A couple of follow-ups to previous posts, because I know you’ve been dangling anxiously…
Two days ago, I saw a vehicle that would haul that tankah I mentioned in passing that I should have backlit the empty eye sockets of the molted exoskeleton of a golden silk orbweaver, because of course I should. Late that evening, I found in sorting that one of the images where the flash was aimed much too high bounced light from the background through those very eye sockets, so I had inadvertently (no, really) achieved this goal anyway. Even better, the very muted light probably did a better job than I would’ve intentionally, because this is much more subtle and mysterious.
I think I might have to load this into a projector for Halloween…
Further back, I had been on a quest to capture decent images of the ruby-throated hummingbirds, and lamented that I could never get the light right on the males to showcase their namesake red breast/throat feathers. Which I did manage, in the next two days.
This isn’t bad, but hardly what I was after – I just took the opportunity to snag the shot while this possessive male was maintaining a vigil over both a feeder and one of the salvia plants, because they seem to have little better to do with their time than waste energy protecting their ample food supplies. I did a little better, a little later.
Not just caught in a hover, but at the right angle to bring out the iridescence of those feathers, about as much as possible in this light, and even get the individual feathers standing out a little. I’m still after better pics, but at least we get some of the red.
While pursuing the hummingbird pics, I caught something wheeling overhead and fired off a couple of quick frames – could definitely have been sharper, but it confirmed something regardless.
This is another Mississippi kite, but notably, this is juvenile coloration, which means we did actually have a nest not terribly far away. Chances are, it was in a neighbor’s yard someplace, so getting pics next spring would probably require their permission at least (the neighbors’ – nobody cares about what the birds think,) so we’ll see if such a thing comes to pass.
And speaking of juveniles, we’ve had a lone juvenile male wood duck making the occasional visit, and their plumage at this stage deserves a gander (sorry.)
Now, the wood ducks have all but left the pond, perhaps partially because of the water level having dropped, but more, we think, because this is what they do in late summer; the same thing happened last year without any drop in the water, and it seems the waterfowl just scamper off at this time and return in the winter because we distribute corn and that’s dependable food. This one male, however, makes the occasional visit and seems to hang out for a while, in this case in the tree on Duck Island. This was not just shot in the morning in weak light, but through a downstairs window since opening the door or window would have spooked it off.
This shows the nice mid-point between the muted brown coloration of the later adolescent ducklings and the brilliant plumage of the adult males – more on the head than anything, since the body feathers haven’t changed much yet. Wood ducks are virtually always in at least pairs, but usually groups, especially when they come here to feed, so why this individual has been alone so many times (we’re assuming it’s the same one, anyway,) we can’t say.
This is full-frame at 600mm, to give you a faint idea of the range involved; I roughly measured it at 36 meters, meaning the coloration isn’t distinguishable to the naked eye unless the light is perfect.
“Naked eye” – this phrase annoys me, but as yet I haven’t determined one that works better.
The pond levels, by the way, have bounced around quite a bit since that drastic drop, coming back up to high level after some fierce rains but then slowly subsiding back down again. With the latest rains, however, it has been holding steady back where it had been all last year, so we’re hoping things have stabilized again. Still no clue what caused this, still haven’t been able to kayak down to check out the area. Well, technically we could have several times, but only if we wanted to pass out from the heat, so I suppose that counts as “not.” Good to see it back, though.
I was very close to doing this as a podcast or video post, and eventually realized it was far easier to type it out and use illustrations than it was to try and juggle the recording and screen capture processes, so here we have it – I would apologize to those who hate facing a wall of text but unless you have an actual, physical handicap, go fuck yourself and deal with reading. If you do have a physical handicap, contact me and I’ll be glad to record it.
My recording purposes have been primarily for three reasons: podcasts, capturing interesting sounds from nature, and voiceovers to interesting videos from nature, with a couple of game demos in there. It’s rarely scripted even slightly now, the closest I’m coming is to demonstrate a particular technique, like the previous Tip Jar and several before that. I’ve done scripted stuff, and this tends to come off sounding a little pompous and unrealistic to me, so I’ve been avoiding it. But this also means that I flub a lot, change pitch and tempo, and other things I shouldn’t be doing, so some of this is to correct for these (rather than, as I should be doing, start learning how to speak for recording, which I do recommend even when I’m not jumping on that task myself.)
Equipment.
Use a good microphone. Listen, I feel ya, mics are expensive, often for no good reason – I can’t fathom how a microphone could cost more than I paid for my first car, or any camera that I’ve purchased. It’s a ripoff, pure and simple, but – the benefit from a clean mic is significant, so finding that balance point, or that sudden bargain, is useful. I am presently using a Sampson G-Track that I picked up used for just within my stingey budget, and the background hiss and noise is virtually nonexistent; it makes editing significantly easier.
Use a pop filter. Condenser mics are notorious for capturing those little sudden puffs of air when we make “P” and “B” sounds and similar, exactly what the word “pop” produces, and these can come through as louder thumps in the recording. A pop filter is simply a nylon screen in front of the mic that breaks up the force of this pop, and it works wonders. They’re easy enough to find cheap, and easy to make, but having it mounted directly to the mic is easiest.
Use a wind filter. Just like the ‘pop’ sounds we make, wind outdoors (or even under a fan) can make rumbles come up in audio, and the solution to this is a plush, furry cover to the mic, which does the same breaking down of the wind force, just more so. They’re easy enough to make it you (like I do) balk at paying a ridiculous price for a bit of synthetic fur, or (like I do) have mics for which no one ever made a wind filter in that size. Often called, “dead cats” in the biz, just so you know. They help a lot, and I always recommend using one for any outdoor recording – even those gentle, unnoticed breezes can ruin a recording.
Seriously, you can just order a faux fur scarf from Temu and open the stitching, re-sew it in the size you need – it’s just a tube of ideal fabric, and many times cheaper than trying to buy the raw fur/fabric. Works great! Try not to ever use on-camera mics. They’re notorious for being not very good in quality, and almost always prone to wind noise. If you have the external mic port, use it.
