And I’d like to thank the Academy

Al Denelsbeck

mosquito larva curled up under water surface
I spent a little time chasing a couple of specific subjects from the backyard pond yesterday, and I’ll be posting about them in detail a little later on, but right now I want to go over this one real quick. Which is not to say this one, as in, the photo above – I’m just using this as a lead in, because I’m going to go even creepier and I wanted the chance to give fair warning. I say this with a certain amount of ironic delight because I know a lot of people can’t be bothered to read the text and are going to blithely scroll down to be greeted by the images unprepared. Serves ’em right. But anyway, the photo above is a mosquito larva, pictured where they spend all but their adult phase, which is under water. I’ve captured a sequence of them emerging before, but am after different, and better, pictures.

Last year, a fishing spider had hung around the pond for a short while before disappearing, likely a victim of the frogs, and I managed to get a few extreme closeups before it vanished. The green frogs overwintered in the pond and I have at least three living within it, but I think the count is more like five or six. For this reason, I wasn’t expecting to see any fishing spiders again, so I was surprised when I found a small one living among the scouring rushes (Equisetum hyemale.) By the way, I had said last year that I had the goal of obtaining some for the pond, and The Girlfriend’s Mother (who I sometimes call my Not-Mother-In-Law) was kind enough to buy me some when she ran across them, so I have a nice pot of them established in the pond now.

juvenile female six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton at base of scouring rushes Equisetum hyemale
This is a juvenile female six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton,) and if she remains within the scouring rushes she’s relatively well-protected from the frogs. She was consuming a meal when I came across her, and though she gave a few anxious starts and shifts as I leaned in with the camera and flash, she stayed put and I was able to get a few pics. This is a different species from the previous one pictured in that link, and while I think this one averages a little smaller than that one, they both can get impressively big.

As I was pursuing my other subjects with the help of the macro aquarium, I wondered if I could get some nice detail shots of the fishing spider, especially showing the legs on the surface. The challenge was already apparent in my mind: the macro aquarium sat on the porch, and needed to because of the lights and the necessity of a table for steadiness at high magnification, so it would mean capturing the spider and bringing her up to the tank, then convincing her to remain in the tank while I got my photos, and then of course returning her to the pond again. That’s a level of cooperation that’s not warranted in any portion of the animal kingdom, but especially not arthropods, and super-especially not shy spiders. But I figured I’d give it a try.

To my surprise, I coaxed her into a small cup without too much difficulty, where she floated on the surface of the centimeter of water and stayed at the edge, ready to flee if she felt the need, and bobbed there gently as I walked her over to the porch and up the stairs. At the aquarium, I nudged her gently out and she skated across the surface and paused at the edge, still floating, showing no sign of wanting to scale the very low sides and escape across the table. Fishing spiders are more than capable of operating on land, so just having her stay on the water was luck enough.

Even better, as she wasn’t quite facing the way I wanted and the sides were preventing me from shifting position, I gently nudged her with a pipette and was able to redirect her position into a head-on perspective, finding then that she still wasn’t done with her meal (or had obtained another,) several hours after the first pics. This might have had something to do with her docility. Either way, I was able to go in close for a portrait, and we’re well down from my original warning so I take no blame.

extreme closeup of juvenile female six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton showing prey
Now, I feel the need to mention something – egotistically, if you prefer: this is full frame. This is using the reversed Sigma 28-105 at 28mm, with a 36mm extension tube added, and the full impact of this will hopefully soon become apparent, but for the time being, I would like to point out the curvature of the water under the pressure of the pedipalps, those two little ‘legs’ in front. To the best of my knowledge, they’re just resting on the surface casually, no pressure or support intended, but they’re bending the water down a smidgen.

Now let’s get a scale shot, taken later in the evening after I’d returned her to the pond and then realized I should have something more illustrative for this post.

six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton with measuring scale
Her body length was about 9mm, and with leg spread this brought her up to roughly 30mm; a quarter coin measures 24mm if it helps. So when you scroll back up the the portrait shot, you know that the vertical span of her face is maybe 3mm? Yeah – high magnification.

I’m just going to point out the reflections of the softbox attachment in the water at the base of the rushes. nice round spots from a nice round softbox. Much better than rectangular, or even umbrella-shaped.

