But is it an interesting post?

Al Denelsbeck

Today, November 23rd, is Reflect on Anxiety Day, and I’m getting an early start on it because I’m winding down from a stressful day yesterday, and the stresses were rather widely divergent.

The first factor was, I picked up a new photography gig, but something that was out of my wheelhouse, which was/is showroom photography. Not the high-end stuff where items are brought into a studio for the promotional photos that will grace every advertisement thereafter (for which I know I’m unqualified,) but items within a display in a retail store, intended as much to show off the wide inventory of the store as the individual items. Nothing terribly difficult, but not something that I’d done much of before, and even that’s been a long time.

Now, I teach photography, and have studied a lot of different techniques and genres, if you will; there’s a part of me that internally critiques a lot of images that I see for how well they work and what might have been done better. So the job, in and of itself, shouldn’t have been stressful at all, and seriously wasn’t. What was stressful were the imagined expectations – not even what the client wanted, but what I perceived them as possibly wanting, exacting standards and high-end studio stuff. And ‘stressful’ is probably too strong a word, but there’s always a distinct amount of uncertainty when taking on a new job, that I think everyone suffers from, and a certain amount of, ‘Make sure you’re thinking of everything – no fumbles, no silly mistakes, don’t forget the lens cap,’ kind of thing. [It’s impossible to forget the lens cap on an SLR, but I’m from the tail end of an era when that was actually a thing, and I believe I actually accomplished it once, with my old rangefinder camera.]

At the same time, I knew what I was doing, as well as how to express some of the potential pitfalls to the client – things like uneven lighting and cluttered backgrounds that would make an image much weaker. So my confidence and my semi-imagined anxiety were clashing a little – again, nothing serious, but almost amusing in retrospect, after the session when I’d had a chance to settle into my groove, as well as speak at greater length to the client. And as I typed the above portion, the images were downloading from the card; now I’ve done an initial perusal, and I feel even more comfortable. I think I managed to make the store seem much less cluttered than it actually was, and kept focus on the excellent settings that they had. I hate to say, ‘cluttered,’ (here’s that anxiety again – isn’t this fun?), because they did well with the space, but they had a serious buttload of inventory on the floor; call it a clash between the photographer that wants distinct subjects without distractions, everything ideal, and a retailer that’s optimizing the space for sales.

I went through something similar with wedding photography, many years ago. My biggest concern when I tackled it was, ‘Would I be able to interact with the guests effectively?’ I’d never been an outgoing person, never a partier, never an ‘Alpha,’ (stupid term) – much more introverted, quiet, and so on. That’s not the kind of person that works as a wedding photographer. I knew what that type of person was, but the anxiety over that was, ‘Can I be that person? Will the guests recognize me as a charlatan, a poseur?’ Could I even take control of the myriad guests for those aspects that required a bit of direction, group shots and such?

This is where I got my full understanding of, “Fake it ’til you make it,” because I had no other choice. I went into it as if I was the confident, comfortable, commanding-but-friendly presence that I wasn’t – and found out that I was, or at least could be as the situation demanded. And it fed itself – the immediate feedback where people did as I asked and complied without reservations or any visual resentment let me stop feeling anxious about it at all. In truth, the whole judgmental thing, I think, gets instilled in us in school and takes us a long time to get rid of, while adults rarely bother with it; no one really thinks, ‘Is this a real wedding photographer?’, they just assume that you are and everything’s golden. So that’s my tip – it’s probably a lot less judgmental than you might believe, so put that aspect out of your head and be confident in your abilities.

[Another aside: This background-level insecurity still remains with my wildlife photography. I see plenty of work from other photographers that blows mine out of the water, not to mention the various things that I see in my own photos that, ‘could be better.’ So how do other people see it? I mean, I know there’s a huge disparity among viewers, but on average? There’s virtually no feedback, so I’m left to puzzle it out for myself – but at least I know that I should always be working to improve regardless.]

So now the other aspect of stress from yesterday. I was awakened by a phone call from The Girlfriend’s Sprog and her SO, who were stranded on the side of the road (on the way to the airport) when the car died. The first bit was fine: get out there quickly and get them to the airport – full credit to them for having left early, so there was no chance of them missing the flight. The next bit was much more complicated: What was wrong with the car? Could I determine this on the roadside? Could I fix this on the roadside, or would it have to be towed? And the standard bit when working on cars, because I’ve never received the slightest instruction in this at all: Am I evaluating it correctly, and not missing anything? Am I going to make matters worse?

