A precursor, perhaps

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified mushrooms on bank of Eno River
In the back of my mind for a while now, I’ve had plans to show a bit more of the macro photography process, specifically some of the shooting angles and odd efforts to get the right shot, as well as a little more on the equipment. What this will require is someone else to do most of the shots, since I would be the model/demonstrator, as well as the right conditions to do this within – in other words, good examples of the demands rather than just, like, a spider in a web at eye level. So far, this hasn’t come to pass, but I haven’t given up on it. In the meantime, spurred by this Ancient Lore post, I present a faint inkling.

The reason that post provoked this one was solely because they occurred on the exact same day, and I knew I had the necessary images – where exactly, in my overburdened harddrives, remained to be seen, but eventually I came across them. I don’t find the image at top to be anything exciting, but it happened that the outing was with Jim Kramer – yes, the Jim Kramer – and he fired off a couple of frames while I was taking that one.

the author trying for an interesting view, by James L. Kramer
Once again, I was using Jim’s Sony F828, the follow-up model to the F717 that I used for a while in Florida about six months prior, while Jim was using his new Canon 10D – you can actually see the exact same frame as above captured in the LCD. The F828 had a pivoting back, which allowed it to be viewed from angles other than directly in line with the lens, which I took advantage of here; this is not an option with my current lineup of cameras, so the same image would have taken a different shooting position.

Now note the water appearing above my head, and the water and the slope in the original photo at top. Jim was shooting almost straight down for his image, while I was propped on a significant slope just above the waterline – it’s possible my other (not visible) foot was braced on a rock at the water’s edge, because it’d be too easy to slip into the water if I wasn’t anchored well. You can also see that the mushrooms appear in a narrow band of moss between the rock and the water, probably unnoticeable unless you’re actively looking for little hidden things (more like frogs, lizards, and snakes in my case, but the mushrooms were colorful and merited the attention when I found them.) To illustrate the methods of pursuing macro shots, Jim’s image could have shown more of the surroundings, but that wasn’t what he was after at the time – I just realized it could be used for this purpose well afterward.

Another photo from the same minute is below, one that I like much better – subtle differences can change the resulting image significantly.

better unidentified mushroom photo

Frustrations, part 13: Unproductivity

Al Denelsbeck

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus feeding from phlox
First off, I have to mention that I have apparently neglected the numbered Frustrations posts; while number 12 was way back when, I actually have 68 posts now in the ‘Frustrations‘ category. This might seem like a lot, but there are over 1,450 posts now, so that’s less than 5%. Still, yeah, I’m a whiny little bitch.

This image isn’t a frustration by itself, but an incidental one because it’s one of the very few that was even worth saving, from an outing not too long ago. While the outing was brief due to a threatening thunderstorm, I was in the NC Botanical Garden, by nature a good place to get photos, and somehow wasn’t on my game (I really need to stop using sports metaphors given how much I detest sports.) Editing the results afterward, I found far too many not passing muster (there: war metaphors, much better.) And since this was one of the few times that I got out recently to dedicate to some shooting, due to weather and schedules and all that, it’s a bit annoying and disappointing not to produce more than I did.

It’s one thing to find too few things to photograph – that, I’m cool with, and on occasion even take it as a challenge to find something that I can make work. No, this time around, I shot an acceptable number of images, but most of them didn’t come up to minimal standards and were discarded. Framing, focus, lighting, whatever – just not cutting it (I have no idea what that metaphor originally meant.) That’s the kind of thing that makes you doubt your skills, at least to some extent. The photographic results, I mean, not the metaphor.

For the most part, I view this as, “Hey, it happens,” but there remains the nagging idea that I should have done a lot better. This may not be a bad thing, since it promotes a drive to improve, which I consider necessary. But yeah, until I come back with a collection of really bankable images, I’m going to mutter and fret a bit.

Just writing this makes me aware of the arbitrary distinctions we make, the lines and categories and all that. For instance, I keep track of the number of images that I upload per month, and per year, and compare them idly – I feel proud when I’ve exceeded some previous sum, but I try not to be motivated by that, because I suspect it can lead to posting crap just to increase the numbers (or, you know, already has.) But at the same time, what does it matter happened between September 1 and September 30? What particular distinction is “a month” or “a year?” How much would it change if I did something like a fiscal year instead, July 1 through June 30? Who cares? The important bit (to me at least – hard to argue that it has any importance in the big picture) is that I get images that I, and hopefully others, think are pretty cool. I don’t need a quota of any kind, even when I’m sure it helps to always keep building up. Maybe this year isn’t going to be “as good” as last year. That’s okay – the future holds promise.