I credit this session to a lot of luck, with the possibility that her meal(s) made her a little more cooperative; some arthropods seem more likely to sit still while they’re eating. But I have to wonder how much of the success I can credit to having done this a lot. For instance, to capture her I submerged the cup edge in front of her and then gently nudged her from behind, coaxing her ahead, and she just skated across the water surface into the cup. It was almost the same when transferring her into the aquarium, except I couldn’t submerge the cup edge because the aquarium was too narrow, so it was rested against the edge and then tipped until the water was about to spill out, so all she had to do was clamber across the lip. Once in the tank, I settled for gentle nudges on the hind legs to turn and position her, or a simple trick: drawing a thin object (in this case the tip of a pipette) through the water nearby – the turbulence will cause the water to follow and thus anything floating on the surface. I always use small objects and come in low, never overhead, and make the barest of contacts when necessary.

So while there were a lot of things that could have gone awry, there were a lot of things that I could have done wrong too. So I’ll at least take a little credit.

April deserves three

Al Denelsbeck

Actually, there’s no particular reason why April should have three end of the month abstracts, except that a) I had three, and b) April 30th is National Do It Thrice Day (what some people with filthy minds call the “3X” day.) The only stipulation to the holiday is, it has to be something that you do routinely, but not repeatedly. Which ruled out me posting bug pictures…

abstract dead wood "Starry Night" patterns
Once again, I knew when I took this one that it was in the running for the month-end abstract, unless I got something better, but then the holiday came along, so here we are. In case it isn’t evident, it’s a curious weathering pattern in a long-dead stump, where the roots split away from the trunk – I kinda liked the “Starry Night” impression (which was impressionism itself, so does that make it redundant?)

And then a week later, I found another wonderfully-textured trunk, and shot that as well to compare them and see which won. But then the holiday came along, so here we are.

tortured souls texture in dead trunk
To me, this is more than a little reminiscent of old illustrations of specters and tortured souls and all that, and I wish I could tell you why. I mean, the style is there, but how did it come about? Is it, like so many styles of artwork, taken from a single popular illustration considered ‘iconic,’ or is there a fundamental reason why such shapes evoke post-mortem ideas? We really need to find out about this.

And then just this morning, as I was chasing sunrise pics at the nearby pond, I happened across a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) which might have been looking for a place to lay her eggs, or just returning from such. She (I am assuming) simply drew herself in and stayed put, throat flexing gently, hoping I would go away but willing to try and convince me if I drew too close. I had a great view from dead-on, so I affixed the macro lens and scooted in on my belly as close as I dared. Then, I cropped the resulting image much tighter because it was the end of the month. And the holiday had come along, so here we are.

extreme close-up portrait of common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina
Looking at these, I’m now sorry I didn’t save them all until October, when it would have been more appropriate. But October 31st isn’t National Do It Thrice Day, so I would have had to narrow my choices down to one. Or find some ridiculous excuse to post all three…

Sunday slide 18

Al Denelsbeck

sunset skies over Fort Myers Florida
This is one I’m undecided on. Some of the images that I take I know are strong (at least compared to many others that I’ve taken,) but this one has me on the fence. I always seem to like it when I come across it, but I know it could be stronger, and really don’t know how others might see it. So, weigh in if you feel like it.

On a photo trip to Florida, I’d been driven indoors by the typical afternoon monsoon that can be found frequently in the summer months, and had considered various plans as I ate dinner in Fort Myers. Leaving the restaurant, I found the skies not only clearing, but the sun breaking through, and only a short ways down the road the sunset began turning colorful, so I started watching for some kind of foreground to go with it. Almost immediately I happened across a small boat launch area onto an inlet or river, and pulled in to use the water. The clouds played very nicely with the descending treeline, and I used that and the reflection to build an arrow across the frame.

Of course, if it pointed someplace, that might be better. Or if I’d caught a bird in the sky or the water. Or even just more dramatic clouds. You see why I’m on the fence?

If memory serves, this was actually taken on my birthday, since I remember being in the restaurant and someone else was celebrating a birthday there. I was traveling by myself, so you might imagine I was lonely or whatever, but I’d had a pretty productive day shooting (this image notwithstanding,) and that works just fine for me.

Going through channels

Al Denelsbeck

shadow against fall reflections on water
So this past fall, seeing my shadow falling across a view of reflections in still water, I decided to get a little fartsy again (I’ll never learn) and make it an intentional part of the image. I didn’t really want a shadow of someone in the peculiar and recognizable position of taking a photo, so I set the camera and held it down by my hip, assuming a more natural-looking profile. Aiming blindly of course, it took a few attempts, but I eventually achieved what I was after.

