Make mine a double

October 27, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina peering from deep cover
The other day I commented that the immortal (so far) Mr Bugg had failed to beat me to the punch in posting something from our mutual outing before I did. What I was forgetting was that he apparently lives across two international date lines, so while it was Sunday here, it was Friday there. Thus, he still managed to post a day ahead of me, we just had to wait another day to see it…

Regardless, yesterday’s outing (or was it Wednesday’s?) netted us only a small collection of images, one of those slower days that you (now) read about, and I’m largely going to skip this one to talk about the previous, which had at least more fartsy stuff going for it. For now, I’ll simply show an image of a still-small Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) that peeped out from a stand of tall native plants in the NC Botanical Garden. Despite it being less than 4 cm in length, which seems quite small for this time of year, I was able to spot this one without too much difficulty since it was in largely the same place that I’d seen it 20 days earlier. Mantids may do this, hanging out in almost the exact same location for a few days to a few weeks, before moving on to another location not far off. Of course, I may be assuming a lot here, including that it had not moved off and come back through, or that this was the same mantis. I’m bad enough recognizing people I’ve met only briefly, and won’t claim any better skills with arthropods.

Meanwhile, I’ll add in another perspective, showing Mr Bugg (the human) in action getting his own shots. I was careful to frame the mantis against his shirt so that it stood out noticeably, but even then you have to be paying close attention. It shows scale nicely, though.

The timely Mr Bugg Homo sapiens photographing a juvenile Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina

Just because, part 20

October 26, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

red-bellied water snake Nerodia erythrogaster basking before molting
I have a handful of pics from a recent outing to post, and while this one came from the same outing, it is notably different from the others and kinda “out of theme,” but I liked it too much to let it go. This is a red-bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster,) a good-sized specimen, basking in the morning sunlight at Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Now that the nights are getting pretty chilly but it’s not yet hibernation time, this is a more common sight, as mostly nocturnal snakes bring their body temperatures back up to assist in their digestion. This particular one was very close to molting, as indicated by those cloudy eyes – in a day or so, it would shed its skin and become much more brightly-colored for a while. While their vision is hampered by this state, snakes tend to be much more defensive, and with water snakes this is a typical temperament anyway, so handling was out of the question – escaping without getting bitten would have been next to impossible. This species is harmless, by the way, and a bite would have drawn little droplets of blood and nothing further, but there really wasn’t a point to picking it up.

More will be along shortly, but I didn’t want to deprive you of the lovely textures brought out by the low sun angle any longer than I had to. You can thank me later on.

It’s not that hard to drive safely

October 22, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

… but you wouldn’t believe it from looking at an awful lot of drivers today.

Sorry, this is way off topic, but coming right after getting rear-ended in a stupid and pointless manner, I just feel the need to point some things out. I also walk alongside the road semi-regularly, and observe the really poor handling of pedestrians and bicyclists too, at least in this area. Seriously, driving safely really isn’t a difficult thing at all, and I can’t fully fathom why it seems to elude so many people. So here are a few little items just to kind of get the reminder out there.

First off, of course,

Put the fucking phone down. You are responsible for a large, heavy vehicle that, even at slow speeds, is capable of doing a shitload of damage. It deserves your undivided attention. There is absolutely nothing, at all, that comes ahead of maintaining a proper level of attention to its control and the surroundings you are within. The call will wait until you are not busy with driving, but even if it’s of extreme importance, then pull the fuck over. Texting, it should go without saying, is not only completely unnecessary in virtually all regards, it is the stupidest goddamn thing to risk anyone’s life over. You don’t need to be playing with your My Little Pony action figures either, which rate the same level of importance and usefulness…

Chill the fuck out. Nobody cares if you’re late for something, or don’t like being held up in rush hour traffic, or whatever. If you’re late, it’s your own fault – own it. And traffic is traffic – if you’re in it, you’re part of the problem, aren’t you? But madly switching lanes, cutting people off, and tromping on the accelerator can provide, at best, a fractional improvement in the situation while exponentially increasing the risk. Worse, if you think that any of these things are going to correct the situation, then you’ll just get even more irritated when you inevitably find out that they don’t do shit.