Room acoustics. There’s no real need for a ‘studio’ or acoustic baffles or tile, but carpet helps reduce room echo tremendously, as does clutter – just breaking up the path that sound can bounce back from the walls will make an audible difference. Sometimes a quarter-turn in the direction you’re facing can alter the sound quality notably. Also, just hanging a blanket from the ceiling as a backdrop can chop off room acoustics. Experiment.
Find the right position for your mic, and yourself. Do a session or three of just experimenting with where the mic sits, how you should be sitting or standing, chin up or down, direct or indirect, and so on. In my experience, leaning back is bad for multiple reasons, even when I’d rather be comfortable, and having the mic a little above my mouth and facing down produces the best sound – you may not see this much, because it blocks the speaker’s voice, but if you see studio and voiceover recording, it’s used more often there.
I have terrible sinuses and my voice quality (I use that term very loosely) changes significantly on different days. I usually try to pick a ‘good’ day, get some hot tea to clear sinuses and nasal drip, and ensure the air passages are as good as they can get. I have some recordings done during a post-nasal drip and seriously, you don’t want to hear them.
Habits.
Silence. Record 6-8 seconds of total silence at the beginning. You will use this in post below, and it’s extremely helpful. It also lets you pause and mentally prepare to start speaking. If the room acoustics or background noise change suddenly (like the HVAC unit kicking in,) pause again and get a new patch of ‘silence’ for the background noise level with this change.
However, if you are doing a screen-capture to demonstrate something on the computer, start the screen-capture process first. Then begin your recording through Audacity/et al, and what I recommend is be producing some steady sound (hum, whatever) as you click the Record button. What this does is give you both an audible and visual cue to sync the video and audio together, because you’ll have video of the recording starting through the capture software. Later on (after audio editing, to a degree anyway,) you’ll line up the audio and video tracks using this point at the beginning, which can be deleted once the two are linked.
Slow down. Even if you’re trying to fit within a specific time frame, such as having 8.2 seconds of video space to fit in with, trying to talk fast rarely helps, and usually just slurs words together – it often takes training or at least practice to speak both fast and clearly. If you don’t have those time constraints, just ease up and relax a bit, you’ll sound better. Also, long pauses are not anything to worry about, because these can be removed.
Immediately redo a flub. If you stumble or stutter, or mispronounce a word, or what-have-you, just pause, exhale once, and speak your line again. Go back as far as you need to if you need to redo a sentence or two, or even if you realize you’re talking too fast or saying, “um” too much – I have a bad habit (well, one of many) of running “um” directly into the next words so even editing those out doesn’t sound right.
If you’re doing a screen-capture demo and recording audio as well as video, be aware of what was happening onscreen as you pause to repeat a line, since both will have to be edited out together – try to avoid sudden screen jumps and such. If you’re doing voiceover while viewing an already-edited video, as I do fairly frequently, go ahead and back up the video to a ‘clean’ point before you even started that sentence and say it again in sync.
Be aware of volume. I’m notoriously bad about changing volume, either with sudden louder portions or simply getting caught up in what I’m doing and not paying attention to how loud or quiet I’m getting. While these can be corrected in post (covered below,) it’s a hell of a lot easier not to have to – it’s part of the proper speaking habits I’ve never developed, and why I recommend developing them.
All of these make the next part a lot easier, which is why I’ve led off with them.
Editing.
Everything here is using Audacity, which is a free, open source audio editor that does so much you should be donating to them (yes, I am.) Other editing programs are similar in may ways, but I can’t address particulars.
Most of the below has come from this page, so full credit to them, but I’ve added a couple of bits from my own experience. So here’s the overall process, which is easier than it initially sounds.
Save the original recording. You may need it again, even though Audacity automatically saves all edits when you save the project, and can be reversed to the start – you may not want to go back through thirty edits.
By the way, using a ‘lossless’ format like AIFF, FLAC, or WAV to save recordings avoids the problems with truncated dynamic range that MP3 and such produce. These may make very large files, but if you’re doing voiceover for video, this will get reduced in size when you render the video into the final format.
Start with Noise Reduction. Multi-step portion here, but once you’ve done it a couple of times it’s automatic in your head.
1 – Select the silence that you recorded at the beginning. Make sure you have no extraneous clicks or bumps in your selection – it should be the flattest waveform you can find.
2 – Go to Effect/Noise Removal and Repair/Noise Reduction…, and click on the Get Noise Profile button. This saved your silence as a baseline.
3 – Select the entire recording now. (See note below.)
4 – Go back into Effect/Noise Removal and Repair/Noise Reduction…, and this time, we can hit Apply. This may take several seconds, depending on the length of the recording. Initial settings may take some experimentation – I am using Noise Reduction (dB): 15, Sensitivity: 5.51, Frequency smoothing (bands): 5, and make sure Noise: Reduce is checked and not Residue. Audacity will save these settings so they’re the same every time you open it, thus you won’t need to keep notes on this, though you may need to change them with a different mic.
That’s it. Listen to the recording, and the background hiss should be so reduced that you should barely be able to tell when it even starts. What this is doing is subtracting the background frequencies you selected from the entire recording, and it works best with the cleanest recordings.
Initially, however, you may want to change these settings – this should only have to be done once per mic or room setup. Once you get the initial noise level, instead of selecting the entire recording for the second step, select just a small patch in the middle someplace, that has typical vocals and at least a brief patch of silence. Use the Preview button to test your settings here (it only runs for six seconds,) and once you’re happy, note these settings, back out without applying it and re-select the entire recording, then apply those settings. The more background noise or hiss there is, the worse the results may have warble or truncated effects, so you may want to reduce the sensitivity or the noise reduction level, and have a little hiss rather than sound like you’re talking partially underwater.
The biggest alteration to the above. If the room acoustics changed during recording, as noted above, select the Noise Profile for the first, and then select only the portion of the recording before the background noise changed, and Apply to that. Then, select the new ‘silent’ section from after the background noise changed, and apply that to only the portion that has that background. If you do not do this here, before anything else, you will have a hard time getting rid of it later – voice of experience here.
Moving on.
My mic only records on one stereo channel, leaving the other blank. If this is the case, right-click over in that space at the left of the track and select, Split Stereo Track. All alterations below should be done solely on the track that has recording – having a silent track in there can alter the effects, so this works better.
