Spring « Photographs by Frank

9 May 2011

Fiddleheads (again) and Trillium

Filed under: Spring,The "New" Yard & Environs,wildflowers — Tags: wild flowers — Frank @ 9:08 PM

Warning… photo talk ahead!

I was not particularly satisfied with the photos of fiddleheads that I got last week; the light was too harsh. Ferns tend to grow in sunny spots and thus fiddleheads are thereby often in lots of bright direct sunlight.

I knew the light was harsh yet I photographed anyway — a failure of my “patience filter”. I should have come back when the light was softer or made a trip back to the house for a diffuser and stand!

Resolving to do better this week, I headed out in search of fiddleheads again.

There were broken clouds aloft so all I needed to do for “good light” was to carefully operate the “patience filter” and wait for the sun to go behind a cloud. A bit of flash (with a small plastic dome diffuser) off to one side allowed me to stop down the lens for the depth-of-field needed when shooting these small objects. I think that these photographs are better… what do you think?

While “out and about” in the woods, I noticed that the trillium were in bloom so they had to be captured as well! Trillium tend to grow in heavy shade so here I switched to “Strobist mode”: put the camera in full manual for exposure, use the shutter speed to “dial in” an appropriate level of background illumination, set the needed the aperture (dictated by required depth-of-field) and control the exposure of the subject by adjusting the flash power.

Here are the weekend’s “keepers”:

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2 May 2011

Spring Progression

Filed under: Birds,Spring,The "New" Yard & Environs — Tags: Birds, ferns — Frank @ 7:49 PM

One of the nice things about spring is the constant change. New birds arrive in the area, new shoots and blossoms appear every few days and, the beech leaves finally fall to the ground!

I filled the feeder on Friday evening with sunflower seeds and we awoke the next morning to feeder covered in bright yellow. A posse of gold finches had found it! At one point a pair (one male and one female) of purple finches was mixed among the gold.

Photographing gold finches was impossible. They were either on the feeder (which does not make for nice photographs) or buried deep among the branches of hemlock which neighbors the feeder; chickadees are the same. I may have to try adding a bare branch perch nearby or moving the feeder to another spot.

In addition to the finches, there seemed to be more chipping sparrows that the week before and the white-throated sparrows arrived. There were still numerous chickadees and juncos around as I expect there will be all summer.

During our walk on Saturday (in which we circumnavigated the beaver swamp that abuts our property) we noticed the appearance of fiddle-head ferns in a boggy area. The light was not great for photographs but I headed out the next morning with macro lens on the camera in search of more fiddle-heads and possibly other emergent ferns; the fiddle-heads were most common, by far.

Both days, I kept careful watch for the first odonates while I wandered, but none were yet to be found. Soon!

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25 April 2011

Great Brook / Late April Snow

Filed under: Spring,The "New" Yard & Environs — Frank @ 10:37 PM

Last Friday was a nice Spring day with temperatures up near 60 degrees. I spent a bit of time in the late afternoon photographing Great Brook as it runs past Joan’s cousin Margie’s house.

Back in the 19th century, Great Brook, the outlet of Gregg Lake, performed much work along its short run to the Contoocoock River. It was lined with many water-powered mills which are, alas, no more.

The brook still flows high in the spring and dependably all year even though its power goes untapped.

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What a difference a day makes! We awoke on Saturday to a bit of snow in the air! A couple of inches accumulated before it turned to rain but the temperature was in the 30’s all day.

Joan had turned over the garden the previous weekend. But, as all northern New Englander’s know, we are still weeks away from safe planting time as the first photo below clearly shows! The apple trees in the yard are flirting with emergence and ended up with a cold, wet blanket for their trouble.

As the day wore on patchy fog developed. I headed up Meeting House Hill on my way back from doing some chores in town. I (correctly) figured that it would be foggy up there and that would set the mood for a few photographs of the cemetery.

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We went to bed on Saturday with snow still covering most of the ground but awoke early on Sunday to 50 degrees and no snow. The New England Spring is never dull!

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20 April 2011

Mid-April Backyard Wildlife

Filed under: Birds,Mammals,Spring,The "New" Yard & Environs,Wildlife — Tags: Birds, Chipmunks, Squirrels — Frank @ 4:58 AM

Well, spring has finally really arrived in our neck of the NH woods. There is no snow left in the yard, although there are still small patches here-and-there in the woods.

On Saturday morning, I filled a bird-feeder with black sunflower seed and hung it by the deck in the back of the house just to see what we could attract. I was amazed at how quickly the “word” spread. Within a couple of hours there were chickadees and nuthatches present as well as the perennial feeder nemesis, the gray squirrel! Within a day, the juncos and sparrows had found the feeder as well as the red squirrels and the chipmunks.

I, as you might have expected, spent some quality time with the camera set up near the feeder!

Here are the resulting “keepers”:

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On Sunday, we watched a female turkey amble though the yard as she picked over the remnants of last year’s acorn crop which were newly emerged from under the snow. In the afternoon on Sunday, Joan and I took a spontaneous break from the yard work and walked down to the beaver swamp at the back of our property. Eagle-eyed Joan spotted a porcupine sitting way up in a tree right at the edge of the woods. No photos though, too high and too well hidden… maybe next time!

As I knew from the beginning, the environs of the new house were going to be great for wildlife (and photography). Our short time here has certainly proved that true and odonate season has not yet begun… although Joan did attract a few early blackflies as she worked turning over the vegetable garden on Monday!

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