Since then, I’ve never been sure if it has the effect I was after or not, which is one of those things that arises in photography. I know what I was doing, and can see the shadow and know what it is and which way it’s facing, but I’m not sure how obvious it is to anyone else seeing it. Is it too subtle, or not subtle enough, or simply not very strong overall? I lean towards the last, which is why it hasn’t appeared until now.

[Yes, this means that I do indeed reject photos from display, making me an even worse photographer than you credited me. Hard to fathom, I know…]

By the way, this shows a little trait that I like playing with sometimes, where the water is transparent close to the viewer (bottom of the image) but becomes more reflective as the viewing angle decreases towards the top. It can produce some pretty cool effects in the right conditions.

Anyway, at some point I started doing the channel-clipping trick to see how the image rendered in monochrome, and made an interesting discovery. I’ve seen this before, but never as distinctly as this. First, here is the same image in only the red and green channels respectively:

same image reducd to only red and only green channels
Neither one of these really worked for my intentions; the shadow is distinct in the red channel (left,) but the reflected tree loses a lot of detail, while in the green channel (right) it gains some of it back at the expense of the shadow.

But now here’s the blue channel:

same image in only blue channel
Wow! Completely eradicated the key part of the composition, and suddenly the twigs on shore (that you might not even have noticed before) leapt out.

Here’s what happened: The reflection of the background sky was visible throughout the entire image. But close to my feet, the sunlight behind me was able to penetrate the water to the bottom and bounce back to the camera; mostly because of the color of the leaves and silt, what came back was in the red and green channels. The shadow served to block this light and let the reflection come through stronger, but when the image was reduced to all reflection, it essentially became all shadow.

Nothing that I tried really made the image stronger, to my eye, so it was wasted effort, except for the cool effect. But now it’s something to watch for, and see if I can’t do something more interesting with similar conditions.

Podcast: Failure is not an option

Al Denelsbeck

Just some thoughts on a more useful attitude towards photography – or at least, my opinion of such. It’s possible that I have it all wrong.

Walkabout podcast – Failure

A little perspective. When you see the images of other photographers, bear in mind that you’re not seeing everything that they do. The average “keeper” rate seems to lie somewhere around 25%, meaning they throw out three out of every four images taken – and this is from people who supposedly know what they’re doing. That stunning image that you saw from them? It might just be a fluke, or a lucky accident, or a matter of timing, conditions, and luck all coming together at once. Sometimes, the only reason they have that photo in the first place is by failing to get the same photo through repeated attempts, and learning something each time. And sometimes, it’s because they didn’t give up until they got it, and this might’ve taken hours, days, or even years. That’s often what makes it special in the first place.

When I was out with a student the other day, a dragonfly presented itself nearby as they occasionally do, hovering in largely one spot for a few moments before darting off again, only to return to almost the exact same location. While the student was experimenting, I amused myself with trying to capture a sharp photo of the dragonfly in mid-air.

dragonfly in midair - full frame
This is the entire frame, handheld with a Canon 17-85 IS lens at 85mm. Moreover, this is manual focus, since autofocus would never stay put on a subject this small and fleeting, and would waste valuable time tracking in and out, or locking onto the background. Now, let’s go in closer and see the image as a full-resolution crop:

dragonfly in mid-air, cropped
Can’t complain about that, can I? Well, I probably could, since the light angle is poor and the dragonfly facing away from me, so it could be better. But knowing how difficult it is to get a sharp image in such conditions, I’m exceptionally pleased to actually capture such wing detail while they were flapping, of a subject that, though hovering, still wasn’t perfectly motionless. Here’s another from the same session:

dragonfly in mid-air, full frame
And now the full-resolution crop:

dragonfly in mid-air, tight crop
Much better light angle (pure luck, credited to the dragonfly deciding to shift position by a meter or so,) and better background, though still no face shot. But yeah, I still feel a sense of accomplishment. And now, I have specific goals for the next time I’m in such conditions. Maybe I can watch for one that keeps returning to the same perch, and try to time the shot for the millisecond before landing, legs outstretched to grab the leaf – wouldn’t that be cool? And I’m going to miss a lot of the attempts, no doubt.