Select the entire track for these.
Initial Normalize. Go into Effect/Volume and Compression/Normalize, and make sure Remove DC Offset is checked, then set Normalize Peak Amplitude to 0.0 dB. You may see a jump in the waveform. you may not – all this is doing is increasing the volume so the highest points hit the upper limit of the recording – it helps with the next step.
Compress. I need this seriously, because as I said, I tend to wander a bit too much in my volume, and what this does is even things out a bit. Go into Effect/Volume and Compression/Compressor… – you will get a graph and variety of settings. You may be fine with the default, or you may (like me) have to change them to be more aggressive – these are my settings:
What this does is to bring up the lower patches and reduce the higher patches, making the recording more evenly-toned throughout. Again, not a bad place to pick a small patch, one with a varied waveform, and Preview it, but like before, note the settings and deselect that small patch to select the entire recording/track to apply those settings to. This is one you may revisit from time to time to improve it, because the changes are subtle and may only show well in certain sections.
Tweak your vocals. This is very subjective, and what I provide is only a starting point. We’re going to apply some specific pitch changes to make us sound a little better – calm down, I said a little, nothing’s going to make me sound like James Earl Jones no matter what, Audacity isn’t that good. So go into Effect/EQ and Filters/Filter Curve EQ, and you’ll get a graph, or even a flat line. Mine, after much tweaking, looks like this:
This curve cuts out the lowest background noise (the left side at and below 60Hz,) a slight curving lift between 60 and 500Hz to improve the bass tones, then a slight increase up to 8000Hz to not let things get too muddy and low-toned. Your best results, however, may only slightly resemble this, if at all – it depends on your voice, and to a lesser extent your mic and acoustics.
You can see that the average of the curve falls above the centerline – this makes the volume jump a bit higher, and you will see the waveform get broader as you apply it. You can alter the curve here to be more centered, or not worry about it, because the next step will correct things.
Second Normalize. Same as the Initial Normalize, only this time you’ll change Peak Amplitude (dB) to -2.0 or thereabouts – experiment. What this means is, the loudest portion of your recording, the uppermost peaks of that waveform, will fall 2 decibels below the upper limits for recording, which is generally a good range for voice. If you’re a very animated speaker, this might cause the waveform and volume to drop notably because your peaks are so high, in which case you might want more aggressive Compressor settings.
Export this as a lossless format. This helps with the next step, or more specifically, where the next step has some issues. I usually call mine something like, “Voiceover-pregate.wav.”
Apply Noise Gate. I definitely need this, because I’m a breathy speaker and too many of my inhalations come up on the audio, not to mention lip sounds and all that. Noise Gate drops out anything that falls below a very low volume threshold, and can wipe these out entirely – I used to have to manually remove these, and that took ages.
But it’s slightly tricky to get set, initially. Once you do, you should need only very minor tweaks for any application, if at all. So here’s the rundown, with an illustration:
1 – Select a portion of the audio with the worst low-threshold noise you can find. In the case of the illustration, it’s the part selected in medium-blue, an intentional loud inhalation.
2 – Right click on the decibel range bar immediately left of the waveform, and select ‘Logarithmic (dB)’. You can grab the bottom of the whole track window to expand it for more detail, as I have here. The peak of the selected portion of the waveform reaches roughly -27 dB (red line) – this is our guide. You can see also that the speech outside of the selection is much louder, reaching about -10 db (green line.)
3 – Open Effect/Noise Removal and Repair/Noise Gate… – you’ll get a window like that shown here. The key is the Gate Threshold, here at -19 dB – a little louder than the peak of my noisy inhalation, but lower than the speech. This means that everything in the wave form below -19 dB (greater negative number) will be wiped. Level Reduction is actually greater than the threshold, so it should produce silence.
Attack, Hold, and Decay all relate to how soon and how long this reduction will take place – mine could probably stand some tweaking because of the next bit, but this is where it stands now.
4 – Preview the result, and if happy with it, apply these settings to the entire track.
Again, these settings will remain, so from here on out you can just apply the Noise Gate without changing anything, as long as your recording is reasonably consistent.
Now, your audio should be crisp and clean overall, but still might need a few cleaned up parts here and there, especially deleting out the “ums” and flurbles. Still leave the stereo channels separated, if you had to in the first place.
If syncing with video or anything else, it’s important not to delete any portion of the track until it’s linked to the video and can be deleted together – otherwise you’ll spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to sync up separate sections of audio and video. Instead, select the offending section and either go into Effect/Volume and Compression/Amplify… and choose an adequate negative number (I usually use -14 dB,) or choose Generate/Silence… instead – it will automatically be set to the length of your selection. If you have any background noise for either of these, the dropout will be noticeable though, so hopefully you don’t.
Also, if you have any hard peaks in your speech that you’d like to reduce, select those peaks and Effect/Volume and Compression/Amplify… to a setting of -2 to -3 dB, enough to reduce the harshness but not go too quiet. The same can be done in reverse if you start mumbling too much.
The Noise Gate may have a detrimental effect, though, in that it drops off “S” and sometimes “TH” sounds at the ends of sentences, where my settings may need further tweaking. This, however, is where that “-pregate” file you exported right before doing the Noise Gate step now comes in, in that you can go into that file and find the matching portion with the esses intact, and simply cut-and-paste it in. To me, it happens perhaps three or four times a session, so not a big deal, but it does sound so much better than abruptly truncated words.
Re-recording. On occasion, you may find that you completely screwed up something: used the wrong name or term, mispronounced a word consistently, totally forgot to tell listeners not to pull the pin just yet – whatever. And so, for clarity’s sake, you decide to re-record that section to patch in seamlessly. Hopefully, you’re better than I am, because my voice changes tone to a ridiculous amount depending on far too many factors, so even an hour later when I start to re-record something, I don’t sound the same at all and patching that in has a distinct audible jump – it’s not ‘seamless,’ in other words. Even when I’m listening to exactly what I sounded like, I have trouble reproducing this.
