Report from the field, part three

Al Denelsbeck2 Comments

raven Corvus corax portraitAnd so, we conclude our photo tour of Juneau Alaska, courtesy of Jim Kramer, unless he complains that I didn’t feature a particular image that he thought I should (you’ve seen fewer than half of what he sent me – I’m playing the editor game here.) It was a business trip with only three days of photo opportunities, so he accomplished a lot, despite the weather.

Seen here, a raven (Corvus corax) poses for a portrait. While their territory covers an awful lot of the North American continent, they aren’t to be found in Kansas, where Jim lives, or much at all in NC – I think I’ve seen them at a distance while at Pilot Mountain, but that’s it. They appear to be plentiful in Juneau, however, if the photos I received are any indication. These are pretty good light conditions to tackle subjects of this nature, by the way – the textures and subtle coloration of the feathers would likely have been lost in brighter, higher-contrast light, plus the associations we have with ravens tie in well with somber and moody conditions. A raven in a field of daisies just isn’t going to cut it.

view of Gastineau Channel from Mount Roberts
In recognition of Jim’s flat Kansas residence, we shall gaze upon more of Alaska’s ridiculously implausible heights and mountains, such as this view from the Mount Roberts Nature Center looking across Gastineau Channel to Douglas Island and the town of Douglas, just across from Juneau, the barest hint of which appears at bottom. This is from an altitude of about 550 meters (1800 feet,) which is less than halfway up Mount Roberts itself.

misty mountain near Juneau
I have no idea what peak this is – we shall call it “Squishy.” Don’t look at me that way, just because you’ve forgotten your classic literary references…

runoff down mountainside in heavy mistIt’s safe to say that if you prefer dry air, open fields, or lots of sunlight, Alaska is not for you. But that’s minimizing the dramatic and rare vistas, and even if you don’t want to live there, it can be a fascinating visit – I admit I’m envious. It’s the kind of remote and impressive landscape that you expect nature photographers to be inhabiting, instead of, you know, college towns in North Carolina…

Gold Creek, Cope Park, Juneau, Alaska
Jim’s comment on the part one post now has me identifying this as Gold Creek in Cope Park, probably named appropriately because Juneau was primarily established by the gold rush – there aren’t too many other reasons to form a city in the margin between the channel and the steep mountains, way the hell away from everything else. If Jim found any gold there, he’s been keeping it mum – I’ll wait and see what kind of new photographic equipment he suddenly acquires…

some Alaskan viewI am thinking this is looking northwest from Mount Roberts, and that splash of green is the marshy area of the northern part of the channel where the airport sits, but that’s the best I can do until Jim pipes up. I like the framing, especially with the trees reaching for the distant peak, and notice the depth provided by the layering blue haze.

wildflower in Alaska
Yeah, I know, now we’re getting into the kind of stuff I normally show here. It’s not exactly intentional, it’s just that there are too few nice scenic landscapes to be found anywhere in this area at all, so I’m forced into doing semi-abstract little tableaux. Lucky for you that the traffic noise never comes through.

Nugget Falls on Mendenhall Lake, Juneau, AlaskaThis is Nugget Falls, which empties into Mendenhall Lake not too far from the base of the glacier. Probably not a place to go tubing, no matter how xtreemcooldood you are.

mist on the mountainside, Juneau, Alaska
Serious humidity. I doubt anyone there is going out each night to keep the plants watered…

unknown mountain on flight from Juneau to Seattle
Jim extended the camera up on a really long selfie-stick for this one… no, huh? All right, fine, it was from the plane on the trip back, as Jim says, about 40 minutes into the flight between Juneau and Seattle. Playing with the map, I have a faint suspicion that this is Mt Ratz, but it’s only a guess. Pretty dire-looking peak though, ain’t it?

And I close with a photo that appeals to the humor that both Jim and I possess – since we’re both atheists, a lot of people figure this is right up our alley anyway. The figurehead over the door is great, but don’t ask me why the windows are mismatched, or why the European spelling of “centre” is used. Just for class, is my guess…

Unspeakable Acts Research Centre, Juneau, Alaska

Well, I still don’t know

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified smallish frog
After making the previous post, I went out to water the plants (yes, at 2 am, don’t judge me, I’m not judging you) and was able to creep up on the frog in the pond with the use of the headlamp. The bright light doesn’t register as a danger to them, so even though this one was the wariest I’ve seen in a while, I could do a nice portrait – despite scuffing my foot on the first attempt and sending it hurtling into the water (the frog, not my foot, which remains resolutely attached.)

