Too cool, part 38: “All Hallows Read”

Al Denelsbeck

First off, I’m a little behind where I want to be in posting, but that’s because of the exhibit that I was trying to finish and it’s done now (if that ‘sticky’ post up there isn’t enough of a clue.) So this is a follow-up post to Halloween, and a practice that we were alerted to by Jenny Lawson over at The Bloggess (and you should definitely check out her books.)

The practice is All Hallows Read, and it’s pretty simple: offer scary books for Halloween. Not instead of candy, unless you really want to, but in addition to. We found out about this in time last year and managed to procure a small selection of books by Halloween, mostly through secondhand book sources. Having more time to prepare this year, we had a larger selection, which was good, because we had more kids this year. And they all took a book, and all of them seemed absolutely delighted. So were the parents. The best, I think, was the little preschool-age girl last year that hesitantly took her book, but on the way back down the walk her dad (I’m assuming) offered to hold the book for her so she could handle her candy bucket better; she adamantly refused to relinquish it.

Last year The Girlfriend’s Sprog noticed that kids were simply taking the first book she held out, apparently unwilling to make a selection, so this year we put a small bookcase out on the front walk and arranged what we had roughly by age range, letting the kids pick – this definitely seemed to work better. We did, of course, help them choose, or pick out a small selection for the parents with infants and toddlers in tow (well, in stroll I guess, or in push or whatever the hell.) And we got to hear from someone who had visited last year who was absolutely delighted at the idea, so here’s hoping that it’s going to get established a bit better.

It’s funny; I don’t get the impression that kids need to be encouraged to read, because they seem to do it just fine, given the opportunity. It just doesn’t occur to them to say, “Hey, can we go to the bookstore/library?” mostly because few kids know how to pronounce “/”. But with books in front of them, they’re generally pretty good about picking something that they’ll like. I can’t speak as a parent because I’m not, and the very thought is horrifying to be honest, but I’ll still suggest that the parental duty, or our adult responsibility if you will, is to ensure that the option is there without prompting from the kids. Set aside some time every month to hit the bookstore and let them browse, or the library. Pick out a few and pay attention to what strikes the child’s fancy. And let them see you doing it. Schools are, all too often, more willing to turn reading into a chore rather than entertainment or interest, so don’t leave it up to them.

And don’t be too guided by ‘suggested age’ ranges or reading levels or any of that horseshit – I’m sincerely glad that I wasn’t (though it occurs to me that using myself as an example might not be the best of moves.) Hey, I’m sitting here in my mid-fifties and reading stuff intended for 65 and up, which I’m pretty proud of…

Now through December at least…

Al Denelsbeck

I presently have a public exhibit of my images at the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau at 501 West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to run for an indeterminate time but probably through December at least. You are welcome and invited to stop by during any open hours (M-F 8:30-5, Sat 10-3,) but I should be present for the 2nd Friday Art Walk on Friday, January 11th from 6-9 PM. Come on by and say “Hi,” tell me my work sucks, whatever you like. This is my first serious exhibit of more than a few pieces (reduced, now down to 32) with a pretty good variety and public appeal, at least if I’m any judge, but we all know how that goes…

Per the ancient lore, part 34

Al Denelsbeck

Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus hunting among finger mullet anchovies minnows
This week we’re back to the Lakes/Streams/Waterfalls folders, about to be renamed Lakes/Streams/Waterfalls/Lagoons/Inland Sounds – okay, probably not, though for accuracy’s sake it should, because this once again is from the Indian River Lagoon which is more technically a sound. As a thumbnail it doesn’t do too well, and I tend to blow past it in the folder looking for items that catch my eye better, but when I looked at it close I suddenly remembered that fateful day fourteen years ago, and what was happening.

Well, not fateful for me, but likely fateful for somebody. For me it was just another day kicking around in Florida chasing those things that I generally only see in Florida. This is cropped a bit tighter than the original, which may draw more attention to the main subject now, but what I was after was not the minnows (anchovies, finger mullet, whatever,) but the guy on the bottom, waving his pincers desperately as the school wavered past overhead. That’s an Atlantic blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) down there, and as I’ve said before they’re the most aggressive crab species that I’ve encountered, always ready to put their pincers to good use rather than slinking away or seeking cover. And in this case, it was eagerly trying to catch one of those minnows as they temptingly passed just out of reach. This would, of course, have been much better on video, and the camera did have that capability, but I either didn’t think of it in time (I’m by nature a still photographer,) or the behavior stopped once I’d switched modes.

