Let’s milk this subject some more

Al Denelsbeck

This is going to be another observation about our visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art last month, and yes, it’s coming from one of the Great Unwashed, so feel free to skip ahead if that bothers you.

We pretty much toured the entire museum, which included the multi-faceted European section; plenty of examples of the styles and techniques usually considered ‘classic’ and what most people think of when it comes to discussing art – you know, Rembrandt and Botticelli and so on. I admit we skipped past the Italian Medieval section, which mostly consisted of flat depictions of people with halos. Grouped together as they were, it was easy to see an overriding style, a popularity of approach within each of the periods, but there’s always the question of whether the majority of artists at those times tended to stay within those styles, or if only those that did were selected to represent the galleries (or even became popular because they stuck with a particular style.) Were there cubists during the Renaissance that people simply thought were talentless hacks?

But then, in the Dutch section we came across a prominently-displayed still life, Banquet Piece by Jan Jansz. den Uyl, which was immediately impressive. After a very large number of drab-colored depictions of people with disturbing proportions in unrealistic poses, this one had an almost photographic quality to it, inordinate attention to detail and accuracy. Listen, I’m cool with impressionism and moods and such, but I personally find the real talent is depicting something as it is. There’s a part of me that believes too many artists, struggling to get the skin tones right, simply give up and claim it’s representative of some damn thing or another. But hey, you can see it for yourself because it’s public domain under Wikimedia Commons:

Banquet Piece by Jan Jansz. den Uyl
Banquet Piece – Jan Jansz. den Uyl, from the North Carolina Museum of Art collection, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Clicking on this, by the way, will take you to the source page where you can see it in better detail than we even could in person. It took me a little while to find this, because I couldn’t remember the name (I was thinking Van Der Rijk,) but my webbernets expertise paid off.

I will draw attention to the light quality overall, especially the reflections and shadows, but also the texture of the linen – exacting attention to detail. Moreover, the perspective on all these elaborately-shaped vessels is bang-on, something that can be hard to get right even when copying from real life or a photo – it’s easy to take the curve a little too much in the wrong direction (yes, I speak from a bare minimum of experience, because I still draw and paint a little.) Note the highlights on the golden centerpiece, and the reflection of the linen in the lid of the overturned pitcher to the left. It’s easy to believe that he was working from a staged scene in front of him rather than imagination, to be this accurate, and it’s still impressive for that.

However…

There’s one little aspect that was missed, something that didn’t quite ring true. If you like these kind of challenges, I’ll let you check out the image to see if you spot the same thing that I did.

I’ll just add a few dead lines in here to carry the reveal down out of immediate sight.

No peeking ahead now.

Dum de dum de dum de dum…

Found it? Okay, well, first off, I’ll mention the owl that can be seen at the top of the golden thing, because Uyl (the artist’s name) is Dutch for owl, and so he usually included an owl someplace in his paintings. That’s not what I was talking about, but a bit of trivia that was listed on the plaque in the museum, which would have made it much easier to find had I remembered it.

What I’m referring to instead is the glass goblet right in the center. I suspect, actually, that this was not part of his original composition or the setting itself, but added later on, because the details seen through the glass have no distortion at all. From long experience shooting into aquariums and various glass containers, I know that even seeing at an angle through perfectly smooth and clear glass will distort what’s beyond it, and this will be enormously so when it comes to curved glass – that’s what defines a lens, after all. But the objects behind it in the painting haven’t the faintest indication of this, and having gone into the really big version available at the source, I can find no evidence that it was not painted over top of the finished painting, a later addition. In fact, there’s another bit of evidence for this, something that I didn’t notice until writing this post. Now that you know where to look, can you spot that?

[I really am curious to know how many people find it with these clues – maybe it’s obvious, maybe not, I don’t know. I just know I missed the second one, even though I spotted the first in the museum within a minute or so of examining the painting.]

There appears to be no reflection whatsoever of the glass goblet in that same pitcher that reflects the linen, though you can see the reflection of its own handle, as well as the centerpiece and possibly the candle holder. There might be a faint indication of it, the bright spots between the reflections of the gold/brass items, but that’s hardly as distinct as I would imagine it to be, seeing as how the goblet appears to be resting against the handle of the pitcher itself.

