Estate Find 54

Al Denelsbeck

“Hey, you mook,” I hear you saying, “that was last year’s weekly topic. We’re done with that now.” But no, not when we’re greeted with this this morning.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus perched in tree in backyard
That’s a white ibis, or American white ibis if you prefer (Eudocimus albus,) perched in a tree on the edge of the pond, and while it’s not the first I’ve seen in North Carolina, all the others have been strictly coastal, which that doesn’t exactly describe our locale. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus perched in tree in backyard
I slipped out the door quietly to snag these shots, hoping not to spook it. These are cropped of course, not representing what I could see in the viewfinder, but the behavior certainly wasn’t that of a bird getting ready to flee. Check out that negligent grip with one toe. And the blue eyes, natch.

I came in after getting enough detailed frames, intending to let the ibis feel comfortable and pondering (only in idle amusement) what to feed it to keep it around. The ibis had that well in hand, though, and dropped down into the yard on the edge of The Bay and began poking around, so back out I went. It was snowing very gently while this was happening, not enough to count really.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus foraging at edge of pond in backyard
For those of you keeping track at home, The Bay is a small semi-circle of the pond edge to the right of the ‘apron’ where the ducks and geese and nutrias and beavers all come up to get corn, actually a little closer to the house than the apron but usually half-glutted with pond plants throughout the summer. [We have to use these terms to communicate what’s going on or where to spot some particular critter, so we’ve developed a collection of geographical terms for the property features.] I was unconvinced that the ibis would find anything to eat there at this time of year, but I’m not an ibis nor conversant enough with their habits, it seems.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus coming up with something to eat
That long beak evolved to poke through the mud in search of small crustaceans and shellfish, thus the coastal habits, and not something that it’s going to find here. Nonetheless, it came up with something that it juggled for a little bit, and I kept firing away.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus with possibly a salamander in its beak
What I took, from my view through the viewfinder (and a 600mm focal length,) to be a cluster of roots or debris looks, on close inspection of the frames afterward, suspiciously like a salamander. Let’s go in as close as we can manage:

full resolution crop of American white ibis Eudocimus albus with what appears to be a captured salamander
This is full resolution, the best I was going to achieve in the conditions (or at least, that I’d chance from what I considered a safe distance,) and that still looks like a salamander in its beak. Nor was the ibis inclined to drop it and move on, instead juggling it around until it was in the right position and gulping it down.

[Salamanders would not be the slightest bit active in these conditions, but they would be buried in the mud staying moist and waiting for spring, so this isn’t a farfetched capture at all.]

After what I considered to be enough frames and, again, trying not to frighten it off, I came back inside to unload the memory card and prepare some choices for this post. The Girlfriend soon came down and got me again, because the ibis had moved off to another portion of the yard, one with a better view, and was still foraging.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus grasping long slender potential meal
Now we’re to the left of Duck Island and the apron, a good 15 meters from the previous hunting ground – or at least, the ibis is. I was down in the middle of the backyard, having crept closer while the ibis was intent on the thing it has in its beak here. This is full-frame, to give you an idea of my view at the time. The ibis was playing with something long and floppy, and I was almost convinced that it only had a rotting leaf from a pond plant or something. But we’ll go in closer.

full resolution crop of American white ibis Eudocimus albus with what might be an eel
We’re once again at full resolution now, and the intervening plants and stems in the way aren’t helping. Yet, that doesn’t look like a rotting leaf at all, and there weren’t that many pond plants in the immediate vicinity that have would long thin leaves of this nature. The slick two-tone coloration, the faint appearance of what may be ribs, the rounded end, and the thicker apparent shape of the thing in its beak certainly suggest something else, and to my mind, that’s, “eel.”

American white ibis Eudocimus albus with what might be an eel
Now, I don’t recall ever seeing an eel at any time in my history, much less here on the pond itself, and it doesn’t strike me as the habitat for them. But that S-bend is suspicious, and nothing else seems to fit the bill (a ha ha) – the ibis certainly seemed convinced, because it juggled this one too for perhaps two minutes before snorking it down whole, and doing that thing that waders do to settle the food distinctly in their crops. I would have shot video, but video handheld at 600mm would have been nausea-inducing and the resolution is three times as good in still photos anyway.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus looking condescendingly at photographer
You can see some swelling in the crop area (mid-neck) here, as the ibis favors me with a condescending look. Okay, probably not, just checking on me to ensure that I’m not up to no good, since I’d crept closer while it was wrestling with the snack. Still, it wasn’t inclined to fly off, and after a few more frames to ensure I had something sharp, I let it be.