In the middle of this, by the way, was the scheduled photography gig.

Long story short: I discovered the problem without much difficulty, and the necessary part was available not too far away. I only had time to buy it before I was due down at the photo job, so repairs had to wait until that was through. But then they also had to be accomplished on the side of a ridiculously busy interstate, and if you notice, today’s another holiday in the US, so, traffic. Whizzing by a couple of meters away, including from my head as I was poking out from under the traffic side of the car. All of this I consider fully-justified stress, not at all dependent on my interpretations or imagination. One idiot fucking with their smutphone or swerving to avoid another idiot and I was done for, gruesomely. The only other option was to have the car towed, and I consider that a last resort.

It worked out, easier than many repair jobs that I’ve tackled, but I did have to get The Girlfriend’s help with it since portions required two people, and she wasn’t thrilled about this either. Like me, however, she considered it a necessary risk, and we managed just fine – tense as hell, mind you, but successful. We even managed to merge two vehicles into crowded, high-speed traffic afterward without too much difficulty.

But it also meant acid stomachs for both of us that greatly limited our meal choices last night, and waking up sore as hell from the muscles protesting the various positions I’d asked of them. Not to mention that I got absolutely nothing else done yesterday at all. Already behind on my posting schedule.

Tick tock, motherf–

Al Denelsbeck

Hmmmm. For reasons that I won’t go into now, which makes it sound a lot more mysterious than the ridiculously trivial thing that it is, I have a loose goal of completing 40 (now) more posts by December 27th. That’s roughly twice what I’ve been averaging. Not impossible, but not the easiest thing to accomplish during the slow winter season. I’m up for it, sure, but can I do it without resorting to nonsense, filler posts like, um, this one? That remains to be seen.

Now, there are still five more Tripod Holes posts that will come in by that time (which are already written and scheduled, by the way) and the end-of-month abstract (which is not, but I know what I’m likely to do for it,) so that’s six less. I have a couple posts in the planning stages, including a potential podcast, so I’ll push those through. On top of that, I can resurrect the Living In The Past posts that served the same purpose last year. So the density/frequency of posts should go up to not quite one a day – on average, anyway, I won’t say that I’ll keep to that schedule.

But while I’m here, I’ll put up an older image that’s been sitting in the blog folder.

fake moon with almost-hidden schtuff behind it
No, I didn’t overexpose a moon image, but a fake moon instead. This came from this experimental session, but was rejected because of the background. If your monitor is adjusted properly and you look very closely, you can see the fittings of the lightstand that was supporting the moon ornament (this is shot straight down from above) and, beyond that, the boards of the back deck. I do have a black velvet blackout/backdrop cloth, but didn’t dig it out for this – I tend to use it sparingly, because it attracts the cat hair that’s a permanent fixture at Walkabout Studios and it’s a bitch to get them all out. No, of course none of our cats are black.

Anyway, more to come.

Semi-cooperative eagles

Al Denelsbeck

I originally considered them uncooperative eagles, but realized that was being unfair. And then as I type this, I recognize that assigning them any level of cooperation is unfair and a stupid human perspective, because they simply don’t give a shit and are going about their days, but I digress.

These all came from an outing with The Immaculate Mr Bugg… psssfffhh, thirteen days ago now… and I’m just getting to posting them now, partially because it wasn’t a very good outing and I didn’t have a whole lot to say but, you know, regular content and all that. A couple of bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) made their presences known, but not through any significant level of activity. The best was a second-year juvenile, who flew almost directly towards us. Only during the sorting did I pick up on a small detail.

second-year juvenile bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus approaching with tiny fish capture
This is at 600mm of course, and cropped significantly here – this is just shy of full resolution – and so it was quite distant for this frame, but you can see that not only does it have a small fish that it captured, but it’s attempting to snack on it in mid-flight. This is exactly the reason that teenagers’ insurance rates are so high.

As it got closer, it tucked its capture up under the tail hidden away, obviously having no desire to share.

second-year juvenile bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus in profile carrying a hidden tiny fish
We were psyched to see that the eagle flew up into a perch right along the lakeshore just a few hundred meters ahead of us, and we began the slow stalking to bring us closer for a nice photo opportunity.