It’s easy for me to believe that the goblet was added in, perhaps to provide a little more detail to the center of the scene, perhaps because the artist wanted to play around with glass and reflections some more (and except for the lack of distortion, it’s really well done.) So far, nothing that I’ve come across has made any mention of it, but I admit I haven’t looked very hard into the painting’s history. I know some artists often tinkered with their work, never really finding their favorite pieces to be ‘done,’ and I’ve been that way with model kits at times (not trying to make a direct comparison, just observing that I know the feeling,) so maybe this was the case here? Can’t say, but I felt like pointing it out. I have to admit that I appreciate the realism that the still life trend brought to paintings, and that I don’t even want to know how many hours this took.

Storytime 1

Al Denelsbeck

So, this year the weekly post will be an image with a story behind it – maybe informative, maybe amusing, more likely trivial to be honest (I don’t lead an exciting life, or at least that’s what I tell people to throw them off the trail.) I guarantee that they will post at least before 8 PM so you can read them to your kids at bedtime, because I’m that helpful. Finding a therapist for them afterward will be up to you however.

To start off, we’ll feature one that’s been sitting in the blog folder for a bit, because I’m lazy right now.

likely grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella in apartment complex pondWhere I lived in Florida, the apartment complex had a decent-sized pond right outside my back door, handy when poking around casually for interesting pics (and testing out experimental equipment.) Within were innumerable minnows, some small panfish that were possibly perch, and some monster fish that I’m fairly certain were grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella,) an Asian species introduced into the US primarily as weed control. When the light was good, these could be seen cruising around slowly, or nibbling on the weeds within.

One day as I was standing on the little footbridge that crossed a neck of the pond, I watched one of these carp patrol slowly below, and when it was almost directly underneath me, I distinctly saw it blink. I’m fairly certain this photo was taken within seconds of that, but at the very least it illustrates what I was seeing at the time.

After a moment I blinked myself, not as a signal nor in a yawnlike involuntary response, but because fish do not have eyelids, so they can’t possibly blink. I was left wondering what I actually did see.

Just a little later on, I had even more to wonder about, because I realized that the eyes of the fish are those bulbs directly along the sides, and not the distinctive things more on top of the snout. Those resemble nostrils more than anything, which is unsurprising because they are nostrils, something that I did not think fish had until I started researching piscine anatomy for this post to determine what they did have. But of course it makes sense, because how else are they gonna smell when something’s burning? Now, why these have the ability to blink, or to be more specific, appear to retract momentarily, is something that I have not yet found, but I saw it clearly enough that there’s little doubt in my mind. I’m a little jealous mind you, since I can’t close my nostrils without one of those little swimmers’ things that horrify people when they find them in your bathroom cabinet, and I’ve had to deal with vulture vomit. It’s not fair.

But setting aside this gross injustice, here’s another view of the same species, this time with an escort which gives a small indication of scale. It’s a wonder, actually, that we still had raccoons visiting the pond…

possibly grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella and unidentified minnow

Podcast: Modren Art

Al Denelsbeck

Let’s start the new year off right with a rambling collection of uninformed opinions that no one asked for, shall we?

Walkabout podcast – Modren Art

Some of the things we heard about in the audio:

NC Museum of Art

Georgia O’Keeffe, of course.

My own ‘version’ of the approach. Not really intended (and even less so now,) but just happened that way.

Candida Höfer.

And Cynthia Daignault, who impressed me the most. Definitely check this link out. The exhibit that we saw is entitled, “Light Atlas” and is featured on her site. I’ve included a couple of my own photos of it below, though it’s better and a little more complete at that link.

section of 'Light Atlas' by Cynthia Daignault
detail of several panes from 'Light Atlas' by Cynthia DaignaultI was shooting with my [*blech*] my smutphone, without the benefit of a flash, so I ask that you excuse the quality of these images. No, wait, never mind – it’s intended to look this way; it’s incisive yet whimsical commentary on technology from a post-neo-farcical standpoint…

One particular effect that I noticed, which may or may not hit others as well, was that I thought I almost recognized several of her painting locations. The likelihood of her actually choosing anyplace that I knew as a subject for one of the panels is extremely low; instead, I suspect that what she chose were scenes that had a fair commonality with many regions of the country, representative of, for instance, certain building styles or ecology.

Again, the combination of minimal brush strokes and detail with the notable accuracy in colors and shading just captured my attention, pure efficiency (though I suspect that’s not a descriptor most artists seek.) Very cool.

