Yo, I’m all over this one

Al Denelsbeck

As intimated in the previous post, spring is indeed being difficult this year, behaving like a child saying, “green light red light!” then giggling maniacally. Which means yes, it’s snowing out there. I didn’t sleep well last night and the sinuses are bothering me this morning, so this is a perfect time to start posting, right? Ah, but today is another holiday – no, not the vernal equinox, that was yesterday – way to be on top of things, there. No, silly, today is Relate An Obscenity-filled Story Day. Now, if you know me, you know this pretty much means every anecdote that I might have at my disposal – I will never be hired to speak at a day-care or pre-school, that’s for shit sure. But, perversely, the particular story that I’ve chosen is not really filled with obscenities – there’s a few, but less than, for instance, some posts. However, you know that they were there all the same; you can just hear them ring out frequently throughout the tale, and can imagine the air was deep blue by the end.

I recently re-discovered this one as I was doing site updates, since I’d posted it on a webpage for the benefit (or whatever) of others. To set the scene, back in 2004 I was participating in an exercise among regulars of the rec.photo.equipment.35mm newsgroup (ask your father,) where each week or so we’d be given a challenge to fulfill, usually something simple, and we’d have to present a photo that illustrated or exemplified the challenge topic. At the time I was sharing a crowded apartment in Florida, and decided to do a ‘studio’ photo to squeeze as many examples as I could into just one frame. So, this is where we pick up, with some slight editing for clarity:

How to spend way too much time fucking up a shot: The trials and tribulations (okay, only trials) of an elaborate “studio” photo.

Hmmmm. “Tension.” Surface tension, spoke tension, chain tension, guitar strings, and emotional tension. One frame left on film roll in the Olympus. I can do this…

Stand up mattress to have room against only blank wall in entire apartment that has access to it. Roll in bike. Position carefully. Clean noticeable areas of grime off spokes and frame. Try to clean spokes with old steel wool pad from kitchen – too rusty, making things worse with rust dust. Nice patch on carpet now. Ignore, carpet not in view. Clean bike again.

Prop guitar against it. Shift umpteen times. Keeps sliding down. Brace with boxes.

Bring in glass, play with reflection. Stick boxes and book to bring to correct height. Shift guitar twelve more times to reflect in water surface.

Angle halogen light to illuminate guitar and bike, get good highlights, reflect in water. Tricky. Eventually realize glass is refracting and distorting image through it. Block back with white paper cut to shape of glass. Good, but too bright with light angle. Light cannot move or reflection will go away. Kick over measuring cup with extra water to raise level in glass. Fetch towel to prevent 1/2 cup of water from soaking into carpet.

Cut black plastic instead of white paper to go behind glass. No good – plastic adheres to damp glass and creates patches of deep black where it touches. Stuff plastic inside glass. Perfect! But it floats and tends to lift above edge of water, becoming visible. No prob – it takes a moment to shift, so I can push it down and get the shot before it rises again.

Place mirror in background. It reflects window light into lens. Not good. Hang black sheet from ceiling as backdrop. Takes several tries with pushpins.

Float needle on water. Plunks straight to bottom. Water level too high to stick anything in there to get it. Carry glass into bathroom, dump out. Use tape to hold plastic down in glass. No good. Use camera filter in glass to pin down plastic, catch needle closer to top. Play with needle until it floats (requires coating it with wax and lowering it onto surface with toothbrush). Go back into room, refill glass. Float needle. Remove cat hair (which also floats) from water for sixth time.

Set up camera. Olympus lenses only go down to f16. Want more; tough shit. Adjust focus meticulously. DOF Preview does not work in split-image portion of viewfinder, very dark and indistinct in other portions. Play for a couple of minutes until I’m as sure as I can be. Camera height too low for cheesy tripod, stuff too tight together for versatile Bogen. Get out micro tripod and stack on books and boxes. Leg spread keeps slipping over edges. Finally get it right. Exposure under halogen at f16 is going to be 1 second, must use cable release.

Glass is tilted. Stuff folded paper under one corner so water level doesn’t look stupid. Guitar shifts yet again. Fucker. Float needle, carefully. Unless aligned a certain way, it disappears against dark plastic backdrop. Tap gently. It tends to rotate slightly back into position. Goddamn thing’s mildly magnetized, I just made myself a compass. Now I know what to do if I get lost in my bedroom.

Go sit in position, cable release in hand. Tap needle gently, grimace and grab hair (not an act by this point). Trip shutter. Can see needle moving.

RESULT: Total shit. Too busy, too damn many reflections, needle moving and indistinct, should have shot it vertical, framing bad, spokes out of DOF, too much of bike visible, not enough of guitar, and I look like I’m smiling.

elaborately staged and still pathetic 'studio' shot
I learned a fuckload about studio photography doing this, but the primary lesson is that I don’t want to do it again. Ya gotta admit the black plastic trick worked like a fucking charm, though. And I can see the merits of light tents and movable black backdrops.

But I went archive for “Tension”…

… which means that, having blown the one frame on the roll that I had to devote to this, I wasn’t going to load and shoot another whole roll of film to meet the deadline, and instead went with a photo I already had in my stock. The digital camera that I’d had on loan, just a few months before, had been shipped off to its new owner by this point.

Note that you can also see the rust dust still present on the bike frame, and one of the boxes peeking in at lower right. And of course, the scratches on the negative that I wasn’t going to bother with by this point. Also, my appearance in the frame came courtesy of that aforementioned mirror, since I didn’t have the room nor a long enough cable release to be in that position in the background.