Now, we were making it a point to only travel a few meters at a time to avoid spooking the eagle, and stop and examine the trees with the long lens frequently – we’d seen where it entered the trees, obviously about to perch, but not the exact location, so we were endeavoring to pin this down. However, this also required watching our footing on the rocks of the lakeshore, exposed by drastically reduced water levels, and when looking through the long lens, the field of view is obviously quite restricted. So despite best efforts, I never saw the eagle perched, and was alerted by Mr Bugg that it had left the perch and was flying back out over the lake, long before we drew very close. Rats.

second-year juvenile bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus still bearing remains of tiny fish as it flies off
Amusingly, you can see that it still has at least vestiges of the tiny fish clasped in its talons as it leaves, somewhat curious since the fish was too small for more than two or three bites to begin with, and the eagle had had more than enough time to polish off such an inadequate appetizer while we had been working closer. Still, this was a much better light angle than we would have achieved had we caught it perched, since that required looking not just towards the sun more, but into the deep shade of the tree canopy, so at least we have these.

Not too long afterwards, I saw a distant adult approaching the tree that held the osprey nest that overlooks that bay of the lake.

adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus approaching tree with old osprey nest
This is the same nest that’s appeared here many times before, which sits high above the lake in a tree that’s largely exposed, as well as distinctively shaped. It clearly belongs to osprey, since it’s not only too small for eagles, I’ve seen it occupied for several years now, though this past season I never saw any kind of feeding activity, even during the hectic day that I was down there – my guess is that the eggs weren’t viable this year. Now, eagles can commandeer old osprey nests for their own, but will build them significantly larger, and it won’t take place at this time of year anyway. Thus, I think we’re just seeing the eagle using a nice vantage and nothing more.

If it could even be said to be a vantage.

adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus hiding within foliage around osprey nest
This tree is visible from a large portion of our stalking grounds on this bay of the lake, so it’s easy to keep an eye on, though usually from a distance. Again, this is at 600mm and cropped significantly, but I recall that I could just barely make out the spot of white within the branches by naked eye, only because I knew I should be looking for it.

[I find “naked eye” to be an overused and annoying phrase, but as yet haven’t found anything that conveys the same concept so easily. I’ll work on it…]

A little farther along on our return path, the eagle was now out a bit more prominently, but it had been present for nearly an hour and was showing no signs of leaving or hunting or anything. Again, at least the light was right.

adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus perched more visibly in tree by osprey nest
When we were about to leave the area to make another failed attempt at sunset colors, on a lake branch that faced the sun better, we detoured slightly to a spot that would allow us to see this tree from a very short distance, which should have given us a nice view of this eagle, though it was nowhere to be seen when the tree hove into view. Did it see us coming and spook off? Had it simply gotten tired of hanging about and left of its own volition? We have no idea.

I didn’t do much for fall colors this year, but while down there, I took advantage of what could be found in the immediate area.

bald cypress Taxodium distichum trees in autumn colors against ugly old loblolly pines on Jordan Lake
The bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) turn a great color this time of year, offering some nice contrast against the ugly and ubiquitous pines. These trunks are normally in the water, but as I said, the lake level is way down. As I type this, I realize something: this particular body of water isn’t actually part of the lake, separated from it by a narrow bridge of land – that’s the shore on the left here. However, this bridge floods routinely during heavy rains and runoff and so this becomes a part of the lake, for a few days at a time, and the bridge is manmade anyway, the former rail bed when the tracks cut through. It occurs to me that, while the main body of the lake is controlled in level by a dam at the far end, this pond shouldn’t be affected by that, but it’s maintaining a matching level here – they’re connected somehow, just not visibly. It might simply be the porosity of the sandy soil that forms the bridge, though I would have though that a rail bed would be a whole lot more structurally stable. Curious.

