There’s something behind me!

Al Denelsbeck

The other night as I worked on the computer in Deep 13 (my basement office/workshop/studio/makerspace/junk room,) I heard a soft, repeated sound, kind of a cross between a tap and a thump, coming from someplace off behind me. Once the repetition had established itself, I got up and went looking for it. It didn’t take very long.

spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer in homemade studio
This is a spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer,) one of the most common chorus frogs, and no, my office is not this flooded – this is a small homemade studio setting that I created just to get detail images. The frog had two potential means of ingress: I had a ground-level window cracked in the attached utility closet for ventilation, the most likely access, but I’d also had the outside door open for a few hours in the afternoon because it was that nice out. Given that these guys get active at night, I’m leaning towards the former, even though the space it would have had to slip through past the ventilation unit was quite small – so are these, this specimen being perhaps 12mm in length.

spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer in homemade studio showing namesake 'X' on back
This image shows where it gets part of its scientific name, the ‘crucifer’ bit – it’s that ‘X’ or cross on the back, and I like how the pattern continues onto the hind legs when they’re tucked in typical fashion, like the coloration was applied afterwards. Such patterns serve to break up the froggy outline and make them harder to spot, but why an ‘X’? I don’t know, and can’t right offhand think of anything in their preferred boggy environments that looks like that. It’s likely just a happenstance thing, a semi-random pattern to blend in with the water-borne debris, repeated through bilateral symmetry. This is an exceedingly common trait: details on the left side of the vast majority of organisms are repeated on the right, with very few examples of true randomness. It’s just how the genes develop.

spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer in homemade studio
Meanwhile, we see here a small artifact of the peepers’ (and many frogs’) behavioral traits. They often leap quite blindly, mostly determining that the way ahead is open and little else, and this one was banging its snout on both the office steps (the noise that attracted my attention) and immediately after capture, the small terrarium that I held it in while I created this elaborate setting. It’s just a little inflammation/bruising – remember that this guy is the size of the top joint of my thumb.

I’ve already featured their calls, but we’ll hear them again:

Several amphibian species

All of the high-pitched ‘cheeps’ or squeaks in there are spring peepers – they’re very common. What I find curious is that, back where we used to live, the frogs and toads seemed to give up on calling after a few hours, certainly by midnight, but here they appear to keep sounding off all night long, when the weather’s right at least.

But while I’m here, I feature a frame from yesterday:

small eastern painted turtle Chrysemys picta picta perched high on back of large yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta basking on small log
Resist the urge to think this is a mother and offspring, if you’re still so inclined: these are two different species, and most amphibians don’t care for their young in any manner. The one on top is an eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta picta,) albeit probably only a few years old, while the other is a yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta,) certainly much older, though I have no idea how long it takes them to get to this size. The carapace of the painted turtle would probably have spanned slightly larger than my palm, while the slider likely weighed a few kilograms. I spotted this from a notable distance, confirming that they really were stacked only through the use of the long lens, and slowly crept closer to get a better view. Soon after this shot, they considered me to be too close and slid off into the water. But yeah, I doubt the slider was ever in a better position for the painted to access, so the little one likely had a significant climb up that domed shell. All in the name of getting some solar radiation.

Old Estate Find

Al Denelsbeck

This one was already being slotted in for the weekly topic the moment that I saw it, but before I even got the necessary photos, another topic that I liked much better happened along, so we’re going to go ahead and use this one now, rather than save it for another week. Spring is on its way, and I expect to have plenty more subjects to feature.

We still have to sell the old house, and The Girlfriend took a weekend trip back there to prep it to go on the market. While there, she gathered a handful more plants that had been in the yard, mostly daffodils, but she also collected what I believe is a coastal witch alder (Fothergilla gardenii) that came with a bonus:

ootheca egg case of Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis on coastal witch alder Fothergilla gardenii stem
Yep, that’s the egg case/ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis,) and definitely this past season’s, because it hadn’t been there before. About the time that the mantids would have been laying egg cases, we were deep in the throes of the move and I wasn’t paying much attention to the front garden, plus the fact that this shrub was wrapped in honeysuckle vines, so much so that the vine was incorporated into the ootheca and had to be cut away. But this does mean that I didn’t leave all of my old mantis subjects behind, even when none of them actually survived the winter because they don’t live that long anyway. So, cool!