And for anyone that might find themselves in the same frame of mind when it seems that you aren’t performing as you should, it can help a lot to go back through older images and compare the progress and improvements that you’ve made since then. Even the bad images are a learning experience; even the frustrations are motivations to improve. These had an effect on you then, and are still affecting you now.

Per the ancient lore, part 26

Al Denelsbeck

sailboat from Eau Galllie causeway
This week we return to the Science/Miscellaneous folder, and a photo that I almost included with last week’s Ancient Lore post because I mentioned how it might have been interesting to capture a sailboat within that one. The pagination of that post wasn’t conducive to the inclusion, so I let it be, but decided to post it this week because there’s not a hell of a lot in this folder anyway. You have to admit, when you think of sailboats they’re generally not this colorful, so I kinda like this one, but never thought it was strong enough to do anything with.

This is taken from the top of the same causeway as last week, a matter of lucky timing that I happened to be up there when the sailboat came through the channel of the Indian River Lagoon in Florida – yes, we’re still working with the Sony F717 during its brief stay with me. The causeway arced up to allow a solid 20 meters clearance underneath for traffic such as this, but I admit that, when I was bicycling around hill-challenged Florida, climbing the incline that this created was a hard slog, one that defeated me one day, two weeks after a serious illness when I thought I had recovered sufficiently. I have distinct memories of stopping and resting the bike on the shoulder (something that North Carolina seems completely unaware might exist,) and lying down in the pedestrian pathway waiting for the nausea to subside; this was not at all helped by being a blazingly hot day, and I was racking my brain trying to think of a place nearby where I might find some shade that was desperately needed. My mind obviously wasn’t working very well, because the nearest and deepest shade lay at the very end of a effortless and breezy run on the bike, directly underneath the bridge that I was on and precisely where last week’s photo had been taken. I could have turned around, literally coasted down without any pedaling whatsoever (I would have expended more energy in braking down at the bottom,) and popped down the ladder for the coolest and darkest spot within kilometers – Florida is not particularly known for deep shade, especially when the majority of trees are freaking palms.

She wanted her picture takenAnother time in the exact same location, I was looking out over the water for dolphins and manatees and whatever else I might spot from the high vantage – I’d seen some big jellyfish, manta and cownose rays, and even some sea turtles from up there – when one of the occupants of a boat passing beneath spotted the camera in my hands, squealed and waved. I quickly aimed down and fired off a shot, the haste partially evidenced by the lousy framing, but I had a bare second before the boat would have disappeared under the bridge. That she wasn’t really trying to have her picture taken is proved by her embarrassed smile here – I suspect she thought I was slower than that, which tells how out-of-touch she was in not recognizing me and my awesome photographic reputation.

And when I remembered this image and decided to include it, I realized this is one of the collection that was lost when a harddrive failed – or at least, the original was, and all I had was the version reduced to e-mail size (there was a purpose for it, then, but I don’t remember what it was now – old, you know.) While this particular frame isn’t one that I regret losing, always, always maintain backups. I still occasionally discover or remember frames that I wish I still had.

The unwanted and uncalled-for sequel

Al Denelsbeck

This is a follow-up video to a series of still images that I took five years ago, and I realized right as I was finishing the editing that I missed the anniversary date by only a couple of days. I couldn’t have posted on the precise day anyway, because my video account has a weekly limit and I’d exceeded it with the previous offering.

And I probably shouldn’t be posting this anyway. I went out late one night, or early one morning if you like being pedantic, casually looking around with the headlamp, and happened across my subjects here. The behavior wasn’t typical, leading me to believe that something might be about to happen, so I quickly fetched the Canon T2i, video light, and mini-tripod. This took all of five minutes or less, but I missed the opening of Act One. I shot most of the rest in detail, then switched to the second pair of subjects and captured the entire sequence with them – timing was on my side in that regard, since they could have easily started while I was occupied with the first couple.

