All up in yo’ face

After yesterday’s monsoon (which was hard enough for us to be watching for the signs of tornados,) there remains a fair amount of standing water in various places, and the yard is nothing more than a sponge right now. In a shallow pan this morning, I spotted a couple of spiders hanging out, one obviously a species of fishing spider. I pointed the largest out to The Girlfriend.

“Can he get out?” she asked.

“He should have thought of that before he got in, shouldn’t he?” was my reply. I’m very Darwinian.

Nonetheless, I put a leaf in the pan, propped up on the side, while I went in to fetch the camera (no, this doesn’t mean I carry it in my mouth. Don’t ask me why we use these terms.) When I came back out, I thought I spotted motion on the leaf but there was nothing to see, including any sign of the fishing spider. My suspicions were confirmed when I turned the leaf over and found the spider clinging to the underside, submerged well under the surface.

submerged fishing spider
I’ve written about these before, but you likely forgot all that info, so I’m posting this refresher – remember to thank me when it comes in handy later on in saving a busload of children. Some species of fishing spider are equally at home under the water’s surface as they are on land, since air clings to their bodies courtesy of both water tension and the little hairs they have that makes them so adorable. Most arthropods breathe through openings on their abdomens called spiracles, so the bodysuit of air is ideally located.

My subject here kindly stayed put as I transferred the leaf into the macro tank, and of course I’m accommodating enough to my readers to go in for the extreme portrait shots, allowing you to get lost in those eyes. The effect with the light angle and the magnification was especially potent – I’m betting these pics provoke a strong emotional response.

submerged fishing spider closeup
This specimen, at full leg spread, would not quite cover the pad of my index finger, and this image lets you to see how the surface tension of the water allows for a fair amount of air to be trapped, spanning across small gaps, while the larger hairs poke right through the surface. Remember that this is inverted from expectation – you’re looking through the water, and the silvery membrane is the air pocket. But I noticed something that I never had before: the air specifically does not cover the eyes at all, instead going right to their very edges and stopping. This makes sense biologically, because it prevents the distortion that the air/water interface would produce and thus the spider can see better, but how it occurs was the question.

I wondered if the spider actually cleared its eyes with a foreleg or pedipalp upon submersion, so I did a few experiments with drawing the leaf in and out of the water as the spider clung to it. Nope – the effect is immediate. Then I pondered if the hairs right alongside the eyes grew finer or disappeared altogether, preventing the water from standing off away from the body, and so I went for the same closeup while the spider was out of the water.

dry fishing spider
Uhhherrrmmm, maybe – obviously the hairs don’t stop, but they might be a bit shorter, and they do seem to lay flatter around the eyes. Still, the demarcation is so distinct that I’m inclined to believe the surface of the eyes is especially friendly to water, actually reducing the surface tension like the ‘sheeting’ treatments you can put on windshields, or the wetting agents used in film developing (I know, I’m talking gibberish now.) While getting this image, the spider lent a small amount of evidential support for this idea by quickly wiping its eyes with its dainty feminine pedipalps, exactly the behavior I was looking for when it submerged, not when it surfaced. That’ll show me.

I thought I had some images showing dewdrops actually sitting on the surface of a fishing spider’s eye, which would put the lie to the surface tension theory, but going back and looking at the one I remembered, the dew was on the cephalothorax near the eye, not on it. One of these days I’m going to have to capture a larger specimen and experiment with the misting bottle to see if this idea holds water (a ha ha) – or I could just ask someone educated. But that’s not as much fun.

While I have read that fishing spiders actually hunt aquatic critters underwater, I have never seen evidence of this myself, and it might not apply to this species. The only thing I’ve seen has been hunting while skating across the surface, but I’ve also never convinced a spider to stay in the tank while it was occupied with likely subsurface meals either, so this lack isn’t indicative of much. But since you were about to ask, here’s one from last year showing off the jesus thing while munching on a spittlebug.

floating fishing spider with two-lined spittlebug
Playing around with the light angles eventually produced good definition around the feet, showing how they bend the water surface down without breaking through, yet when the spider wants to go under, it can do so effortlessly – I’m guessing it depends on the angle of the foot. Or it could be telekinetic I guess. I’m constantly reminded by UFO proponents and the religious to keep an open mind, so let’s not rule out hyperdimensionality either…

While I was out today, I did a couple more tight portraits of arachnids. This one was found on the pampas grass the other day as I was cutting it back for the winter, and is perhaps 50% larger than the fishing spider from today.

Slender crab spider portrait
After some searching, I’m fairly certain this is a slender crab spider (Tibellus maritimus,) – I never would have placed it as a crab spider myself because, you know, I figured they would look like a crab and not a twig, but what do I know? It illustrates the difference between common and scientific names, however, because the species I typically associate with “crab spider” are from the family Thomisidae, while this one is of the family Philodromidae – they’re only distantly related. The eyes can reveal all.

And to make up for my pathetically low numbers of spider images in the past year, I add in another taken today, a bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax,) who is certainly more scared of you than you are of it, as demonstrated by the hair and the wide-open eyes. Poor little guy…

bold jumping spider portrait

None of this looks familiar

I’m the middle of a book that will be reviewed here upon completion (well, not right here, but up above somewhere,) and in the meantime, I keep running across thought-provoking content that I want to expand upon. I haven’t been taking notes, preferring instead to keep moving forward on the book, because it’s been taking a while – I’m actually doing much more writing than reading at this point (measured by time spent, anyway.) So I’m going to have to go back through and find all of the idea germs I came across earlier. Except for this one.

I had tackled this idea briefly before, and always had it in the back of my head as further speculation, and now some of the details within the book (no I’m not telling you what it is) have fleshed it out a little more. Brief synopsis: our minds have been shaped by evolution to be a certain way, far more than we typically expect. So the idea of finding “intelligent” life from other planets is, to put it mildly, problematic. This isn’t to say that it can’t happen, but that what we imagine it to be is probably way wrong.

I’ve said it many times, but we’re social animals. We’re geared to relate to one another, judging ourselves and our actions almost entirely by how others might see it, because we worked better as a species by developing these traits. We take this perspective for granted, believing that this is how it would always develop, and sometimes even believing that many other species have a similar perspective, in part at least. It takes a lot to demonstrate how narrow and vain this really is.

Take snakes as an example of animals that are unsocial (using this in a biological manner, not as a value judgment like we might use the word in conversation.) Their young are born fully mobile and immediately capable of feeding themselves, possessing the instincts and anatomy to do so, thus needing no care from an adult. Snakes obtain meals in a solitary manner, unable to achieve a benefit from “pack hunting” or whatever because their prey is singular and does not protect itself in a herd. On occasion, there are dens where many snakes might congregate, simply because it’s an ideal shelter in an area where such is sparse; they don’t do it for camaraderie, and in some such cases, when food is scarce too, they eat each other, or even their own young. While any of this might seem odd or distasteful to us, that’s the perspective talking, because it works remarkably well for the niche that snakes fill in the ecosystem. They have no social instinct because they’ve never needed it.

Guinea hensMost (perhaps all) bird species congregate in flocks, primarily because they gain a huge protective advantage from the multiple opportunities to spot danger and alert all others, additionally because their food sources tend to come in large amounts of seeds, berries, or even schools of fish, so there is more benefit from feeding among the others than competition from doing so. They also have to care for their young in the early stages, so often form parental bonds to share the workload. Birdsong is largely related to territory, part of the competition that they do face amongst themselves, which is reproduction. And this reproduction produces an extensive behavior all its own, that of selecting a mate that appears better than the rest, which fostered various displays of fitness in the form of plumage, shelter construction, and the song repertoire of an experienced survivor. People familiar with pet birds can usually see this difference in sociability, often misinterpreted; birds like their heads and backs scratched mostly because their new feathers itch and cannot be reached there, and prefer to perch on shoulders because it’s a dominant position.