American white ibis Eudocimus albus posed in profile
Of course, I could have done without the intervening vegetation, but not a bad little portrait for my troubles. Will this guy stick around? I would have been inclined to think this was a once-off encounter, but the ibis also seemed to snag two good meals within a half-hour here, so who knows? We’ll be happy to add it to the denizens if it’s so inclined.

Ah, there they are

Al Denelsbeck

The thick snow and the frozen pond caused a near=total cessation of involvement at the pond edge – no ducks, no geese, no nutrias, no beavers. Just some grackles and blackbirds. We dropped some corn on the edges and across the ice a little, just in case, but even the trail that someone had blazed through the ice had refrozen completely over.

I witnessed a quick pass yesterday around midday, a lone duck doing a high-speed circuit over the pond and returning back down towards The Bayou, apparently checking to see if the ice had retreated yet – it confirmed my suspicions that they were keeping tabs on it and ready to return when they had access to the banks. But in the early evening, the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) apparently decided that they’d waited long enough, and descended on their feeding spot. Now, I still have the previous video clips that I’ve been working on far too slowly (lazily,) but these had to jump ahead of course.

The light was dropping and the batteries about to die, so I pulled them and the memory card out, and of course, that was when the two adult nutrias waddled all the way across the ice from the background trees, and then three white-tailed does came to visit as well. With all this, we waited until almost full darkness to go down and distribute more corn, eventually realizing that one of the juvie nutrias was watching us from the copse to the left of Duck Island, not making any move to come get corn. There were potentially two reasons for this reluctance: the first that the light was just enough that we could be seen as human shapes rather than, like usual, the blinding glare of the headlamps, and the second being that coming out would have meant scampering across the ice, as in, not in the water, and they felt far more exposed and unable to escape as readily.

Earlier today when I went down to check conditions on the edge and see how fast the ice was melting, another adult nutria that had been hidden down there left quite quickly, far earlier than we’ve even seen them do so; several times previously, we’ve drawn surprisingly close even in broad daylight, so my guess is that, knowing they have to cross 20 meters of open ice and not being the most adept runners, they err on the side of caution.

Just so you know, since I haven’t shot any pics of this, the snow remains only in small patches here and there – it took fours days rather than my predicted three, but that’s what snowstorms in NC are typically like. They might hit hard, but they vanish quickly, commonly under the onslaught of the sunlight that comes the following day. That’s the kind of winter I can cope with.

Procrastinating

Al Denelsbeck

backlit hot mug of tea steaming on snow-covered surface
Last year, following the one freezing rain storm that we’d received, I went out and did the above shot because the conditions were right, and I suddenly thought, Hey – I should revisit that in these conditions, and so I took my mug out to the top of the same grill and did it again. Only, I was a bit later in the morning and the backlighting wasn’t as strong, and so it worked better as an animated gif (pronounced, “jwa-ka-MO-lay“.)

animated gif of steaming tea mug buried in snowS’okay, granted, we got a bit more snow this time, but that really is my tea mug in there – somewhere. The faint breeze wasn’t allowing for a nice vertical vapor trail and I was timing it for when it swirls became visible against the darker background trees. I also hadn’t planned on doing an animation so the camera wasn’t remaining in exact position, and thus the background dances a little (mostly because I aligned the snowpack together for the four frames.) Should have thought of it earlier when the sun was lower, but here we are, feeling the enormous regrets of life. And reheating my tea…

After coming in, I noticed a lone icicle melting away in that same sun, most visible through a window (plus it was warmer to remain indoors,) and so endeavored to capture the regular drops that fell. I shot a lot of frames, changing a few settings as I did so, and you might be surprised at how hard it is to time something like this even when it’s periodic, but a lot of frames either captured the drop before it detached, or after it had exited the frame. The first turned out to be the best.

icicle shedding melt drop with tiny interval drop between
Still a smidgen of motion blur in there, but it shows the background trees within the drop halfway decently, and the secondary drop too. Still has a little elongation from the separation – the shape will bounce back and forth, well, fluidly, as it’s falling, but somewhere in there it will be quite round again, though I’m not going to waste that much time trying to capture it.