Why am I being so vague, you ask? Because it’s a lot more fun this way. Without further ado, I present the video to let you find out the hard way what I’m talking about.


The previous experience with exactly this subject can be found here, and I’m quite proud of both the title and the writing therein, which tells you far too much about me. For the record, these are leopard slugs (Limax maximus,) and yes, they’re huge. And very fond of brick too, so it’s paramount that one watches the front steps when going out at night. I have a wicked tendency to go barefoot in the summer, but these humongous bastards have almost broken me of that habit.

I have to note that I did a bit of web searching to try and determine more details about what was captured here, but didn’t turn up a lot. And I was unwilling to delve into it further because, you know, such searches are being saved, cataloged, and examined for “national security” and all that rot – I didn’t want to appear fanatical or anything. Trust me, this is all academic, detached observational kind of thing; I’m not especially motivated to pursue such subjects. No, really. But I’ll admit it’s kinda annoying to have this whole webbernets thing and then feel self-conscious about actually using it. Like, is there a better technical term for that blue thing, even though most sources call it a penis? That seems kind of sexist to me – it should be a vaginis to me, but is there a proper Latin term? And what’re those white blobs being discarded? Probably not condoms, I’m guessing…

Meanwhile, I could have sworn I posted some of these photos back when I took them, but can find no record of it either within the blog or in the published images folders, so I guess we take care of it here.

cluster of invertebrate eggs, likely leopard slug Limax maximus
Back in 2012, before my first experience with bumping sluglies, I found this cluster of eggs underneath a crate in the side yard. At this point of course, no details could be discerned at all, so I couldn’t be sure what they were.

closeup image of developing fetus through transparent eggshell, likely leopard slug Limax maximus
I checked back on them as they were developing, and despite getting really lucky with the lighting, didn’t get enough detail from the fetus to even give an idea of what they were. “Caspar” would be my best guess based on the appearance, but I don’t think ghosts are hatched from eggs – they’re probably live-born. Or dead-born. Whatever.

hatching slugs likely leopard slug Limax maximus
Not much later on, the mystery was solved to a reasonable degree, especially given the size of the eggs and the cluster thereof – there’s probably no other species that could produce the sheer mass. Each individual egg was about 5mm across, if memory serves, which doesn’t seem too significant until you sum up a few dozen; it certainly wasn’t a typical garden slug that weighed about the same as three of the eggs. So I’m pretty comfortable saying that, yes, someplace not far away there will be, if there isn’t already, a cluster or four very similar to these. Should I go looking for them? It’s your call.

But you knew that already

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified swimming/floating beetles, possibly whirligig beetles family GyrinidaeI said that I would reveal what the month-end abstract was, and so I have returned, later than intended but bearing gifts for all (one of which is coming up very soon.) At right is another version of the same subject, taken at the same time but with a much faster shutter speed. In certain small areas of lakes, ponds, and streams, a variety of swimming beetle can be found at times, charcoal grey but shiny, swimming at great speed in elaborate zigzags. These are, most likely, a variety of whirligig beetles, family Gyrinidae, but since I have yet to obtain a closeup image or capture one for better examination, this identification remains tentative. They’re about a centimeter long and half that wide, and virtually always congregate in groups. It’s not the first time that I’ve photographed them either, but I’ve never made the effort to capture one for detail shots, so I may have to rectify that soon.

To produce the abstract, I simply aimed almost straight down at a cluster of them whipping around and dragged the shutter a little, as in, 1/13th second, which was enough to let them blur through the frame – the curious light trails were provided by reflections from the water and possibly their shiny backs. If you go back to that image, you’ll also see some faint curling traces left by sunlight reflecting from other ripples not caused by the beetles. I was wading in the shallows of Jordan Lake for this one, and they darted away only when I got too close, which was a little less than a meter – if I take along a small minnow net I could probably snag one with a couple of tries.

unidentified beetle possibly whirligig beetle family Gyrinidae pausing on water surface
This is probably the best closeup shot that I have of the species, which isn’t saying much, but there are some cooler images to be found here. On that page I speculated that they were Hydrophilidae, but those are diving beetles and tend to be larger, so I’m correcting myself here without even knowing if I’m correct – I’m probably wrong on both counts, and the next six tries as well. Hey, you come here for the photos, not the entomology lessons. Or if you do, well, you’re in trouble…

Per the ancient lore, part 25

Al Denelsbeck

brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis under Eau Gallie Causeway
I know you’ve gotten the pattern down and are keeping track, so I don’t have to tell you what folder this comes from; it’s a mere accident of timing that it coincides with the end of the month, and if I felt like cheating, I’d let this serve double duty, but since I already have a month-end abstract, I’ll keep the post count up.

