Figure 1 – Common tern hovering, Wood Neck Beach, Falmouth, MA, July 9, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Last weekend I was marveling at the common terns – Sterna hirundo – at Wood Neck Beach in Falmouth, Massachusetts. These birds are agile fliers and have this incredible ability to hover above the surf and then in an instant to dive down for some morsel (preferably a small fish). I took the image of Figure 1 of such a hovering maneuver.

Here there is the standard flying bird on a cloudy day problem. You are shooting a white bird against a grey sky. there is precious little dynamic range, causing graininess. The photograph is further complicated by the fact that one is shooting with a telephoto through a highly scattering atmosphere. Here the solution is to use the fuzziness to advantage. Don’t call it “fuzzy.” Call the quality of the image “diaphanous” – light, delicate, and translucent. That’s the ticket and the objective all along!

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 168 mm, ISO 160, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/11.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Allium fireworks, Highfield Hall and Gardens, Falmouth, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Last Saturday, when I was at Highfield Hall and Gardens in Falmouth, Massachusetts I had missed the Fourth of July by a couple of days. Too bad because I came across the beautiful Allium of Figure 1 in the gardens. They were reminiscent of fireworks and I was thinking, if not the Fourth of July then how about Bastille Day. I can celebrate with our allies the French. So “Vive la France, everyone!!”

I decided to do this image as a deep blue tone to mimic the sky and a fireworks display. This was one of the fun black and white photography manipulations in the analogue days – but has now been made a mundane and simple digital task. The good news is that you don’t have to deal with chemical nasties.

I have actually started carrying three camera with me. First, is my Canon, invariably with some kind of telephoto zoom. Second is my IPhone, which I tend to use for its wide angle abilitities. And third is my little Fuji FinePix digital camera, which I like for close-ups such as the flowers here because it has more pixels and more controls than the IPhone.

It only gets confusing when I get home and have to figure out where all the images are.

Fuji FinePix AX550,5.9 mm lens, 1/125 sec at f/3.3.

Figure 1 – Osprey family, Falmouth Beach, Falmouth, MA, July 10, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I have to admit that I have been suffering from “raptor envy.” Over the last few months, I have been admiring other peoples’ photographs of raptors: owls, eagles, hawks, falcons, and buteos. I have been wondering just how is this done, how do you get close enough, and in general I have been suffering from “raptor envy.” In the meanwhile, I have during my walks seen a lot of these birds ever in the distance, and my photographic attempts have been rather pathetic – well maybe not the attempts, but the results certainly. These great birds have always been dark, tiny in the frame, and often out-of-focus.

Last weekend we went to the Great Sippewissett Marsh in Falmouth, MA, and I looked longingly at the ospreys in a distant nesting platform. Later my friend Kip, who knows all secrets Woods Hole, took me to a nesting platform in the marshes just off Falmouth Beach, and to my delight I could get quite close to the nest. So was this the secret?

At first, I thought that nobody was home. Off in the distance a solitary osprey danced through the air in a gyre. Then I saw a little head pop up in the nest and wondered if the gyre might become ire at the insult of my proximity.  I suspect that being dive bombed by an angry bird of prey is not the best experience. I surmise this from the fictional cinematographic experiences of Laura Dern and Bryce Dallas Howard, with velociraptors. Fortunately, my raptors were used to the presence of gawking scientists. Then I saw her closing in and snapped photographs madly. I kept focusing on the eyes as best I could and pressing the shutter. I only had my 70 to 200 mm lens, which may have been best, since with the big lens I doubt that I could have captured it on the fly. Two of my best images are shown in Figures 1 and 2. Gone for now is any sense of “raptor envy.” I finally have my own – Pandion haliaetus.

The osprey is a truly magnificent bird. Also called fish eagle, sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, it is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey that can reach in excess of 60 cm (24 in) in length and 180 cm (71 in) across the wings. Psst, that’s almost a six foot wingspan. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant. Having survived hunting and the ravages of DDT in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the osprey has made a decent comeback and is currently rated as “least concerned” as a species. But the precise population numbers are unclear and the osprey’s hold against loss of habitat and pollution must be considered tenuous.

There are a few interesting points to be made about Pandion haliaetus. It was one of the original species described and identified by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae,  In the Linnaean taxonomy it was Falco haliaeetus. Second, is the origin of the English work “osprey.” Genus Pandion derives from the mythical Greek king of Athens Pandion II, who was the grandfather of Theseus. Species haliaetus comes from Ancient Greek haliaietos ἁλιάετος, the “sea eagle.” The English word osprey is more obscure but appears to derive from the Anglo-French ospriet and the Medieval Latin avis prede “bird of prey.”

