Out there

Al Denelsbeck

Stepping out to check on the weather last night since snow flurries were possible, I saw a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in The Jungle at the edge of the property, and stepped further out to chase it/them off (there’s never just one,) not really wanting them to strip any more of the bushes and trees we’re trying to cultivate. Neither my approach nor my scolding had any visible effect on the deer, who clearly saw me, so I decided I’d do something with this camera and went back inside to get it.

My movement was apparently now enough to convince them that something wasn’t quite safe, because they’d moved on to the neighbor’s yard by that time, but going out into the road a little allowed enough of a view.

young white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus in yard at night staring into camera
This probably wasn’t the entire herd, if there’s such a thing; what I mean is, without any bucks and no sizable does in sight, more were probably within a few dozen meters. Nothing exciting here, but at least it’s current (just a few hours old as I type this.) There wasn’t going to be much I could do about composition, and even focus was highly questionable, especially at f4 like this, but it’s close enough for what it is, anyway.

Gotta get out to the Butterfly House, get some new images. It’s been a while…

Too cool, part 50: Hey sis!

Al Denelsbeck

Star formation is a long-drawn-out process, which we know from both basic physics and actually seeing it happening in telescopic views, though we can’t see change in real time. Gases and dust have to be pretty thick in some region of space, molecular clouds to provide the raw materials, which gradually coalesce under combined gravity and with the help of Core-Collapse Supernovae (CCSN,) which are exploding, dying stars that send shock waves through these clouds and press the components closer together. We have images of regions like Orion’s Nebula and the Eagle Nebula, where we can see the emergence of new stars. This almost certainly happened with our own sun, once in the heart of a molecular cloud billions of years ago, but those raw components have since been either absorbed by various stars or blown away by the stellar winds once those same stars, ours included, reached their more powerful phases. It seems odd now, since we aren’t in anything like a cloud at all, nor are we even in a notable cluster of stars, but there’s been enough time for things to disperse under various influences.

In a post on Universe Today, they identified the first star believed to have formed at the same time as ours and from the same molecular cloud, a sister star to our own – actually, it’s been identified for a few years now but this is the first I’ve heard of it, mentioned in passing while the post dealt with the search for further siblings. That star is HD 162826 (or HIP 87382, or HR 6669, or SAO 47009, depending on what catalog system you prefer,) and it’s about 110 light years from us and shines at a magnitude of 6.5, right around the edge of unaided visibility in dark sky areas. It’s targeted here in a screen capture from Stellarium software:

screen capture from Stellarium showing location of sister star HD 162826
You can see Vega down towards the bottom, and HD 162826 near the top in a string of three stars. This, naturally, made me wonder not only if it could be found without too much trouble when doing astronomical observations, but whether I had already captured an image of it while doing meteor shower images – the proximity to Vega meant I could possibly locate such images without a lot of searching.

It took two minutes.

full frame night sky image to northeast showing Vega and HD 162826 marked
This image is full-frame, taken during an attempt at the Eta Aquariids in May of last year, and Vega is that bright star about 1/4 down from the top and slightly left of center. We look at the top edge of the frame for our crucial bit. Yes, there’s a streak up there, but it’s only a satellite – what we want is delineated by two small red stripes. Let’s see it at full resolution.

sister star HD 162826 plotted in starfield near Vega
Ignore the red and purple bits; I didn’t bother cleaning up the noise in this image, courtesy of the 6400 ISO necessary to snag fainter stars without motion blur – this is an 18-second exposure. Vega is now at the bottom of the frame like in the Stellarium plot, with HP 162826 at top, and it’s easy enough to plot the other stars nearby to know this is correct.

So, how do we know that HD 162826 is our sibling? Well, we don’t for sure, but the spectra is specific enough to give us (astronomers, anyway) significant confidence. The frequencies of light that stars emit tells of their composition, since different elements block different portions of the spectrum.

spectrum of our sun
Spectrum of our own sun, courtesy of NASA.
Image Credit: Nigel Sharp (NSF), FTS, NSO, KPNO, AURA, NSF

There are a couple of very rare and specific elements contained within our sun, and HD 162826 is the first to display these same elements. And while it’s 110 light years away, that’s close in stellar terms, and easily within the range of wandering possible in the 4.5 billion years since the birth of our sun, with all of the gravitational pulls of other stars nearby. At present, there is another candidate for sisterhood, HD 186302, but its orbit within the galaxy may throw some doubt on this. I checked, but I know I have no images of that one, because it’s within the skies of the southern hemisphere and invisible from any latitude that I’ve been in.