The problem is, I still don’t know what species this is. In size and body shape it appears to be a green frog (Lithobates clamitans,) but with the lack of a ridge extending back from the eye along the body, called a dorsolateral ridge, it would seem more like a bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) – both of these are common here, and found at the proper pond nearby that serves as the foreground to lightning pics. It’s a small specimen, about 4 cm in body length, so it’s most likely a juvenile, and no source that I’ve found has told me whether the ridge develops later in life.

You might think a nature photographer should know all of this automatically or something, and perhaps this is true for some definition of “should.” But here’s how it works for me: I have shot several hundred different species, from mammals to arthropods to flowers, and the distinctions of many are known mostly to specialists within a given field, such as herpetologists in this case – NC has at least 30 species of frogs and toads alone, probably more counting subspecies. What happens fairly frequently is that I shoot something and find out later what it was – or, also frequently, that I did not capture the necessary detail that would distinguish one species from another, such as belly coloration or the stripe along a leg. But considering how many species I can recognize on sight now, across multiple Kingdoms and Phyla, this method hasn’t been too shabby from an amateur naturalism standpoint.

Report from the field, part two: The catchupening

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

female Eastern box turtle Terrapene carolina carolina portraitI had actually planned to have a post regarding the summer solstice pop up Sunday, nothing elaborate, but at least containing current photos, but then life happened in the form of emergency surgery. No, not for me, but for The Girlfriend’s Sprog who, in a fit of impetuous infection, callously threw away her plans to retain her appendix throughout her life. She’s fine, but we have confirmed that she doesn’t come out of anesthesia well.

Monday’s color post had been written weeks back and simply scheduled to appear – I haven’t been logged into WordPress since early Saturday morning. So briefly, I’ll mention the little girl seen here, an Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) that I discovered Sunday struggling in the pond in the backyard; this is notable in that it is a terrestrial, tortoise species that is not aquatic and thus not at home in water that’s 30cm deep and more. Which means my happening along was probably fortuitous, because she couldn’t climb out and was unable to tread water for very long. Despite the gratitude she should ethically have bestowed upon me, she was reluctant to pose for portraits, especially where the light was ideal.

Eastern box turtle Terrapene along foot for scale - yes, we have no bananas
This was clearly a female, about ten years old or so, determined by the brown eyes, the lack of a deep indent on the plastron (the bottom shell,) and the ridges on each scute (the textured pattern of the carapace, or upper shell.) She was likely seeking hydration in the hot weather, so I’m going to have to put a log or something into the pond to assist escapes.

small shy frog peeking from pondWhile retrieving her, I also spotted a frog submerging in the pond, and sat down after the turtle portraits to wait out the frog’s re-emergence. It did so only briefly, and not in a position where I could identify the species accurately, so this will remain a project for later. The pine straw seen here is ubiquitous in the yard, requiring daily removal from the pond, while the discoloration of the water is courtesy of the rains from a few days ago carrying in silt from the red clay – it will take days to settle out, and is one of the reasons why snorkeling in North Carolina is well-nigh pointless. Soon after this image was taken, The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog said that she thought she should see a doctor, which sparked a 26-hour adventure. We’re going to ignore her next time she says that…

So, on to the travels and travails of Jim Kramer, the official Walkabout Noncontiguous Noncorrespondent. As is required by law when visiting Alaska (punishable by three years astonished disbelief from friends when told you didn’t go,) Jim went out on a whale-watching trip in [Al: fill in proper name here before posting] Bay. And, judging from the images, photographing whales is as tricky as photographing dolphins.

single fluke breaking surface
Everyone, naturally, thinks of whale watching by imagining a humpback whale breaching majestically a good eight meters out of the water before crashing back down in a mini-tsunami, usually while hearing the trumpets of the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom theme* (which seems to be unavailable everywhere I look so I can’t provide an example for you young whippersnappers.) Such behavior, however, is rare, and normal activities of cetaceans consists of brief appearances to accommodate the necessity of breathing – the top of the head, where the blowhole is located, is usually what is seen, and then only long enough to exhale and inhale again.

orca killer whale Orcinus orca blowing
Here, an orca (Orcinus orca), more commonly known by the misleading name of killer whale, produces a noticeable spray from having water still present over or in the blowhole when it exhaled. If they’re anything like the Atlantic bottlenose dolphins that they’re related to, they appear unpredictably, meaning one has to be scanning the empty water for the faintest signs and quickly bring the camera to bear when they appear, with luck nailing the focus within a second. Nice portraits are challenging, to say the least.

orca killer whale Orcinus orca providing a brief portrait
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who doesn’t instinctively keep the camera body level – maybe that’s a thing with Canon bodies and/or the additional battery packs – but at least I correct and re-crop them before posting…

orca killer whale Orcinus orca family of dorsal fins
I don’t have to ask Jim what species these are, because it’s obvious – not just from the color pattern above, but from the distinctively-shaped dorsal fin, which seems to droop only when retained in captivity. Jim was lucky enough to see several families it appears, and you have not missed the mist in the air from the recent exhalation, right?

