A little demonstration

Al Denelsbeck

Branches across pond view
So this is just a series of photos that I set aside to illustrate something, waiting for a slower period, and since it will be raining steadily for the next two days it seems, now’s the time. It would be better illustrated ‘real-time,’ except to do that I’d have to have a documentary film crew following me around, which hasn’t come to fruition. Yet.

[Stop shrieking and running around the room – it’s never gonna happen. Sheesh, you’d think this was election results or something…]

The photo above pretty much shows what I first saw when ambling around the pond back in October, and the detail that made me pause for a second. A lot of the photos that I capture are a result of seeing something that wasn’t quite right, the break in expected patterns, colors, shapes, and so on, and this has two of them. One of them, lower right, is just a leaf suspended temporarily among the branches, but the other, above it and slightly left, was not a leaf, and not a natural aspect of the branches. This was what made me stop, and move closer.

something on branch
Definitely on to something now, since the shapes are far from typical for even a diseased growth on the branch – one of those on the top left side even seems to show light shining through underneath. Most likely arthropodal in nature. Still closer.

some kind of arthropods on branch silhouetted against sky
Crouching a little lower to use the light from the sky to outline them better, it’s now obvious: we got bugs. All of this was in the shade under a tree, no direct light at all, and while the photos increase the contrast and thus deepen the shadows a tad, there was still too little light for a clean view. Some additional illumination is in order.

bark lice Cerastipsocus nymphs in cluster on branch
I hate using on-camera flash, but I hadn’t gone to the pond with the full macro rig, so here we are, looking at stripey little bastards of some kind. I initially thought, ‘aphids,’ but the bodies didn’t seem quite right, and they aren’t – BugGuide.net pegs them as nymphs within the genus Cerastipsocus, a category of bark lice; one of the two species in the area is colloquially named as tree cattle. Adorable.

bark lice Cerastipsocus nymphs dispersing
The mere act of leaning close caused them to unpile and begin to disperse along the branch, like naughty kids in the schoolyard when a teacher approaches, casually and elaborately unsuspiciuous. But breaking up in this manner also made them much harder to see from any distance at all, so spotting the initial cowpatty, or whatever, was what allowed me to see them in detail.

The thing is, I couldn’t tell you how to spot things of this nature, and I can only give occasional illustrations of it like this; to the best of my knowledge, it just comes from being out there and paying attention to details, knowing how things normally are so that the little shapes and the anachronisms become evident. I can assure you, there are plenty of false positives, things that I look at closer only to determine that they’re not interesting after all, and I have no way of logging everything that I miss, except for the occasions where someone that I’m with sees something themselves; when they do, it’s from the same habits anyway.

So if you’re pursuing natural subjects, it helps (a lot) to get used to the natural patterns and shapes and colors, so that the items that aren’t draw your attention immediately. It won’t always produce a subject, but it’s amazing how often it does.

There’s something familiar…

Al Denelsbeck

fall colors from a few years back
So on Monday I started selecting the photos that would appear in today’s On This Date post, and ended up with two distinct possibilities from back in 2014; this was the second. In the context of the others, I knew this was taken around the nearby pond, but I couldn’t place that path anywhere, and most especially not the spiky yucca-maybe plant down there in the corner, extremely common when I was in Florida but considerably less so here.

And then I had a thought, quickly followed by another (I know, right? Wonder of wonders): I had just been out at the pond shooting what I could of the fall colors only a couple hours earlier. I checked the Sort folder, and there it was:

same location this year
The lighting conditions certainly make a huge difference, though the foliage isn’t as well developed this year, and initially, I’d used the ‘standard’ color and contrast settings for the shot, though I should have been using the ones I’d preset for such light conditions, so I at least increased saturation for display here. More noticeable is the different perspective, so I checked the EXIF info, but the two photos were taken with focal lengths only 3mm apart. For the top one, I was apparently further back, crouching lower and aiming higher.

It would have made a truly stunning, eerie, and unfathomable occurrence (well, actually just a neat coincidence) had I taken the second photo today, exactly (more or less) six years later, but noooo, I had to go and ruin it all. And today is going to be drizzly, misty rain all day long, courtesy of yet another tropical storm, so little chance of doing such an exact comparison. Note that I just did a podcast about improvements and making the effort and all that, so we can see how dedicated to the concept I really am.