And finally,

lone gumball among autumn colors of American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua tree
The American sweetgum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua) also turn nice colors in the fall, though no particular vantage point gave me a better working distance, so I went in close instead, isolating the gumball. I’d say I at least made an effort, but I don’t think you’d buy that. Two other images from this outing are better, though you’re not going to see them until the end of the month, so you’ll just have to contain yourself until then. I know it’ll be hard…

Why, yes – yes I did

Al Denelsbeck

I don’t know why I did, because the results were as expected, but I made the attempt again early this morning to capture some meteors. It was, at least, quite clear.

night sky exposure showing Cassiopeia and Andromeda galaxy
Not a glimmer of shooting star in there anywhere, nor did I see any no matter where I looked. So I boosted ISO to 6400 and just did some night sky exposures of this nature – but this is the funny thing: the narrow dynamic range of any photo means you can only get so bright (white) and no brighter. This means the brightest stars reach maximum exposure quickly, but then the dimmer stars catch up to them in a longer exposure and can end up obscuring the ‘visible’ constellations and asterisms. Cassiopeia, a prominent ‘M’ shaped constellation standing by itself in the sky, has become almost totally obscured in this frame, slightly frustrating because I was specifically framing to get it and the Andromeda galaxy into the frame here. Though the faint Milky Way, which wasn’t visible, shows a little detail along the right half of the frame, so you pick your battles, and I probably could have set an exposure to capture Cassiopeia largely as it appears, but then Andromeda would likely have disappeared – I know I had a hard enough time trying to spot it, and I knew where to look. That was the point of my doing this framing, because the higher ‘peak’ of Cassiopeia points to Andromeda, more or less. Here’s a marked version:

night sky exposure with Cassiopeia and Andromeda marked
The five most prominent stars of Cassiopeia are marked in yellow, while Andromeda is found within the red pointers. This is shot a little wider than a ‘normal’ view, which would have placed them right at the very edges of the frame, but basically, find Cassiopeia and you know how to locate Andromeda, though it may take binoculars and it will still be very faint.

I did make an attempt at Andromeda with the 600mm lens, but my focus was slightly off. Moreover, really nice definition would take an exposure of significant length (or a much faster lens at least, but that would probably not be sufficient by itself,) and in that time, the Earth turns, the sky moves, and Andromeda blurs sideways – it really requires a tracking motor to stay on target. One of these days.

I also played with Orion and his dog, briefly.

night sky exposure of lower half of Orion with Sirius peeking in at corner
I was trying to balance framing to get Sirius into the picture, as well as capturing a little of the Orion nebula, while not getting too much motion blur into the frame – this is as close as I got. Now we’re a bit closer than ‘normal,’ but Sirius, the Dog Star and the brightest star in the sky, is there at lower left while the bottom half of Orion is at upper right – the key stars are still prominent, but you can see how many dimmer stars surrounding them have appeared in the longer exposure now. And yes, there’s a hint of the Orion nebula forming a faint haze around the ‘dagger’ stars, though really, the entire region is rife with reflecting dust and gases that it takes a lot more effort to capture in an image, or even see. Just so you know, this is a nine-second exposure at ISO 6400, f5.6, and 42mm focal length, and I did perform my sensor-noise removal trick afterward. This seems a little complicated at first, but once you’ve done it a couple of times, it takes less than a minute to accomplish and helps a lot.

One more, for giggles.

night sky exposure over Jordan Lake with Jupiter in upper right corner
I said above that Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, which is true, but some of the planets can exceed that easily – that’s Jupiter at upper right. While it looks like cloud cover down on the horizon, I’m fairly certain it’s just atmospheric humidity, catching the light from distant Sanford, NC (I think.) My view east and northeast was also stained, but by Durham’s light instead – this isn’t a good area to escape light pollution, but the best I have within easy reach. And that streak left of center is not a meteor, but a mere airplane instead – they were exceedingly hard to avoid, and I don’t think I’d spotted this one until it got a little closer.

But yeah, that was it – not really worth the trip.

Tripod holes 47

Al Denelsbeck

American alligator Alligator mississippiensis lurking under thick duckweed in pond, Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina
N 32°14’36.57″ W 80°46’9.83″ Google Earth location

On our way to Hilton Head Island many years ago, we found ourselves passing right alongside Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, and stopped to do a quick tour. Nestled within the marshy wetlands of the coastal islands, it was brimming with a large variety of shorebirds and waders, crabs, and of course these guys: American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis,) though this is quite a small specimen. Several species of waterfowl were herding their new offspring around in the pools, and while we were there, we could hear a mother – moorhen, maybe? – bringing her brood close to the edge of the little island within this pond, though we couldn’t see them at all. The gator heard them too, and cruised silently over to the very spot on the shore of the island whence came the mother’s calls, waiting patiently for their appearance. So was I, because I’m happy to catch anything feeding, or indeed most kinds of wildlife behavior, but a gator especially. Yet nothing happened, possibly because mama was smart enough to know that the coast was not clear.

