Odd memories, part 20

Al Denelsbeck

Photography remains nonexistent and my time remains thin and sporadic, with no change to these visible in the immediate future, so for now we’ll just have some nonsense posts. It’ll get better soon, I promise.

Every once in a while, these memories come back to me, vestiges of another life – my move from central New York to North Carolina (even is it was central NC) marked a decided difference in my experiences, attitudes, and living conditions.

We lived in the same house in NY for seventeen years – well, “we” is relative. My mother was there even longer, while my siblings had all left at various times earlier. But that house was a large, old farmhouse. It had been appended to an original two-story house that was built around the turn of the century – as in, 1900 or so – but that portion was not heated nor adequately insulated, so it mostly served as storage, while we lived in the more modern section that had been built probably around the 1940s or so, and admittedly updated a little since then. One of those updates was the eradication of a fireplace in each room (including upstairs bedrooms) and the installation of hot water baseboard heating. This consisted of hot water pipes that ran along the outer perimeters of the rooms down at the floor, with radiation fins along them to help dissipate the heat into the air; all of this was concealed behind tasteful metal housings. Bear with me, since this is germane. The heating system was spastic, and especially prone to uneven heating, though I still can’t imagine exactly how one room would be cold and the adjoining room, on the same damn water line, approaching sauna conditions.

One of the traits of an old house, unsurprisingly, is how rodent-proof they aren’t. Mice could often be heard scampering around on the ceilings and having the occasional squabble up there, and would venture into the main living quarters whenever they had a ready access. Having cats helped prevent this from getting out of hand, and the kitchen was well-sealed against such incursions, so we didn’t have pantry-raids, at least. But over the years, we escorted plenty of mice and several bats back outside, and in the summer we routinely had to release starlings from the attic after they got in from dog-knows-where.

One night, I woke from a deep slumber suddenly, with the immediate urge to turn on the light on the nightstand. I recall no noises, nothing at all to indicate why I should be awake, just the demand that I should. As I lay there on my side, pondering this unexplained impetus, my eyes caught a bag of walnuts on my nightstand, handy for snacking while reading. It was a paper bag from buying them in bulk, and the top was crumpled and curled over where it had been rolled up but then slowly opened itself under the stiffness of the bag. I was in such a position were I could look straight down the length of the rolled portion – and noticed a tiny face staring back at me. A mouse had been endeavoring to make its way into the bag (without, for some reason, simply gnawing through it,) and had been trapped by my sudden stirring. I can only surmise that I heard it, and without registering the exact reasoning, had been forced awake by this.

We stared at one another for a few seconds, separated by no more than 40 cm, neither of us moving – then I gently snaked my hand out and closed it over the top of the bag, effectively capturing the mouse within the roll. There was no reason to kill it, so I simply carried it downstairs (this is probably about 2 am) and out the back door. It was, at least, not a cold night so I didn’t have to get dressed to do this. I took a few steps outside the back door and opened the bag to release the mouse.

Unfortunately, one of our cats, a lightning fast hunter named Dusty, had heard the door open and had come up to be let in for the night. Dusty announced his presence immediately after I opened the bag, and saw the mouse spring from my grip and bound off into the grass – for not two leaps. In a fraction of a second Dusty had pounced before I could do anything sensible; I never would have released it in front of the cat, but I hadn’t noticed him until I had already opened my hand. At that point there wasn’t anything I could do, and Dusty was no longer interested in coming inside, so I just went back into the house, though some measure of how bad I felt releasing the mouse to its immediate doom can be derived by the fact that I still distinctly remember this little story.

The other recollection is more upbeat and amusing. On another evening, I was sitting in my easy chair reading and heard a soft rustle from the trash can. I lowered the book and otherwise remained still, listening for it to happen again, unsure if I had merely heard something settling in the trash. In a moment it came again, then again, sharper, and a tortilla chip vaulted from the can and hurtled across the floor to disappear under the bookshelves.

I should explain that I had discarded a bag of old Doritos, and such bags are even less prone to staying tightly crumpled than paper ones. An enterprising mouse, finding no movement or noise in the room (since I was reading and I had by that time learned not to sound out the words,) had smelled the nacho goodness and gone foraging in the trash bin. Having selected a prime stale chip, it had leapt out to carry this treasure back to its access, which was the hole that permitted the heater pipes to enter the room, opportunistically widened by the mice over the years. This one had followed the pipe under cover of the metal baseboard plate until even with the trash can, then crossed the open floor and jumped into the can. Once in possession of its food, it was taking it back to a safe eating location.

The amusing bit happened almost immediately after it disappeared under the bookcase. The end plate of the heater housing had been removed, for reasons that I can’t recall, the the bare pipe was exposed right at the corner where the pipe passed between rooms. I heard a rapid and musical tinkatinkatinkatinka from the chip rattling along the edges of the radiation fins as the mouse sped for cover, then as the sound reached the corner, the Dorito reappeared again by springing out into the middle of the floor; the mouse had failed to account for the size of the chip, and being much larger than the hole, the chip had been ripped from its grasp by the wall as the mouse made it through successfully.

I waited, knowing this wasn’t the end of the drama. All was silent; the world held its breath. Then, after about a minute, a small grey nose appeared from the shadows of the missing end plate. The mouse surveyed the room warily, ensuring that the kidnapped chip had not alerted any authorities, then started out into the room. After only a second in the open, the little grey scavenger went for broke and sped across the meter of open floor to where the chip had fallen, seizing it and racing back to the hole in the corner. The Dorito, however, had not shrunk at all during its time out in the open air, and I watched a comical dance as the chip, paler than the mouse, could be seen banging frantically and repeatedly against the wall while the mouse uttered desperate little squeaks, rivaling just about any Three Stooges gag. Eventually, a compatible position was found, and with one last wobbling clatter, the chip disappeared into the wall. All was well; the world started breathing again. I went back to reading, and somewhere behind the sheetrock a mouse family began their history of MSG hallucinations and flashbacks.

