I had plans to put something up for Darwin Day, which is today, and was in the middle of a project to produce some photos, but life happens, as do family issues. You may have noticed that I discuss very few personal matters here, save for trivial frustrations – that kind of shit really isn’t for online dissemination, despite what some people seem to think social media is for. I’d like to vent sometimes, believe me, but it really doesn’t serve a purpose other than self-gratification, and not much of that. The result right now is that instead I’m going to feature some photos from the blog’s official Contributing Non-correspondent, Jim Kramer, that he sent me several days back. I will leave it up to you to tie this into Darwin Day in some manner, which explains the post title.
The above image is Lower Cascade Falls at Hanging Rock State Park, and is possibly the very image that Jim was taking when I snapped my own photo of him at work. You can see a significant color difference between his image and mine; most of this was due to me shooting slide film, which captured the color cast of the deep shade conditions, while Jim was shooting digital with some form of white balance in effect, though there’s a chance he tweaked the color in post-processing as well (I’m not making accusations, I just never asked before starting this post, and that pertinent bit is not recorded in the EXIF info of the image file.) I’m pretty sure that I had an appropriate warming filter at the time, which would have made the colors much better, but for some reason didn’t use it; it’s possible that I hadn’t purchased one yet, and images exactly like the one on that earlier post were what prompted me to get one.
I really do need to get back to this park and do some more shots; I was originally going to take along the Impertinent Mr Bugg, but he’s trying to be obnoxious so I’ll just go alone and have a nice, relaxing day where I won’t have to remind anyone to use the appropriate lenses or fix their damn hat all the time.
There is only a small range of positions available to photograph the falls, but this is pretty typical of waterfalls to be honest; they tend to occur in geography with steep drops and narrow openings, so options are limited. Minnehaha Falls in north Georgia has been the one cascade that I know of with a fair amount of options, if one was careful and didn’t mind hiking up the rock ‘steps’ that the water crashed down.
The deep shade, by the way, helped with these very images, because to get that wispy, cottony water effect you have to use a long exposure, and low light helps. So does a small aperture, and a neutral density filter. Bright sunlight on the water has an unintended effect that’s impossible to correct for (at least if you’re skipping quite a lot of digital editing): individual water droplets and ripples in the falls will catch the sunlight momentarily, producing brilliant reflections that will appear in the image as white specks. I’ve got several examples from experiments and never managed to produce anything that didn’t look weird, so shade still remains the best conditions. Someday, I’ll do some serious moonlight exposures, much like these, but probably not at Hanging Rock or indeed any park, since they usually close by sunset (which is much safer and a very good idea – people tend to be stupid if you give them the chance.)
I will close with another image of Jim’s, of a (to my knowledge) unnamed little torrent almost hidden in a cleft in the rocks. The scale is nicely deceptive; while Lower Cascade Falls is about ten meters in drop, this one is less than two. I’d featured my own image of this before, to which was added a variation from Jim too – he did a much better job of capturing the falls during these trips than I did, the bastard. I’ll just have to console myself with eclipse pictures I guess…
It is, inexplicably, still winter here, and so little to do except projects that really don’t result in photographs. I’m still working on some other possibilities, so hopefully something will be along shortly. And as I say out loud below, I’ve got several things planned for later on in the year, actually scheduling photo opportunities rather than taking them as they come, so we’ll see if this results in more and/or better content.
So for now, we got this:
Walkabout podcast – Nothing in particular 2
Some of the things I made reference to within:
George Hrab’s Geologic podcast. I shouldn’t link to this because mine will now seem even worse than you originally thought in comparison, but I can promise you that I will never talk about how great The Beatles were, so there’s that.
The program to block Windows Update Services can be found here. With Windows 10, the updating service has become obnoxious, intrusive, and uncontrollable, any one of which is an inexcusable trait for any software to have – having all three is fucking contemptible. This disables that completely, and greatly improves Windows performance to boot (at least in my experience.)
I thought I’d posted at greater length about what I call the ‘puzzle drive,’ but so far the only mention of it that I’ve turned up has been here. Maybe it was in comments on another site. But think about how satisfied you feel whenever you solve a puzzle, figure out a mystery, or even fix something. And alternately, how frustrated you feel when you can’t. It’s pretty compelling, isn’t it? I think there’s more to this than we typically give it credit for.
The site I used to learn how to clean digital sensors is here. Once again, and they stress this many times on their site, you only want to do this if you feel comfortable with doing delicate work. And yes, Eclipse is the name of the high-grade alcohol – I picked mine up off of Ebay. I also use a battery filler bulb instead of the ridiculously overpriced Giottos Rocket Blower – three to five bucks is about in line with a goddamn squeeze bulb air blower. A good artist’s brush for the first pass, cleaned in baby shampoo (doesn’t leave residues behind) and rinsed and dried thoroughly, and then a microfiber cloth also cleaned meticulously. A dust-free environment helps a lot, but that’s very hard to accomplish, though getting the bathroom a bit steamy can do a lot for controlling airborne stuff. And you can see below why this has to be done from time to time (or at least, why I have to do it…)
That’s all for now. But if you’re looking for more suggestions on how to handle the season, last year’s podcast may help. I already have a bunch of seeds and mantis egg cases for spring.
