The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit — when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings — I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore….
But Winter has yet brighter scenes, — he boasts Splendours beyond what gorgeous Summer knows; Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice; While the slant sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light….
Approach! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, And the broad arching portals of the grove Welcome thy entering.
Hello!
This is the second of two posts featuring hydrangeas and their winter shapes. Unlike the previous post (see Winter Shapes: Hydrangea Skeletons (1 of 2)), I took these on a dark and cloudy day, so there was no backlighting to make their little parts appear to glow. Yet these can be delightful to look at anyway (in my own humble opinion) because the softer light shows off some of the fine, lacy (and sometimes silver) textures in individual stems and flower petals.
I snipped the quotation above from the poem “A Winter Piece” by William Cullen Bryant. The poem is much longer than those excerpts, and is a vibrant ode to wandering the woods in the winter, with vivid descriptions of the sights and sounds one might encounter on an extended woodland walk. If you’d like to read the whole poem — or just skim it for some of the charming details — here’s a link to the full version:
“If you pay attention to the world around you, you can’t help but fall in love with nature. The rhythms, the beauty on a vast and a minute scale, the triumphs of life: It’s all laid out around us, and if we choose to be in touch with all this richness on a deeper basis, we’ll be better photographers. Learning to see is, after all, about learning more about yourself as you connect with the natural world around you.”
“Natural light exists in two forms: as strong, direct sunlight, known as specular light, and, if softened by clouds, diffused light. Both types of light are sourced from the sun. With nothing standing between your subject and the sun, the light is direct and produces sharply defined edges. Emotionally, this direct light expresses vitality, hope, and joy. People go out to sit in the sunshine because being bathed by the light of the sun can bring a feeling of happiness. Our existence depends on the sun, and emotionally we know that, so sunlight inherently expresses life. Sunlight is bold and aggressive. It can be wonderful for dramatic landscapes, and for times when you want to create strong contrast in a photograph. Yet sunlight is not appropriate for every subject. You wouldn’t express the peacefulness of a forest in the high contrast of full-on sunlight, but you could use that light on a landscape of sand dunes, or to capture the intense glow of backlit flowers or leaves….
“Working with light, it’s important to recognize some differences between how we see light and how the camera sees it. Our eyes can read a greater range of contrast than the sensor in our camera can. As we scan a scene, our pupils are constantly opening and closing to adjust for the amount of light so that we can see detail in everything. We are looking here, then there, and the eye is constantly adjusting to the light and shadow present. The camera can’t do that. It simply grabs a moment in time, the one you’ve chosen, and tries to capture as much range of light as it can, but that can be a big compromise. Because of this, a scene might look good to our eyes, yet the results may be a disappointment. The more you realize this difference, the better you’ll become at analyzing the contrast of light in any situation and deciding how you’ll manage it.”
“In the garden, hydrangeas are handsome and versatile shrubs. They excel in a woodland setting, particularly if you choose cultivars with lighter-coloured flowers, and they can make a spectacular specimen in a mixed border….
“Hydrangeas work well with complementary herbaceous plants… and also with evergreen shrubs that have an opposing season of interest, such as azaleas or sweet box…. And, while in full floral spate the hydrangea will steal the show, in the depths of winter, the denuded shrub, with its charming, skeletal flowers, adds useful structure and interest to the garden.”
Hello!
Continuing with a “Winter Shapes” theme (see Winter Shapes: Japanese Maple Leaves (1 of 2) and Winter Shapes: Japanese Maple Leaves (2 of 2)), I assembled some closeup photographs of hydrangea “skeletons” from two recent photoshoots. As with the Japanese Maple photographs, this first of two posts features those from a sunny day with sparkly backlighting, the kind of lighting I often seek out when photographing flowers and plants.
It can be especially effective to work with backlighting that’s filtered through nearby shrubs or trees, so that background brightness doesn’t swallow the subject entirely while it creates interest through blends of blurred light and shadow. I usually take multiple shots of scenes like this from different positions and camera settings, since — as Tharp describes in “The Nature of Sunlight” above — the camera tries to gather as much light as it can, which may be too much for subjects as small as these hydrangea remnants. It’s also true that since I’m facing the light source when taking photos like this, the camera’s viewfinder is awash with light and it may be difficult to see the viewfinder’s rendering — so I have to rely more heavily on what the camera is telling me about the exposure than I do with more direct lighting. It took me a while to get used to that — largely ignoring the viewfinder image but paying attention to the aperture, shutter speed, and histogram instead — but once it became a habit, it gave me more creative control over what I was trying to accomplish.
“[Trees] do not dwell only in the present. They remember the past, and they anticipate the future.
“How trees remember, I do not know: I have not been able to find out. But they do. At least, what they do now may depend very much on what happened to them in the past. Thus if you shake a tree, it will subsequently grow thicker and sturdier. They ‘remember’ that they were shaken in the past. Wind is the natural shaker, and plants grown outdoors grow thicker than those in greenhouses, even in the same amount of light….
“Most trees, like most plants of all kinds, are also aware of the passing seasons: what time of year it is and — crucially — what is soon to follow. Deciduous trees lose their leaves as winter approaches (or, in the seasonal tropics, as the dry season approaches) and enter a state of dormancy. This is not a simple shutting down. Dormancy takes weeks of preparation. Before trees shed their leaves they withdraw much of the nutrient that’s within them, including the protein of the chlorophyll, leaving some of the other pigments behind to provide at least some of the glorious autumn colors; and they stop up the vessel ends that service the leaves with cork, to conserve water.
“How do the temperate trees of the north know that winter is approaching? How can they tell, when it is still high summer? There are many clues to season, including temperature and rainfall. But shifts in temperature and rain are capricious; they are not the kind of reliable signal to run your life by….
“The one invariable, at any particular latitude on any particular date, is the length of the day. So at least in high latitudes, where day length varies enormously from season to season, plants in general take this as their principal guide to action — while allowing themselves to be fine-tuned by other cues, including temperature. So temperate trees invariably produce their leaves and/or flowers in the spring, marching to the rigid drum of solar astronomy; but they adjust their exact date of blossoming to the local weather. This phenomenon — judging time of year by length of day — is called ‘photoperiodism.'”
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photographs focused on the shapes of desiccated Japanese Maple leaves, that I took in early January. The first post is Winter Shapes: Japanese Maple Leaves (1 of 2).