When the student saw me doing this, she decided to try herself, but was getting frustrated, and no surprise. Not only did she have limited experience in using manual focus, and knowing which way to turn the focus ring to track movement towards or away from herself, she also had a dragonfly that was far less cooperative, darting around more and hovering for much briefer periods – essentially, one that I would have ignored myself simply because I knew the attempt would be more frustrating than fruitful. And that knowledge came from having attempted this an uncountable number of times over the years; you might imagine how often I’m in an area where dragonflies congregate.

Soon afterward, a small flock of birds was demonstrating a curious diving behavior over the same river, about 20 meters away, and I was determined to at least capture a detailed enough image to identify the species, but also hopefully snag a shot that illustrated the behavior nicely. And yet, despite my experience with timing and following a moving subject and manual focus and all that jazz, from 27 frames, I have not one keeper. One might be able to be used for ID of the species, but that’s about it, and I’m not even going to bother editing it to show here, that’s how bad it is.

Which is another aspect of photography: show only your best work (which I shall immediately violate.)

slimy salamander Plethodon glutinosus with bad lighting
One of many misses
Now here’s something else to consider, and something that I coach my students about too. There are a lot of options for improving photos, and many of them are camera settings. And these are of no use if you can’t get to them fast enough or don’t know what they do. There is a huge advantage to being able to switch settings very quickly, often without taking your eye from the viewfinder, and this will only come from handling the camera, or lens, or tripod, a lot. Sometimes even with closing your eyes and doing it by feel. This is experience, and does not have to come from actually shooting a lot of frames – often just fooling around with the camera in hand is enough. No amount of theory or reading will replace the ‘muscle memory’ of doing it, and it often spells the difference between an okay shot and a great shot. You might feel funny just sitting at home and playing with your tripod [ahem], but when it comes time to needing it, you’re not fumbling with the releases or leveling. And it might also tell you that the quick-release is balky and needs to be watched carefully, or how much tightening is necessary to keep the camera steady but allow for small repositioning with a firm nudge. You soon discover that you like the tensioning knob to the left, or that having just one leg facing directly upslope makes leveling much easier. Some of this stuff is so automatic to me that I’m not even conscious that I’m doing it.

So overall, the message is try, and try, and try again – that’s the only path to improvement, but it’s a guaranteed path.

Sunday slide 17

Al Denelsbeck

Juvenile Atlantic ghost crab Ocypode quadrata showing off camouflage
I simply love the eye-bending quality of this one, and chances are you’ve seen it before. I think it was taken on the same beach trip as Sunday slide 5, early in the morning. That’s the best time to see Atlantic ghost crabs (Ocypode quadrata,) unless you like running around on the beach with a flashlight late at night. Getting this close takes some effort since, for reasons unknown and unfathomable, tiny crabs don’t like people looming over them. I know, right? So The Girlfriend ran interference, blocking this one from its burrow, as I skootched in closer on my belly to get this perspective. I’ve been wanting to redo it ever since, mostly to have a variety of perspectives with more beach in there (you know, a “Find Crabbo” kind of shot,) but so far the specific conditions have eluded me, even though I managed to snag a couple of shots of the species on the last Outer Banks trip. There are another two beach trips coming up this year, so we’ll just see what happens.

Too cool, part 35: A modicum of success

Al Denelsbeck

newborn Chines mantis Tenodera sinensis peering from home twig
The praying mantids have been an ongoing saga on this blog now for several years, and if you want to call it an obsession, no argument from me. While I am definitely motivated to capture sequences and behavior of any species that I can, I happen to like mantids, and I’ve had the opportunities to bear close witness to them. So here we are again.

Not having found any distinctive evidence of local egg cases this spring or past fall, I had ordered three online, and set them up in prime locations within the yard where I could observe them easily; my goal has been to capture the hatching in great macro detail, something I haven’t quite accomplished yet. Two of the egg cases, unfortunately, fell victim to some marauding shithead, likely grey squirrels, so only one remained unscathed. And that one I noticed was hatching out just as I was dashing out the door on a tight schedule. When I’d returned, the hatching activity had stopped and a bunch of newborns were scampering around on the twig to which I’d affixed the egg case, and several nearby plants. Well, shit.

Oh, well. I settled for doing some shots of the newborns, out and about in the immediate vicinity of the egg case.

a cluster of newborn Chinese mantises Tenodera sinensis
Bear in mind that they measure just 10mm in body length at this point; this is using the wonderful Sigma 28-105 reversed, and is full-frame.