Addendum: Oh yeah, forgot this in the original post. While I make snarky comments about income, more often than I should really, I think that doing what you like to do is more important than chasing the “‘Murican Dream” or whatever.
Another one that I had kicking around in my blog images folder, waiting for a chance to sit down and explain it – there’s a couple more coming too, but they’ll take a little longer to write up, so we’ll go with this for now. This was my attempt at a landscape shot during the total solar eclipse last year, which came out even worse than expected – but not a lot.
Let’s put it this way: you can, naturally, take any kind of landscape photo with the sun in the shot – but you’re not going to get one that also shows any sunspots. In order to see those, you’d need to reduce the light from the sun by a lot, a tiny fraction of its actual light output, and then the landscape would drop into total darkness. And the same thing’s going to happen during a solar eclipse. Even though the sun itself is blocked and thus you can see the corona, the sun is, you know, blocked, and the corona itself isn’t throwing enough light to illuminate the landscape around you. Sure, you can do a long exposure to actually get a view in the dim light, because after all it’s like late twilight; you can see where you’re walking and all that. But if you do that, the corona itself is going to bleach out and likely completely obscure the dark hole that communicates “eclipse” in the first place.
So for giggles, I took that frame and brought up the shadow areas in an editing program, to see just how much of the landscape could actually be seen. Annnnddd you’re looking at it; not too impressive, is it? The sun corona is so small because it was high in the sky – the eclipse occurred in early afternoon in August, so to even get anything else in the frame, I had to shoot wide angle with a short focal length. I could have gone up underneath a tree and gotten a closer shot with some branches, but that was really the only choice, and it wouldn’t have been very illustrative (not that this is, but anyway…) The exposure settings were 1/40 second at f5.6, ISO 400 – pretty much the limit of handholding a camera and getting a sharp pic. And even at that, you can see how dark it came out. Think being several dozen meters away from a streetlight at night: you can see where you’re walking, but you ain’t reading any fine print, you know?
The most interesting part? I caught the barest hint of the curious eclipse effect that Jim Kramer got a shot of, because the brightest portion of the sky is not where the freaking sun is, but down low closer to the horizon – picking up the faintest hint of scattered light from those areas outside of totality that were still seeing direct sunlight. It seems normal until you actually think about it.
Today is a holiday that I’m sure you’re all set to celebrate. No, not that one – I’m talking about Ignore An Utterly Pointless Holiday Day. That’s right – today (by the most remarkable of coincidences) is a day that you’re encouraged to completely blow off whatever insipid and senseless holiday you like. Not that I’m, you know, pointing fingers or making suggestions…
I really shouldn’t say things like that – it’s virtually guaranteeing another snowstorm will roll in for February.
But having said that, now there can be no snowstorm, since I’m so confident there will be! Hah! Fate, you stand no chance with a grandmaster such as I!
[I was remarking to someone the other day about how silly the phrase, “tempting fate” was. It’s fate! It’s gonna happen whether you tempt it or not – that’s the definition. We really can’t even handle our own language, so we’re totally screwed if we ever meet up with extra-terrestrials…]
Anyway, it’s time for the month end abstract. Our abstract this month is brought to you by the letter ‘Sonofabitch,’ and was naturally taken following the big-ass winter storm that we got. These twigs were only a few millimeters in diameter and still collected a half-kilo of snow in a nice pattern to set off their alternation, so there we go. In fact, it’s one of the scenic pics I took while waiting for the brown-headed nuthatch to return, so it has served a double purpose. Its mother would be so proud…
Yeah, starting with the profanities right off the bat – that’s the way to scare off the little old ladies. But if you managed to make it all the way through the title without swooning, you’re invited to read on, because not enough people really understand this issue.
I’ll lead off by saying that I worked in animal shelters for years, and animal welfare programs even longer – some of them quite progressive. I was also responsible for doing a lot of research into methods and improvements, which included networking with some of the most knowledgeable and advanced people in the business. One of the shelters that I worked for was in the running (multiple times) for the Humane Society of the United State’s “Standards of Excellence” award – not a winner, I admit, but when you realize that there is generally at least one animal shelter for every county in the US, including those with much bigger budgets than ours, I think we were doing pretty damn good to be in that realm.
So I feel qualified enough to tell you: the idea of a “no kill” shelter is a complete myth – at least, in the manner that everyone imagines it to be. And it’s going to remain a myth, at the very least until attitudes go through a huge change in this country, but also as long as the goddamn phrase even exists. It actually works against the very idea, a self-defeating concept, and I don’t expect you to take my word for it – look it up yourself. I’m not the first to express these thoughts.