There was one aspect that I neglected to mention in the podcast, one of the other photographs that we saw early on. It was a scene of an amusement park at dusk, lots of detail and complication which communicated the popularity and crowds. But right away, I could see the evidence of digital manipulation, with the streaks of a car’s taillights curving through the people, ostensibly a time exposure of several seconds. Yet only a few of the people themselves were blurred even slightly, while an ascending roller-coaster train and a freaking plane in the air remained sharp, evidence of a shutter speed no slower than 1/30 second. To me, that’s a significant alteration which no longer makes it a photograph, but instead a composite or digital creation – this doesn’t necessarily make it less artistic, but it does take it out of the realm of strictly camera work. This is becoming more common, especially with astronomical landscape images (the ones with a distinct and elaborate starfield appearing above a sharp and well-exposed field or tree or whatever, next to impossible to accomplish in one frame,) but I personally still opt for such things to be clearly labeled as manipulations, if only to distinguish them from the in-camera shots that really do take a bit of skill and planning.

But yeah, go ahead and say it: “Hey, Al, at least they’re taking some photos!” I deserve that…

December’s Abby… something

Al Denelsbeck

sunrise on North Topsail Beach
Don’t make me explain the movie reference in the title…

Given that I’ve shot maybe six creative frames throughout the entirety of December, this month’s abstract shot comes from back in May, a cropped version of one of the many (hundreds, I think) sunrise images that I obtained while at North Topsail Beach. I did a slight tweak in contrast to bring out the waves better, but otherwise the colors are as found, a nice alien landscape. It’s funny – as I look at it, I could easily believe that it was taken this month, because the overall humidity cut out a lot of the yellow registers, making blue dominate the frame and giving the appearance of coldness. It wasn’t, of course – I was standing in the water in shorts and sandals, though I suspect The Girlfriend, had she been out there that morning, might have worn a light sweater mostly due to the stiff ocean breeze.

Just a little later on (less than two minutes actually, as I check the EXIF info,) I endeavored to do a fartsy composition with a seagull, firing off numerous frames as it cruised near the sun. These all came out less than ideally, partially due to most of the frames catching the wings at a downward angle, but also due to the lower light. Even slightly underexposed, the shutter speed was slow enough for a bit of wing blur to come up each time – I think the best effect would have been with the silhouette tack-sharp, so maybe next trip.

seagull against sunrise, North Topsail Beach
Notice how this one is a bit more orange in comparison to the one above it; this is actually what was happening at the time, because I had the white balance set for full sunlight so it wasn’t altering anything in-camera. The exposure probably shifted a little, as the sun emerged further from some of the semi-obscuring clouds and got a lot brighter – you can see the clouds underneath now look a little darker.

And if you look closely, you can tell how far the sun moved between frames. In the top image, there is a ‘fork’ in the clouds at upper left on the sun, and that same fork is still visible in the second image at lower left. Bear in mind that the sun was not rising straight up, and never does at this latitude, but instead shifting diagonally up and to the right – you can see an animated sequence of this motion within this post.

My New Years’ resolution is going to be either a) take more photos, or b) stop whining about not taking enough photos. I’m not sure which is the more attainable goal…

Per the ancient lore, part 42

Al Denelsbeck

Bodie Island lighthouse at sunrise
And so, we reach the last Ancient Lore post of the year, and coincidentally we’ve finished our third pass through the folders, ending here with Sunrise/Sunset. “But wait, Al,” you say sharply, “you’ve been doing this weekly; shouldn’t this be number 52? Or somewhere in that general vicinity?” Which is pretty cool how you talk in URLs like that. Except that I started late in March, because I took my own sweet time trying to decide what to do as a weekly feature.

This is from March 2006, and I was now using the Canon Pro90 IS, my first digital camera – nothing exciting, but it had some cool uses. The aforementioned Jim Kramer and I had taken a trip to the Outer Banks strictly for photography, which is where I nearly lost my life to a treacherous quicksand trap. Or something. But that was yet to come – later this same day, in fact. At sunrise we were out by Bodie Island lighthouse, where the sky was resolutely uncooperative and almost totally without clouds, which doesn’t make for the most dramatic of sunrises. Nonetheless, we still got a hint of sunrise color, which can be seen by the faint yellow color cast on the lighthouse itself and the pinkish clouds. I have also used this image to demonstrate how light is tinted differently depending on conditions, because looking at the foreground boardwalk shows a blue cast that’s typical of open shade and hazy days; the reds and yellows scatter first and don’t bounce into the shadows, but the blues do.