It’s easy to believe that studio photography is fairly simple, since everything is controlled and set up just how you like it. The reality is often something different – and I don’t even do this routinely (obviously.) Reflections (look at how complicated the guitar seems just because it reflects everything around it,) backgrounds, light angles and hues and intensities, to say nothing of the one angle that illustrates what you need it to – which I even had to play with in the previous post, so the softbox and focusing light addition are clear. Sometimes we don’t realize that our perception of something comes from our ability to see it three-dimensionally. I was approached by a glass artist who wanted her artworks photographed for advertisements, who stipulated that she wanted it clear (heh!) that the pieces were glass – it wasn’t always evident in the photos that she’d had done previously. I knew it would be a tough job, because most of the impression that we get of depth and transparency comes from seeing such a piece from multiple perspectives, noticing how the different layers and surfaces shift separately as we turn our head or walk around it – something that obviously wasn’t going to be demonstrated in a still photo. Truth be told, I wasn’t really qualified to tackle it, but she was looking for a bargain rate, so I quoted her a price with the stipulation that she would only pay if both she and I were happy with the results. The price I quoted was probably one-third or less what a professional studio would have charged, and it was still too much for her tastes, so yeah, best of luck with that…

Macro photography part 12: Refinement

Al Denelsbeck

I have been meaning to do this for a while now, and have no real excuse for how long it took to get to it. It took no time at all once I sat down to work on it.

This is a combination of two projects, really. The first is the macro softbox, which is still in routine use because it works extremely well. The second is the focusing light, which needed a little work – partially to stabilize the light beam more than that gooseneck USB extension was allowing (despite my initial confidence in it, it tended to wobble a bit and realign the light,) but also to make the system more efficient.

center of beam of macro softboxStudio strobes often have what’s called a modeling light – a single light bulb in addition to the xenon flash tube, which can be turned on and off at will. The idea is, the bulb shines light from the same direction as the flash tube, so you know what kind of shadows the strobe will throw when it goes off (there are also constant light sources, not quite as bright as most strobes, much hotter, but especially, hard to use for people because it makes them squint and causes their pupils to contract.) Anyway, I wanted to carry the idea of the modeling light into my macro work; since I often had to have the focusing light anyway, it might as well be coming from the same direction as the strobe when it went off, right?

The first part was, determining the ‘sweet spot’ of the strobe and softbox. I had always assumed that the focus of the strongest light was not quite perpendicular to the face of the diffusing panel, due to the position of the reflector behind it and the incoming light from the strobe itself, but I was never sure how far off this angle might be. So I attached the strobe and softbox to a light stand, with the panel aimed straight down, and set a measuring stick on the floor underneath with the zero end directly under the center of the diffuser, but about a meter below. I then triggered the strobe a couple of times while shooting the results with a wide angle lens, to see just how far up the measuring stick the brightest portion of the light fell. Curiously, I was all wrong (hard to believe I know): the brightest spot was directly in front of the diffuser, perpendicular to its face. Okay then.

After that, I cut a hole in the reflector back of the softbox, just big enough for the LED light’s beam, and rigged a small adapter to hold the light at the right angle, since the back of the diffuser was sloped to reflect the output from the strobe. I set aside the gooseneck USB extension and simply used a standard USB extension cord since the light was now affixed to the softbox itself. The other change was having a battery pack with a switch, making it much easier to turn the light on or off as needed.

focusing/modeling light attached to macro softbox

light shining through macro softboxThe battery pack, by the way, is now attached directly to the strobe unit with Velcro, especially since I’ve switched to a smaller, lighter flash bracket that doesn’t provide as much room to carry it.

Now, when the focusing light is on, I know that the softbox is aimed precisely where I need it to be, as well as seeing how the shadows will be falling across my subject; there is an added element as well, since a lot of my subjects are near or within foliage, and the focusing light coming directly through the softbox tells me if it will be blocked by branches or leaves.

So how’s it work? Just the way it was intended, and with remarkably predictable results; what I see in the viewfinder is largely how it will appear in the final image. The final results are slightly better, due to the fact that the focusing light is small and like a spotlight, but the strobe is diffused by that panel into a much broader area, so shadows are lessened and coverage improved. The almond blossom from the previous post is one of the initial experiments, but there’s really nothing that shows in the final image – it’s all about how well it works to nail focus and predict the shadows, and for that, it does a great job.

Yesterday had been quite warm and this was still carrying over into last night as the rains rolled in, so in my search for experimental subjects, I once again found three green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) to work with. There’s a chance of snow again tonight, so they’re probably getting a bit exasperated by now.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea perched on vinyl cover
Each one gave me slightly different conditions to work with, so I was able to do a couple different tests in the brief time I spent out there last night. This one was pretty straightforward, and not posing too enigmatically. The next one was more photogenic.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea looking placid
Both of these were sitting on a vinyl cover, but this one was slightly under an overhang, so the modeling light gave a good indication of when the light from the strobe was going to be blocked. While the fade into darkness isn’t ideal in an illustrative, identification style photo, I like the effect from a portraiture/fartistic approach. You can’t even see that overhang, can you? Believe me, it was practically right over the frog’s head.

For both of these, I should have switched the macro light from the left side of the camera to the right for better facial lighting, though in this case it likely wouldn’t have worked, given the constraints. And again, this was a quick test of the focusing light more than anything.

The next one was even more of a challenge, and vindication of the project.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea shot through the branches
This is the same shrub where I photographed the first emergent a couple of weeks ago, but this frog has a deeper color and different spot pattern. This one was also fairly deep among the fallen leaves suspended in the branches, so getting a better portrait angle was the challenge. Luckily it held still as I maneuvered around to poke the lens through the leaves, and the macro light suspended on the arm alongside the camera told me when I would effectively illuminate the amphibian; I have several frames, all successful, so there you go. I should have done this long ago.