However, the first of Jim’s images, above, I’m fairly certain is not an orca, but a whale’s pectoral fin instead – my guess is a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae,) but this is only a guess based on just a handful of images and the knowledge that they frequent the area. Originally, the change in light conditions and species led me to believe that they were photographed with some separation, but the time stamps are intermixed with the orcas above, which means so much for my judgment. The image below remains my favorite, and also clear evidence we’re not dealing with orcas since they have vertical tails. [No they don’t – what the hell made me say that?]

whale fluke breaking surface
Speaking of light conditions, pay attention to the drastic difference in appearance with the next two images, which are the same subject.

California sea lions Zalophus californianus chilling on a buoy
From the artistic standpoint anyway, I like this image better than the one below, largely for the contrast of colors, but the composition is pretty solid too, especially given that it was taken from a tour boat where control over positioning could only be achieved with timing. Personally, I’d love to take a kayak out into conditions like this, but the risk to the camera equipment is pretty high. I mean, I could survive a dunking easily, but even the humidity and spray could trash a body and lens.

close up of Califonia sea lions Zalophus californianus on buoy
These are California sea lions (Zalophus californianus,) not to be confused with seals, which are actually a different classification of pinniped – look for the ear flaps, just barely visible here, and the orientation of the hind flippers to tell them apart. Or if it’s noisy, it’s a sea lion. But anyway, notice the difference in color and lighting compared to the one above, especially the color of the fur and of the water. Mostly, this is due to changing position between the two, switching the angle from which the sun is coming at the sea lions and the water, but likely also due to the varying cloud conditions, which thinned a bit for the second image while not actually allowing direct sunlight to come through. Thus the shadows remain soft and contrast manageable, but the latter image doesn’t give the deep overcast impression of the former. While you might suspect the exposure meter of the camera had its say in the matter, there’s only 1/3rd stop difference between the two – it’s definitely the light.

By the way, as ragged as it looks, the condition of the fur is typical, and not indicative of illness or injury. The topmost sea lion, meanwhile, sports what I call the “chute didn’t open” pose, usually associated with sleeping cats.

Jim got extremely lucky with the next one, in capturing the elusive Alaskan man o’ war, the rare arctic version of the dangerous jellyfish/siphonophore found in tropical waters, vastly bigger than its warm water cousin.

jellyfish or iceberg? You decide
Okay, not really, I’m just foolin’. They’re actually pretty common.

* Seriously, there was this great triumphant, um, trumpet theme, a very distinctive fourteen-note volley, but the show dates from before video recorders and so few people would have a sample of it. It does not seem to have made it to any of the much-later DVDs and reboots, so I’m guessing the producers never secured the rights to it for subsequent use.

Monday color 20

Al Denelsbeck

holly leaves and berries against blue skySince it is now ‘officially’ summer, we will perversely jump back to almost the only color to be found in wintertime, holly berries in full fruit against the brilliant green of the leaves and a rich blue sky. I will admit to being quite pleased that we can find skies like this throughout North Carolina winters; having grown up in central New York, the winters there spelled overcast conditions for the majority of the time, which could be very depressing. The few occasions when skies like this appeared, it often spelled a wicked cold front coming through and, instead of being pleasant, it was bitterly cold and windy. The decision to get the fuck out of the state came on one such day, when our water pump had failed and I was in our shack of a wellhouse trying to get it operational again in wind chill conditions down below 0°f. It’s very easy to start asking questions like, “What am I doing here?” in circumstances like that.

Years before, we had taken our first trip to Florida, visiting a water park in February and so on. Flying back, we were above the clouds of course, just as brilliantly sunny as Florida had been most of the time, but on the descent into Syracuse we plunged through the thick cloud deck, getting darker and darker, and emerged over a dim, dismal landscape of dirty snow spread over dead grass among bare trees, remarkably monochromatic – not the most welcome of sights at the end of vacation, and I’m more than a little surprised the pilot didn’t turn around and head right back to Florida. He had the audacity to smile at us as we were deplaning as well.