That would be Feralyn
Let me start by painting the picture. The shelter that I worked for the longest was, as far as anyone would be able to calculate easily, ‘average’ for North Carolina – servicing a medium-sized college city, but with plentiful rural areas. And we took in about 7,000 animals a year – that’s about 20 a day. Very few days could be considered ‘average’ of course – we might range from less than 8 animals on some winter days to over 50 in the height of the breeding seasons. Yes, a day. Mind you, these were of all types – everything from family pets surrendered because of a move (or much more likely, behavioral problems) to impounds from cruelty investigations. Mostly strays of course, some of which were obviously lost, owned animals, but more than enough were feral animals that had never had contact with people. I fostered several borderline cases, feral cats that came in young and stood a chance of being able to acclimate to humans and become pets. My little rule was, ‘about four months’ – if the cat was older than that, the chances of taming it down to become a pet were extremely slim. One of my cats, that I owned for sixteen years, was one such case – not at all sociable around strangers, and still capable of hissing at me neurotically if I entered the room too suddenly. She became mine when I knew that she couldn’t be returned to the shelter and be considered ‘adoptable.’
And that’s a very loaded word, ‘adoptable’ – it implies a demarcation that really doesn’t exist. There are levels of appeal for every animal, and it’s different for every human viewing them. But it’s safe to say that some animals simply would not, cannot, fall into that realm – too many were actually dangerous, and it would have been irresponsible to even try. Others were ill, often communicably so, or might have behavioral/mental issues. So we can start considering the idea that some animals just aren’t adoptable, and retaining them would take space from animals that were. Remember, 20 animals a day on average – that means that, barring those unadoptable animals, that’s how many have to be placed in homes a day to avoid euthanizing animals. For just one county. That’s a pretty busy program.
And I will sideline here to say, ‘euthanize’ is the word of choice (and frankly, respect) among sheltering personnel. Call it semantics if you like, but in a lot of cases, the subtle meanings of the words we use do have an effect, which is why the very phrase “no kill” even exists (more on this is a bit.) When we euthanized animals, and yes, it was a lot, it was done with an overdose of anesthetic injected intravenously, with personal attention and care, for every case where it could be safely done. Feral cats, for instance, had to be restrained pretty thoroughly to avoid danger to the handlers – and still, it was never done cruelly or even thoughtlessly. Nobody in there wanted to do it – we never would have hired anyone that did – but it was a duty and necessity of work in a shelter. The people that were there, that work in any shelter, are the ones who care about the animals and want to make a difference. And often enough, that means doing the tough parts as well.
So now let’s talk about kenneling, especially long term. First of all, with that number of animals coming in, how many cage spaces, do you think, it would require to house all ‘adoptable’ animals until they’re placed? No, wait – let’s correct a small problem in dealing with numbers, because the kennels didn’t magically empty out on January 1 to start counting again. Throw in a standard wait period for every stray animal – in our case five working days – to allow an owner time to show up, regardless of the appearance, health, sociability, or what-have-you of the animal, so even determining ‘adoptable’ by any standards that you like has to come after that period. Now, here’s a simple metric: it doesn’t matter how many cage spaces you add, because all it does is extend the period of time, from the shelter’s opening, that the kennels become full. Once full, you are, yet again, dealing with no euthanasia only by having the same number of animals go out the door as come in. That’s the only number that matters.
Which is, partially, where the claim of “no kill” shelters comes in. None of them, at all, take in every animal required for a given county – they decide which animals they take in, and can refuse anything they deem unadoptable, and may even have a waiting list for those that are still considered adoptable. As part of my job when a new shelter was going to be built, I did extensive research into such shelters to see how they did it – and found that they didn’t. Every one of them existed alongside another “kill” shelter, that in many cases took the overflow directly from the “no kill” shelters when they couldn’t place the animals. So, yeah, the meaning of “no kill” in such cases simply means, “not by our hands,” and not, “the animal is still alive.” Sound like marketing bullshit to you? Yeah, it does to me too.
My study took place in 2006, I believe, when there were two “no kill” shelters that were triumphantly championing their own cause – one was San Francisco, a very distinct city area with very limited opportunities for feral animals and ‘barnyard’ breeding, and it existed right across the street from the county “kill” shelter! The other was Ithaca, which shipped its overflow animals better than 500 kilometers out to Long Island each fucking week to manage their numbers. Hey, I’ll admit that maybe, in the interim, some county has found a way to make it work, and perhaps there really is a “no kill” shelter out there that actually handles all of the animals that a county produces without unnecessary euthanasia – but even then it’s going to be bullshit, because not every animal is adoptable. Period. And of course, when you include that keyword, then you’re free to define ‘adoptable’ as you like, right? I’m not being disingenuous; this happens all the time, including at another shelter that I worked for.