Meanwhile, this morning The Girlfriend spotted something that I’d walked right past (but that’s okay because I’d already found something cooler anyway – that’s waiting until Friday.)

likely eastern mud turtle Kinosternon subrubrum burrowing into the lawn
We could make out even fewer identifying marks than before, but this is likely an eastern mud turtle (Kinosternon subrubrum,) perhaps the very same one spotted before. I had thought that it was departing its burrow because the temperatures are better now, but on returning to the spot a little later on, there was no hollow, just an expanse of very loose soil, and now I suspect it was actually re-burying itself. I didn’t try digging gently down to see, though I might try this later on, since they apparently go less than 2cm under and I would contact the shell pretty quickly if it’s there.

[Actually, now that I think about it, The Girlfriend was the first to see both instances of mud turtles, so she’s challenging my wildlife-spotting abilities. Next thing you know she’ll be writing obsessive posts about free will and eighties music…]

You can’t get there from here

Al Denelsbeck

If you are hoping to see some detailed and remarkable photos of this morning’s total lunar eclipse, you are in the wrong location. I mean, I can provide photos of other lunar eclipses, but not the most recent, since the conditions here made a brief foray into “execrable” before they descended into “fucked.”

advancing lunar eclipse within absolutely terrible conditions
This is the best that I got through the cloud cover, and I had time for only two frames before the moon disappeared for good, or at least, well into the total phase before I gave up checking and went to bed. For reference, this is exposing eight times (three stops) more than the brighter of the totality pics found here – suffice to say that it was quite dark, with the moon’s disc barely discernible in the sky.

On the other hand, I fired off a few frames today in conditions that were less than conducive for good shots, and actually did much better than expected.

four male wood ducks Aix sponsa looking wary in backyard
Considering that this was shot through double-pane glass, it’s surprisingly clear, as four male wood ducks (Aix sponsa) tried to get their nerve up to delve higher into the yard for more corn. I’m pretty certain they could see me through the back window (we have window tint on order,) so they weren’t venturing further, plus there were no females to lead the charge – you know how it is. Still, I got a decent portrait out of it too – it’s just a shame that it was overcast.

profile of male wood duck Aix sponsa watching photographer
I’m trying hard not to make this the, “All Wood Ducks, All Day,” blog, but it is such a hoot to watch them come up next to the house, often running because they think they’re missing out. They’re preventing us from getting too used to it as well, since they still won’t allow people outside in their presence and will usually fly off, at the very least swimming to cover at the far side of the pond. This means we distribute corn while they’re away, and make sure it’s down before the late-afternoon onslaught. It’s fun.

Estate Find XI

Al Denelsbeck

It’s still a little slow, with the exception of the wood duck visits, but spring is threatening to take hold, as evidenced by small factors in various places, and one of those is what we’re featuring this week.

blossoms on almond tree
These are the blossoms of the almond tree, which sprouted spontaneously from the compost pile 13 years ago. It’s demonstrating that the move and transplanting did not faze it in the least, and in fact, there are far more blossoms on it than ever before. I did not hesitate to treat it with the deer repellent spray, though I think the deer start paying attention when the young new leaves are out; I want an early start because deer damage in the past certainly stunted its development.

almond blossom and new leaf buds
With the exception of what’s in the greenhouse, this is the first of the transplanted trees to show notable development, but the various Japanese maples all seem to be heading in the right direction – their buds are still small, but definitely moving along. In fact, for all of the plants that we brought with us, there was only one fatal casualty: the avocado tree that had reached nearly three meters last year. Because of its size, we were forced to house it in the garage under a UV growth lamp, but the two multi-day runs of sub-freezing temperatures did it in, since the garage wasn’t heated in any way and the cold eventually penetrated the pot to the roots. It’s a shame, but a much smaller one in the greenhouse is doing fine.

The smallest of the butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii) is also in question right now, not showing any distinct signs of life at the moment, but they develop later than the maples, so we’re monitoring it. There are still two others than maintained some green leaves all winter, surprisingly, so we should still have those. And several cuttings from the oak-leaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) are developing in the greenhouse as well, and will be transplanted as soon as we feel the cold weather is well and truly gone.

white camellia Theaceae blossom appearing to have development issues
The camellia (Theaceae) bushes that came with the property are all blossoming madly, but that’s hardly a sign of spring since they’re winter-bloomers. I noticed this one and went in for the closeup, since it seemed to have a mutation of some kind, with the reproductive organs not fully enclosed by the petals. But then, I realized a lot of them were like that, at least on this one bush, so perhaps this is normal. The European honeybees (Apis mellifera) were not in the least bothered by it.