And there was one more challenge, though the new lighting method was only going to be of trivial use there. During the afternoon I had noticed activity in the backyard pond, and twice saw a small frog surface, but it was incredibly spooky and the slightest motion that I made to line up the camera sent it back into the depths of the water again. At night, however, frogs are confused by bright lights, and as long as nothing passes in front of the light source, or gets illuminated by it (such as a headlamp shining onto the camera itself as you lean close,) frogs will usually sit still. This one submerged as I drew close, but then immediately resurfaced a short distance away and floated there patiently, and I was able to get in very close. However, the light angle wasn’t ideal for penetrating the water, and this image was a little dark – it’s been brightened slightly in post.

green frog Lithobates clamitans not spooked enough to submerge
Yes, the reflection of the softbox is a bit distracting, and there’s little that can be done about that – the water is going to curve in odd ways along the frog’s body, and no light source is going to escape the effect. The best that could be achieved is weaker, indirect light, like from an overcast sky or tree canopy, so daylight conditions, and then of course the frog wouldn’t be holding still. The best thing to do is to switch positions and see what reduces the reflections the most.

reflection of softbox from raindropsBut that image above, and the tight crop to the right, illustrated something else for me. I was vaguely concerned that the hole I cut in the back of the softbox would show in the resulting images, given the right conditions, and I’d have a distracting darker ‘pupil’ in any distinct reflections, which happen often enough among my various subjects. The even round spot is fine, more or less normal looking, and much better than the window-pane rectangle from an earlier lighting rig, but a dark spot in the middle is hardly natural-looking. So it’s pleasing to see no sign of it at all. I was fairly certain that the strength of the strobe would overpower the LED light itself in the photos.

By the way, do you see two eyes looking down to the left? Well, you do now…

Preparing for the feast

Al Denelsbeck

first blossom on almond tree Prunus amygdalus
Do you know what this is? Seriously, do you? Yes, yes, it’s a flower, very good Quickdraw, but what kind of flower?

All right, never mind, stop guessing wildly, you’re embarrassing us both. This… is the very first blossom on my almond tree! Six years ago I found a little sapling emerging from our mulch pile, and as I uprooted it I realized it was growing from what looked like an almond. A little research into the shapes of their leaves confirmed it, and I transplanted it into the yard, where it took hold and started growing. That was at the old place, and it got transplanted again to come with us to the new house, and uprooted again, but only briefly, when some tree work was being done in the yard and we didn’t want it damaged. It now stands just under a meter tall, and is sporting two blossoms and a bud of another. That means we’ve got, potentially, three almonds to look forward to in the harvest season!

Can you imagine that? Almonds, fresh from the tree! Okay, not really; raw almonds aren’t a wise thing to eat – they should be roasted first. But our own almonds! The anticipation is killing me. And the number is perfect too, since there’s three of us.

All foolishness aside, I am pleased to see it actually flowering – we’ve had so much difficulty with the soil here and getting things to thrive that it’s nice to see this little accident still plugging away. Moreover, this image is a bit of proof that another project of mine is working pretty well, but that’ll be a later post, because there are some illustrating photos that I still need to obtain. Bear with me.

Per the ancient lore, part 1

Al Denelsbeck

Herewith I begin another semi-regular topic, though I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to aim for weekly or not. But for each of these, I will be featuring one of my earlier digital images, thus the ‘ancient lore’ bit – we’ll be stirring deep into history here, going as far back as 2004! That was actually before I’d purchased a digital camera of my own, but Jim Kramer (an obscure name, I know) had gone into digital before I, and when he’d upgraded to a later model, he loaned me his old one before it sold off to another friend of mine. This was when I lived in Florida, and I made the most of the time that I had it.

A word about the history. Digital cameras had been available since the mid 90s, though the first offerings were massive models and quite expensive, like 10 grand or better. By the time I was in Florida, Canon had a couple of DSLR models out, but mostly only the high-end professionals had adopted them – one wedding photographer that I knew had jumped in with a Canon 10D, though everyone else was still shooting film. The camera that I was using, a Sony DSC F717, was known by titles such as “prosumer” and “bridge” – a little better than the touristy point-and-shoot styles and possessing solid image quality, but still with a fixed zoom lens and not aimed towards the professional markets. Like most digital cameras of that time and years afterward, there was a noticeable delay between pressing the shutter button and actually capturing the image, and so crucial timing was difficult – as I would later gain a lot of experience in.

But right now, let’s go back to the second or third day that I had the camera, when I was maintaining a saltwater aquarium with residents of the local lagoon. There is actually a structure to my choices here, since I’m going in category order, followed by chronological – this comes from my ‘Aquatic’ folder.

juvenile Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus posing with dislodged barnacle
Keep in mind, the webbernets wasn’t what it is now; there were a lot fewer resources available even though it had been active for close to two decades at that point, so it took a bit of time to identify this particular specimen – photo galleries of crab species really didn’t exist. And this was a much smaller example than what I was used to; measuring only about 5cm across the width of the carapace, this was a juvenile Atlantic blue crab (Callinectes sapidus,) lacking the deeper green coloring, with blue highlights, of the adults. It didn’t stay in my small aquarium for very long, since it required more food than would be available and it likely would have consumed many of the other species that I had in there, but I shot a few sessions while I had it. The shell fragment it seems to be displaying to us is actually a detached barnacle seen from the underside (which is the top of the head – no I’m not kidding.)

previous image without color correctionThis was before I got into serious macro work, and so my light sources were a bit eclectic. While I had two flash units at hand, a lot of my aquarium photography was done under the main light source for the tank, which was a halogen reading lamp on a swing arm. This prevented any bright reflections that a flash unit might have thrown from the glass of the tank, and provided a reasonably normal angle of light, but it was much dimmer than a strobe. And not white-balanced, so it cast an overall color shift that was worsened by the sediment in the water. The image to the left is the original, uncorrected color, while I tweaked the one above to be more of a neutral, ‘true’ white.

The camera that I used here stopped working a few years ago, and the friend that had purchased it suggested that I take it back home if I wanted to fiddle with it and perhaps get it working again, but I forgot to put it in my bags when I left his place. Meanwhile, I think Jim still has the Sony F828 that replaced it – I’ll try pestering him to break it out, charge the batteries (if they’ll take a charge) and do some images for nostalgia’s sake.

Remember…

Al Denelsbeck

… those emerging reptiles, just two weeks ago?

