01.01.20 – A Photo of a hummingbird perched on top a aloe branch taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 300mm lens.
A Hummingbird on the Top Perch
Posts Categorized: nature + environment
Make Way! Incoming Goldfinch Flight!
Sat. 12.21.19 – Photo of two American Goldfinches at a water faucet taken at Irvine Regional Park by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 70-200mm f/4 lens.
The Ginkgo Biloba Tree
Thurs. 11.21.19 – Here have another auntumnal photo of a bright yellow gingko tree from my Monday Kew Gardens photo walk. The last of the bright fall trees are a delightful remedy for the dark, rainy skies.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D850 with a Nikon 70-200mm lens.
Afternoon Walk through the Park
Tues. 11.19.19 – The overarching weeping tree near the Albert Memorial has made a delightful yellow autumn path to walk through.
Photo by Ms. Jen with her phone.
Rose Decomposition
Sat. 11.16.19 – Here we are in mid-November, the weather is damp and chilly but, yet, there are still a few rose bushes with blooms in various stages of end of season decomposition at the Rose Garden in Hyde Park. This particular pink rose bush had small flowers that were twice the size of a minature rose, but half the size of a regular rose. The rose hips were tiny and the whole was altogether lovely.
Photo by Ms. Jen with her camera phone while out on her afternoon walk.
More Macro Photo Experiments
Sun. 05.26.19 – Today I went out and about with my cheap Amazon $12 extension tubes for Macro photography. I went out and explored yesterday to see if there are any flowers in Hyde Park that would work to take macro photos of. The answer was yes as late May spring has fully sprung in the London parks.
Thus, I took my extension tubes with a manual 24mm old Nikon lens along with my Nikon D850 DSLR out and took many photos up close. Very up close.
Here are a few of my favorites. Per usual, double click to see the enlargements.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 at Hyde Park in London, UK.
Light Pollution : Asterism
Wed. May 1, 2019 – Happy May Day – be it of the traditional It’s Spring! style of May Day or the 20th Century Workers Unite! style of May Day.
Even with education, activism, and communities making an attempt to keep the skies in the American West dark, the switch over to more energy efficient lighting on and around homes and in street lights have made communities brighter than ever at night.
Two of the ‘rural’ dark sky spots that even a few years ago I could be astounded at how many stars I could see from a house or yard now are nearly washed out with too much light. Two days ago, I asked one of my brother’s neighbors to please turn off their front patio lights when they go to bed, kindly last night they did so but to little avail.
Rather than doing the currently fashionable photography trick of processing an astrophoto within an inch of its life to have an incongruous scene of lit foreground object with AMAZING Milky Way Photo, I have instead processed these photos as my eye saw them.
How did my eye see these two adjacent scenes last night? Bright street lights casting light domes to light up houses and to wash out the night sky to the point where one only really sees the bright stars in a constellation. While the asterisms were clear, but the detail was scrubbed out.
Please folks, go read the resources of what average folk and cities can do at the IDSA and let’s work at making sure that all of us can see the stars on a clear night.
Let’s wipe out light pollution.
*****
Double click on the photo thumbnails for the larger photos. Both photos were taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.
Just Before Dawn on All Saints Day, or Getting Up Too Early to Photograph the Sunrise at Mackerel Cove
Thurs. 11.01.18 – To a person who is not yet on East Coast Daylight time, but instead still three hours behind in Pacific Daylight time, waking up at 6:40am in Rhode Island to be out at Mackerel Cove beach to photograph the sunrise and dogs running free at low tide was a bit of a difficult thing to do – though it was well worth it.
The air was cold, 30-something degrees fahrenheit – hat, gloves, and a jacket were needed. The sun rose slowly, with the first pink light reflections on the wet low tide line at 6:50am. For the next twenty or so minutes, Sparky the black lab ran happily after her ball while Kenji the island dog poked along the high tide kelp piles for edibles, as the clouds lying low in packed cotton ball formation in the eastern sky turned from gray to pink to neon pink-orange-yellow to the sun rising over the trees and houses on the east side of the cove. From 6:50am to 7:18am, it was magical.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.