I have mixed feelings about this visit, because while we saw countless aspects of wildlife in pretty decent conditions, this was when I was still using slide film for the ‘important’ stuff, but most of the slides have a horrendous color cast to them that’s difficult to correct. I’d say it was a bad batch of film, except it’s on multiple rolls, and I kept my film refrigerated until use. I’m inclined to believe, then, that it was processing error, but it meant very few keepers from the trip, and between this and the increasing difficulty in even getting film processed, it spelled the end of my film days. I still pine for the colors and vibrancy of Fuji Provia 100F and Velvia, which digital has never been able to approach, much less duplicate, but between my associations with the lackluster results from this trip and the bare fact that no one seems to recognize those differences, staying with digital seems to be the best move, or at least not more than trivially reductive. Though some of my former results still beckon…

More local “news”

Al Denelsbeck

It’s about 7:30 PM right now, only a little chilly, with clear skies, unlike last night. Will I go back out and make another futile and disappointing attempt at the Leonids? The answer, may surprise you. But first, let’s check in with what’s happening on the Estates.

Well, what was happening, five days ago to be precise – these are all older photos. But they’re newer than some others that will be posted soon, which is very important for you to know. Somehow.

Japanese maple tree on Walkabout Estates, with not-too-hidden occupant
The average temperature has dropped, but we’re still getting some pretty warm days with the nights only dropping low on occasion. The Japanese maple out front displayed some nice color, and within that time I spotted a little occupant. I shot wide here for context, but certainly went in closer, because you know I had to – it’s like a curse.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus on Japanese maple tree
I keep expecting these guys to find their winter hidey-holes, and yet keep spotting them in various visible locations during the day, though I suspect at least some of them have decided that it’s time to pack up for the year. This juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) was perhaps a little smaller than the top joint of my thumb, so less than half of adult size, and hasn’t been seen to return since that day. Unlike the next ones.

two green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus taking advantage of adjunct greenhouse
Due to neither The Girlfriend or I knowing what ‘restraint’ is, we have overflowed the original greenhouse and had to ‘construct’ a second one, that I call the adjunct greenhouse. This uses the back wall of the shed and the back fence as structural elements, and largely consists of plastic sheeting, but it can hold the various plants that need to be protected from a hard freeze but otherwise can go dormant for the winter. It works actually much better than I expected and can get toasty inside fairly easily, despite not being airtight, and the treefrogs have discovered the charms of it, yet they seem to favor being right at the very edges where the benefits are minimal – I guess they know what they’re doing. This flap of plastic serves as the ‘door,’ tucked in around the ladder that hangs back there, so I always have to check carefully before I pull it aside to enter. They’re both adults, with the top one being a good-sized specimen – tucked in as seen here, roughly 45mm in length and 30 in width, give or take.

A short distance away on the gate, this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) had shifted away from me warily, then appeared to grab a 12-second power nap.

adult Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis snoozing briefly on narrow tree, showing color variations
Really, it had just dodged off of the gate as I approached, acting quite concerned about my presence, then immediately closed its eyes as I leaned in, like I was going to believe it was asleep and not up wrecking the bedroom well past its bedtime. Moments later it opened its eyes again and surveyed me judiciously, but I wasn’t moving then and it no longer appeared concerned – as much as I’ve watched them, anole behavior still seems a bit random at times. What I was after here is the coloration, though, which I suspect might be in transition between a darker, more heat-absorbing color for basking, and the green hues that help it blend in to the various plants; to my eyes, this appears to be occurring within individual scales rather than as ‘regions’ around the body. Makes me think I could train them to produce distinct patterns, maybe spell out advertising for the site? Let me think about this – forget you heard anything.