On this date 46

Al Denelsbeck

Like I said last week, lots to play with this week! In your face, Slow Period! Let’s see, now…

We start with 2010’s entry, a sampling of fall colors that didn’t get posted then:

backlit oak leaves during early autumn
I spend too much time trying to identify things like this right as I upload them for posts, instead of doing it, oh, anytime in the several years that I lived right next to it, so I’m definitively saying these are oak leaves, and confidently saying it’s a white oak, and tentatively saying it’s a swamp white oak, and that’s as far as I’m going. Do your own DNA test if you want to know if it’s the Roosevelt White Oaks or the Bouvier White Oaks.

On to 2012 [wait, no 2011? I didn’t have any photos from 11/11/11? No, apparently not.]

[Sorry, I wrote that the American way, which might have confused Europeans, so if you’re European, that would be 11/11/11.]

unidentified dark moth with fluffy forelegs
I don’t know what this moth is and I’m not checking. Okay, fine, it’s possibly genus Orgyia, whose name means, “moth that parties hard, hur hur hur,” [no that’s not true – it actually means, “the length of the outstretched arms,” which is the only way I offer this tentative identification.] I know this was shot near the front porch light one evening, and this version has been darkened slightly and had contrast increased, because that white background paint reflected most of the flash’s light back into the lens, a hazard of shooting macro on brighter objects and backgrounds; light hitting the lens directly will reduce contrast and saturation. Gotta love those Seinfeld sleeves at least.

Next stop, 2013:

very young green lynx spider Peucetia viridans with water adhering
We’d had three egg cases from green lynx spiders (Peucetia viridans) hatch out in the yard, so I had plenty of tiny spiderlings to work with, when I could get close enough to them. Judging from the other photos, the water here isn’t naturally occurring, but the result of applying a misting bottle, which I will do occasionally when the rain has been sparse because the arthropods generally appreciate it. The vertical part of the face that you see here is well under a single millimeter in height, just to give you a faint idea – breathing throws the camera out of focus too often, so I discard a lot of attempts when I go in this close.

2014? 2014:

unidentified Hymenoptera on unidentified flower
It’s a wasp, or bee – Hymenoptera, at least – on a flower. Or a flower mimic. It’s a picture – deal with it, I don’t want this to take all day to write.

And it’s one of two choices for this date, but the other will appear in a different post. Or has already. I haven’t written it yet, but this is being written a day ahead of time, so who knows?

Counting down (er, up) to 2015:

mating American bluet damselflies genus Enallagma making valentine shape
The best I’ll say is that these are American bluet damselflies (genus Enallagma) because there are too many species and I’d need to see the body segments better than I captured here. Shamelessly influenced by social media, they were posing while making a heart, awww. Though admittedly, most of the humans that do this aren’t actually engaged in The Task at the time. And even when they are, they won’t fly around that way, so credit/shame/whatever on the damselflies for this feat.

Finally, 2016:

sprouting mimosa genus Mimosa throwing distinct shadow on rock
This is likely a mimosa sapling (genus also Mimosa,) though there is at least one other species nearby that has nearly identical leaves, the partridge pear, but those don’t typically grow in these conditions, which is right alongside the Eno River. What I was after, though, is the shadow that put me in mind of fossil impressions, since ferns were so common in the very early stages of plant life on this planet. Looking at it now, I could have tackled it better I think, having the living leaves framed more against the grey rock – I have an upcoming podcast that talks about this (recorded but not edited yet.) So this is perhaps a ‘Before’ photo, kinda – I’m probably not going to go back to the river to reshoot this, especially since it was four years ago and the tree is likely different in appearance now; trees be like that. It’s the kind of adversity that you have to deal with as a nature photographer…

Podcast: Improvements

Al Denelsbeck

So here we have the… second? Is that right? Holy shit, that’s bad… podcast of 2020, kinda pathetic but whatcha gonna do: withhold your payments? Yeah, that’s right, sit down and hush up.

This time though, we’re going into improvements. No, not improvements that have been made, but improvements that will be made. Maybe. Hopefully. Soon… ish…

It’s actually a challenging and semi-complicated subject, without easy or even clearly-definable goals. But why waste time typing when it’s all here in audio?

Walkabout podcast – Improvements

And some of the things that I mentioned within:

Last year’s podcast about motivation.

My views on pursuing “art.”

