Visual Impressions- Cornell Arboretum's Herb Garden

In summer, the Cornell Arboretum offers among the richest array of blooms in the Finger Lakes.  And, in the height of summer, the Herb Garden adjacent to the Nevin Visitor Center is a sure winner.  On two recent visits, I did some portraiture of some beautiful flowering plants.  Join me for a little explore.

Before I even reached the Herb Garden, the bioswale captured my interest. There is a new installation by Jenny Pickford.  I am looking forward to exploring the many ways this presents itself through the seasons and in different lighting.  Visualize it with red maple trees in autumn.

Double Allium

Behind the sculpture in the bioswale, I found some of richest Purple Cone Flowers I can recall ever seeing. 

Purple Cone Flowers

Understandably, I needed to remind myself that the light was excellent, and that I had to get to the Herb Garden while the sun stayed low.  What did I find? 

First on my route was dew-laden Borage.  It has s a tiny blue flower, and offers a pleasant fragrance to boot.

Borage

Sharing the raised flower bed with the Borage were some Corn Poppies which often have a white band on the rim of each petal.

Red and Blue Companions

While the Borage has its share of  bees, the Corn Poppies much offer a richer harvest for the bees. 

Feasting on a Corn Poppy

There are also larger Opium Poppies in the Herb Garden.  The bees find them equally attractive.

Opium Poppy in Among the Lilies

For my friends on the staff at the Cornell Arboretum, thank you for your dedication and creativity.  The same goes to the volunteers who add so much help.  For my fellow photographers in the Finger Lakes, don't pass this up.  It is one of the few arboretums that is open for photography in the beautiful early morning light.  For the rest of my friends, now you know one more reason I love living here.

Paul Schmitt

Blooming Wonderful

The Finger Lakes of New York are a bonanza for the nature lover. One of my favorite nature spots in spring is the Mundy Wildflower Garden along Fall Creek on the Cornell University campus. It is a rich, intensely managed natural area with an amazing array of native plants, and it is alive with birds, too.  I have been going there for twelve years and always come away richly rewarded.  To learn more, go to:   http://www.cornellplantations.org/our-gardens/botanical/mundy-wildflower

Today, I began there shortly after sunrise. I concentrated on the flowers though the birds were very active.  Later, I would join a work party removing invasives and planting more native plants. But first, I would have some play time. Entering the garden,  large beds of yellow surrounded the white flowers of the Great Solomon's Seal hanging gracefully beneath rich green leaves.  I've seen Ruby-thoated Hummingbirds hovering under these to gather nectar.

Near the entrance was White Baneberry, Actaea pachypoda, called Doll's Eyes because the china white berries have a purplish "pupil". The plant in Mundy was in such a charming alignment that a photo was mandatory. The leaves and flower head were in ideal arrangement.

Other delights awaited me in the garden.  Down the trail were the Great Solomon's Seal mixed in with Wild Geranium. Also called Spotted Cranesbill, Geranium maculatum is an easy plant to introduce into the home garden.  Both of these are hardy, though I've learned to keep the Solomon's Seal behind a fence to thwart the deer's hunger. Unlike so many of our introduced garden plants, they are ideally matched to our climate and low maintenance.

Next I came upon some False Solomon's Seal growing among the ferns. These sway in the slightest breeze, so I had to work fast before the sun stirred up the air.  However, unlike a bird, they cannot fly away just as I get ready to fire the shutter.


Not all plants are in peak bloom; the large White Trillium, Trillium grandiflorum, can also be attractive when the white flowers fade to red.  See below.

 Another deer resistance plant that is ideal for the home garden is the Wild Columbine. Watching a hummingbird feed on it is not to be missed.  In many cases, it has been shown that these native varieties have richer nectar than the exotic varieties that may be somewhat showier.  For me, a native plant that is better adapted to our locale means less care in the garden and a great ability to sustain itself over the years.

My saunter through Mundy Wildflower Garden led me to another late spring favorite, May Apple.  I have it in my home garden where its toxicity has proven its worth. Deer have never touched it.  It is not invasive and requires zero care.  Today I headed for a favorite place in Mundy where I discovered a harvestman spider in residence.

I made a final stop on my way to join the work party. I had found another Wild Geranium next to a contrasting tree.  The difference in the textures and colors attracted me.