Two successive frames were amazingly similar, so much so that I had to overlay them together into another gif (pronounced, “JLOCK-en-speel“):

two-frame animation of successive drops almost perfectly timedBear in mind that this is not just two successive frames, but two successive drops, captured after falling almost the exact same distance – we’re talking just a couple of millimeters difference. But keep staring at it, because those background trees will start your eyes twitching.

It would actually be slick if I could capture two frames in such rapid succession that a falling drop had only moved that far, but we’re talking high-speed video cameras for such a brief time gap; I could calculate what it would take but I’m not going to. [Actually, looking at the motion blur of some frames where I’d stopped the aperture down to create starbursts and instead produced distinct motion blur from the drop, I’d say we’re talking better than 200 frames-per-second to capture such minimal movement between frames.] But no, this is only a cool (a ha ha) coincidence.

Okay, back to video editing…

Tip Jar 5: Light Angle

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified fungus on tree trunk
Not to get too deep into either fundamentals or philosophy, but, “photograph,” essentially translates to, “light drawing,” and light is what it’s all about… but that’s what sight’s all about too, so that’s kind of a “Duh!‘ thing. But light angle can be very important to your results, and it’s good to know how to utilize this. In the image above, the shadows define both the deep shapes and the overhang of this odd fungus, and this would have looked very different, probably not as dramatic, if a flash was used, especially not a direct, on-camera flash.

Any art student knows, when drawing, you turn a circle into a sphere with the simple addition of a shadow, and in photography, shadows can define and enhance the shapes and textures of your subject. Very often, simply moving to a different position with something will change its appearance well beyond just a different perspective. When using natural or ambient light, this is usually all that you can do, but that can be quite a lot if you consider up and down, direct or oblique in your consideration – even more if you have a camera that has a flip-out, rotating LCD for a live viewfinder so the camera doesn’t have to be held up to your eye. Also, when doing any outdoor photos, whether they be landscapes or portraiture or even architectural photos, remember that the sun moves across the sky, as well as changing altitudes with the seasons, and this can radically alter the way something appears. If there’s a scene or setting that you like but can’t quite make it work, try returning to it at different times of the day at least to see how much it differs. And with smaller subjects, sometimes you can simply move them as needed to work with the light better.

two images of ice surface from different angles showing widely varied reflections
Same subject, same session, aiming indifferent directions in relation to the sun (and achieving different exposures from the amount of light reflected into the camera.)
Light angle is paramount to portraiture, whether it be weddings or ID photos or nudes, and the more demanding your requirements, the more you have to be aware of the results and how to alter them. Direct flash is anathema to most ‘people’ photos, since it flattens most curves and makes everything seem ‘fatter’ – this is where the old adage, “the camera adds ten pounds” comes from, even though it’s not the camera or photography in general, but the handling of light. The “camera’ (actually the light angle) can also lose ten pounds or five kilos or whatever, by being carefully controlled. This is why most wedding photographers have a strobe on a bracket that sits high and off to one side, to shape faces better and throw shadows down behind the subjects. Meanwhile, studio shoots of any kind almost always rely on meticulous balancing of light for optimum results.

pages from "The Joy of Photography" showing terrible highlights from light angle and slick pages
Shiny subjects require special consideration and often techniques to prevent glare that detracts from the image
Artificial lighting, whether it be an off-camera flash/strobe or studio lighting or even a handy table lamp, provides a lot more control over how your subject is rendered. As shown above, reflective surfaces can be the worst to cope with, especially curved ones, but overall, the more flexibility that you can achieve, the better your results will become. I’ve personally spent a lot of time refining the macro flash rig, and it will undergo even more, but right at the moment, the flash is on a flexible arm that can achieve a large variety of light angles, and can be reversed to come from either side of the lens.