But okay, let’s get back to kennels. Even ignoring the whole idea of the sheer numbers, let’s talk about long-term care. We all know that the ideal situation is a loving home, which means plenty of space and exercise and good food and medical care. Super. That’s not what any kind of kennel can provide – even the expensive boarding kennels, charging a premium rate while the owner goes on vacation, cannot meet these criteria easily – it sure as hell isn’t happening on any county budget or any nonprofit structure. The overwhelming majority of shelters, regardless of claims, house their animals in relatively small spaces, with very limited outside access (forget about gamboling on the lawn,) limited social interaction with other animals or people, and rudimentary food and medical attention. Think ‘jail,’ only with less yard time and interaction – ‘solitary confinement’ is a bit closer to the mark. And it doesn’t matter what intentions are, or how dedicated the staff is, because there are a lot of animals to take care of. And that staff wants to pay their own bills (the selfish fucks) so add that into your budget. Yeah, volunteers, I know – I’ve worked with volunteer programs for years, so let me give you the real numbers. About ten percent of volunteers are worth the time – the vast majority just want to “cuddle” or do “fun” things, so good luck finding dependable people coming in to clean up shit for free. Meanwhile, they all have to be trained to do things right, and who’s going to do this? Believe me, we did a lot with volunteers, but they require a ridiculous amount of effort and the turnover is much higher than fast food workers.
Now let’s talk about disease. Hospitals (human ones) are known for being on their game, and the bare facts are that a lot of communicable diseases actually get spread through hospitals – despite fierce disinfection routines, that’s simply the place people go when they’re sick. Shelters are even worse – at least in hospitals, the majority of patients shit into a toilet, or are isolated from others when they have stuff that can be spread through the air. In shelters and kennels, it becomes ridiculously easy, no matter how fierce your disinfection routine is (and even if every one of your volunteers is doing things exactly as told,) to have illnesses spread throughout, at least a room or wing, but sometimes throughout the entire shelter. So, medical treatment. Yeah, imagine the veterinary costs of that. One of the nastiest canine diseases, parvovirus, is incredibly hardy, able to be tracked between kennels with a speck of feces on a boot, and when infection takes hold, requires very specific veterinary care to prevent the animal from dying of diarrhea and thus dehydration – we’re talking constant intravenous fluids. We saw parvo every year, usually multiple times a year, because it’s very common out in the wild and not every dog (a ha ha ha ha ha ha!) is vaccinated against it. So how, exactly, is the “no kill” shelter handling such cases? Usually, by a) taking only vaccinated, owned animals, and b) having that little criteria of ‘adoptable’ in there, so they can euthanize the parvo victims without “killing” them. Read the fine print.
Even ignoring all of that, there’s the simple thing that long-term kenneling isn’t healthy for animals – there have been more than a few studies on this as well, not to mention that I can tell you firsthand because I’ve seen more than a few. “Cage crazy” was a term we used for when animals weren’t coping well with extended exposure to such limited environments, and it varies for every animal, just like it does for every human. Generally, a month was considered too long, and while this might be extended for some animals with better, more enriched environments than we could provide, extending it out to several months or years almost certainly isn’t going to work. Behavioral and developmental problems are virtually guaranteed, and in a lot of cases, this won’t reverse. Think about it: if a dog spends six months in a typical kennel space, with only occasional human contact, how house-trained do you think they are? And once this lack of training is established, how easy is it to eradicate and get the dog into asking to go out? I’ll answer this one for you (because I have more than a little contact with dog training, and trainers, as well): Not very easy at all. It may never happen. So, what’s going to happen to that dog, once the new owners decide that they’re tired of carpet-cleaning bills? Heh, not the “no kill” shelter – now it’s a problem animal with very low chance of adoption, and they can’t afford the hit to their reputation… even if they actually caused it in the first place.
We’ll delve into the realm of suffering now, and what exactly counts as cruelty. Deprivation, inadequate medical attention, inadequate exercise, and so on – they don’t have specific lines that can be crossed, and again, it may vary from animal to animal. Too often, however, this isn’t the line that’s being considered; it’s whether the animal is “alive” or not. That’s a pretty shitass criteria, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. Dead animals don’t suffer or feel pain or neurosis – that’s can only take place in living animals, and it’s the reasoning behind euthanasia in the first place, most especially when we consider a family pet that’s in failing health. “Quality of life” is a prime consideration, and it should remain a prime consideration at all times – shelters, no matter what they claim, are not exempt. I’ve also worked as an animal cruelty investigator (this was a checkered few years of my life, I admit,) and I got to see firsthand the effects of ‘hoarding’ behavior; people with the best of intentions, that truly loved animals, but their criteria was, “avoiding death” and not, “avoiding suffering.” You would be horrified, and it happens more often than you might think. I did the photographs and the impound procedures on a case where 66 large dogs, mostly greyhounds, were kept in one three-bedroom house. The smell of ammonia from urine made me reel as soon as the door was opened, and I endeavored not to touch anything in the house because feces was every-fucking-where – I am not exaggerating. The dogs were in varying states of ill health, because who can pay vet bills of that nature? And mind you, this was an approved foster home – just one that the rescue group never checked up on. But, it certainly qualified as a “no kill” environment. Sometimes (all of the fucking time) you have to be less superficial about your standards…
That would be Apple – and you can kind of make out the condition of her teeth. Despite that, she had quite a few happy years with us
[One of those dogs became The Girlfriend’s pet for years, by the way. Despite the fact that they all came in at once into a “kill” shelter, only a couple of them were euthanized due to extremely poor health, and most were adopted.]