Here’s an enhanced version, boosting contrast to combat the reduction that the water caused, and tweaking the green tinge away towards more of a color that reflected the occupants than the water itself.

enhanced Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus hunting among finger mullet anchovies minnows

Perhaps the first of the last

Al Denelsbeck

tiny mushrooms erupting from trunk
Given that October 31st is now twice as long, I actually have more time to post the end-of-the-month abstract, and so I might be back later on today to feature something else. But this is what I’m offering right now.

The image above came from my recent trip to Ohio, in a small park that constituted a brief indulgence of my propensities, which means I didn’t do much shooting while there, and even less of my normal subject matter – disturbingly, I shot more photos at a halftime show for some sport, it might have been chess, but those were of my hosts’ sprog and anyway we left before the second half or third trimester or whatever the hell it’s called. I did indeed travel with one of my macro lenses, the Mamiya 80mm, but did not take along a flash unit (airlines, you know,) so I was shooting handheld in natural light, which was pretty crummy overall. And in my defense, I will say that these mushrooms were tiny, barely discernible as bright specks on the trunk at ‘normal’ viewing distance, so they’re magnified quite a bit (more so because this image is cropped.) They really deserved to be tackled more seriously, but not with the rig that I had at the time.

More photos from that trip will be along shortly, but for now (and because I’m feeling a little guilty about the shot above,) I’ll throw in another from earlier this month, from right after I had repaired the Canon 17-85 IS USM and was out doing test frames. As tests go this isn’t really a good example, because I’d repaired the aperture so the goal would be to see if it worked at, like, f16 and not wide open as seen here (and it did,) but the shot looked a lot better wide open so I’m featuring that one. Don’t ask me what these are, they’re just orange berries along the nearby pond. I probably should work on my fartistic blather more…

unidentified little orange berries

Just in time!

Al Denelsbeck

I know, you’ve been watching all month to see what the holiday for October would be, but what could I do? This is the day it was set for. But you may be glad you waited, because October 31st is (among other things, apparently,) International I Need Some More Time Day, the day when we’re permitted to catch up on everything that’s been getting behind. To that end, today is actually 48 hours long – to all celebrants, November 1st does not start until, you know, November 2nd to the outside world. Yes, we’ve gained an extra day in the calendar, kinda – not really, because there’s still 365.2422 days in a year, but one of them is now twice as long.

It sounds like it could cause a lot of confusion, but really, the date is just a matter of semantics, isn’t it? We’re the only living species (well, except for blue-footed boobies) that appends an actual title to any given daylight period, or rotation of the Earth, or whatever you want to call it, so we can change it at will. Hell, there are periods in our past history when months and even years just disappeared because someone wanted to clean things up – no, not in the erasing history sense, but in the, “Dammit, this calendar keeps getting all fershlugina,” way.

If, for instance, some supervisor at work or professor at school starts giving you grief over this, claiming that “it’s not actually a holiday” or something whiney like that, first off, point them right to this post – that should be all the authority you need. But you can also remind them that they’re stupid enough to do this whole ‘Daylight Saving’ clock-switching horseshit, so how is this More Time Day any worse? And just think about how much it’ll help with deadlines and tight schedules. Seriously, we’ve needed this holiday for a while.

So, go ahead and check out two sunrises for today. Put off that mortgage payment for another 24 hours. Get your homework done and finish that TV series you have on videotape (people still do that, right?) When someone says, “You never fed the dog today,” remind them, “The day ain’t over yet.” Sit back and gawk at Miss October just a bit longer. We’ve earned it.

Per the ancient lore, part 33

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified snail snoozing on water reed[Yawn] Yeah, sorry, we’re back in the Invertebrates folder again, which certainly got off to a slow start; even now, I don’t add a lot to it, but back then I could go a couple of years without getting any photos of a snail or slug (which might have been a good thing, considering what I get up to now.) And so, this one was taken with my first actual digital camera, the Canon Pro90 IS, one of many such offerings that were soon surpassed by models appearing only a couple of years later – obsolescence can occur quickly in the digital camera realm. I took plenty of photos with that rig before I got my first DSLR body, but I was still concentrating on film for the quality shots at that time.