two versions of mosquito eggs on water with different flash angles
The difference between a more overhead angle and one from behind the camera and to the right
While I usually deride ‘chimping’ (the act of checking the LCD preview of the image that you just took,) one of the few places where it serves a purpose is to check lighting, most especially what happened with a flash or strobe. While I still recommend not counting on it, since LCDs are notoriously unreliable and too small to judge effectively on, you can see that the flash throws too many shadows, or fails to illuminate the key aspects properly, and adjust accordingly right away. Many studio lighting units have a ‘modeling light,’ a normal bulb that can stay on and allow you to see how the shadows will be thrown when the strobe goes off, and doing the same thing with a smaller flash unit is handy too, when you can achieve it (I’ve gone back and forth on having this option – right now it’s tricky with a diffuser panel n the way.)

high-contrast image of fungus spores, maybe, with poor light angle
A particularly bad example, the light here is too far to the side and throwing far too many shadows from an already-complicated scene
staged photojournalist illustration
A ‘studio’ subject with fill light coming from the left to maintain detail on the shadowed side of the camera – note the highlight on the chrome on the left side, and the detail in the bills and ticket even in the shadow
There are other modifications as well. The aforementioned diffuser, or softbox or umbrella, works to spread out the light and prevent the ‘spotlight’ affect from a single flash bulb, softening the shadows and lowering contrast slightly. A ‘fill-flash’ can be used in natural or ambient light to soften shadows as well; it can seem odd and pointless to be firing off a flash while in bright sunlight, but the flash will add almost nothing to the sunlit portions of the subject while it brightens up the shadowed areas from being almost pure black. A secondary light does the same thing, offsetting the main/key light, reducing shadows or illuminating the off-side enough not to be lost in darkness, or a simple reflector can be used to accomplish this, given enough available light that can be bounced in usefully.

You can also see photographers aiming a strobe at the ceiling, a technique called ‘bounce lighting,’ and given a close enough pale ceiling, it spreads the light out over a broader area and looks the most like ambient light. It does require a lot of light output, which translates to a higher guide number in equipment terms, and won’t work well with high ceilings, dark ceilings, or too large of a room to be captured. In the right conditions, however, it can usually look like no flash was used at all while still reaping the benefits of a fast shutter and properly-colored light (unlike nearly all indoor lighting.)

spiderweb showing iridescent in backlighting
The glow of the leaves and especially the delineation and iridescence of the web could only have been achieved with backlighting
While the general rule is that the light source should be somewhere behind the shoulders of the photographer (if natural, or mimicking that if not,) there are plenty of occasions when you might break this rule – backlighting, as shown above, though care must be taken to prevent that same light from hitting the lens, and I’ve cropped out my hat brim that was faintly visible at the top if the image, blocking the sun from the lens. Long shadows also serve a purpose and are a compositional element themselves at times. And while we talked about softening shadows above, there are also the benefits of not doing so, having inky black portions of the image or a face that is half-shrouded in darkness, which provides an entirely different mood than a standard portrait. You can enhance or diminish a texture, depending on how you light it, and add or subtract contrast and even color. It’s worth studying any of the more dramatic images that you like (or even dislike) to see how the light affected this, perhaps being even totally responsible for the mood or tone. The more you grasp this, the greater your repertoire.

Good luck!

three images of same American alligator Alligator mississippiensis sowing different light angles
Same alligator, same time, same location, just different angles. Note not only the mood, but the colors rendered from both the gator and the water. There’s no ‘right’ way to approach this, just the idea that you want to convey

Not for nature photographers

Al Denelsbeck

The tremendous winter storm that we’ve been getting warnings about – indeed, the entire southeastern US – rolled in mostly overnight, and dropped about 20-25cm in our area. North Carolina isn’t a state that typically copes with such things and doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to handle it – mostly, the snowplows and salting trucks – and so most things shut down when storms like this happen. Nature photographers, however, are on the job as always [breathes on nails to buff them, watches a fog of ice form, gets a bit more humble…]