Now take humans. Most of our concepts of fairness and morals come from ideas of equitable distribution of gains, which throughout most of our evolutionary history was food, but the distribution thing is only necessary if food is a communal effort, such as hunting large animals and farming. We have young that are worthless for months, so require extensive dedicated care, and have the instincts to provide this, as well as maintain a parental pairing at least. We like the bright colors of ripe fruits and vegetables, and of the flowers that indicate where such will appear later on. We possess not just the ability to vocalize distinct sounds, but the ability to easily distinguish them as well, supported by bones that had once been the jaw levers of our distant ancestors, and this system probably assisted in coordinated hunting, later a foundation of language and the rapid dissemination of accumulated knowledge.

At some point in the past, we split off from our primate cousins and took to the grasslands instead of the trees, developing the bipedalism that enabled us to pursue large collections of protein on the hoof, which might have been a significant part of our developed brains. At the same time, our forelimbs no longer had to remain free to grasp limbs or serve as locomotion; we could now carry things for long periods, and the concept of possession could develop. Like many species, we at some point developed rudimentary counting skills – two bananas (ooh!) are clearly better than one, especially when the ripe season is brief and we may not find food again tomorrow.

Those manipulative forelimbs are pretty important. They contain multiple independent digits, legacy of millions of years previously when the progenitor of all land critters evolved away from fins into something that pushed and gripped the earth rather than slapped against the water; the number remained five for nearly everything, though they might have changed position or importance in many species – even horses have the vestigial remains of the remaining four while relying on one that specialized into a hoof. When we freed our hands from locomotion, they could be used to manipulate tools.

The idea of manipulation remains ingrained, displaying extremely early in our young and reflected in our ability to count, and interwoven throughout our language even in abstract concepts that cannot ‘move’ in any way. It was incorporated into two other, very key concepts: cause-and-effect, and an overriding curiosity. Somewhere along the way, we refined the ability to piece together the basic ideas into a ‘puzzle’ concept, not just for noticing the behavior of our prey and predators, but into figuring out that the grain planted in the spring became the food source of summer, and stored correctly, the food source all winter too. It’s an intricately developed system, too, in that we get an immediate internal response, delight, in solving puzzles, on top of the subsequent advantages of food somewhere along the way. Few other species have this, and certainly not to the extent of developing scientific laws and figuring out light.

And yet, throughout all this, we are dominated by status, competing amongst ourselves for improvement and recognition, born from sexual selection and the prestige (and likely greater share of resources) of the leader of the clan. It’s important to have the newest videogame system, even when this probably isn’t contributing to sexual selection very effectively. In fact, the rational part of our minds has to ponder carefully to find any value at all – it satisfies that puzzle drive and in some cases the competitive one. It’s not the reason why we compete that serves as the motivation, just that we do; it’s still a half-assed system that can be fooled easily, as is the sexual drive which can be satisfied without procreation at all.

Another factor that comes into play is our time to mess about with book clubs and artwork. In many species, the balance between finding food, avoiding predators, and maintaining shelter takes up all available time; there is nothing resembling “leisure.” For us to have the time we do, we had to inhabit (or create) a niche where these demands were minimized: few predators, dependable food sources, lasting shelter, and so on. Some of this likely came about from our own efforts, sparked by those clever bits in the brain; others may have been a product of the climate, or other species interacting, a right-place-right-time scenario where there were abundant prey animals right on top of good shelter materials.

All of these things make us what we are, and there are other bits in there that we really don’t know at all: why our brains developed so distinctly in this direction, whether the protein source (as in the available prey) or the protein demand (larger brains) came first, how much of it was driven by changing climate or coincidental events, and so on. Having built all that, perhaps now it seems strange that we somehow believe alien species will be a lot like us.

Ugly aquatic mite
About as alien as I can get…
We have to distinguish the pop culture ideas of the almond-eyed grey anorexic prober from the scientific approach that ignores such anatomical concepts altogether, but still searches for radio signals and sends visual and audio representations into space. Any one of the factors named above, and thousands more not mentioned or even considered, could be different and result in a completely unrecognizable evolutionary path, and thus a completely unfathomable species. Perhaps the light is entirely different on the planet of this hypothetical species, and they didn’t develop a vision system at all, relying on sonar or air currents or even their own emanations of electromagnetic waves to plot their surroundings. Perhaps they did not benefit from cooperative interactions and never developed a social system at all; can intelligence (to the point of interstellar communication, at least) even arise from that? And even if it could, would such a species have the faintest motivation to pursue it? If they did, for what purpose? Let’s say they had a lot more competition than we did in our history; would this mean overtures with a new species would consist of who killed the largest number of others in the shortest time, because that’s what determined prestige for them? Perhaps circumstances made them virtually indestructible and with finite life spans, so no fear of harm or death, no sense of pain, no grace to avoid damage, no concerns over velocity. Perhaps they developed as a planet-wide super-social species, a huge swarm mind that has no concept of individuality, competition, or even language because there is no external communication.

But let’s assume that some extra-terrestrial species developed in a similar enough way that they have a language, whether expressed in sounds or light flashes or scents. We have to consider that we’re highly unlikely to ever be able to understand it. Our language relies on numerous species-wide ideas and conclusions – that manipulation thing mentioned earlier, for one: [noun] [action verb] [noun] [adjective], with nouns representing discrete concepts such as you, or Australia, and with verbs representing broad varieties of individual action based on movement, possession, and even abstract ideas. Take the simple sentence, “Al slowly writes the blog post.” “Al,” in this case, pertaining to myself, but only because we form a narrow frame of reference and seek the most likely candidate for this pronoun from among the millions of people this could apply to, accepting automatically that this must be a name and not a title, object, place, or cultural convention such as, “January.” Then we get to “slowly,” which modifies the verb we haven’t even gotten to yet and only makes sense from the standpoint of comparison against other examples not mentioned. “Writes” is both a physical action and a mental one, describing a complicated process of forming thoughts into sounds that represent common ideas among ourselves, then converting those into symbols, and recording them to be retained for a period of time, communicating with others that I have never met and have no worthwhile reason to engage with – it’s certainly not putting food on the table or protecting my nonexistent offspring. And then, what’s a “blog post?” The mere physical description of this takes in the peculiar medium of electronic info and representations of symbols through contrast on a monitor, while the overall purpose is so broad as to defy a useful description. Now try interpreting this correctly as a species which doesn’t use pronouns, or doesn’t use group ideas such as “people” but represents each individual separately, or cannot see color or contrast but only three-dimensionality (thus unable to even fathom “information” on a flat surface,) or doesn’t have the same emotions so has no concept of vanity or attempting to share ideas. Many of our words we don’t define at all, but just use in context: tell me what “is” means without using it. When you get that far, explain why we would even need it; of course something “is” a certain way – how else would it be?

Think that’s fun? Now imagine you’re faced with a new alien species, and want to ask it a question. The species is not only not going to understand your language, it almost certainly won’t interpret the voice inflections we use to differentiate a question from a statement, has no idea what your raised eyebrows mean, won’t understand why your finger keeps going back and forth in odd directions, might consider being touched a grave insult or the symbolic transmission of microbes, and might treat lasting eye contact as blindness – you already saw it, why do you need to keep looking? We can’t even imagine what we’d have to do to communicate because we cannot get out of our own frame of reference, or even fully comprehend what our frame of reference really is.