In looking at the EXIF info, I find that I shot this on Auto White Balance, a poor move to retain the sunrise colors because the camera will often notice the color cast and try to correct it towards neutral. Yet this actually looks fairly accurate, or as near as I can recall about the conditions anyway. I suspect this is because there are enough shadowed portions in the lower region of the frame and they balanced out the sunlit portions with an opposing color cast.

same image tweaked with more orange/redIt’s also easy to do a little color tweak and make some more dramatic colors without looking unrealistic at all – except that I know there was too little humidity, and too few clouds, to produce this. [Yes, it’s really been altered slightly – look closely at the grasses if it helps.] And it’s easy to get into the whole debate about what’s appropriate when it comes to editing, and a lot of it may depend on usage; artistically, you could paint a picture in any damn color you wanted, so is there any big deal when producing an art photo print? While for photojournalistic purposes and some contests, the practice is frowned upon.

This boardwalk, by the way, no longer exists, having been replaced with a larger and better one. So one day this image will be immensely valuable for its historic record, I’m sure. Because, you know, no one else ever took any photos from this perspective…

Ten down, um, how many to go?

Al Denelsbeck

So as I said previously, today marks the tenth anniversary of the first blog post, which is a little curious to me. I wasn’t really sure where it might lead, and had no serious expectations – though I know where I would have liked it to have gone. At the time, blogging was exceptionally popular, and there were a lot of sites out there with some interesting and thought-provoking stuff; more than a few people had parlayed a web presence into things like speaking engagements, publishing books, and so on. So yes, I entertained the idea that this might lead someplace ‘big.’ Did I believe it? Not really – I’m somewhere between a realist and a pessimist – but it certainly wasn’t going to happen if I didn’t venture the time and effort. And as it says in the Welcome page, it’s just as much a writing exercise as anything else, which helps me organize my thoughts and feed my own interests. If someone gets something out of it, great! And if they were chased off, well, so be it.

Since that start, blogging waned a bit in overall popularity, and several of the people that I’d ‘known’ back then disappeared, leaving the practice behind for other things. But I happen to like it, and while the blog may not add anything in particular to the main part of the site (that dedicated to showcasing my photographic pursuits,) I doubt it detracts from it in any way either. The popularity and ‘bigger things’ never materialized (yet, anyway,) and may not ever, but I’m cool with that. It’s my soapbox, and I’ll give it up when I’m good and ready.

All that said, let’s take a look back at some of the posts that I particularly like – perhaps it’s because I felt the writing expressed what I was after pretty distinctly, or perhaps the photos were ones that I felt proudest of. Maybe you’ll agree, maybe you won’t – feel free to chime in if you like.

By the way, I was attempting to narrow it down to just one per year, and gave that idea up; there may be a small selection for any given year.

2008
There was just one post back then, Oh, is that what I’m doing?, so it must be the best. And the worst. The wisest, and the stupidest.

2009
I don’t get emotional too often (or at least, not what most people imagine when you say things like that, which is maudlin or something, though I can manage irritation and pissiness just about anytime,) but Flashback is a rare exception, relating something from a previous life. While What I did over summer vacation wraps up with a perspective that still strikes me dumb.

2010
Go us! is a bit of a rant, but I’d like to believe that it could make people think a little about the vast amount of effort expended over something completely superficial.

2011
One thing that I really like about critical thinking is its value in eviscerating sophistry, and unmasking false assertions is fun too, so Dealing with the real world is an obvious choice; it’s a shame that the originating article has been taken down now.
There’s also Nuclear whoas, one of those controversial topics of course, and Cultural blind spot, another hopefully thought-provoking perspective like 2010’s choice above. And as intimated earlier, the disappearance of the forum that I cross-posted it to eradicated quite a few interesting replies. Such is the webbernets.

2012
I started getting into my stride, as it were, so we’re getting a few more choices now. Personal god is another rant, but more than a little justified I think. To offset that, we’ll have a photo post with Good morning!
Too smart to be intelligent illustrates why I find most philosophy to be utterly worthless, while Seneca Falls, we have a problem examines a disturbing disconnect between critical thinking and a lot of popular feminism.

2013
Much ado about “fucking” is, like, my personal philosophy, and interpret that as you will. Both Too cool, part 18: Hubble turns 23 and Drama are choices for photography; the former isn’t mine yet is damn cool, while the latter introduces my trend towards uncomfortable closeups of arthropods. And a bit of humor with All the answers.

2014
Mass challenged and Life is not all spiders and mantids and It’s all good for something are all here for the photos. Then a break with But what if the third time is the charm? to trash Pascal’s Wager (again,) before we have a dramatic photography outing with I know better.

2015
The struggle for an appropriate title is a favorite when I probably should be ashamed of it, and that might be intriguing enough to get you to click. On the horizon is an examination of artificial intelligence, because. Then we have She has a great personality and Keep coming back to ’em for the extreme closeups. The myth of “live and let live” is always going to rank highly with me, while Cry, “Sexism!” and let loose… illustrates that pursuing an agenda (not mine) can produce some utter nonsense.