 There was just so much eye candy to be found, that I found it hard to quit. The ephemeral nature of native plants means that a return next week will present a new set of blooms to enjoy. That is part of what keeps me coming back each year. Throughout the spring, there are both wildflower and bird walks in the Plantations that are expert-led.  They are listed in this link:
 http://www.ssreg.com/cornellplantations/classes/classes.asp?catID=4421

So, whether it is birds or flowers, the Mundy Wildflower Garden is a treasure for all nature lovers.  Discover it if you can.

Paul

Blooming Highlights

The rush of migrating birds has ended, and it's time to catch up with the highlights of the spring wildflower blooms. I find myself pulled between the elusive birds and ephemeral blooms.  Here is the best of the spring blooms.

At the entrance to Cornell Plantation's Mundy Wildflower Garden, I found Celandine Poppies and Virginia Bluebells in wonderful colors.  I had to get very low on the ground to get this view.

Nearby was one of my favorites each year, May Apple. Another chance to lie on the ground.

The Trillium grandiflorum were a bit higher and less difficult to photograph.  They are always grand.

An easily overlooked wildflower is the Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum).  Oddly, the garden geraniums we plant in our gardens are not members of the Geranium genum.   The Wild Geraniums are so prolific that the deer must not be eating them.  Hope it stays that way!

Now, all of these are fairly common, and while beautiful, they do not excite the passions like a wild orchid. These Pink Lady's Slippers were in a cluster of 185 plants that I visited for the first time this spring.

That is an extraordinary cluster of blooms.  I also like to portray the charming arrangements that the blooms sometime present.  This one is, for me, a portrait, .....perhaps of two sisters?

 

So, those are my highlights of spring.  In only a week or maybe two, the later blooming orchids will appear, and I'll get excited once again.  The one difference is that I will have to endure the mosquitoes that frequent the bogs and fens in June.

You can understand how I am torn between choosing blooms or birds on any given day.

Kind regards,

Paul

Seeing Autumn in Simple Terms

Sometimes, I find myself getting too complicated with my photography.  Too much gear to see clearly. Too much weight to haul.  It can become a burden.  So, today, I am publishing seven photos taken with my simple iPhone 4.  No zoom, no filters, no tripod, no thirty pounds of gear.  Just the wide angle, fixed aperture lens and the editing apps on the phone.

I'll begin with a photo taken last Friday when I had ten minutes to spare before a program with some delightful ladies in a garden club.  Found this in the arboretum at Cornell Plantations.

Used an app called Photogene to trim a bit and add a frame. I don't recall ever seeing such tall asters.  Staying on the subject of asters, I found these on a short walk.  They clearly have not benefited from the attention the preceding asters received, but that is part of what attracted me.

Pretty nice, and only a short walk from my home.  Only had the iPhone along. 

On longer walk in the Steegee Hill preserve nearby, I found the even later blooming Witch Hazel.  It can be found blooming in January.  Really!

Again, edited in the iPhone using Photogene. 

Granted that Witch Hazel is not as spectacular as some, but can the others bloom after the killing freezes?

On the same walk, I came upon a demonstration of the randomness in nature.  This oak leaf somehow flew in the wind to catch itself on a tiny branch of Witch Hazel.  Somehow, it was caught by a small hole in the leaf.  What are the odds of that? So, I had to take a photo.

Edited in PhotoForge2 and colorized in Mobile Monet.

Often, I seem to see subjects in combination with their setting.  These small shelf fungi are not too unusual, but I saw something in the blanket of reddish oak leaves and grayness of a late autumn day.

The colors of the woods depends on the tree types, so nearby was a grove of maples.  They were a simple yellow in a surrounding sea of reddish oak leaves. One yellow maple leaf had been blown against a tree's trunk, and it stuck there.

Edited in Photogene and colorized in Mobile Monet.

Not all of my time this fall has been in the woods. Earlier this month I was in Cape May chasing birds. On a few instances, I pulled out the iPhone for a break from the heavy equipment.

I am sure that most of the settings for my photos at Cape May are unrecognizable today after the hurricane blew through there yesterday. I mostly wonder about the fate of the many migrating birds, and the people that live there.  But, I also wonder what this stretch of sand dunes looks like today.  On one October day, the sunrise looks like this with the Cape May lighthouse in the distance. It was lovely.

Photo taken with DMD Dermander HDR app.  HDR is high dynamic range; the app takes two photos, one over exposed and the other underexposed, in order to record the wide range of tones.  It  then combines them into one image.  Post processed using PhotoForge2.

So, the iPhone does not replace my high end camera and lenses.  But, its limitations do support them by demanding that I pay attention to more than complicated equipment. A simple camera is a great learning tool for both the neophyte and the advanced photographer.  The instantaneous review of your photo is arguably the greatest learning tool to come along in photography.   Give it a try.

