This is worse than those weekly cliffhanger serials that used to be popular, both because it’s taking longer than a week for me to get to the next installment, and because it’s nowhere near as interesting…
The morning after the storm photos at the lighthouse, I was up early to catch the sunrise, but was delayed a bit because I had to change out the leaking tire. Since the Earth flatly (um, globally) refused to refrain from spinning as I did this, I had a very short period of time to be someplace and ready for the sunrise, so I settled for a beach access just south of Avon, the town I was staying in. If you’ve looked at the map at all or are otherwise familiar with the Outer Banks, it comes as no surprise that they’re flat; also rather thin on trees and such. This means that the options for scenic compositions are limited – no shooting from hills, few items to do foreground interest, and so on. I simply picked a nice spot on the side of the dune break that allowed beach access and set up the tripod there. Luckily, the sun cooperated much better than the night before, and I captured some nice colors and textures as the sky lightened.
A little tip: these are the kind of conditions where you bracket heavily, not trusting the exposure meter at all, but shooting a lot of frames both over- and under-exposed to get the best colors. Not only is it necessary because the frame might contain a wide range of light levels – as seen here – but because the shutter speed will be different for those exposures too, and might freeze a crashing wave in place, or allow for some movement from the breakers that produces a surreal cottony look. It will also give you the option to do some high dynamic range work if you want to composite together an image that has a decent exposure for both the foreground and the sky (the image above is not an example of this, but exactly as it was shot in-camera.)
Also note that the sun will illuminate the clouds progressively further up as it rises, perhaps turning the slate-grey surfaces pink or orange in stages, and this can be extremely subtle – we tend to watch the horizon in such cases and ignore the view above our heads, so keep looking around and shooting a lot of frames.
As the sun made its appearance, it was framed against some distant cumulus clouds which lent a bit of interest to the scene, and I went in close for a sequence of frames as it rose.
The sun (and moon) move their own width in 150 seconds, so from first peek to fully above the horizon takes less than three minutes, though atmospheric distortion may alter this slightly – in the right conditions the sun can actually be seen to us even when it is technically below the horizon, the light being bent by the oblique angle through the atmosphere. This is also what produces the out-of-round appearance vaguely visible here. Those clouds were a long ways off, being almost entirely over the horizon, and knowing how high they tend to be, they could have been well over a hundred kilometers distant – there’s even the chance that they were the same storm that I’d been shooting, and driven back in, the night before.
Soon afterward, the sun rose into that line that can be seen over it, in the photo above, which was another solid wall of clouds – at that point the conditions sank back into hazy twilight. I waited around a bit, and was rewarded by the occasional appearance that let me do some more moody breaker photos. For unknown reasons, the birds were particularly sparse on this trip – I did not see one pelican at all – and so the ‘typical’ beach wildlife shots weren’t part of the gallery this time around. Even the occasional seagull or tern was framed against darker clouds and lower light conditions, making it hard to freeze them in midair since the shutter speeds went a little too long to allow this – you’ve seen perhaps the best example in the previous post.
By the way, for those still following along at home, this is the placemark that illustrates my shooting location for this sunrise – clicking it should automatically open Google Earth if you have it installed on your computer.
But of course, early morning on the beach almost always means crabs. The Atlantic ghost crab (Ocypode quadrata) is aptly named, since one usually catches only a fleeting glimpse of them as they scurry back into their burrows upon someone’s approach, sparking the realization that they were right there but we never saw them. Their camouflage is among the best I’ve seen (or at least, realized that I’ve seen) in North American species, blending into the sand extraordinarily well, but with a little practice and alert eyes, they can be spotted at least when they pause after fleeing, usually from having wandered too far from their burrow and being unable to find shelter. It is very bad news to use another crab’s burrow, by the way, so it’s important to find the right one, and I got lucky enough to get between a young crab and its safe haven, allowing me to get several nice close images.