2016
It’s mostly photos this year, partially because I was now taking a lot more, but partially because my efforts were improving and thus I don’t feel as accomplished about the older stuff, you know? What this says about my philosophical posts we’re going to leave unexamined…
Anyway, we’ll start off with A tiny bit of diversity, doing some serious closeups on newborn mantids, and go to The snakes are taking a beating in the same month, actually much more diverse because it features a family of red-shouldered hawks. Then we’ll have Podcast: The mindset of a nature photographer, because I think it’s the most helpful to those interested in the topic. We’ll close with Too cool, part 32… and maybe 33, featuring a question that as yet remains unanswered.

2017
A pretty productive year, if I say so. We’ll open and close with some philosophical stuff, such as Of matters big and small because again, you know, soapbox. Too cool, part 35: A modicum of success is the post about Chinese mantises, since I finally did something useful with video. I’m only doing the first link of three regarding a super-productive beach trip; that’s The week of mellow, but wait! We had a total solar eclipse that year too, so Podcast: Yeah, me too has to be in there. And if there’s one perspective that I’d love to reach as many people as possible about, it has to be The measure of humankind.

2018
Once again, we start with huge blocks of text, because winter, so that would be “No kill” is a myth that needs to fucking die already. But hey, I had preceded with photos: The color of the day is “white” and its follower deserves a look too. It’s been a bit turtley lately is a sentiment I’m sure you’ve heard too much of by now, but I was the first. I must inflict The unwanted and uncalled-for sequel because I didn’t feature the first; all necessary further commentary is within.
And 2018 saw me starting slideshows, with the least-painful example being Podcast: Yet again

That should be enough to keep you busy during the lean months, but just in case, while doing the ‘research’ for this I ended up adding a few more to the Favorites page, so you can go there for more bloggy goodness. You know, if you’re feeling peckish. Meanwhile, I’m going to try and sneak at least one more out before the end of the year, and it might be a podcast. However, The Girlfriend’s birthday is coming up, and she considers this a disturbing milestone though that’s unwarranted, so don’t hesitate to tell her so.

So just in case I don’t catch you before then, have fun starting off yet another arbitrary demarcation like we’re prone to (I’m referring to New Years with that.) Cheers!

Behind the scenes

Al Denelsbeck

holly berries against blue sky
I know I say this far too often, but I’ve been quieter than intended recently, and there are more than a few reasons for this. The holiday season has a bit to do with it, but more it’s been my work schedule, falling right after the trip that I had to make to New York. More distinctly, though, has been no photography to speak of – between work and bad weather and no subjects at this time of year and no place that I can go to find any right at the moment, the cameras have been getting no use at all. I suppose a lot of people would find this perfectly reasonable, but to me it means something’s wrong. On top of that, a persistent sinus infection, and the general seasonal ho-hum-ness (it’s not anything near depression, just a noticeable lack of motivation,) all add up to not having jack shit to post about.

But enough whining! I’m actually in the middle of something larger coming, because in a few days we hit the tenth anniversary of the blog, which is slightly startling to me, and I’m going to have something up in recognition of this (notice that I didn’t say, “celebration.”) While I’m not yet sure what, exactly, this will be, I do know that I’ll have a list of my favorite posts for each year.

self-deprecationMaybe. You see, I’m not exactly a rating and comparison kind of guy, and things strike me differently on different days. Plus there’s the whole pedantic, “Wait, do you mean best as in writing style, or important content, or illustrative photos, or–… I mean, let’s pin down some criteria here.” I have enough trouble doing this at the end of the year for just one a month, and have cheated a few times, so narrowing it down further to one a year? Not sure how this is going to work out. And I already have a Favorites page linked right up there at the top, so is this superfluous? I’ll let you judge.

Right now I’m thinking that I should have simply gone with posting unused photos from the past year, because going through each month and picking the more likely candidates, then reading them to compare their qualities, is a bit more time-consuming than I like. Not to mention that I don’t have many uninterrupted periods to accomplish this within. Maybe I’ll just bake a cake.

