Fair’s fair

Al Denelsbeck

In a recent discussion about religion, someone told me that I had to be fair and consider all the good that religion does along with the bad, far from the first time I’ve heard this directive. It sounds innocent, and in fact, praiseworthy on the face of it, but it’s almost offensive in its nature; it all depends on the circumstances, and is a great example of the kind of manipulation that often takes place in such discussions.

If my doctor cures me of an illness, that’s good, right? If my auto mechanic fixes my car, that’s a point in his favor, correct? Well, yes and no – this is what they’re both supposed to do, and in fact, carefully certified and charging money to accomplish, so it’s not exactly a moral thing, but a contractual exchange, and an expression of competence in a chosen field. One must ask what a minimum standard is in such circumstances, and if someone should be considered noteworthy for simply meeting this.

But okay. Let’s say my doctor gives a great deal of money to charity, and donates a lot of her services to underdeveloped countries. That’s good, I think we can agree. But then it’s discovered that she has been dismembering orphans in her basement, without even a permit, and selling the bones for voodoo rituals. That’s… not so good. So if she is nominated for the Humanitarian of the Year award, it’s predictable that a lot of people are going to get upset. The distinctive difference, one that many people cannot grasp, is that actions can be beneficial or detrimental by themselves, but if we want to pass judgment on an individual, organization, or ideology, we consider the collected actions as a whole.

Now, ostensibly, this is exactly what I was asked to do – but again, the context comes into play, and the context was not for the objective evaluation of religion, but that religion was actually a beneficial thing, a force for good. If the Red Cross was found to be setting puppies on fire during each meeting, it would pretty much cease to exist; their donations would dry up overnight, even if the puppy ritual did not negatively impact their aid services in the slightest. People would reason that their donations were, even peripherally, lending some kind of support or approval to the barbecue, and that they could certainly find some method of providing aid that did not involve animal abuse. They see the value in supporting the beneficial actions, not the organization, recognizing that it is trivially easy to have the good stuff without any bad stuff.

Every country has laws, and to the best of my knowledge, not one has any form of law that requires considering how many good things a person does to determine whether a law was actually broken. When a drunk driver kills a child, the judge does not ask if the driver is a dog-lover, or used to be in the Peace Corps. Priests do not get one free murder. While it’s true that, on occasion, the sentence reflects some effort on the part of the convicted to offset their crime (e.g., community service or ‘good behavior,’) this is, by and large, an aspect of appropriate punishment, not an admission that what they did was not bad. In the true sense of the ‘scales of justice,’ the crime and the sentence are intended to balance out, leaving a neutral result. Anyone can argue that juries may be swayed by the good actions of the accused, and this is true – they’re also swayed by the bad actions such as criminal history, and typically use the information to determine not the nature of the crime, but the intent and/or social fitness of the accused. It is also worth noting that very few people think so much of our legal system that they actually consider former criminals to be ‘neutral’ after the sentence is completed; the laws regarding registered sex offenders make this starkly clear. Life sentences and the death penalty assume by their nature that there is no method that the accused can possibly balance back to neutral.

But even if one were to believe that religion should be judged on how the scales actually tip, we’re faced with the question of how, exactly, one should measure this. Let’s take a simple thing like the catholic church’s disinformation campaign against condoms, provoking an AIDS epidemic in several African countries. What is an effective offset to this, just to bring the scales back to zero (much less gain a positive weight)? Day care centers? Food drives? Couples counseling? Ignoring that all of these are often cheap ploys to preach to a captive and vulnerable audience, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that killing people in the name of arbitrary interpretations of scripture is going to require more than all of those combined.

Even this is misdirection, however. The direct answer to this whole fairness issue is, don’t fucking do the bad shit in the first place. It’s really that simple, and it’s incredible that I would have to point this out. The vast majority of nonprofit organizations devoted to providing assistance are hugely ahead of any religion because they follow this minor dictum, having nothing that needs to be offset in the first place. If you want to be fair.