Next obvious question: Since HD 162826 likely emerged from the same molecular components as we did, is it among the potential candidates to harbor life? The answer apparently is that it’s a low chance – HD 162826 does not indicate the presence of any gas giants (determined by both changes in spectra and brightness when such a planet eclipses the star, and perturbations in the motion of the star itself,) and without such planets, the composition of the proto-planetary disc, from which the planets would form, is called into question. As mentioned above, the emergence of new stars and their stellar winds changes conditions within the molecular clouds, so it remains possible that our own sun, had it emerged earlier than HD 162826, eradicated the components that would have helped life form around its sister. Which sounds like typical sibling rivalry.

Some of these details, like much of astronomy, are speculative and subject to revision as we observe more closely, so who knows what we’ll have discovered in a mere ten years? Right now, I’m pleased that, immediately upon finding out that we have a sister (probably/maybe,) I can produce my own photo of her. But it’s probably not her best side.

Tripod holes, part 2

Al Denelsbeck

elaborate lightning bolt over Jordan lake
N 35.796027° W 79.011323° Google Earth Placemark

This one’s kind of missing the point, I’ll admit it – it’s not showing you what you can achieve at an exotic locale (like I’ve even been to one,) because this is the kind of thing that can be captured anywhere, and this particular frame came from not too far away from where I sit right now.

But, it does say something about preparedness, and the willingness to go to some effort in pursuit of an image. I was just about to go to bed when I heard the rumble of thunder, and referring to the Real-time Lightning Map told me the location and amount of activity. Jordan Lake is an area that I frequent when I need ‘big skies,’ low horizons and wide fields of view, not too far away, but even better, it was in position to take advantage of the storm. Screw sleep, I thought, I have a great opportunity.

The storm was petering out and vanishing in the distance when I captured this image, essentially from the back side of the storm. The lightning is not hitting that little island – it’s actually kilometers beyond it. But what a dramatic bolt!

It must also be said that I was shooting out the sliding side door of a minivan with the seats removed, mostly because it was more use to us as a cargo vehicle than a passenger car, but that was damn handy here. If you look close, you can see the isolated blurring that indicated this was not prevention against all rain, a drop or two managing to find the lens, but it was sure a damn sight safer when lightning was around. Too bad the minivan died not very long after this and was sold for salvage. We even defeat the original meaning of ‘tripod holes’ because I believe it was the only time that I shot anything out the side door of the van. This location, however, has been used a lot before, including the sunset/moonrise pics from a couple days ago, not a hundred meters up the road.

If you want to pursue these kind of images, the aforelinked Map service, or an app on your smutphone, can give you decent warnings as well as storm paths and activity. Having a few different locations nearby to choose from, with the foregrounds and settings of your choice, is good preparation – you’ll know that if a storm is passing just north, you can always use location A, while to the west would be location C. Knowing how to shoot lightning is useful, but most of all is remaining safe. Don’t take risks, don’t gamble on it not happening this time, and recognize that, even while the timing of strikes can often follow a rough pattern, lightning can be notoriously random, striking well ahead of or behind the ‘active’ part of the storm.

And, be prepared for disappointment. I’ve chased lightning pics for years and only have a handful of images to show for it; the majority of outings, even while improving my advantages as mentioned above, netted absolutely nothing. That’s the way it goes. If it were easy everyone would have great pics.

More than six

Al Denelsbeck

A lot more. Ahhh…

low hazy clouds going gold near sunset
With the sky bright but showing some hazy clouds and the first full moon of the year about to rise, I decided that I needed an outing, and headed down to (of course) Jordan Lake. There’s a spot on the causeway where both moonrise and sunset can be seen easily, so the only switching that I’d have to do would be, at worst, sides of the road. But this largely applies only to the winter months when both celestial bodies are running south; in the summer months, they’ve shifted north and so one or the other is usually obscured from the vantage I’d chosen.