And we’ve seen this causeway from the top, but now we have to view it from the underside. In fact, if you look carefully at that linked photo, you’ll see a distant sign just left of center in the image, and a break in the guardrails right next to it; that’s the head of the stairs that led down the water level and access to this point underneath. I took up a very careful position down there to line up the repeating patterns of the support columns, and liked the pelican for its intrusion into this pattern, except I think it grounds it a bit too much in mundanity. As can be seen by the vertical striped stains on the horizontal crossbars, this locale was a huge favorite of perching birds: pelicans, cormorants, anhingas, ducks, the occasional heron, and so on.

pedestrian in distance bombing shotBut wait! I captured something else too, wholly unintentionally, and didn’t even know it until editing the photo quite some time afterward. Way in the distance, hundreds of meters off on the other side of the channel and causeway, someone crossed the frame along a similar pathway as my own – shame they never thought to stop and take a picture, ’cause we could have had some weird kind of synchronicity thing going on. Trust the other person to screw up a great opportunity…

Looking at this now I realize that, had I been down there at the right time, I could have caught a sailboat passing through the channel, right in mid-pattern – might have made a cool composition. I’d shot a couple from the top of the causeway, but didn’t really hang around on the underside much because there wasn’t any reason to. Even my snorkel spots were a ways behind my shooting position, in shallower water and well away from the possibility of oblivious boating traffic. I’d say something like, “Maybe next time,” but I’m honestly considering the chances of my returning to this area pretty low right now; the next Florida trip is likely going to be aimed at more scenic and productive areas for photography, mostly the Gulf coast and the Everglades. But we’ll see.

Sayonara, August!

Al Denelsbeck

You're trying to cheat aren't you?
And so August goes its merry way, but not without firing off its parting shot of an abstract image. And just to show you what kind of guy I am, I’m not going to jump right in and blurt out what this is an image of, but I’m going to let you figure it out for yourself instead. If you get stumped, I’ll be along eventually (before the decade is out, most likely) and fill you in as needed, but I’m confident that won’t be necessary.

What?

Al Denelsbeck

Great blue heron Ardea herodias peering straight down from directly overhead
A few days back, the Missing Mr Bugg had finally finished with all his summer chores and we had another outing, the first since early May; it was moderately productive but not as much as either of us would have liked. Nonetheless, we both have a selection of useful photos, and I gave him plenty of time to rectify the horrible neglect he’s been showing his blog, but as of this writing he still hasn’t posted anything, so I guess it’s up to me. Yet again.

More will be coming, but I had to post this one just for the expression and odd angle. While we watched, a territorial dispute between two great blue herons (Ardea herodias) resulted in one cruising across the lake and alighting in a tree almost directly over our heads. I had lost sight of it among the branches just as it touched down, but knew it had to be within a very small area, not to mention that it was gurking softly to itself as we quietly shifted back and forth beneath it trying for a glimpse – and it still took two minutes to spot the bulky bird. It wasn’t as horrified by our presence as it appears here, spending time looking out over the water and carefully watching an unleashed (of course) dog that was shambling through the immediate vicinity. The owner none-too-quietly informed us of the number of birds that could be seen in the area, blissfully unaware of us both pointing long lenses into the tree canopy directly overhead and speaking in hushed tones. There’s a reason that I don’t like popular parks…

By the way, this is a good example of why you should know how to shut off autofocus quickly and without looking at the switch. In such conditions, the camera is likely to lock onto anything except the eyes of the bird, which is the primary point of attention for the image, and you’ll need to get focus back where it belongs quickly. Meanwhile, this shows the useful eye-alignment of herons (and many other waders,) able to see straight down under its chin – its beak is aimed slightly downwards here, but far from directly towards us. For birds like the American bittern, this placement allows the bird to view its entire surroundings while its beak is pointed straight up in camouflage mode, making it appear like water reeds – plus it permits watching the ground underneath its perch for predators, and probably even assists in spotting food in the very water the bird is wading within. This probably means that thousands of years in the future, nature photographers will have big protruding eyes that allow them to see all of the potential subjects that might be around them.*