It’s not a competition. I’m not sure how this idea got started, but speeding, especially through town where we all travel between traffic lights, cannot provide more than an immeasurable difference – nobody is doing time trials, Andretti, and your dick isn’t bigger than the guy you have to pass. I know how satisfying it must be to get to the next traffic light ahead of someone else, almost as satisfying as being first on the playground for recess, but nobody is keeping track or actually gives a fuck. I mean, organized sports themselves are pointless and childish, but carrying this idea over onto the road is especially asinine.

Braking isn’t painful. Seriously, it’s not – try it and see. And believe it or not, it’s far safer to do so when approaching stopped cars on the roadside, or bicyclists, or pedestrians. You’re going to get where you were going, in extreme situations, perhaps 45 seconds later than intended, but most often it’s down to ten seconds or less. If your time is that valuable – oh, bullshit, it isn’t, so get over it. Slowing or, god forbid, even stopping to prevent a close encounter or potentially dangerous situation is not going to count against you in any way. Moreover, if the hazard is in your lane, then oncoming traffic actually has the right of way. This means, to spell it out in small words, you wait for them.

Between the lines, all the time, every time. Why do I even have to mention this? The lane markings are there for a reason, and it’s as a guide to prevent, you know, little inconveniences like head-on collisions. Staying within those guides, as opposed to cutting corners or sweeping wide, takes literally an immeasurable amount more effort – you might have to bring the other hand into play and will have to stop playing with yourself, but so be it. If you’re physically unable to remain in the lane, you’re undoubtedly going too damn fast. It’s a really stupid thing, and I have no idea how people justify it to themselves, but I see it a lot. There’s even a thing here where, when a painted divider widens between lanes, people feel this is extra space for them to use in cornering (and even on perfectly straight roads, and try to figure that one out,) never actually realizing that it’s a bad situation if the oncoming driver behaves in exactly the same way.

It’s not a matter of special privilege. We’re all on the same roads, we all have the same importance behind being there, we all have the same frustrations. There’s nothing that makes you special – I’m sorry to be so blunt and direct about it, but you’re old enough to drive, you can handle it now – buck up. There are a lot of drivers, it seems, that rely on everyone else on the road obeying the laws so that they’re free not to. And there are plenty that feel that their presence on the road is somehow more important than everyone else. I know this is hard to believe, but there is no royalty in the US at all, and especially not in North Carolina.

If the traffic light has stopped working, the intersection has become an all-way stop. Seems like simple logic, but there are much simpler people out there, a lot of them. I think they believe that, if there is no red light, then it’s somehow safe to enter an intersection, again, never really fathoming that anyone else believing the exact same thing means lots of mangled metal and pooling blood. It never seems to register that there is no green light – you are not denied permission, you have never received it in the first place.

Turn signals are not an advanced skill set. This is apparently a well-kept secret, but pushing up on that little lever, as fatiguing as that might be, means turning right, while down means left. This applies to all turns, and even lane changes. Again, a reminder about competition and privilege, but it’s actually a good thing to let others know what the fuck you’re about to do, and follows this arcane concept called courtesy. Look it up if you need to. And you might, because a turn signal is not considered permission to cut someone off or change lanes without safe clearance – nothing is, actually. If you need to get out of the lane you’re in, you wait until it is clear and safe to do so. It might take as long as the average YouTube video of someone crashing their skateboard, and we all know how excruciating it is to sit that long – it’s like waiting for the microwave to finish with that damn burrito. Agony!

The laws of physics will make you their little bitch if you need the reminder. No matter how much in control you believe yourself to be, no matter what kind of driver you tell yourself you are, simple physics still rules and couldn’t care less about your ego. The faster a vehicle goes, the more effort it takes to stop, and the more likely it is to break traction. And the more sudden you have to maneuver, the more likely the vehicle is to tell you to go fuck yourself. Truly experienced drivers never believe they are in control, only that there are situations where the chances of losing control are far less than others. Such situations include safe following distances, safe maneuvers, and speed appropriate to conditions.