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with lens Lens   EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 180 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode. 1/2500 sec, at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 2 –  Canon T2i with lens Lens   EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode. 1/4000 sec, at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 2 – Osprey, Falmouth Beach, Falmouth, MA, July 10, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Windsor chair with table and reflections, Highfield Hall and Gardens, Falmouth, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Today I wanted to share another interior image that I took at Highfield Hall and Gardens this past Sunday.  This photograph is a geometric interior shot. Because it is of such concrete definition, I would not refer to it as an abstraction. I think that lying within the nature of our minds is a love of the geometric. Geometry is both soothing and defining of boundaries. There is an appeal to the ordered. It mirrors the stability that we wish of our lives.

I read recently about a couple of parallel lines found on an ancient animal bone and suddenly we had the earliest evidence of humans in North America. In that respect the geometric is “of mankind,” and such is certainly the case here with this chair, the window blinds and their reflections. But it is ultimately the case that we learn geometry, structure, and order from the natural world. A pine barren with a straight and rigid line of parallel trees, a flower, a stair fish, and, of course, the random pattern of the stars that we mentally group into constellations.

Behold the Great Bear and his lesser buddy “The Little Bear,” you say? I can see a dipper, but a bear? It is the product of an over active imagination perhaps – but most significantly it is of a human imagination.

With regard to my photograph, I was taken by the parallel reflections – a physicist’s delight. I love the warm glow and the tonal range. And it is wonderful to be in a museum filled with wonderful art and to suddenly focus instead on the beauty of the mundane and everyday – here the furniture in the library. Specifically it is the most utilitarian of furniture. Yet the Windsor chair is ever a thing of great beauty.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70mm , ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/320th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Juvenile wild turkey among my hostas. Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Sometimes if you are really lucky Nature comes to you. This morning as I was pulling into my driveway, I discovered a young group of wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) in my backyard. These are the most dinosaur looking of birds. So it was a scene of Jurassic Park among my hostas. I raced to retrieve my camera and chased this flock of fowls into the woods snapping away. Apparently, for wild turkeys, it’s a flock, for domestic turkeys, a gang. The lighting forced me into a suboptimum exposure time for the focal length I was using. But the image came out with decent sharpness and I love the iridescence of the birds neck. The first time that I say on of these guys up close I mistook it for a peacock. Probably this speaks more of my impressionability that the intrinsic quality of turkey plumage. People will call them ugly, but there is a certain beauty and elegance in what Ben Franklin proposed (well kinda sorta…) as the National Bird.

And happily there is an Ogden Nash poem about turkeys.

The Turkey

“There is nothing more perky

Than a masculine turkey.

When he struts he struts

With no ifs or buts.

When his face is apoplectic

His harem grows hectic,

And when he gobbles

Their universe wobbles.”

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/125th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – American bullfrog, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, June 17, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Hmm. To a large extent nature photography tends to be a matter of you never know what you are going to capture. Today I went down along the water’s edge and stood quite still in hopes of seeing some of the frogs that have been serenading in a bass voice. As  Figure 1 attests I was not disappointed. So there I am with my big lens at 400 mm shooting a macro-subject perhaps six feet away from me. It was very successful in terms of sharpness and background. The lens performs amazingly well under these circumstances. Frogs are about as wary as any creature in the woods. Also i do have to point out that with macro-photography it is way better to get down with the subject and shoot a portrait into its face. But there was no way that this frog was going to put up with this kind of familiarity. And indeed, as soon as I looked away to adjust the camera he left into the water and retreated beneath the surface. “It is not easy being green.”

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 400mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Don’t eat the hand that feeds you. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Today’s photograph, Figure1, is of my friend’s new puppy, Emma. In a moment of over exhuberance, puppy Emma forgot what they taught her in puppy school. “Don’t eat the hand that feeds you.”

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 100mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500th sec at f/7.1, with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Eastern chipmunk peeking out of a log, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA, June 14, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016

I’ve got to apologize for constantly posting pictures of cute and cuddly eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus). It is just that they are so photogenic and their antics so endearing. They seem to be following me as I walk through the woods – ro at least they seem oblivious to me. But when I stop and look at them they freeze. Today this one retreated to the security of the hollowed out tree, only, as expected, to pop its head out a few moments later. I suppose that there is a certain insecurity to not being at the top of the local food chain, and here they fall victim to owls, raptors, and snakes. SO I cannot blame them their nervousness. It is after all a dangerous world.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 320 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/160th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Reserved seating, Eastern pheobe, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, June 13, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I cannot tell you how many times I have schlepped my heavy, big lens all the way through the woods at the Assabet River National Wildlife refuge without taking any photographs, only to emerge from the forest to discover something photogenic near the center’s parking lot. I suspect that this follows from variety of habitat. You can walk along the path and predict from experience the kinds of birds that you are going to run into.

The parking lot is an open space with a grassy area – perhaps describable as a meadow. The birds here are a bit less nervous around people. They are more comfortable with the things of man: cars, benches, wires, and pavement. Today I came upon the lovely Eastern pheobe (Sayornis phoebe). It had chosen to sit on a sign, as if it were reserved seating. 

The final point to make here is how sharp this lens can deliver under the right conditions even at the maximum extension of 400mm. There is a lot of eye and feather detail.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 400 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/800th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.