Arecibo message
Source: Wikimedia Commons

We have examples of ancient writing that we have never interpreted, despite the fact that not only did it come from humans, we have pretty solid ideas of what we would want to write about in the first place. We spend years trying to figure out what goes on in the minds of species that we have easy, constant access to, like dogs or porpoises, and most of what we provisionally ‘know’ we’re not very confident with. We have multiple ways of even representing our ideas in a visual manner: English is based on “symbol=sound,” while many Asian languages work with “symbol=discrete idea,” close but not comparable to pictographic languages which portray events more like a cartoonist than a novelist, sometimes utilizing “symbol=trait.” The Rosetta Stone was such a remarkable find because it gave the same story in multiple languages side-by-side, serving as the key to translation that had been eluding archaeologists for decades. These are, again, difficulties within our own species, in the common frame of reference of same emotions, same manner of living, same planet.

What does all this mean? There’s no conclusion to be found, save for the very high likelihood that we wouldn’t even know something was trying to communicate, much less what it might be – with the additional idea that communication might be a very, very bad idea, which we have difficulty recognizing because, even as hostile as we’ve been to our own species in the past, we still function as a social group.

The image at right is a message we sent into space – kind of. First off, no one really believed it would be received, so it’s just a representation of what we might send, were we trying to communicate. Second, it was a binary signal, so the grid layout and the colors did not actually exist at all; you’ve got a small advantage in that you can see a two-dimensional version with differentiations among elements, something no extra-terrestrial species would have. And I say you have this advantage because it is your assignment to interpret this message. What does it say?

Even the simple first element, a binary representation of the numbers one through ten, is hard to fathom, but it’s necessary to understand the next several, which use the same structure to produce some key bits which should be universal: atomic weights. But then the message changes languages to do pictures, including the only one that most people would likely recognize, which is the human. Or videogame character, at least – the proportions are a little off for humans. And of course, no picture is formed at all if the grid layout is not interpreted correctly. We sit here, part of the species that created this message, sharing the same perspective and having a pretty good idea what we’re inclined to say, and likely couldn’t translate all of this effectively (the full description is here, by the way.) How many misinterpretations are possible from this? Perhaps that we emanate DNA from our heads? That the Earth is out of the plane of the ecliptic, or roughly 11% the size of the sun? That the telescope is nearly the size of our entire system? Man, those aliens don’t stand a chance

*     *     *     *     *

I’m going to throw in another little bit, loosely related but not quite on the same subject. All of that stuff above would also apply to any supernatural being that might exist. The emotions, outlooks, and even rudimentary thinking skills that we possess all serve to help us survive, none of which would be necessary, functional, or even make sense for a god; what use would a singular, hyper-potent being have for sympathy, fairness, judgment, or even time passage, curiosity, or creation at all? Would such a being be amused by this, or have desires of any form, much less the displeasure or goal-seeking that are always credited to it? What would such desires be there to accomplish? We can easily imagine bacteria having no need for these, but they are biologically much, much closer to us in development and environment than all of our concepts of supernaturality. The idea that any such being would be as similar to us as world religions repeatedly avow becomes ludicrous, even as speculation – but it is something we evolved to expect.

History repeats

Red-shouldered hawk at sunrise
This morning I had almost the exact same conditions that I had last winter when I snapped a pic that I liked but wanted to redo, so I leapt into action, which turned out to be frozen so solid that I hurt my coccyx. But like then, I wanted to catch the red-shouldered hawk as it sat in the tree illuminated by the just-risen sun; unlike then, I got the pic before the hawk, some thirty meters away, decided I was acting too suspiciously to trust (that coccyx thing,) and flew off. I had tried to maneuver into a position that provided a better view of the head, to no avail, so we have this stalker portrait. I set the white balance to direct sunlight, which essentially makes no color correction, so the reddish light of the sunrise was retained – auto white balance would have altered it.

The reason I wanted to redo that image from last year, much as I like it, was that the lens I used does not produce a perfectly round aperture at that focal length when wide open, and so the background light has vague nonagonal shapes to it rather than smooth circles; this is because it has nine aperture blades, thus it produces a nine-sided polygon from out-of-focus highlights. So as the sun peeked through the bare trees, I wielded a different lens and tried again.

Holly silhouetted against sunrise
The horizon clouds, however, had other ideas, so the light was of a markedly different quality when the sun emerged. I had a moment of brilliant orange light before the sun rose into a thin cloud band and disappeared, and by the time it reappeared the color had changed, so this was what I ended up with.

Unedited versionAlmost anyway. The image above is actually edited to remove the faint evidence of the nature photographer’s bane: electrical lines. There are actually very few places in the US that are free from wires, poles, and towers, making any kind of landscape shots tricky, and this is especially true for the front yard – I’ve done no small amount of repositioning in an attempt to get something interesting in the sky without those damn wires. Seen here is the untouched version, with faint but noticeable streaks on the left side. Wielding the smudge tool in Photoshop was enough to hide them, though if you compare the two, you can still see some hints – without the comparison they really don’t attract attention. While I was at it, I did a slight color tweak towards red. But go back to last winter’s image and notice how the background looks so much better here; this is why I wanted to redo the shot.

AnotherReasonSunrise also brings another bane of landscape photographers in many parts of the country: jet contrails. Between the sudden surge of departing flights and the light angle that makes them stand out starkly against the sky, you can almost forget about including the sky in images taken from some locales. I think most times people tune them out while taking photos and never notice when they’re in the frame, but they provide a strong contrast element that is immediately noticeable in the resulting image. I shot this one just as an example of why I can’t work from the yard too much, even when I have nice foreground subjects. Soon afterward, the cold air had dropped the power curve in the batteries too low to be effective and the camera died. I could have swapped them out for a warm, fully charged set, but I had already lost the light quality and those contrails were only going to increase in size and number.

If it were up to nature photographers, there would be no overhead lines, no cell or radio towers, and jets wouldn’t be permitted until after the golden hour, staying the hell away from the really nice areas altogether. Just you wait. Someday our numbers will be great, and then things are gonna change.

Ze cuttlefish

Chances are you’ve seen some example of zefrank’s work if you know what the internet is, but just in case, I’ll go ahead and promote him a little more. He featured one of my favorite genera, cuttlefish, in one of his informative “True Facts” videos, and by “true” we mean more true than, “Based on a true story,” but perhaps not exactly 100% bona fide in every niggling little detail. Nevertheless, you will still learn something, even if you’re a marine biologist specializing in Sepiida, though the application of this new knowledge may have some limitations…

A few years back, The Girlfriend and I were visiting the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher, one of three in the state, and stayed for a ridiculous amount of time at the tank housing the cuttlefish. There’s something remarkably graceful in their movements, floating in any direction without apparent effort like a helium balloon that’s lost too much pressure to rise very far anymore. But it’s their skin that deserves (and gets) all the attention. Not only are they capable of amazingly rapid and versatile color changes, for camouflage, threat displays, and mating, but they can produce bioluminescence as well, a pleasant green glow from their undersides reminiscent of those lightsticks that we enjoy playing with but can’t figure out why. I was lucky enough to capture this while we were there.

That's a squeed!This image, or at least the background thereof, is heavily edited to remove both reflections and the rest of the aquarium showing through the back of the tank, but the cuttlefish is untouched (perhaps unretouched, whatever that means) and that green belly is indeed glowing. My understanding is that this is a mating display, the cuttlefish equivalent of an open shirt with gold chains, but likely far more effective – maybe this means guys should hang a lightstick around their neck in clubs? This might work only on the women that resemble cuttlefish, so your call on the value of that.