All bets are off. We are a betting species. We believe, constantly, that while something bad might happen, as long as it doesn’t happen right now, then we are ahead of the game. It’s okay to leave our lane on a blind hill or curve because the chance of an oncoming car coming through right now is low enough to save us the supreme effort of having to slow down. Too many people really do believe that if it hasn’t happened yet, it will continue not to happen. These same people keep buying lottery tickets, so apparently they aren’t consistent in these beliefs, but then again, they’re special, so who cares what physics, experience, or logic tells us?

What’s disturbing about this is, how simple it is to avoid it all. The best technique is usually called defensive driving, but there are probably a lot of sports-minded chuzzlewits out there who don’t like the idea of pussy defense, so it’s better to just call it accepting the risks. At any time, something bad might happen, and believing that is the first step towards handling it. But more importantly, driving a vehicle means having the responsibility of an inherently dangerous mass of metal, one that there is no perfect control over. And when something goes awry, the potential for fatalities is significant – just ask any emergency responder. It’s really, really hard to weigh the likelihood of killing someone, including ourselves, against the horrible inconvenience of driving a bit slower or being a little considerate of those around us. I know, right?

And worse, so much of the irritation with other drivers comes from them behaving exactly like us. Too many people seem to believe that hey, if they aren’t going to drive respectfully and safely, why should I do so? Which is the same as saying, “If they can be stupid, why should I be the smart one?” Funny, I always thought that was kind of the goal in the first place, but if you’re the type to resent being better than the fucktards, well, I know a few that aren’t even allowed to drive, so…

Scooped

October 22, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina portrait showing old injuries I had another session with the immutable Mr Bugg yesterday, and I figured he’d be trying to scoop me on posting, but here we are. More importantly, I know he can’t show off any images of my subject here, because I encountered it after I dropped him off.

I spotted this common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) heading out from an ornamental pond across the sidewalk as I drove past, and I turned around quickly and headed back, because its path was going to take it directly across the road. By the time I’d parked and gotten out with the camera, it had already made it to the road surface but not yet out into traffic. Getting run over is a common demise for turtles, more often in the spring, as their treks towards mating or egg-laying opportunities carry them across busy roads. On occasion, some helpful passerby will move them from the road, but the important thing is to take them in the direction they were facing and not just to the nearest roadside, since they were going that way for a reason. So while it would have been easy to push this one back into the grass immediately behind it, I carried it instead across all traffic lanes and deposited it in the grass on the far side before getting these images.

And as you can see, this is not its first encounter with traffic, or most likely not at least – that cracked shell, an older injury, almost certainly came from a car, and it has a cracked snout to match, which you’ll get a slightly better view of shortly. My subject, defensively grumpy as the species always is, was not going to pose in the best light angle and I was disinclined to continue stressing it out. By the way, safely handling one of these, the largest turtles we have in the area, takes a little knowledge. Their heads can come a lot further out than we typically see, reaching well over either shoulder, and most distinctly, they do so with lightning speed, sometimes able to dislodge someone’s grip on their shell from the violent nature of it, but also easily able to startle someone into dropping them. The legs also have great digging claws that can be used to fend off typical grips on their carapace, so it takes a certain approach, with varying recommendations across the net. Some people suggest simply gripping the fat tail, while others say this can dislocate the vertabrae – myself, I have never seen nor heard of examples of this, but it never hurts to play it safe. The best suggestion is to scoop it up with a shovel, but not many people have one handy, so the next best is to grasp the rear of the shell on both sides of the tail, which is awkward and doesn’t keep you from the hind legs. For this one, I just used my fingertips to grip the edges of the carapace between the front and rear legs, keeping back from the reach of the head.

Here’s another shot because everyone needs a snapping turtle portrait for their phone backgrounds. But I have to wonder where this little bugger was last week, when it would have been appropriate?

common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina showing snout and carapace damage

You don’t know danger

October 17, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

green treefrog Hyla cinerea backlit on pickerelweed Pontederia leaf There are a few people, it seems, who imagine wildlife photography to be kind of a rough-and-tumble business involving forbidding locales and exposure to challenging and sometimes dangerous encounters with fauna. To those people I only want to say, “You’re absolutely right!” While out capturing the images within this post, I was better than ankle-deep in some muck that could have sucked my sandals clean off, had I not been careful, and there was even a chance of being stung by a bee, perhaps more than once. And there was no one within, oh, about two hundred meters or so. The walk back to the car alone, at the edge of a shopping center parking lot, was a good thirty meters through poorly-cut weeds. Uphill.