But here’s another, cropped a little to show off the detail better.

newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis showing fine detail
If the body is 10mm long, that would make the head about 1mm in width, and those tiny spikes on the forelegs… what? I’ll let you figure it out. Suffice to say that, despite the difficulty of working with a lens fixed at f16 (quite dark in the viewfinder) and with a working depth-of-field of 2mm or less, I’m quite happy with what it can accomplish.

And here’s a shot that demonstrates scale better:

newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis with millimeter scale and dime for comparison
For everyone familiar with US currency, that’s a dime in the photo.

The next day, I was delighted to find that a second wave of hatchings was taking place, and I managed to squeeze out a tiny bit of time to devote to it. Now, if you found the pics of the newborns creepy in any way, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is where I have my fun.

Chinese mantids Tenodera sinensis newly emerged from egg sac ootheca
The one thing that I have not caught (and thus remains on the list) is the actual emergence from the egg sac; every time I’ve seen them soon afterward, but never actually coming to light for the first time. These two are examples, apparently not long from the event, but still well out into the open. Something that I determined a few years back is that mantids molt almost immediately upon hatching; the exoskeleton remains anchored to the sac by a fine webline, and they have to draw free and get use of their legs over a period of time, my guess is about ten to twenty minutes, judging from what I’ve seen. A lot of the threads can be seen in this image, and these two are still anchored even while mostly free from the exoskeleton.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis drawing free from initial molting
This image is slightly confusing to me. While it appears to be drawing itself free from the old exoskeleton, thus the bound appearance with the legs and antennae gathered, two of the legs right at the top of the photo already appear to be free. It’s possible that the molt is only for the body itself, or even just the abdomen, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Questions still to be answered.

twp newly-emerged Chinese mantises Tenodera sinensis waiting to gain the use of their legs
What a wonderfully funky view. The bullet-headed appearance, especially with that bulging ‘forehead,’ is curious, and as yet I don’t have an answer for that either, just speculation (which we’ll get to.) And this shows a large collection of the molted and discarded exoskeletons, all that chaff between the two, with one dangling below the head of the mantis on the right – yes, they’re quite a bit smaller than the emerged mantids. Maybe it’s not a molting after all, but the arthropod equivalent of a yolk sac? I guess I could actually ask somebody…

But wait! There’s more!

Not too long ago, I picked up a camera body that could actually do video, and the preliminary tests with a macro lens were encouraging. So as this was happening, the system got its acid test, this time with the Mamiya 80mm macro and extension tube. So you not only get to see such exquisite detail, you now get to see all the writhing and creepiness in real time! Lucky you!


This is naturally my first time using a video editor and adding a voiceover track, and it will become more polished with time, so bear with me. But the results were better than expected and enough to convince me that macro video was not only feasible, but a useful addition to the skillset. Camera steadiness will be a distinct issue, however.

But if you thought that was bad, just try to imagine what kind of other shit I might find to video ;-)

Yay! It’s Earth Day!

Al Denelsbeck

red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus launching itself from treeWelcome to Earth Day! I hope you get the chance to either go out and enjoy the natural (less human-affected) parts of our planet, or do something environmentally beneficial. I personally am going to have the chance to do neither, but I at least get the first option in fairly often, so we’ll go with some recent examples of that as eye-candy.

I was out with a student and wasn’t lugging around the long lens when this red-bellied woodpecker (which do not have red bellies, but the name red-headed woodpecker was already taken by one that is admittedly more fitting of the moniker, so we’ll just pretend the belly is red and anyway it’s a Melanerpes carolinus,) was peeking out from either side of a trunk just a bit too far off for good results from the Mamiya 80mm, before taking flight towards a more promising tree – I didn’t intend to capture this particular moment but I’ll take credit for my expertise anyway, and can I make this sentence just a wee bit longer?

Actually, several of these images are coming from outings with students, generally casual captures that I grabbed while they were working on their own compositions. This is one from two days back, a cluster of mountain laurel flowers (Kalmia latifolia) in various stages.

mountain laurel Kalmia latifolia beginning to bloom
I really could have done without that red stem down in the lower left, but whatcha gonna do? I mean, besides hacking the thing off, and that’s not very EarthDaylike, is it?

