Seascape – Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Newlyweds and the Cruise Ship

Images of Newlyweds on the beach

June 8, 2021June 4, 2021 MichaelStephenWills7 Comments

With grandchildren in the Miami Area and a sister in Daytona Beach, Florida was on my mind this morning and memories of this beautiful experience on Cocoa Beach came to mind. After an eventful day touring the NASA launch control center, Pam and I took an evening walk during the golden hour, me with camera in hand.
Full in expectation of catching the passing scene with lots of shot I set to full size jpeg mode using a Sony Alpha 700 dslr with a DT 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens. The light was exceptional, so I did not expect much post production work.

My first impression was of the line of cruise ships heading south from Port Canaveral, the starboard side lit perfectly behind human denizens of the Cocoa Beach shore, in full enjoyment mode. A synergy of the images struck me. I took a few experimental shots then, as we progressed down the beach front this unusual tableau came into view.

Wedding Immersion — Newlyweds on Cocoa Beach give rapt attention to a distant cruise ship, it looks like an elegant child’s toy.

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Pulling back the focal length a bit the reason for the bride and groom on the beach is clear.

Newlyweds and Photographer — Photographer approaches from left.

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The session proceeded smoothly and professionally, it was a pleasure to watch. I felt no compunction for capturing these private moments on a public beach, the transcendence of the images reflect well on all participants.

Newlywed Photoshoot — Bride and groom pose while photographer composes the shot, her assistant behind.

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Pull back to capture the entire environment.
Enjoy!!!

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Copyright 2021 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Endless Searching

discerning a fascinating species

June 7, 2021June 5, 2021 MichaelStephenWills22 Comments

Gulls, an omnipresent element of any beach stroll. Pestiferous, abounding and incessant the gull is simple to deal with. Keep any and all foodstuffs under wraps.

Click for “Florida” in my Fine Art Galleries.

For those who adore a crowd of gulls

Conversely, for those who adore a crowd of raucous opportunists simply pull out the food and offer it to the air. There is more about this photograph at this post, “Lady Feeding Gulls, Cocoa Beach Dawn.”

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Beach Walking

Pam and I developed a habit of hanging out in Florida during Finger Lakes Winters when the gorges are closed for safety and even walking the streets is perilous, stray black ice encounters abound. We trade icy falls for beach walks.

It is natural to become inured to the flight of gulls along the shore. For all my carting along the Sony Alpha 700 with a variable lens ( 18 – 200 mm) there is not a single photograph of a gull in flight. Yet, I have my eye on them until my blindness was lifted by a peculiar individual. It seemed to be a white gull, yet it had a watchful eye.

Gliding shoreline parallel with head down, how could I have mistaken it for a gull?

Osprey occupy an environmental niche along 700,000+ shoreline miles worldwide as a single species Pandion haliaetus. A unique bird with its own family, Pandionidae, and genus, Pandion, some experts recognize sub-species in geographic regions. Ours is the Western Osprey.

The following photograph is of a wing shape very different from the gull.

Osprey Stalking Behavior

IPhone 8 always in my pocket, I captured this clip of an Osprey stalking fish in the Atlantic Ocean surf. You will have a better viewing experience by clicking on the title of the embedded YouTube, then click on the Full Screen icon at the lower right.

Copyright 2021, Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

The Three Laughers of Tiger Glen

The Sound of Laughter Among Friends

May 26, 2021May 24, 2021 MichaelStephenWills15 Comments

In the midst of a pine forest

The name for this Japanese (also called Korean) Red Pine, “Tanyosho”, refers to this trunk branching. Once a year this specimen is pruned to maintain form. The bark is polished, as well. This species (Pinus densiflora ‘Umbraculifera’) is native to Japan, Korea, northeastern China and the extreme southeast of Russia.

through the roots of the trees

the waters gathered

Stone Torrent in Karesansui-style Garden — A stone torrent element of the Morgan Garden, Cornell University, a karesansui-style rock garden intended to imitate the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance. In this way the garden can serve as an aid to meditation about the true meaning of life.

to form a raging torrent

bound by fire-formed rock.

Click Link for my OnLine Gallery “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.

Through this forest

at summer’s end

strolled three friends, Daoist priest Lu Xiujing, Confucian poet Tao Yuanming and Buddhist monk Huiyuan.