odd-looking camellia Theaceae blossom and European honeybee Apis mellifera
I just missed out on another thing to feature, however, because I didn’t have the camera in hand. As The Girlfriend and I were leaving for an appointment, we passed the lamp post along the walkway, and one of the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) was proudly displaying its dewlap in a territorial way, the first I’ve seen of that display this year (or indeed, on this property I believe.) The reason seemed to be both the wonderfully warm weather and the presence of another anole a little further down the pole. Later on, when I did have the camera in hand, it was simply posing lazily.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis napping briefly while hanging from lamp post
Even though I was steadily drawing closer in plain sight, this one would do that anole thing of appearing to take little cat naps for a few seconds, and I still don’t know why this is. Yet you can see a hint of pink from the dewlap, perhaps a sign of the first stretching, since I don’t recall ever seeing it this clearly when they weren’t displaying.

closeup of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on lamp post
An hour later, the coloration had reverted back to the typical olive-brown that I’ve been seeing all winter, but that pink is still vaguely visible. And cheers to this one for letting me draw in this close, though I do suspect it’s getting used to our frequent passages. I have to note that I sat down on the back deck to do a little reading in the fabulous day yesterday, moving the lawn chair over to a new position as I did so. Less than five minutes later, the arm of the chair was surmounted by another anole who did not seem overly concerned with my presence, and for a moment I thought it was going to crawl up my armpit; this was taking place as I was maneuvering the smutphone for a few shots, so it wasn’t like I was holding perfectly still or anything. I get the impression that if I fall asleep out there, I’ll awaken trussed up in tiny ropes, receiving demands that we either leave the property or pay them rent.

So yeah, we’re getting closer and closer to active photography season, and it shows all signs of being a good one. I have to note that both January and February set blog records for photo uploads, with six video clips so far, so perhaps this is a promising trend?

Don’t expect much

Al Denelsbeck

Yes, I’m aware of the total lunar eclipse due to take place in a few hours, and I am intending to pursue it (again.) However, Old Man Weather may have other ideas.

full moon almost obscured by atmospheric haze before total lunar eclipse
This is what it looks like out there right now, and it’s been this way for hours. It may still clear up a bit more, but if it remains like this, I’m not going to get anything worthwhile. I’ve gotten plenty before, so no biggie, but naturally this eclipse will be the one where a major asteroid crashes into the near lunar surface and makes a spectacular display.

I have to fess up that my shooting angle for this one could have stood improvement:

branches interfering with view of hazy moon
Really, I just stepped out onto the porch for a couple quick example frames – you’re lucky I even used a tripod. I’ll do better if the skies do better.

Been building

Al Denelsbeck

This has been a while in the making, as will become evident, but it worked.

male and female wood duck Aix sponsa in small open water patch on pond during freezing rain storm
Most of the pics are old, because I was trying to accomplish a few things first, and so we see a pair of the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) hanging out on the pond back when it was nearly frozen, during the sleet and freezing rain storm last month. We’d already been distributing corn for the Canada geese, which the ducks had also discovered, and so they were starting to make routine visits to feed. We’ll go in a little closer to see that it was still raining as I took this:

tighter version of previous image with wood duck pair Aix sponsa showing still failing rain
There was only one section of the upper pond that remained open water after the storm, but the ducks navigated through that to the edge and then simply climbed onto the ice to walk the rest of the way to the yard, though we were being helpful in throwing corn out onto the ice as well.

wood duck Aix sponsa pair with male northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis on snow-pack of backyard
Here, the break in the terrain behind the male’s head marks the edge of land, with the frozen pond just beyond it, while I somehow got out far enough for a clear shot without spooking off the ducks, which has been exceptionally tricky.

male wood duck Aix sponsa snagging a kernel of corn
Yet I was still having difficulty nailing sharp focus and achieving a decent portrait, not helped by the lower light levels slowing the shutter speed down. Meanwhile, the ducks soon developed the habit of descending on the yard en masse at least once a day, usually twice, with their numbers steadily growing as the word got out. Yet while the geese and mallards began getting habituated to us quite readily and would approach within a few meters, the wood ducks wanted nothing to do with humans and would fly off at the merest hint that we were out and about. Attempts to photograph them from an upstairs window were often thwarted by them hearing or seeing the window opening – they have both excellent vision and hearing. But there was no way that we could watch an entire flock of them coming way up into the backyard without finding some way of capturing this. And eventually, it worked out.