Per the ancient end of 38th November abstract lore… thing

Al Denelsbeck

brown anole Anolis sagrei on drier side of screen
It’s the end of the month, just in case this escaped your attention somehow, and also Friday, which is Ancient Lore day here at Walkabout Studios (that sounds so much more snazzy than “on this largely ignored blog” or “in this corner of a shared office,” doesn’t it?) And so we are doing double duty today, especially since I took practically no photos during November and certainly nothing worth calling an abstract. It’s been that kind of month.

We’re back in Florida, “we” being the imaginary beings who are present for this image as it is taken, or perhaps it means this brown anole (Anolis sagrei) and I, who actually were there on this rainy day back in 2004. The place where I lived had a screened-in porch right at ground level, and in Florida this means lizard territory, primarily these guys and the newly-christened Carolina anoles, formerly green anoles. This particular one had gotten in along the edge of the door and was on the inside of the screen, so staying relatively dry during the downpour that had completely saturated the screen – it’s unclear whether the reptile is pleased about this state of affairs or not. But while we’re here, check out the length of those middle toes in the back.

Oh, yeah, we’re in the Reptile/Amphibians folder now, in case you’re keeping track. Of course you are – don’t mind me, I’m being silly.

Very often, the main door into the apartment remained open while I was home, at least if the temperature permitted it, which meant that such exploring herps could venture into the main living area, where they became fair game to Meerkitten, who was much more of a hunter than Ben or Feralyn. I suspect the rainy conditions of this day kept her well away from the porch so she never found this interloper; at another point in time, I’d watched her spot one on the other side of the screen, and spent a frustrating minute attempting to bite it off of its perch. Frustrating to her, I should add – amusing to me, and providing no apparent impact to the anole, who stayed put with only casual glances around at the landscape as the cat on the other side, millimeters away from its belly, tried vainly to bite through the screen.

Right after moving in, Keet’n was out on the porch taking in the new smells, and saw one of the resident Muscovy ducks approaching. Beside herself with anticipation, she endeavored to crouch behind the small windowframe to ambush this oblivious bird that was waddling ever closer. Now, Muscovies, in case you are unfamiliar with them, are not ‘duck’ sized, instead being more along the lines of a small goose – in other words, about three times the mass of a cat; it was apparent that Keet’n’s depth perception wasn’t all that good. She became aware of this too as the duck came closer and its size more defined: she stopped crouching and sat up for a clearer look, then completely upright as if to say, “No, I wasn’t trying to ambush you – perish the thought!” In reality, I suspect she was preparing to flee should it prove necessary. The duck ambled past without notice, and Meerkitten watched it go incredulously, never having seen something that spelled out all the traits of ‘bird’ but fit into the ‘overfed lapdog’ weight class…

By the way, I say she was a better hunter above, but that’s relative. She had spent the first few months of her life feral, but had been strictly indoors for the following eight years, so her ‘hunting’ consisted only of what slipped into the place, which was generally lizards and once a frog. On another rainy evening, however, I was in my bedroom and heard her calling from the living room, that peculiar tone that cats have that basically says, “I have captured something.” This, naturally, brings the other cats around to see what’s happening, forcing the captor to growl meaningfully to protect its meal; it seems rather inefficient overall, but I believe the call is meant to summon kittens, and the bare fact that she was no closer to having kittens than I was did not bear on this instinct. Nonetheless I had to go out to see what she had run down across the savannah (living room carpet,) to find her proudly standing over an earthworm, one that had likely made it way onto the concrete slab of the porch in the sodden conditions. I admit to being vocally derisive of her carnivorous prowess, and did not allow her to keep her prize – cruel, I know. I could have mounted the head on the wall proudly I suppose…

Let’s dig into the stockpile

Al Denelsbeck

This is not going to go down into my records as the most productive month that I’ve had – I think I’ve forgotten what some of the controls on my cameras do. So I’ll feature a couple of images from earlier just to keep things moving along.

By the way, I have to get into the habit of flipping through the stock more often. Immediately after unloading the memory cards, I’ll see some images and know I can make a post out of them, and usually do. But on occasion I’ll mentally set some aside for later; the problem arises when I sort the images into the appropriate folders without editing them for a post first, because then they’re out of sight and mind, and I rarely go back through the various folders looking for ideas, even ones that I’d already had. Meanwhile, I admit, the Blog folder presently has over 300 images that I had edited for use but never posted…

Moving on. While sorting, I found the following little detail, only because I often look at the images at full resolution to examine them for critical sharpness. Here’s the full frame image, from this outing last month, a little contrasting color composition:

fartistic composition in the botanical garden
You’ve spotted it already, haven’t you? Sure, but only because I told you there was something else to see. And in all seriousness, it’s this kind of thing that helps you find interesting nature subjects – just, you know, if it’s a little more obvious than here.

spider leg peeking out from behind phlox blossomHere’s a better look. No, right there, the little brown thing poking out from behind the purple petals. This is a full resolution inset, what I saw as I checked out the frame for acceptability, and that brown thing is likely a spider knee. I say this not from being anatomically obvious, but because there’s nothing brown that should be cropping up right there, and because the details fit, and because this is the kind of habitat that spiders like, which is illustrated by the image below from the same outing (different patch of flowers though.) It’s entirely possible that the spider saw me coming and slipped out of sight, but remained unaware of how badly its exposed knee gave it away. See, that’s the thing about growing up on hide-n-seek: when we do it, we can learn from it. When most others species do it, losing tends to be a bit final.

