Tag: seasons

Same winter, different camera

So here it is, my first batch of taken with my new Nikon D5000 DSLR digital camera. I’m still learning how to use it, specifically how to tweak ISO, shutter speed and aperture to make photos better. It’s still over my head, but luckily I’ve been visiting Digital Photography School for tips, a great website for novice photographers such as myself.

For this first group I decide to take more photographs of the snowy winter scenery on my property. I experimented with landscapes from afar in addition to a few up-close macro shots. of the snow-laden branches and shrived red berries hanging on the vines.

There’s a very clean feeling I get from the photos this camera takes, they’re not as grainy as the ones from my point-and-shoot Canon. But as for a deeper analysis, I need to learn more before I can make one.

In the meantime, enjoy these photos. There are some great ones of the small barn on my property.

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Publish date:
January 14th, 2010
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At the marsh

Truth be told, most of my nature photos I take on my property, which is fairly large by Long Island standards and features a great assortment of trees, vines, bushes and flowers. But I also leave the reservation.

This batch comes around the same time as my last group of fall photos, but were taken at one of the salt marshes on the Long Island sounds.

They feature thin, wiry vines, some with almost delicious looking blue berries (though I gather I’d get pretty damn sick eating them).

Then there’s the water, which seems to looks cold in the barren fall.

But the algae that lines the ricks on the shore, it’s a green as it is in spring, which makes me wonder what changes aquatic plant life goes through during seasonal shifts.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
December 23rd, 2009
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At the very end of fall

It’s a tossup for the most depressing end of a season between late late fall and late winter.

While winter tends to linger, and slushy, gray snow, cold wind and barren trees can get a bit maddening by the end of February. But the end of fall, when all of the wild colors fade to subtle brown, when the dead leaves crack and curl in their piles, and the empty trees creak in the chilling winds, well, it’s a real bummer.

These are the last photos I took of the season, just a few days before a fierce blizzard blew in with winter.

It’s all sticks, save for a few red berries. There are even a few photos of my barn, which seems to frown in the cold.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
December 23rd, 2009
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Falling furthur

This next batch of photos comes from late fall, but not the end of fall. As you’ll see in later photos, this period of the season still had plenty of color left in it.

The middle of fall was marked with bright yellows and plenty of greens, from still healthy lawns, stubborn-to-change leaves and knotty vines. But, closer to the end of the season the greens disappeared, replaced by yellows and reds, while the old yellows turned brown.

At the same time, the leaves on the ground, which once looked waxy and pliable, had browned and shriveled and dried.

So, enjoy the photos. My next batch will come from the very end of the season, when most of the colors were gone.

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Publish date:
December 22nd, 2009
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And with this I say ‘goodbye summer’

These are last of my summer flower pics, and though I can’t say they are the best ones I took, I can say the actual moment when I took them was one of the best of the summer.

I credit the wind.

It was a warm summer day, late afternoon, and I had walked outside of my in-law’s house because I had noticed a set of flowers I hadn’t photographed yet, a bush full of flowing purple hibiscus.

Then, when I started taking photos a warm wind kicked up, ruffling the petals of the flower like cotton sheets hanging on a clothesline. It was so quiet outside that i could hear the wind scrubbing my hair. And though the air coursed around me like rapids split by a river boulder, it felt like I too was bending in the wind with the tissue-paper petals.

The joys of the moment. A still joy. A peaceful joy. A summer joy.

I’ll miss it, but the season will return. Now it’s time to dig into fall.

Enjoy the photos.

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Publish date:
October 16th, 2009
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Goodbye, sweet summer

IMG_1106Maybe I’m being dramatic. The summer wasn’t that hot, the month of June was the soggiest I ever remember, July was cool and it wasn’t until August when we got a few of those balmy days I so enjoy. But, still, my favorite season is ending, so forgive me for romanticizing.

I’ve begun looking through my files of summer photos, organizing them by flower type or any other subject for future blog posts. However, the following photos are better presented as an assortment.

Some of my favorite shots are of the Tiger Lilies, though many of the wildflower, garden plants and decorative bloom photos came out great as well.

They remind me of that moment when the hot sun all of a sudden bakes your neck, and the flowers, now hearty, glow in the daylight, and you realize that spring is gone.

And it’s summer.

Enjoy the photos:

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Publish date:
September 14th, 2009
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The rest of spring

IMG_0825Summer is near its end. Though right now the tropical air is sticky, and the oceans are spouting rough, swirling storms, I’ve felt moments of coolness in the air that hints of fall. Sometimes it’s a smell, a tart whiff of grass that you get when the hot season disappears. It’s made me pine for spring.

While I could say summer is my favorite season, it has one thing that spring doesn’t share, it’s decelerates. It cools into fall. Spring, on the other hand, accelerates into the sunny months of summer.

It doesn’t depress me, that summer is ending, even though I hate the cold. I do not hate the seasons. In fact, I’m going to try and appreciate winter more this year, with a little help from my camera.

I took many photos in the spring that I haven’t shared yet. They’re wonderful to look at, but one thing stands out when I compare them to my summer shots: the green. There is no greener time than late spring. I don’t mean the amount of green, because we all know how full the trees and the grasses are in July. It’s the depth, the purity of the green in spring that amazes me. It’s almost phosphorescent.

So here are the remainder of my spring photos, mostly of flowers I still don’t know the names of. You can see how fresh the leaves, how young the quince fruit, and how delicate the flowers are. Luckily, that season will come again.

Enjoy the photos:

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Publish date:
August 27th, 2009
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Celebrating spring

3493959081_60db7e4167If you know me at all, if you’re connected to me on Facebook, or if you follow me on Twitter, you know I turn into a major whiner around October when the cold air sets in for good. Because I hate the cold.

And even though I enjoy a clean, fresh snowfall, a good stew, a Rhone Valley red wine and many other wintertime consumables while I’m wrapped up in thermal undershirts and itchy sweaters, I countdown to the warm weather.

So, when the spring finally arrives for good after the usual warm-cold-warm-cold teeter-totter of the in-between weeks of March and often early April, I’m beyond glad.

Then I crave light salads, and smile as I dig out the short-sleeved shirts from my closet. I fall completely into that feeling of rebirth, often read Leaves of Grass to put me in a celebratory mood, ditch the hot coffee for my warm-weather favorite, black iced coffee with a lemon wedge, and loosen up.

Thank goodness, because the past winter was harsh.

My spring basking led me yesterday to walk around my yard and take photos of every wildflower, leaf-bud and blossom that caught my eye, testing out the digital macro setting on my utilitarian Canon digital camera. The shots came out great.

I even snapped a few photos of a small ant colony, incredibly close photos. The rain had earlier washed the holed entrances to the colony closed, so they were digging out when I arrived with my camera.

Enjoy the shots. Download them if you’d like. My spring gift to you.

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Publish date:
May 3rd, 2009
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