And finally, a quick pic from the proper greenhouse.

serious crop of lemons on tree in greenhouse
I’ve been monitoring these all year, so I’m 95% certain that all of these lemons were ones that I pollinated personally back… shit, I thought it was February, but it’s just shy of a year ago, once again in the greenhouse. In the intervening time they’ve been outside enjoying the sunlight and warmth, natural pollinators and the rain and, when the rain wasn’t sufficient, my own routine waterings (from the rainbarrels, asshole,) and while the lemons grew bigger, they never did more than turn just a little more yellow. Put them in the greenhouse in late October and boom! it’s about harvest time. People that actually know about growing citrus are likely shaking their heads at my ignorant antics, but hey – we were never after any kind of agricultural pursuits, we just liked the trees. And the limes are coming along fine too, while the avocado pit that we planted about 18 months ago is now a proper sapling over a meter tall and still putting out new leaves in there. I can’t say it wasn’t worth the effort to put that cheesy little greenhouse in, at least.

Sorting finds n+7

Al Denelsbeck

Just a couple, but with a bonus that’s truly exciting and interesting, I can assure you.

[Hopefully, the critical thinking espoused herein has helped you not to fall for that feeble little tactic, if you weren’t already immune to it.]

Anyway, the fuzzy moon:

setting full moon distorted by atmospheric haze, with a bird silhouette
When I first examined this sequence of moon shots, I was magnifying to full resolution to determine which was sharpest (not ‘sharp,’ mind you, because clearly none of them were,) and apparently missed this little detail when doing so, driving it offscreen while I looked at crater definition. But one of them featured a very distant bird silhouette – too indistinct to determine what species, though only a handful fly at night anyway, and given the proximity to the lake, I’d give a little extra weight to ‘heron.’ Not much, though.

But this definitely is:

great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias cruising in for a landing on Jordan Lake at sunrise
The same morning but of course much later (an hour and seven minutes, according to the EXIF info,) this great blue heron (Ardea herodias herodias) circled around us and cruised in for a landing, not long after sunrise. The sun was almost directly behind the heron and very low, so a small patch of sunlight got past the wings to highlight the head momentarily, and I know it was momentarily because I have other images in the sequence where it did not. This wasn’t planned at all – I was simply tracking the heron as it glided in, partially because nothing else was going on.

Now, I admit that I have been far too quiet on the blog, and have been having trouble getting motivated to post much; credit the weather and approaching winter, the lack of decent subjects to chase (I have been photographing almost nothing, but a few will come up shortly,) being busy with other projects, and still having issues with the computer, and still trying to track these down – it’s something weird, likely due to a ‘security’ update, but as yet it hasn’t become apparent what. What I have done, however, was complete all of the Tripod Holes posts for the rest of the year, and in doing so, I came across the bonus thing. Actually, I should be flogged for even using that word here.

So for one of the images chosen, I found that I no longer had the original negative scan on my system – not lost, just purged for space – and I rescanned it. The results, however, were decidedly off in color register, and so I dug out some old data CDs where I was pretty sure the original scan could be found. I was right, and it was much better than what I’d just done – this is a little worrisome, in that it might mean the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III is going wonky, and choices for a replacement that can run on Linux are few. But the post is ready, and that’s all that matters right now, right?

What I also found was the original scan for an image that became some of my ‘branding,’ specifically on letterheads and envelopes – looked like this:

brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis in pale sky
All well and good – except that, a few years ago, I’d rediscovered the negative and attempted to scan it, and produced this:

brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis from horrible print negative
That’s terrible, and at the time I blamed it on the negative and/or original processing, but seeing this makes it clear that the original was not that bad. Something happened in the more-recent scanning process, which might have been a failure of the machine, or simply a bad setting someplace that I hadn’t caught – not mistaking negative and slide settings, which is easy enough to do because I switch back and forth frequently, but those results are markedly different. Yet I’ve also scanned a whole stack of slides and negatives, not too long ago, and everything came out just fine. So it’s a mystery for now, and one that I’m watching carefully.

For giggles, I also tweaked this older scan for more optimal color, even though it may have been a faithful representation of the conditions at the time of the photo.

color-tweaked version of old negative scan, showing editing artifacts
Definitely a bit brighter and richer, but the sky also became blotchier and a little unreal-looking. It would be easy to blame this on jpeg compression, except the original scan above doesn’t show it despite being reduced to the same size and compression settings. This came from trying to coach more blue/cyan out of the sky when there was too little in there to begin with, and the change in values also became greater between values, producing this faintly hand-painted look. It’s one of the hazards of digital editing (and yes, I’ll admit that someone more experienced might have produced better results, but also that I’ve been doing this for years and so the warning to the inexperienced still stands.)