Paul 

Creative Results with iPhone image editors

I've been preparing for another smartphone workshop and exploring the many photo editors on the market.  One of the most useful (and more challenging) editors is  the Iris Photo Suite.  It is $1.99 and provides a wide range of whole image manipulations-  exposure, white balance, shadows and highlight, sharpness, histograms, and noise.  There is also a wide range of filters that apply textures and color treatments to the complete image.  In addition, it has layers and selective masking so that a texture filter can be applied to a selective portion of the image.  All pretty powerful, but supported by pretty sketchy tutorials.

Here is one image that I first corrected for image wide settings, leveled and cropped, and finally added two masks to create greater texture on the wooden rail fence.

Overall, I am pleased with the result.  One very helpful feature is the ability to zoom in on a local area to achieve some precision in selecting the area on which to apply the mask effect.  The result matches how I felt about this little corner of the Herb Garden at Cornell Plantations.

Another more creative app is MobileMonet which allows you to select where in the image to show colors. I played with this using a photo of a brilliant orange Cana at Plantations.  First, the  image was optimized using Iris Photo Suite. Moving on to MobileMonet, a black and white line sketch is created, and using a stylus brush, I painted in the areas where I want the underlying color of the input image to show.

The result, far removed from the original image, appeals to me because it removes the competing background, and produces a stronger artistic interpretation of the subject without the background colors to confuse the eye.  It reminds me of some wonderful watercolor images done on pure white paper with no color beyond the subject plant.

As I've evaluated the many photo editing apps, I have come to realize the awkward mess we have where no one app has all the tools.  One app may only cost $1.99, but building a set of apps does accumulated a higher cost, and the different apps have so different approaches and icons that it becomes confusing. In addition, the small screen does create a poorer result than can be achieved when the image is brought into a desktop computer with much larger screen. As an example, I cannot imagine how you would see image noise on the small smartphone screen, nor how to correct for it.  That would best be left to the desktop.

Paul Schmitt

A Successful Failed Outing

Our local baseball team has blown the lead in so many games this year that I accuse them of a new tactic- snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  It is supposed to go the other way in order to reward persistence.  So, it was for me today.  

I went out for birds this morning.  The first place was a zero. Best to forget it.  Then I went to Cornell's Arnot Teaching and Research Forest.  I spent about 1-1/2 hours along the creek that parallels the entrance road. It was frustrating. There were several Red-eyed Vireos but all too distant. One inquisitive Dark-eyed Junco lifted my spirits with its song and feeding behavior along the creek bank.

I usually see these Juncos mostly in the winter, so I am newly appreciating their summer song. Still, I was frustrated.  Packed up and drove up the road hoping to find birds I could photograph from the car.  Reached the top and not even a Goldfinch. It was turning out to be pretty much a failed outing. Then, I came upon the the foundations of some long gone farm buildings with a large bed of naturalized Day Lilies and Pink Phlox.  A second look spied Tiger Swallowtails.  So, today was now about butterflies, not birds.  Maybe I could get something out of this.

I noted that the swallowtails were all getting pretty tattered.  Still, the combination of hot  colored Pink Phlox plus the feeding swallowtails was a lift to my spirits. I ignored the fact I have these in my house garden.

What more could I expect?  As I was concentrating on a pair of swallowtails some 12 feet away, I gave no attention to what was happening on the flowers very nearby.  After all, these blooms would be too close to focus on.  But, some movement did catch my attention, and I had something to surpass the butterflies.  Have you ever seen these?  Hope so.

It is a Hummingbird Moth, technically a clearwing moth.  They hover to feed  just like their namesake Hummingbird. We discovered them on our pink phlox some years ago, and eagerly await them each year.  They are about 1-1/4 inches long typically.  You can see in the next photo the clearwing.

They are an extreme challenge to photograph. They never stay on a bloom for very long and are erratic in their flight. You have to be fast and have a quick-focusing camera.   The image above has a shutter speed of 1/3200 second in order to stop the motion. No flash can help at this brief shutter opening.

Oh yes, I did see a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird on the phlox, but she was quick to see me and exit. Too bad.

So, somehow this failed outing did turn out to be successful. With that in mind, I passed on a ball game tonight to edit the photos and share them with you.  Hope you enjoyed them.

Paul Schmitt

Sometimes a simple camera will do..

I am excited at the prospect of a full class tomorrow for my first workshop on smart phone photography. Preparing for the class has really advanced my understanding and skill with this minimal camera.  I am at times amazed at what this iPhone4 will produce and only hope I can inspire others to explore their possibilities with the smart phone camera.