Anyway, this was a brief side trip, actually back in September, a few days before this post featuring images from the same excursion (it sounds so much better using the big words than when I say I just stopped at the pond on my way past to see what was happening.) But for a casual check on conditions, I shot over 160 frames in 35 minutes and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many individuals I saw; more than I initially thought at least, since the second image in the previous post came from the same day. Safe to say it was busy down there.

When I say, “casual,” it means I didn’t bother with the versatile macro flash rig and was primarily shooting in existing light, which reduced the number of options and keepers from the session, largely because the breeze was quite stiff and pickerelweed stems are fairly tall; movement was a constant issue, and to keep the shutter speed up I was shooting at larger apertures most often, which kept the depth of field pretty limited at these magnifications. And this is more magnified than it might seem, because all of the green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) that I breathtakingly encountered were juveniles, this year’s brood, and so about half the body length of adults; this means an average of about 25mm. You can easily see the net effect here, with the eyes and foretoes sharp while the hind end of the body has already gone well out of focus.

Treefrogs need to stay moist, so they don’t like direct sunlight or hot days, which meant that most of the ones I saw were staying to the shady side of the leaves at least, but more often even well down into the thicket of stems, reducing the available light even more. Still, the color tends to be richer in the natural light images; you can compare natural light and flash with the photos in this post, from the same location. And while the selective focus has to be pinned down on the eyes most often – we’re put-off by not seeing the eyes sharp in a photo – it does lend a somewhat surreal look to the rest of the image.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea drowsing on pickerelweed Pontederia
Treefrogs are primarily nocturnal, so they spend most of the day snoozing in safe locations. It was midday and many of my subjects, while aware of my presence, allowed me a close approach as long as I did so slowly, but perhaps half just didn’t want me around and jumped away to more distant leaves. Thus the variety of the images that I snagged was limited, and pretty typical of the daytime poses. On a couple of occasions, though, I caught something a little more interesting, like two of them sharing the same leaf side-by-side.

two green treefrogs Hyla cinerea sharing the same pickerelweed Pontederia leaf
Mated pair? Siblings? The latter is somewhat likely, given the large number of eggs that got deposited in the pond and the same general age of the individuals, but since these are under breeding age the chance of them being romantically entwined is virtually nil. Frogs also don’t have the social structures that we have and no particular reason to hang out together (“You like mayflies? I like mayflies!”) so I’m more inclined to put this down to just happening to settle on the same leaf when it came time to catch a few winks. It’s rare enough to see that I had to go in closer and do a portraity shot (spellcheck doesn’t like that word.)

two green treefrogs Hyla cinerea being abstract
Remember what I said about keeping the eyes sharp, and about short depth of field? Yeah, imagine trying to get the camera lined up just right, with the image plane (essentially the back of the camera) equidistant from the eyes of both of these spuds, while the wind was blowing, and without disturbing them. Standing in muck and awkwardly aiming down from above the leaf, without touching it or any neighboring leaves which would set up warning vibrations. I’ve said it before: macro work can occasionally make you ache in muscles you never realized you had. You might have heard the saying that good artists suffer for their art, but at the very least, even mediocre ones make you suffer through listening to them pursuing it…

Later that same evening, as they also say (probably not the same ‘they,’ but anyway,) I found another of the same species in the even more exotic and intrepid locale of the backyard fence, even if this one is notably darker than the others. Since we don’t see too many green treefrogs in the immediate vicinity I’ve been pleased to spot several this year, and this one posed much more dynamically for me, possibly because it was dazzled by the headlamp and really couldn’t tell what I was doing.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea poised alertly on fence
At nearly 11 PM the flash was a necessity, and I could use f16 and get a better focus range, while the conditions let me get in even closer for the best portrait of the bunch. Or at least I think so, though others may have a different opinion. They’d be wrong, but that’s still allowable…

Spotted frogs

October 16, 2016October 15, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

As promised, I am back to reveal where the frogs are, but just in case you’re late to the game and haven’t seen the original challenge, it can be found here, while the remainder of this post will continue below the fold.