Anyway, enjoy the color.

Report from the field, part one

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

Steep valley in Juneau Alaska
As hinted at earlier this week, we feature the first set of images from the blog’s official, um, Noncontiguous Correspondent, Jim Kramer, and his trip to Juneau, Alaska. We can’t really use the term “foreign” since it’s still the US, and even the continental part – I had opted for “discontiguous” but Merriam Webster tells me that’s incorrect. And truth be told, “correspondent” isn’t even working since he’s sent me roughly two dozen words in relation to these, due to a schedule that is best not examined closely. So any text herein, which will be minimal, is mine and subject to wild inaccuracies. I mean, even more so than normal…

view of Juneau Alaska from Mt Roberts Nature Center
Alaska is many times the size of Texas while only one-tenth as egotistical (yet just as prone to grave errors in elected officials,) and Juneau is the unlikely placed capital, way down this little tail to the south and likely viewed as “not proper Alaska” by the residents in the rest of the state. I’m guessing, anyway. Juneau has every appearance of losing its share of the bed to the mountains, clinging desperately to the edge and having continual nightmares of falling off – in fact, the city continues around behind the mountain seen to the right, there being just enough room on the bed for a couple of roads and a shop that sells parachutes for hikers. The image above is taken from the vantage of Mt Roberts Nature Center, which is reached by a tramway visible below.

tram to Mt Roberts Nature Center, Juneau
steep valley in Juneau AlaskaI used the word, “precipitous,” in the teaser, and anyone that knows me can tell you that I don’t use that word lightly. Juneau is an area of ridiculously vertical landscapes, as are quite a few portions of Alaska – not a place where Frisbees are popular, I’m betting. But you can probably hang-glide to Seattle…

I cannot vouch for whether it is always this humid there, but I imagine it’s pretty frequent. I also imagine that the spring thaw season gets to be a real mess. I am not a cold weather person, but viewing these pics while we were in heat wave and drought conditions in NC was kind of pleasant.

Now, a small bit of info. The clouds seen in many of these pics seem quite low, but they may not be any lower than the clouds we see all the time – they only appear that way because the peaks are tall enough to jam through them. I had the experience one time of being in the Blue Ridge mountains of NC and seeing a thick fog boil in very dramatically. In moments it became clear it was not fog at all, but a storm cloud at ‘normal’ altitude, when the downpour began.

ridiculously steep slopes in Juneau
Now all of this is scenic enough, but right outside city limits, as it were, sits Mendenhall Glacier – actually, quite a few glaciers, if they can even be differentiated in any meaningful way, but Mendenhall is the one with easy access. Seriously, check it out in the mapping service of your choice – it’s a pretty dramatic landscape.

Mendenhall Glacier long shot
Scale is always a tricky thing with images like these, but to help you out, there are still trees on the slopes alongside the glacier. To help you out even more, it measures 650 meters (2,100 feet) across the base where it contacts the water. Look closely at the details and keep those figures in mind as we go on to the next photos.

Mendenhall Glacier and iceberg
The colors and textures of the glacier are great, even in this muted light – perhaps they’re better because of it, letting more of the subtleties through without glare. I can’t help but wonder how old some of that snowpack is in there…

With a lot of math that I cannot do and perhaps a few details from Jim, I could estimate the size of that iceberg in the foreground. A faint hint may be gathered by comparing the ripples in the water, though it doesn’t help a lot, I admit. There’s a bit I can provide, however, even if I wouldn’t put any trust in my figures here: see the dark stain right dead-center on the glacier face, just a little above the center of the pic? That’s about 65 meters (215 feet) off the water, or roughly the height of a 21 story building.

texture and debris of Mendenhall Glacier
Even though this image overlaps the previous, you can see the difference in texture here, not just from the debris, but from the actual shape of the ice. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that the darker debris absorbs more heat from sunlight and melts off the ice it contacts faster, smoothing away the surface more than splitting off icebergs, but that remains a guess.

By the way, this is a lake, with a tortuous path down to the bay – I have no idea how many icebergs actually make their way down to open water, but it’s quite a path to travel.

cascade alongside Mendenhall Glacier
I have no idea whether any path exists up to the glacier itself, but from seeing these images, I suspect not – it would likely be treacherous as hell just getting to it, and the crevasses thereon not something you’d want to fall into. Though it presents some interesting speculations from an archeological point of view…

I will close with one of my favorite images from this batch, which Jim has not identified for me. Geologists out there can tell me what produces all those colors in the rock, especially the foreground pebbles, but for now I’m just going to enjoy them mixed with the different textures in the photo.

unidentified stream near Juneau with whitewater and colorful rock

Call it a plus

Al Denelsbeck

hoverfly on unknown flowersAnd then, the rains did come.