Anyway, whatever it is will be coming in a few days, which gives you enough time to read everything that I’ve posted and see how many you agree with, right? I’m sure you’re not that busy yourself. But just to show that I’m not totally worthless and should consider becoming an accountant (again,) I leave you with another photo from yesterday, which like the one at top I took while waiting to meet with a student. They are, if nothing else, proof that the camera still works. I have to maintain reasonable goals for myself, you know?

mourning dove Zenaida macroura in bare tree against blue sky

Per the ancient lore, part 41

Al Denelsbeck

night time exposure showing star trails
Another week down, and nothing to show for it here – seriously, you’re not missing anything on my end. You want me to write about, like, what I had for dinner? I could feature some images from my friends’ trip to Costa Rica, except they’ve been so busy since they got back I’ve only seen the photos of them crashing a whitewater raft…

So today, in recognition of the winter solstice and thus the longest night of the year, we have Space. Back around this time of year in 2006, I had a borrowed Canon 10D, used to take these photos, and one night (or early one morning, if the EXIF clock was accurate,) I set it up on a tripod and locked the shutter open for a 906-second exposure, otherwise known as fifteen minutes – okay, fine, 15.1 minutes. Better? The trails that you see come of course from the rotation of the Earth, and almost hidden there in the branches over to the left is Polaris, the North Star, so named because it sits almost exactly straight up from the geographic north pole, dead along the axis of the planet’s rotation. Therefore, it’s in the same position all night long, every night, while all other stars in the sky shift position throughout the night and throughout the seasons.

And no, it’s not that bright blotch – it’s actually to the right of the blotch, the one single spot of light in the image (not counting the sensor artifacts, the ‘noise.’) In fact, I’m not exactly sure what that bright blotch is. Let’s have a closer look:

inset of same image
This is full resolution, and Polaris is the more-obvious center of the arcs. A lot of people think Polaris is the brightest star in the sky, but it’s not – that would be Sirius, which is dimmer than some of the neighboring planets anyway (chances are if you see an especially bright ‘star’ it’s Venus or Jupiter.) And no, Sirius is not that close to Polaris, and there are no particularly bright stars that close to Polaris, so what the hell is that blotch? I honestly don’t know. Since this was about 6 AM, I might have caught sunlight reflecting from a satellite, such as an Iridium flare.

Seeing things at this resolution, you can not only notice the noise, credited to the long exposure, but also that focus wasn’t bang on, which isn’t surprising to be honest. The sky did not look anywhere near this bright as I was framing the shot, and even spotting Polaris in the viewfinder can be tricky – autofocus is naturally not an option. So the best one can do in such situations is to pick a bright star and adjust focus manually until it looks the brightest and sharpest. By the way, you can’t simply crank the focus ring all the way out thinking this will automatically be ‘infinity,’ because most modern lenses have some additional play in their focus travel and you will only ‘pass’ infinity and be defocusing again. If the lens has a specific infinity pointer, that will get you a lot closer, but even a tiny bit off will result in, well, this. And framing foreground elements will have similar issues, because you might see them well enough with the naked eye, but the viewfinder is notably darker.

plot of Polaris within StellariumA couple of bits of trivia, while I’m here. Polaris is not exactly along the line of Earth’s rotation, and actually describes a tiny circle over 24 hours (which you will only capture around this time of year from well up north during the Arctic night – in populated areas you have to contend with daylight of course.) Polaris is used to align alt-azimuth telescopes, especially those with tracking motors that counteract the Earth’s rotation to allow for long exposures without these kind of star trails, but they have to be aligned with the true axis of rotation, the celestial north pole, which sits a little ways away from Polaris, as illustrated by this plot from Stellarium. Anything in the foreground, like the trees that I captured in the above photo, will be blurred into arcs themselves by the counter-motion of the telescope. And while we all know that Polaris was used to orient towards north for centuries, there is no real counterpart at the south pole of the Earth, no helpful star sitting right above the opposite end of the rotation axis. Well, that’s not exactly true; there are three which sit even closer, but they’re too dim to be spotted easily. Instead we have the Southern Cross, or Crux, four stars in a kite-shape that point in the right direction even while quite some distance from the celestial south pole. Alpha and Beta Centauri are two bright stars not far away, which can also be used to align south; Alpha Centauri is actually two stars in close proximity, part of a trio where the third is too dim to be seen without aid, and the three are our closest stellar neighbors, being a little over four light years away. While Beta Centauri, another triple system appearing similar in brightness to Alpha, is nearly a hundred times more distant.

A little before the above image was captured, if I remember right, I did an experiment on film that also made use of the apparent motion of the stars in the sky, that one being much more captivating. It’s a cool thing to try, but in a couple of weeks; we’re hitting full moon right now, and the light from that will seriously affect star trail photos.

Per the ancient lore, part 40

Al Denelsbeck

compound eye of horseshoe crab limulus
It is Friday, which means it’s time once again for the Ancient Lore post – time flies, doesn’t it? This week it’s a selection from the Science/Miscellaneous folder, and so what you’re seeing here is the eye of a horseshoe crab.