The following morning, which means yesterday based on the posting date but this morning as I type this, I would say Earth day eve except it wasn’t evening and Earth Day morn refers to actual Earth Day and not the day before so I don’t know what to call it for convenience, I was out trying for the sunrise, which as you might be able to tell from the sky and water reflections, really didn’t produce any notable colors.

weak sunrise shot
The sun was just high enough to shine through a gap in the trees I was standing within, providing a good example of natural light coloration – yellow for the sunlight portion at mid frame, but distinctly blue for the deep shade at the bottom. It was even more noticeable than this, but I tweaked it for fartistic effect. No, it’s not going to be in the Guggenheim anytime soon, I’m well aware of that, thank you for reminding me…

unidentified orb spider in web with backlighting and refraction
I don’t know what kind of spider this is, but I couldn’t go this long without putting up a spider pic – I was starting to hear those little voices again, you know? Anyway, this was from another student outing (I think the same as the woodpecker,) snatching the opportunity of backlighting and refraction off the web strands. I could have done without that tiny bright leaf trapped in the web though (I suppose we’ll just go over my failings for Earth Day, not like that distinguishes it from any other posting day.)

unidentified flowers in deep shade
Another student outing (I’ve been busy this past couple of weeks,) another moment of opportunity. I don’t know what these are (eye-candy, remember?) but they’re pink. I don’t care what you might want to call them – women, I’m looking at you – they’re just pink. We don’t need so many words for colors. Just use the RGB values if you want to differentiate so badly.

And finally, a Canada goose family (Branta canadensis) hanging out on the same sunrise day – so, yesterday/not yesterday. I happen to like the gosling’s apparent preoccupation with its foot – it’s like when younger children get new shoes and keep sticking their feet out to examine them. I mean, I still do this, but it’s only to see how filthy my feet have gotten in the water sandals. You probably didn’t need to know that…

Canada goose Branta canandensis family on pond shore

We’ll start with the reptiles

Al Denelsbeck

New Hope Creek in Duke Forest
Yes, I know that’s not a photo of a reptile… or, is it? Your challenge is to find the six reptiles in the frame.

10mm shot showing width of viewAll right, don’t bother, unless you’re masochistic – there are no reptiles visible in the shot. I just picked up an ultra-wide lens, a Tamron 10-24mm aspherical, and I’m showing it off because I’m quite pleased with it. The ‘aspherical’ bit is key, because wide-angle lenses have a tendency to introduce wicked distortion, often called ‘barrel distortion’ in the trade but also described as a fisheye effect, where objects nearer the edge get more and more warped until it almost looks like you’re looking at a reflection in a christmas ornament (or a doorknob if that offends you.) This was due to the simple nature of lens grinding: no matter what the strength, they were always a portion of a sphere, and light coming in along the edges was bent more than light towards the center. This same trait is responsible for the darkened corners of many images when shot at widest aperture (again, called ‘light falloff’ among the cognoscenti, or simply in lens tests.) The ability to cast/grind lenses (I’m not sure how it’s done, actually) in an aspherical shape has improved that tremendously, however, correcting a lot of the distortion at the edges and rendering the photo much more realistically – not perfectly, mind you, but vastly improved over the previous examples. When you look at the image at top, note the trees at the edges, standing pretty damn straight (the ones closer to center don’t count, because they’re on the stream edge and erosion has caused them to lean towards the water naturally.) In the bad old days, the edges of the image in wide-angle photos would be badly curved and the trees notably warped – this is corrected so well it hardly appears to be an ultra-wide view angle. Which is why I included the vertical image to the right. You can see the ‘horizon’ at the top of the image, and that’s my sandal peeking in at the bottom, just to illustrate the width of the frame.

These shots were taken during a student outing to Duke Forest, and you can see how the trees are finally leafing out in earnest, while the weather has not only gotten comfortably warm, it occasionally gets uncomfortably hot. This particular day was mostly comfortable, and Duke Forest is a great place for water snakes (and occasionally others,) so we were on a quest to find them. Curiously, we’d done almost the entire session without seeing the faintest trace, and were close to wrapping up. Partially out of desperation, I put on a longer focal length and began scanning a likely area, a tangle of roots and snags at the edge of the water, away from where the dogs belonging to the people who feel they’re exempt from leash restrictions (Orange County is especially full of them) could scare the snakes off. That’s why I get the big bucks. Or should, anyway…

queen snake Regina septemvittata basking along waterside branch
Two queen snakes (Regina septemvittata) were revealed in this way, though neither of these images were taken with that same long lens. Instead, we clambered through the difficult footing to get better vantage points, greatly improving the results. Queen snakes are relatively small aquatic snakes, less common in this area than the northern water snake and far smaller, about the diameter of your finger and completely harmless unless you’re a minnow (in which case the finger thing doesn’t help I guess.) This one blended in so well with the twisted nature of the old snag that it was next to invisible just a few meters away, unless you looked hard. The next one was a little more obvious, but again, from its size it could blend in with saplings and vines.