This one is either a European/common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) or a pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis) – the aquarium has had both and I did not confirm which one this is at the time. I was using the cheesy video function of the Canon Pro 90 IS for short clips, possibly even worse than phone video if you can imagine that, so I won’t inflict them upon you, but I still caught another aspect of behavior therein; we tend to consider their tentacles like those of the octopus, flexible and compressible but of a fixed length, so when they stretch out to twice as long as the cuttlefish’s entire body (which might even exceed the girth of their brain,) it’s a little startling. And like most aquariums and zoos, you can also capture human behavior – The Girlfriend and I still mimic the youth who approached the tank while I was filming and announced, in a broad southern accent, “That’s a squeed!”

cuttleyeWhile typing this, it occurs to me that a certain amount of how appealing cuttlefish are comes from those eyes. They’re as wide open as any fish, but the peculiar shape of the pupil gives them a mostly-closed appearance, pretty mellow and easygoing – with the intense, startled look of a round pupil, we’d very likely be interpreting the actions and intentions of these cephalopods entirely differently, since we’re a species that finds it crucial to read emotions through eyes. Give them a prominent supraorbital ridge like raptors have, glaring at everything indiscriminately, and they’ll become an apex predator and far less cute.

The coolest video about them that I’ve seen comes from Nova, their Kings of Camouflage segment, and it demonstrates just how amazing their abilities really are (this is a 53-minute, full length documentary, just so you know.) The camouflage is wonderfully effective, but it’s the dazzling hunting display that really has to be seen to be believed, and I don’t say that lightly. After this, you won’t be surprised by anything in the natural world ever again, and if it doesn’t make you at least impressed by cuttlefish, much less a fan for life, I will gladly refund your money. I’m that confident.

Yeah, I, um…

So, recently a friend mentioned something about a polar vortex, and it was in the middle of an e-mail exchange that dealt significantly with hexagons. I really don’t pay too much attention to news, TV, or weather reports, and did not know at all that this term applied to the notorious weather we’re having right now.

Instead, I thought he was referring to the massive vortex that sits on Saturn’s north pole, which is hexagonal:

Color-composite Cassini image of Saturn’s northern hexagon (NASA/JPL/SSI/Jason Major)
Color-composite Cassini image of Saturn’s northern hexagon (NASA/JPL/SSI/Jason Major)


It’s an accurate depiction of me, I admit it. I couldn’t tell you how many people have no idea this exists, though I’ve known about it for years. On the other hand, I couldn’t tell you much of anything about current events on this planet. Judge me as you will…

On composition, part 21: Water

While it may seem that “water” is more of a subject than a compositional tool or element, there are actually so many ways to use it that it begs for greater examination. So let’s dive in sorry – sometimes you can’t resist.

RockFramingThe primary trait is, of course, reflectivity. It can mirror a subject on a lakeshore or provide a duplicate sky behind a subject without having to be aiming upwards. Drops can give sparkles of sunlight even off of the tiniest of subjects. It can even provide cool double-exposure effects when the reflection still allows some transparency to reveal what lies beneath. Too often, we’re so used to it that we tune it out as simply water, and fail to see the colors or images it can provide in a photo. Most especially, we often don’t realize that changing our viewing angle can produce radically different results.

Then there are the textures. Waves and ripples, drops and mist, often reflecting from multiple angles to show the invisible sky or nearby foliage. The camera can halt the movement of water and create a curious surreal effect; alternately a long shutter speed can let the motion blur into a soft cloudy haze, as in the more common waterfall images.

And we cannot forget the ideas it communicates. Wet surfaces and drops may tell us of recent rains, while dew says, “morning” – the difference between these can be nothing more than semi-overcast lighting versus bright sunlight. The curl of an ocean wave is remarkably evocative, and artistic in itself, but it’s an entirely different message from the glassy surface of a motionless lake. A single drop in the right location can be a focal point or tell a story, and when it turns to ice/snow/frost, it gains a whole new set of connotations.

So, some ideas on using it:

Angle – Reflections and even transparency will change depending on what angle you view the surface, and of course, small changes in position can change what’s being reflected by it, giving a splash of color to offset a subject or reducing the background distractions by reflecting the shadowy foliage. Spotlight reflections from the sun can be placed where needed or avoided entirely.

Texture – Very small ripples provide smooth gradients and less variation in reflections, allowing for a predominant color as desired. High winds and rough water often produce contrasty textures, nearly black and white. When using fast shutter speeds to freeze the action, take several exposures since you never know just what’s been captured. Very long exposures under muted, indirect light like overcast skies or shade (or moonlight!) will produce softer textures as these changes blur together, while doing so in bright sunlight will produce lots of spots and streaks from the momentary sparkles.

Dew – This disappears rapidly under bright sunlight, so seeking images either before full sunrise or in areas of deeper shade provides more time to work. However, sunlight on dew is also a cool effect sometimes – it just means you have to move fast because you may have less than a minute, depending on conditions, to get the shot. Be early, and be ready.

Dew on grape leafBecause dew and raindrops display their surroundings in a semi-globular manner, their affect and appearance often depend on what’s in the roughly 140° spherical arc behind them. Often, this means bright sky and dark foliage, but it may also mean certain dominant colors. Keep this in mind, because shooting angle can change this significantly, and you may find that the scene benefits from contrasty drops, or gets a hint of color from a nearby flower that’s not actually in the frame.

Exposure metering and flash – Water can be tricky. A strong reflection of sunlight in the wrong area of the viewfinder can skew the exposure reading way off the mark. When you see sparkles in the viewfinder, get several meter readings and watch for out the one that is drastically different from the others (a much faster shutter speed or significantly smaller aperture) – that’s the one that got blinded by the light and you don’t want to use. Also, the camera flash can be bounced back into the lens by either a direct angle or significant ripples, and this includes any exposure preflash that your camera may use too, wrecking your exposure reading. Then there’s the simple trait that a wet surface darkens almost any subject, so exposure readings can go in the opposite direction too, trying to bring that darkness back up to the middle tone that camera meters are calibrated for.

Also note here that the wind picking up can alter your exposure reading, by causing a water surface that was mirror-like to break into multiple shapes reflecting sky, sun, or surrounding foliage.

Louisiana Heron ReflectionReflections – Two things of note here. The first is that reflections in water are always darker than the original, so the sky’s colors will be deeper in the lake surface; plan accordingly (if, for instance, you’ve gotten an exposure reading from the surface, and the actual sky is included in the frame too, the sky is likely to go too bright.) Also be aware that focal distance of something reflected in the surface is not to the surface itself, but bouncing off of it all the way to the subject. Focusing on the moon reflected in the surface, as well as rocks or plants alongside, will require a very high depth-of-field and is likely to fall outside the range that can be achieved.

Contrast – Because of both the darkening effect and the increased reflections, as noted above, wet surfaces increase contrast. This can make some colors richer, but it can also produce too much contrast in certain conditions. The nice thing about shooting on rainy days is the overcast provides light that helps control this, but wet surfaces under full sunlight can become very harsh.

Penetration – Shooting subjects that are under water, from above the surface, can sometimes be tricky. Bright sunlight penetrates best, but of course throws those starburst reflections that can get in the way. However, hazy to overcast skies make it nearly impossible to see beneath the surface, since the light coming from all directions means there’s no way to face that doesn’t produce reflections from the surface. A polarizing filter can help a lot, because light reflected from water is polarized and can be reduced or eliminated with such a filter, as long as it’s oriented properly. With just about all of today’s cameras, a circular polarizer is recommended. Another trick is using a shadow (your own does in a pinch) to block the sky from the surface you’re attempting to shoot through, though this does reduce light on your subject as well, and shutter speed may become an issue. Also, be aware that a rippling surface will almost certainly distort everything beneath – we tend to average this out in our minds and ignore the distortion, but the camera will capture one moment and the funhouse mirror effect it produces.

Lens drop flower
Water drops as lenses – This effect, becoming more popular now, is very cool but very demanding. A nice round water drop will act as an inverting lens for subjects behind it, creating a reproduction of the background upside-down and in miniature – very miniature. A macro lens is necessary, and you’re not focusing on the water surface but the apparent distance the drop lens produces – this means the edges of the drop might actually be out of focus while the image within is sharp. And of course, while using a flash (and you should,) the flash needs to be aimed at the background subject and not the drop, which might produce starburst reflections that obscure your subject.