After making that last post early in the morning and going to bed, I was awoken by another storm, this one centered right overhead – at least, if the explosion of thunder that loosened my fillings was any indication. This one brought rain with it, a good soaking, so I’m no longer conflicted.

I have not been neglecting my arthropod subjects, even though I’m trying not to post the same things over and over again, and for the past few nights I’ve gone out and misted many of the plants that they’ve been living upon, almost entirely for their benefit. Thus, some of the photos you’ll see here are from the real rain, and some from my shamelessly staging a fake rain for the benefit of the bugs, taking advantage of the circumstances to get a few pics while I’m at it. Yes, I’m that crassly opportunistic.

I don’t even know what bush these flowers are from, and have little to search on, but the aroma is pleasant, and this hoverfly was quite happy. Whether the rain provoked the flowers into opening or not I cannot say – it appears like it might have, if this and two of the rose bushes are any indication.

Most of the time, after the plants have been misted (which I usually do at night to let it last longer, since the sun will evaporate it in minutes,) the arthropods will become visibly active, seeking out the moisture.

harvestman Opiliones Leiobunum taking advantage of dewdrops
This little specimen, known as a harvestman or daddy longlegs or more properly from the order Opiliones, probably genus Leiobunum, scampered into the spray as it was occurring, which is fairly rare – most species seem to avoid it when it’s coming down but will emerge soon afterward.

unknown minuscule orb weaver spider in wet webSpiders most often seek shelter, usually at one of the upper anchors of the web, but will resume position quickly, sometimes gathering drops that adhere to their bodies as they do so, though whether this is intentional to make it easy to drink, or incidental as they clamber past, is something I haven’t determined yet (and quite possibly won’t – who could tell if a spider is snagging dewdrops intentionally as it crawls across its web?) I have seen some spiders purposefully dislodging drops from the web, presumably to keep it invisible, while others seem to ignore it in the knowledge that it will evaporate quickly. Actually, there is probably no such knowledge – they just never evolved an instinct to worry about it because it never affected their survival. Let’s not credit too much cognition to the class.

There are still half a dozen or so mantises that I can find at any given time, and they noticeably take advantage of the moisture when it appears, which is usually demonstrated in one of two ways.

Chinese mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis cleaning dew from leaf
The most common seems to be when they slurp the dew up directly from the leaf, though getting a really good angle on this is hard, since they tend not to do it when a camera is looming at face level right in front of them – go figure. However, you can see where this one has already cleared a portion of the leaf from the adhering drops. I missed an opportunity the other night, when another had climbed up to a leaf and poked its head over the edge to sip up the moisture – I did not have the camera in hand at that moment.

Chines mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis cleaning mist from forelegs
The other method is usually employed if they get caught in the mist, but not always. They’ll use a foreleg to clear the water from their eyes first, then from other areas of their body or just snag it from a surface, then suck it up off the leg. Perhaps because they’re in a more ‘ready’ position while doing this, but I’ve found it a lot easier to get these kind of images – they seem less self-conscious about danger nearby.

Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis on downspoutOne little surprise appeared the other sweltering night, spotted on the downspout just after I misted the plants below, so I provided its own misting. This is likely a Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) and they need the moisture, so it’s rare to see them out when it’s been so dry. Just to demonstrate my dudeness, not only did I provide a decent soaking, I turned on the deck light right overhead and left it on for a few hours in an attempt to provide more food for the little spud.

Not too long ago something laid eggs in the pond I’ve been working on out back, but it proved incredibly elusive so I never got to see what it was. I wasn’t sure if any of the eggs survived the mosquito larva filter, but there are tadpoles in there now so we’ll just have to see what develops. It could also be chorus frogs, peepers, or cricket frogs, all of which are common in this area.