You can open as many Audacity windows as you like, so you can re-record while still having your original open. Then pick the whole sentence that you need to correct (or a significant portion thereof,) start recording with that silence at the beginning, and re-record that sentence several times over, making whatever subtle changes you like. Because your original was buried in the ‘flow’ of what you were saying, even an entire sentence re-recorded may have a different cadence or timbre to it, and I know I’m bad about exhaling right at the end of the re-recorded sentence and this changes the tone at the end.
Unfortunately, now you’ll have to redo all of those compression and equalizing things above for this new recording just to have it sounding almost exactly alike, but seriously, once you’re used to it the whole process takes a minute or so. Then pick the best version of what you re-recorded, and simply cut and paste it over the offending section of the original. It’s not uncommon for volume to be different between the two, but this is easy enough to correct. No problem.
A note about audio/video syncing. If you’re doing this on a track where it’s crucial to sync precisely to the video, you’ll likely notice that the re-recorded section is trivially (or not) different in length than the original, which will make syncing less precise. If you watch and see the waveform jump in either direction just as you paste, you can potentially cut it or add silence to it to bring things close – usually, a fraction of a second isn’t noticeable. The worst part is if you have to significantly increase the length of what you’re correcting, in which case you may be playing around with lengthening the video with a freeze frame or something to fill in the gap.
Once you have the audio track down to where you want it, if needed, copy this over to the separate, blank stereo track by selecting the entirety of both – they should then match up perfectly. Test it of course, then right-click in that blank portion to the left to select Make Stereo Track.
You can now export the audio in the way you need it – an MP3 or whatever for podcasts or uploads, or a lossless format to add to the video edit, whatever. Unless you want…
Music. I usually do a quick opening and closing music clip to video, at least, and a lot of people recommend/insist upon background music throughout the entire recording, though I consider this extraneous and usually unnecessary, and very often annoying – consider that your listeners may not like the piece you chose and don’t want to keep hearing it. Either way, this is easy to accomplish.
In Audacity, click on Tracks/Add New/Stereo Track – you’ll see it pop in underneath your current one. Then in a separate window, select your music tracks and copy them, then paste these into the new blank stereo track below your original recording – you will likely have to play a bit to line things up the way you want them, by either cutting or Generating Silence as needed on either track. If desired, do your fading in and/or out by selecting the end portions (however long you want the fade to take) and using Effect/Fading/Fade In (or Out – you’ll figure it out.) I like having the fade out cross over into the beginning of the vocals, as shown below.
Now, you’ll notice that the original, top tracks start with something in there, a waveform right off the bat, and the inserted music intro comes in after that in the gap of silence. That beginning is the hum I produced as I started the recording, to sync to the video track I was recording at the same time, and it remains in place now so the audio and video can be synced, whereupon both will be cut out of the final project and the audio will start with the music (and the video with my title card fading in simultaneously.)
Also, it’s usually not a bad idea to keep the music down in volume so you don’t assault your listeners, and you can easily adjust that now.
Syncing audio and video. I won’t go into too much detail here since your video editor may be different and this is long enough. With most non-linear video editing suites, however, you can line up things together fairly easily. For simple voiceovers, I’ll cut the audio tracks as needed and simply slide them along the timeline to line them up – these have been recorded after I already edited the video tracks to what I wanted. Volume levels may require adjustments depending on what was captured with the video and whether you want it or not – I have changed them in specific places at times to highlight the sounds a species might make. While I endeavor not to have too much “dead air,” the silences where I’m not talking and little else is coming through the video, sometimes this works as ambience because it really was this quiet, and you don’t need to hear me blathering nonstop.
For syncing to a screen capture, however, that opening noise is used to sync to the visual start of the recording, and then both audio and video are ‘grouped together,’ so that all edits are done to both simultaneously – this is where your flubs and “ums” can get cut, while everything before and after still matches together. This may produce jumps in the video, which is why I say to be aware of what you were doing onscreen when you misspoke, so you can back up and hopefully have a near-perfect match in video.
In this example, actually from the previous Tip Jar, you can see that I instead imported the opening musical introduction separately – that’s the A2 track at bottom, synced with the faded in/out still of the title card, track V2. Then the voiceover track (A1) is aligned with the screen capture track (V1,) where both can be edited together and still maintain perfect (ahem) synchronization.
There you have it. This is by no means ‘complete,’ but it holds most of the tips that I can provide towards getting better audio recordings for your purposes, and you can now see why I balked at tackling this in video. Hopefully, this provides something (preferably a lot) that you can use, and will improve your own recordings notably. Good luck!
So, we’re all already familiar with the sorting finds, the images that I come across when sorting all of the recent photos into the appropriate folders that I then realize I should feature in a post; you may wonder why I didn’t do this initially upon unloading the memory cards, but I either found something else that had a higher priority, or was too busy at the time, or simply hadn’t looked closely enough at certain images to recognize the merit that they had. But whatever, stop sidetracking me.
In this case, we’re featuring a couple of images captured while doing the sorting, a first I believe. Last night I was deep into the overdue task and happened to glance down to find the office/studio/lair chair was in imminent danger of rolling over my next subject. This is not, in and of itself, a rarity – having a basement office with an outside door in an older house means critters, mostly arthropods but occasionally not, are frequent visitors. This one, however, seemed slightly misshapen, and upon capturing it I confirmed why.
Yep, a wolf spider mama taking the young out for their first real adventure, trying to get rolled or stepped on. She was easy to capture and get into the pan I use for such ‘studio’ shots, but far less cooperative in staying away from the edges so it looked more natural – she was even more averse to the leaves I provided that would have made an even better setting. I am lucky in that the ridge on the side of the planter tray that I used, combined with the color of the table thereon showing through the translucent plastic, actually appears more like brickwork than anything else. Plus short depth-of-field, of course. Let’s get creepier.
She was moving a little sluggishly for the species, perhaps because of the young, but it meant I could focus better on her and the bebbehs, and she only shifted immediately after I achieved sharp focus about five times, which is ahead of the game for such sessions. None of the young-uns showed the slightest inclination to even twitch a leg.
These were with the 180mm macro, but I switched to the reversed 28-105 to try and get closer, without the best results.