Frogspotting

October 14, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True is fond of posting readers’ photos with some animal camouflaged within and challenging everyone to “spot the [blank].” I never submitted these photos to him, but as a lead-in to further images of the species, I’m going to host my own challenge, with the keyword being “frog” (as if the title of the post left you hanging.) The first isn’t too difficult, but if you find yourself needing help, you can click on the image to open a larger version in another tab.

There is a little bit of curious trivia concerning both of the photos in this post, but it’ll wait until I provide the follow-up, where I will also reveal the targets.

But if you felt that the first one was too easy, this next one should wipe that smug grin from your face, using higher contrast and a much more complex scene to sadistic advantage.

So have at it, and I will be back in a bit with the reveal.

Things are looking down

October 13, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

Once again, like clockwork – or I guess calendarwork is the more accurate description – we find ourselves on the verge of National Grouch Day, which is this Saturday; that’s October 15th for those of us who are days-of-the-week-challenged. Whoever was responsible for this could have scheduled near the first day of school, or the day after the idiotic Daylight Saving change, or when income taxes are due, or at the very least the first Monday of something, but noooo, just “middle of October.” It’s this kind of lack of foresight that screws things up regularly.

The one bright spot to all of this is that virtually no one knows it’s coming, so when we begin reluctantly trying to foster the sentiment among others, they can respond genuinely without forewarning – there’s nothing worse than a fake grouch, not even those horrible grimaces that are produced when everybody is lined up for a group portrait at work. The optimum effect is achieved when you catch someone having a good day (I apologize for the coarse language) and can crash them down here with the rest of us, but who I am kidding? That kind of shit never works; it’s probably not even worth trying. But just to get my own thing going, I once again present a list of things you can attempt to help, not celebrate, but at least recognize the day, fully realizing myself that no one’s going to try or even be reading this goddamn post. I’ve done this, not once, but twice before, and people were still as upbeat and cheerful as ever when the 15th rolled around so, yeah, thanks to all of you for that. You don’t even deserve these ideas.

And remember, it’s important that we all take part, so no cheating and picking only the suggestions that affect others.

Wear something too small

Schedule the kids for a surprise dental visit

Order the crappiest thing at your favorite restaurant

Call in sick to work, especially if there’s some big event you’re coordinating. Leave lots of unfinished business too

Switch the labels on all the spices in the cabinet

Drive very slow in a no-passing zone, then speed up when the opportunity finally comes to be passed. Of course you slow down again immediately afterward

Definitely go without deodorant

Screw with your alarm with your eyes closed

Sniff a lot, as if you have a cold. Refuse tissues in surprise every time they’re offered

Insert long pauses

into your sentences

Especially in meetings

Replace the hand cleaner/degreaser with lotion. Lilac-scented

Leave the car radio volume up full blast

Remove two primary keys from your keyboard

Re-microwave an already popped bag of popcorn

Get a squeaky chair from a thrift store

Use lots of incorrect grammar on a forum that’s really hard to sign on to

Schedule yourself for a surprise dental visit

Take up two parking spaces, but end-to-end rather than side-by-side (halfway pulled through.) As the lot fills, from a distance there will appear to be two empty spaces when there are none

Get several short, curly hairs embedded in the bar of soap

Replace nail polish with greasepaint

Leave fifteen seconds of near-silence on voicemail accounts

Make chocolate-chip cookies for everyone with unsweetened chocolate. Or raisins

Do one of those “easy” projects on Pinterest

Hide someone’s damn selfie-stick

Pay attention to the election

Make it stop, oh god make it stop A few of those were solicited from Dan Palmer, mostly because I got tired of doing this thankless task. I don’t think he’s very accomplished at being genuinely grouchy, instead more like playacting, but then again, he does have two teenaged daughters, which is something that could be added to the list I guess, if I posted with a bit more advance notice…

There are people who believe that National Grouch Day should be devoted solely to personal efforts, without any attempts to instill such feelings in others. These people, it goes without saying, are selfish little shits who believe that grouchiness is a spectator sport rather than participatory. Feel free to set them straight. You know how you’re always told, “Cheer up! It’s [some holiday]”? Right. This time, it’s the cheerful people who are our targets. It’s still not gonna be fun or satisfying, because someone will find a way to ruin it, but… ah, hell. You know what? Don’t even bother.

