A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Mighty Wings
July 5, 2022
The Maine eagle gathering in the first pictures below is a seasonal occurrence. The birds of prey gather to feast on alewives in a small tidal estuary where the fish are corralled into narrow and extremally shallow water on their way upstream to breed and possibly die. This was the most eagles I have seen at one time, closely rivaled, however, by some sightings in Whitehorse, BC, circa 2007.
Another post will come to sum up this trip to Maine last May.
In New York Ci...
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Of Time and Elasticity
June 29, 2022
Whether it is through extremely long exposures or the blink of a fast shutter, I always know that coming home and firing up the virtual lightbox to develop my shots, I will be treated to portraits of a parallel universe; a world I might have inhabited at the time of shooting but which flowed in many alternative directions and to the beat of countless additional tempos I just did not have the bandwidth for.
Take the following snapshots for instance. Moments frozen in tim...
New York City in Spring
June 7, 2022
This is a benign post about those tiny details which, should one choose to accept them, can chisel an alternative reality into our lives as megapolis dwellers. Over nine million souls live within a eighteen-mile radius of our home. Needless to say, we are piled up on top of one another like sardines in the proverbial can.
We can choose—and often do—the reality of traffic jams, news-promoted crime, corrupt politics, soaring inflation, omnipresent garbage and lamb chop sh...
Snowy Owls of Long Island
Possibly because of online birding sites and sighting maps, the last few times I found snowy owls, many others had as well and the scene was a comically static porcupine of long lenses trained on a stubbornly pensive bird squatting somewhere on a patch of sand.
Not this time around. I was still basing my search area on previously reported sightings, but I also knew the spot from previous years and had decided to chance it despite a grey day and dull light. It appears ev...
Hummingbirds of Fall 2021, a Summary in Pictures
Another autumn is behind us and soon, the snowy owls will be arriving. For now, enjoy a glimpse of these ruby-throated hummingbirds on their breathtaking journey across the continent, feeding non-stop as their wings flutter fifty times a second, their heart pumping at a dizzying seventy-two thousand beats per hour.
Echoes
June 16, 2021
While the world still struggles with a stubbornly cruel pandemic, there is at last local progress and as NYC claims a seventy percent vaccination rate, our lives are veering back towards what was once normalcy, if there ever was such a thing.
This weekend we did the unthinkable; we stood in line without a mask—even though distancing—and hopped onto a maritime instrument of public transportation, a.k.a. a ferry, along with a plethora of our fellow and so colorfully diver...
Maine Creatures Great & Small
June 12, 2021
Borders remaining stiff, we badly needed an escape and took a few days to revisit our favorite Maine spot. Fall had turned early summer, or rather late spring. But the forests were as lush, the sea everchanging and wildlife was delightfully abundant.
Here is a brief kaleidoscope of the creatures and plants that made us smile or sigh sometimes, including a family of foxes right by the shoreline.
Short-tailed weasel
Foxes!
Bald eagle
&n...
Revisiting the Flying Years
February 20, 2021
I have updated this old post about my flying years with vintage pictures, only worth reading if you really like aviation or very old, damaged color prints.
X-ray Oscar Yankee (also known as XOY) and yours truly
Of Blogging and Entropy
February 18, 2021
Well my first post of the year, long overdue, is not loaded with new photos.
Instead, I am going to ramble about these premises, how attached I am to my blog space, and yet how pointless it remains.
I started this blog in 2004 while living in Little Cayman. Back then I sported a deep black Compaq Presario laptop and connected to Cable & Wireless internet through an internal modem and a phone line, at pitiful speeds. The first images I posted, mostly underwater sh...
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Maine
November 18, 2020
After two hundred debilitating days of quasi-total isolation, of hunkering down and stocking up, of washing hands, clothes and goods at a frenzy, of avoiding our kind like the new plague, and of barely buoying our sanity up through carefully distanced local park visits, Marie and I might have succumbed to cabin fever had she not, long in advance and out of sheer wisdom, booked a Maine cottage for a week.
September had found us pale and weak, not so much in physical term...
Holding One's Breath
November 4, 2020
On a vu souvent
Rejaillir le feu
De l'ancien pays
Qu'on croyait trop vieux
Il est, paraît-il
Des terres brûlées
Donnant plus de liberté
Qu'un meilleur novembre
Et quand vient le soir
Pour qu'un ciel flamboie
Le rouge et le bleu
Ne s'épousent-ils pas?
Ne nous quitte pas
Ne nous quitte pas
Oh Démocratie
Ne nous quitte pas
Bald eagle, Staten Island, USA, September 2020
Did Someone Say Noise?
August 22, 2020
Out at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife refuge yesterday afternoon, Marie and I were treated with the usual plethora of animal activity, a myriad of birds including multiple ospreys, a raccoon scurrying up the beach, a muskrat grazing on lush grass, and then, to our utter surprise as it is quite early in the season, we saw this charming little thing:
Female ruby-throated hummingbird (I think)
Now this was shot with my trusted, beloved, outstanding Canon 5D Mark IV and the 100-...