crab spider possibly Mecaphesa on phlox blossom
The entire blossom is about the width of your thumb, so no, I don’t feel bad about missing this, and I’ve spotted enough things that might typically have been missed, so I’m ahead of the game. I think – who knows? Perhaps real nature photographers are reading this and scoffing…

banded water snake Nerodia fasciata peeking from hiding spot
From another outing on the Eno River with the Tardy Mr Bugg, we twice saw the same banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata) hurtle from its basking spot on the roots of a tree on the bank and down into the water. The first time around, I skipped down the small embankment and sought it out, finding it as it peeked from its hiding spot among the roots. Water snakes prefer this kind of habitat, with plenty of hiding spots but easy enough to climb out and bask for warmth, and they camouflage well among the roots. In fact, it saw us before we saw it, and it was its hasty movement that caught our attention. This is also a good illustration of their habits, because snakes cannot hold their breath as long as, for instance, turtles, and when they escape into the water they usually have to surface within two minutes or so, which often isn’t enough time for danger to have moved on, so they usually seek some kind of cover or camouflage to poke their heads up among, within obscuring branches or alongside rocks where they’re not obvious.

I have seen exceptionally few of the banded variety in this region – by far the most prevalent is the northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon,) which can be distinguished from the banded by [I’m not going to tell you because it’s Mr Bugg’s assignment to identify the one in the photos he took.] I would point out that the body of the snake is vaguely visible to the right, curled under the water just under the tips of the roots there, but it’s so distorted by the rippling water that you can’t make much out anyway. This was a moderate-size specimen, by the way, probably about 50cm or so. This one gave me the impression that they’re shyer than the northern water snake, because it sped for cover so quickly, but that could simply be individual variation.

Now let’s go way back, into the dark ages of May of last year, for some images that I didn’t feature then even though I told a story involving them.

I had a borrowed underwater camera and was attempting to do a particular composition, which was shooting right down the inside tube of a curling wave right before it broke, obviously requiring a very specific position and timing. And more so when the waves are small, as they were at North Topsail Beach – but the bonus was, the rising sun was sitting right in position down the tube of the curlers, so I could have this added element. I made a lot of attempts, and not only was I unsuccessful, I ended up losing my glasses in the surf (you may think I was being stupid, and I was, but not as much as you might think, because I could hold the camera down close to knee level where the curlers were without having to put my eye to the viewfinder, so I wasn’t even getting my shoulders wet. Most of the time, anyway.) But this is what I captured while trying, which still has a little bit of interest:

attempt to shoot down curler
Too soon, not a good curler, but you can see the droplets from the break right at the edge of the frame, while the portion of the swell in the center of the frame hasn’t followed as far. And of course, water drops on the lens don’t help at all…

attempt to shoot down curler
Too distant and too late, but I might still crop in tighter and do something with those airborne drops backlit by the sun. And no, exposure compensation wasn’t an option with this camera, which is why the flash is in use for some of the frames.

attempt to shoot down curler
Almost. The timing was only slightly off, the position the closest that I achieved, but the flash did a good job of bringing out some nice foamy details and even a bit of depth. Not at all what I was after, but with a tighter crop it could become a neat abstract.

There were some that were just confusing and scattered, some where the camera was about submerged and mostly what was visible was bubbles. Someday, perhaps, I’ll get what I was after, but I expect it’ll take a lot of tries and more than a few pairs of glasses…

I’ll close with one last image, from the Savannah trip back in September of this year, one that simply didn’t fit in with the post at that time. A few turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) were perched in a dead tree conversing quietly to one another, and I was able to creep in closer to them by moving casually and using nearby trees as a screen. This particular vantage, however, was more than a little dangerous; not only do many birds defecate before taking flight, vultures use vomit as a (very effective) defensive mechanism, so shooting straight up from underneath carries a high level of risk. But that’s me, deep in the face (or, uh, other anatomical parts) of danger to bring you the breathtaking photos. Or at least these.

turkey vulture Cathartes aura seen from dangerous position directly underneath perch

After a fashion

Al Denelsbeck

It’s not technically winter but damn close to it, and nature photography has ground, if not to a halt, at least to a low enough speed that I can step off and pick up the tortilla chip that I dropped. Which means this is the time to post about stupid shit – lucky you.

One of the other people that I check out semi-regularly, over there in the sidebar, is known for being a little bit of a fashion horse, to the point where they’re asked for advice from time to time [that was originally written, “from tie,” a mere typo that I almost left in]. And I have to admit, this is one of these places where I have to disagree significantly.

The bare premise is, we judge others on how they look, and if we want to be judged favorably ourselves, we have to look good. While most of us can only do trivial things to our physical appearance, we can at least dress nicely, to make better impressions in this manner. Truth be told, this usually works.

And yet, it shouldn’t, and it’s one of those things that makes me itch. It’s one of the most superficial ways to judge someone that we can imagine, and yet we engage in it constantly. Let’s face it, some of the biggest crimes ever committed in the past century were done by people in the ubiquitous and ridiculously unoriginal tie-and-jacket, and somehow we still find such things ‘respectable’ – males are still expected to wear them to weddings and funerals and a good percentage of job interviews, still expected to have them for many office jobs and certainly many meetings, and so on. And the variation in them is minimal at best – different styles and widths of ties come around, different size lapels for dog’s sake, but even colors are pretty damn narrow in scope. And don’t get me started on neckties – stupidest goddamn piece of clothing to ever exist, much less be considered important. What does this even do? “Well, it adds color to this ridiculous cookie-cutter getup that we consider proper…”

And don’t let me harp solely on men’s fashion; while women have a broader range of what’s ‘acceptable,’ especially in the office, there tends to be a lot more emphasis on it, with a very narrow time frame of acceptability too, otherwise we wouldn’t have such phrases as, “last fall’s fashions.” Among the myriad reasons why I wouldn’t cut it as a female, my inability to keep up with or even understand what colors go with which seasons would doom my social standing in such populated environments.