Fog – You don’t need me to tell you how cool fog is. But what I can say is a) fog at night is especially fun to play with, and a few bright lights in the frame will significantly enhance the effect, and b) try to have some nearby areas in mind that would look great in fog, so you know where to go when the conditions strike – this will likely be different between day and night shots. Don’t use flash on or near the camera, because it will bounce from the individual mist droplets and bespeckle your image. Unless you’re selling ‘ghost’ pics to the gullible…

Because of the muted light, you’re likely to want a tripod even for the day shots, especially since fog mostly occurs in early morning. A heavy fog will give you mist drops on surfaces to work with too.

Underwater – This is a highly specialized field, one that I admit I cannot help you with very much. My experience comes from using small, specialized aquariums to photograph aquatic subjects, which is a much more accessible way of doing it than having elaborate underwater camera rigs and diving gear. Some of the same traits apply, however: you will almost always need to be using extra lighting, and at an off angle – this reduces reflections from both suspended sediment and aquarium rear surfaces. Contrast is reduced. The underside of the surface of the water is a brilliant mirror when you can use it. And air bubbles are even more distinct that water drops in their reflectivity. But while we’re here…

Hermit crab in aquarium
Yep, that’s a reflection of me at top
Aquarium photography – I’m touching on this briefly just to provide some quick pointers, but it’s a specialized topic in itself and perhaps I’ll tackle it in detail later on. The biggest point is that unless it’s straight on (perpendicular) to the glass surface, glass bends all light that comes through it; this means ideal sharpness and lowest distortion comes only when shooting straight into the glass. Curved surfaces are especially annoying, since they will present varying distortion and, depending on the curvature and how close you can get, may entirely prevent a sharp image from being captured, even when it seems to look just fine to our eyes (the reason for this is that the lens is much larger than our eyes, capturing the scene from a wider angle – thus more distorted portions – and combining it back down to the image plane.) Lighting of course reflects easily from the glass surface, but so does everything surrounding you, your own clothes, and the camera itself – the goal is to get as close to the glass as possible to prevent this, preferably working with a rubber lenshood pressed right against the surface. I routinely wear a black shirt when visiting public aquariums, and have done all sorts of things to prevent reflections when working at home.

I doubt you could avoid water in your images even if you tried, but hopefully, this provides a few ideas on using it as a strong element (Ha! Oh, the wit…)

Good luck!

CompReflectedTree

But how? Part 12: So mean

I find that I’ve managed to limit myself by choosing the “But how?” classification for posts of this nature, because not everything that I want to address fits into that question format very well. So just chalk it up to poetic license (or poor planning) when I fudge the structure a little bit, like now, when we examine How come atheists are so mean?

The biggest question, of course, is whether atheists really are mean, or noticeably meaner than, say, religious folk, baristas, or WalMart shoppers – I think it’s safe to say everyone is mean at one time or another. Getting an objective measure of how mean atheists are as a body would be exceptionally difficult, since ‘mean’ is a value judgment and subjective anyway – we’ll be coming back to this. Plus, since atheism is a standpoint, and has nothing to do with rules of behavior, or member requirements, or temperament or lifestyle or diet or shoe size, there is little likelihood that the trait can shown to exist in any form. By a wide margin, the only time most people even know they’re speaking to an atheist is when the topic of discussion is the less-savory practices of religion; understandably, this is going to skew the impression a bit.

But let’s take this example. Are atheists particularly mean in their approaches within such discussions? There are two ways in which we could demonstrate that this is a potentially warranted conclusion: 1) count up all of the responses from atheists, or at least those considered likely to be atheists, and 2) determine if the majority of the points made by those show an unreasonable amount of animosity. Yeah, that’s likely to be a mess, and again, very subjective, but at the very least this starts carrying us away from noting only the responses that seem most abusive. Far too many people operate on the principle that “I read this nasty comment, and it was by an atheist, therefore atheists are mean.” By that same standard, all YouTube users are vacuous bigots and all online gamers are homophobic – and all religious folk are creationists. Labels are an easy way to avoid the strenuous activity of thinking.

Even then, we won’t have a very good number to work with, because not every atheist even reading the discussions is commenting. By nature, the calmer ones wouldn’t even bother commenting, and perhaps, the nastier ones broke their keyboard in fury before their submission posted. There really isn’t a useful way to obtain a number that will work.

When it comes to forms of media, is it easy to pick out the atheists because of their abrasive attitudes? Are they noticeably more nasty than, for instance, Republicans, or vegans, or feminists, or sports fans? Do the number of epithets, and derogatory terms, and personal attacks, and outright lies from atheists outnumber those from any other classification, those named or otherwise? If we look at what passes for political ‘discourse,’ in this country at least, we see a hell of a lot of petulance, bias, dishonesty, and outright hostility – yet no one is wringing their hands in despair over this state of affairs, are they? I hope I’ve made a point that being mean is remarkably common, which doesn’t excuse such behavior, from atheists or anyone else, but does mean that selecting any one as standing out in this regard falls somewhere between ridiculously biased and laughably naïve.

Very likely, a lot of the impression also has to do with internet memes, and people being influenced by what’s popular – the phrase “shrill and strident” is now a joke among most outspoken atheists after the number of times it has been applied, in total seriousness, to people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, neither of which can even remotely be considered “shrill,” and strident is none too apt either. Curiously, “strident” gets so little use otherwise that its appearance in such discussions is very likely to be just mindless repetition, and a certain number of those using it couldn’t even define it usefully. Just like movie reviews can warp someone’s impression of a film, hearing a pointed descriptive phrase can cause a lot of people to find those qualities above all else; advertisers have known this for well over a century. Repetition plays a part as well, and even a curious trait brought to new heights by online socialization: the bandwagon. Bacon, for instance, is considered fairly tasty by many, but I doubt anyone believes it outranks other foods by such a huge margin that we need bacon soap, bacon breath mints, and bacon-wrapped scallops. Wait, hold on – we do need that last one…

But this gives an indication of something that might be at work (I’m trying to be very objective here, because there’s little doubt in my mind,) and that’s something we could call “defensive hyperbole.” We all get defensive when our viewpoint is challenged, and there’s certainly a tendency to exaggerate the attack, even by considering it an attack in the first place. Simple disagreements turn into arguments quickly, with counter-accusations and personal remarks appearing frequently – people can be notoriously incapable of reading/hearing only what’s been said without ‘reading between the lines.’

A couple of things magnify this defensiveness, as well. Religion is frequently wielded as an indicator of status, an actual label that says, ‘good,’ and when this is questioned in any way, people often consider it a personal affront; if religion is being called bad, then I’m being called bad. Sometimes this really is the message expressed by some particular atheist, but not always, and not often in my experience. As a personal example, I consider creation stories to be entirely mythical, and much of the moral guidance therein to be appalling, but I don’t consider anyone following religion to be automatically bad, just mistaken (to varying degrees too, since no one that I’ve ever seen follows their own religion strictly.) Actions can be bad; people are just people. The other factor that magnifies the defensiveness is the in-group influence – the peculiar idea that if a lot of people believe so-and-so is true, then it must be true, something that a ridiculous number of people fall for. Churches operate on this principle constantly – a church is nothing but an in-group, really – and religions usually make a big show of their presence in countless ways to take advantage of this human trait. So when any religious behavior is questioned or denigrated, the attack is against ‘me and everyone I know,’ as well as openly challenging this method of surety at the root. That’s pretty rude, isn’t it?