I don’t really believe it should all be about money, but we also cannot survive without it very well either, so…

The instructional video that I did, my first big video project that I’m pleased with, even when I see room for improvement. The question is, should I be tackling more of them? And what would someone pay for access to them? (Yeah, I know, everyone wants something for free, but that’s not how it works. What are you gonna offer in trade?)

In there, I mentioned two of the goals that I’ve been pursuing, for the past few years actually: to obtain photos of praying mantises mating, and creating their egg sac (which may make for some decent video clips, the latter at least.) I have one, count ’em, one photo of each, both from years ago, and they’ve been sitting in the blog folder waiting for me to slip them in appropriately somewhere; the idea was, I’d show them in comparison to the new versions when I successfully completed one or both goals. But since that didn’t happen this year (again,) I’m posting them anyway.

pair of mating Chinese mantids Tenodera sinensis seen within thicket of pampas grass
Here’s a pair of Chinese mantids (Tenodera sinensis) mating, the only time I’ve seen it happen (ten years ago!), and it was so deep in the thicket of pampas grass that this was the best perspective I could obtain without disturbing them. Notably, the female’s abdomen already seems remarkably distended, not what I would have expected, but the bulk of the egg sac is protective layers, something akin to that expanding, hardening foam that is used to seal gaps, so that may be what’s taking up a lot of the space. It’s also possible that the male fertilizes the eggs immediately before they’re laid, similar to fish and frogs (where it happens immediately after,) so the development is at peak here. I honestly don’t know – that’s the kind of thing that I aim to illustrate and explain. I never did see the female create the sac following this, which means the next photo isn’t any close kin.

female Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis almost finished producing egg sac ootheca in longneedle pine tree
This was actually taken many years previously, on slide film, as a female of the same species was almost complete in her task of producing the egg sac (ootheca.) Not quite as obscured as the one above, but still far from ideal. I’ve done my damnedest to keep mantises around to increase my chances of seeing this, to no avail, so these goals, at least, are waiting more on luck than on efforts. Granted, those efforts have netted me plenty of other photos and video clips, so they’ve been far from fruitless.

Oh, and the one podcast (so far) solely dedicated to humor – you can decide if I should ever attempt such a thing again. I think there’s room for improvement, at least.

Must be Saturday

Al Denelsbeck

… and the Bay City Rollers are excited.

The first Saturday in November is Desaturate Day, as everyone knows. Well, everyone not living under a rock with worm tunnels between their ears, anyway. And thus I’m here to inspire you to wash out, go drab, and reduce it all down to black and white, because everything is simpler that way – for a given definition of “simple,” at least.

Not a lot of the photos that I’ve taken in the past six months or so really do well when converted to monochrome, but I scared up a couple, with some older entries for seasoning.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea in mixed-channel greyscale
We first saw our friend here back in September, and the original was pretty monochromatic in itself, though not in the way the term is normally used. I mean, technically, none of the photos in this post are chromatic in the slightest, they’re simply brightness values, but ‘nonchromatic’ isn’t in regular use – some dictionaries don’t recognize it at all, so we use a term that means “one color,” as if black, or white (I’m not sure which one is supposed to count,) is a color. It’s insulting to pedants, really.

Anyway, this version of the photo was done with channel clipping, a mix of the green and blue channels with a contrast tweak to make the most of the range. We’ll return to this particular practice later on.

How about another version of the Midmonth Abstract from just a few weeks ago?

small trees against foggy lake, in blue channel only
Because the original was primarily blue, selecting just the blue channel for this one rendered the foggy lake as an indistinct void for a nicely surreal affect, that a little tweak in Curves enhanced. It would have been nice to get just a hint of grey from the colors of the leaves, but this would have required much more selective level controls, practically the same as dubbing in elements from another frame, so I let it go; the near-black leaves and branches work well enough against the encroaching nothingness. True to form, the blue channel was a bit muddy and this shows, but I think it lends a dreamlike quality to it. Yeah, it’s perfectly intentional, that’s it…

unidentified backlit dragonfly from green channel only
We also saw this one earlier, here, and the contrast levels obviously lent themselves to this treatment. But this is channel clipping again, just the green channel because it brought out the darker wingtips; the red channel had them almost the same brightness as the rest of the wings, and the blue channel was simply too dark and muddy.

Let’s have a (more or less) natural monochrome.