The dark patches in there are the ‘faces’ of two of the newborns – you can see that they typically use their legs to hide their identities, which makes me realize: eight eyes, eight legs, so they can still play peekaboo. Evolution is amazing. Focus could have been better of course, but part of the problem was, achieving truly close focus means having the lens very close to the subject, and the edges of the planter tray were actually interfering. Also, the range of sharpest focus is within a millimeter, and since I was shooting handheld (albeit propped on the table where I could,) this mean sharp focus was more a matter of timing my trivial swaying in and out of that range, with more misses than hits. But why weren’t you using a tripod and a macro slider? you ask, a trifle impertinently, but I’ll patiently explain that such things are nigh worthless with living subjects, since they require said subjects to remain cooperatively in one place while all this is set up – good luck with that. Generally, you have between two and ten seconds to pin down sharp focus before your subject buggers off to a different position, and you will then spend that same timeframe trying to get everything lined up again, even with a tray like this that you can slide around. This was not my first spider rodeo…
While I was doing this, I decided to tackle a subject that had been waiting for a couple of days, so I deposited mama and the fry back outside and turned to this one. The other night, as I approached a golden silk orbweaver (Trichonephila clavipes) in her web, I was observing some odd movements and, even as I suspected I knew what was happening, I saw her free her recently molted exoskeleton from the web and drop it – timing was just a little off on that one. However, I collected the exoskeleton and brought it in for a macro session, but then didn’t tackle it for a few days. This seemed to be a good time.
This was one of the initial shots with the 180mm macro, a little blown out but it got light down to the eyes and chelicerae like I was after. However, I needed to be closer and more detailed, so it was back to the reversed 28-105.
This took several tries to get right, because I was trying to get both the eyes and the chelicerae in the same plane of focus – imagine trying this with a living subject that prefers to hang vertically. But you can easily see the eye arrangement, with the four outer eyes facing sideways on little eyebumps. I should have been creative and gotten some light source down under and behind the cephalothorax to shine up through the eyes – maybe next time. But since I also got those fangs in focus, I’m good with this. So you know, the space between the topmost eyes and the bottom of the chelicerae measures a whopping 5.4 mm – try getting that precise measurement with a living subject. I also must note that this is only about half of full adult size for the species, female anyway. We don’t seem to have quite as many on the property as we did last year, but how many do you really need? Okay then.
Went out to the car in the evening, just as it was getting fully dark, and on my return, right alongside the front door, I heard a sharp rustle in the leaves underneath the camellia flanking the door. I took out my pocket flashlight and tried tracking the noisemaker, going around the bush carefully since this was too reminiscent of an earlier encounter. Finally spotted a toad, figured that was the culprit (and this is very typical – several toads frequent the front area,) until I saw the thick dark body of a snake alongside the house. The snake realized it was busted and broke for cover exceedingly quickly, so I only got a glimpse of the head, but the size and darkness of the body and what markings I’d seen struck me more of a cottonmouth than anything else.
Now, the property here is ideal for the species, which is quite venomous, but I had yet to spot one at all – plenty of other species, including three different (harmless) types of water snakes, but not a cottonmouth. I was determined to try and prove this, because I’ve never even seen one in the wild, but some caution was needed of course, especially given that I was barefoot. In short order, I determined that it had gone to ground in the gap between the bricks that supported the rain barrel, so I put on some boots as a modicum of protection and gathered up the camera. Which, naturally, wanted to fog up immediately since it remains that kind of weather. Thus, my initial pics weren’t conclusive – or actually, they were, but not until closely examined.
The head is turned away, though the on-camera flash illuminated it well enough – the macro flash rig I had attached just wouldn’t get into the narrow angle needed to shine into the hollow. In a short while, however, the snake had turned its head to see what I was doing better, and this time I used the (urk) smutphone, because the illuminating LED sits right alongside the lens. Since all I have on my cheapass little phone is a wider-angle lens, this meant I had to get damn close to the opening, far too close for safety, but by this point I had seen enough.
Smoother, less-angular head, distinct vertical stripes on upper and lower jaws, and round pupils instead of slitted – all traits that eliminate cottonmouth as an ID. Instead, this is another species of water snake, most likely a northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon,) though the details I’d need to see to confirm that – whether the bands near the tail are solid or broken – are hidden. No way to show scale for these, but the body was quite thick, and I got the impression it had either eaten recently or was perhaps pregnant. This is also quite dark for the species, with minimal distinctions in the markings – not out of line for the wide variations that occur, but more in line with the coloration of cottonmouths; it looked almost solid black at first, and a detail that registered in passing but only subconsciously, it looked very matte and dull, due to the rough scales. This immediately distinguished it from the other two black species in the area (eastern racer and eastern rat snake,) which both look slimmer and smoother/shinier. I also don’t think I’ve seen the black variant of the rat snake in this region – they’ve all been the grey variant.
Anyway, a false alarm, which is both good and bad. Bad in that I still haven’t actually seen a cottonmouth, much less photographed one, but also good in that a snake that was right alongside the front door was not actually venomous. It also reminded me that I get complacent at times, and need to remain alert for such potential hazards.
Nothing for the Tip Jar right at the moment – my time, motivation, and desire simply didn’t coincide this week to permit me to have something up here right now. While I have tried quite seriously to adhere to a schedule from the moment I started doing regular posts, this isn’t a job, isn’t producing income, and shows no evidence of people really counting on seeing the new stuff popping up anyway ;-). For my own discipline, I maintain it, because it’s good to have challenges and obligations, but sometimes, it’s simply going to slide a bit. Maybe I’m skipping a week, maybe it’s just slipping for a day or two, but nothing worse than that.
In the meantime, have a slide scan from back in 2001 I believe, the only time I’ve gotten images of a newborn killdeer (Charadrius vociferus.) This is another that’s been on my list, but it’s been decades since I’ve found a killdeer nest, despite how easy it is – they’re ground nesters, usually little more than a clearing among rocks and gravel, and the adult will handily inform you that you’re getting close by calling loudly from a short distance away while dragging a wing as if injured, luring you hungrily in pursuit so you don’t find the camouflage-speckled eggs in plain sight. And because of this odd placement of nests, the newborns are up and running around within an hour or so of hatching, totally unlike most other bird species. It’s very cute.
