Posted in Autumn, Birds, Language, Nature, Photography, tagged Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Canon SX50, fog, Great Blue Heron, morning fog, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Tamron 150-600mm, Woodbridge VA on November 5, 2018| 9 Comments »
When I entered Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge early one morning last week, a layer of ground fog was hanging over the fields, giving the landscape an eerie feel that somehow seemed appropriate for the Halloween season.
As I made my way to the water’s edge, the skies brightened a bit and the fog seemed to lift a little. I was filled with a peaceful and serene feeling as I enjoyed the early morning moments with a Great Blue Heron in the distance.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, Winter, tagged Bald Eagle, Bald Eagle couple, Canon 50D, fog, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, mist, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Tamron 150-600mm, Woodbridge VA on March 2, 2018| 8 Comments »
Do you take photos only when the weather conditions are optimal? If I followed that rule, I’d be staying at home most of the time. This winter in particular, it seems like I am at work on all of the days with good weather. So often I will choose to go out with my camera when I am free and not when the weather is good.
One particular morning last week it was really foggy and visibility was extremely limited. The subjects that I could see were hazy and indistinct, utterly lacking in contrast. It’s hard to know how what camera setting to use in situations like those.
I was at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, my favorite spot this winter for wildlife photography, and as usual I managed to spot some Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). It is always a challenge to photograph the eagles, because they tend to perch a good distance away from the trails that I follow and they are often quite skittish.
In this case, the difficulties were magnified, because of the heavy fog/mist. I ended up processing the images that I captured in a number of different ways, attempting at times to enhance the contrast or eliminate some of the fog, with varying degrees of success.
Here are a few of my favorite shots of the eagles in the mist.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Landscape, Nature, Photography, tagged Canon 50D, fog, impressionist, mist, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Tamron 150-600mm, Woodbridge VA on February 25, 2018| 3 Comments »
We don’t often have daytime fog where I live—most of the time it burns off shortly after sunrise. Yesterday, however, it hung around all morning and visibility was very limited at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Except for a lot of gulls and a few geese, the birds seemed to have decided to stay sheltered until the fog dissipated.
It was a nice challenge for me to try to capture a sense of the moment in the indistinct shapes that were visible as I looked out into the water of the bay. Here are a couple of images that have a kind of abstract, impressionist feel that I really like.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Landscape, Nature, Patriotism, Winter, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, fog, golden light, Huntley Meadows Park, Macbeth, morning sunlight, Tamron 150-600mm, trees on February 22, 2018| 5 Comments »
The early morning sunlight was spectacular yesterday as it streamed through the trees at Huntley Meadows Park. I tried to capture this phenomenon as a kind of mini-landscape by using my telephoto lens and framing it just as you see in this image. It is a little unusual for me not to crop an image at all, but by composing it this way, I was able to include those elements that I found the most interesting, the light and shadows of the trees, and left out the things that I found less interesting such as the sky. I did include a little strip of grass in the foreground so that the image is not completely abstract.
When I first arrived at the park, the sun had barely risen and there was a lot of ground fog, which made the woods look really mysterious and a little spooky. One of my viewers on Facebook said the image looked like it could be the setting for the witches in Macbeth. The second image was a lot tougher to capture, because of the lack of light and my desire to capture a sense of the fog that was clinging to the ground. There is a slight blur to the image, which would normally be a shortcoming in a photo, but I think it works ok with an image like this one.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, fog, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on September 26, 2016| 7 Comments »
Fog hung over the wetlands at Huntley Meadows Park early Friday morning, making the walk on the boardwalk a little eerie. When a spooked Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) took off right in front of me I was scared almost witless, but had the presence of mind to get this shot.
Here’s a shot that I took shortly after the first one that gives you a sense of what the boardwalk looks like as it makes it way through the wetlands of my favorite marshland park.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Photography, Travel, Urban, tagged Canon A620, fog, Vienna, Vienna Austria on December 17, 2014| 12 Comments »
It was a really foggy start to the day in Vienna yesterday and the photos I took looked almost like they had been taken with black and white film.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Architecture, Landscape, Photography, Travel, Urban, tagged Armistice Day, Armistice Day 2011, canon 18-55mm lens, Canon Rebel XT, Eiffel Tower, fog, Paris on November 11, 2014| 5 Comments »
Three years ago on Armistice Day, the top portion of the Eiffel Tower was hidden in the fog, giving this familiar landmark a feeling of mystery. I really liked the look and got shots of it from both sides of the Seine River
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Landscape, Nature, Photography, Winter, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, fog, gray, Huntley Meadows Park, ice, landscape, monochromatic on January 11, 2014| 9 Comments »
Yesterday’s cloudy, rainy, foggy day made it a little tough to take photos, but I like the effect it had on the landscape, creating almost monochromatic scenes of different shades of gray. This is an unfamiliar style of shooting for me, so I played around a bit, trying to capture both a wide view of the marsh, and some close-views of isolated areas.
The snow here is gone now, but the ice is still hanging on.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 