And then there’s some of the considerations that spring up with just a little more objective examination. The bare fact that ideologies which routinely promote the ‘life is sacred’ concept have so frequently been found causing death is nothing short of enormous hypocrisy. It is well known that the Spanish Inquisitors tortured their victims with bludgeoning, crushing, and burning because they were forbidden to draw blood. Instead of guidance by the moral compass of the church, we see the avoidance of damnation with loopholes – god should have thought that one through better…

[It does not matter whether any proposed god accepts the dodge or not – religion is what people do in the name of god, its entire point of existence, and the priests themselves obviously weren’t too motivated towards charity and upstanding character.]

Let’s consider the argument that most of the actions to be weighed were undertaken with the belief that they were good in the first place – regardless of who was killed, tortured, beaten, robbed, banished, vanquished, persecuted, or otherwise disadvantaged. I’m silly; I tend to define ‘good’ as being beneficial to all involved, and not just a new way of describing self-importance and arrogance, so I’m not going to allow this defense in the slightest – ignorance of basic moral standards is no excuse from anyone, but especially not to specifically qualify religion as ‘good.’ It’s worth noting that every person who demanded that I consider the good with the bad had to have understood this perspective as well, otherwise the demand makes no sense, so using this argument to excuse those actions is self-contradictory.

Authority is not synonymous with good – there are millions of events throughout history that attest to this. This distinction is lost far too often, however, as people believe that following the strictures of their chosen authority is good, solely because not following them is bad – a peculiar binary approach ignorant of the idea that this is a minimum standard; if anyone was good for obeying traffic laws, that’s setting the bar rather low on judging value, isn’t it? It becomes even lower when someone chooses their own authority, not just from the religion they prefer to follow from among several to hundreds, but also in the selectivity of what scripture they have decided to embrace. While millions of people in this country crusade for adherence to god’s proclamations regarding homosexuality, campaigning for laws restricting marriage, they remain blissfully unconcerned about the proclamations against trimming hair, tattoos, coveting, and so on. What we see is not concern over actions of benefit, or even the bare recognition that laws are for protection and not discrimination, but just going with the flow; someone told them this was good and important, and away they are swept. The scripture serves only to justify it, not providing any real guidance. This is, in fact, the primary way that religion has been practiced throughout the vast majority of its recorded existence.

What results is the exact opposite of a moral compass, the abdication of any standard or even definition of ‘good’ in lieu of wielding divine authority, or just listening to the majority, which appears in abundance outside of religion as well. Unfortunately, the fact that western cultures no longer participate in witch hunts is probably not because we determined that witchcraft was never demonstrated; it is likely only because no religious authority has insisted recently that it needs to be done. The bombing of abortion clinics and the murder of doctors working therein does not come from any scriptural guidance, since the only relevant passages prohibit such actions (not to mention the underlying penance structure would make such actions pointless anyway.) People can easily be provoked towards extreme actions, however, when they abandon their own judgment in the belief that they shouldn’t be using it in the first place.

And finally, there’s the idea that without religion, we would all be horribly bad anyway. While this idea is promoted by religions the world over in such a modest and self-effacing way (imagine that,) it is incredibly naïve, bordering on the irredeemably ignorant. We hardly need religions to tell us what’s bad, any more than we need someone telling us not to eat decayed animals, or that we should take care of our babies. I have yet to come across any scriptural prohibitions against pouring acid in my eyes, so that’s okay, right? Seriously, how fucking stupid are humans assumed to be with this idea? But even without the conclusion that can be reached through twelve whole seconds of thought, we still have extensive studies in sociology, psychology, and even biology that show not only the inherent nature of our moral drive, they demonstrate that several other species possess their own versions of these, despite the fact that scripture has yet to be translated into chimpanzee or rat. You’ll pardon me if, every time someone tells me we can’t be good without religion, I strongly recommend that they be safely housed in a padded cell, solely on the basis of terminal gullibility. Naturally, their access to infomercials should be completely restricted…

I like to think that I make the effort to be fair. I don’t judge people as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ knowing that everyone is capable of both kinds of actions; by extension, this means that violence is far better linked to human nature than any one underlying cause. But religions are widely, repeatedly claimed to temper this – it is, in fact, the most prominent trait named for any of them, the biggest reason why everyone is supposed to hold faith in esteem. Yet the religious, by a vast margin, cannot recognize nor account for the countless reprehensible acts fostered solely by their faiths throughout history; I would have thought fairness would involve that as well, rather than perpetually trumpeting their piety to one and all.