Anyway, it’s a follow-up to this post, the most recent capture of a killdeer. But no bebbehs…
I sat down this morning, literally, and tackled (not literally) a project that has been on my list for years, that even just laying the groundwork for has taken far too long, and I don’t consider it ‘completed’ yet, nor may I ever. But I certainly didn’t come close to it today, though I made progress and got some successes.
I’m referring to doing some natural photos of hummingbirds, specifically the ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) that are the only species I’ve seen in person. “Natural’ means, “not at a feeder or other contrivance,” and of course, to accomplish this, you need flowers that hummingbirds like to feed upon. We’ve had butterfly bushes for years, but these don’t seem to attract much if any attention. We’ve planted (several times) cardinal flowers, which never germinated at all. And we’ve had some potted salvia, which started off nicely but then faded. Finally, late last summer we got two varieties of salvia, a blue and a purple, which settled in nicely and then exploded with activity this spring. This has finally worked as intended, and the hummers have been visiting them routinely – I just haven’t set up the camera nearby to photograph the activity, until now.
[To satisfy my habit of providing proper names, I will say that both salvias appear to be varieties of Salvia guaranitica – the blue was still tagged as such, while the purple appears closest to this hybrid, also a variety. That’s what I’m going with, anyway.]
It was relatively early in the day when the sun was still on the other side of the house as well as partially-clouded, so the light was low, and my first attempts didn’t have a fast enough shutter speed to halt their movements well enough. This male, the ‘owner’ of the purple plant, was quite hyperactive and difficult enough to track even with autofocus, typically visiting a blossom for literally a fraction of a second, enough time for a tiny sip, before moving to another.
A note about hummers. They’re neurotic, or what we would consider to be so from their actions, though we can’t vouch for their actual mental state; they are fiercely territorial over their chosen feeding spots, often staking them out to keep watch and chase off any intruders the moment they’re spotted, which leads to frequent chases and occasional aerial battles, and they easily appear to spend far more time trying to fend off intruders than actually feeding – it’s hard to believe they get enough calories to function. The purple salvia was guarded by a male, while the blue was owned by a female, while at least two others made frequent attempts with varying success. There are also three feeders that we maintain, one within meters of the purple plant, so there’s more than enough food to go around, but it’s just not in their nature to share.
The salvia plants themselves are thick and deep, but the background is also cluttered, in this case with a camellia bush, so between this and trying to keep up with a twitchy subject, autofocus frequently just buggered off to the background or occasionally nothing at all. I tried switching it off and going manual, but that wasn’t any better, far too slow with the movements of the hummingbirds. I also tried staking out particular blossoms, locking focus thereon and waiting, but this didn’t work either, and I could tell that I was missing activity just outside of the field of view. The best process seemed to be, autofocus, watch the activity over top of the camera, and then attempt to snag it when the hummer was in an ideal position. Note that, “best,” doesn’t mean, “good,” and the hummers would often move on to another location in the moments while I was raising and aiming the camera.
Or simply move off even as I had focus locked and framed nicely. But there’s something nicely ominous about how her eyes rendered here.
This is the female that ‘owns’ the blue salvia, and I will note that I tweaked the blue registers here to hew closer to the actual color of the blossoms, since the camera isn’t actually capable of capturing it.
Another miss, but the background blossom was sharp, so let’s claim that was the intention. Just so you know, the linear separation of these two blooms might have been as high as 20 cm, but likely less – depth of field at this magnification just isn’t there. When I try again, I may sit back further to see if I can improve on this a little, at least to have autofocus not have to twitch as much.
The female, at least, was cooperative several times over, in that she’d perch right on or near her claimed plant to guard it, as well as keep an eye on what I was doing. But it meant I could actually get some sharp photos, including of her bare patch of red feathers on the throat, in proper light too. The male almost never managed a light angle to show off the red iridescence, and his throat virtually always appeared dull brown.
Also, I’d boosted ISO to 800 here, and changed to my preset for low-contrast conditions, which boosts contrast and saturation a bit – visibly different here.
Nice profile. Can’t complain.
A curious effect here. You can see she’s stretched her neck longer, but the neck feathers looked splayed backwards – this is possibly a territorial display directed at an interloper, since she vanished from the frame immediately after this. I know I’ve seen them spread their tail feathers for the same reason, usually when facing off in flight.
By the way, sitting in a lawn chair with a view of both plants, I was treated to the frequent chittering that they make when chasing one another off, as well as being buzzed several times – when in pursuit, they don’t pay a lot of attention to trivial concerns like nature photographers. It was this very chittering that redirected my attention to particular birds, since my attention was being routinely split between the two bushes.
The blue salvia sits in front of a massive spread of roses that was here when we moved in, but this was the first I’d seen a hummingbird actually drinking from one.
And a pause, since it sat the highest in the immediate vicinity and afforded a good view to protect her territory, though most often she sat lower and more camouflaged against the greenery.
This is the clearest shot I managed of the male that owned the purple salvia, unfortunately partially obscured by its own wing. The shutter speed was only 1/160 second, nowhere near fast enough to freeze the wings. I’ve had them blurred at 1/800 second – the wingbeat of hummingbirds is astounding.
But yes, the goal is to not only get sharp photos of the male, who’s more hyperactive than the female, but also to get that red iridescence of the throat, which will take better light. I didn’t get a chance to get back out this afternoon when the sun had crossed the house, though I will eventually – the heat during the day is still horrendous, and dangerous even when just sitting on one’s ass, so you’d best appreciate it when it happens.
Now, another male was sneaking in to partake of the purple, and had learned that the ‘owner’ took a particular perch in an oak tree nearby, so this guy would slip in on the blind side of the bush, practically underneath, and get a few drinks in down there before being discovered. The average time this lasted seemed to be in the range of 2-8 seconds – hummers have good eyes.
One last one of the possessive male – this would have been a better shot with focus on properly, and much better with the iridescence. But at least the plants are convenient and the hummers are visiting them routinely, so the opportunity is there to do better. I have about a month or so before they split and head south for the winter. Hopefully, more will follow soon.