Haw River in Bynum NC in infra-red
You may recognize this as infra-red, mostly from the bright foliage and black sky, and what I liked most about it were the brilliant white leaves on the little island, much more reflective of infra-red wavelengths than the trees nearby. This might have had something to do with it being October (back in 2006, not last month,) with the trees starting to become less green – or it might not, since I’ve seen fallen leaves still reflecting a lot of IR. Either way, I liked the starkness, increased here of course, but I would have preferred that bare tree to have been more prominent and isolated in the frame – since this was taken from a highway overpass, my options were pretty limited. And it might seem at first that I had problems with leveling the camera, but it’s fine, as a look at the horizon will confirm – the spillway runs at an angle to the road, so that’s the bit that’s not ‘level.’

Back to this year, when the early morning sunlight and some coarse textures lent themselves to the ol’ noir treatment.

juvenile likely eastern river cooter Pseudemys concinna concinna perched on rock, green channel only
This is another just-green-channel image, which worked best for the contrast; the red channel was lower contrast than this, while the blue channel (being the opposite of yellow) rendered most of the colors within as too dark overall. Most especially, that eye was a necessary element, but having the stripes and the carapace textures in the shadows provided more detail and depth.

I did these next two quite some time back, and never posted them because I couldn’t decide which worked better, so now I’m cheating and posting them both.

abandoned Lady Anne in super-contrast greyscale
We hunted down this shipwreck (okay, it’s more likely just abandoned) last year during a beach trip, but I didn’t quite get the appearance I was after with the direct approach, so later on I went the extremely high contrast route, which is an improvement, but I’m still unsure. There are two versions.

abandoned Lady Anne in super-contrast greyscale
These were both done using a technique discussed back on another holiday, yet what probably would have worked better would have been trees (or some horizon element) behind the roof of the wheelhouse instead of open sky. But that’s something for painters to chase – photographers can only take what’s there. Mostly.

It’s autumn, right? So it’s time for some autumn, um, monochrome…

oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia leaves in autumn colors, without the colors
Okay, definitely barking up the wrong tree here (because this is not even a tree,) but this is the season for foliage colors, and the original was a fine example, so what am I doing converting this to greyscale? If we could answer that, it all might click into place. Doubtful, of course, quite a long shot actually, but the possibility exists.

Still, the contrast between the colors came out nicely. I forget what I did for this one (it was a while ago,) but it’s likely just the red channel.

Yet another, from deep in the mists of time.

morning dew in spiderwebs, extreme closeup greyscale
Let’s face it: this one looks good in both color and greyscale, and would look good no matter what I did to it – it’s that badass. I’d buy a giant print of this myself, if I wasn’t the one that had taken it. That it hasn’t produced my fortune yet is just evidence that too many people aren’t very bright, but then, we already knew that.

[Did you like that subtle little manipulation? I pretty much said, “Only stupid people wouldn’t buy this.” That’s slick marketing, that is.]

Finally, we return to the green treefrogs, because damn I shot a lot of them this year (good eatin’ through the hard winter months.)

green treefrog Hyla cinerea in mixed channel greyscale
Referring back to the original, you can see that the birdbath was a bright blue, which definitely begged for the channel-clipping treatment, but when examined, the blue channel was actually overwhelming, rendering the frog too dark while the birdbath was almost solid white. So I kept the green channel too, and adjusted the opacity of that to blend them together (like the first frog at top,) until I got the contrast that I wanted. Without seeing the original, it’d be easy to believe the birdbath was white and this affected the exposure to darken the frog, but no, we’re only talking crass editing tricks here. But if it works, it works, and I’m not going to claim this is Kodak Tri-X or anything – hey, I own up to my editing efforts.

Ah, what the hell

Al Denelsbeck

I know we just did some moon stuff a few days back, and we also just had (or are about to have, if I finish this post before the other hits its schedule) a lot of B&W images, but I liked this clip and had to share.

After playing around a bit, I angled the camera to align with the diagonal direction of travel for the moon, aiming slightly above it to let it come into the frame; it was definitely more dramatic with the terminator leading and the details slowly coming into view. Yeah, I know it’s not quite centered – you try to perfectly line up something traveling diagonally by shifting the camera ahead of it while it’s tilted at a matching angle.

Again, this is real time, the amount that the moon actually travels across the sky (or the Earth rotates, blah blah.) I did several clips, and this was the last, coming up pretty clear. But I have others in the middle that showed a noticeable amount of scintillation which caused the details, especially along the terminator, to ripple. While this is caused by atmospherics, air densities and movement and all that, I don’t know why they changed so significantly, back and forth, in the half hour or so that I was out. Yet this also shows that, unless conditions are optimal, a long exposure of a dimmer subject (everything else in the sky, really,) would easily be blurred by these changes, no matter how stable and sharp the rig, no matter how accurate the tracking system.