It’s much worse in hazy conditions, because the crabs won’t even throw a shadow that can help them stand out – and they seem to realize this, rarely being out in full sunlight. They are, of course, considered a tasty treat by most sea birds and probably just about anything else in the area, and are mostly nocturnal – going out on the beach at night with a flashlight makes it much easier to spot them, and the light tends to mask your approach too, so it’s easier to get close. I used natural light for the image above, just to show how hard it is to see them, but opted for a flash for the next pic, showing the details of shape and camouflage a little better.
This produces much the same results as using a flashlight at night would, providing a distinctive shadow that helps pick them out against/above the sand, but even this close the coloration and camouflage pattern is impressive. This one was quite small, perhaps 3cm across the entire width, and once it realized it could not reach its burrow it simply froze in place, though if I moved too sharply it would dash away a short distance before freezing again; if I wasn’t watching when this occurred, it was difficult to find the crab again even though it was still within two meters.
As they get larger, the camo pattern fades, perhaps because they’re faster and more adept at escaping, and also maybe because they’re no longer good targets, in size and defensiveness, for predators. I spotted one ducking into a larger burrow as I approached, and sat down to wait it out, which doesn’t take too long.
This one seemed to have a good memory for what the landscape looked like, because its first peek out after I took up a nearby position caused it to immediately withdraw back into its burrow, despite the fact that I was motionless; I’ve grown so used to species that pay no attention as long as I’m not moving that I’m slightly surprised by those that can recognize what ‘doesn’t belong.’ However, this is a relative thing – by the time it peeked out again and I still hadn’t moved from position, it determined that the coast was clear (sorry) and continued with its business, which was to clear out the warren from the wash-in caused by the night’s rain. That’s the mound of fresh sand that you see here above the opening.
This one was about 4cm across the carapace, so not quite a hand-span in overall width, and I wasn’t shooting with a long focal length for this at all; just a little out of the frame at bottom were my crossed legs. The crab dragged up a load of sand tucked into its legs and pincers, moving cautiously but not particularly slowly, and since I’d been sitting with the camera already raised to my eye it was easy enough to get a sequence of frames. Now, the camera isn’t particularly heavy (though I think I still had the flash attached,) but when you have to sit perfectly still in ready position and wait for something to happen, you quickly realize how fatiguing this can be. I could have spent some time building myself a nice comfortable lounge chair out of sand, but by then the sun would have been too high and the crabs would have called it a day. Maybe next trip.
My timing was right on this one: if you look closely at upper right, you can actually see sand in midair that the crab was flinging away. As soon as this action takes place the crab typically shoots back into the burrow, instinctively aware that the motion attracts attention. This makes me wonder what purpose is served by hurling the sand away rather than simply depositing it subtly, which would be a lot harder to see, but I’ve watched this behavior from numerous specimens so it seems to be typical.
Eventually, I packed it up and went back to my room to check out and head back north. I would have spent a lot more time poking around in the southern reaches of the Outer Banks, perhaps even taking the ferry to Ocracoke, but I had to get the tire repaired and it seemed the only places that could tackle that were in the Nags Head area. Unfortunately, this exposed me once again to horrendous traffic (it was Saturday morning, the week following Independence Day) and my mood was deteriorating rapidly. I was going to go for a swim while the tire was being repaired, but before I even got to the beach access I got called back by the shop, informed that the tire couldn’t be patched and needed to be replaced instead. The combination of additional expense, detouring north, and mounting irritation caused me to cut the trip shorter than intended, and I pretty much wrapped it up once the new tire was mounted – I did a brief stop chasing some scenic pics on the way back (and a nap in the car to counteract the road fatigue and short sleep hours the previous night,) but that was it. While I can’t complain about the images I captured – which I have yet to finish sorting – I’d still intended for the trip to have more in it, so I retain the impression that it didn’t accomplish much. It’s nothing but perspective, really – humans are weird that way. Or maybe it’s just me.
This was sunset – what there was of it – at a little harbor in Avon. About all I could do was position myself to place that strange bump in the clouds over the tree to make it look like it belonged there. If you look close, you can see the faint shadow cast by that slightly taller cloud onto the humidity layer above, the kind of thing that makes sun rays (or crepuscular rays, if you want the technical term) in better conditions than this.