Okay, that’s a bit misleading. First off, it’s not the eye of a horseshoe crab, but just the cornea, kinda, because this is from the molted exoskeleton, an empty shell from a juvenile found entangled in dead seaweed. Second, it’s one of the compound eyes, but horseshoe crabs have ten eyes, or really, a hell of a lot more, but we’ll just count the compound eyes as two because I’m too tired to count all of those little ommatidia right there and you don’t care anyway.

Now, if you know anything about horseshoe crabs, you know that they’re armored and spiky little bottom-dwellers that mostly scavenge, and their mouth is directly underneath their shell; so, not exactly pursuit hunters, and not exactly easy prey. Which raises the question of why they need so many eyes, when it would seem that they don’t actually need any. This might be like asking why anyone needs multiple homes or sports cars or Hummel figurines – they don’t need them so much as they have some neurosis about collecting them. The better answer, perhaps (probably not,) is that they’re actually arachnids (the horseshoe crabs I mean) and we all know how they are with eyes – why have two when you can have eight, you know? But curiously, while most spiders have both simple and complex eyes (you know, the kind with focusing lenses,) none that I know of have compound eyes like those of flying insects, so horseshoe crabs are definitely being optical hogs here. Most of their other eyes are simple, and dot the top of the shell, a few on the underside, and a selection along the tail. Because why have a blind tail? I mean, really…

And when the habits of horseshoe crabs have been studied, it appears that the primary uses of these eyes are for sex. I am forced by my own nature to surmise that horseshoe crabs must have a habit of saying, “Hey, my eyes are up here – and down here, and over here, and under here…” And now you’re wondering where a horseshoe crabs boobs are, aren’t you? You perv. Anyway, according to this article, even though the main eyes are unfocused compound jobbies, they still do a remarkable job of discerning details and contrast, at least if the computer simulation reflects any degree of accuracy. These are the kinds of rabbit-holes I find when I’m just looking to fill in some simple details for a post.

Anyway, don’t try to sneak up on a horseshoe crab, and don’t expect to get away with any sleight-of-hand tricks. And to provide a little more context and scale, I present this other image from the same time, my brother finding the crab and apparently sticking his fingers in its eyes…

juvenile horseshoe crab limulus molted exoskeleton
By the way, I have to point out that this is my 1,500th blog post; I would have liked to have done something a little more special for the occasion, but time and lack of new photos and this heinous schedule have all conspired against me. I took note of the 500th post, coincidentally another about an aquatic subject, but missed celebrating the 1,000th post, which is remarkably anticlimactic. Maybe I should simply stop drawing attention to these events.

Your Inner Voice

Al Denelsbeck

I have no photos to illustrate this, because I never stopped to take any – I know, a sorry state of affairs for someone who calls himself a photographer. So you’ll just have to contend with my narrative. Or, you know, skip it and go to a site with pichers…

For family reasons, I had to do a rather abrupt trip to New York, and for poor planning and gambling reasons, I ended up doing it as a driving trip rather than a flying one, even more abruptly (like, a few hours notice.) On the trip up, I was on a relatively tight timetable, but on the return leg a few days later I had a little more time to play – not a lot, mind you, and it required delaying my arrival home if I spent any of it, which I was ultimately disinclined to do. Right now I’m faintly regretting this decision.

I had to travel through the edge of the Catskills mountain range, nothing too dire, but definitely a surfeit of hilly regions. On quite a few portions of the trip, large areas of rock had been blasted away (literally, with dynamite) to present a more level driving surface – not level by any measurement of a bubble in green fluid, but not as far away from it as the original terrain had been. This meant that, very often, I was driving past steep and staggered rock faces, the walls of the manmade valley for the road itself. The weather was cold, and many of these walls sported frozen waterfalls, the evidence of a lot of water seeping directly out of the faces between layers of rock. It might have been a lot more picturesque with a bit of sun, but this was still upstate New York during December, so the sky was resolutely overcast (one of the many traits that made me move away from the state.)

Further south into Pennsylvania, the sun managed to break free, and at one point I was looking at the terrain with some curiosity. This was a land, not exactly of rolling hills, but the kind of mountains you find in kids’ drawings: sharp peaks sporadically placed, very steep though not very high, perhaps a few hundred meters. And virtually no ‘ranges’ either, no ridges or lines, just points sticking out of the landscape. I looked sharply at one that I drove past, because the sides rose at something very close to a 45° angle, remarkably steep, yet still bearing a thick carpet of presently-denuded trees. I had to wonder exactly how something like that formed; I knew that mountain ranges tend to be collision zones of tectonic plates, but hills like this are more often large areas of erosion-resistant rock remaining behind while millennia of water carried away anything softer surrounding it. I also wasn’t far from glacial deposits, but in my experience and limited education, they also tended to be linear in nature. These sporadic and singular hills were a mystery to me.

