The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: blue

Showing posts with label blue. Show all posts

Friday, September 14, 2018

At the Cape: On the Beach

At the Inn, they said the Cape Cod National Seashore is often considered one of the ten best beaches in the world. While I can't verify that claim, I can attest that at least from our point of view, it does seem pretty spectacular. Per Wikipedia, it includes nearly 40 miles of seashore along the Atlantic-facing eastern shore of Cape Cod.

Beach Infinity

Hat Stays On

Seagull in Profile

Beach Inspector

Pickup Line

Struttin'

Feathermania

Wind at His Back

These next two photos were taken by Deb, with my camera.

The seals were remarkably close to the beach. While one could swim quite near them, we were warned not to do so because apparently large sharks like to eat seals, so the sharks were likely not too far offshore.

Whiskers Above Water

Deb took a picture of this stranger having way too much fun in the water.

No Idea

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Early Spring at the Res, plus Backyard Life

My walk around the res today was my third res walk this week. Spring has arrived! It is still early, but the signs of Spring are all around; the buds are opening on all the deciduous trees and shrubs. A very busy time of year for living things.

All of the photos in this post are taken, hand-held, with my Olympus 75-300mm lens. In addition, many of these have been cropped in post processing. I was quite far away from many of the subjects. Much of these details were not revealed to me until I viewed the photos on my computer screen.

Tips

Tips 2

Reflections

The Cormorant is Often on the Rock

Green Needles

Res Blue

Homage to Monet

The large field next to the Res was hosting several sporting events including a Cricket match.

Cricket Grounder

Caught just before the release:

Putting a Spin On It

After returning home, I took a few pictures in our back yard. Who doesn't love a Red Bud tree?

Red Bud

Just after photographing the Red Bud's buds (sorry, couldn't help saying that :), this next little guy decided to fly by and set for two seconds on a far away branch. He's a very small bird. But there is something very cute about the look of a Tufted Titmouse; do you agree?

Tufted Titmouse Among New Buds

Friday, October 28, 2016

Cushing Park and Farm Pond

Cushing Memorial Park and Farm Pond are adjacent recreational areas for enjoying nature, taking a brisk walk (or a slow one), rollerblading, biking, and/or running. Cushing is on the grounds of a retired military hospital. The hospital buildings no longer exist other than a small church and few small out buildings. Though Cushing Park has mile markers and a paved 1.5 mile loop, there's no path to walk or run all the way around Farm Pond. One can go partway, ... actually "across" Farm Pond, by walking (or running) along a "breakwater" near one end.

Good leaf color and a sunny day make for an unbeatable combination to enjoy a fall picture-taking session.

Moon Above

Often times, clouds make photos a lot more interesting than a solid blue sky. I was lucky to visit Cushing on such a day.

Sky Painting 1

Sky Painting 2

Color Mix

Sky Painting 3

Many Ring-billed gulls enjoy the scenery at Farm Pond.

Birds Over Pads

No Mid-Air Collisions

Path to Walk on Water

Tail Fan

Partner Flying

Flying into Color

Water Life

Entering Leaf Central

Reaching to the Sky

Park Bend

Complementary Colors

Turning Leaves

Direct Lighting

Patchy Clouds

Fall Beckons

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Nexus 5X Camera Takes Great Pictures

The battery in my non-smart flip mobile phone is the original one, and since that means it's *many* years old, it can't keep a charge for very long. After a "full recharge", talk time is about 30 seconds before the battery dies! Not good!

Alas, it was time for me to join the modern generation and get a new mobile phone. I thought I'd try the new Nexus 5X direct from Google (made by LG). So far, I'm very pleased with that decision. The phone sports an excellent camera, one of the best in any cell phone to date. Dxomark rates it very highly (it's the same camera as in the Nexus 6P) only bested by a few phones that cost twice as much: see the dxomark website. Notably, it is rated higher than the current best iPhone models.

Google/LG put a new Sony sensor in the camera that has larger 1.55μm pixels, giving the phone excellent photo capturing performance in terms of signal-to-noise and lower light photography. It is easy to doubt such claims, but from what I can tell, this phone indeed takes very nice pictures. See for yourself below.

Hmmm, I wonder what I should take pictures of with my new phone?... How about more foliage pictures? One can never get enough of these, right?

Reflections Across the Road

Shadows on Needles

I (currently) resize all photos to a maximum of 1000 pixels in the longest dimension for this photo blog. Since the originals for these photos are 4032x3024px, considerable detail is lost as you view my photos in your browser. For example, the pine needles in the above photo don't appear particularly sharp. Here is a 100% crop of a portion of the same photo:

Pine Needles

And here is another 100% crop of a different portion of the scene:

100% Crop

While these samples are hardly "super sharp", they fair pretty well as 100% crops go, where one pixel is one pixel in your browser. All I'm trying to say is that the 4032px version looks a lot better than the 1000px version, so don't use my blog as a definitive reference for the underlying photo quality.

Enough tech talk. Back to some photos:

Orange You Glad You Saw This

End of the Res

It is interesting to compare the above photo, taken with the Nexus 5X, with another similar photo taken with my Olympus gear, two weeks earlier:

End of the Res Olympus

You can see how the trees have lost most of their color, but despite that, and despite the first photo being from a "lowly" cell phone, the Nexus 5X image could easily be considered the better image.

Res Blue on Blue

Autumn Clouds

Sunset Over Gravestones

Birch Protector

Red Lock