Most of this might be considered making excuses, which isn’t the point at all. I’ve seen enough examples of meanness, as well as being so myself, to know it exists. But this doesn’t prove that it’s a defining trait of atheists, and I hope I’m showing that objective examination is what any honest person should engage in. Indeed, in such discussions objectivity has been requested countless times from religious folk, concerned that they were being lumped in with the extremist flakes, so I would think extending the same courtesy would be considered fair.

Let’s take a look at fair, though. The topics of discussion when it comes to religion are often quite contentious: censorship, restrictive legislation, selective and questionable education, bigotry, classism, and even ridiculous medical practices and physical attacks – gay beatings, murder of abortion clinic doctors, beheading infidels – the list is not pretty. If anyone tries to deny religions are deeply involved in all of these, and many more besides, they will not like how strong my response is – it’s the nature not just of disagreement, but of demonstrating how much one disagrees and, to no small extent, how disreputable anyone might be for trying to ignore such behavior. This is part of the social contract; we, all humans, have to define what’s acceptable and what’s not, and there are a lot of ways to define the level of unacceptability. A police officer could kindly, quietly, say, “Put down the weapon, please” – it would be mean to raise their voice, right? C’mon. Tone is as important, if not more so, than content in communication, and there are many levels of disagreement or disapproval. When we look at that list above, they’re all unacceptable, but some much more so than others.

Tied into this is an outright blindness to position-swapping. Many, probably most, religious folk defend their faith as a personal choice – they’re not required to make sense, nor have to convince anyone else, since it’s their prerogative to choose what they want, which is fine, actually; no one could take it away anyway. But none of those behaviors listed above, the ones that arise in discussions regarding religion constantly, are expressions of personal choice in the slightest; they’re expressions of authority, privilege, and elitism, the sudden switch from personal choice to a superiority complex, and the belief that their faith is what everyone else should obey. Parents may consider public school curricula to be damaging to their child, which is an opinion, however misguided, that they’re entitled to. They’re not entitled to dictate what anyone else’s child should or should not receive. They may be openly disgusted over the idea of same-sex marriage, which is fine – don’t get married to the same sex, then. Others have their own opinions, believe it or not – opinions are like that. But when it is pointed out that religious folk have no authority to dictate to others, that there are even laws against trying to peddle such influences, abruptly the position swaps back and the whining starts that someone is trying to take away their personal liberties again. This isn’t any form of reasoned discussion, and does not deserve to be treated as such.

If we examine any action by itself, not associated with any worldview or belief system, it’s often not too hard to view it objectively, judging its value solely on what it accomplishes. But when it is attached to a larger idea as part and parcel, then objectivity often vanishes as it’s absorbed into the attitude towards the entire system. Nobody would ever say, “I let my children play in the street because I’m from Finland” – that makes no particular sense – but people do say, “I won’t provide my child experienced medical attention because it’s against my religion,” and in some places there are laws that permit this, even though it makes no more sense. Very often, religious folk expect a deference to their belief system, as if it’s been established as rational and/or beneficial, so of course pointing out how harmful various practices are is contrasted against this expectation. There’s no reason whatsoever that someone’s personal worldview should be allowed to place a child in mortal jeopardy, but idiots in times past have permitted this kind of nonsense, and now anyone who dares to inject sense into the discussion is somehow being cruel.

And let’s not ignore another simple factor: that accusations of tone or impropriety are often just misdirection; they have nothing to do with the content of the commentary, the points made, or any attempt to address them, and it’s safe to say that a certain percentage of time, it’s purposeful avoidance of a discussion that isn’t going to turn out well. When someone cannot respond usefully to the point, they frequently resort to changing the subject or going on the attack. In fact, if anyone bothers to examine the religious responses to scientific articles that establish evolution, the inaccuracy of scripture, or the abusive standards of particular sects, they’ll rarely see points of rebuttal; instead, by a wide margin, come the protests of impropriety – bookended, of course, by assertive mantras of holy truth. It’s unfortunate when we fall for it, as if criticism is somehow socially unlawful.

Finally, we get down to the comparison, which can be described as nothing short of hulking hypocrisy. Atheism is routinely associated with satanism, nihilism, hedonism, immorality, and a host of other disreputable epithets – issued by no one other than fine, upstanding, kind religious folk. When there is any form of public display regarding even talks by atheists, all the way up to billboards advancing secularism, the vandalism appears almost immediately, imagine that. The sciences, as noted above, routinely come under attack, to the point where pressure is constantly applied not to teach many aspects in schools, even thought they’ve proven their worth far more than any religious text. Legislation to prohibit same-sex marriage is not promoted by mellow, kindly people, and the placards carried by religious demonstrators cannot charitably be called, “pleasant.” Virtually anything that kids find entertaining, from board games to books and movies, routinely receives fierce accusations of heinous content or practices, so much so that I may start a new site highlighting these, since I will never run out of content. And of course, any prominent atheist will receive countless e-mails and letters assuring them that they will be tormented for all eternity. Pointing out that atheists find the concept ludicrous is missing the point; the upstanding souls that make such avowals believe it wholeheartedly, or at least claim to. You’ll pardon me if I dare express my opinion that all this behavior is not just mean, but vindictive and neurotic as well. These are not happy, well-adjusted people – not by any measure. Nor is there anyone leaping in to decry these tactics for the sake of polite discourse.

Is this representative of all religious folk? No. I’m more than happy to maintain an objective attitude and believe that it’s the lunatic fringe, avoiding the application of simplistic labels intended only to strengthen my arguments. And I would hope for the same perspective in return.

The Great Unused of 2013

I have to admit, I’m really not one for rating things, especially comparatively – top ten lists and all that are not for me. I did it last year, mostly because a prominent blogger would feature any such posts on his own blog as a bit of promotion, so it was blatant opportunism. If you’re here because you found my blog from that link and are still following it, cool, it worked! But my guess is that few people bother to click on such links.

And I usually don’t have “favorites,” at least not anything that lasts very long. Even images that I’m especially pleased with fall out of favor after a while, because I’m too used to seeing them, and so a new favorite will pop up from images that are fresh. This means I’m trying to constantly do something better than I’ve done before, which is a good trait to have, I think (notice that I offer no ruling on whether I’m succeeding or not,) but it also means ranking is out of the question because it changes constantly.

So what we have here, instead, are images that I cropped and sized for blog use sometime in 2013, but somehow never made a post about – I think mostly because I try to rotate out subject matter and I had been doing too many of the same style when these were fresh, and then just moved on. The post title, by the way, also does not attempt to place a value on them, instead using “great” in terms of quantity, and is probably far more similar in usage to “Great Unwashed” or “Great Depression.”

Insect wings alone in spiderweb
This tableau I just came across at some point in the summer, liking the story that it told, and was lucky enough to get the right lighting angle to bring those wings out sharply. There’s a subtle concord of shapes between the wings and the leaves which I liked. That’s all; nothing deep.

Crab spider crouched on leafIt’s hard to do artistic insect photography, or at least for me to do it, though this is an attempt. Most times I aim for detail images, or behavior, and let’s face it, the market for gallery prints of bugs, especially spiders, is rather limited. But I like to believe the position manages to change the spider from menacing to almost-shy, with the leaf dominating the frame and the spider relegated to a corner, as it were – certainly the “ready-to-pounce” posture is almost obscured by this angle. There’s also enough leaf detail to imply scale a bit better than many of my images, conveying that this really is a small specimen.

(Yes, I do know the difference between insects and arachnids and true bugs, and arthropods is the only one that encompasses them all, but it’s still an awkward word, so I’m going ahead with the common usage in the knowledge that no one is confused, even if they’re pedantically offended.)