Dumbasses.

snow on birdhouse on March 12
Despite such optimistic indications, on Monday afternoon the snow returned – not a lot, and nothing to improve the appearance of the landscape in the area, but certainly a kibosh on the concept of an early spring. Whoever might’ve gotten that impression. It was, in fact, snowing hard enough when I got this photo that the blurs from at least four falling snowflakes are visible in the tiny portion of the frame that shows any depth, off to the right. I’m glad I didn’t do any early plantings.

melted snowflakes (so, water drops) on weeping cherry blossomsThe air was cold enough, especially at altitude, to produce snowflakes, but at ground level the temperature largely remained warm enough to prevent it from sticking. The Girlfriend’s weeping cherry tree, enthusiastically pushing out blossoms for the past two weeks or so, refused to cradle any flakes artistically and instead melted them on contact, though the pale background indicates it was accumulating on the grasses. I had time only for a brief photo session, trying to find something that spoke of the conditions and not doing terribly well – the birdhouse up there did better than anything. I also didn’t affix the flash, wanting the natural light conditions, but it was dim enough that decent shutter speeds (at an ISO that wouldn’t look shitty, from the Canon 30D) just weren’t happening. One subject merited a return in the evening when I had a few more minutes, so this time I did it right and used the macro flash rig.

unidentified spider completely ignoring the freezing weather
I’ve remarked before how quickly the spiders seem to reappear as soon as the weather turns the slightest bit warm, but this is the first I’ve seen active during freezing conditions, and not very sluggishly at that. It’s curious, because it seems a waste of time to me – prey insects aren’t likely to be found anywhere, even though a small handful are cold-hardy and can even be found in arctic conditions. But I don’t see them around here, and generally the temperatures have to be up in the 10s (that’s celsius, or 50s fahrenheit) to start seeing insect activity. Perhaps this guy knew something I didn’t. Or maybe it’s just one of those evolutionary freaks that likes the snow – every species has a few.

While out there with the flash, I returned to the cherry tree to do another version, this time going low to capture more of the interior detail of the blossoms. It’s a shame I didn’t have snowflakes to work with, just to enhance the apparent clash of seasons.

more weeping cherry blossoms melting snow
The next day dawned bright and sunny, but I still had to clear the snow from my car at mid-morning, though it had never stuck to the roads and was quickly eradicated from lawns and such. I’d like to believe it was the last of the season, but the nights are still predicted to drop below freezing for a few more days at least, so it’s not time to plant anything yet. I have better plans this year than ever before, so here’s hoping at least some of them pan out into something interesting to post.

Okay, okay

Al Denelsbeck

sanderling Calidris alba running ahead of encroaching seafoam
Yeah, it’s been longer than intended, but once again, it’s been a period with too much going on that wouldn’t be the least bit interesting as a post, and otherwise shitty conditions to try and photograph within. Despite the early indications, spring has not arrived yet, so be patient – I’ll have more stuff coming when I have something more to work with.

And naturally, when I sit down to actually work on a post, the connection speed is abysmal…

So this image is from the North Topsail trip last year, but also one of the many potentials that I set aside for the gallery updates but never used. It’s the kind of image that I’m torn over – nothing exciting or compelling from the behavior or detail standpoint, faintly interesting in the body position, especially since the sanderling (Calidris alba) has more the appearance of stepping daintily in the seafoam gap rather than (in reality) running from the advancing tideline, but I still liked the color and the framing. In the end I decided on images that I felt were stronger, but didn’t want to completely reject it…

Now, another aspect of this work. If you’re a photographer and intend to have a website, hopefully you’ve flush enough to pay someone to make one for you, but I suspect that’s rarely the case – it certainly doesn’t apply on my end. So if you’re doing your own, a lot of factors regarding the design come into play: what screen-resolution and aspect ratio are you aiming for, and will you make it compatible with smutphones? How many scripts or dynamic doohickeys do you include, and how well do they play with different operating systems? How much time do you spend researching such things and how much impact do they have?

I recently picked up a new (to me) monitor with a different aspect ratio, and thus changed my display resolution, which means the blog now shows differently to me, and if you’re the type to worry about how the ‘page’ is laid out (I am,) you start wondering about how to format things to appear right to the greatest number of users. I had fixed ‘full column’ and ‘partial column’ image sizes, and in my original screen resolution these worked well, but now less so as it’s increased, and so I wonder what the average is for most users, and if I boost these sizes, how many users now have images too big to work well? I actually increased the full column sizes just a trivial amount, more a sop to suspicions than any functionality, but it still remains less than the size I use for the horizontal image formats in the gallery itself, so the pic above was reduced from the one I had set aside for potential use therein (from 800 pixels wide down to 750, to be specific.)

It might seem frivolous or even paranoid, but presentation is a big part of the impression people get from your work – some more so than others. I personally am a ‘functionality over form’ kind of guy and passionately detest the current fads in webdesign, which change almost as frequently as clothing fashion and with the same utter pointlessness, but how much of this is safe to reflect in my site? Do I turn off new visitors if there’s too much blank space or awkward pagination? These kind of things don’t keep me awake at night, but ignoring them entirely might be detrimental to some unknown degree.

As for smutphones, well, too bad so sad – I’m not even going to bother. Not only do they change too often and have entirely different aspect ratios and typical layouts (most people use their screens vertically instead of horizontally, so formatting a site and blog to handle both is tricky,) I am far too wordy to appeal to the typical person who might be surfing on their phone, and the time spent choosing image sizes is completely thwarted by screens that can fit in your mouth, so they’re not a factor in my decisions, at least.

About the only accommodation I might make for phones is to offer a ‘background screen of the month’ option for a small yearly fee, if I think it’ll be popular enough – I’d probably have to avoid certain subjects. Naturally mentioning it way down in a wall of text is exactly what I shouldn’t be doing. But yeah, if you’re intrigued by the idea, make a comment or drop me a line.

Later on, there will be more gallery rejects, so you got that going for you. Which is nice.

Deadlines met and missed

Al Denelsbeck

coral growth on an old snail shellTo see February on its poorly-spelled way, we have a shot from the dead season earlier in the month when virtually nothing existed to photograph, and I pulled out this little find from the Wilmington trip last year. Wandering the beach, I had found a snail shell, weathered heavily by tidal action and boring worms, that had served as an anchor for a small coral colony, and recently came across it again when sorting odds and ends. It’s faintly curious because the coral out-masses the shell by at least 2 to 1, probably more, and makes it distinctly off-balance, but coral attaches to fixed surfaces. As you can see, the coral is opposite the shell opening, covering every smooth surface, so I surmise that the shell itself was attached to something on the side you see here; part of the shell edge that continues out of the frame to the right seems to have an unweathered, freshly broken appearance, so I suspect that’s where it all had been anchored at one time.