This was a small average specimen, about 4 cm long, so that will provide a little scale for the next bit. As I was circling around to get a variety of photos, I noted a tiny grey arthropod of some kind up near an eye, small enough that I could make out no details either by eye or through the viewfinder, so I went in as tight as I could to get images that I would be blowing up later on.

some arthropod on Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelisThis little stowaway couldn’t be much larger than 1mm in body length, and by flashlight it remained hard to make out, though it could be seen perambulating around on Mt Frog here. If you look closely, you can see that it has its own supply of water, a tiny droplet adhering to its leg. But in a moment, it turned to face me, and the resulting tight crop confirmed what the other images had hinted at.

newborn jumping spider on Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
If the body shape wasn’t enough, that eye pattern determined that this was a tiny jumping spider, almost certainly a newborn. While I should have used the reversed 28-105 for this shot, which would have provided much better magnification, I was already pushing the limits in terms of position and lighting – not every macro subject is in ideal conditions (in fact, very few are.) The frog was completely unconcerned with the rider, only blinking once when the spider wandered to the corner of its eye, and wasn’t terribly concerned with my presence either, but they rarely are anyway – they’re a pretty easy species to photograph when they’re not actively hunting or looking for mates.

Returning to this morning immediately after the rain, we have a bizarre catch, which happens far more often than we probably imagine. The surface tension of water is an entirely different thing when you’re tiny.

assassin nymph Sinea bearing huge water drop
This assassin bug nymph, probably genus Sinea, was all set to weather the next week’s worth of irrepressibly hot conditions. While it was probably helped by the spiny body structure, when you’re 3-4mm in length, you can get away with carrying a water droplet the length of your entire body, though I suspect it wasn’t intentional. And it wasn’t just hanging there, because the bug was actively trying to avoid me and kept moving to the far side of the stem. But you have to appreciate how the water acts as a lens to show the plant behind it.

No, seriously, you have to. There’s no choice in the matter.

Plus or minus

Al Denelsbeck

clouds lit by electrical storm and city lights
The weather here has been rather oppressive, since we’ve been having temperatures into the thirties (or the nineties if you’re still using Fahrenheit) with no rain for over a week, and the plants are struggling, to say nothing of humans doing anything outside. Last night, we finally got the conditions for a thunderstorm, and I unceremoniously dumped a phone call with a friend to trot down to the pond to do some more photos – yeah, they’re used to it; storms are rare. While there was a decent breeze, I was still sweating while out there, standing almost motionless alongside the tripod.

Above, the layers of clouds become evident with the mixed lighting, the purple-white flashes of lightning contrasted against the amber of the sodium city lights, lending a lot of depth to the sky – the light in front of the house saved the foreground from being just a flat cutout against it.

commercial flight in front of active thunderstorm
My little trick of counting off the seconds between flashes to get a rough idea of when to open the shutter was completely trashed by the storm, at least in the first twenty minutes or so – I would have needed a stopwatch that provided time in hundredths of a second. Seriously, the flashes were nearly constant, with two primary areas of activity in the sky. Above, a straight line at far left denotes a commercial flight into Raleigh-Durham airport that was skirting the thunderheads on approach, which must have been a hell of a view. Though also quite possibly bumpy, and I imagine if you didn’t like flying the view wasn’t reassuring. I was hoping that the lightning flash would have silhouetted the plane against the clouds in that moment, but I suspect the city lights against the clouds washed out any evidence of that.

helicopter flying towards storm
There was also a pair of helicopters that passed low overhead and were headed right towards the thunderheads, which also should have been a great view.

helicopter flying towards storm
I’m reasonably certain they were Air National Guard flights since nothing else flies together around here like that, and also judging from the sound – probably AH-64 Apaches. Sure, the pics make it look bright, but these are time exposures, and all I could make out were anti-collision lights.

anticipated lightning flashAs the storm started to settle down a bit, I could start using the timing trick; lightning seems to follow a rough pattern, with a certain amount of time between strikes occurring from the same area of cloud. Count off the seconds between strikes, then lock the shutter open about ten seconds before that time is reached again. Like I said, its rough, and it’s entirely possible that it’s merely my own confirmation bias and the strikes are more random than that – I’d need to keep some pretty specific records to be sure either way. But this image here is a successful attempt, at least. I didn’t want the amber glow from the city lights in the clouds, so the only way to accomplish that is with a short exposure that captures a flash at just the right moment, and this one was a seven-second exposure timed for the reappearance of the flash. I’m pleased.

The breeze was enough that the water was choppy, so no nice reflections of the storm within, but at least I had a little foreground to work with – that’s something that I’ve had a lot of trouble achieving in the past. Too many trees, and ugly things like poles and wires, nearby make it hard to frame the lightning against something useful, and dashing out to another location is very hit-or-miss, mostly miss. The pond nearby is quite handy, and these are all facing in the opposite direction from this session a bit earlier this year.