I’m gradually getting closer to doing some real telescope stuff, and expect to have some results this winter. We’ll just have to see what transpires.

Closer and closer, inexorably

Al Denelsbeck

swing against fall colors
“Inexorably.” I don’t use that word often enough…

Anyway, the autumn colors are advancing, day by day, and I spent just a little time over at the nearby pond to chase some of them. They’re still a bit patchy, and will likely remain that way, as the earlier trees turn and drop all of their leaves, then later trees do the same, and so on. Actually, I was on the interstate briefly today, and stretches of that had the best colors that I’ve seen anywhere, but I’m not going to make much of a scenic landscape shot from the interstate. Maybe something for a country & western album…

Canada geese Branta canadensis through gap of autumn color
The Canada geese (Branta canadensis) had been fairly thin around the pond for a while, largely disappearing after a brood had been raised, but are back in large numbers now, likely some flocks on their migration south rather than semi-permanent residents. I have too many photos of Canadas, but they served here to add something to the varied colors. The American sweetgum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua) are probably the most dependable color producers in the immediate area, and should be peaking soon.

I don’t even know the species responsible for the next, but who’s asking anyway?

mix of fall colors
The blend of color worked well with the dark lines of the trunks, and I think I happened to be there at the right time for the backlighting to make the most of it. I know that, right down at the bottom, there are the ‘knees’ of a bald cypress that remains out of the frame, a tree that turns a really nice burnt-orange color at this time of year, but none of the ones near the pond provide a decent perspective. Maybe I have to poke around town and see if I can find any others, before they go bald.

I would be remiss if I did not feature The Girlfriend’s trumpet flowers.

blooming trumpet flowers Brugmansia
Abruptly, at about the time we expected it to be going dormant, the trumpet flower tree (genus Brugmansia) burst forth with a load of buds, and they bloomed out over a period of several days right at the end of last month. They weathered the edges of yet another tropical storm that passed through (being pierced countless times by falling pine needles, another reason why I hate those trees,) and got browned a bit by overnight temperatures that dropped remarkably far for a few nights – and yet, there is another bunch of new buds as I type this.

trumpet flower Brugmansia alongside garden mobile
I eventually moved the pot away from the pine, which also helped with backgrounds slightly, but there’s no really good shooting angle to keep distractions from the background, so I figured I might as well make the distractions pleasant – that’s The Girlfriend’s wind mobile back there.

Of course, another update on the green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea,) because why stop now?

green treefrog Hyla cinerea perched on lemongrass Cymbopogon
With the lower temperatures, I figured these guys had all packed it in for the winter, finding someplace to bury themselves until spring, but this afternoon I found this half-size juvenile perched on the lemongrass plant (Cymbopogon) right by the front door, only a meter or so away from the spot on the Japanese maple where I’d found the sneaky one. Same one? Maybe, but not half as accomplished at hiding this time – probably actually wanted the attention. And I walked right into it – I’m such a tool sometimes.

Just so you know

Al Denelsbeck

A couple of years ago, I used this valuable space to opine about acting as (as in, pretending to be) an auto mechanic; now, I presently feel the need to express similar feelings about working on computers.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I work on computers all of the time, when you define it as, “engaging in tasks that are facilitated or necessitated by a computer,” and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. This blog, of course, is almost entirely computer-driven, and so is the website itself. While the photography takes place outdoors and without any internet connection, it is inextricably linked to computers. And every job that I’ve held since, oh, 1991 has involved them in one form or another, usually to quite a large extent. No, I mean working on computers, the physical assembly and behind-the-scenes formatting that many people have performed for them by young people in blue polo shirts, the encompassing term of “fix my computer” – when, of course, they don’t simply buy a new one instead. I’ve never dealt with blue polos, and I don’t “fix” things by buying another – I just end up doing it myself.