Now we get to the actual harm that the “no kill” ideology does, and like I said, exactly counter to what is actually effective. Believe me, the vast majority of people think “no kill” shelters are the way to go, actively denigrating those shelters that do not adhere to such a policy, despite the fact that it’s completely impossible. The overall beliefs seem to be that, if shelters were done right, all of them could be “no kill” – those that don’t “just want to kill animals” (that’s in quotes because I’ve heard this directly more than once,) or are trying to save money, or don’t care about the animals, or various other demonizations that make the operators subhuman. We’re a species that thinks in terms of opposites, so when there are “no kill” shelters, then all the others must be “killers” of course – just like you have gluten-free yogurt, so any that doesn’t say this must have gluten in it (gluten is not only a non-issue unless you have a very specific and rare disorder, it’s found in wheat and so isn’t in yogurt anyway, but it’s exactly that kind of stupidity that prevails in marketing, and “no kill” is a marketing term and nothing else; even the word “kill” is chosen for its impact.) Not to mention, animals are remarkably polarizing, and people get all frothy really quickly – and not very rational. But here’s part one: as long as people believe that things are under control, that such “no kill” shelters exist to make everything hunky-dory, that their own animal is assured a wonderful life when they give it up (including, and this is a big thing, unwanted litters,) then the problem doesn’t really exist.
That’s part two: the problem is, very simply, too many animals to find homes for. I started off quoting those numbers for a reason, because they’re overwhelming, all across our country and in most others besides. Unwanted litters, pets that “aren’t quite what I wanted,” situations where it’s easier to get rid of a pet, animals that aren’t interesting or fun or cute anymore, and so on – they all add up, hugely. And the only way that it’s going to get better is to reduce these numbers. That means spaying or neutering all pets. That means no designer pets or breeding programs (cross-bred animals have way fewer health problems than pure-bred anyway, and what the fuck do you think “pure-bred” even means, anyway? Do you think there’s some kind of genetic superiority among animals, and it reflects on you to own one?) That means no impulse buys or superficial considerations over getting a pet – including how cute it was in a goddamn movie. That means controlling the animal populations on farms and rural areas. That means an animal is for life, a companion that stays with you through thick and thin – friends aren’t ‘disposable,’ especially not when you never did the research to see just what ownership entailed for that breed. And it’s not until everyone is on board with this idea that it’s going to change.
This flies in the face of human desires. There’s no simple solution, no one direction to point fingers, no class of person or particular agency (“kill shelters”) to demonize, no one place to make donations to ‘fix’ the problem; in short, no way to feel superior. We just don’t like it when we can’t say, “All you have to do is this,” and then feel like we’ve accomplished something. The problems are cultural, and systemic.
And none of this is helped by the kind of knee-jerk emotional responses that dominate our attitudes to animal welfare. Animals – the cute, cuddly ones anyway – are our child substitutes, and can trigger our base instincts in countless ways, most of which we try to pretend are ‘rational;‘ this underlies so many things like veganism and anti-fur campaigns and insistence on free-range whatevers and on and on and on. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong in particular with any of these, but use them as examples of how humans can get ridiculously and blindly emotional over the issues, more so than any given situation warrants. It’s way back in our hind-brains, and it has the ability to skew everything we do or believe. And of course, there’s no shortage of organizations that happily prey upon this trait, asking for money while having no actual solution that could possibly work.
Which of course means that the organizations, the advocacy groups, and the outright attitudes that really are aimed towards fixing all of this don’t get the attention; worse, they’re often considered the enemy, and are labeled with attributes that simply don’t belong. You might notice that I’m not providing you with places that are effective to give your money to; I want you to figure this out on your own. And money certainly helps, but the more effective solution is attitude and advocacy; that means us, our efforts, our attitudes, our behavior. We’ve got an entire culture to change, and it doesn’t happen with finger-pointing.
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Some posts regarding, or inspired by, my sheltering days:
Yes, it’s finally arrived! I know you’ve been anticipating this holiday just as much as I have, and I could barely sleep last night. So get your flashlights, unlock that one door in the basement (you know the one,) go check out that particular narrow alley on the bad side of town, and have a happy Find Something Hidden In The Shadows Day!