I was at a loss as to where this was taken for a bit, until I did a little poking around in the other folders for images with the same date, which soon reminded me: this was at River Road Park in Wilmington, NC, right alongside the Cape Fear River, and taken in 2006. Overnight, the snails would forage along the banks and water reeds, but as daylight arrived they would occasionally just hole up right where they were. Near as I can tell, they attach themselves to such perches with a variant of the mucus that they exude to facilitate their movement, in this case something that dries into a kind of glue; it might be the same stuff that they will seal the opening with to keep the moisture in, which I’ll feature here at some point later on. Are they sleeping when this occurs? Couldn’t begin to tell you – I don’t know if snails actually sleep, but what else they gonna do? Play video games? Update their blogs?

Obviously, I had to get down pretty low for this shot – or at least, the camera did. Since the Pro90 IS had an articulated LCD screen, I could hold the camera at wild angles and still frame the shot with the screen aimed conveniently, while not having to grovel in the mud and sand quite so much – something that I can’t do right now with any of the DSLR bodies that I use. I never recommend using the LCD screen for framing a shot, because it usually means holding the camera in an unsteady manner that can lead to camera shake and blurred shots, but there are times when it’s useful, especially if you remain aware of the downsides. Here, it permitted me to take advantage of the blue sky and the light angle that brought out the texture of the shell – not high art, but could have been much more boring, you know?

Just because, part 27

Al Denelsbeck

Meerkitten yawning in infra-red
I came across this one while trying to find some other frames for a particular post, and decided to feature it for giggles. I have a Personal/Miscellaneous folder that mostly holds photos of family and friends and so on – in other words, not stock images that are available for publication (which is why it doesn’t feature in the Ancient Lore lineup.) I don’t go into it often, but usually when I do I get at least a little reminiscing out of it.

This was from Florida, and taken with the infrared function of the Sony F-717 while just fiddling around one evening with the lights off. This is Meerkitten, one of the semi-feral shelter rescues that became mine for fourteen years, and one of the smarter cats I’ve known with a lot of personality to boot. She earned her name from her ability to stand effortlessly on her hind legs in order to see something better, and because “meer” was the noise she always made. Obviously I caught her here in mid-yawn.

I love the effect that the infra-red light had on the lens sitting beside her though, my old Vivitar 75-260mm for the Olympus cameras – at the time I was normally shooting with the Canon Elan IIe, my first ‘serious’ film camera, but I did a lot of experimental and B&W photography with the Olympus rig. The color difference you see on the lens came from the different materials: the rubber focus and zoom rings are dark, while the anodized aluminum lens barrel came out, for reasons unknown, much brighter, even though they were identical shades in visible light. In front of that sits a ribbed tube which had been an old metal broom handle before it was repurposed into a camera adapter for a telescope, glimpsed here (the yellow bit). You can’t make it out in the photo above, but it’s attached to a rear lens cap that allowed the Olympus camera to be used with the scope.

And if you look very closely, you can see the string of saliva that join her upper and lower canines on one side. Bet you really wanted that detail pointed out.

And there’s the handoff

Al Denelsbeck

juvenile northern water snake Nerodia sipedon basking while approaching molt
Oh, look – another insipid sports metaphor. We can’t really escape them, can we? But I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I don’t know what it means or what sport it’s from. I think it’s jai alai…

Anyway, this is a photo from a recent outing with the Tardy Mr Bugg, who’s supposed to provide the entire story, so I’m encouraging you to click on his link and find it. I would link directly to the post itself, except that he hasn’t posted it yet as I write this, so this is only to his main blog – I’ll correct it when he finally puts the post up.

While waiting, you can bask in the warm glow of my voice (well, you know, compared to certain others, anyway) with the podcast that I just added, below. We’re entering the slow season, and this is a reflection of it, but also hopefully a source of further news within the next two months. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?

Podcast: And more projects

Al Denelsbeck

As the nature photography shooting season winds down, we start looking for other things to occupy our time. I already have a podcast about winter activities and projects, so check that out, but this one is about what I’ve got planned, or am smack in the middle of.

