Winter beauty

Posted on February 5, 2015 by David

I’d like to follow up on yesterday’s theme about what is really the intrinsic magical beauty of winter. Snow and ice create some pretty amazing forms. So yesterday we looked at a spectacular moon set in Germany. Today I’d like to consider this equally gorgeous photograph by Jim Young for Reuters, showng Chicago’s Crown Fountain in this week’s midwestern snowstorm. This image has the same blue tint that indicates cold, and then there is the wonderfully captured little streaks of snow and the two passerbys, hurrying to escape the cold. And notice how both the buildings and the people lean forward. This adds dynamics to the image. But the street lights and most of all the face on the fountain itself create that “je ne sais quoi ” surreal enigma.

And I think that there is an important lesson to be learned from this photograph. In winter especially there are a thousand excuses to stay indoors and not take photographs. Last night I looked out at the tree shadows cast by the moon on the four feet of snow in my yard. It was so easy just to go back to bed. But what I should have done is gotten dressed and set up my camera on its tripod

Winter Moon

Posted on February 4, 2015 by David

In my experience, if you are looking for the epitome of winter glory, you need to look no further than Bavaria in Germany. I came across this wonderful image by Armin Weigel for the AFP of yesterday’s full moon setting over the parish church of Schoenach near the Bavarian village of Regensburg in Germany. It’s got everything required the cold blueness and the snow create a sense of absolutely frigid winter. Readers of Hati and Skoll will recognize the allusion to the end of the Norse world, the Gotterdammerung. And yet the glorious moon hovers and dances in thermal disequillibrium over the church, creating a pale and incongruous golden warmth.

And as for the moon, it will soon be out of the way at night and readers are advised to search out either with naked eye or binoculars the green glory og comet Lovejoy in early February. Cameras out please!

Merely a tourist

Posted on February 2, 2015 by David

Figure 1 – IPhone image of the frozen Concord River on the First of February 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015

OK, so Monday morning and snowing again. Welcome to New England, in all its spectacular winter glory. I found myself yesterday with a most excellent view of the historic and very frozen Concord River and only my IPhone to record it. This is the land of Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau. So please accept Figure 1 for what it is. Merely a tourist’s snapshot, appropriately taken with a cell phone. This just in case you are wondering why we put up with this kind of weather. It is so, so beautiful and we love it.

Cityscapes

Posted on February 1, 2015 by David

One of the weekly photocolumns that I follow pretty closely is the reader photos to a preset theme. This week’s theme was “City Skylines” and there are some really wonderful submissions. I particularly like Michael Kennan’s spectacular skyline of Seattle from Queen Anne Hill. Then there is Jane Barrett’s cleverly circularized image of the harbor in Stockholm. But my admiration doesn’t stop there. There is a really interesting image by Owen Bowler of the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth reflected off the water. This is a particularly subtle and clever variation of the distorted reflection genre of architectural photographs. Finally among my favorites is Daniel Furon’s moody and wonderful image of the San Francisco skyline. Honestly, I have seen a lot of beautiful photographs of San Francisco over the years. This one takes my breath away.

American goldfinch – spinus tristis

Posted on January 30, 2015 by David

Figure 1 - American Goldfinch in winter plumage, January. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – American Goldfinch (spinus tristis) in winter plumage, January. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

At this time of year, the beautiful American goldfinches are pale shadows of their late summer selves. They are however, grateful visitors to my feeder, and unlike many of the more frenetic birds, they seem to sit politely at the feeding stations, like well-behaved dinner guess. Of course, sitting with their heads buried in the feeder is hardly they way yu want to photograph them The fellow pictured in Figure 1, with his prized sunflower seed, had a cowl of gold that very much exceeded that of most of his peers. Perhaps he is a Boston Bruins fan. What has most intrigued me is that if I take a picture of even the palest goldfinch, I find that with just a little boosting of the color saturation they become brightly yellow. No other adjustment is necessary. The color is there latent and subdued, ready to pop out – like the Yin of summer buried deep within the Yang of winter.

