Today, enjoy two videos of shorebirds taking flight at once. Starlings can flock and swarm in clouds of birds, called murmuration. My videos of a shorebird colony taking fright, at something unknown as the beach was empty, are from my IPhone 7.
This is a still image, high resolution, similar to the view of the second video. A repeat from yesterday.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
December 3, 2014 President Obama warned of the coming pandemic and passed along plans and a team to the incoming Trump administration. By December 2019, the pandemic unleashed in China, Trump gutted this capability and, while Pam and I were planning out January 10th Walt Disney World trip, hid the truth from United States Citizens.
We were keeping an eye on China, by January 10th the Chinese communist government was lying, “there is no human-to-human” transmission they told the WHO (World Health Organization). Knowing the truth, our plans for that day would be different.
One week before January 10, the dawning of the day photographed here, “the CDC Director Robert Redfield was notified by a counterpart in China that a “mysterious respiratory illness was spreading in Wuhan [China]”. Redfield notified HHS Secretary Alex Azar shortly thereafter, who shared his report with the National Security Council (NSC). According to The Washington Post, warnings about the virus were included in the President’s Daily Brief in early January, an indicator of the emphasis placed on the virus by the intelligence community.” December( and maybe October/November), 2019 through January, 2020: COVID-19 was spreading across the USA as visitors from Wuhan disembarked from planes.
The following images compare IPhone 7 to a dslr mounted on a tripod.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
IPhone 7
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
I heard the word “shroomed” (as a verb) used in Episode 1, Season 6, of Bosch. As in “the Federal Government treats us like mushooms”: grown in excrement and kept in the dark.
One day after my “Sunrise Texture” series as the sun rose on Cocoa Beach I was waiting with the same photographic kit. It was perfect weather for a visit to Walt Disney World, planned for that day: unsettled.
This image couple demonstrates the effect of long / short exposure without using filters. I changed the ISO and F-stop to achieve these effects.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
ISO 50 F/32
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
ISO 500 f/6.3
I turned around to observe the colonies of shore birds…..
White Hawthorne tree blooms grace hedgerows of the rural hillside facing Glenariff Forest Park. The other white is grazing sheep. The North Channel of the Irish Sea is visible at the foot of the glen, with the shore of Scotland just visible.
Foreground are the stumps of mature trees cut by the forest service to control the oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. We visited June 2014, the year before, October 2013, the Belfast Telegraph reported “Northern Ireland is close to the point where it will be impossible to eradicate a virulent disease from the forests where it has taken hold.” Glenariff Forest part was one of those forests and the tree stumps are victims of that struggle.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Comparing this view with the first of this series, first glance, with the camera held steady on a Manfrotto studio tripod, it is identical but from the play of light and cloud. My model Pam walked a few feet to sit in quiet contemplation of the beautiful surroundings.
To produce stock photography I research the details of the image, to write an informative caption. For example, in the post “Another Glenariff View” my identification of the Rowan was from a two volume atlas, paging through page after page.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
After photographing the broad expands of a wide Glenariff valley, moving the tripod on that same eminence, here is a near and far view.
The foreground white flowering bush of pinnate leaves is Rowan (Sorbus in the family Rosaceae subfamily Maloideae). In Irish it is crann caorthainn, a plant considered sacred in ancient times by both Celts and Vikings. The fruit is made into preserves, jellies. The pinnate leaves are similar to Ash, the reason it is also known as Mountain Ash, Rowan is not botanically related to Ash.
The Canon lens EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM was mounted on the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III camera. The graduated neutral density filter was perfect for the setting. Notice, between the hills in the distance, is a patch of the Northern Channel (of the Irish Sea), and just visible the Scottish Coast, a tilted horizon uncorrected.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Here is the first stop on our tour of the Antrim Glens and coast, Glenariff Forest Park. These blogs have gone backward from Torr Head towards the started our day with breakfast in Coleraine, proceeding south along the plain to the head of Glenariff. The name, in Irish Gleann Airimh, means “Glen of arable land.” The Glenariff River flows from the height of Tievebulliagh, a 1,300 foot mountain, to form the broad valley of Glenariff. Arable, means tillable, and the land is tillable because the valley is wide.