What’s funny is, I tried a couple of different remote security cameras aimed from a good location, but the nature of those is that the wider viewing angle defeats the resolution, and so you can tell there’s something there, but not see it too clearly. Worse, the motion sensing function of the better of the two still couldn’t trigger on the ducks; too small in the frame and not enough contrast. So that meant that we’d have to start recording manually when we actually saw them out there. But while we were still trying to do this successfully, I managed to sneak upstairs to the window that I’d left open and finally get the footage that I was after.

A pair has been seen a couple of times hanging out at the end of the pond where the nest box is – we think it’s the mellow pair that doesn’t spook as easily as the others. Now, we’ve already seen mating behavior from the mallards, but not yet from the wood ducks, so it’s not clear yet whether the nest box will be used this year – we’re holding our breaths.

Meanwhile, I fretted mildly, when moving away from the previous area, that I might have no opportunity to photograph the bald eagles like we’d been doing down at Jordan Lake, and while I have spotted a solitary example here, there hasn’t yet been any indication of regular activity. But if I have to replace them with waterfowl like this, especially right in the backyard, I can probably cope.

No numbers this time

Al Denelsbeck

I get a little tired of numbered posts, even though I’ve been the one that established them in the first initial place, and we had a ‘Sorting Finds’ post just two weeks ago. But in that intervening time, I collected over 700 more images before I even got the chance to back up the files to an external drive (I have two internal harddrives mostly for backups, and a backup server that’s been down for a while, but then a couple of old harddrives that I use for the same purpose,) so it was time to do another sort, and indeed, it produced a few images that escaped posts back then. You know, all two weeks ago or less.

This is the one that I’m a little surprised to find that I missed, but then I recall that I was hoping for a better followup.

North American beaver Castor canadensis departing through channel
I looked out back one midday and discovered a North American beaver (Castor canadensis) cleaning itself on one of the small tree islands, quite close to the house – both the time and the location were curious, since they’re largely nocturnal and have only left vague evidence that they even visit this portion of the pond at all; I’ve only seen them in the creek off the back of the property, though the evidence of their visits, in the form of gnawed-off saplings and stripped sticks, is found occasionally. I tried slipping out the back door with the camera, shielded from view by a large tree trunk, but apparently it heard me because it was gone when I eased into view. I briefly spotted it making its way out through the channel between the upper and lower ponds and got off a single frame.

Now, I’m not 100% sure this is a beaver, since I’ve seen a nutria on the farther portion of the lower pond when visiting with a neighbor. Nutria tend to be slimmer and smaller on average, but their physique overlaps with beavers at the larger end, and the only other way to tell at a distance is by seeing their ratlike tail, which I never got a glimpse of. Still, I found a beaver stick in the pond not far from where I’d spotted this guy (nutria eat grasses,) so I’m leaning towards beaver.

wood duck Aix sponsa cruising past yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta on backyard pond
Just because I captured the two together, I feature this wood duck (Aix sponsa) cruising past a yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta) in the pond. Not quite the lighting conditions that I would have preferred, but I’ll take it for now.

And more on the duck front.

female mallard Anas platyrhynchos preening under highly raised leg
Here we have a female mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) industriously preening herself – I realized during sorting how high her left leg was raised. And this did not escape the attention of the male either:

male mallard Anas platyrhynchos observing female during preening
It’s not nice to stare, but she can’t possibly see him so it’s okay. And it’s her fault for doing that in public anyway. If I had a readership, I would have just lost half of them with that comment, but I probably don’t have a readership because of various such comments in the past. Though I’m not the one staring, you know…

[These images illustrate something that may pose a problem pretty soon: there are lots of intervening small trees and such on the edge of the pond, devoid of leaves now, but not for long, and my view of pond life is going to get much worse. I could always go cut them all down, but I’m trying not to do any more than is necessary, and this spring and summer are going to be the acid test. I’ve also already seen how glutted the surface gets with pond lilies and duckweed and so on, and I’m not even sure the ducks will keep visiting once they get fully established. We’ll see I guess.]