Clothes have a distinct purpose, and first and foremost, should fulfill that purpose. After that, it really should be up for grabs, with little if any attention paid to them. They reflect absolutely nothing about who someone is, how valuable we might find their advice, how forthright or honest they are, or anything else at all, and forming even a simple opinion about someone over their manner of dress is far more likely to be a product of manipulation than an accurate evaluation. Now, granted, for a lot of people it’s much easier to buy nice clothes than to develop a personality, much less a respectable demeanor within society, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh. But then again, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

Listen, I know society isn’t going to change overnight, even with the overwhelming influence that this blog has. But we can at least try to make the effort to notice how someone treats others, or the issues that they find important, or even just their basic competence, rather than if their shoes match their jacket or whatever damn thing – if you’re buying clothes for your clothes, there are probably better things to spend your time and money on. Relax, be comfortable, wear something useful, and stop thinking about petty things. Most especially, dress for the weather. I’ve been lucky enough to work at places without demands, which was good when the warehouse wasn’t air-conditioned (and that’s noticeable in North Carolina summers, to say nothing of further south.) And I’ve also been unlucky enough to work for a corporation that worried more about dress code than it did about actually producing quality products. It’s the only time that I actually wore a tie (save for a clip-on during some catholic hoohah when I was six,) and when I quit that job after several months – over more than the dress code, trust me – I was happy to destroy the ties. Except for one, since that one had already been destroyed by getting caught in a fucking machine, because only complete and utter morons require dangling cloth wrapped around your neck when you have to maintain machines with gears. That corporation, by the way, was a photo lab, CPI Photo Finish, and is long gone now because this was far from the stupidest thing they ever did…

I understand the idea of, you know, employees having a specific uniform so they’re easy to find when assistance is needed, and I understand a certain neatness of appearance helps a lot when it comes to things like wait staff – we’re not going to escape superficial impressions (but if you’re an employer that requires it, don’t be a cheap motherfucker and provide it, at your expense. If it’s that important to you.) But overall, let’s get over the whole concept that how someone dresses reflects who they are as a person. Let’s exercise just a little deeper understanding, a little more attention paid to a person’s actual demeanor and work habits, rather than some idiocy about padded shoulders or pleats or some transient stitching practice. And for ourselves, let’s wear what we want to wear and like wearing, what’s comfortable and functional, and stop worrying that someone will judge us on something so shallow that they must not be able to handle anything more complicated. We really shouldn’t value such opinions anyway.

Thanks – I feel better now.

Per the ancient lore, part 37

Al Denelsbeck

autumn leaves blowing downroad from Pilot Mountain, NC
Today we’re gonna take a little trip to the mountains. Okay, well, no – it’s not today, but November 6, 2005. And it’s not the mountains, but a mountain, or perhaps more specifically a metamorphic quartzite monadnock, but I don’t have a folder dedicated to metamorphic quartzite monadnocks, which is good because this is the only thing that would be in it. Pilot Mountain, I mean, (“Pilot Metamorphic Quartzite Monadnock,”) which is that big knobby thing in the distance. And that in and of itself wasn’t the primary subject of this image, but the blowing leaves instead – I just used the mountain/metamorphic quartzite monadnock as a backdrop.

I always thought this was a granite extrusion, a magma channel from many eons ago, perhaps the last remnant of a volcano, before there were even grits in the state. Yeah, that long ago – boggles the mind, don’t it? But no, this is likely compacted and fused sand, which in itself came from the erosion of the mountains still many kilometers west of here. It sits all by itself, a big pinnacle among very shallow hills of the region, not even foothills of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province yet – which is why I thought it was an extrusion of tough, hard to weather rock. Which it is, but not in the way that I thought. What remains unanswered (in my five minutes of research for this post,) is why there’s a big knob of compacted and metamorphic sand in the middle of nothing else.

All that aside, this is a variant of a photo that I’ve wanted for years, which is to catch a falling leaf in an open area of sky among the branches of surrounding trees – preferably, much closer and more distinct. You might imagine that this is hard, and I can tell you that your imagination hasn’t even remotely prepared you for how hard, since I’ve attempted it countless times now. There are nice gusty days in the fall where leaves will drop by the dozens or hundreds, so all you have to do is pick a spot and wait, right? Yeah, no. Leaves go all over the place, dancing to their own aerodynamics, quick and slow, and getting one in a narrow patch of sky, focused, is seriously challenging. Or maybe it isn’t, and it’s simply beyond my capabilities, but for the purposes of this narrative we’ll (rashly) assume that I have some modicum of skill in getting photos.

And I’ll point out something else, something that also has a bearing on my attempted-yet-so-far-failed goal. While there are several airborne leaves in the frame, there’s just one that says, ‘leaf,’ that even looks unmistakably like a leaf – without that, the others are amorphous shapes which may or may not be leaves. Or birds. Or trash. Leaves can come in many different shapes, a lot of them indistinct and easy to mistake for something else, out of context, so my imagined shot would ideally have one as recognizable as the specimen at the top of the frame – which is even more demanding. I suppose I should simply resort to Photoshop…

Want to see a curious effect? The same photo can be found here, with a slightly different crop, but notice how different it looks, how much more autumny with more brown bits excised.

A flash of light

Al Denelsbeck

Today, I have just now discovered, is Sudden Insight Day, which is kind of an odd holiday; what, are we supposed to provoke a sudden insight somehow? If it was that easy, we’d have a lot more scientific discoveries each November. So for my own part, I’m going to relate a recent insight that occurred to me, and we’ll consider that appropriate.

The flight up to Ohio last month was at night, and I settled into my window seat to enjoy the view, which was almost completely clear for the entire trip. I am a bit of a flying enthusiast, not getting anywhere near the opportunities that I’d like, so instead of playing on my phone or sleeping or thumbing through a catalog of overpriced and useless items, I’m generally looking out the window. The significant difference to the routine, this trip, was having a smutphone; I did not possess one the last time I flew. This addition allowed me to do some GPS tracking while in flight, even though I could not get a connection to any mapping service for complete plotting.