But if religion really is a force for good, then there should be little, if anything, to weigh against this, much less a laundry list of persecution and murder. And if a supreme beneficent being really is the inspiration or guiding force, then bad acts just simply should not ever be able to happen, period. Any and every excuse wielded to try and explain why these still occur only serves to reinforce how little religion really is tied to any superior power, despite the vast philosophical efforts that have been expended to try and rescue this paradox. The most common answer to this is, “We can’t know the mind of god,” which logically means that no actions can or should be taken in service to such. No religious person ever manages to get that out of it, however. Isn’t that odd.

More to the point, it’s ridiculous to weigh good against bad to try and salvage a belief system, or to force it into a binary good/bad state – that’s doing a huge disservice to our intelligence in the first place. There is no reason to bring religion into it at all. Do good; don’t do bad. No other baggage is necessary. Anyone that is concerned about how their religion is viewed is trying to gain a ‘good’ status without actually bothering to do anything good… and what should we conclude from that?

You’re doing that deliberately!

Al Denelsbeck

There’s a method of presenting information that I see way too much of, from writers and educators that really should know better, and I can’t help but believe it’s doing more harm than good. I’ve probably used it a few too many times myself, but now I’m going to be aware of it and try never to use it, at least in circumstances where it is misleading. I refer to “language of intent or deliberation,” which is kind of a vague way of putting it that makes academics happy but doesn’t really explain anything. To put it more casually, it’s assigning thinking processes to things that do not possess them.

Blameless red wolfRichard Dawkins used it extensively in The Selfish Gene, and now I see Steven Pinker doing it, both of them in relation to evolution, one of the most misunderstood concepts in science. Sure, quantum physics rates higher on the nonplussed scale, but quantum physics really is complicated and counter-intuitive; natural selection is far simpler – this simplicity is what makes it work, and what should be assisting the understanding of it.

One common example is seen often, even though this is a minor example compared to some. We are frequently told that wolves weed out the old and the sick members of a herd of deer or elk, thereby increasing the strength of the herd overall. Bluntly, this is nonsense; wolves capture whatever they can, and quite often it’s the young members of the herd, the ones that serve as the genetic future. One could as easily say that the herd on average outruns the wolves, and this is slightly more accurate, though still misleading if it is presented in the way that either species chooses to make certain actions. Wolves eat; deer/elk try not to be eaten – even the young, the old, and the sick. There’s nothing more to it than that, and none of them think about what would work best.

People might say that this is where natural selection works, that the wolves serve as ‘selectors’ for the prime members of the herds – the ones that survive are the ones that are better. This is true to a small extent, but far less than is implied by the example. If we take it at face value, the wolves would be preventing genes that allowed deer to get old or sick – and also allowed them to be young and helpless. Obviously this is nonsense; every species starts young, every species has the ability to get sick, every species dies. Wolves do not act on these factors any more than any other survival hurdle does. We could just as easily say that hard winters ‘act’ to strengthen the herd. In such a case it’s considered poetic license, since we don’t believe climate does anything intentionally. But we do believe animals act with consideration, so the deliberate action language can serve to muddy the waters. More on this in a moment.