Walkabout podcast – And more projects

A curious note: One of the projects that I mentioned in there was a focusing lever for lenses, for video work. As I was editing the audio after recording, I realized that this might be more common than I originally thought, and once I finished, took a look on Ebay. Sure enough, they make them, and I went ahead and ordered two on the spot. And then uploaded the podcast file. Which means that I struck one item off the list before I even told you about it. That’s efficiency.

The post with the cicada molting. Since the photos have time stamps, it demonstrates just how much time can be spent trying to illustrate one topic, and that’s with being there exactly as things started. Finding a subject and waiting for something interesting, much less catching the crucial action on video, is an entirely different matter, so this may be quite challenging. I’m not counting on producing a lot of video clips.

The video that came about also entirely by chance (the ‘bumping sluglies’ clip.) Again, imagine if I tried to stalk these gastropods in the hopes of seeing this occur.

I mentioned a spider shot that required a tough shooting position, and that can be found with this post. You may disagree with me on the value of these efforts…

So, a little something about major trips that I meant to mention in the podcast and forgot. First off, when intending to go someplace totally unfamiliar, especially out into forested or overgrown regions where natural subjects are best found, it’s vitally important to know what can be found there – most especially, what’s dangerous. This applies not just to things like venomous snakes, but also what kind of plants to avoid and even what form of parasites are common; vaccinations might even be in order. On top of that, knowing as much about your subjects as possible will greatly increase your odds of actually locating them, as well as capturing something interesting. What’s their habitat? When is their mating or nesting season? When do the primary food sources grow/arrive/migrate? This means research, and a lot of it, so it’s never too early to start.

And even though the funds for such a trip might be a while in coming, the planning itself can be encouraging, plus you might have an edge on bargain rates for flights or accommodations, and you’re ready should a sudden windfall occur in your financial situation (like, you know, someone deciding to help fund a trip by purchasing a lot of prints.) So mentally change it from, “sometime in the future,” to, “let’s get this all hashed out now.” It can’t hurt.

And below, one of the images that will be in the upcoming exhibit. Not too creepy, right? I think I can get away with this one, a nice balance of bug and fart. At least to me, but what do I know?

newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis on calla lily blossom

Per the ancient lore, part 32

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified waders in shallows of Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge
This week, we’re doing Birds, and have what is probably the most birds that I have captured in any single photo. Granted, it’s not a murmuration of starlings, which can number several thousand in a huge cloudlike flock, but it’s still an appreciable number, you have to admit. This is in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, somewhere off of Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, and I couldn’t tell you for sure what these birds are. There appears to be at least two species, and I’d lean towards willets and sanderlings, given how common they are and their feeding habits which would point them towards conditions like this, but that’s just a semi-educated guess. Also notable is how much of the water remains, consistently, just a few centimeters deep. I would hazard a guess that, had I attempted to wade out there myself, I’d get more than just my sandals wet, and would probably even leave them behind; most of the region is swampy, boggy, or deep mud, and though it supports a bird’s weight readily, I would likely have sunk in at least to my knees.

The color, for some reason, isn’t very impressive, as bad as some negative films that I’ve tried, and what you’re seeing here has been tweaked to improve it a bit – the original was worse. This is still with the Sony F717, which sensor definitely had a better color register than the Canon Pro90 IS that I later obtained, yet it didn’t measure up to the later Canon DSLR bodies – which themselves have their own weaknesses, especially in skin tones. Looking at the EXIF info just now, I see the White Balance was set to ‘Auto,’ which may have had a lot to do with it given the frame-filling blues and greens – I should have had it set to Full Sunlight.

inset of previous frame
Here’s a peek at a higher-resolution inset in an attempt to identify the bird species – still not enough. That long beak in the front says ‘willet’ or perhaps ‘limpkin’ to me, but there aren’t enough details to pin it down. But yeah, they had to have been finding plenty of food in there. This was on the west side of Merritt Island, with ocean inlets a fair distance off and not terribly big, so I have no idea how much tidal change might occur, but I suspect it was minimal – I’m guessing the rain had more to do with depth fluctuations. And if I remember right, the whole complex contained a variety of fresh, brackish, and salt water pools depending on where you were, so it’s anyone’s guess what this was (or, you can ask someone who actually knows and doesn’t have to guess.)

I would definitely recommend Merritt Island to any nature photographers, despite the photo here – it has plenty of opportunities for wildlife shots, including this one (shot the same day.)

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