While waiting to see if the sunset might improve a bit, I was looking carefully at this anvil cloud well north of where I was, with a couple of rising cumulonimbus clouds in front of it. This kind of cloud formation will often result in thunderstorms, and the heat and humidity conditions of the day supported this possibility; it’s the same kind of thing that causes the frequent summer afternoon thunderstorms (I call them monsoons) in Florida. The sun hadn’t quite set at this time so the sky was still pretty bright, and I could see no actual lightning activity in the clouds, but wondered nonetheless. Traveling north was easy – there are really only two choices from Avon, north and south, unless you happen to have an amphibious vehicle, or wings of some sort. A hovercraft would do it too. But okay, most of us would have just two choices, and hitting NC 12 north would be taking me almost directly towards this distant cloud formation. I decided to chance it, since I had only one other thing planned for the evening, and I could do that just about anywhere.
I cannot, to no one’s surprise, neglect my normal subject matter even when I’m on a trip specifically to produce more scenic and landscape photos than I can achieve in my normal haunts. When stopping to put air in a leaky tire, this very small green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) was startled from its perch near the air hose, so I grabbed the camera and got just a couple of frames. It was getting much darker by this time and I was on the shady side of the building, so I had to focus by the light of a penlight held in one hand, which is a trick all in itself, one that I’ve had to do far too often – one hand holds the camera, while the other supports and focuses the lens, so a couple of spare fingers in there must not only hold the light, they have to aim it where the lens is pointing at the same time. If you haven’t tried this yet, you simply must.
All of this is fascinating, at least to me, but it’s also not really germane to this immediate situation, for one simple reason: this specimen was a juvenile, so no mating behavior was about to take place. What I consider most likely is that it encountered another mantis, quite possibly one of the Chinese mantids (Tenodera sinensis,) but something happened to interrupt the meal, and so it was only partially consumed. I searched the plants for any evidence of another, still wondering how either of them might have crossed the significant moat that is our backyard pond, before realizing that the victim here might have fallen from the overhanging branches. And there’s one other thing that could support this idea.
One last frame, to demonstrate scale – now you understand why my handling of it wasn’t that secure. Yeah, I know, I should be an expert in handling tiny fragile insects by now, able to snag a fly in midair without harming it, restringing damaged spider webs and all that. But I’m still a guy, and there’s only so delicate that we’re supposed to be, you know?
Both of these views, despite their glaring dissimilarity, are from Creef’s Cut, in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge just off of NC 64, a little inland from the Outer Banks – see the 
Being there at a busy time for tourists, I didn’t attempt any full-length or establishing shots of the Bodie Island lighthouse, even though the area makes it fairly easy to do this – just didn’t want all those people in my images. Instead, I chose a few different angles that hid unwanted elements (like the full parking lot, easily visible from this shooting angle) and still tried to be fartsy – I’ll let you decide if I succeeded or not. I’ve done a lot of shooting around Bodie Island light, including 
Above is the view from the platform seen in a previous image, looking out over the marsh area that borders the sound side of the barrier island – a great egret (Ardea alba) made an appearance but wasn’t inclined to venture closer for a better portrait.
This is just a hint, because there are several posts getting lined up right now but it’ll take me a little bit to get to them. Feel free to guess how I spent the past couple of days.
The webbernets is great, I have to admit. Yes, someone did make one at one time, and it turns out to be the same manufacturer as my previous flat-panel flash: Sunpak. The Sunpak Auto 322, while long discontinued, is a flexible little unit with a bundle of aiming options, a built-in PC sync cord, and manual output ranging from full to 1/32nd power, as well as thyristor-controlled automatic exposure. It can flop 180° atop the shoe mount, sitting to the left, right, or vertically, and the smaller flash head can pivot 180° on its own, as can be seen in my image. It is a little bigger than palm size but about half of the weight of the Metz and much better balanced. It runs off four AA batteries and has a Guide Number of 24m/80′ – not the strongest flash you’ll find, but more than adequate for macro work.