I went out late last night to do a few night exposure pics while it was coming down thickly, with ‘okay’ results, but not quite what I was after. if you’re using strictly ambient light, mostly streelights bounced from the overcast and then again from the snow on the ground, the exposure goes far too long to show any flakes actually falling, so I was augmenting with a single flash burst, which produced this:

time exposure of backyard at night during snowstorm with flash illuminating the snow in the air
That might have been an adequate amount of light by itself, at least for the immediate surroundings (dropping off into darkness in the middle distance,) but the snow in the air definitely overwhelmed things, and yes, this was a single burst in the milliseconds duration. So I tried again, this time angling the flash upwards by maybe 30°:

time exposure at night during snowstorm with flash angled higher to illuminate the falling snow
That’s a bit better, concentrating the illuminated flakes towards the upper portion of the frame against the darker trees and sky. I was going to try for a few more, but as I was experimenting with shots of the back of the house, the camera batteries died about the same time that I realized my gloves were wholly inadequate for the conditions and I was tempting frostbite. I could have swapped batteries and gone back out with other gloves, but the fingers needed to warm up to operating temperature first, otherwise the gloves would simply keep them at dangerously cold levels. So I just went out some time later to do a couple of ‘only flash’ shots, like the weathervane.

weathervane and walkway lamp under heavy coating of snow still falling
Plenty of snow in that frame, and you can see that the fading light from the flash allowed the snow to ‘smear’ a bit. It wasn’t gusting, just faintly breezy, but when I’d come back in from the first session (a mere 12 minutes according to the image timestamps,) my coat, hat, and headlamp all had a distinct blanket of snow on them, as did the towel covering the camera.

Daylight this morning was good enough to illustrate, though, and it had finally stopped snowing by then.

Turtle and Unnamed Islands in backyard pond now frozen over and heavily coated with snow
In comparison to yesterday’s images, now the pond has completely frozen over, with a heavy blanket of snow over everything. I will say it was fluffy, dry snow due to the temperatures, but I’d still hate to shovel it, and with the faintest luck we won’t have to at all – we’re not going anywhere, and the sun is already breaking through, the best thing about nearly all NC snowstorms.

However, someone wasn’t happy to stay home, and forged their way around to the feeding apron with no small amount of effort.

path broken through ice on backyard pond to feeding area near Duck Island
The trees coming out of the pond just right of center are Duck Island, and the path broken exuberantly through the ice is still relatively fresh, not completely refrozen, so I’m going to say it was early morning. This was not ducks or geese, instead either the beavers or the nutrias, leaning towards the former, but only just. I’m sorry I wasn’t out there to hear this at least, because it probably was no small racket – I’ve heard them breaking much thinner ice than this.

path broken through ice on backyard pond near Duck Island
The chances are, they were actually finding something to eat with this, since The Girlfriend had distributed corn late yesterday afternoon even while it was beginning to snow, and the ducks certainly hadn’t made much of a dent in it by nightfall. While the corn that was distributed on the banks is well hidden, plenty of it was spread in the water too, before the surface had frozen, and so awaited anyone’s attention in the shallows. You can also see a small scattering of it to the far right from this morning. It’s funny how the snow makes the bank look steep and distinct – it’s anything but, just sloping gently into the water, and it’s only the fact that the snow was melting into the water for a while as it piled up on land that produced this effect.

path broken through ice on backyard pond near Duck Island
Definitely not considering the ice much of a discouragement, you have to admit. And now, looking at that path, I’m changing my mind towards favoring the nutrias as the culprits, since the beavers don’t seem to use Duck Island much but the nutrias always do.

More items of opportunity.

Carolina wren Thryothorus ludovicianus and dark-eyed junco Junco hyemalis checking out frozen The Puddle in the backyard
The Puddle, naturally, was frozen over, and here a Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) and dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis,) both fluffed up against the cold, check it out hopefully in case any plants had dropped seeds conveniently onto the surface. The small birds are very active out there and raiding the feeders exuberantly.