To get in the spirit of things, I present to you a photo from six weeks ago, when I was out at the airport. Another frame from the sequence was featured in a post back then, but as I was skimming the folder I noticed something.
I said at the time that I was pretty sure this was WTVD’s “Chopper 11,” and it certainly fits the configuration. But as I went past it again, I realized there was the faintest hint of details that could be seen in the versions that were against almost solid clouds, the medium-tone of the background keeping the exposure from going too dark (as opposed to those against a sunnier portion of sky, where the exposure meter adjusted for the greater amount of light and used that as its middle-tone, which made the helicopter commensurately darker.) Anyway, I popped the frame into the editing program and bent them Curves around a bit to bring out that shadow detail, and produced this result from it:
That’s… not Chopper 11, which has a big “11” on the side of the fuselage. But since the registration number could be seen now, I ran that through the ol’ webbernets, the place to go for useless trivia. Turns out it’s registered to Helicopters, Inc out of Cahokia, Illinois. As they tend to say around here, “You a long ways from home, boah.”
So what, exactly, do these Illini, these sand-hillers, think they’re photographing around here, hmmm? I’d recommend paying close attention to the skies if you live here, because I can’t imagine any valid reason why a midwestern eggbeater-jockey should be cruising our skies with cameras on their French-made puddle-jumper. Just be warned.
Okay, it was likely just a loaner aircraft while one of the local owners, possibly WTVD itself, was having their own aircraft serviced – it happens often enough. But still…
You ever do one of those projects big enough that there’s no real “Done!” feeling? You know, there are enough details to miss, enough functions to check, that you’re never sure you got them all, and there’s no real point when you’re completely confident that you’ve finished? That’s how I feel about website updates.
And yet, I will still come in here and say, “Okay, check it out!” and simply deal with any issues as they’re found. So, feel free to go peruse the updated image galleries in the main part of the site – I’m not even sure how many I’ve added, to be honest, but nearly all galleries have been expanded; the exceptions are The River gallery, because I haven’t been back to the Indian River Lagoon in Florida since 2005, the Sets gallery, and the In The Tank gallery, because the one addition I would have made to that went into Insects & Macro instead, which got very expanded to reflect the increased amount of efforts I’ve been concentrating in that direction. Even the Tips & Tricks gallery got that new page on cropping images (with video because, hey, you know me – always ready to broaden my horizons. Or something. It might be my vocabulary of expletives.)
Okay, I just counted, because I wanted to know myself:56 new pages, 57 if you count the cropping page which went up a couple of weeks ago, and even more photos than that because a few of those pages had multiples. But that was more than I imagined. The image seen here, by the way, was one of quite a few that I passed on – this one mostly because I already have enough mantis photos, and the ones that I added this time around were stronger. There’s a surprising amount of thought that goes into such a project: which ones are strongest, which seem too much like the others, how do they balance in the galleries, is there a good variety, is there too much of one color, and on and on. This is on top of the writeups I do for each page, not to mention all of the tags, links, and meta-data that has to be included. Suffice to say I’ve been working on this, off and on, for months.
And there were a few of the old pages pulled down too, ones that no longer passed muster. Sometimes I look at photos from years past and, not really cringe, but definitely find them lacking in appeal anymore. There’s this faint underlying aura of embarrassment, kind of a, “Why is this even on the site?” thing – not too strong, but I’m definitely happy to replace them. Yet, I think that’s the kind of thing that anyone should be feeling if they’re progressing in their skills and efforts; it’s a mark of improvement, isn’t it? Dog only knows what I’ll feel if I start tearing into the slide files with the same thing in mind – they could probably stand it.
But anyway, that’s one major project down, by far the biggest. I’ve still got several more on the burners, though I’m not sure any of them will be reflected here in any way. I may be able to get back into more regular posting now.
Now, here’s one significant advantage North Carolina winters have over New York. New York will be largely overcast and grey throughout the winter months, I mean like almost constantly, and the tendency is, if the sun does actually appear, it’s because a pressure system (don’t ask me whether high or low) moved in and dropped the temperatures like a bitch. But here in NC, it’s fairly common to have brilliantly clear sunny days almost immediately following a storm, and it does make for better shooting conditions.
In fact, while the temperature was lower this morning than it was during the storm yesterday, the sun was doing more than its part and got a head start on melting this all off, but it’s got a long ways to go. Notably though, when I was out in the direct sunlight, I actually started getting a bit hot, and I think I may have picked up a little color today; granted, only on my face, but that’s all anyone’s going to see of me for a few months anyway. I can save a little on the spray-tan.
It was also a damn sight easier to keep the equipment dry, but one still had to be wary of sudden tiny avalanches as the heavy loads broke free of branches and came cascading down, usually without any warning whatsoever. There was still no breeze, so generally the collapses occurred at random, though occasionally when disturbed by a bird.