Looking down on rural West Virginia at one point, I caught a flash of light out of the corner of my eye, back behind and to the right of our aircraft. We were flying at better than 25,000 feet, so details on the ground tend to be broader rather than the fine details of cars or even parking lots, and this was a distinctive bright flash, growing and then receding in brightness quickly. I looked, but it did not repeat, making me more than a little curious. The effect was similar to a rotating beacon, reaching peak brightness as it faces directly towards you before diminishing rapidly again, and I’ve spotted plenty of airport beacons in this manner, but not at such an altitude and not without easily seeing the pattern. I might have put it down to an electrical storm, but I was seeing far too many ground details to believe there was even a small thunderhead in the area. After a few moments I looked away.

Perhaps fifteen seconds later, it came again, not quite as bright, and then as I zeroed in on it I saw it again, this time fully focused, yet no closer to knowing what it was – just that it was inordinately bright. Again, I could see the glows of nearby towns, so one light source would have to be overwhelming for it to appear that way. And all of a sudden, I had it.

It was the night of a full moon, which was just out of sight beyond the top of the plane window in that direction, and what I was seeing were the reflections of the moon itself on bodies of water, as the plane quickly passed through the narrow path of them. No sooner did I realize this than it became readily apparent, as we passed over a winding river that made the reflection trace a serpentine path along a stretch for a few seconds. Still freaky looking, but entirely recognizable once I knew what I was looking at. Not long after that, a lake gave me an unobstructed and undistorted view of the entire moon for a second.

Looking at the map just now, I might have been seeing reflections off of the meandering Little Kanawha River; I’m fairly certain I was looking at Parkersburg, West Virginia not long afterward, on a recognizable sharp bend in the Ohio River, and was wondering what one largish light source was. If I have the town correct, it was probably the well-lit parking lot of the medical center there. Next time, I’ll preload some maps into the phone.

Per the ancient lore, part 36

Al Denelsbeck

Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus being typical
Can you guess the category for today’s Ancient Lore image(s)? No, it’s not ‘Aquatic.’ No, it’s not ‘Beach.’ No, it’s not ‘Lakes/Streams/Waterfalls.’ We’re doing these in alphabetical order, and we last had ‘Leaves/Plants/Trees,’ so what must be next? You should have memorized the order of the folders by now.

That’s right, it’s ‘Mammals,’ a surprisingly underpopulated category among my stock images – you’d think a nature photographer would have a decent selection in there, but I guess I suck. Anyway, that image up there isn’t even the featured one, it just illustrates things slightly better, having been taken the same day and a minute or so before. “Before what?” you say, “Get to the freaking point, Al,” but you should have known by now that wouldn’t work. Anyway, we find ourselves once again atop the causeway, looking down into the Indian River, full name Indian River Lagoon, more specifically the sound behind the barrier islands on the Atlantic, mid-coast side of Florida. It was pretty much salt water, with access to the ocean many kilometers north and south of this region, but broad enough to make numerous ocean inhabitants happy enough, and among them were the Atlantic bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus.) However, one had to be sharp-eyed to even see them most times, and even faster on the draw with the camera to get any kind of photos, because the typical behavior of dolphins is to surface as if they were cresting the top of a very small hill, exposing their blowhole for about a second before disappearing beneath the surface again. Moreover, this is almost completely unpredictable, far less of a pattern than you might imagine. So even when in prime viewing conditions from the height of the causeway with excellent light, getting a decent shot was challenging, and in fact, after all these years I still don’t have anything that I would consider printable, even with the help of a dolphin tour.

And it’s worse, believe it or not, with autofocus, which needs a certain amount of contrast to lock onto a subject, something that doesn’t often spring up with subjects beneath the surface. Add in the shutter lag for the older digital cameras, and the aforementioned brevity in appearance, and you end up with a very frustrating shooting session – generally, the discarding of numerous shots of blank water, a blurry subject, or if you’re lucky a disappearing tail. Expect to cuss a lot.

The notable aspect of this particular session was, one of the dolphins had been progressing steadily closer, starting to come in right underneath my position (I may have shifted along the bridge to accommodate this, of course,) when it spotted prey, likely a ladyfish or tarpon. Immediately, the placid, ‘strolling’ nature of the dolphin’s progress changed to hot pursuit, and it bulleted through the water after the fleeing fish, easily three times as fast as it had been going. Dolphins, however, are still massive creatures, many times more than its intended prey, so the fish had a distinct edge in maneuverability and used this to good advantage. The dolphin was likely faster, but the fish could turn a lot better, and the chase was something to watch.

At one point, just as the dolphin was almost within seizing range, the fish snapped off to one side and the dolphin attempted to emulate it, twisting so hard during its frenetic chase that it completely overturned, rolling all the way over from its own momentum and utterly destroying any concept of the grace of these sea creatures, and that might be what I captured here.

Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus rolling over during pursuit of prey
First off, the intended meal is that dark streak towards the center of the image – the dolphin had indeed been very close. And the wandering autofocus has made its effect known. But you’re seeing the side of the dolphin here; that distinct fin is not the the dorsal (back) fin that we’re all familiar with, but a pectoral, since the dorsal points towards the lower right corner here. You can just make out a hint of the paler underside pointing away from us. The odd shapes up towards the head of the dolphin, to the left, are likely air expelled during the desperate maneuver.

It might well have been more impressive with video, and the camera had the capability, but bear in mind that the chase started abruptly and lasted perhaps eight to ten seconds (the dolphin effectively lost its prey when it rolled over,) so even if I’d been instantly ready to switch, the very act of doing so might have meant capturing nothing, especially with trying to regain focus again on rapidly twisting subjects under the surface. It’s a shame, because I’d love to snag clips like this, but between the demands of the conditions and the sporadic, fleeting nature of such behavior, the chances remain very low – we’ll just have to see what happens. But in the meantime, here’s another story of a hungry dolphin, one that was absolutely breathtaking to see.