The circumstance that provoked this particular rant is replacing a pair of harddrives in my workhorse, due not to any kind of failure, but dwindling space instead (see above about photography.) I picked up a pair some weeks back, and finally took the time to sit down and begin the surprisingly-long process of installing them. Actually, that bit isn’t long at all, even taking into account the formatting and partitioning. The long and troublesome bits are the prep work ahead of time, backing up existing drives and ensuring that unwanted and unneeded stuff has vacated, and then the transfer of all that info onto the new drives, accurately and completely. Add in that one of the drives was completely unrecognized initially, leading me to believe that it was corrupt, but that was because I examined it on a Windows computer which was incapable of interpreting the format; Linux’s GParted discovered it (and subsequently changed it) just ducky.

Notable in here is that I’m running a dual boot system, able to load both Linux (Mint) and Windows 10, unavoidably because there are still some things that I need Windows for. But this means that both systems must be preserved, and all harddrives must be usable by both – and that I needed to backup two systems. Did you know that, as a part of Windows backup services when it asks if you want to “create a disk image,” it means, “copy the entire fucking harddrive”? Yeah, I spent a few hours and frequent crashes finding that out.

More distinctly, somewhere in there Linux got some schmutz added into directories, dog knows how, which prevented me from altering any files since there “wasn’t enough space on the harddrive.” I knew exactly how much space was available (more than enough,) but for reasons yet to be determined, these programs supposedly needed space within the boot partition, which shouldn’t have been altered and definitely wasn’t necessary for saving a fucking thing. Did you know that, when LibreOffice (the Linux version of MS Office) cannot save a document, it leaves a temporary version of it sitting on your drive which perpetually prevents you from saving it even after you fixed the issue, until the goddamn fake copies are found and removed? Discovering these things takes time, and we won’t even talk about frustration.

[As an aside, while I find Linux overall to be much smoother and more stable than Windows, it is nowhere near ready to replace it, and in far too many cases it suffers from coder elitism, requiring lots of stupid text commands, a la ancient and decrepit MS-DOS, to perform simple functions that really should have been incorporated into the Graphical User Interface. What a lot of programmers don’t realize is that GUIs are not intended as sops to inept users, even when they often get used that way, but to prevent having to retype endless commands that could instead be activated with a fucking mouse click. I’m not viewing, sorting, or editing photos through a text interface, and really don’t want to keep opening one up every time there’s some trivial issue that probably shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.]

Anyway, I’m not actually done with this yet, and while this is all going on, I’m not engaging in other computer activities like writing posts or editing photos, which is simply asking for data losses. More will be along in a bit (Ha! Computer joke!), but for the time being it may be a little slow here. If you like, I’ll record audio of my efforts just to amuse anyone interested in creative cursing…

On this date 45

Al Denelsbeck

fruit fly Drosophila <img loading=
Back in 2012, there were just two subjects that I shot on this date, but I shot a lot of frames of them, reason being, I was after the tiny details. One was the molted exoskeleton of some kind of grasshopper, and the other was this: a species of fruit fly (genus Drosophila) with curiously dark eyes. Typically they’re red or red-gold, but fruit flies are known for their visible mutations, especially in the eyes, which is one of the reasons they’re studied in genetics so much, and I was documenting this one because I wasn’t sure that I had a mutated specimen. Actually, genetic mutations occur fairly frequently in most species – humans are said to average between 60 and 100 per individual – but most don’t have any effect, and even less so visibly; there’s a lot of ‘junk’ DNA that no longer does anything, and mutations in that don’t either, for the most part.

Fruit flies are tiny, so holding one in position for photos takes more than tweezers, and what you see here is the tip of a wooden toothpick with a tiny blob of petroleum jelly on it, to which the fruit fly is adhering; yes, it’s tiny, and yes, it’s dead. Ah ha, you looked at a dead thing!

Moving on to the next year (that would be 2013.)

pampas grass blossoms against sky
At the old place, a rental, we had two kinds of pampas grass in the yard, and they bloomed very differently in the fall. This one was fluffier, and I simply framed it against the richly-colored sky.

pampas grass blooms against almost-matching cirrus cloudsIn fact, I’ve had this fartsy composition hanging around in the blog folder for years, thinking that I’ll put it up sometime, so now’s the time. This is the other kind, in fact shot two weeks and one day after the one above (so ineligible for an OTD post.) Yes, I used the cirrus clouds in the background that way on purpose, almost giving an impression of windblown seeds or trailing smoke. That’s creativity, that is.