I got there a little late though, and as I was setting up the tripod the moon was already peeking over the trees.

rising full moon with a shitload of birds
All of those white specks in the trees are birds, only they’re not in the trees but passing well in front, a huge flock of seagulls migrating to their roosting spots for the night. Just so you know, I checked Google Earth for that bearing and those trees were over 3 kilometers from me. The horizon was ostensibly clear, but the haziness and the color both speak of a lot of humidity, while the setting sun gave a yellow hue to everything else. Video would have been a useful thing here, had I been more on the ball.

More evidence of that was to be found.

rising full moon badly distorted by the atmosphere
I could play around trying to achieve sharp focus all I wanted; it wouldn’t make a bit of difference here, with that much atmospheric distortion. Again, video might have shown some nice shimmering, but that’ll be another day. I suppose I could go out tomorrow morning for moon set…

setting sun throwing crepuscular shadows from cloudsThere was a curious effect that was visible while this was going on, though. As the sun dropped below the horizon it was of course illuminating the undersides of the clouds, and the vertical aspects of these could be discerned: some of the arms were dipping lower and throwing shadows across the clouds themselves. From our vantage these appear to be rising high into the sky, but this is dispelled by looking in the opposite direction, towards the moon.

anticrepuscular shadows crossing entire sky down to horizonThis was, in fact, when I first noticed them; you can see they cross the entire sky and disappear over the horizon, converging as they do – that’s one long shadow. And yes, that’s the moon, at 18mm focal length rather than roughly 1000 (and cropped tighter for the blog.)

Sun rays and/or the shadows created by them, the ones that converge down and ‘point’ towards the sun, are called crepuscular rays, while the ones that converge down on the opposite side, at the antisolar point, are called anticrepuscular rays. They’re all parallel, though, or as close to it as counts – it’s only our perspective underneath them that makes them seem to spread out or narrow down. While they’re directly overhead, they’re simply known as Sweet Baby Rays. But only right smack at the zenith. What this has to do with barbecue sauce I have no idea.

Meanwhile, the birds in the great distance remained very active. I would have liked the one below to be a bit sharper, but some of this was probably down to camera shake on the tripod, since I wasn’t shooting with a remote release and mirror lock-up:

variety of birds in front of and around rising full moon
There was little warning that they’d pass in front of the moon. They weren’t even visible to the naked eye at that distance, and in the viewfinder there would be a bare second or less as they entered the frame. Hurriedly pressing the shutter to try and capture this did nothing whatsoever for stability of course. If I really wanted to capture birds (or planes or whatever) in front of the moon, I’d set up with the tripod and additional stabilizing arm (both of which I’d have to keep adjusting as the moon crosses the sky,) with the remote release and perhaps the LCD viewfinder for a larger image; this would have the added benefit that the mirror would already be locked up, so an automatic edge in stability. Maybe someday, but when it’s warmer. Granted, it wasn’t too bad out there tonight, temperature-wise, but it’s dropping again as I type this.

Eventually, the moon rose high enough that the near-ground distortion was thinned out and some detail could be achieved.

rising moon showing better detail
Granted, it’s still not as sharp as it could be, but there remains the twilight background and some moody thin clouds, so it was worth the trip. And the sunset, while not spectacular, nonetheless performed better than the vast majority of them in this area.

sunsetg colors off of bottoms of hazy, twisty clouds
For once, sky conditions that I’d observed some time in advance remained in place while the sun set, without vanishing or alternately thickening up to the point where they obscured the sun entirely. I’m glad I made the trip this time.

Six

Al Denelsbeck

That’s all. Six frames. I’ve shot six frames in the camera, not just since the new year, but since December 17th of last year when I did the bubbles. Pathetic.

blossoms on lemon tree in greenhouse
Yet, they’re not bad frames.