And suddenly, I remembered Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, the account of finding the transitional species between fish and leg-having things. The initial finds of some promising body structures, in fossil form of course, had occurred in a roadcut in Pennsylvania, so chosen because the entire region was made of deposits from a delta within the Devonian era – just the kind of place a fish deciding to check out the land would like. Now, when we talk about what kind of era forms the foundation of some geology, we’re talking the bedrock, which is usually under meters of topsoil (and perhaps glacial deposits,) so just picking a spot and digging is ridiculously labor-intensive. Which is where the roadcuts come in, because these are areas where not only the overlying soil has been tripped away, but nice cuts down through layers of rock have been made, with new portions eroding away all the time under the onslaught of the elements (like icy waterfalls.) Plus they’re remarkably convenient right alongside public access roads. So searching in the rubble within these cuts allowed for easy access to countless exposed time periods. And it was in one such cut that a colleague of Shubin’s found the pre-scapula which fostered the expeditions that would eventually find Tiktaalik. I wasn’t sure where this find actually took place, but I knew it was someplace in western Pennsylvania, which I wasn’t too far from right as I remembered all of this, and the bedrock should stretch across a significant region anyway.

The immediate thought was to pick a likely cut and stop, and spend just ten minutes poking around to see what I could find. I wasn’t thinking that I would find Tiktaalik or anything related, but just finding something would be cool enough – I don’t have much access to fossil fields of any kind, and I’m fascinated by them. Ten minutes wouldn’t take too long from the trip. The other side of the coin, however, was that I still had eight solid hours of driving ahead of me at this point, at least half of that after night fell – and the tail-end of it would be into the aftermath of the winter storm that had hit my home region. But I was also considering that I would pick a handy spot along the way to simply stop and overnight there, breaking the trip up, getting some rest, and allowing conditions at home to improve.

And while all of this was going through my head, the car rolled on, and I scoped out any rock faces that I passed on my side of the road. I wasn’t after bare rock, but a rubble field, someplace where any fossils might already have broken free from the rock matrix and be sitting there waiting to be found, taken home, given a good meal and a place to curl up. Many of the spots weren’t up to snuff, composed of pieces larger than my head, not nice pocketable fossil size. And then I passed a spot liberally strewn with gravel, nice small fragments about the same size as any fossil might be, the ideal conditions, or at least as far as I could judge in passing.

And I didn’t stop. The bulk of the trip ahead of me weighed too heavily, and the implied inertia of the car just carried me beyond. Even though it was extremely unlikely that I would ever be in this area again, even though I had a relatively open timetable and no one else in the car to accommodate, I passed on the opportunity.

After returning home, I started doing a little research into where Shubin and his team had made their find. I already knew the book hadn’t been specific about the location, but elsewhere I had come across something more detailed, and I started trying to pull it up again. It didn’t take much research to find this article (written by one of the people over there on the sidebar,) which provided a little detail into the locations. The pre-scapula had been found along State Road 120, which at its closest point fell a little over 20 kilometers from my path, though it stretched away towards the west. And then I read at the beginning of the very next paragraph:

Route 15 provided another bonanza.

Route 15 was the road that I was actually on while dithering about whether I should stop and examine the talus or not. Well, shit. I’d taken it from the state line all the way down to Harrisburg, so it was very likely I’d driven right past the very spot where they’d found a pile of fossils. Now, again, these weren’t Tiktaalik or anything close, since they fell a little too late in development – you might say they were Tiktaalik’s great grandchildren. But still…

I’m not kicking myself too seriously here. I ended up doing a hard push and driving the whole way home that evening, running on too little food or sleep, but not having to worry about anything else the next day. And chances are, if I’d stopped to look for fossils I wouldn’t have found anything anyway, since fossil ‘veins’ tend to be very narrow and sporadic, so the time was probably spent best the way it was. Yet I’ll always wonder.

I said I had no pictures, but what the hell – here’s Google Street View for one of the many spots that might have held promise, just to give you an idea. You can even see grey stains from the seeping water that would create those frozen waterfalls that I’d passed.

Google Street View of talus along road cut, Route 15 Pennsylvania

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