* Assuming, of course, that nature photographers gain preferential mating privileges through their activities, which is a highly debatable factor…

I am about to outdo myself

Al Denelsbeck

It’s 3 AM, and I’ve just come back inside from filming/videoing something in the backyard, and all I can say right now is, it will likely remain the most bizarre thing that I’ve captured on video for quite a long time to come. It all started when I just took the headlamp out and poked around a little bit to see what could be found, and stumbled across (well, not literally, thank dog) something that, you know, boded. Thinking I should get video of it if I was correct, I came inside and got the camera and light unit, taking only a couple of minutes to do so, and when I came back out I found that my suspicions were well-founded.

I’m being vague because I’m not going to spoil it, while it isn’t appearing yet because I still have the post-processing to do, and it’s late and I’m going to get some sleep. Which might be a mistake, considering what I’ve just seen. The worst part (so far) is, I might have to wait a week because I nearly reached my weekly upload limit on Vimeo with yesterday’s video – it all depends on how long this one is, though I suspect I can slip it in under the wire. Don’t get too anxious though, because you may very well regret it. The only other thing I’ll say right now is, think of the most disgusting thing that you’ve seen here, because I now have the same, but in living motion.

Podcast: Hybridcast

Al Denelsbeck

Today is Highly Debatable Humor Day, when we celebrate those examples of humor where the appeal could be wildly subjective; if you don’t find it amusing, well, you’re in accordance with a certain percentage of victims listeners/viewers, so just take heart in the idea that you’re not alone.

I kinda jammed it all together with this one. What started out as an idea for a longish photo post soon revealed itself to be way too long for a written and illustrated page (yeah, even for me, so you know that’s saying something.) Plus I had a couple of other incidentals to mention, and hadn’t done a podcast recently. So we get this podcast/slideshow/video clip compilation that probably doesn’t do justice to any format. And yet, I’m still not shooting vertical video on a smutphone…


Further details on schtuff therein:

The Original Ceylon Tea Company – Best Earl Grey that I’ve found yet.

Tardis Tea from Adagio Teas – Also very good – the tin is cool, but The Girlfriend’s Sprog stole that from me. Also check out the IngenuiTEA infuser, because screw tea bags (there’s an off-color joke in the making there, but I think we’ve had our fill of those for the time being.)

96-LED macro video lightTwo things that I neglected to mention regarding the video clips – they made it into the first attempt that was thwarted by post-nasal drip, and I forgot them the second time around. I obtained a little 96-LED portable light source that runs on 4 AA batteries or a USB powerbank, and that’s what was used for the two clips seen here – it’s light enough to be supported on an articulated arm (on its shoe mount or 1/4-20 tripod socket,) works fabulously for macro video, is reasonably diffuse, and is even dimmable. There are lots of versions on Ebay, and I have to say it was well worth the trivial price.

The second bit is, I’m still using the off-camera monitor, which helps with macro work significantly, but it has one effect that you can see in the video: aiming the camera is no longer an intuitive thing. For instance, holding it in a bracket down below waist level and framing with the monitor means that tracking a moving subject, or simply pointing the camera in the right direction, is a lot more challenging. Yes, I need more practice, thank you Captain Obvious, but I’m offering this as a warning to those getting started in it like I am.

Now, the part where I mentioned that the camera had some kind of tracking error that led to weird lines towards the bottom of the frame? Yeah, maybe you didn’t see that effect at all – it might actually be the fault of the video player that I’m using in Linux, and/or the screen resolution of the same. I also had some weird issues with the first rendering of this hybridcast, stray frames appearing at the very end of fade effects, and that is a known issue with the OpenShot editing program; a little websearch provided a simple solution, so never neglect your Google-Fu when you run into an issue (the solution, should you encounter the problem yourself, is to move the offending clip to an extra track, which seems to eradicate the frame blip for some reason.)

Did you notice that I had the directions reversed on Bar Sinister and Bar Dexter? Good – keep it to yourself, hotshot.

And finally, a reiterated public service message:

Don't shoot phone video vertically dipshit

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