Birding Workshop with Don Freiday Sr. Part Two: Birders and their Environment

While we were out and about on the unseasonably pleasant last Sunday in January for the workshop, we were encouraged to take photos of things other than birds- in particular, of the birders themselves, and of the birders' environment.  I have done extremely little in the way of human portraiture at all.  Part of this stems from my hesitance to take photos of strangers without their permission, and the other part from my difficulties with a small amount of social anxiety.  However, legal adults out and about in public spaces such as a park or city street are fair game for photography (not so much their children).  The portrait which I am most satisfied with from that particular day is of a young man who shares my apprehensions about photographing people.  He is listening to my father's lecture intently, the morning light illuminating his face.  It's a great picture of his profile, and I just can't get enough of how crisp and clear the photo is, and how soft the lighting is.  I processed it through Lightroom to lighten the shadows under the brim of his hat, to crop out a cut-off face to his right, and I chose to put it through a yellow black and white filter to enhance the mood and classic feel of the photo.

Robert Jr, I did not watermark this photo in case you ever come across it.

Getting outside for any reason always makes me feel better about life.  One reason it never fails to cheer me up is all the beauty that can be found in any landscape.  Cape May Point State Park has a lot of appeal, but one area that tourists focused on the Jersey Shore might miss out on is the bird walk (not the boardwalk).  To the left of the hawk viewing platform is a trailhead around some marshy brackish areas where plenty of waterfowl convene, along with woodsy areas where a diverse number of other bird species can be observed.  Bringing my camera along yielded a very appealing and just barely asymmetrical photo of a pedestrian bridge over very still, mirror-like water.  The scenery put me in mind of a lovechild of Monet and Hokusai's ukiyo-e prints.  The lighting had remained soft and diffuse as we walked and photographed.  I am extremely pleased with the composition and clarity of this photo, and love the sense of peace that I feel when I look at it.

A true picture of the floating world.

The Last Rose of October

"The Last Rose of October"
f/2.0/ISO125/1/2564s
HTC6500LVW

The days are growing shorter and cooler, and the sky is becoming clearer and bluer. It's October, the growing season is ending, and the time of harvest is here. A few hardy blooms remain in my garden. I had the good fortune of seeing a goldfinch perched on the coneflower stalks, pecking at the seeds of the dried flower heads.  With wonder, I observed that the only rose bush is putting forth one more bud.

We inherited this rose bush with the house, before there was a flower bed. It was a sad little thing, growing out of the yard itself at the corner of the house. Last year, only one bloom made it. The leaves were chewed full of holes, and it didn't quite clear a foot in height. When we finally got around to putting in the flower bed on the street side of the house, I decided that the rose would need to be transplanted. It needed to be dug up anyway, otherwise the rototiller would have destroyed it. Up it came and into a temporary home while we weeded, turned over and amended the soil, and bought a few perennials. I didn't have high hopes for the rose, but we put it back in the ground anyway.

This year, we made sure to fertilize the rose bush in particular, and keep the pests off as best we could. This last October rose is the seventh bloom. It's a blinding hot pink, so bright that the human eye and the camera have a difficult time focusing on it. The chilly weather has preserved the rose for days now, a late summer firework. I took this photo early on a Saturday morning.  The sun had only just come over the horizon, and a few raindrops from the storms the night before lingered on the silky petals.  Liquid gems sparkled and caught my eye, and my lens.  

The photo was originally in color, but I want the focus to be on the lighting, and to capture the melancholy feel that autumn sometime brings.  Bittersweet, the end of warm sunny days, but the beginning of wonderful crisp days that lift my soul on brisk winds.