Branches. Fuji X100. 23 mm 1/640 sec f/2 @ ISO 400. June 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
I was attracted to these branches and the late afternoon lighting: They looked a bit like wings taking flight. I see the final image as more of a study of pure texture and pattern. But then nature is everywhere imbued with texture and pattern. (Click for larger: Image looks better in larger size.)
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Black and White Photography, evergreen branches, pattern, Photography, texture, tree, X100
Eliot Porter. Blue-throated Hummingbird, Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, May 1959 [Lampornis clemenciae]. 1959. Dye transfer print, 9 5/16 x 7 3/4″ (23.7 x 19.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of David H. McAlpin. © 1990 Amon Carter Museum of American Art
These are wonderful images. All of them were captured in the wild. Some of the images look more like fantastic paintings of birds in striking poses, but all are natural. Porter’s technique, shooting to Kodachrome with a large format view camera, is also remarkable, particularly capturing birds in flight in the days before fast digital photography. According to Donnelly, Porter “had to wait for hours for a bird to come to him. ‘He would stare at trees for an impossible amount of human time,’ says Donnelly … He was obsessed with the microscopic and the universal at once, ideas of chaos and infinity.”(*)
MOMA’s website on the Artist’s Choice series is here. A good review with an excellent selection of images was done by NPR and is here. More information on Eliot Porter here.
The exhibit continues to July 28, 2013.
Posted in Nature, Other Photographers, Photo News, Reviews
Tagged birds, Eliot Porter, MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, nature, nature photography, Trisha Donnelly
Pastoral. Fuji X100. 23 mm. 1/640 sec f/8 @ ISO 800. June 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
When the surge of spring blooming is over, but before the heat of summer starts the leaves on the plants and trees on their inexorable cycle of wilting and eventually dying, there is a lush and rich fertile green and a fulfilling peacefulness to the land that makes it seem as if this timeless moment will go on forever like it is now.
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. ―
who knows if the moon’s
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky–filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I shouldget into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty peoplethan houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,wherealways
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves
Posted in Landscape, Nature, Photography
Tagged Bruce Park, Cummings, e.e.cummings, green, greenwich connecticut, park, Photography, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke, Spring, trees
Mead Lake. Fuji X100. 23 mm. 1/500 sec f/5.6 @ ISO 800. May 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
This is Mead Lake, in Connecticut, within the large Audubon Sanctuary in Greenwich. Mead Lake was formed when the Byrum River was dammed. A very tranquil scene on a pleasant afternoon hiking.
Posted in Landscape, Nature, Photography
Tagged audubon, audubon sanctuary, green, greenwich connecticut, lake, mead lake, reflection, woods, X100
Fuji X100. 23 mm. 1/1000 sec f/5.6 @ ISO 800. May 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
This is a very old apple orchard. Old orchards like this will be found pretty much all over New England, where old stone walls crisscross the woods, marking old, nor overgrown farms. This is in the Greenwich Connecticut Audubon sanctuary (the oldest Audubon sanctuary in the country).
Posted in Landscape, Nature, Photography
Tagged apple orchard, audubon, garden path, greenwich connecticut, orchard, path, Photography, X100
Fuji X100. 23 mm. 1/125 sec f/11 @ ISO 800. May 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
“Forest Foliage” sounds like a better title than “Skunk Cabbage.” This grows prolifically in shaded swampy wetlands of the forest. I think it’s an under-appreciated plant – The image has an appealing texture to it.
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged audubon, Black and White Photography, foliage, forest, greenwich connecticut, Photography, skunk cabbage, wetlands, X100
Apple Buds. Nikon D200. 17-55 mm f/2.8 Nikkor @ 55 mm. 1/80 sec f/19 @ ISO 1600. May 2013. Copyright 2013 Joanne Mason.
More spring flowers, with a bit of stylized post processing.
Posted in Flowers, Nature, Photography
Tagged apple blossom, Bruce Park, Flowers, greenwich connecticut, Photography, Spring