Lightning over pond
I was switching back and forth between vertical and horizontal shots; the thunderhead on the left side was producing the best vertical bolts, while the area on the right kept showing off these branches that stretched across the sky, visibly extending. This frame is actually a crop from a horizontal. I was wishing I’d been shooting some video because the frequency of the flashes, and the arms shooting across the sky, would have been quite dramatic, but no, I’m using older bodies without video capability and left the cheesy little camcorder sitting on my desk. So you get stills instead, using the pilings exposed by the lowered pond level as a foreground element. Is that rain stretching down out of the clouds? Quite possibly, but not a drop of it fell on us here.

dramatic cloud glow
And that’s what produced my conflicted response to the storm. I’m always pleased to get decent lightning pics, and this past year has been unprecedented in my successes in that area – I’ve gone for several years without any at all. But we really need the rain, so while I’m quite pleased with the opportunity, and the shot above most of all, the storm didn’t accomplish anything else, and I still had to go out afterward to water the plants again.

Worse, the imperturbable Al Bugg has been jonesing for the opportunity to get some lightning pics, but he’s now away being a camp counselor so I couldn’t even call him to come by and get some practice in. One of these days, though…

Curious definition of “secret”

Al Denelsbeck

I started thinking about this idea when I read this article on Mental Floss about various conspiracy claims (they do not deserve any proximity to the word “theory”) regarding Denver International Airport. And it reflects the same thing that can be found in virtually every conspiracy idea: that some secret society will go to great lengths to create some master plan that must remain secret, and then leave clues all over the fucking place.

Seriously, what the hell purpose is this supposed to serve? Does it not somehow count as a secret unless it’s hinted at extensively? Is it more fun this way? Do those who are in on it need to be signaled because they’re not sure where or what it is, or do they simply need reminders? “Oh, yeah, Denver Airport, that’s the one we’re launching the revolution from. I keep thinking it’s Des Moines…”

Sure, just mentioning it makes it obvious, but apparently it’s not clear enough on its own, because the belief is widespread, enough that it is almost a cultural assumption that ‘conspiracy’ means ‘lots of subtle symbols and indicators.’ People think the flight numbers of the 9/11 planes are rebuses, and dollar bills have secret symbols on them. Such beliefs are necessary for conspiracists to believe they’re clever, able to fathom the puzzle, but it’s safe to say it would be phenomenally stupid to put a bunch of hints around, if the intention really were to remain secret. Mystery novels do not reflect real life, and sinister cabals of the type that feature so prominently in the fevered dreams of conspiracists would have no desire to play fucking games.

But that’s really how it must be viewed, when it comes down to it; they can’t possibly be taking this seriously. If someone really believed that the symbols and sniglets they were finding pointed to a secret society or whatever, the last thing that anyone sane should do would be to smugly announce it – that would be a great way to get disappeared, wouldn’t it? What do they think would happen, some shadowy figure is going to come up to them some night to shake a finger and say, “Oh ho ho, you got us, you little scamp! [Sigh] What are we going to do with you?”

Hey, listen, I’m on board with solving crimes by catching the subtle mistakes and traces of evidence accidentally left behind, but that’s not at all what we’re talking about here. And at some later point, I’ll deal with the backwards process of creating a scenario and then finding the evidence to fit it, which can be done for just about anything that can be imagined. No, this is specifically the idea that these items are purposefully placed, daring someone to put it all together. As if wondering about something mysterious or hard to understand takes some kind of elaborate skill…

There is a lot of psychological fodder in the whole thing: the idea that whoever is behind the conspiracy must be stupider than the one who “discovers” it, the pattern-seeking nature of humans that makes us invent such scenarios in the first place, the overwhelming desire for there to be something going on behind the scenes. And of course, the way that no one seems to realize that if some arcane society left behind such specific details, they obviously intended for them to be found, meaning they would have nothing to do with any real conspiracy. Naturally, that would just send the conspiracists off on another quest…

But this next bit is something that I had originally set aside for later, and have now decided to tackle right here, because a 500-word post is too short anymore. Occam’s Razor is a common tool in critical thinking, but with subjects such as these, it seems to actually support the idea of a conspiracy. To continue using this example, given all of the little details of the airport’s design and decoration, there could be a lot of reasons that explain how each came about – but ‘conspiracy’ is a single answer that addresses all of them. Thus, the simplest answer is probably the correct one; isn’t that how it goes?

Well, yes and no. The first thing to recognize, as mentioned above, is that once the idea of a conspiracy has been introduced, many of the further examples of ‘evidence’ were selected solely because they fit, or could be made to fit, while ignoring all of those bits that did not fit, or pointed specifically away from such an idea. We can’t be selective about what we address and what we ignore – explanations have to cover all of it.