So, in finalizing the material this morning, I needed a few more photos and did not have time to go further than my backyard.  I chanced upon a very bold Tiger Swallowtail butterfly on the coneflowers. With some editing on the computer, I achieved two reasonable image of one of my favorite butterflies. I was only about 5 to 6 inches from the subject!

The nectar must have been powerfully sweet to overcome the butterfly's aversion to people.

I only hope that I can cover 16 people when we are in the herb garden at Cornell Plantations.

Regards,

Paul Schmitt

Canada Lilies- A Woodland Treat

I have an admiration for flowers that achieve unique beauty without selective human breeding.  So, along with the the truly wild orchids, one other will lead me to awake at 5:30 am. (The time is driven by capturing extremely sharp images when the air is dead still.)

The Canada Lily, Lilium canadense, is in a struggle to survive the overpopulation of Whitetail Deer.  Since the Mundy Wildflower Garden was partly fenced, the few plants inside have begun to show their full potential. Earlier this week I was amazed to find a single lily standing about seven feet tall with eleven blooms.  Plans were made based on a prediction of favorable conditions for Saturday, and I was joined by spouse Pam and good friend David Dunneau. 

This is an amazing plant.  Previously I had only seen single or double blooms that I now characterize as juvenile plants. 

The smaller plants are still  quite beautiful and definitely easier to compose into a photo.

A closer look at the flower shows an inviting target for the pollinator.

While most blooms were very regular in form, I found one plant with twin blooms that had a very seductive form.

I thought when I saw this bloom several days ago that it was in the process of opening and would be fully open this morning, but it retains the earlier form.

An unexpected bonus of the early morning outing was spotted by my friend David.  Two very tiny flies in the mating couplet. They are only about 6 millimeters long (1/4 inch).

Pretty neat to see them in detail.  Again, the calm air helped greatly.

Finished by 9 am, we retired to the Ithaca Bakery for bagels and coffee.  We had earned the treat.

Paul Schmitt

It's all about the birds and the bees.

Ask yourself what comes to mind when you hear  "the birds and the bees".  My Friday outing was all about the birds and the bees.  Really!  Read on.

There are now multiple websites that have a live stream of an active nest - Bald Eagles, Great Blue Herons and Redtail Hawks, to name a few. One of the very popular ones shows a pair of Redtails nesting on a very high light tower on the campus of Cornell University.
See:  Cornell Redtail Hawk Nest

I've heard many people admit to watching this on their computer for long periods of time. Some are doing so when they should be working. Such is the magnetic interest that the cycle of new life has on us.

To my good fortune,  I have been directed to a cliff side nest of Redtail Hawks in the Fall Creek Gorge near the Cornell campus, and the location is perfect for photography.  Even better, it is not a man made structure but "au natural" with no voyeuristic component.  Join me in a series of photos from about a two hour session and how it ended with the bees.

This is, I believe, the female shown high above the nest on a warm day, keeping watch on the nest below.

I think she sees me. Actually, I am on the sidewalk of a well-traveled street with regular pedestrian traffic and I am sure she sees me and lots more.

When I arrived, the chicks were active in the nest below.

The chick in the foreground is the older of the two. Note that it has more dark feathers emerging to replace the down.  The younger chick is attempting to do something with the tough-skinned chipmunk left earlier by a parent. They are not very graceful at this stage.  Awkward, really.

Eventually, the adult overhead flew to a roost on the opposite side of the gorge, still watchful.

After some time had passed,  the male returned with a fresh chipmunk.

For a few moments, both adults were on the nest.  I think the male left quickly to resume hunting and the female remained to feed the chicks.  Chipmunks are pretty tough skinned, and the one chick's attempt to take one apart was futile. The female put all of her strengths into the task.

She was pretty equitable in dividing the food among the two chicks.

What I expected next was the onset of a food coma for the chicks.  I could see them become calmer.

As the nest came out of the shadows and they became drowsy, I expected the adult to shield them with outstretched wings, as I had seen three days before. It had been two hours on the bridge. It was time to move to something new.  The time passed quickly.  I'd met numerous walkers.  Most had never seen such a thing close up, but some stopped every day on their way to and from work. 

So, I went to Sapsucker Woods for a break and to walk a woodland trail looking for small birds. Found a few such as Phoebes and Orioles, but was most taken by the wild azaleas blooming with hot pink flowers.  

So, you see that my day was really all about the birds and the bees.