The biggest issue is that genes are propagated only by reproduction; whatever genes the species was born with, it passes on to its offspring. In truth, slightly less than 50% of the genes from either parent get passed on, for all two-parent systems – roughly half of the genes lose the lottery of random selection between the two parents as their contributions combine into the fertilized egg, while a tiny percentage of others spontaneously mutate into something else. But what this means is that wolves ‘weeding out’ the old or the sick are doing nothing at all genetically. The older members of the herd have already passed along their genes if they were going to – the wolves are too late. And any sick ones of reproductive age are only affected if the sickness occurred because of a genetic trait, and was not sufficient to prevent reproduction on its own. The newborns that fall prey are a facet of selection – they are caught before they reach reproductive age, so their genetic legacy is interrupted by predation – but the impact on genes is fairly low; some gene may appear that encourages faster development, so they’re not as helpless when the wolves appear, but there’s a limit as to how much this could accomplish. They’re already born with the ability to stand and walk within hours of birth, and this certainly was an aspect of selection. They’re not, however, going to develop in the mother’s womb to the point of being able to outrun all predators before the amniotic fluid dries. If they could get that big and developed, the mother would start seeing the disadvantage of carting around that loaf in the oven, and lose the selection process in that manner. Note that this option also requires more than one trait: the tendency to develop longer in the womb, and the mother’s change in physiology to accommodate this. This involves at least two genes to accomplish, but probably dozens more, so it would take a lot longer to occur.

InnocentElkProtective herds are, of course, a behavior that has been selected for, as are the protective instincts of the parents – these evolved right alongside all other traits, and each one has an impact. What this means is that survival of the genes relies on many points of convergence, so any one selective factor – predators, food sources, climate, etc. – has only a partial effect on the process. What selection produces is not an ideal organism, but one that balances both environmental influences and the random genetic changes that occur into something that, on average, works better than before. It’s actually pretty haphazard and slow, which is what’s fascinating about it, because the species we see now had to be shaped by millions of causes over long periods of time.

Mind you, the wolves are not only selectors themselves – they are also selectees, guided by the development of deer and elk to run faster and hunt more efficiently. It would serve in their best interests not to get the inadequate sources of protein, but to get the prime examples from the herd; nailing the biggest, healthiest member is a far more efficient use of their effort than getting some stringy old cancer victim. The deliberate language so often used seems to present wolves as a fixed trait, while the ungulates can be shaped; naturally, both can change according to the traits of the other, and many more traits besides. It’s much more like some of our competitive sports, where manufacturers try to come up with clothing, for instance, that allows a tiny bit more freedom of movement, that provides a tiny advantage over other competitors that lack it – which lasts only until the others either get the same clothes, or obtain another tiny advantage of their own. Gradually these advantages accumulate and shape the way the sport is played.

In the middle of all this sits the environmental factor. Conditions change, often much more rapidly than a species can adapt to them. Every species not only copes with the other species around it than may prey upon it, or provide food, or simply eat the same food, it also deals with how the climate has changed, or if a food source becomes scarcer, or if a river or land bridge has changed the area they live within. They cannot choose what changes are made by natural selection, or decide that going north is a good idea – they are all beholden to whether a beneficial trait may arise in time. Often enough it doesn’t, and extinction occurs. But this also means that perfect adaptation is next to impossible – each advantage over conditions lasts only so long, and new ones must appear in the gene pool and be selected for all of the time. The language may not be to blame for this, but often the impression is that natural selection has led up to the current state and stopped, as if this is an end result, when in reality it is ongoing – it’s just slow enough that we can rarely see examples of selection taking place. Any species may have traits that don’t work very well in current conditions, and eventually these may change for the better.

But the deliberate language does work in another way that’s extremely detrimental. The idea that wolves are purposefully picking out the old and the sick implies a long-abandoned selection concept known as Lamarckism: that what the species does in their life affects the nature or effect of the genes that are passed along, as if these can be altered during the lifespan of the animal. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of evolution, still extant after all these years, and I really do believe this is helped along by such language. With a few tiny exceptions that have recently been discovered (and are not very well researched yet,) the genes that a species is born with are the ones passed along to the offspring. The only way that they have an effect as a selective trait is if a) they provide a change in behavior or ability, and b) this change is sufficient to affect the reproductive chances of the possessor. A wolf, deer, elk, or even human that reasons out something cannot pass this onto its offspring in any way, unless the ability to make such mental connections was provided by genes in the first place. No matter how much anyone learns, or how physically fit they’ve become, they’re not passing this on to their kids genetically; the offspring can only obtain it through their own efforts after birth. The only thing that someone might be passing on is a genetic tendency to believe that education in this manner is a good idea, or a faint trend towards tougher muscles, that they were born with – a gene mutation that produced these effects. Herd animals are not inclined to protect the elderly or the infirm, because that behavior is a liability to the entire herd; some members may trend towards this behavior through the genetic lottery at any time, but since it doesn’t provide any survival or reproductive advantage to those still capable of passing along their genes, it doesn’t propagate more than any other behavioral variation that may arise.