This image was taken hand-held and again through glass at 300 mm. The little birds are a bit demanding subjects. But I think that this was reasonably successful.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 300 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority A mode,1/160th sec. at f/11.0 with +1 exposure compensation

The Finish Line

Posted on January 29, 2015 by David

As Bostonians we just naturally think of the city as the “Hub” of the universe. As a result, we also naturally expect that everyone knows and cares that we were hit on Tuesday by Nor’easter Juno, which dropped ~24 inches of snow on the Hub and about 30 inches out where I live. “Inches?” you ask. Yes, “inches!” Central to this kind of geocentricism is the view, widely held by Americans, that we should use a silly and antiquated measurement system, that is all together different from that used by the rest of the modern world. Hmm!

Anyway, there is one photograph that is going the explosive viral rounds on the internet showing a man clearing the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the midst of the storm. Not great photography, but powerful symbolism and meme.

The largest digital photograph

Posted on January 28, 2015 by David

Figure 1 – “LRO Tycho Central Peak” by NASA / GSFC / Arizona State Univ. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – LRO. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LRO_Tycho_Central_Peak.jpg#mediaviewer/File:LRO_Tycho_Central_Peak.jpg

A few days ago I wrote about NASA’s new photomontage of the Andromeda Galaxy taken by the Hubble Space telescope. At 4.3 Gb this is by today’s standards actually a pretty modest image. But it did get me wondering what exactly was the current record holder for world’s largest digital photograph. Well Wikipedia to the rescue! Wikipedia claims that when it comes to digital the largest image is also from NASA but is a high resolution map of the moon. It is 681 gigapixels, was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter over four years (2010 to 2013) and is composed of 10,581 images. This image of the lunar surface has its own website where you can zoom in and out and navigate to specific features. Figure 1 is a spectacular image a part of the composite of Tycho crater’s central peak complex casting a long, dark shadow at local sunrise. And the best part is that part of the mission’s purpose is to reconnoiter the dimensions of potential landing sites.

Mourning dove – Zenaida macroura

Posted on January 26, 2015 by David

Figure 1 – Mourning dove in winter, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 is another post-storm visitor, the unassuming but, I think quite elegant, mourning dove – Zenaida macroura. It is “mourning” not “morning” just like with Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning becomes Electra.”The name mourning comes from the mournful sound that this dove makes, reminiscent of mourning at a funeral. But it has other names as well: turtle dove, American mourning dove, rain dove, and Carolina pigeon or Carolina turtledove. Turtle dove, appropriately conjurers up images of Christmas as two turtle doves was my true love’s gift on the second day. For some reason I am reminded of winter boy scout camp years ago and finding a rock hard frozen partridge.

What I like about them is that they are calm and understated. They were just sitting quietly in a tree watching the world. And in a subtle way they are beautiful. Here again I hand-held through glass – have been experimenting with that as it is the warm approach to bird photography, and here the sharpness was not an issue. I am also pleased with the falling flakes of snow from the branches on the right and by the warm earthy tone of the bird and the way that it complements the tree behind him.

Canon T2i EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, IS on. ISO 1600, 1/400 sec at f/5.6 with +1 exposure compensation.

Eastern Bluebird – Sialia sialis

Posted on January 25, 2015 by David

Figure 1 - Eastern Bluebird - Sialis sialis, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Eastern Bluebird – Sialia sialis, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

On my commute to work Thursday morning I passed a little bush that was filled with Eastern Bluebirds – Sialia sialis feasting on red berries. These little beauties are not really rare, but I have never seen them at my feeder and at that particular moment I wished that I had my camera with me and imagined standing in traffic snapping away happily.

Well, this Saturday morning I was rewarded or given a second chance. We had had the first major significant snowstorm of the season and at around seven I had ventured out to make sure that the feeder was full since the birds were likely to be ravenous. I was having coffee watching the feeder when to my delight a group of Eastern Bluebirds appeared.

I grabbed my camera, fitted it with my big lens, turned the IS on and broke all of own self imposed rules. 1. I handheld the camera. 2. I photographed through a pane of glass. Indeed, I wound up resting the lens against the window. And, in fact, one of the birds settled in a birch that was very close to me enabling the shot at 180 mm. I am pretty happy with the results of Figure 1.