Author: cpb

Seacoast

Portsmouth, N.H., and all along the seacoast

Barber shop, Portsmouth, NH
Coffee shop, Portsmouth, NH
Fire station, Portsmouth, NH
Cemetery, Portsmouth, NH
Downtown area, Portsmouth, NH
House, Portsmouth, NH
Railroad crossing marsh, northwest of Portsmouth, NH
Church, Portsmouth, NH
Office building, Portsmouth, NH
House, Portsmouth, NH
House, Portsmouth, NH
House, Portsmouth, NH
House and offices, Portsmouth, NH
Fishing boat, Rye, NH
Beach cottage, Rye, NH
Beach walkers, Hampton Beach, NH
Beach cottages, Hampton Beach, NH
Beach cottage, Hamton Beach, NH

 

 

Maine

Rocks at Portland Head Lighthouse, Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Fire hydrant, Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
The author, taking one of 85 photos that were later deleted. (Might make a good ‘Artist Statement’ photo, tho…)
Shady brook off Maine Route 26, Oxford County, Maine.
Tree in field off Maine Route 26, Oxford County, Maine.

 

Maine seacoast and west toward New Hampshire.

Saturn

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My adorable telescope, plus the camera adapter minus the camera, but including a bottle of A&W Cream Soda. So I am now a diabetic.

 

A few years ago, I spent about $100 to be able to mount my Canon DSLR to my telescope. I’ve since discovered that shooting anything other than the moon is pretty much impossible. Focusing on something that small (though bright) through a cheap telescope and 100 km of turbulent atmosphere is not something my camera likes to do. The object is never sharp enough to see in a photo. My telescope doesn’t track, either, so there goes photographing any deep sky stuff.

So, yeah, I’m pretty much stuck with the moon.1

Fortunately, the Canon comes with a video camera option. With Saturn lurking just over the southern horizon, I made this little clip:

 

1. Yeah, taking pictures of the moon is cool through a telescope, I guess. But the photos aren’t that great. They’re dark and grimy looking no matter what, and even if you’re live-view focusing, they’re never very sharp. You can do just as well with any decent zoom lens and some cropping. If you want to look at the moon, you’re better off just peeking through the eyepiece, where the view is much prettier for some reason—tack sharp and well lit.↩

Catching Up

It’s certainly been a while. Here are some photos ranging from mid April to just this week.

Breaking waves, 2″ exposure, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Fireworks display reflected in Libby’s Pond, Gorham, N.H.
Field and Presidential Range, Jefferson, N.H.
Fireworks display reflected in Libby’s Pond, Gorham, N.H.
Fireworks display reflected in Libby’s Pond, Gorham, N.H.
Fireworks display reflected in Libby’s Pond, Gorham, N.H.
Author and the Milky Way, Shelburne, N.H.
Confluence of Moose and Androscoggin rivers, Gorham, N.H.
Swimming hole, Ellis River, Pinkham Notch, N.H.
Park, Miles Pond, Vt.
Farmhouse, Miles Pond, Vt.
N.H. Route 113, Chocorua, N.H.
Houses, Portsmouth, N.H.
Tandem takeoff, San Francisco, Calif.
Trail, Smuggler’s Notch, Vt.
Intersection, Stowe, Vt.
Field and sunset along U.S. Route 2, Lunenburg, Vt.
Cars parked at Mt. Washington summit, N.H.
Mt. Washington Cog Railway train, near summit of Mt. Washington, N.H.

Special Guest ‘Star’

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Constellation Leo, late March, Gorham, NH, with Jupiter a few degrees south. 30 second exposure, ISO 3200.

Leo is “my” constellation. Even though astrology is a bunch hooey and applesauce,  I’m glad to have Leo as “my”sign. The crouching lion is one of the few constellations that actually looks like the thing it represents.

I like Jupiter being there, too. The high clouds smeared its light a bit, making it actually look like the giant planet’s disk is visible. It’ll be interesting to track Jupiter over the next few weeks to see how it moves against the background stars.

 

 

The Hunter Retires

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Orion, late March, Gorham, NH, 30 second exposure, ISO 3200.

Orion sets a little earlier every night and by April he’ll be gone until the fall. The seeing tonight wasn’t great, with a high, thin layer of clouds. The good news is, the slight smear gave objects a bit more size. Betelgeuse’s reddish hue is easily visible.

My favorite thing about Orion is that most of the bright stars in this photo will someday blow up. The one on the upper right, Bellatrix, won’t, but Betelgeuse, Saiph (lower left), and Rigel (lower right) will definitely go boom within a few million years. The three bright stars in Orion’s belt are all Class O stars, super hot and massive. They definitely aren’t long for this universe.

Dusky

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Total lunar eclipse of Sept. 27, 2015, seen from Gorham, NH

I invited some kids from my school out to see the eclipse with me, which put me in teacher mode and not so much in photographer mode. I didn’t get the shots I could have gotten had I been a bit more focused on getting them. That’s probably fine. The world needs more teachers and fewer photographers, anyway.

On my Facebook page, I made a borderline snarky post about the “Supermoon” hype, which I’m thoroughly sick of. There have been at least 10 of these super-close full moons since I first heard of them. The moon doesn’t appear any larger to the naked eye, at least unless someone points it out. Now we had the “Supermoon eclipse.”

But I have to admit, the moon did look bigger, especially when it was low on the horizon. It had the horizon effect—which is an illusion—plus the supermoon thing, which isn’t. Both conspired to create a memorable moonrise this weekend.