Book review: Dinosaurs for Kids

Al Denelsbeck

It’s been a while since the last, mostly because I haven’t been reading that many new books, but I just had to put this one in here. When we did that “All Hallows Read” thing for Halloween, The Girlfriend had procured a fine selection of books, for all age groups, by shopping through the secondhand book and thrift stores. But as we were setting them out, one in particular caught my eye, or more specifically, the author of one caught my eye.

cover of Dinosaurs for Kids by Ken HamIf you’re not familiar with the name, Ken Ham is a notorious Young-Earth Creationist, known for his debates with Bill Nye and his cute-as-buttons ark park in Kentucky, where he espouses his ideas about biblical literalism – essentially, the [christian] bible is absolutely true in all regards, even when blatantly contradicting itself. And of course, one of those absolutes is the timeline of creation, establishing that the Earth is only around six thousand years old because that’s all the generations that have been outlined therein. We know this because… because. It says so right there in the bible, and unlike every other book in the world, the bible cannot contain prevarications, myths, or self-serving fables. You may think I’m being snarky, but Ham says as much himself right in his book.

Naturally, I removed the book from the collection of stuff that we were handing out after bringing it to the attention of The Girlfriend, who was grateful – she was unfamiliar with the author and had not skimmed the content, but was horrified at the potential reaction of any recipients: whether or not they were in line with this vapid concept of YEC, they still would have thought we were. Such an impression probably wouldn’t have lasted long anyway, because I have great fun chasing away all of the religious recruiters that come to the door and with no attempt to hide my derision, but still…

As I was taking the photos to illustrate this post, I decided to go ahead and do a full review – it was a children’s book, after all, and wouldn’t take long to read the entire thing; probably about as long as to type the review, really. Did I come up against anything unexpected? Not really. It was as disappointing as you might imagine.

paragraph from Dinosaurs for Kids by Ken Ham, in case you had any questions about approachFirst off, no one is going to mistake this for a book on dinosaurs, despite Ham’s best efforts to list a lot of them. This is evangelical indoctrination, pure and simple, a hamfisted (a ha ha) attempt to use a subject that kids find popular to try and instill his own concept of biblical literalism. We’re not even talking the hoary old ‘Teach the Controversy’ idea, because he does not present controversies, only the idea that scientists are wrong, because bible. When he is presenting the fossil evidence of body types and habitats, for instance, he is content to simply refer to “scientists,” but when it comes to ages and diet, he begins to make the distinctions of “secular scientists” and “creation scientists,” a division to be found among evangelists and nowhere else, since science is not built around ideology, but around the strength of the research. This research is openly dismissed within the book whenever it fails to support any biblical passages, regardless of how much evidence and interconnectedness it demonstrates; Ham even goes so far as to say, multiple times, that secular scientists “guess” at how old things are, completely failing to address the huge body of work that supports the consensus of a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth.

Most noticeable, of course, are the gymnastics he goes through to present the adorable idea that all animals were vegetarian until they left the garden of eden, so those long sharp teeth of so many species? Yep, for plants; carnivorousness came about after all that sinning from adam and eve and the expulsion from paradise. Why did the animals receive god’s wrath over the actions of two humans? Like all others who find this story worth repeating, he never says, though he did try passing off the chestnut that every last person in the world, save for the eight people in noah’s family, were all sinners again, thus the flood. And yes, dinosaurs were on the ark, dying out sometime in the last four thousand years after this occurred.

Ham, as expected, repeats the curious concept of ‘kinds’ to try and explain away how this was supposed to take place. Even though it’s abundantly obvious from the biblical passages that the word “kinds” is interchangeable with “species,” Ham assumes that the bible was written in modern English and “kinds” instead refers to much broader groups; thus, noah only needed a representative pair of, say, horned dinosaurs to breed every last species of them that we have evidence of. Yes, he completely ignores the bare fact that he has just espoused evolution with this idea.

inside cover of Dinosaurs for Kids by Ken HamThis is why I never feel particularly threatened by books of this ilk. It is very easy for a questioning child to find all of the flaws in his desperate flailing, and even if their childhood was fully immersed in such selective ‘education,’ interactions with the broader world will soon start to show the myriad problems. As will the progress of (real) science, as his comment that we have never found a dinosaur fossil with feathers was overturned just a few years after publication. It won’t matter to Ham and his fellow YECs; if it has feathers, it must be a ‘bird kind,’ despite the fact that it doesn’t have wings, despite the fact that its skeleton is structured only for running, despite the fact that the feathers could never support any kind of flight. Dinosaurs are “beasts of the earth,” separate from “birds of the air.” It says so right there in the same passages that speak of a flat earth with four corners…

Mostly, however, I find such tactics to be deplorable because of two things. The first, that religious folk so often target children for their efforts because they know that such horseshit won’t fly with adults; mold the impressionable minds early on, and forcefully at that. Ham uses the words “true” or “truth” no less than 24 times within, always while contradicting the knowledge established through thousands of points of evidence, and never really explaining why he feels the bible overrides everything else – blind faith despite the countless issues. This is why, in fact, the concept of ‘faith’ even exists, because ‘confidence’ in a religious viewpoint cannot be established with any modicum of applied reason. Reason, however, and demonstrations and bodies of evidence and predictive abilities, are the boogeymen of religious indoctrination, which relies instead primarily on repetitive assertion. If you say it enough times it must be true, a word I find nearly always as self-contradictory as “professional” is when applied to equipment and tools.

