventually leads to the realization that there is a there to go and a going…and that every step, to the eye of the spirit, is through textured light!

2/12/2011: Welcome back to ME

That is Maine in the title…and I am back from a week of business meetings in Virginia. Though this pic was taken a week ago, it still looks like this in Maine. The snow is a bit more compacted, but there is still plenty on the ground. That is 5 foot snow fence. I still have a number of digiscoped shots from Florida to share, but, for today, I am back in ME.

Canon SX20IS at about 45mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

2/6/2011: Rosehip in the Snow, Parson’s Beach

Happy Sunday! A play of textures, set off by the contrast between the brilliant red of the rosehip and the white of the snow. I also like the way the red of the rosehip has absorbed enough heat from the sun to melt the snow around it and create a little frame for itself. The thorns, to my eye, give it an extra appeal.

For this shot I used the tele-macro on the Canon SX20IS, shooting from a standing position and well back, but still getting the macro effect. 560mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Cropped from the left to eliminate a distracting out of focus twig, and from the right slightly to more or less restore “rule of thirds” composition.

This is part of the sequence of grand snowscapes I shot on Friday. You saw one of them yesterday, taken only a few moments before. As part of my photographic discipline I have trained myself to always, in every situation, spend at least some time looking down, looking close, thinking small…even when the grand vista is compelling. There is often something worth my attention right at my feet. No…there is almost always something interesting right at my feet, if I take the time to look. And often, looking close produces an image which opens out with as much contrast and texture and pattern as the full landscape.

Without trying to stretch the metaphor too much, I think there is a spiritual truth there. I would not like to think that, in the grand and thrilling sweep of eternal values that opens to the spiritual eye, I would ever lose the intimate details, the small beauty of what is right at my feet. The poets say the universe is contained in a single grain of sand…or, say I, in a rosehip in the snow.

2/5/2011: Great Hill from Parson’s Beach, Kennebunk

A break from the unrelenting diet of birds, birds, birds of the past two weeks, and a return to my current reality…snowy, snowy Maine. We now have, after another foot fell on Wednesday, and taking into account settling and melting (sublimation actually, since the snow is going directly from ice to vapor without ever being water) about 3 and a half feet of snow standing in our front yard. What you see here is a healthy stand of beach rose. The tallest of those plants tops five feet. This is a perspective shot taken at moderate telephoto. Great Hill with its houses is about an eighth of a mile behind the dune and snow buried rosehips in the foreground, on the far side of the Mousam River.

Canon SX20IS at about 70mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.

1/15/2011: boardwalk in the snow

When this first posts tomorrow morning, I will be, most likely, at Newark Airport, between flights, on my way to Las Vegas (working trip…which is the only way you will ever get to Las Vegas!).

This is Saco Heath again…the boardwalk under snow. There is as much snow on either side, but the blueberry and rhodora bushes hide it well. We got another 16 inches or so the day before yesterday, so it might look different now. :).

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode. The camera was resting on my glove on the snow and I used the flip out LCD to frame.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.

1/11/2011: Light in the Forest

After church on Sunday, my daughter and I stopped at Saco Heath again, just to see what it looked like in winter. She was impressed with the beauty of the light under the tall fur trees where the trail works its way toward the bog, and we were discussing how difficult it is to catch that particular (and undeniable) beauty in a photograph…how the eye and the brain…the mind…absorbs the impression of beauty without needing any center of focus, as we move through the landscape, but how in an image, once you place a frame around it, without that center of focus, the result is, most of the time, just a clutter from which we fail to recapture the original impression.

So I took a few shots to demonstrate the limits of what can be done. I explained as I worked and showed her the results that I was also visualizing the image in B&W, using a green filter effect, which lead us to discussions of how B&W photographers used to tailor the light and the response of the film with a whole bag full of different colored filters…how it was, in a very real sense, the one control they had over the image once basic exposure decisions were made. I told her that often, in situations where it is really the light you are photographing, B&W can be more effective, or at least, just as effective as color.

So here is the same image processed in Lightroom using the green filter B&W effect. This treatment brings the little fur into some prominence and is perhaps better focused as an image than the color version.

I am not sure which I like better, or, even if I like one better. Of their kind, and given the limitations of forest photography, they are both satisfying. Just. Unfortunately the experience is fresh enough so I still remember the impression I was attempting to catch!

Canon SX20IS at about 110mm, f4.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.

Processed for light, intensity, and clarity in Lightroom. Cropped for composition. Green filter B&W effect.

1/10/2011: running away icy

I think this will be my last pic taken in 2010. Tomorrow we will move into the new year! This is Emmon’s Preserve again, in Kennebunkport Maine, with the little Baston Brook (river?) running down over ledges away from us. It was a difficult shot to frame as there was no clear line of site.

This is the wider view, which I also quite like, despite its busy foreground.

If you compare the two you will see that I had to clone out the little branch tip in the first shot.

Canon SX20IS at 85mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/125 @ ISO 80, Snow Mode, and at 28mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/250 @ ISO 80, Snow Mode.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity (see page link above).

1/9/2011: If dancing water froze

Happy Sunday!

I suppose there is no real surprise here…other than the fact that it is possible. This is what even the most rapidly flowing, swirling, jumping water coming down a little series of falls in Maine looks like when it freezes. It captures the motion in solid form. It turns the music of the rapids into intricate folds and fingers of ice. How? I will admit, I can not quite imagine it.

But then I don’t really need an explanation. It is enough to find it there on my walk…to see it for what it is…and to bring it home to share with you…to bear witness.

It is an instance of truth that must be seen to be believed, and that, once seen, is sufficient to itself.

It is Sunday, and you might be ahead of me with where this image is leading me. Because, of course, what I see and appreciate in this image shares an identity with what I see and most appreciate in the spirit. The essence of faith is that it is possible even when we can’t imagine how…but it is also truth apprehended, seen, touched, felt, experienced…that is sufficient to itself, beyond the need for explanations. Like dancing water frozen and yet in still in motion, truth is something we must experience, and that we can only bear witness to. With no spiritual camera to bring back the evidence to share, I have no choice but to become the dancing water, to let the frozen motion form within me, to let truth perceived shape my life into a living witness.

In that sense, what matters here is the taking of the image, and its sharing, not so much the image itself.

Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Snow Mode.

Processed for clarity and intensity in Lightroom.

1/8/2011: the corner of simple and green

Sometimes you see an image very clearly, but when you attempt to frame it, it turns out harder than you thought. That was the way here. Simple image. I saw it right away.  It then took me an inordinate amount of time to find the angle, zoom setting, and particular section of branch. Still, I like it.

Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunkport, ME.

Canon SX20IS at 180mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/250@ ISO 125. Snow Mode.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

1/7/2010: Icy Kiss!

Take one more look at the image before you read all about the difficulties of making it.

A little curl of water and lacy ice surrounded by snow, and an all but impossible exposure problem. I decided to let the snow go completely white, in order to bring some light and life to the flowing water and some texture to the ice. I tried it both ways. This is one of those cases where I over-ruled the built in Snow Mode using Exposure Compensation.  Unfortunately, the snow goes gray very quickly, if you decrease exposure, and the water goes too dark. All in all I prefer this standard Snow Mode treatment. The tight crop, is, of course, to emphasize the pattern of ice and water.

This is what it looks like pulled back a bit.

You can see from the dappled light patterns that the adjacent snow happened to be in sun patches on both sides. 

Canon SX20IS at 290mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Snow Mode.

Wide shot at 70mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/160 @ ISO 80, also Snow Mode.

Ah yes…but that is just technique…the image either stands as it is, or it does not.

Works for me. 🙂