This is one of the two lemon trees in the greenhouse, just kickin’ it. We had a nasty cold snap in December, right as many buds were about to bloom, and though there’s a heater in the greenhouse to maintain temperatures above 12°c, it wasn’t able to keep up and it dropped down to about 4° in there (much, much colder outside, however.) I was reasonably confident this was cold enough for the flowering to halt, but it only paused, and started back up again as soon as the temperature got decent. Moreover, while I was in there pollinating the flowers the other day when the outside temperature was quite nice, I discovered a honeybee within, having found its way in through the crack around the door.

When The Girlfriend picked up these two trees in midsummer last year, she selected one that was actually bearing fruit, four unripe lemons. We waited all summer to see them ripen, in vain – they remained resolutely deep green, so much so that we began to suspect they were limes instead. They were still as green when we finally moved the trees into the greenhouse for the winter – and then they started brightening.

ripe lemons nestled among the leaves within the greenhouse
Now, don’t ask me what the deal is with the tree being in full blossom while fruit is still ripening on the same branches – I thought there were cycles for that, you know? And if you look close over to the right, you’ll see brand new lemons just popping out. Now, if my efforts at pollinating are even 10% effective, we’re gonna have a shitload of lemons; I’m trying to picture what these trees will look like then, because neither is even two meters tall, and the one branch bearing three lemons is not exactly aiming for the sky – that blue in the background is the edge of the pot. But, it’s nice to go out there in winter, hang out in the toasty air, and breathe in the scent of the flowers. If there was room I’d put in a chair…

Visibly different, part 53

Al Denelsbeck

I said this was coming, and had intended for it to be the last one of the year, but it ran longer than intended; I wasn’t going to rush it, for reasons that will become obvious.

This began in early December when The Girlfriend was helping move her mother into a new home and brought back a box of family photos. Among them was an old 4×5 inch glass plate negative, broken sometime in the past and now missing a piece. I looked it over carefully, trying to judge the age, but of course it was a negative and thus hard to really discern the details. With as long as I’ve been both shooting my own stuff, and working in a lab making prints from negatives, I still find it hard to mentally invert what I’m seeing. So, out of curiosity, I carefully placed the two remaining pieces on my light table and simply fired off a few frames with the camera aimed from above; I do have a scanner that could handle 4×5 negatives, but it hasn’t played nice with the computer for a while and might simply be fried.

Then after looking over the initial images, I did a little research in cleaning old plates, because the mildew was excessive and highly visible. The non-emulsion side was easy enough to clean, but I started very slowly with just warm water on the emulsion side, already showing notable degradation around the edges, and realized that I would remove the emulsion trying to get the mildew off, so I halted any further attempts. Then I carefully aligned the pieces again and reshot the image.

original light table image of old 4x5 glass plate negative
This is the original light table image, before any level controls or inversion. You can see the darkening of the emulsion around the edges from age, and one other bit that will be more visible in a second: the two pieces had been exposed to different conditions, light or air, over the years and one was notably lighter than the other.

inverted non-negative image of glass plate negative
This is the initial inversion, before I tackled adjusting the light levels – this couldn’t be done automatically in software because that missing piece would skew the registers. You can easily see the difference in ‘exposure’ if you look along both sides of the break, and lots of mildew, along with a few scratches. Plus one other peculiar detail if we go in close:

closeup of 4x5 glass plate showing scratched out eyes
At some point in the past, someone had scratched out the pupils of the eyes of the older gentleman, and I could only speculate on why. It’s easy to blame kids and perhaps not inaccurate, but it was done so specifically (and refer to the original to realize how fine this was) that it might have been done to create a more distinctive pupil in the print. Not the best way to do it of course, but not everyone had the ability to correct this in the darkroom, or by touchup dyes on the print itself.

The worst part is it destroyed too much of the original eyes. While I can do a lot with very selective cloning, copying minute details from one part of the image to reconstruct the damaged part, there was little to copy from, so the eyes would have to be recreated almost entirely. This is what I ended up with at this stage:

repaired eyes of glass plate negative
Near as I can tell, the eyes were originally blue, so that’s what I went with. Motion blur is evident in several spots within the photo, indicating a long exposure image which lends some weight to this being a quite old photo. But I could see evidence in the girl’s eyes of the main lighting from front, and so not only had to recreate both pupil and iris, but this light as well – and, if you’ve ever had to draw eyes, you know that getting them aimed correctly, not faintly crossed or walleyed, requires careful attention, in this case lots of very close work interspersed with zooming back out for the overall perspective. I’m pleased with the results.