The second reason that I dislike such indoctrination tactics is that it sets the child up for interactions that simply cannot come out well, and there’s no way I can believe that the majority of evangelists who promote such tactics do not know this. They seem to feel that arming a child with glib little sayings such as, “Were you there?” (in response to every last bit of evidence disproving creation) is making good little soldiers out of them, and not embroiling them in an (at best) embarrassing situation, but much more likely something that seriously impedes their social interactions for years to come. Fostering a smug and arrogant attitude coupled with so much overwhelming ignorance is a fantastic way to see that your warriors get their asses handed to them rather than simply corrected; eventually, it’ll establish that ‘humility’ that seems to be a byword of so many religions, but it’s a much harder path that starting off with it in the first place.

This says nothing whatsoever of the child’s ability to pursue any kind of serious education later on; when you think about it, evangelists really are trying to establish a community of uneducated, unquestioning, and well-nigh useless drones. That’s good for them, I suppose, as long as there are enough donations on the plate, but I can’t imagine how this could be considered progressive or good for any society. And of course, we have countless demonstrations around the world right now of exactly what kind of society this produces; theocracies are not among the major movers and highest standards of living in the world – quite the opposite, in fact.

It’s easy to claim that Ham, and the audience that he targets with such books, are among the minority even of religious folk within the US; the majority don’t believe in a young earth or biblical literalism or dinosaurs on the ark, even if they buy the asinine ark story in the first place. I’ve even heard the protest personally, on top of countless times online. My frank response is, “Don’t tell me; tell him.” I don’t care what your personal standpoint is, and it isn’t going to change my opinion of religion. But it shouldn’t ever be solely up to the outspoken atheists to promote solid science and following the evidence, and recognizing how beneficial these are to us all; if we’re concerned about doing something good, well, the targets and goals should be clear.

*     *     *     *

I’m going to add a little of the discussion that took place between The Girlfriend and I regarding the eventual fate of this book. She’s loathe to discard any book, which is fine, but I obviously felt that re-donating it to any thrift store wasn’t in anyone’s best interests. I can understand her feelings about destroying books, and recognize that it’s almost a form of censorship, even though this is one copy that we own, and not an attempt to stop it from appearing anywhere else. She did not, however, acquiesce to donating it back with a lot of notes added in, which I felt would have been the most fun overall ;-)

Looking back while time is scarce

Al Denelsbeck

Just so you know, today is the 4th anniversary of Philae touching down (bouncing repeatedly off of) comet C67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko – I say this so you have time to make dinner plans.

I keep thinking that I’m past the busy spell and can finally start posting a bit more regularly, but this has yet to be proven. Still, I’ve got a little time today, even if I have no recent photographs to pass along, so while my gut is playing games, I’ll try to tackle one that’s been sitting in the background for a little while now. In fact, during a quiet spell I actually attempted a little work on this while in Ohio, but didn’t get very far. At the same time, Halloween produced another post idea, and here we are twelve days past that and no closer to it than before.

I’ll use this opportunity to briefly touch on the initial reactions to the photo exhibit. First off, the staff at the Visitors Bureau seemed to approve, and at least one person there mentioned their favorites. When the 2nd Friday Art Walk arrived, we had a small collection of visitors – more than normal, I’m told – but the night was chilly and drizzly, so not conducive to prowling around downtown for the sake of art. But overall, the response was pretty positive, I have to admit; there were the typical and expected responses of, “Very nice,” which I usually take to mean, “Ehhhh,” but that came from two couples, while everyone else seemed quite enthusiastic and complimentary, and honestly so (if I’m any judge, anyway – we all know how weird I am.) People seemed quite taken with many of the images, and I have a couple of new potential students that may arise from the show, which has only been up a week so far. Most curious were the comments, multiple times, that the ‘creepier’ subjects were the favorites; two people admitted to being big herpetology fans (so, lizards and frogs,) while another would have liked to have seen my spider photos. This is amusing to me, because The Girlfriend and I specifically chose to limit such photos, concentrating more on scenic and Carolina-themed images to fit in with the Visitor Bureau vibe, as well as avoiding the kind of subjects that people might find icky. Me being me, I was not about to eradicate all of the creepy subjects (and I did pick the more fartistic compositions of such,) but I’m entertained by the idea that I might have gotten away with more.

Anyway, on to the main subject.

The author testing out a macro periscope, by Paul Denelsbeck
I had a project that went through multiple stages over a period of many years, from idle conception to working model, which you see here (that’s me without the beard, right there in my old haunt of the Indian River Lagoon in Florida, with the causeway in the background.) Basically, it was a reverse-periscope for photographing aquatic subjects right in their own front yard, or, uh, whatever. The body of it is that green portion with the black collar, attached to a monopod that also supported the camera in a precise position in relation to the periscope. It was all carefully planned to use the Sigma 105mm macro lens, between the shape of the lenshood and the view angle of the lens itself.

display view of reverse periscopeThe key portion that promoted the whole thing from an idea to a work-in-progress was a front-silvered mirror, and let me explain. Most mirrors are back-silvered, the reflective surface being on the back side of the glass because it’s delicate and easy to scratch. But doing any photography, especially high-magnification photography, with one of those means there are always secondary ‘ghost’ reflections from the front surface of the glass, so the goal is the make the front surface the most reflective. I thought this was going to be a tricky thing to purchase until I came across replacement side-mirror panels in an auto parts store; the unfinished back was exactly what I was looking for, and it was available in larger pieces for truck mirrors. The remainder is all PVC pipe and a piece of clear acrylic for the viewing window. The elbow is actually a T-joint cut on a precise diagonal and sanded flat for the mirror to mount to, and I painted it all green both to reduce its obvious contrast to any undersea denizens that I got close to, and to cut the glow from reflected light onto the photo subjects and surroundings. On the black collar (a simple reducer) was mounted a 1/4-20 threaded insert for a standard tripod screw, as well as a 3/8-16 threaded stud for a mini ballhead to hold a flash unit, which could be aimed to fire into the water just ahead of the scope. Seen behind the camera is a Manfrotto 3028 head, which as far as I’m concerned is a necessary tripod head for anyone into esoteric photography experiments, since it can get into countless different angles, and was the only one that would accommodate the needs here. All submerged seams were sealed with silicone, and the inside of the whole assembly was painted deep matt black to eradicate internal reflections – before the mirror and viewport were attached, of course. Planning ahead a little can make things much easier.