Speaking of birds, the geese and ducks from yesterday were nowhere to be seen, which is just as well, since the pond had frozen solid by this point. And not even skatingly so; it was partially from accumulated snow and so not terribly smooth, and I’m sure not very thick at all. It likely wouldn’t have supported the weight of an average dog, much less a person. But I wasn’t interested in skating anyway (and in fact, haven’t ice-skated since I was five, which pretty much means “never” since you couldn’t call what I did “skating.”)
It should be obvious that I under-exposed the above image, by 1 1/3 stops, in order to keep the sun’s glare from overpowering the sky, and I touched out a little bit of lens flare too – nothing very serious. More curious is the warped starburst around the sun, which I’m guessing is an artifact of the aspherical lens.
Not far away, I got caught in one of those snow showers, and quickly pointed the camera directly into it – made for a dramatic photo that illustrates the conditions, but of course I had to clean a lot of snow off the camera and lens, and out of the lens hood. Still not half as bad as the deluge yesterday (can I use the word “deluge” when referring to snow? Somebody call Merriam-Webster and see if it only applies to liquid water.) But yeah, Douglas Adams’ advice applies extremely well to nature photographers: always keep a towel handy. And don’t take the disposable rain ponchos out of your bag for any reason.
And then, not far from that, I pointed the camera straight up to take advantage of the branches framing that sky. Once again, none of this is ice, or even adhering to the branches very well; just a liberal coating that has so-far remained undisturbed. In fact, right there at the top of the opening, you can see another little cloud of snow breaking away from the branches.
All of that was well and good, and opportunities for more compelling landscape pics than I normally get around here, but the real captures were yet to come. Rounding the pond and passing by a small dead stump, I started hearing the taps of a (I thought) woodpecker, and could tell from the direction that they had to be coming from that very stump, not four meters away. I still had the wide-angle lens attached, and though I didn’t see any sign of the bird yet, I started switching to the longer lens. Before I had fully completed this operation, the noisemaker appeared from a very subtle opening near the top of the trunk and watched me suspiciously.
That’s a brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla,) a bird that I’ve never seen in the wild, though I’d handled one during my wildlife rehab days. It was, apparently, doing some work on its nesting hollow, which is quite gratifying to see since this is within easy access and visibility (if not exactly at the best sun angle.) I had the chance for just one frame before it hopped from the opening and flew up high in a nearby tree, and I knew it wasn’t likely to come back down while I stood there, so I quietly moved on. My intention was to return a couple of minutes later to see if I could get a few more images of it, and I amused myself with more landscape pics before I made my way back, getting the 100-300 L lens affixed before I came into range, and watching the opening carefully. My efforts paid off nicely.
The bird wasn’t missing the sounds of the camera as I was firing off my shots, but I was remaining motionless and it didn’t seem to be making the connection between the sounds and this unmoving person nearby, looking around in all directions while I loaded the memory card.
It even hopped up to a nearby bush and hung upside-down in the wonderfully gravity-defying way of nuthatches, before returning to its nest hollow; I hadn’t moved. It disappeared into its hollow and re-emerged a couple of times, curious but never so alarmed that it felt the need to fly away, and even flashed its telltale pale head spot. I can, unfortunately, relate.
After, really, quite a few frames, I moved on while it was inside its hollow again. We’ll have to see what happens – whether it finds a mate and if eggs are laid, but it would be nice to be able to check on some young in the spring, and with luck I’ve got a little head start on habituating them to humans nearby.
Now, remember how I said yesterday that it would be better to have bright light on the snow-covered berries? Of course you do; I’m being insulting. Those berries sit right alongside the entrance to the pond area, so naturally I was checking them out. On entry, the sun wasn’t quite high enough to throw light onto them, so I saved them for when I was about to leave. As I approached however, I could see another bird sitting nearby, and it soon revealed itself as a mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos.) I had to go for this particular pose, since it wasn’t turning to face me – or at least, not aligning its body in my direction anyway. I’m not sure what motives to ascribe to this.
I fired off a few frames and watched to see if it would do anything interesting before I moved on to the berries, and the bird was more than obliging, and again not too concerned with my presence; there’s even a chance it was the same one I’d photographed about two weeks ago, since the shooting locations were only about 75 meters apart, well within a territorial range. And my patience paid off, because the bird popped down to a cluster of berries and started picking out a couple.
And I just kept the frames firing.
No, I don’t know what kind of berries these are, and I would have thought they’d have been polished off long ago, but perhaps there’s something about freezing temperatures.
And there it goes.
Ya gotta appreciate it when your subject is so cooperative. I waited around a little longer, but after two berries, the mockingbird seemed to think I was now a little too threatening and went back to the wire to keep an eye on me.
And yes, I did not neglect the berries myself. It only took three attempts over two weeks time.