From various cues within the image and the glass plate itself, I’m estimating this as being at least 80 years old, possibly well over a hundred. The Girlfriend did not know who these people are, but from the age I feel pretty confident saying this isn’t her mother in the photo; possibly her grandmother. There’s also a hint of a hatline on the older gentleman, the lack of tan above the brim.

I’m self-taught in Photoshop and GIMP, with little bits of online tutorials here and there, and I did a bit of looking to see if there was an easy way to remove the mildew spots and patches, perhaps by removing just the brightest registers, but found nothing, and nothing that I tried worked, save for simple cloning. All over the image. I stupidly failed to keep careful track of how long this took, but I estimate it (based on the various saved versions that I have) as between fifteen and twenty hours. This is the final version, finished two nights ago, with perspective correction and cropped for printing:

restored 4x5 glass plate negative
But that doesn’t make the difference as clear as it could be, so let’s go with this:

animated gif showing initial scan and restoration of old 4x5 glass plate negative
I’ll be honest: while I see a few tiny details that could have been better, overall I’m pleased with the results, and will be sending this in to print as an 8×10 sometime soon. I also plan to sit down with the other family photos and see if I can spot any clues as to who these people are. Meanwhile, as an exercise to see how my restoration skills are, well, someone might deride the time that it took, but I’m happy to put it in my portfolio at least.

Tripod holes, part 1

Al Denelsbeck

Wow, time for a new weekly topic already? I was just getting used to the old one…

‘Tripod holes’ is a semi-obscure photographer’s term, referring to locations that are so popular, you can use the same holes that other photographers have used to put your tripod feet within. This isn’t quite the same thing, but close; this year, we’re going to take virtual trips out to the locales of some of my favorite, or distinctive, or perhaps just stumbled across, images from times past – and maybe not even all that past, but I have to at least unload the memory cards so it almost certainly won’t be while I’m right there; that’s social media horseshit, and we all know how lame that is. Suffice to say though, that if you run right out to the locations the moment you see a new post, chances are you won’t find me there.

To assist with this (providing the locations, I mean,) there will be links to Google Earth Placemarks right in the posts, along with the latitude/longitude coordinates; if you have Google Earth installed on your computer, clicking the link should take you right there (though at the moment I’m having issues and this may be removed in later posts,) and if not, you can still get there by popping those coordinates into the mapping service of your choice. And I mean right there, because I try to be accurate and it should place you within a few meters of my precise shooting position. Exciting, isn’t it? There should be plaques…

So, our first, definitely one of my favorites:

high-contrast head shot of American alligator Alligator mississippiensis in water of Savannah National wildlife Refuge
N 32.154375° W 81.089437° Google Earth

It’s cheating a little, because this appears in the main gallery and even has the placemark therein, but I really like the shot, so there. This was taken within Savannah National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina, right across the Savannah River from the city of Savannah, Georgia, which I only mention because there are no nearby towns in South Carolina to refer to. It is of course an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis,) nowhere near as imposing as it appears here, though it’s often not hard to find a much larger one there. Initial frames were about 75° off this angle on the opposite side, using the sunlight more, but this side created better contrast, shadows, and color from the water. I mean, it’s not exactly an accomplishment to make a gator appear menacing – it’d be much more skillful to make them not – but this one just seems to lurk in the shadows while in bright sunlight, I think mostly because of the eyes. Plus those textures, of course. Yes, I’d keep a gator as a pet if I thought I could swing it in the slightest, both practically and ethically, and I have to note that friends of ours actually had one show up in their pond and they removed it. Put a strain on our friendship, I can tell you…

And take your year with you

Al Denelsbeck

So here we are at the end of the month, and somehow at the end of the year – at the exact same time too, who’da thought? I admit to shooting extremely little this month, and even less that could be considered ‘abstract’ that I did not, thoughtlessly, already feature. I did toy around with freezing soap bubbles again when the temperature dropped low enough, but was not achieving satisfactory results and so they shan’t appear here – especially since I didn’t even get far enough to warrant taking any photos.