So with all that, did it work? Well, kinda…

kings crown conch Melongena corona in persicope view
It was constructed around the 105mm macro, since that could focus closest and sharpest, but also had to have a certain length to be of any use at all – bear in mind that the longer focal length ‘true’ macro lenses hadn’t been released when I started the project, nor were they within my budget range at any point during construction, but I had the ability to use a 2x teleconverter to produce an effective focal length of 210mm, too (not used for the test shots here.) Essentially, it did work as intended, but the conditions that would permit it were pretty narrow, and at the same time I was doing aquarium photography, which was several times easier and more versatile. Obviously, one had to either cope with a circularly vignetted image, or have enough magnification to completely overlap the rectangular photo frame.

[By the way, that’s a king’s crown conch, Melongena corona, in that shot, not a true conch but a sizable carnivorous snail instead, and not something that you want to step on, because their shells are fairly sharp and incredibly durable. This specimen is probably 5-6 cm in length, and this image was taken with the Sony F-717 instead of the Canon Elan IIe seen at top.]

More noticeable were the vagaries of use. It still had to be pretty close to a subject, so one that wouldn’t spook too easily. Often, this meant something resting on the bottom, thus angles became an issue (especially since I was trying not to drive the scope down into the sand and shells.) And within these parameters, even a flash unit was going to provide more top light than frontal. So it didn’t see much use. I did make a straight unit though, just a tube with a port on the end, for shooting more-or-less straight down into the water, and this might eventually see some use again (though I’ll have to rebuild it, since I discarded both during a move, being the worse for wear in the intervening years.)

minnows in front of periscope
This was the first of the tests, and an amusing one at that. I was using the pond behind the apartment complex, first just for water tightness and methods of stabilizing – I will note that any such device will be buoyant, trying to push back to the surface, enough to potentially tip over a tripod, which is why I switched to a monopod that I could actively press down, and also move a lot easier. But once everything seemed kosher, I needed something to photograph, within a very short distance of the viewport, and so I cheated a bit. I made up a collection of tiny breadballs and began dropping them in front of the periscope to coax the minnows within range, which worked pretty damn well – there are roughly thirty within the narrow field of view here. This was before the scope was painted so I think some of the light is sunlight reflected from the white surfaces.

But as I was working on the support rig and the depths and all that, I was out there barefoot sprawled by the water’s edge, and eventually stretched one foot out into the water for better bracing. After a moment or so I felt a curious tickling, and looked down at my foot to see what was happening…

author's foot being viciously attacked by piranhas
As you can see, I’m lucky to still be here, and walking unassisted to boot. The hazards of nature photography abound…

[Yes, that’s a fanny pack in the topmost photo – calm down. It worked a hell of a lot better for wading and biking than anything else, including a backpack that has to be taken off to access.]

Per the ancient lore, part 35

Al Denelsbeck

cattail bullrush Typha reflection in drainage channel
This week we return to the Leaves/Plants/Trees folder, a little abstract reflective image taken in the drainage channel behind the apartment complex where I lived while in Florida. I have to note that drainage channels in Florida are the size of some shipping canals in other countries, primarily because Florida decided very early on that it held nothing but disdain for the drizzly, off-and-on rain showers that many other states practiced. When it rains in The Sunshine State (which is nearly every afternoon in the summer,) it does so with a demonstration of efficiency that is breathtaking. Water has to be delivered and there’s no time to waste, so the goal is to be done with it all within seven minutes, and often it only takes three. The dam bursts and it hammers down, then stops and the sun comes back out again in moments, and if you happen to have gotten caught in it, relax, because you’ll be dry again in 20 minutes or so. And I say this knowing that you think I’m exaggerating…

But anyway, to accommodate such deluges, the ‘ditches’ that are provided are usually deep and voluminous – so much so that the one in front of the complex, by the roadside, was two meters deep and housed non-too-small turtles all year round. Mind you, the water wasn’t that deep, more along the lines of 10-20 centimeters, but the capacity was there. Out back, the channel was even larger, easily capable of handling a small boat, and I never did determine how deep it was.

[I will also note that many of these channels were created to actually maintain large patches of dry land, since Florida is prone to swamps and wetlands and marshes, not the most inviting of geography for housing developments. The solution is the cut deep drains for the water and use the soil from those cuts to raise and level out the land more, and it largely works.]

On the same day that this was taken, I happened across a Florida gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus) lying in the grass near the channel – rather curiously, when I thought about it.

Florida gar Lepisosteus platyrhincus lying in grass alongside drainage channel
Somewhere around 50-60 cm in length, it was still alive, and not far from the water but not immediately alongside it either, with the surface being some 2 meters away laterally and one beneath it. I initially suspected that it had been caught by a fisherman and left there, but there was no visible hook injury and it seemed odd that, if an unwanted catch, it would be discarded there and not simply tossed back in. But it also seemed like a good distance to have jumped on its own accord. We had otters that foraged in the area, and of course countless wading birds, but again, no visible injuries. Eyeing those teeth warily, I picked it up and tossed it back into the channel.

And I have to note, when I remembered this image and had to go back and find it in the Aquatic folder, that I had to go much further down in the list than I had for the cattails that were taken on the same day, because between the river visits and the aquarium that I maintained, I have a disproportionate number of aquatic subjects over the vegetational, at least during that period in my life. I suppose I should try to maintain a more balanced diet of photographic subjects…

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