Now, this shows decently on my monitor, and perhaps not too much on others – or perhaps worse. It also serves as a warning that editing is not an easy ‘fix,’ and may become quite obvious depending on who views it. Better to ensure that you have it right the first time than to count on correcting it later.

All right, all right, I’ll do better content in another post shortly. Sheesh…

Not a mighty roar

Al Denelsbeck

scattered clouds in night sky over Jordan Lake during Leonids meteor shower
Well, it’s the Leonids meteor shower again, or at least the time for it, and since the skies looked pretty clear when I checked, I did a quick trip down to the lake to see what I could capture. However, once I got down there, the clouds rolling in were quite evident, especially well to the southwest as seen here. Still, the skies above were clear, and I re-aimed for a wider section among the trees and fired off some long exposures.

long night exposure showing Orion, Pleiades, and Jupiter trails
This was about a 3-minute exposure, with that bright ‘star’ at upper right being Jupiter, the tight smudge close to center being Pleiades, and Orion coming in right at the bottom. And the clouds starting to intrude. The meteor radiant near Leo still hadn’t risen at this time, but that often doesn’t matter – the meteors may show just about anywhere. If they show; I didn’t see even one. And the clouds, not visibly moving while I stood there, nevertheless were quickly taking over the sky.

same field of view showing a lot more clouds and an intruding aircraft
And the planes were everywhere. Normally by about 10 PM they’ve nearly halted, but I saw at least eight while I was there, with three getting into my long exposures, like the one cutting through Orion’s Clavicle here. Since this was near midnight, that’s a pretty good amount of activity, though not at all welcome.

I did one more frame and then wrapped it up, not willing to wait and see if the clouds passed. As I type this after 2 AM, the sky here looks pretty clear again, but there’s too much light pollution in the immediate area and I’m too tired to drive back down to the lake for an hour or so of attempts. Maybe tomorrow night.

Well, it took a while…

Al Denelsbeck

… but not because it took this long. What I mean is, I kept setting it aside for a ‘good time to do it’ and finally got around to it the other evening, but when I did start it, it only took a little over an hour.

Am I talking about that online course in Communicating Effectively? How To Stop Procrastinating? Finding Compelling Winter Subjects? No, don’t be ridiculous – why would I need any of those? No, I mean I finally sat down and filled in that missing bit of photographic plate. Back in January I spoke of restoring an old, broken glass photographic negative, at least in digital form, and got it to where I was satisfied – except for the large blank space where the piece of glass plate was entirely missing. This was the restored version:

restored 4x5 glass plate negative
I knew that continuing the wall and ceiling would be trivial, but the corner of the painting on the wall would take a little effort to make look right. I hadn’t the faintest idea what the original actually was, but the point was simply to make the background complete, without this strange void in there. So I snagged an image online of an old, basic painting (I have no idea why such boring things are ubiquitous) and inserted it into the image, like so:

restored 4x5 glass plate negative with missing piece digitally rebuilt
The challenge was twofold: first, to alter the perspective of the original straight-on framed painting to appear as if we were seeing it at a proper angle; and then, to change the contrast and highlights to seem to fit the light conditions and film characteristics. Then add in some defocus blur, a touch of motion blur (that’s only visible at high magnification, but present in the original plate,) and some appropriate film grain. I’m pleased with this, especially considering that it’s only a background detail and typically won’t undergo close scrutiny – the point, largely, is that it’s subtle enough not to draw scrutiny. I think I could have done a better job on the near edge, giving it a little more thickness and changing the shadow gradient more, and may still revisit it. I had some 8x10s done of the finished file, but the lab fucked up the color register and so I’ll send them off to be redone at a place with quality control, and may tweak the file before I do so.

[Brief explanation: I used Snapfish, because it was cheap, and went for their option where I can pick them up locally – it just means they forward the digital file to the local pharmacy lab which prints them there. Except the local lab didn’t have their enlarger in spec, and while it was a greyscale image, the print came up greenish. Switching to real monochrome paper is something few, if any, digital labs do, so even greyscale images are printed on color paper through a color enlarger. But if the color channels have not been properly balanced, you’ll end up with a color cast in an ostensibly B&W image. The attendant 4x6s that I ordered of the same images were fine – it was just their large print machine that was whack. Still inexcusable – if you offer the service, put in the effort.]