I’ll take this opportunity, as well as a lot of vertical column space alongside the image, to mention again what position and framing do for an image. It’s not just the simple trait of whether your subject dominates the frame (appearing large and centered) or is minimized among other details, but with any living species, we pay attention to position and implied attitude. A head-on shot of a spider, especially with legs spread to grasp, is about as menacing as you can get, but get outside of this implied ‘target zone’ and suddenly the same posture might seem more protective, almost cowering. Your approach may depend on what you’re trying to show – typical behavior, or something expressive? A nice composition, or identifying characteristics? It never hurts to do a variety of these, to be honest, because you never know what they might eventually be used for.

Assassin bug and molted exoskeleton
This is the first of three images, all using the same subject to illustrate different things. I had a post planned on molting behavior, and more images of this topic will be coming up, but right now we’ll check out this spiny assassin bug, with its recently discarded chitin nearby. When you start paying attention, molted exoskeletons can be found everywhere, but I think most people simply mistake them for “dead bugs.” For the amateur entomologist, however, they can often be a flag that a newly-emerged specimen is lurking someplace nearby.

spiny assassin bug portrait
Now we switch lenses and go in close for detail, because we can. Macro work is usually demanding, but a lot of fun at times. Mostly what it enhances is how much of a world there is at a scale we usually pay no attention to. And while we’re on the subject of scale…

Scale shot of spiny assassin and molted skin against fingertip
… there’s nothing like getting a really solid impression of just how small we’re talking about. It’s one thing to give distinct measurements, or even include a small ruler of some kind, but neither work half as well as something that immediately conveys the size by familiarity. The one big (?) difference between all of these photos is the leaf in the closeup, which is obviously different – I coaxed my subject onto another leaf because the vine was attached to the wall in a position that prevented a portrait shot with adequate lighting.

Unidentified red caterpillars consuming redbud leaf
The redbud tree alongside the porch suddenly sported a horde of newly-hatched caterpillars later in the summer, which tackled the leaf like a line-dance, or a carrier FOD walk if that’s an analogy that works better (probably not.) For some reason the redbud drew a lot of attention this year, but I attempted to transplant it late in the fall because it couldn’t remain where it was, and we’ll have to see if it accepted this in the spring.

Red-headed caterpillars eating redbudAs the caterpillars grew larger, they tackled the leaves in a different manner, making a more noticeable dent in the foliage. Their numbers dwindled, however, likely due to predation but I never witnessed what was responsible; all I know is only a handful made it to chrysalis stage, and I never got to see those hatch out either (this is largely why these images remained in the blog folder unused – I try to build a story when I can.) When you’re this close, by the way, it’s easy to actually watch their progress through the leaf, and after only a few minutes you get the impression they should be stuffed to the gills by now.

I finally searched to determine the species for just this post, by the way: these are likely red-humped caterpillar moths, or maybe that should be red-humped caterpillar moth caterpillars, so let’s just go with Schizura concinna. The adult moth stage is pretty unremarkable, in marked contrast to the coloration of the larvae here. Is that actually aposematic coloration, a ‘keepaway’ warning to predators? Yes, indeed – these little guys can emit formic acid defensively, though this is knowledge gained by reading and not experience. Don’t grab them and you won’t gain this experience yourself.

We take a brief break from creepy things for some scenic pics.

University Lake in autumn
For the post about autumn colors, I had several images lined up to see which fit the best; these two remained behind, forlorn and forgotten.

University Lake at autumn sunrise
Obviously I was only going to use one anyway, but which one? Neither was the case, so they get the consolation prize of appearing now, which is really only an illustration of how humans can anthropomorphize anything. These images are not ‘consoled’ by their appearance here, since they’re far too miffed about being passed over the first time.

Obviously, these were taken from the same vantage point, but here you can see what difference the time of day makes; the latter was taken right at sunrise, or at least, right when the sun was high enough to get over the other trees. While the red light is normally a nice touch to many subjects, here it actually reduced the color response that could be obtained later on in the day. But the mist is nice.

Break’s over; back to yuck.

jumping spider on butterfly bush
While chasing various other subjects on the butterfly bush, I glanced down and found this little jumping spider surreptitiously watching me from a cluster of leaves. Or maybe it was, anyway – insect vision is often very limited in scope, especially for distances, but jumpers are a notable exception because of the specialized eyes they have for hunting. I played around to get the lighting this good, since there were numerous leaves that could throw shadows, as may be apparent. It makes this image a little misleading though, because the spider really was deep in shadow and very subtle, not at all as it seems here. Still, I liked how it came together.

praying mantis molting
We return the the topic of molting. Here one of my resident mantises hangs suspended from its abdomen, feet not touching anything, still attached to the newly-shed exoskeleton. I got several examples of molting this year, but none in a stage earlier than this, with one exception. I’d love to catch it from the very beginning, but this is perhaps very tricky, since arthropods are vulnerable when molting, and likely will not begin the process if there’s any evidence of danger like, oh I dunno, some huge nature photographer looming overhead with a camera and flash rig. This image, meanwhile, shows a little bit of the disconcerting trait of every molt I’ve seen: the emerged insect is significantly larger than the chitin it just popped out of. I honestly don’t know how this works.

Green lynx spider moltingOne of the lynx spiders that I followed all year put on this display one evening, and illustrated a curious trait, which I’ll get to in a minute. Some arachnids, like the fishing spiders, split their exoskeletons horizontally along the sides and flip the top portion out of the way, while the lynx spiders (and mantids) split longitudinally along the ‘spine’ and exit that way. This specimen is also hanging from its abdomen, and both this one and the mantis remained largely motionless for a while, despite the fact that I was obviously nearby; I suppose that it takes time for them to feel confident in the hardness of their new chitin, and in the meantime it is better to be still and not attract attention. But after a while, this one (a female) stretched out and grabbed the network of web strands that only makes a faint appearance in these images, and detached herself from the molted skin.

Green lynx spider emerging from molt
And then she did the curious thing. She went around to each of the legs of the old exoskeleton and worked on the tips by mouth, detaching it from its anchors.

Green lynx spider detaching molted exoskeleton
After a minute or three, she had unhooked all of the supports and dropped the chitin out of sight, the only species I’ve known that did this, though many others might and I simply never find the results.

Newly molted green lynx spider
My best guess is that the lynx spiders rely on their camouflage for both protection and hunting, especially a juvenile like this one, and the stark white exoskeleton is too capable of attracting attention. Or maybe it’s just embarrassed by it; last season’s fashions and all that.

Belted kingfisher on dead treeAnother break, a belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) perched conspicuously on a dead snag. This was taken while we were on Jekyll Island, and narrowly missed fitting into that post – I wanted to, but then I have to try and fill up all this space alongside without going “blah, blah, blah, blah,” and sometimes it’s hard to remain topical.

When you’re standing in any public area and pointing a long lens at something, people always look to see what you’re photographing. I’m amazed sometimes at how long it takes people to actually spot my subjects though, like this time; granted, the kingfisher was significantly farther away than this image makes it seem, but c’mon, it’s at the top of the tree and silhouetted against the sky!

I like kingfishers, and see them often, but have yet to get the really snazzy photo of one that I want. They’re shy birds, typically spooking when anyone gets close and leaving with a raucous, chittering cry that invariably tells me I’m too late to set up a shot. Many years ago I was standing in shallows on the edge of a river, moving little while doing long exposures of running water, when one came and perched directly overhead, not four meters away. I knew it was probably futile, but I tried to ever-so-slowly detach the camera from the tripod and aim up at the bird, knowing that any indication of danger would cause it to flee. To my credit, I actually got the camera free, but the bird spooked before I could bring it to my eye; I’ve always suspected it was doing this from pure sadism.