So I did go out last night and early this morning in the pursuit of Perseids, starting off just in the backyard but then deciding to go down to a small boat launch area not too far away, which I’ve used once before. The scattered thin clouds visible during the day (see previous post) had all vanished, and things were pretty clear, as you might be able to tell from this stretch of the Milky Way seen looking northeast. Cassiopeia can be picked out in the milky band, a little below mid-frame, which means that the radiant of the Perseids shower was a little below that. Look in the band closer to the top of the frame, though, and you’ll see two brighter stars flanking a darker patch, what I call the ‘gateway stars’ since both the stars and the gap in the Milky Way are visible on a clear night. These are Deneb and Sadr, and sat at roughly a 75° altitude, so this frame largely captures half of the sky vertically – this is the Tamron 10-24mm super-wide, which has its pros and cons.
The benefit, of course, is that it can capture the most sky area, or indeed any other kind of landscape, of any lens I own, without introducing too much distortion – when viewed as a whole frame. The horizon glow you see here comes from not only the town we live within, but also likely the next city beyond too, both lying in about the same line from here.
An inset from the previous frame near the edge, this shows one of the two major drawbacks of the lens: the attempt to correct the wide-angle distortion inherent in shooting at such a wide angle still produces strange artifacts, not the best for trying to do starfields, certainly. The other major drawback is that it still distorts, meaning straight lines near the edges of the frame still lean, sometimes at odd angles. While it can increase the chance of capturing a meteor in any given frame because it covers more sky, it also reduces the size of said meteor, and of course, other elements in the frame may look warped. I’ll probably stick with the 18-135 at 18mm from now on.
But, how was the meteor activity, you ask? Actually, there were more visible than most ‘shower’ nights I’ve been out, including two bright and distinct trail meteors, though no real fireballs that I saw – naturally, the two bright ones occurred outside of the camera’s field of view, one of which cutting right across that inlet view above, just, not while I was aimed there. But how about where I was aiming?
This is full-frame, and I was delighted to see that streak to lower left when unloading, since I didn’t recall one being visible in that location, and given the display here, it should have been bright. We’ll go in closer on that same frame.
A double, one with a very distinct change in brightness! Not terribly long, but a valid capture at least. Right?
Looking at the next frame, wrong.
Meteors are far too brief to continue into the next frame, especially with a few seconds in between – these are satellites. The curious thing about them is, this was at about 1:15 AM, looking almost due north, so this should have been the least likely time and place to see satellites since they need to catch the sun to be visible. Polar orbit, certainly, and I’m guessing higher. These both were about 60-second exposures. I checked Stellarium but this showed no satellites at all in the vicinity, though I probably need to update my database. Given the parallel tracks so close together in timing, I’m going to take a stab and say these may have been Starlink satellites, the only ones I know running so close together in this manner. Figures.
I witnessed a few that certainly fell within the field of view of the camera while I was exposing, including two that crossed directly over Cassiopeia in opposite directions within two seconds of each other, but all of these were momentary ‘shooting stars’ and none appear to have registered at my settings – I was even firing off frames of just a couple of seconds immediately after seeing a visible meteor, just to mark the preceding frame as one to examine closely, but no sign of anything, certainly not anything to show off.
Most of my exposures were done at ISO 1600, but as the meteor activity seemed to be increasing and I wanted to try and capture these brief streaks better, I switched to ISO 3200, and this was the biggest mistake. I shortened the exposure times down to about 30 seconds, thinking I’d have the same exposure but better chance of catching the brief dim streaks, but the resulting images were far worse.
This is almost the same exact field-of-view as the first image above – if you look closely, you can just make out Cassiopeia in the center of the frame, and those gateway stars towards the upper left, having rotated counter-clockwise a little as the night wore on. But this is so bad I thought I’d inadvertently changed other settings, or perhaps even bumped focus. However, everything is in line, and I even have a distinct dotted line from an aircraft passing through, so this is just the camera not handling ISO 3200 worth a shit.
This was a thing with film, and it even had a term: reciprocity failure. ‘Reciprocity’ is the thing where camera settings are all based on f-stops or exposure values (same thing): you can increase shutter speed by a stop, but open the aperture by a stop, and produce the same exposure. With film, the idea was, you could increase ISO by a stop, and then reduce by a stop in aperture or shutter speed, allowing higher depth-of-field or a faster shutter speed. However, the response of the emulsion compounds during long exposures meant that the sensitivity would drop off over time (a few seconds to a few minutes,) so you could no longer dependably calculate this trade-off, hence ‘reciprocity failure.’ Not having this was one of the benefits of digital, but I suspect (off the top of my head) that ISO 3200 on the Canon 7D is an ‘expanded’ ISO setting, where the software is supposed to compensate, much like what I might do in GIMP to try and coax a better light response, but the sensor really didn’t capture enough of the light necessary to enhance. Regardless, 1600 is now considered the upper limit as far as I’m concerned.
[This is true of many cameras, and I always cautioned my students that the upper two or three settings in ISO should be ignored, since they rarely produced any useful results, the images typically looking like they came from a much shittier camera.]
Now, the other thing from the session, which at present I have nothing to show for. While out there on a marvelously quiet night, the barest of breezes but an excellent temperature, both great horned owls and eastern screech owls were calling routinely – I’d never heard the calls of screech owls and had to check it with my BirdNet app, but they sound fantastic. I tried for some recordings just on my smutphone, but it couldn’t handle the minimal volume, and I’ll have to return with more dedicated recording equipment. Seeing either, of course, much less photographing them, is going to be a lot harder, but I’m game at least. Another goal, of which I have no lack.
My friend texted me this morning asking me when the solar eclipse was, and I was about to answer, “It’s not,” since the path of totality passed across northern Europe. But then I thought to check and see if there was any portion visible from the US, and indeed there was. The irony of this being, I could see the smallest fragment from where I was, but not from where he was, just two hours south. Still, this prompted me to go out at the right time.
I didn’t have specific details for where I was, but in the nearest big city, the eclipse was supposed to peak at 0.33% – yes, one-third of one percent. Here, it might have reached 0.35. I suppose I could have checked Stellarium, and indeed, still can – according to that, it peaked at 0.40% for this location – righteous! This is what it looked like through the solar filter, roughly 13 minutes before that time:
When using the filter, I always set to under-expose by a certain amount, since the exposure meter on the camera copes with the darkness surrounding the disk and tends to render the sun too bright – in this case, it’s one full stop ‘underexposed.’ You can also see a hint of two sunspots in there, though focus was slightly off.