Clover sprouting within discarded bottleWhich brings us to the gene level, where deliberate language is a major factor of confusion. Genes do not do anything except spark the development of proteins under certain conditions; they are far less active than a grass seed that germinates when surrounded by adequate moisture and nutrition, and are much more like an alarm clock that rings at certain times. Their propagation in any species relies on the survival of the individual that possesses them, and the lottery that may just drop them out in favor of the gene from the other parent, or the rare mutation that occurs. When a new gene mutation provides some slight advantage in survival or reproduction, it stands a better chance of getting to offspring, and in multiple generations of this process, it can become more prevalent in the gene pool of the species, first in a local group, and eventually in time throughout the entire population. The gene does not try to survive; it does not survive at the expense of others; it does not compete. Natural selection sees that tiny advantages can add up over time – again, on average. Note that it is not just the singular gene that propagates from any advantage it might provide to an organism – every gene that the organism possesses at that time, including the detrimental ones, gets selected and is along for the ride. The detrimental ones may also prevent the beneficial ones from propagating as well; it all depends on what the nature of each trait is, and whether it has a significant effect on the reproduction of the individual.

As a species, we have a lot of traits that spring up in old age – drying and discolored skin, grey and thinning hair, lots of organ failures, and so on. These are obviously not advantages, and should have been selected out – and likely were, every time they occurred within the reproductive timeframe. But the tendency to appear after reproductive age never gets any chance to be selected; those genes have already been passed on before they have a detrimental effect. If we were to try and interpret a message from nature, it’s that we have no purpose beyond reproductive age (I personally have never had a purpose, since my genes went nowhere.) But there’s no message, and no purpose (whew!) – this is just the way that the conditions available on this planet produce a pattern. We might think it could be better or worse, but that’s just our tendency to see things with intent, a survival trait that, on average, worked for us. Nature, however, just is.

Counterpoint

Al Denelsbeck

Snow-dusted holly leaves

Bluebird house in snowI think it snowed early this morning just to offer a counterpoint to the pics from yesterday morn. This is the first of the season here, and no, I don’t really count this as snow; not from having grown up in central New York, and not in comparison to many other parts of the country right now. We have often had much heavier snowfalls than this by this time of year, so it just reflects how lucky we’ve been here. I’m not gloating, even though it’s true that I moved south largely to escape winter weather. While I’m not fond of cold, I can hack it reasonably well. It was the expectation that inclement weather was supposed to have no effect on school or work that was most disagreeable, and after several years, multiple minor vehicle damages and one major one, and having to pull a faulty pump from our well in arctic conditions, I figured it was time to get out.

Below, one of the last remnants of the spiderling colony on the butterfly bush, which has finally given up its green leaves. I can no longer find any of the green lynx spiders that hatched therein, which doesn’t mean they’re not there. I can still find a few on the rosemary bush though, and at least two were unfazed by the snow this morning (they don’t have to drive in it.) But here, a few resilient strands of web anchor what appears to be snowflakes transitioning to water; the shapes in the background that ‘cradle’ the drop were wholly unseen and unplanned, unless you want to give my subconscious credit. I could be wrong about the material, though – it might just be a holiday decoration that the spiders have been too lazy to take down. I will leave you to contemplate what a spider holiday would be like.

Semi-melted snow on web

All up in yo’ face

Al Denelsbeck

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

Al Denelsbeck

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

Al Denelsbeck

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

Al Denelsbeck

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…

Al Denelsbeck

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

Al Denelsbeck

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

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