Click Link for my OnLine Gallery “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.

Huiyuan, a recluse, had vowed never to leave the temple grounds they wandered.

His vow included the crossing of the raging torrent of Tiger Glen.

Preoccupied by their conversation Lu and Tao Cross Tiger Glen

Huiyuan followed his friends

Click Link for my OnLine Gallery “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.

over the raging torrent.

Tiger Glen is the border Huiyuan vowed never to cross.

In crossing Tiger Glen Huiyuan leaves the temple and breaks his vow.

As soon as they realized what had happened, the men burst into laughter at the absurdity of this transgression.

Click Link for another posting about Cornell, “Lib Slope Autumn.”

These are my photographs of Morgan Garden of the Johnson Museum of Art on the Cornell Campus.

References and Further Reading

museum.cornell.edu/morgan-garden

museum.cornell.edu/collections/asian-pacific/japan/three-laughers-tiger-glen

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_densiflora

Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Glacier!!!

experience a glacier of Patagonia

February 22, 2021February 20, 2021 MichaelStephenWills6 Comments

Two person ship launch against glacier base.

Summer was the season for our visit to the edge of eternal, for now, Patagonian ice fields. Remnants from the last ice age, larger than some (small) countries. The site is surprisingly noisy with sharp, explosive, ice crackles.

More amazing even than the sounds, the dark shading on the ice is volcanic dust from recent eruptions of many cones.

Click this link for more glacier photographs from my work on Getty Istock.

Click this link for my series of posts about Chilean fjords and glaciers we visited February 2016.

With and Without People

always without water

December 16, 2020November 30, 2020 MichaelStephenWills

Pampa del Tamarugal National Reserve

Getty requires a signed photo release for each human in a photograph.

For this, the single best overview from our time with the Pintado Geoglyphs, I carefully painted out every human figure, our fellow tourists.

Here are the versions with and without human figures.

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Geoglyph Panorama

Rain never falls here

December 15, 2020November 29, 2020 MichaelStephenWills5 Comments

Pampa del Tamarugal National Reserve

Eternal high clouds that never yield water, we visited these hills just off the Pan American highway, to view shapes formed by moving stones.

The shapes are multifarious, mysterious and majestic. Hundreds of them, rendered for reasons known only to the makers.

I stitched together five images to yield an overall impression.

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Click me for the first post of this series.

Ghost of a Ghost Town

A place that exists because of water and a roa

December 13, 2020November 24, 2020 MichaelStephenWills4 Comments

Adolfo Tapia Live Here (?)

The Spanish word pintados translates to painted in English. There are many references to the word, in one it is a war loving tribe known for tattoos. Here, it is the name of a deserted town on an abandoned railroad running roughly parallel to the Pan American highway. As we passed through en route to Geoglifos de Pintados, I captured these shots of the ruined town.

The handprinted sign above the window, top photograph, says in translation, “Here lived the Adolfo Tapia Family, 1940-1956, F.F C.C. del Estado.” Searches on Adolfo Tapia turned up nothing, all we know is the sign attributes the designation to the state government.

The hill of the geoglyphs are the background, some of the figures are visible. There will be more in later posts.

The railroad served the many Saltpeter factories dotting the Tarapacá region. To my knowledge all were closed in the mid-20th century.

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Well Ordered

fighting for truth and honesty

December 11, 2020November 23, 2020 MichaelStephenWills

a basis for fairness

Pooleys were a firm of mechanical engineers, founded in Liverpool 1790. Shown as Pooley of Liverpool in Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, the company originally made scale beams, such as shown here, a reminder of the origins of Humberstone.

A demand of the workers was access to a scale to verify company store weights. With this post I close this series of photographs from the Humberstone UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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References

Websites

Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works World Heritage page

The Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works site (Chile), removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger/

Mother Country

touchstone or Imperialist Tool?

December 9, 2020November 20, 2020 MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

from well watered lands

1872 James Thomas Humberstone founded the Peru Nitrate Company. No, is geography was not deficient, this land was won by Chile from Peru in the War of the Pacific. This rolling stock was delivered from England, where Humberstone was born, in Dover, and worked his early years on railroads, London. At the age of 25, hired by the Tarapaca Nitrate Company, he moved to South American.

Robert Francis Fairlie developed the Fairlie Locomotive.

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