Given all that, I’ll leave you with Lewis Black, who is better at it than anyone I know. Or worse. Whatever. Too bad he has an audience full of ‘norms’ who seem to be doing that spectator thing…

Too cool, part 32… and maybe 33

October 11, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and finally sat down to tackle it. You have to admit, it definitely fits into the ‘Too cool’ category, and offers a great insight into the rising air masses that form thundercells.

We are revisiting the photos taken during my July trip to the Outer Banks with a sequence of 34 consecutive frames as an animation, creating a dynamic illustration of the storm cloud activity. And there are a couple of things that I want you to keep in mind. The clouds themselves were only lit by lightning, and for the most part could not be seen in person except in millisecond flashes – even the faint sky colors at the beginning of the animation, the last vestiges of twilight, were too dim to really define the clouds except in these long exposures. Also, the exposures were varied, within the 20-35 second range, so in most cases multiple lightning strikes were captured, the majority of them within the clouds. If you look very closely, you can see the motion of the stars, and even a cool effect: directly above the lighthouse, the stars seem to move almost directly downward, while over the storm they have more of a diagonal motion. This is a trait of the wide-angle (18mm) lens, which gives a hint of fisheye distortion; all of the stars are tracing portions of a circle, but the ones closest to the equator have the largest arc and thus seem to move almost straight. The same distortion makes the lighthouse lean into the frame a bit. I readily admit that I did not bother removing the digital sensor noise from the frames, those bright red and blue dots, because it would have taken hours to go through them all.

Now, a couple of pointers if you want to attempt this. First, try to pick your camera position right from the start and don’t change it, leaving it fixed firmly to a steady tripod. I took an initial dozen or so images and then re-aimed the camera slightly, making it necessary to shift those frames to line up with the others, a tedious process at best – you can see a little twitching where it wasn’t perfect. Second, making sure the camera is level helps a lot; mine wasn’t, and all of the images had to be tilted slightly to look like I knew what I was doing. It seems like a simple thing, but it isn’t – in the dark, there are no references to sight the frame edges with, and often it’s hard enough to even tell where in the frame the prominent elements (like a lighthouse) are falling. Having a small spirit level can help, as long as there is a nice even surface to use it on, but whatever method you use, at least try to have it so you don’t have to correct the alignment of every frame afterward.

The varying light on the lighthouse itself, and the fence and foreground, does not come from lightning bursts behind the camera, but from me firing off an external flash unit to give the lighthouse more definition than just a silhouette; it took a few tries to determine the angle that would work best. While the bright sparks down below the treeline, among the buildings, were from other visitors, mostly firing off their phone cameras and oblivious to the fact that their flashes were completely ineffectual at that range, as well as the light show they were missing by facing in entirely the wrong direction.

All of that stands alone quite well. But there’s an additional item of interest – maybe.

I meant to mention in that earlier post that something I’ve been wanting to capture is a little phenomenon usually called a red sprite, a dim discharge that occurs, on rare occasions, well above an active thundercell. The conditions have to be just right, and even then they’re wildly unpredictable. But while out alongside the lighthouse watching the electrical show, I got a glimpse of something that I thought might have actually been one; subsequent reviews of the frames above the clouds didn’t show anything at all, so I figured I’d just gotten a stray reflection from my glasses.

With a lead-in like that, you know something has to be coming – and the truth is, I can’t tell you exactly what. Because while putting together this gif (pronounced, “SKIP-ee,”) I found not one, but two curious and presently unexplained lights in the sky – just, not where I thought they should be to fit the bill. Both of them appear in the animation above, if you watch closely right near the lighthouse light itself. To the right here is a full-frame example of an original frame, to give an idea of how big the items appeared, and again, this was shot with a wide-angle lens, so things look even further away than they would to the naked eye. The point of interest is just above the light, to the left slightly – really quite small, especially at this display size. I wouldn’t leave it at that, however, so we’ll go in for a better look, this time at the full resolution of the original image.