This is one of my most popular photographs, it is from that day. I set up the tripod on an eminence overlooking the glen and a park path. Pam, in her red raincoat, headed down. The Canon lens EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM was mounted on the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III camera. The graduated neutral density filter was perfect for the setting.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Betelgeuse, AKA “Alpha Orionis”, was the first star disk, other than our Sun, measured. One hundred years ago the apparent size of Betelgeuse was then as now 0.003% of the sun. I bring this up because this “red” star at the end of its life cycle, is in the news, being now 40% of its brightness last year.
Betelgeuse is so far away this dimming is 700 year old news, the time it takes for light span the distance. News of our sun is more recent, sunlight informs us of the Sun’s surface from 8.33 minutes ago. Sunlight bursts from clouds to the camera in an instant of a second. In comparison my reactions to capture it are glacial. Sixteen seconds passed since the images of Series 6, time for three exposures at a slowed pace now the sun breaks free from the clouds.
Twelve minutes, fifty four seconds elapsed from the first images of this series. Seventy nine exposures taken with 16 selected moments, these last without the sand mirror.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
A Willet feeds in the new day. This is a species sandpipers, a cousin of the Sanderling of yesterday’s post.
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5/0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
All sixteen Sunrise Texture moments are presented below.. Suggestion, for this series in a larger format, open a separate browser tab for each post. At series end you will then have eight (including the very first post a few weeks ago) landscapes to compare.
Exposure: 1/6 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/250 sec at f / 4.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/250 sec at f / 4.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/10 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/250 sec at f / 4.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/320 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 125
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/15 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/500 sec at f / 5.6, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO250
A sanderling is a species of sandpiper. Exposure: 1/320 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
Exposure: 1/8 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 50
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
Two minutes pass from Series 5, and not because I have stopped snapping. My routine is to insert a (automated) sequential number into each filename. Using this it is possible to calculate the number of exposures in a series. Since Series 5, 16 were snapped before the first I could use in Series 6. Ten exposures between the first and last of Series 6, during which a minute, twenty eight seconds elapsed..
The sun disk is above the horizon, bursting from clouds.
Ten minutes, eighteen seconds elapsed from the first images of this series. Seventy one exposures taken with 14 selected moments of shining sand mirror, a strong curving return flow.
The small bird feeding, of the first image, is a Sanderling, one of the smallest species of Sandpipers.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Exposure: 1/320 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
In this second image, the mirror is erased as sand absorbs surf. I needed to show the developing sun burst.
Exposure: 1/8 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 50
A slide show of these images. This set compares short exposure with open aperture (f 4.5) to a much longer exposure driven by a narrow aperture (f 22) and the lowest film sensitivity of the camera (ISO 50). Suggestion, for this series in a larger format, open a separate browser tab for each post. At series end you will then have eight (including the very first post a few weeks ago) landscapes to compare.
Exposure: 1/320 sec at f / 4.5, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 100
Exposure: 1/8 sec at f / 22, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 50
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
I selected moments of shining sand mirror, a strong curving return flow with a continuing mark of a southeast wind of seventeen miles per hour, with bursts above twenty. Wind, waves, even the rounded particles of sand all created from the energy of the celestial body I am waiting to appear.
Exposure: 1/500 sec at f / 5.6, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO250
A slide show of these images. Suggestion, for this series in a larger format, open a separate browser tab for each post. At series end you will then have eight (including the very first post a few weeks ago) landscapes to compare.
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f / 5.0, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO 250
Exposure: 1/500 sec at f / 5.6, Focal Length: 24 mm, ISO250
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 