Spring Into Summer! May 30, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: buttercups, Canon 24mm f3.5L TS-EII, Elliot, Hawley, ragged robin, summer wildflowers, tilt-shift photography
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Spring’s wildflowers are the little ones which appear in the woods before the leaves unfurl and block the direct sunlight which fuels them. They’re beautiful but transient, and I love them.
But they’re seen in the larger context as the opening act for the Girls of Summer, the wildflowers which bloom in the full light of roadsides and meadows. In general, these are larger, heartier plants with showier blossoms, and these are what will anchor my photography for the next good while.
We’ll start with a roadside bloom of Ragged robin and buttercups along the side of route 8A in Hawley:
This might not show too well at blog-size, but it’s what my travels this day yielded.
Courtesy of Elliot, whose tilt of about three degrees gave me both the foreground and the skyline on a breezy afternoon.
Summer Colors. June 13, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: buttercups, cow vetch, ragged robin, summer wildflowers
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By the looks of the fields around these parts, the Summer season seems to have begun (despite being quite a few degrees cooler than that today!) Roadside fields have either already had their first cuttings, or are burdened with a Serengeti of tall grasses laced with the colors of the season, brilliant yellows and purples, as in these Buttercups and Cow vetch blossoms:
…or a palette of cool pastels, like this sherbet of Ragged Robin melting over a lime of new grass:
It seems like an unusually colorful season, but then, I might just be noticing it more these days. How about you? Does it seem particularly vibrant where you are?
Hump-Day Dump! June 16, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: blue flag, Charlemont, columbines, fog and trees, hawkweed, irises, ragged robin, random shots, Savoy, sunset, wildflowers, Windsor, yellow flag
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Here ’tis, the proverbial photo-dump.
You know, the stuff which doesn’t tell a story, but which you hate to delete without giving it its moment in the sun.
Dark blue columbines along the road in Savoy:
Orange hawkweed at a cemetery in upper Windsor:
Yellow Flag irises in a beaver swamp in Shelburne:
…and Blue Flag irises in a meadow, these back in Windsor, and set against a field of Ragged Robin and Buttercups:
The weather’s been un-June-like, rainy and cool. Here the mists rise over a field in Charlemont:
I know, it’s grainy, but it’s a hand-held shot on a dimly lit evening, and consequently at a stupid high ISO.
And a bit later, a sunset as the clouds blew away:
Not a calendar shot, but perhaps worth sharing before I recycle it.
Hope your week is going well as we crest this thing and set our sights on sliding down the other side.
Summer Wildflowers. June 6, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Ashfield, buttercups, meadows, ragged robin, summer flowers, tilt-shift photography, wildflowers, Windsor
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Summer is a time for wildflowers which grow in open spaces. Roadsides run riot, and fields flower furiously between mowings.
Here are a couple of early examples of that.
Ragged Robin rages in a high meadow in Windsor:
That one is courtesy of Elliot, my Canon TS-E lens, and exhibits relative clarity from about ten feet to infinity despite being taken on a windy afternoon, thanks to a fair degree of tilt and shift.
This next one, a field of buttercups up in Ashfield taken the next day, is courtesy of the same lens without the shenanigans, that is, no tilt or shift, just a straight-on shot, as there was nothing in the foreground which needed a close focus:
New England isn’t the best venue for a T-S lens, as it’s not particularly planar – one is much more likely to find suitable subjects on the plains of the Midwest or in the deserts of the Southwest.
But we make do with what we have, don’t we?
Little Bang Theory 