queen snake Regina septemvittata in alert position on root tip
Both of these were less than two meters apart, and while shooting from a better light angle would theoretically have improved the results, there were some issues with this. Primarily, it would have required actually being in the water, not beyond our abilities or sensitivities by any stretch (we’d both already been wading that day,) but the bottom was especially rocky, making footing treacherous, and approaching from open water would have attracted far more attention, likely sending the snakes darting off for cover. Sometimes you take what you can get, even when you recognize that there might be ways to improve the shot. It’s not worth twisting an ankle or dunking the camera equipment.

Eastern fence lizard Sceloporus undulatus attmepting to hide from the papparazziOn the trek back to the parking area, I swept my eyes over another likely spot, a deposit of downed tree trunks, and pointed out another subject, actually two. Eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) are especially fond of old, weathered and textured tree trunks where they blend in very well, but also of course find their food. This one was basking atop the trunk until we got too close and it scampered for cover, but lizards aren’t like snakes in this regard; they often slip just out of sight and wait only a short while, sometimes less than a minute, before venturing back out again, so a little patience can pay off easily. We didn’t really have the time, already running late on the session, so I settled for leaning in and finding the lizard sitting just out of normal sight on the back side of the trunk, where I could get a peek at its face in shadow. They’re wonderfully textured lizards, not as spiky in appearance as some species out west, but hardly smooth, and this is accentuated by their color pattern. They’re large for lizards in the area, running roughly the length of your hand as full-size adults, ranging in girth up to 3cm or so (which is like three fingers.) Again, no comparison to some western species or even our own hellbender salamanders, but more impressive than the green anoles.

Splitting the difference is the five-lined skink, another common one in the area. In fact, especially common in a park called West Point on the Eno (River,) where I went with another student yesterday. The place was crawling with them, provided that you paid attention. I present an example.

Two southeastern five-lined skinks Plestiodon inexpectatus on stump and fence
Did you see the lizard? Did you see them both? Not particularly hard, especially when I’ve led into it like this and framed the image in this manner, but you can probably imagine that, given the attention most people pay to their surroundings, they could have escaped notice easily. Southeastern five-lined skinks go by a variety of names in this area alone, and probably even more across their range, so the best thing is to stick to the scientific name of Plestiodon inexpectatus. Or maybe not; the taxonomy has changed not long ago, and there remains uncertainty as to how many subspecies there really are, so call them what you want I guess.

adult male five-lined skink Plestiodon inexpectatus peering around tree trunk
They come in a range of coloration, so much so that they are often mistaken for multiple species. This one, peering almost secretively around a tree trunk (I liked this image for just that effect,) is an adult male, where the head becomes noticeably reddish while the body, close in size to the fence lizards, becomes a burnished deep bronze with little evidence of the stripes. While the juveniles seen above further up will often show distinctive stripes and a brilliant blue tail, an interesting defensive mechanism. Given their propensity for basking in bright sunlight (at least until nosy nature photographers come around,) you’d think such a flag would act against them, but it’s pretty cool how it works. Like many lizards, five-lined skinks have detachable tails, easily able to separate from the body when something seizes it, which is likely given that, just as something strikes, the lizard darts forward and the predator gets only the tail. Bereft of its supportive organs, however, the tail can still writhe around in a furious manner, and to most predators, movement means life and the ability to escape, so they concentrate on subduing a little strip of meat and bone while the bulk of the lizard makes its escape. The tails can grow back surprisingly quickly.

Five-lined skink Plestiodon inexpectatus looking noble atop a fence post
Position is everything. This fence post was no taller than any other, so I had to get pretty low to get this perspective, but it works, doesn’t it? I tried to get him to wear the little Batlizard hood and cape, but he had the nerve to call it, “tacky.” More importantly, though, is that it took only a minor shift in position to put a bright spot breaking through the background foliage right behind the head in this manner, highlighting it very distinctly. Little things like this can help your images a lot.

That’s a start on catching up. The previous post gave an unsubtle hint about the next topic, but I have some video to edit first. Yes, I’m branching out.

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