We did not escape the clutches of the storm that passed across the country, though it did arrive a bit later than anticipated; I had the IP camera set up to run a time-lapse overnight, which captured nothing but rain. Instead, it turned to snow around 9 AM and continued all through daylight hours, which is a good amount for any location, but what we call “slammed” in NC. Thankfully, the pond is within easy trudging distance, so I was still able to get some pics without contemplating any driving.
The biggest challenge was keeping the equipment dry; it was a sub-freezing equivalent of a downpour. I wouldn’t call it a ‘blizzard’ myself, having grown up in central NY and seeing what that really means, plus there was no wind at all. But the snow accumulated in seconds, literally, and I had to keep drying off the camera and lenses.
The Canada geese (Grus canadensis) seemed to be bearing up stoically under their shawls of snow – not very active and not looking happy, but coping. Shooting across the pond with the 100-300 L, the density of the falling snow can be seen easily.
The pond, almost rid of the ice a few days before, was gradually starting to freeze over, the snow becoming slush on the surface, which the waterfowl were cutting paths through, little channels of open water that they followed mostly single-file. During my animal rescue days, I’d gone out a couple of times to free domestic geese that didn’t have sense enough not to roost on the ice, thawing a small patch before it refroze and pinned their feathers, and thus them, to the ice surface; the wild geese apparently know not to do this, but I can’t look at them sitting in the middle of the thickening slush and feel comfortable with it.
The funny thing was, with the air as still as it was and the temperature sitting just below freezing, it wasn’t half as uncomfortable as some of the days in the past couple of weeks, though you did have to be wary of snow dropping from branches down the back of your neck, and I was in a constant battle to keep it out of the camera bags. The Girlfriend and The Sprog accompanied me out there, so I can present an exciting action shot of yours truly, which at least shows off the snow piling onto my chapeau – I’m glad I had the foresight to double up with the broad brim hat and not just use the wool cap.
But, admittedly, it was a losing battle, and before too long I called it quits solely because the camera equipment was getting too wet and I was afraid of moisture seeping into the electronics. We headed back and I quickly dried off the stuff and put it in front of a fan to help evaporate anything else away, letting the bags dry thoroughly as well. But I did have the chance to revisit an earlier shot and do something a little more along the lines that I’d envisioned. A bit brighter light would have been nice, but that wasn’t going to happen today. So it goes.
Maybe, if I get my shit together, I’ll be back with some macro snowflake images. We’ll see how it goes.
I really do need to get back to this park and do some more shots; I was originally going to take along the Impertinent Mr Bugg, but he’s trying to be obnoxious so I’ll just go alone and have a nice, relaxing day where I won’t have to remind anyone to use the appropriate lenses or fix their damn hat all the time.
So for giggles, I took that frame and brought up the shadow areas in an editing program, to see just how much of the landscape could actually be seen. Annnnddd you’re looking at it; not too impressive, is it? The sun corona is so small because it was high in the sky – the eclipse occurred in early afternoon in August, so to even get anything else in the frame, I had to shoot wide angle with a short focal length. I could have gone up underneath a tree and gotten a closer shot with some branches, but that was really the only choice, and it wouldn’t have been very illustrative (not that this is, but anyway…) The exposure settings were 1/40 second at f5.6, ISO 400 – pretty much the limit of handholding a camera and getting a sharp pic. And even at that, you can see how dark it came out. Think being several dozen meters away from a streetlight at night: you can see where you’re walking, but you ain’t reading any fine print, you know?
You ever do one of those projects big enough that there’s no real “Done!” feeling? You know, there are enough details to miss, enough functions to check, that you’re never sure you got them all, and there’s no real point when you’re completely confident that you’ve finished? That’s how I feel about website updates.
In fact, while the temperature was lower this morning than it was during the storm yesterday, the sun was doing more than its part and got a head start on melting this all off, but it’s got a long ways to go. Notably though, when I was out in the direct sunlight, I actually started getting a bit hot, and I think I may have picked up a little color today; granted, only on my face, but that’s all anyone’s going to see of me for a few months anyway. I can save a little on the spray-tan.
It should be obvious that I under-exposed the above image, by 1 1/3 stops, in order to keep the sun’s glare from overpowering the sky, and I touched out a little bit of lens flare too – nothing very serious. More curious is the warped starburst around the sun, which I’m guessing is an artifact of the aspherical lens. 
That’s a brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla,) a bird that I’ve never seen in the wild, though I’d handled one during my wildlife rehab days. It was, apparently, doing some work on its nesting hollow, which is quite gratifying to see since this is within easy access and visibility (if not exactly at the best sun angle.) I had the chance for just one frame before it hopped from the opening and flew up high in a nearby tree, and I knew it wasn’t likely to come back down while I stood there, so I quietly moved on. My intention was to return a couple of minutes later to see if I could get a few more images of it, and I amused myself with more landscape pics before I made my way back, getting the 100-300 L lens affixed before I came into range, and watching the opening carefully. My efforts paid off nicely.