I’ve got more space to use alongside this one, so I’ll digress. We no longer have the pampas grass, and I don’t exactly miss it. It didn’t look bad when fully grown, and provided enough photographic subjects, both by itself and by habitat for other things, but the maintenance was a bear. Each fall or winter it would have to be cut down to stubs, not particularly hard (any old saw would whip through it,) but the patches were thick, getting up to four meters in height, and the mass of vegetation to be hauled away measured three or four tarploads, dragged to the back and tossed over the fence into a mulch area. But pampas grass leaves are a bit serrated and sharp, so gloves and a heavy shirt or jacket were necessary. Then the stubs had to be burned off to promote the next year’s growth, and I know one year, I experimented and simply set fire to one of the patches of standing plants, throttling it back with a garden hose as needed. Easier, but just as time-consuming and a bit more dangerous. Overall, pampas grass isn’t worth the effort.

On to 2014.

autumn leaves in still pool
I shot a lot of images on this day too, all during an outing to find fall colors, but really, not very many of them were compelling at all, and I may just go through and toss a lot of what I’d previously kept. The colors were weak – not because of the camera or anything, but because of the overcast lighting and the poor development of the autumn that year; usually that means a late summer/early fall drought. I did what I could, but this is about the limit of the palette available that day. Whoop de doo.

And that’s it, really – November 4th wasn’t too productive in my shooting history. Next week should be better – I’ve got six different years to work with.

Wait, we’re one short!

Al Denelsbeck

red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus on dead trunks against blue-grey sky
I had said earlier that, after an auspicious start, I thought I could do a post for every day of October, and had intended to post this one yesterday, so the month end abstract would bring us up to the full 31 posts this morning. Alas, the day at work yesterday was horrendous, running quite late, and I was exhausted and actually in pain when I got home late yesterday afternoon, so we simply grabbed something to eat at a deli and I crashed immediately afterward, waking up early this morning after the month’s-end had already posted. But you know what? It’s a blog, and I’ll get to it when I get to it, because that’s life, not to mention that I already maintain a pretty good schedule, and that the number of photos uploaded during October set a new record, which also holds true for the year (actually, blown it out of the water and shot remaining bits of it out of the air like skeet targets,) and with this post I get back into my schedule anyway. So I’m not going to feel guilty about it at all – I can own this like a man.

Funny, today is also a holiday (well, two, but who celebrates the other anymore?): it’s Get Unnecessarily Defensive Day, though that’s not really my style; it’s a holiday that celebrates and encourages insecurity, isn’t it? And if there’s one thing that I’m not, it’s insecure. Nonetheless, I put it out there in case anyone else, you know, wants to get annoying over trivialities. Not that I’m looking down on anyone – that’s not my style either. It’s just the way I was raised. Plus I’m a guy.

Getting back to the normal (well, regular) subject matter, we have the last photos (probably, anyway) from a recent outing to the Eno River, starting with the opening image of a distant red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) that greeted us as we entered the walking trails. Metaphorically speaking, anyway – it really wasn’t paying us any attention.

One other woodpecker presented itself (again, metaphorically,) in typical conditions for the species, which can be described as “less than ideal.”

female downy woodpecker Dryobates pubescens on shadowed side of tree
female downy woodpecker Dryobates pubescens failing to hold still enoughWhile downy woodpeckers (Dryobates pubescens) tend to be within better reach for photography, working on lower trunks often enough, they also avoid the sunlit portions and will even move to the opposite side once you start to get too close, so good angles still take some effort (and I’ve done better earlier in the month, so I’m not going to fret too much about these.) Then of course, there’s their movement, which is near-constant for the species, and a tripod or lens-stabilization does nothing at all for combating that. Sure, boost the ISO to get better shutter speeds, and watch the shadowy settings turn into pure noise.

Or you could always carry a pocketful of grubs and wood-boring beetles, and use those to lure the woodpeckers into better lighting conditions. Hey, don’t call yourself a dedicated nature photographer unless you’re willing to go the lengths. Just remember they’re there before you go digging for change at the convenience store…

We’ll do this in thematic chunks, and so next up is water.

ripples around rocks showing faint iridescence
This one was in the running for the month-end abstract, and I guess still made it. I was just doing the ripple patterns, and happened to catch some iridescence or refraction in there, not something that I noticed at the time, so whether this was an artifact of the moving water or a reflection of sundogs in the clouds, I can’t say. But you did notice the creepy little hand reaching in up there, right? Gotta recognize both holidays.