Back to the spiders (speaking of sadism…)

Acacesia hamata
While this looks like a great advertisement for moisturizing cream (okay, maybe not,) those lines on the abdomen are not fissures at all, or indicative of an imminent molt, but mostly coloration. This is a juvenile Acacesia hamata, a type of orb weaver, in defensive posture. It will remain like this most of the day, to emerge at night and create a classic round orb web to catch nocturnal insects. The legs serve as both protection and camouflage, disguising the shape of the body to make it resemble an emerging bud, assisted by the spider’s habit of nestling at the base of leaves. I watched this one for weeks before it vanished, sometimes managing to get images of it in the center of its web at night. It’s the next pic that gives the best impression, however.

Acacesia hamata scale
Aside from showing the size of the spider, this illustrates a habit that I try to encourage, which is being able to spot that which doesn’t belong. While the spider resembles a bud, azalea bushes do not sprout new leaves in this manner, so the tan shape is something that Doesn’t Belong, and thus deserves more attention. Any form of nature photography benefits from this kind of observation, but macro and arthropod photography especially so.

I was directly, though inadvertently, responsible for this next meal:

Florinda coccinea and prey
One dewy morning, I was setting down my ground pad to photograph this Florinda coccinea spider, and spooked the leafhopper nymph directly into the web. Florindas are sheetweb spiders, making a horizontal fabric of webbing among blades of grass, and often are not seen at all until the dew arrives to highlight the web. The dewdrop adhering to its head is likely obscuring all vision, but this matters little to most web spiders, who detect prey in the web by the vibrations and are capable of finding it by feel. I was lucky to get this angle, because the webs are close to the ground and often obscured at the sides by the supporting grass, but by lying flat on my side and exploiting an opening, I got a clear view. The dewdrop deserves a little closer attention, though.

dewdrop on spider head detail
This is a full-resolution inset of the previous image. Since dewdrops work as lenses but invert the image, the dew-laden sheetweb that the spider hangs from can just be made out at the bottom of the drop. The light patch at the top of the web, however, isn’t showing something under the spider, but is a reflection instead, so not inverted; it’s the softbox panel of the flash I used. And the drop shapes adjacent are dewdrops that the strobe light passed through, projected onto the surface of the drop. The flash is attached to the camera on a bracket and positioned, in this case, off to one side, which kind of shows the gymnastics involved; the lens was right at the very edge of the web, and the flash was actually firing through it (the image has been flipped and cropped from its original sideways orientation.) Another image doesn’t lend much more to the scale, but suffice to say this specimen is no larger than the orb weaver above.

I close with an image that wasn’t sitting in the blog folder, and despite my protests at the beginning of this post, serves as a favorite from the year. I always have one of my photos as a computer desktop background image, and this tends to rotate a few times a year as I select a better one. This one, however, has been up for months and will likely remain for a while; if it doesn’t, well, that’s just an indication that I got something better. Back on the butterfly bush, one of the mantises poses seductively, and the dark eyes indicate that this was taken at night. To the best of my knowledge, this is the one that produced the only egg sac that I know of, but either way, I like the shot – lovely detail from the face and foreleg, nice color throughout. I’ll be sure to show it to her kids when they arrive.

Chinese mantis on butterfly bush

Having my fun

And, I admit, showing off at the same time.

First off, I never expected to be away from the blog so long, but it’s been a surprisingly busy several days, coupled with a minor digestive ailment which tended to sap my creativity. “Okay,” you’re thinking, “but what does that have to do with your writing or photography?” Don’t lie to me; I know that went through your head.

Green sea turtle spare tire coverAnyway, a few years ago I had hand-painted a green sea turtle onto a vinyl spare tire cover for The Girlfriend, who is a sea turtle enthusiast. Ostensibly it was a christmas present, but it ended up taking longer than I wanted so she didn’t get it until later. She was not at all displeased over this, however, and has been ensuring that it stays in good condition as long as possible.

This year, The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog recently bought her first car, and got the same model as her mother – this made my christmas decisions a little easier. She’s a Doctor Who fan and has been planning the personalization of this car since before she bought it, plus the car is bright blue, so naturally there had to be a TARDIS on the cover.

I had to do all the work on this while she was out of the house, and of course during good weather since I had to work outside – this, by the way, was the primary reason I needed the airbrush cup. It took a few weeks, not from labor but just from finding the right times, but I finished plenty early.

TARDIS spare tire coverOn christmas morning, I sneaked out and mounted the tire cover on her vehicle, then when gift exchange came around, I presented her with a card which hinted vaguely that she should be looking at the spare tire. As we went outside, it was apparent the moment she spotted the cover, from the sudden exclamation, and even more gratifying when she ran her fingers across it and asked incredulously, “You painted this?” I think she’s pleased with it.

I was smart enough (or egotistical enough – your call) to document the progress, and made a webpage detailing the whole painting process. I’m not talented enough to do something like this from scratch, and copied the design from an image brazenly stolen from the web (for which I have indeed tried to establish the original artist, with no luck as yet.) But if you have the interest, the whole project can be found on a dedicated hand-painted TARDIS tire cover page. Most of the work was, in fact, careful masking, and not half as arduous as it might seem at first.

On to The Girlfriend. A couple of years ago was the saga of the stray kittens, and two of those remained with us. The Girlfriend had never had cats and didn’t consider herself a cat person, which makes it all the more amusing to watch her carrying around Kaylee like an infant, including rocking her – Kaylee, for her part, actually enjoys this and does not get motion sickness at all. So I decided The Girlfriend needed a cat sculpture this year; in a previous year she’d received a newly-hatched sea turtle and a manatee, both carved from soapstone.

This was was presented as a gift much the same way, with a card hinting at where to look – in this case, it was “Find Kaylee,” which was a little misleading since she was winding around our feet at the time. But The Girlfriend took the hint and began searching the various favorite haunts of her cat, soon finding the sculpture nestled in its own nest on the bed where Kaylee often curls up. There was no mistaking her delight in the piece.

MonkeyChunk3This project actually went a lot smoother than I anticipated. I had a cylinder of white soapstone that I received as a present myself some years back, and the color and shape lent itself to the idea, since cats curl up into balls anyway and tend to mold themselves to their surroundings. I located a couple of images as a guide and sketched out the rough shape, and somehow managed to keep the proportions correct throughout the work (the biggest exception was the left foreleg, which was a little large at first.) Pieces like this are difficult to photograph well enough to see all the details at once – they usually benefit from being able to be turned in the light so the shadows fall differently – but I think you can still faintly make out the curl of the “fists” that marks a happy cat, something Kaylee does frequently and The Girlfriend finds adorable.

This one also had to be done while The Girlfriend was away, plus putting away all the tools and cleaning up every last trace of the work, which usually consists of small chips and fine white powder all over everything after being hurled there by the Dremel power tool (which are wonderful things, I think I’ve said before.) Definitely something you want to do outside, someplace that can still be cleaned up easily. Soapstone is easy to work with, but this also means it’s easy to make a mistake with as well – one slip of the power tool or detail knife can produce a gouge that has to be eradicated somehow, so while soft materials can save a lot of time and effort, there’s a tradeoff like everything. I finished the piece by wet-sanding with 400 and 600 grit sandpapers to produce a lovely smooth texture, and did a light treatment with mineral oil to bring out the stone’s translucency. Now I’m ready to graduate to marble! (Yeah, right.)

Kaylee curled asleepA little later the same day, Kaylee made a spirited attempt to mimic her likeness on the bed, almost exactly where I’d placed the gift earlier – she often covers her nose with her paw, and that was a detail I knew I had to include. She wasn’t cooperative enough to pose like this before I started work on the piece, so I had to cheat and again work from images gathered online.

The rest of the time since then was spent in scattered ways, everything from helping design cards for a major game project (not mine) to moving a greenhouse (not ours,) celebrating a birthday in there (not mine,) and repairing a computer (mine). Hard as it might be to believe, I barely lifted the camera at all in the past ten days, which just isn’t right at all. I’ll see what I can do pretty soon.

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