[I was aiming too close to vertical for this, since it was about 2 PM locally, and so using the swingout LCD on the Canon 70D as a viewfinder, since I couldn’t raise the tripod with the long lens that high above my head and my neck doesn’t otherwise bend that way – for stability, I set the tripod fairly low and sat on the ground to do this. Sharp focus, however, is achieved by firing off test frames and then examining them at high magnification, which works fine at night but less so in the glaring sunlight, so the above frame was off a tad.]
This is the stunning amount that it reached just past peak:
According to Stellarium, this really is at 0.35% here, this time 1 1/3 stops underexposed. This was the sharpest of the frames, but you’ll notice the greater glow around it; thin clouds were passing in front of the sun. I did, in fact, do video, which just barely shows the movement – ah, what the hell.
This partial lasted just 30 minutes, and in between frames I had my shirt draped over the camera and lens to keep it from getting too hot, since it’s still brutal out there. During the frames, the shirt was draped over me and the viewfinder so I could see, and not broil too badly.
One last frame as the eclipse was ending.
I left this at full resolution, but again, thin clouds were affecting things so it could have been sharper; this time, I knew the focus was as good as it was going to get.
I think we have largely the same conditions tonight as the Perseids are peaking, so we’ll see if I snag anything. Meanwhile, a partial lunar eclipse will be taking place in just two weeks – funny how that works. Should I get the counterparts to these, we’ll have a nice matched set for August- perfect decor for the baby’s bedroom! I’m taking advance orders…
A small (heh!) collection of diminutive critters from the environs, the past several days.
Checking out the diamond spire gardenias one night as they had started blooming again, I saw a little knot around one leaf cluster, almost but not quite appearing as fallen leaves.
Yes, this is a reasonable illustration of scale – gardenia leaves and flowers aren’t that big, the leaves usually 25-35mm across. I was just a little surprised to find this guy sleeping off of the ground like this, rather than tucked into a burrow or cluster of dead leaves as I would have thought.
Trying to get a decent view was challenging, since other ‘trunks’ of the gardenia were in the way and I was trying not to disturb the plant too much to avoid spooking my subject off. The size, the spots along the sides, and the rough, keeled scales identify this as a brown snake (Storeria dekayi.)
I finally got down to have a view of the head, shooting in between the ‘trunks.’ Smaller than a pencil in diameter, this is about average size for the species, maybe a wee bit smaller. Overall length perhaps around 200mm, but that’s just guessing.
On the same plant, over a week later, we had a different guest spending the night.
This was undoubtedly a newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) except I’ve never seen one emerge from an egg yet and don’t know if they immediately start running around on plants or spend some period of time hiding within leaf litter; it was the smallest I think I’ve seen, anyway, and I endeavored to illustrate this.
It started getting a little bit antsy as I was sliding the millimeter scale into the frame, and there was only so close I could get it, but I think this effectively illustrates that the head is 4mm wide or less.
When it shifted position, I also shifted the scale, slightly more illustrative.
The scale is propped between leaves, underneath the anole but closer to us, so it actually appears slightly larger than it would had it been lined up alongside. While doing all this, I managed to peg an overall length of 50mm, but with anoles, half of that (or better) is tail alone, this one tapering down to a tiny thread. It could easily have stretched along my middle finger, and been completely hidden when I turned my hand over.
Despite the closed eyes in the previous pic, the anole was still antsy – they do this a lot, and I don’t understand it, but even when alerted to potential danger, in only moments they’ll close their eyes and appear to drop into a catnap; I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t a camouflage reflex, hiding the dark contrast of their eyes from predators. You’d think they would evolve eye color more in line with their bodies, if that were the case…
Anyway, this one was still slinking carefully around on the leaves, unsure if it should flee – this is all by night and illuminated by the headlamp (or the camera flash during the pics,) so it probably couldn’t see that well, though the millimeter scale certainly slid into the same light and was likely in view. We’ll go in closer on this frame for the detail – anoles have great scales.
Length (not width) of the head here, perhaps 7mm – that’s the width of a pencil. I would have liked to have coaxed it onto my hand for better scale, but it was clear the anole wouldn’t have taken well to this and I probably would have achieved nothing, especially since the camera with the 180mm and flash/softbox is heavy, not easily handled in one hand. I need an assistant more often. Though I did have one for the next.
Not newborn, per se, but newly emerged from the water and its tadpole stage, this green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) was also quite small. I later went out and measured the fence slat that it’s on, which is 20mm in width. This time, though, The Girlfriend was handy, and she didn’t mind holding the frog for a different scale shot, even though she was worried that it’d leap away. The frog was more cooperative than anticipated, though.
There’s always a certain level of amusement to such sessions, since she’s always urging me to hurry up, “It’s going to jump away!”, like I’m not already aware of this. What, they jump? This one, however, settled in nicely and actually had to be coaxed back out of her hand. Would that all my subjects be this willing…
[Look, I know that’s acceptable sentence structure, and has been used countless times before in great literary works and all that, but it really doesn’t make sense by any rules of English, does it? This may be the last I’ll ever use such a thing.]
Went down to the waterfront the other evening around sunset, the first time in a while because we’re usually getting dinner about that time, and there was a hint of promise with scattered clouds of different types, which are good when you’re looking for colors. Instead, the sun dipped below a distant cloudbank and only the barest hint of color was produced – so it goes. A little later on, some of the higher clouds got a momentary dappling of yellow, and that was it. Better luck next time.
Still, there’s just enough color to keep it from being completely monochrome, and some decent contrast, not just in brightness, but in textures as well. I’ll keep it.
It was relatively early in the day when the sun was still on the other side of the house as well as partially-clouded, so the light was low, and my first attempts didn’t have a fast enough shutter speed to halt their movements well enough. This male, the ‘owner’ of the purple plant, was quite hyperactive and difficult enough to track even with autofocus, typically visiting a blossom for literally a fraction of a second, enough time for a tiny sip, before moving to another.