Now you can see two prominent stars that have actually moved a bit in the 31-second exposure, while much of the other white points are likely sensor noise, but the key item is the dim orange smudge. This is, as you can see, nowhere near the top of the storm cloud, and given the distance of the storm itself (my guess was at least 30 kilometers away, probably much more,) this would also have been many kilometers above the tops of the clouds as well. The skeptic in me frowns, not finding this likely. And as I said, I was firing off the external flash unit during most of these exposures, so it remains possible that those flash bursts illuminated something in the sky, such as one of the hordes of mosquitoes that were attacking me with vigor.

Except… a single flash burst lasts only a few milliseconds, short enough to freeze a mosquito in place, not produce an indistinct blur like this. And while the mosquito (or even a night-hunting bird or bat) would have been well out of focus since I was set for infinity, in order to appear this big in the wide-angle frame, it also would have had to have been close – so close that the powerful flash burst should have blown it out very very brightly. For comparison, I refer you to this post, where I captured either a bat or a moth, or both, with a sequence of strobing flashes. Same flash unit, but because of the strobe effect, each burst was about 1/16th the strength of the full-power bursts used in the images seen here; the sides of the lighthouse, being much further away, received far less of the light and so appear quite dim. Bear in mind that I mostly aimed the flash up to concentrate the light towards the more-distant top of the lighthouse, trying to keep the lighting even, but look at the brightness of the fence in the cases where I aimed a little lower, realizing that the fence was hundreds of times more distant than a mosquito would have to be to appear that big in the frame, and yet I still wasn’t aimed directly at it. Also note that, in the strobe images from that other post, the shapes of the critters can still be discerned despite not being remotely in focus, while here we only have a threadlike appearance.

Now the other one, not all that far away in the frame (almost a direct line beneath it, in fact) several minutes later on:

I could almost believe this one was a bird or something, simply because it had a little more shape, but it doesn’t seem to fit. To be far enough that it wouldn’t get overexposed by the flash, it would have to be quite big, and then it would be getting into a decent focus distance; it should be either much brighter, or much sharper. Stray reflections from the lens are highly unlikely, since nothing very bright was shining anywhere near my position save for that lighthouse light, and while that’s bright enough to burn away the window frames and railing, it produces no effects in any of the other frames from that night. I could easily have seen any planes that might have come into the frame (which I did not,) but even if I missed one, the navigation strobes would have produced a dotted line in the 24-second exposure – I have examples of this from the later storm further south that same night.

So, did I capture a pair of sprites, or some other curious electrical phenomena that evening? I honestly don’t know – all I can say is a few things that they probably aren’t. For now they’re simply UFOs, or perhaps the more accurate but less understood appellation UAP, for unknown aerial phenomenon. But my curiosity is piqued, at least…

More Monday monochrome

October 3, 2016 Al Denelsbeck

width= Let’s take another look at converting color images into monochrome. It’s not very often that I’m out with the intention of shooting images to be converted, and I never switch the camera over to monochrome mode; instead, during sorting or editing I’ll pick a handful of images that look like they might fit the bill and see what comes up with the conversion and a little tweaking. So in this case, we’ll use one of the shots taken at Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island, seen at left. Monochrome images make use of contrast above all else, and this image was taken as the rising sun was transitioning from low-contrast light, diffused by the thicker atmosphere at the horizon, to the high-contrast light of bright sun in clear skies – we can see the sharpening contrast in the textures of the rough sand and the trees against the sky. I consider this a moderate level of contrast, not the best candidate for monochrome, but it has promise, especially in the variety of textures. So we’ll start with simply wiping out the color by converting the image to greyscale.

Once again, we’re in Adobe Photoshop, in this case Creative Suite 5, usually abbreviated to CS5. Most older and all newer versions can do the same thing, but there may be subtle difference in the displays and menus. But since not everyone wants to drop a ridiculous amount of money on the egregiously-overpriced Photoshop, there is GIMP, which is a free, open source package that can do just about everything Photoshop does, and the Curves function is included. There are also countless online alternatives that may work, since numerous software packages now emulate the core functions of Photoshop, but most of these require Adobe Flash, which really should be destroyed so I’m not suggesting that you use them.