Estate Find X

Al Denelsbeck

Olympus VN-8100PC digital voice recorder and Azden SGM-2X unidirectional microphone with 'dead cat' wind guardNo images for this one, because it’s been a slower week and all of the photos that I’ve gotten are subjects that have been featured before. So it’s strictly audio this time – well, and my typical exposition. These are all night recordings, which should become obvious, and all recorded right from the backyard. I was using an Azden SGM-2X unidirectional shotgun mic with a wind guard on an Olympus VN-8100PC audio recorder, since I’ve never splurged (yet) for a higher-end recorder. All clips had a little noise reduction done to cut down the normal background hiss, and one was amplified a little, but for all, I’d recommend headphones.

First up, we have a few different frog species inhabiting the pond.

They think it’s spring

If you noticed a trickling sound in the latter half of the recording, that was the rain starting as I stood on the edge of the pond – there isn’t enough flow to produce the noise of running water. Meanwhile, we have the sharp peeps of the spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer,) the deeper short sounds of what is likely a southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus,) and the background mutter, heard before, that is a toss-up between Atlantic coast leopard frogs (Lithobates kauffeldi) and wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) – with such a chorus of them in the middle distance, it’s hard to tell if any single frog is repeating or not. You can find the specific calls of these at this page.

On another night, we had a slightly different set of sounds.

Probably not a cougar

Up front, the drawn-out creaking growl is likely a gopher frog (Lithobates capito,) but now some of the muttering, duck-like calls can be heard individually, repeating a few times – these lend weight to being wood frogs. Note that I have never seen either a gopher frog or a wood frog – these identifications are made only by the calls, but I’ll be trying to remedy that soon enough. All but a couple of these seemed to emanate from the far side of the pond, which is marshy and soft, so getting up close and spotting them might be tricky, more so by the headlamp, though we’ll see what happens.

One day while observing the wood ducks, I witnessed a male appearing to lead a few others around with very faint peeping calls, and right at dusk one night, I could have sworn I heard that from the upper end of the pond near the nest box. If correct, this would mean that they’re actually roosting on the nearby portion of the pond rather than down through the channel on the lower bayou where they always seemed to disappear. So the following night, I went out with the audio recorder and got no ducks, just the same ol’ frogs, but then a fierce wind suddenly roared up.

Came up abruptly

When the volume jumps in the middle, that’s when I turned and aimed the mic into the trees, and yes, you hear a branch snap off and hit the ground, while something else hits the metal roof over the AC units. I could see the treetops swaying wildly against the night sky, and could only estimate the windspeed, but it was a sudden squall type of gusting, on a night when no serious weather was predicted. Much credit to the ‘dead cat’ wind guard on the mic, because no thumping or rumbling of any kind can be heard, so a great test; I’d had to make this one myself because I couldn’t find one long enough for the Azden SGM-2X (it’s actually some faux-fur scarfy thing from Temu, with the backing removed, folded and stitched into a tube.)

And lastly, we have this capture, that I’ve finally been lucky enough to get.

No, we don’t live by a rainforest

Those, all of them (well, except for the frog croaking and background traffic,) are barred owls (Strix varia) – those are the sounds they make as mated pairs. I’ve been hearing the calls semi-regularly since we moved in though I have yet to catch even a glimpse of one around here. I had to amplify this recording a little, but likely not because of great distance – barred owls have a faint and echo-ey call that makes them sound twice as far away as they actually are, so if you hear them clearly, they’re generally within 50 meters. My guess is this pair was in the vicinity of the stream on the back side of the property across the pond (where the beaver lodge is.)

Man, spring is going to be off the hook.

Still with the ego

Al Denelsbeck

A couple weekends back, The Girlfriend and I were checking out thrift stores in another town and came across a nice little wood duck figurine, fully painted. It became clear that the proprietor wanted much more for it than we were willing to pay, but it got me mildly determined, and of course when you have a 3D printer you have to check out the options. Sure enough, someone named milletro had a wood duck decoy on Thingiverse, apparently a 3D scan of an actual decoy, and I downloaded and printed it.

3D printed models of wood ducks Aix sponsa, original in front and author's remix in backBut the proportions were off a bit, the head being too small and narrow, as well as too rounded on top – real wood ducks have rather oblong heads. So I reworked the model in Blender, a 3D modeling software – this was no small feat, because I don’t know how to do complex shapes very well, and so resizing and reshaping the head left behind some yucky artifacts. After I printed it, I had to do a little sanding, but at least the proportions seemed a lot closer to reality.