And as I was about to start on this post, I glanced at the sidebar where posts from years back on this date can be found, and noticed none at all for last year – which means I missed the end-of-month abstract for February in 2017. A wave of utter dread came over me, as well as firm denial: there’s no way that I could have disappointed my copious readers in that manner. And yet, it remains true; I missed the month end abstract a year ago. There must have been some extenuating circumstance then, some loss of internet service or thing of that nature, because not only is my post missing, I have no missives about this lack from my readers either! I’m sure your mind is boggling at this very idea as much as mine is. So to all of those who attempted to alert me to this apparent oversight, I apologize profusely, but your efforts never made it through the mysterious barrier to communication that existed then.

Better late than never, as the saying goes, which I believe was originally a reference to menstruation. I herewith rectify this egregious lack, and provide a month-end abstract for February 2017, indeed actually taken within that month – I strive for authenticity. This is a crop from a larger frame to enhance the abstractedness of the subject, and somehow spellcheck did not even blink on that word. I mean, it actually underlined “pre-existing” [again], and who hasn’t heard of that?

February 2017's abstract
I’m often unsure how obvious, or not, any given photo is, but I suspect this one is helped a little by the reflection of the clouds. Anyway, it’s an old pine limb extending from the water, doing its best impression of an angelfish, though perhaps one with a lot of tumors on its side. Being in deep shade the limbs came out silhouetted against the sunny sky reflection. Yeah, I’ve done better, but remember: February. Easily the least productive month for me, at least until I move to the southern hemisphere.

From the jaws of defeat

Al Denelsbeck

So, I’ve mentioned before that I’ve wanted (for reasons too sordid to go into here where anyone could see it) to catch sunrise on the central peak in Tycho. Tycho is a crater on the moon, one of those where the impact debris formed a pile of rubble directly in the center of the crater, because physics. And of course, this little mountain will see the rising sun before the crater floor, which will be visible from Earth with a high enough magnification.

This is an image of that peak taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, but this is too late in the day – the crater floor is visible. That central peak is 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in height, just so you know. There is a banana for scale at the base of the peak.

central peak of Tycho crater from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Credit: NASA/GFC/Arizona State University

Now, the moon rotates a lot slower than Earth, each day there lasting 29.5 Earth days, so sunrise is a much slower affair. As a bit of trivia, each of the Apollo missions were timed for lunar morning, when they would have constant daylight but the moon’s surface would not have heated up too far to tax the equipment and astronauts – the temperature difference between day and night on the moon is hundreds of degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit – doesn’t matter.) Anyway, capturing this sunrise event doesn’t quite require the exact timing of such an event on Earth, but it’s still a narrow window during one phase of the moon.

We’ve had some clear nights, and on February 23rd I observed the moon and thought, Maybe, and so set up the tripod and 170-500 lens to see what I could get. This is not quite enough magnification to see if the sun is touching that central peak, and in fact, pinning down Tycho itself is more than a little tricky. When you see the full moon it’s easy, because Tycho has that wonderful system of rays, a starburst of ‘ejecta’ (debris) from the impact, but they mostly extend towards the west side, which is not illuminated yet at the time I was aiming for. There are only two visible at Tycho sunrise, and they’re curving around enough that they can be hard to use as a guide; if it’s too early, even the crater walls of Tycho are shrouded in darkness, and with all of the craters in that region of the moon, it’s hard to know which one you’re actually looking at.

first quarter moon just before sunrise on Tycho
What happens is, I get the shot, trying hard both to nail the precise focus and to make out if that central peak is illuminated, then come back in, unload the card, and look at the full resolution image while trying to pin down enough landmarks to ensure I have the right crater.

By the way, Google Earth has a moon setting where you can see detailed photos of the moon, but it’s no help in the slightest: all of the images are taken during “high noon” for that region, throwing no shadows or shaping, so even telling certain craters apart is difficult. Like a lot of photographic subjects, the best results come from oblique light, the shadows providing the shapes and textures that make things interesting. So full moon shots are nice, but non-full phases like shown here have much more depth and relief.

Here’s a marked version. The blue arrow is Tycho, just a bit too soon so the central peak is still dark, while the yellow arrow is Eratosthenes, a crater at the end of the Apennine mountain range (Montes Apenninus,) that distinctive curved line of mountains easily visible with a long lens, decent binoculars, or a small telescope.

first quarter moon with Tycho and Eratosthenes marked
The reason that I mention the Apennines and Eratosthenes is that these are more visible and distinctive than Tycho, at this time of lunar day, and the appearance of Eratosthenes from the darkness indicates about the same happening for Tycho. And after getting this image and determining that I was a little too early, I wondered if the event might just occur in an hour or so. This is where I was unnecessarily stupid (like there’s a necessary level of stupidity,) because I neglected to check the time when the moon would disappear below the horizon and guesstimated it instead; when I went back out, I was too late.

The next day I did a couple of daylight shots of the moon (meaning our daylight, like late afternoon here) and followed up in the evening, confirming that I was too late.

first quarter phase of moon showing sunrise has passed Tycho crater
And the marked version; again, blue for Tycho, yellow for Eratosthenes.

version of same image with Tycho and Eratosthenes marked
There is the faintest indication of that central peak, from both a brighter spot of the light reflecting more directly to us from the sides, and a darker spot from the shadow it throws; you can imagine that, at this magnification, even if I get the precise moment the focus better be bang on or it won’t show at all.

The other crater now visible to the left of Eratosthenes is Copernicus; with its high and sharp walls it shows up pretty well with magnification, leading to the common saying, “If you can see Copernicus, it’s too late for breakfast on Tycho.” So, yeah, missed sunrise again.