I am sure that there are others who will enjoy reading about this. Please share it with someone.

Thanks,

Paul Schmitt

iPhone photos- Can they be creative?

When a leaky zip lock bag proved to be the undoing of my cell phone in August 2011, I made the leap from a very basic cell phone to an iPhone.  I was wading in a river with my camera on an inner tube float and my cell safely protected by a zip lock bag, or so I thought. It got very wet.  So, I went from saying "it is just a phone" to saying it was my link for checking weather radar and getting birder updates on where to find the best birding. I had not included the camera in the iPhone as part of my decision.  That would change.

The change in my opinion began one afternoon when I was wandering through the herb garden at Cornell Plantations. The light was good, and I had been lazy.  My DSLR was not with me.  I decided to "play" with the iPhone camera just as when I experimented with a Holga toy camera. It had a single element, uncoated plastic lens. There were  two aperture settings, one shutter speed and no meter.  Basic.  Very basic.

Now, the iPhone is a bit like the Holga  too.  There is one aperture, f/2.8.  Since the lens is very wide angle, there is a large depth of field.  Correct exposure is dependent on the automatic metering to set shutter speed.  This makes for a good test of the photographer's basic skill set and understanding of wide angle photography.

My first images surprised me.  Was this capable of more than snapshots?  I immediately saw the first challenge, namely holding the iPhone so my fingers did not get into the image.  In addition, I was so close to the subject that it was easy to shade the subjects.   Those are good basic skills to keep in mind.

A next question to me was about the wider landscape image.  Could I use the wide angle to show a perspective of flower beds and their surroundings? 

I found the size of the iPhone made it easy to hold it in unusual positions and see the result on the image screen.

This image would have been better if I had a short stool to stand on, but I loved the color, and the instant review of the photo. The colors were looking pretty good too. This  image was at 1/125 second and ISO 100, naturally at f/2.8.  The previous image was at 1/120 second, ISO 80. I was surprised that the sensor ISO speed went down to 80.


So, I went looking for some more images.  If you are photographer, you know how a few good images inspires a burst of creativity with no apparent sense of time passing.

 The images kept coming as I awakened to the possibility of a creative camera that is so small and as ever present as a cell phone.

Parallel to this discovery was the delight I felt when I could pull the image I just made into a photo editing application, and make some simple adjustments.  If you can remember shooting a roll of slide film, mailing it to a processor and waiting for the return mail some week later, then this is revolutionary beyond the initial digital revolution when you could download a memory card to your computer the same day and edit.  Now you can do edit and email it to someone within minutes, and it can be a  pretty good image.


Here is a good example of how the iPhone can capture an unexpected creative image. We were visiting our daughter in Washington, DC this autumn and with some unexpected time, headed across the Mall to see the new monument to Martin Luther King Jr.

 In the interest of  honesty, this is a digital composite. The sky was a dull and uniform grey, so the sky  is added.  My point is that I was able to capture the critical image data and create an artistic and reasonable image to express the feelings I had at this sculpture.



Just this past week, I was feeling cabin fever after a day of pouring rain, and went in search of images with both my iPhone and Canon G9 point and shoot.  I wanted to compare the two cameras critically.

I think this is a pretty good image.  It was made with the camera very low to the pavement in order to correctly position the reflections. Which camera would you expect to have created this landscape image?







So, after deciding on the   source of the landscape image, decide which camera likely made the portrait image at that follows. It is in the same light.

Well, the first image is from the iPhone.  The tipping of the Corning clock tower and the bank building suggest a wide angle shot with the lens tipped upward. This causes keystoning.  The second image uses a longer focal length to limit the portion of the scene in the image.  There is less keystoning. The colors are pretty good in both with a slight edge on my screen to the G9, a very slight edge.

I asked the question whether the iPhone is capable of creative photograph, and I think the answer is a qualified yes.  It works where wide angle distortions are not a problem.    (Note that the  one common complaint is that people's faces are distorted to look bloated and warped. That is to be expected from a wide angle lens.) I do think it is important to get close to a foreground element that can fill the image.  Objects in the distance become very small and are lost to the viewer.

The simple truth is that the camera you have with you is better than the one you left at home.  Another lesson is that a simple camera can yield creative results if you have learned how to use it to its potential.  The iPhone camera is fully capable of creative images within its limits, and it is fun.

I have begun a gallery of iPhonography in my website and hope you will visit it at:

Natural World Photography by Paul Schmitt



Here is my final image from when I was leaving clock tower area.  Can you tell what it is?


Paul Schmitt