water splashing over spillway and underlying mosses
We stopped briefly alongside the spillway and chased a few compositions. For my part, I was playing around with shutter speed and seeing to what extent the lens stabilization (this is the Canon 18-135 STM) would compensate for handheld shots, since I hadn’t brought a tripod. At this point, it was early and the morning drizzle was just clearing, so light overcast conditions, which helped reduce the light and allow for longer shutter speeds, though this is still only 1/40 second, f16, ISO 250. Not enough for a really cottony look to the water, but in direct sunlight, even thinner sunlight, it’s very difficult to stretch the shutter speed long enough without, say, neutral density filters. For an experiment, I’m fine with it, but with a little preparation (e.g., the intention of doing such before I left home,) it could easily have been better. If it clears enough tonight (it’s mostly cloudy right now, early morning,) perhaps I’ll find some nearby ripples or cascades and do a moonlight attempt with the full moon.

Ah, wait, we have a stray fall color shot.

stark trunk with a smidgen of autumn color
The branches seeming to favor the sunlit side meant the trunk itself could stand out distinctly, and I liked the suggestion of a lightning bolt against the reds (about the only tree to show this color yet,) so there we go. My effort, naturally, was to get underneath and frame it stretching diagonally to make the most of the shapes and color. Hopefully I can get some more just a wee bit later in the season.

But enough lollygagging. It’s time for the arthropods.

unidentified grasshopper still drowsy from morning chill
This unidentified grasshopper wasn’t moving at all, still chilly from the overnight temperatures, but was positioned to make the most of the emerging sun – provided a bird didn’t find it first. The grasshopper, I mean, not the sun. The sun usually isn’t too hard to locate; just look around in the sky until it hurts the most.

unidentified wolf spider Lycosidae wandering through undergrowth
Very close by, an unidentified wolf spider (genus Lycosidae) was showing opposing animus by wandering enthusiastically through the weeds, not at all affected by the temperature (which at that time was somewhere around 15° C, I would say.) Spiders are very cold hardy, so it was probably balmy conditions to this guy, and it paused just long enough for a single frame before moving on.

We located two Carolina mantises (Stagmomantis carolina,) the later-developing of the two common mantid species in the area, and slightly surprising to me since I figured the season was about over for them.

pregnant female Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina perched conspicuously on orange leaf
This one was doing a really shitty job of blending in, like a teenage tourist, and was obviously about to produce an egg sac somewhere. Not on that leaf – they’re a little brighter than that. Or their instincts direct them to better supports – however you prefer to view it. While we can’t attribute to them a plethora of reasoning powers, they still get by just fine, and they’re not stupid enough to fret about politics or sporting events, so…

That was on the outbound leg, while on the return trip we spotted another, not too far from where the first was but I’m almost certain a different specimen.

pregant female Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina posing for portrait
This time, I went for the Mamiya macro, but was shooting wide open (f4) and so depth was extremely short. Not a recommended practice, because precise focus is very difficult and the short depth eliminates all other details, but occasionally it works; in this case at least, it delineated the dark edges of the head against the background. But yeah, it would have worked better with at least a little more depth.

I’m going to throw in a short video clip here, because I could see this effect while standing there and had to capture it.

Handheld, of course, with the Mamiya macro, and focus was just slightly off, but you can still see the interference effect as the breeze blew the web strands. I’m not exactly sure what caused this, and would have put it down to the patterns of the close web strands clashing with the patterns of the sensor pixels – except that it was visible to the naked eye, so I’m leaning towards the waves of light actually overlapping, but this is a wild guess and should not be used during exams; if you can explain this better, please jump in. Credit to the backlighting and having a dark trunk to highlight this against.

And finally, more recognition of the other holiday today.

marbled orbweaver Araneus marmoreus working on web in early morning
This is a pumpkin spice spider, what they grind up to flavor all of those seasonal concoctions, so how this one escaped that fate, in a college town, I’ll never know.

Okay, I lie, it’s a marbled orb weaver (Araneus marmoreus) and common in the fall, plus not too small in size either – “marble” is close to an accurate comparison. This one was industriously spinning or fixing her web (the pedipalps indicate this is a female) before settling in to her hiding spot up at the topmost web anchor, possibly because we were so close; I had to step carefully through the bracken to reach this angle, and got just one useful image of her eyes. Which of course I’m sharing, because I’m me.

And that makes 31 posts for October, coming in before 6 AM too, so I’ve fulfilled my obligation and can now, um, dissolve into dust, or sail off into the sunsetrise, or something. Whatever, I’m good. Happy Halloween!

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