More importantly, however, “conspiracy” is a simple word, but hardly a simple concept. It doesn’t even mean anything all by itself – conspiracy to do what? Which is usually where things fall apart, because it tends to be as diverse as, “making the runways look like swastikas,” and, “being partially funded by Freemasons.” You can conspire to throw a surprise birthday party too, and that’s just as illegal as the previous two, which is to say, not at all. Even if we posit that something truly illegal is going on, or planned, it helps a lot to actually specify what. It helps even more to have the ‘evidence,’ you know, lead towards the idea – Nazis and Freemasons aren’t exactly related in any way, and of course, the statue that caused the death of the artist is, um… what, now we’re dealing with some kind of mummy’s curse or something? Is coherence a bit too much to expect? Believe me (or don’t, and check for yourself,) but a really stunning number of conspiracy claims are exactly this scattered and bewildering, buttressed only by the idea that something “doesn’t seem right.” Yeah, I guess if you find connections between a failed baggage system and Navajo symbols on the floor, there are a lot of things that aren’t going to seem right to you…

Ignoring all that, however, and simply going with the prominent claims that some secret organization exists, again, we’re talking about a simple description for a ridiculously convoluted and detailed idea – an entire airport built because of, in service of, or to promote the future plans of this organization, which involves billions of dollars and who knows how many hundreds to thousands of people, all loyal and dedicated to whatever sinister plan is being imagined, and this is evidenced by, you know, creepy murals. A picture is worth a thousand words I guess. Yet this hardly qualifies as the simplest answer in any way, and even a separate explanation for each individual bit of ‘evidence’ is less involved, and requires less machinations, than one conspiracy. An umbrella standing in a corner could be a spy’s signal to his confederates to meet at that spot when it rains, but it’s a hell of a lot more likely that someone simply forgot their umbrella. And I hardly think I need to point out that artists and decorators can be wildly imaginative and more than a little flakey – their goals are usually not to be normal.

As a comparison, the military of any country tends to have a lot of secrets; it’s the nature of security, since if you know your opponent’s defenses you can subvert them easier. Do military operatives go around dropping clues and providing puzzles regarding their secrets? It’s a ludicrous thought, isn’t it? Misinformation is occasionally planted, perhaps best evidenced in the planning of the Normandy Invasion of WWII, and even that wasn’t as obvious as most of the things seized on by conspiracists as ‘evidence,’ not to mention that none of it was evidence at all – it was simply bait. But it’s safe to say that the big painting in the lobby of the Pentagon does not show all of the missile bases around the world if interpreted correctly, because not only is there no freaking point to that, it’s inviting trouble.

Moreover, there have actually been very few conspiracies, ever, throughout history, throughout the world. And of those, most of them have been very small scale, precisely because the fewer people who know something, the better, and huge plans have too many variables to function smoothly. Even if we assume that some organization is capable of controlling so many aspects of life in even a small city as to make some elaborate plan viable, then we’re to believe that some mook with a cheesy website is going to blow the lid off of it? Please.

Of course, the most amusing bit is that those who earnestly promote these ideas then get quite indignant when they’re not being taken seriously…

Monday color 19

Al Denelsbeck

short focus Chinese mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis consuming katydid on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
This has appeared before, but it remains a nice color image so I’m using it again. Plus it has callback value!

The surreal effect was generated by shooting in natural light at f4, which produced an extremely short depth-of-field that let most of the frame go into soft focus while only a few portions of the subject stayed sharp. But there’s another detail to the effect that is visible – or, specifically, not visible – one that I actually talked about just shy of a year ago. You see, mantises display a ‘false pupil’ dark spot, making it look as if their compound eyes are actually more like our own, and this shows in nearly all photos of them. However, it isn’t a surface feature, but one at a slightly different focal distance than the eyes themselves – different enough that, in the short depth-of-field in this shot, it all but vanished. It can just barely be made out right towards the tops of the eyes, easily missed among the indistinct reflections from the overcast sky.

It shows up again with a little higher depth of field as seen here, taken at the same time, but with a flash unit and at f16.

Chinese mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis eating katydid on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
Since the head is at a slightly different angle now, the false pupil has shifted down, producing a seemingly-startled look from the mantis. It’s also easier to make out the raindrops on the eyes from the brewing storm, one that chased me inside shortly afterward. It’s easier to believe in the storm from the lighting of the top photo than the unnaturally bright flash lighting here, though.

1 … 234 235 236 237 238 … 323