Now, as you’re rolling your eyes at my incompetence and thinking of reading someone else’s blog, let me tell you the rest of the story. Again, pinning down Tycho when you’re seeing it at the terminator (edge of shadow) can be tricky if you’re not intimately familiar with all of the craters on the moon, and Google Moon is no help; neither are most of the moon maps in existence, for much the same reasons. So one of my tricks is to take a full moon photo from my own stock, where Tycho is obvious, and overlay it onto the current image. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Not only do both the size and the orientation have to be precise, requiring a lot of playing around in an editing program, the moon wobbles, and doesn’t show us the exact same face each night, so any chosen full moon shot might not match the face I just got, and no editing trick is going to fix that.

But as I was going through my folder seeing what pics might help, I came across a set of images taken back in 2009 when I had an 8″ Galilean telescope, experimental shots holding the camera without lens up the the empty eyepiece of the scope – much larger and more detailed than anything the 170-500 could manage. The orientation was different so maybe that’s why it escaped my attention then, but I stopped dead now and looked stupidly at the photo (orientation changed closer to other photos here.)

first quarter moon showing sunrise on Tycho's central peak
See it? I admit, it’s hard to make out at this resolution, meaning that in the viewfinder of the camera at the lower magnification of the 170-500, it would be impossible, but here’s a full resolution inset of the telescope image, with handy blue pointer again.

full resolution inset of previous image with Tycho marked
Yeah, that’s sunrise on Tycho’s central peak all right. And there are even some indications that I caught it almost as it occurred; I shot four images over seventeen minutes, and it appears to be getting brighter in each. So, for years I’ve had this as a goal, unaware that I’d captured it without intending to back during some experimental shots in the early days of the blog – in fact, ten days before what presently counts as the first post, but not really. It even got posted seven weeks later.

I ended up selling that telescope back when I needed the money, and in all honesty this isn’t a good area for astronomical observations, between the light pollution and humidity, but I still might get a smaller scope to use when the mood strikes – I like astronomy too much not to.

First mud, part 2

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve had a small handful of posts (how many is that? What do posts mass? How many fit in an average hand?) in the works for several days, trying to get enough time to sit down and work on them, so this is evidence of them to some extent – there’s going to be a lot of photos in this one. But some of that is due to conditions, too.

common chickweed Stellaria media blossomIt is perfectly expected to be mired in the lingering pall of winter at this point, the time when I am struggling to find something, anything, to photograph, and we had a couple of hard snows which would have seemed to indicate that spring might be slow in coming. At left, a common chickweed (Stellaria media) flower, perhaps 8mm across at best, makes an initial appearance in one of the dormant planters in front of the house. I had to make two attempts at this, because when I first spotted the flowers I didn’t have time to photograph them, and that time arrived after dark. This is a flower that closes up at night, so you understand how that went. Eventually, I got out during the day to capture this bare little indication of the better photography season.

Yet we had a spate of remarkably warm weather, and abruptly things were happening. The daffodils emerged, many of the plants in the yard started to bud out, and the rose bush that I had just trimmed back threw out hundreds of new branches. One could easily be convinced that spring had arrived, and while I’d love to believe that, I’m wary of the time of year and suspect that we have another cold snap due at some point.

But damn the practical pessimism – there might be things to take pichers of out there! The Unclean Mr Bugg thought so too, resulted in two outings within a week, making up (a little) for the fact that he’s been missing since christmastime. Okay, that’s not completely true; he tried to schedule an outing when it was grey and cold and I didn’t feel well, which I had to blow off, but that was the only one. And so, out we went!

The first was to Mason Farm Biological Reserve, and we were largely looking for birds at that point. They were more scarce than normal, but it was afternoon and not the ideal time to be chasing such subjects, even as we enter mating season. We still got inordinately lucky, right from the start. At the calls of two barred owls (Strix varia) pretty close by we froze, and a pair cut right across the path in plain sight, alighting in some trees roughly thirty meters away. By the way, I’ll take a moment to scold whatever ornithologist or naturalist that named the barred owl, or perhaps the barn owl – whichever was named second: it is perpetually tedious to keep orally explaining to someone the difference between the two names, which inevitably means I’m saying, “Barrrrred-duh. You know, with bars, the stripes across the plumage.” If some stupid sonofabitch names a new species the bard owl, I will hunt them down personally and kneecap them.

One of the owls was spotted (no, not with spots, you fool, but espied, discovered, arrested visually) on a branch in relatively plain sight – which demonstrated how good those bars are, because even then it was damn hard to see, but you know, this is what I’ve been doing for years, so no biggie [polish nails]. That’s, naturally, if I don’t tell you about the second owl, which was never seen again, yet still likely to be perched in another tree giggling at us. We crept closer, snapping off a few pics under the forest canopy in light overcast conditions – not the ideal time to be chasing photos with a long lens. Our subject, back to us, took off and flew to another tree not far away, and I watched it carefully to note its position as we crept still closer. Eventually, it turned fixed its gaze on us. I am under no illusions that it didn’t know we were there all along, since we were conversing quietly and owls have wicked sharp hearing, but I think it was more intent on its territoriality and/or courtship and was ignoring us as long as possible – it even craned its head around when the distant calls of a red-shouldered hawk were heard. But yeah, with patience we got some nice facial shots, and I think it’s pretty obvious that we see it here from the back.

barred owl Strix varia eyeing the camera warily
I was over-exposing (from what the camera suggested) by a full stop because of the lightness of the background, with boosted ISO and a monopod for the long lens, and this still isn’t as sharp as it could be – like I said, not ideal conditions, but snagging an owl pic in daylight is uncommon enough, so I’m not complaining. And you know me – I can complain about anything.