[Original model in front, my rework in back.]

four images of painted 3D printed wood duck figurine by the authorThen, of course, I had to paint it. Interesting enough from the standpoint of mixing colors to try for the best match, and the details of the real ducks have a bit of variation – not in their coloration so much, but in how the details look depending on whether the neck is more extended or not, and how the wings sit across the back, and so on. This says nothing whatsoever of the iridescent feathers, which I had no decent way of emulating to any degree of accuracy – they do make iridescent paints, but they’re expensive and I’m not sure the effect is the same as wood duck feathers anyway. After several tries, I settled on a base coat of a metallic grey, overcoated with clear acrylic mixed with green or purple, which provided a colored sheen anyway. I mean, the actual bird feathers change color depending on the angle that you’re looking at them, as well as disappearing and simply appearing black in indirect light, but this was close enough to communicate the idea anyway. At least, I think so…

The original paints that I used were matte, so I top-coated with a clear gloss acrylic, because duck feathers are waterproof of course, but I think it has a little too much shine to it and may have to re-coat it in semi-gloss, except for the eyes and iridescent feathers. The model itself is roughly 150mm in length, or about half life-size of the real thing – good size for a shelf, you know? Plus it kept the print time down to about two and a half hours. I’m pleased with the results, even when I see the small printing and painting mistakes that I made. And, of course, the new version was uploaded to my Thingiverse account.

[A small note: Licenses and attributions are a variable thing, though most people uploading designs to such sites do so under a ‘Creative Commons – Attribution’ standard. This means editing their designs is allowed, as long as you credit the originator, but commercial usage and sales are not allowed without express permission. There are still assholes that violate this – I’ve seen them a few times myself – but for the most part, the agreement is honored as part of the 3D printing community, and that’s how I was able to use and edit this one. Without mmilletro’s original, I would have made no progress at all because I simply can’t model shapes of this nature.]

More photos of the real things will be along shortly, even though I’m still trying to get a really nice portrait. They’re now visiting the yard routinely because we’re feeding them, but they’re still insanely wary of our presence and usually at least swim off, if not flying away to the lower pond, the moment they see us, so nearly all observations have been taking place through windows. Working on it…

male wood duck Aix sponsa venturing out into sunlight

Tricksy tricksy

Al Denelsbeck

I left you hanging with yesterday’s end-of-month abstract, so I am making good on it and revealing just what it was now. This is almost disorienting to me, because the weather has changed drastically since it was taken and it really wasn’t that long ago, after the sleet and freezing rain. So let’s take a look at the original.

sunlight glinting off of the surface after a sleet and freezing rain storm
Note, first, that letting the camera meter off of the bright white sunlit surface was enough to darken the frame down significantly (because camera meters are set to render a middle tone and don’t ‘know’ that what they’re reading from should be white,) and I purposefully darkened it another 2/3 stop to enhance the contrast. As much as it looks like snow, this is actually the crunchy surface left behind by a sleet storm that turned into freezing rain, so a bit coarser and rougher than snow. Perhaps a bit more reflective, too, but at certain angles, the rainbow glittering of tiny reflections was evident, and that’s what I aimed to capture.

But then, I wondered about enhancing those sparkles, and started playing with the Curves function in GIMP.

screenshot of Curves function in GIMP showing setting and effect
What this shows is how all but the brightest registers were reduced significantly, and luckily, all those sparkles were much brighter than the icefield. The normal ‘curve’ would be a diagonal line across the middle of that histogram, lower left to upper right, but here it’s bowed down significantly, and you can see from the underlying grey mountain peak in the graph that most of the image was centered on the middle tones. When they were reduced, the sparkles could be seen much easier. Simple!

What did it really look like, in person? Well, something about like this:

corrected version of glittering reflections off of frozen sleet field
… except that I can’t render it more accurately here, because there’s no way to make the glittering reflections almost blinding in nature; the dynamic range of digital images and the monitors that display them is much, much smaller than what happens in real life, and until we have monitors that could make you squint and see spots afterwards, this is as close as we’ll get. I am kind of puzzled by this, though – with all of the advancements that have been made in displays and LCDs and all that, increasing the dynamic range, the gamut of brightness from their version of ‘pure black’ through ‘staring into the sun white,’ hasn’t really occurred. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

Meanwhile, how come nobody has designed glass that simply filters out all light that passes a certain brightness? You could be driving, and the low winter sun through the trees or that nasty reflection from someone’s rear window is simply rendered as black, or at least a hell of a lot darker. Just selective polarization from intense light. There must be a way to do this…

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