But we need something, so I selected a handful from earlier months that never got featured then. Lazy, I know, but c’mon, there’s been some decent content this year – you can’t have it all.

raindrops in bright sunlight on Ginkgo biloba leaf
One of the late spring rains left behind some residue on the ginkgo leaves, not long to be around now that the sun was out.

green heron Butorides virescens cleaning foot on log at edge of water
A close crop from a wider scene, this barely counts as abstract, but you know, if you’re looking for the quality abstracts, those come with the Premium Membership, which also includes a goody bag and part of this nutritious breakfast.

low-hanging leaves dipping into water
In deep shade and probably set for brighter, more contrasty light, this composition is a nice accent but a bit muted – let’s see what we can do about that.

same image in very high contrast
Much better – now it looks like a soft drink can. Which is just the kind of thing you come here for.

And finally, one that really is from this month, the precursor to the holiday. Not, not that one, the proper one.

holiday lights in darkness, mostly defocused into bokeh
I wasn’t really wowed by any of these, mostly because I found the LEDs tended to have overpowering blues and purples. Which is funny, because the incandescent holiday lights tend to have weak blues. Maybe I’ll market a set of lights, carefully balanced in output, specifically for photographers to mess about with. You’d buy a few sets, right?

There’s still time, so perhaps I can sneak in a proper abstract later on today, or maybe something else entirely, No guarantees – this means I don’t actually have any plans for such, much less a post waiting in the wings (that’s a bloggers’ secret.) But maybe.

Until then, enjoy yourself today, celebrate wisely, pick a random time during the day to consider it a whole new year (why not?), and I thank you for coming by!

Profiles of Nature 55

Al Denelsbeck

* Hold on a second. While the last post was the 2,500th, there was one in there that wasn’t actually written by me, which means the accomplishment is a little hollow, like celebrating two millennia of something on New Year’s Day 2000 even though it had been only 1999 years – New Year’s Day was the start of the 2,000th year. Can’t have that…

black-crowned night heron 'Uzma' peering warily from some kind of cedar I think
This week we get to meet Uzma, or at least we would if we saw something more of her than a fleeting glimpse as she ducked back behind her drapes. Uzma likes to ‘keep an eye on things’ in her neighborhood, meaning that she’s constantly trying to watch everything her neighbors do in case they’re as degenerate and creepy as she suspects. That this has yet to be confirmed doesn’t impinge on her consciousness, because it can always happen tomorrow, nor does she recognize that constantly spying on her neighbors is pretty damn creepy in itself. Worse, if she ever does see something unsavory, she won’t know what to do about it since the last person she had to gossip with died because he didn’t trust EMS not to go through his stuff while he was unconscious. We’d like to provide more fascinating facts about Uzma here, but she wouldn’t answer her phone even when we knew she was right there, so we’re going to do a first for these Profiles and simply make stuff up. Uzma probably used to work in HR, denying medical leave when she couldn’t fully interpret the doctors’ signatures, and was the kind to draw her feet up in the restroom stalls so no one knew she was there, hoping this would encourage people to talk freely. Alas, all she ever heard was desperately-relieved flatulence. She doesn’t actually have a beak; those are just seriously pursed lips. And no, there’s isn’t a weird blank space between her eyes and the top of those lips. Uzma (likely) spends too much time in the children’s section of the local library making a list of unsafe books, like those that show kids playing outside, and writes angry letters to TV stations when someone uses the word, “cherry” – the baking shows are really tired of her shit. She never misses a church service, but it’s mostly because she’s always trying to figure out just what kind of impudent undergarments people are wearing under their clothes; if it’s not visibly bulky and lumpy, it must have some kind of animal pattern on it. She doesn’t even put lace doilies on the arms of her furniture because that’s too provocative. We bet, anyway. Uzma used to subsist on a strict diet of prunes and plain shredded wheat, but had to give that up when she realized she was spending too much time in the bathroom, and you know what they say about that. Uzma’s favorite adjective (we imagine) is, “astringent.”

Given that there were, what, 36? American Pie movies, you can be sure that the Profiles are not dead yet. Take heart in the fact that they’re no longer weekly, but then realize in horror that this means they could appear anytime.

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