Others were making it clear that they believed spring was here too. The frogs were already calling, and in several places we found turtles basking. I usually consider the appearance of the frogs to herald the spring shooting season, so there were gratifying to see. Here, a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) turned its head this way and that to watch us warily as we passed, which was quite curious; they usually don’t hesitate to dive into the water as soon as they know someone is near, but a jogger even passed as we stood there shooting, and the turtle turned to watch him go without even twitching from position.

painted turtle Chrysemys picta displaying remarkable patience
Mason Farm didn’t offer a lot else worth mentioning or displaying, so we’ll move on. A few days later, I was doing yard work before I had to meet Mr Bugg again, and casually plucked a few fallen leaves from where they had nestled over the winter within the branches of a small shrub. A flash of bright green had me thinking the shrub was also leafing out, but better focus revealed it to be a green treefrog (Hyla cinerea.)

green treefrog Hyla cinerea newly emerged in spring
Notably, this was the exact same shrub (or its immediate neighbor) where I had photographed the one unearthed, literally a ha ha, from a bag of potting soil last year; I was trying to encourage it to use the bush’s soil for its winter hibernation, but suspected that it had rejected my suggestion. I’m still not sure this is the same one, since it has bigger yellow spots on the back than I see in the pics from last year, but it’s also thinner and less hydrated from hibernation, so… maybe?

[On an unrelated side note, did you see how the background details mimicked the curve of the frog’s back, actually framing it? How about the other twig that points right to the main focal point, the eye? That’s careful composition, that is, a master at work. Okay, I’m sorry, the truth is it’s wholly unintentional and serendipitous, and I’m only admitting it here because nobody reads anything on the internet, so this is my little inside joke. Also, I spit in your milk back in the third grade.]

After that, I picked up Mr Bugg at his place, and spotted/espied/discovered/arrested a green or Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) basking on a solar landscape light. I was able to go back to the car to get my camera, but as I worked my way in closer it started stirring warily, which I hopefully captured with this image.

green anole Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis not happy with photographer's presence
Stop arching your eyebrows; the ‘green’ in the name comes from the Latin root graein, meaning lizardlike, and isn’t a reference to color. Sheesh.

That’s another lie; it really does refer to color, usually just a hair less vivid green than the frog above, but anoles have the ability to change color due to mood, and this might have been a reflection of its new emergence.

We didn’t know what to expect at our next stop, which was West Point on the Eno River, but I announced my skepticism that the snakes would be out yet. Naturally, that was the first thing we spotted.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon basking at Eno River edge
Really, immediately off a busy path, this northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon) was sitting motionless – I thought it could have picked a better place, since it was asking to be attacked by overreactive visitors or disrespectfully unleashed dogs, but there it was. Northern water snakes are quick to bite but utterly harmless, yet constantly mistaken for something with more consequences (i.e, venom,) like cottonmouths or copperheads. This one was almost certainly fast asleep, and we were able to go in quite close for portraits. The next shot is a tight crop of another image, still not full resolution, but certainly not the entire frame.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon in tight closeup
Snakes don’t have eyelids so they don’t look asleep, but this one almost certainly was to allow this kind of approach. By the way, to help with identification: round pupil; venomous snakes have slitted pupils like cats. Dark portions of pattern on back is widest along spine, and heads are dark and patterned, unlike copperheads. Very thick body and neck; copperheads are more slender. Upper lip has vertical stripes, and no horizontal stripe through the eye, unlike cottonmouths (which do not live in the area anyway, despite rampant folklore.) Also, the broken band pattern towards the tail, seen further up, distinguishes the northern water snake from the banded water snake, which are otherwise virtually identical.

And more frogs were out.

small frog, possibly cricket frog, sitting amongst leaf litter at river edge
In most cases, however, you had to be sharp-eyed. The little chorus frogs were out in force in some ideal places, but usually not visible at all until we stepped close, whereupon they launched themselves into the water, or at least away from our feet. If you’re having trouble seeing the frog, good – that was the intention of this photo, though it sits immediately in the center of the frame. And at 20mm in length, even if you saw it move it might be hard to spot again. Slow and careful approaches would permit better photos, though.

likely southern cricket frog Acris gryllus sitting in shallow water
This is likely a cricket frog, but positive identification is a little tricky since the markings can vary so much, and there are northern and southern variants with subtle differences between. I suspect a southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus,) but feel free to crush my delusions of intelligence. I don’t mind. Really.

Here’s a view of another specimen, that I include just for giggles.

likely southern cricket frog Acris gryllus waiting patiently on close approach
I had the macro lighting rig with me, but lazily had not taken it out for these shots, so we’re looking at f4 just to prevent a slow shutter speed in the shade under the trees. But there was a bit of indirect light from the sky, as we can see when we examine that reflection in the eye.

inset of likely southern cricket frog Acris gryllus photo showing eye detailYou can see the semi-cloudy sky, and the silhouette of my head slightly to the left, while Mr Bugg is standing upright a bit more distant to the right. This is full resolution, by the way, and to get this I was flat on my belly on the ground, elbows starting to sink into the soft peat at the river edge. Believe it or not, it’s slightly easier to get the portrait images rather than profile, because you’re cutting off the frog’s intended direction of retreat and they have to reposition themselves to hop in another direction – for some reason they seem reluctant to do this, at least if you move slowly enough.

A little further on in much softer conditions, I saw a rock which didn’t look right.

suspiciously frog-shapped rock
I thought this looked a bit too frog-like in shape, and the 80mm focal length seemed to confirm it, but the additional detail of the dark eyes told me that it was probably a dead specimen. Then I saw it move, and went back to thinking it was a new emergent from the mud of hibernation.

There’s more detail to be seen in that image, though, so look closely. Because it becomes more obvious with the next shot.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus emerging from hibernation mud behind dead specimen
Yes, that primary one is dead, and noticeably swollen, but the one immediately behind it isn’t. That’s an American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) back there, responsible for the movement of the corpse that I saw, but what exactly is going on here I cannot say for sure and don’t want to speculate on. It’s possible the dead one was exposed during the winter while the live one was deep enough to escape that fate, but that’s just a wild guess. Other than that all bets are off.