Still not sure who these people are – the goal is to get a decent print to The Girlfriend’s Mother and see if she recognizes them; the girl might actually be the Mother herself. Though you can see here that the quality of the image wasn’t too high to begin with, and enlarging to 8×10 doesn’t do it any favors – this is not something that I would attempt to correct or even could, because it would involve practically hand-painting in the details that weren’t captured in the original, while I admit I did some very constrained sharpening around the girl’s eyes. But hey – I finally tackled it, and the ‘complete’ image looks world’s better.

[Another note, technical details for those into that kind of thing. The original plate is a decent illustration of one-point perspective, though technically it’s two-point. This means, if you continue the lines of the ceiling edge, top of door frame, tabletop, molding, etc., they will all meet at one point, someplace far off to the right – the opposite wall does the same thing, but for a point far to the left, thus the two-point bit. The fake painting had to match this to look right, and so getting the corners in the right positions takes a little playing around. But that’s not quite enough; since the painting is supposed to be seen from an angle, a little horizontal compression was in order, moving all corners towards each other (left-right only) to ‘narrow’ the painting for that oblique-angle appearance. Not hard in any way, but necessary to make it blend in well, and easy to get off by enough to make someone believe it was dubbed in. I could simply have removed the painting entirely and left a large blank wall, but that would have looked odd and, in truth, there was something there. Plus I liked the challenge.

Further, obviously the wall was reconstructed by copying/cloning/rubberstamping (depending on what program you use, but they’re all the same thing) from intact portions of the wall, to continue that hue and pattern. But this has two pitfalls: if you can only copy small sections, repeating patterns tend to keep appearing, as well as the lighting in the room may mean that the wall over there was actually darker than the wall over here, so copying into the wrong place becomes obvious. I managed to avoid the shading issue, but this narrowed my source areas and the stippled repeated pattern became visible at first. The trick there is to pick a couple other sections of wall, even stuff that you already copied, to go over the repeated pattern in small patches and eradicate it – this usually doesn’t require much at all.]

Tripod holes 46

Al Denelsbeck

huge number of Atlantic sand fiddler crabs Uca pugilator congregating along high tide influx, south end of Topsail Beach, NC
N 34°20’56.61″ W 77°39’20.41″ Google Earth location

While walking along this beach, The Girlfriend and I found it a little curious to stumble upon a long hollow filled with scattered gravel, until we realized that it wasn’t gravel at all, and then we boggled at it. Instead, these are all Atlantic sand fiddler crabs (Uca pugilator,) thousands of them, and the hollow is a swale that floods at high tide. Once the tide recedes, the crabs begin foraging for microorganisms within the recently-submerged sand, following the path all the way back to a very small pond that remains at low tide. We’ve been there multiple times now, and my guess is that this will go on until a storm reconstructs the island geology, which (knowing the Atlantic coast) could occur at any time.

The crabs will disperse upon a close approach, but it tends to be very close, so getting a good look isn’t difficult, and capturing one takes only a quick dive – they average only a couple centimeters in width and their pincers, even the big ones, aren’t too effective, nor do they seem to use them offensively against people (unlike the Atlantic blue crabs.) Following the path up to the pond/puddle will reveal a mosh pit that’s almost disturbing.

Atlantic sand fiddler crabs Uca pugilator clustered tightly on edge of tidal pool
I can easily understand how many people find this creepy, and the resemblance to spiders is more than passing, but these are completely innocuous little critters and it’s amusing to watch them sidle out of the way if you reach for them, not in a fearful way, but as if you have BO (though, given my habits when out on the beach, we cannot rule this out entirely.) Faintly visible in both images is the evidence of their foraging, little balls of sand left behind when the crabs gather some up, turn the grains over in their mouths to remove their food, and deposit the wet sand in little spheres. Meanwhile, some much larger aquatic crab (these fiddlers are primarily terrestrial) was appearing at times from the deeper recesses of the tiny pond to snag a fiddler meal from the edge – it’s practically home delivery. Yet I cannot fathom how other species weren’t out there devouring this smorgasbord of crustaceans; I’ve seen seagulls and the small waders absolutely ecstatic about some of the little ‘sand fleas’ that wash in with the waves, so I’m guessing these guys are unpalatable in some way – I admit to not trying any myself, despite the ease of getting some samples.

1 … 53 54 55 56 57 … 326