So as we see below, just converting the image into black & white doesn’t give it a lot of punch. It can be better, and it’s not hard to do this – it just takes understanding where it lacks it and how to manage it. Also bear in mind that this is my opinion of what works, and yours might be different, but you can still glean a good idea of how to achieve it with these techniques. Our biggest problem right now is the range of light levels in the original is a little narrow, with very few areas approaching either full white or full black – most of it is in the middle tones.

Driftwood Beach Jekyll Island Georgia in greyscale
So, not only are we going to stretch the range of light levels in the image, but we’re going to move some of them out of proportion to the others – inducing greater or lesser changes in some narrow ranges to produce selective levels of contrast in certain portions of the image. We can do this without any kind of special selection tools or masks or layers, working solely with the Curves function. Here’s my tweaked version:

Driftwood Beach Jekyll Island Georgia in greyscale with selectively enhanced contrast
Better? I like to think so anyway – without the warmer and softer colors, it has a stark and desolate look, with the angle of the trees and the shadows lending an idea that something oppressive is/was off to the right, almost a post-nuclear kind of thing. But even if you would prefer a different effect, here’s how to tackle it.

Curves illustration
First off, the opening state of the Curves tool has a straight diagonal line across the graph, still visible here in grey, while the curvy black line represents my changes from it. Behind it all, the grey ‘mountain range’ is a histogram that basically shows how many pixels of each light level exist in the original image. Note how the range stops short of the right side of the grid, which is the brightest side – pure white is the right edge. This means no pixels in the original image came close to peak brightness. It isn’t necessary to have a full range in any image, but it can often help in monochrome, so the first thing I did was move the corner markers in a bit, pointed out by the red arrows – you can also just move those pointers along the bottom of the graph immediately below the gradient bar, the ones that line up vertically with the end pointers. This is the same thing as increasing the contrast of the entire image, making the brightest tones (which aren’t very bright) extend a lot closer to full white, and the same at the dark end at the left side of the graph, though the image didn’t need a lot of help there.

Now, the selective part. Each one of those dots on the curved line represent a point I selected on the original just by clicking on it, then pulling it into a new position with the mouse; the blue arrows are not the direction that I moved the points (in most cases this was simply ‘up’,) but instead the areas of the image that were affected by those positions on the curve. Near the top, I wanted the sky to become much brighter behind the standing trees to enhance their contrast, but it had to blend in with the rest of the sky so the difference didn’t appear abrupt, so the curve still had to be pretty gentle overall, otherwise some sections might have appeared ‘airburshed’ or even taken on the appearance of different clouds – in other words, if you need to preserve the gradient tones, the curve needs to be smooth. In my previous example, you can see a lot sharper changes made, a real roller-coaster along the curve, but that’s because the image had almost no gradients, instead having sharp transitions from distinct clouds that I wanted to enhance.

The arrows near the bottom of the curve are controlling the shadows, and after the initial changes, the shadow of the main piece of driftwood was too deep, losing almost all detail in that area, so it was brightened up to keep the idea of, ‘shadow,’ and not, ‘black paint.’ Also, the differences between the dark, wet sand and the dry sand near the treeline was getting a little harsh, so some careful adjustments were made to keep the two close enough in range that they didn’t appear weird.

[A quick observation here: you’re seeing the high tide watermarks, but notice how the tracks and disturbed sand are still present in the lee of the main log in the photo. This shows that the very shallow foam edge was blocked from further advancement by the log, and too shallow to do much by seeping around the sides. The band of lighter, disturbed sand below the waterline further down the beach (higher in the frame) is likely from seagulls and crabs foraging for the shellfish left behind when each wave retreated.]

So there’s an example of controlling contrast for just the effect you want. It’ll take some practice, and not every image will come up to par when doing this, but it will give you a lot more control than simply converting to greyscale or editing within the Contrast functions. Give it a shot.

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