While out there, we heard more barred owl calls, one from across the river but one contesting it from our side, clearly a territorial display. With a few repeats I pinned down the rough location and, having a little familiarity with the quality of barred owl calls, I knew it wasn’t too distant, and just off the path we were on. There were two trees that seemed likely, between 80 and 100 meters away, and so we started creeping closer, stopping frequently to examine the trees for the camouflaging patterns of the owl. The first tree yielded nothing, but within the second I soon noted what looked like a tail as I rounded the trunk. Another two steps confirmed it.

barred owl Strix varia watching our approach with distinct wariness
This was a nice little vindication of my nature photographer skills – well, partially, anyway. There was no way we were going to approach an owl undetected, but my estimate of location was perfectly accurate and I was ready with the camera as it hove into view, peering at us with intent suspicion. I got off only two frames before it flew off, and should have had exposure compensation ready, but didn’t – that’s why I said “partially.” This is tweaked slightly brighter in post-production.

decrepit stump with nest openingThere’s also less vindication of nature photography skills from this one, and commensurately less to show for it. We’d already passed this stump when I heard the soft tapping, presumably of a distant woodpecker, but as I turned back to examine the trees across the river I thought my triangulation seemed a little off. Another couple of steps confirmed it, and with the 100-300 lens I spotted the nest opening at the base of the branch, on a stump on this side of the river; someone was busy within shaping their nest hollow. Flushed with my success from capturing the brown-headed nuthatch, I waited patiently for the bird to appear in the opening. I don’t hold my arms up over my head for much, and though the camera wasn’t heavy, it soon became fatiguing to keep it to my eye, so I did a lot of spot-checks as I waited, pretty much every time there was a pause in the tapping. Going from the timestamps on the photos, I waited at least fifteen minutes, standing there at the base of the stump, before I gave up on seeing the builder emerge, even when I knew I would never get the shot unless I was more patient than that. Now, if I’d brought the tripod and could sit beneath it with the remote-release in my hand, that might have been a different story.

Overall, it was a pretty successful outing, even when I’d gotten a few decent images before we’d arrived. The weather was exceptionally comfortable, not hot and not at all cold (we were both in shorts and wading sandals.) By no rights should I have pics like this from late February, so I’m pleased. And yet, still pulled off a bonus shot too.

Later that same evening, I went out back to check on the backyard pond to see if the frogs there were stirring, and as I passed one of the rain barrels, another green treefrog was found perched on top – obviously this is a different specimen than earlier, and allowed me several shooting positions. And I spotted a little blip of something submerging within the pond, too, so I’m comfortable that pics of the green (not tree) frogs from the pond will be along before too long. Plus, I still have at least one other topic awaiting my attentions, so I should get another post in before February ends, on top of the end-of-month abstract.

second green treefrog Hyla cinerea of 2018 sitting on rain barrel

Too cool, part 37

Al Denelsbeck

Enceladus and Saturn's rings from Cassini courtesy Cassini Imaging Team
Courtesy: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Okay, okay, it’s cheating, I know, since I’ve featured this very same moon before, taken by the very same probe as well. Of course, for the time being, there’s not a lot of choices in the latter department, since the Cassini probe was the only one doing detailed images of Saturn and its moons, but last September it boldly went down into the thickening atmosphere of Saturn and either got rendered inoperable by the pressure, or Bowmaned off into a new realm someplace – I’m fairly certain NASA is maintaining the former, but you know, they still maintain that we’ve actually been to our moon…

Anyway this is, once again, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, still showing off its fancy plumes, backlit by the sun, backgrounded by Saturn’s rings, and accompanied in the frame (though not in proximity) by another of Saturn’s moons, Pandora. Astronomy Picture Of the Day from February 15th has the details, and a larger version of the image. This one looks like a digitally created abstract; add in a base color of blue fading into pink and you’d have a great representation of cosmic artwork from the eighties.

Enceladus is known for being composed of a thick ice crust over what seems to be an underlying, global, liquid ocean, which vents out into space through cracks in the ice crust; that’s actually what you’re seeing at the bottom of the moon. You might be thinking, How does a liquid ocean exist under the ice crust way out there around Saturn? Enceladus is close enough to Saturn’s strong gravity that the constant tidal forces on the solid core – the same kind of thing that gives Earth its ocean tides, but a hell of a lot stronger – actually keep it in flux and generate a fair amount of heat and friction, which appears to be enough to maintain the ‘mid-level’ water in liquid form – and it’s this same state that makes Enceladus one of the biggest candidates for life to form within our solar system. Determining this could be tricky, since that ice crust is kilometers thick – right now we have the information we do about it through penetrating radar and gravitational measurements. One of the things that I hope we accomplish within my lifetime is actually getting some kind of probe down to the water level of that moon.

Now an examination from the photographic standpoint. You may have noticed that Enceladus is entirely silhouetted except for the barest edge, but Pandora has its face illuminated by sunlight reflected from Saturn. Why not Enceladus? Because we’re looking at the ‘double-night’ side of Enceladus – it’s closer to Cassini (and our viewing position) than Saturn is, while Pandora is on the opposite side of the orbit; the sun itself is directly behind Enceladus, thus the glowing ring lines across the image, while Saturn is out of the frame to the left. Sunlight reflected from Saturn can illuminate Pandora, and it illuminates Enceladus too, making it much brighter than Pandora – but on the side opposite us.

I said ‘double-night’ above to reflect the light dynamics around other planets. On Saturn’s moons, the sun can be very bright, but it’s so distant as to be quite small in the sky, while the vast bulk of Saturn itself – and Jupiter, and Neptune, and so on – will dominate the sky, and throw a lot of reflected light. So Pandora, between the sun and Saturn, is lit from two sides, and only a narrow sliver of the moon might be experiencing darkness. But as it moves around to the night side of Saturn, the far side can experience true night, like this face of Enceladus is now. The ‘day-night’ cycle of the moons is distinctly different from our own, where our little and somewhat distant moon can brighten the night at times, but not as badly as something taking up literally half of the entire sky as Saturn might.

And yes, Earth throws reflected sunlight onto the ‘dark side’ of our own moon as well, but a) it mostly does it during our local day so the light scattered from our atmosphere obscures most of it, and b) it’s weak in comparison to Saturn – consider how small the Earth looks in those photos taken from the moon. But in the right conditions it can still be captured – check out ‘Earthshine’ sometime.

1 … 186 187 188 189 190 … 325