Aglow

Bee in flower, Pinkham Notch, NH
Bee in flower, Pinkham Notch, NH

Great Glen Trails has a lot of flowers planted around their visitors center. With winter coming, most of them are starting to look a little beat up. Most of them had some kind of insect crawling in our around them. But the bugs were glued to the blossoms. They weren’t flying at all. The ones that moved at all did so with a smooth, eerie slowness that didn’t necessary seem sad. It didn’t seem like anything.

It’s not looking good, but I’m rooting for the bugs just the same.

Albedo

Schoolyard basketball court, Gorham, NH
Schoolyard basketball court, Gorham, NH

Albedo is a term I learned from astronomy. It refers to the percentage of light reflected off a surface. A theoretical perfect mirror would have an albedo of 1, as it would reflect 100 percent of the light that hits it. (There’s no perfect mirror; you always get a dimmer image in the reflection.) Conversely, I  would have figured this blacktop would have an albedo close to zero.

Apparently not: It turns out the albedo for “worn asphalt” is 0.12, or 12 percent. That’s much higher than I would have expected. Once I learned that, I began noticing that headlights reflect off of roads quite brightly, even during the day.

I guess the light is winning.

Labor Day

Tree roots on angled bedrock, Randolph, NH
Fungi on cut log, Randolph, NH
Moss growing on stump, Randolph, NH
Fern, Randolph, NH
Gordon Falls, Randolph, NH
Cairn, Randolph, NH
Caterpillar, Randolph, NH
Tama Falls, Randolph, NH
Red and green leaves, Randolph, NH
Tree fungus, Randolph, NH
Water drops on fungus, Randolph, NH

Photos from a Labor Day hike along Snyder Brook in Randolph.

Distance

Milky Way (Sagittarius) and path of Boeing 777-300 airliner behind elementary school, Gorham, NH.
Milky Way (Sagittarius) and path of Boeing 777-300 airliner behind elementary school, Gorham, NH.

I tried this shot last fall, my first at this school. My focusing then was terrible (and didn’t get much better for this one), but the biggest problem was the pair of lights in the vestibule. I just couldn’t find the switches to turn them off. For the 30 second exposure necessary to get the stars in the background, the lights overwhelmed just about everything.

With the beautiful weather of the past few weeks, I wanted this shot again. I asked one of the custodians where the light switch was, and he informed me that there aren’t any. He said I could unscrew the little jars covering the bulbs, then unscrew the bulbs themselves as long as I put them back when I was done. I asked, “Can I do that?” He shrugged and said, “Sure, you’re the principal.”

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.

Anyway, the red streak is the exposed lights on a Qatar Airways flight from JFK (about 300 miles south west of us) to Doha. The plane had taken off in the past hour and was just settling in for a 10-hour voyage to the Middle East. So we have the school, 30 feet away; the plane, 30,000 feet away; and a little farther back, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, 1.4×1017 feet away.

Give or take.

August

Flowers, Gorham, NH
Red berries, Gorham, NH
Drooping flowers, Gorham, NH
Ant on leaf over berries, Gorham, NH
Grasshopper on granite boulder, Gorham, NH
Feather caught on dying shrub, Gorham, NH
Bristly plant, Gorham, NH
Honeybee on flower, Gorham, NH

Ten minutes into the first interview I had with my current boss, he was telling me about the weather in Gorham. He carefully walked me through all twelve months and what they would deliver to the area in which I was seeking employment.

“And then in late August,” he said, his eyes suddenly becoming far away, “the light starts to change…” Right about then, I swear I heard a ghostly tinkling of distant chimes. This did not sound good.

He was right, of course. The light has changed. The sun is lower in the sky and already you can tell something is amiss. Fall is coming. Every hundredth or so tree on north-facing hillsides has a faint yellow cast. Afternoons are still warm, but this morning had a bit of a snap to it.

The coming of our second autumn is difficult to describe. It’s like that stinging aura you feel the night before you get the flu. But it’s pleasant. Of course, the winter that comes after is long and can be unpleasant. Whatever. You get what I’m trying to say.

To hell with it: I’ll just defer to my boss. The light has changed.

Hummingbirds

Hummingbird at feeder, Gorham, NH.
Hummingbirds at feeder, Gorham, NH.
Hummingbird at feeder, Gorham, NH.
Hummingbird at feeder, Gorham, NH.
Hummingbird at feeder, Gorham, NH.
Hummingbird at feeder, Gorham, NH.

A few days into the last school year, our Life Skills teacher handed me her phone. Playing on the screen was a movie that I couldn’t believe was real. A cloud of hummingbirds was buzzing a bird feeder like electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. The teacher had shot the movie through her kitchen window.

Today, she invited my wife and I over for lunch, and suggested I bring along my camera. For the next hour, we ate salads and watched the little birds feast at the feeder. Between bites I switched lenses and mostly failed to catch the little scamps in action. I shot almost 600 frames, and wound up with these four.

The challenge is not just in their speed, though that is a problem. They really don’t stop moving for more than a half-second or so, and are in and out of the focal plane before you can get a bead on them.

The real problem, though, is shooting fast enough to stop their wings, while also allowing enough light into the camera to make a decent image. I would have loved to have shot these images at 1/4000, but it was cloudy and even rained for part of the time. It was just too dark. And shooting with any speed at all meant cranking the ISO to 3200 sometimes, which made even the decent images a little too grainy.

Still, they are fascinating creatures. One thing I’d heard about but never seen was their aggressive behavior to each other. I guess if I had to get through the world eating liquid sugar all day, I’d be a little cranky, too.