wood duck nest box above frozen backyard pond sporting thick layer of snow atop
The wood duck nest box awaits its occupancy in a month or two. We did see two pairs swimming around right alongside it a few days back, but no one flew up to check it out while we watched. I need to get a camera on this, too, so I know when it’s in regular use; even staking it out like I did last year is hit-or-miss, mostly miss. A camera in it would be ideal, but hard to work out, since it sits a solid 50 meters from anything, much longer if I tried to run wires to it (around the perimeter of the pond) for either power or image transmission, and outside the range of the wifi. Even reaching it to swap out a memory card is tricky, so this is a project that is not likely to happen.

large old Japanese maple Acer palmatum in backyard under heavy load of snow
The old Japanese maple in the backyard collected a nice load of snow upon its bare branches, aided by the last flimsy leaves still clutching the ends. The snow really did stack up as if carefully balanced.

snow piled heavily on branches and dead leaves of Japanese maple Acer palmatum
Between the wind gusts and the sun now blazing down, this will be gone pretty quickly – this is why I make it a point to get out early to get pics before the conditions change too much.

And a pair of comparison images, the first from three weeks ago:

mossy frog fountainhead removed from The Puddle, in the background
This is a fountainhead removed from The Puddle, awaiting my efforts to clean it up and decide what to do with it. It was still sitting in the same position when the snows arrived:

frog fountainhead removed from the Puddle, now totally obscured under thick snow
Tried to do the same angle and perspective, but I might not be quite exact here. It’s a good before/after illustration, though.

So yeah, nice little winter storm, impressive but not debilitating, and we don’t expect it to remain very long at all. I wouldn’t mind getting down to the waterfront to see what that looks like, but it’s unlikely the roads in our little development will be plowed anytime soon, if at all, so I’m setting that goal aside.

But I still have to get back to video editing…

Taking its time

Al Denelsbeck

backyard pond at Duck Island showing reduced ice and more open water
After the predictions that continued all day yesterday, we expected to wake up to noticeable snow this morning, and we did, kinda, but not at all what we expected, just a bare dusting of scattered flakes that, even at this latitude, they’d be embarrassed to call, “snow.” I went out to capture what I could, since I needed to do the month-end pics anyway, and spent a little time both cataloging the conditions and trying to be fartsy with it. We have Duck Island here, right where the ducks and geese and nutrias all come up to feed, and you’ll see this area in greater detail if I ever get the video clips finished.

The curious thing about this is, there was a lot more ice yesterday morning, pretty much the entire right half of this frame, since I was scattering corn across it. The temperature did not climb very high at all yesterday and dropped again overnight, so I don’t understand this. The best I can say is, the shifting wind might have driven more deeper (and thus warmer) water from The Bayou, at the top of the frame here, in this direction.

broken ice plates refrozen to surface after something broke through
Here we have some evidence of the nightly activity, plates of ice that had been broken free and shifted around, then re-frozen into place. Either beaver or nutria were responsible, and I’m leaning towards the former. It’s a really weird sound to hear at night, and I’m not sure I’ve captured it adequately yet.

singular large snowflakes decorating ice surface above fallen leaf
Playing with the composition of more lonely snowflakes on the ice, this time above a pin oak leaf beneath. There was only so close that I could get, since I was leaning out over ice that wouldn’t even come close to supporting my weight, and the ground wasn’t even frozen – the pond edge was treacherously soft. I could get slightly closer for the next one:

maple leaf frozen under rough ice on backyard pond
Yeah, practically the same thing, and even oriented the same way in the frame. I’ll work on my variety.

In the side yard, about 10 meters or so from the bird feeders (which we’ve been taking in at night since the second bear raid,) I found this:

black bear Ursus americanus feces in side yard not far from former location of bird feeders
Yep – that’s bear shit, and not in the woods either. One of the neighbors reported a raid on her own feeders, and another spotted it at about five AM one morning, perhaps two weeks ago. I initially wasn’t sure how long this had been there since I couldn’t recall the last time I’d passed this spot, but then remembered that I’d gone right by this refilling watering cans yesterday. It’s possible that I walked right past without noticing, but that’s not like me, and I think it’s likely that it really did occur this past night. We have one motion alert camera active (of which this sits outside of its reach) and I’m trying to get more set up – that’s what I spent part of today trying to accomplish, without success yet. However, there will be a slight edge tonight, which we’re getting to.

One last pic of the pond, this time Turtle Island (on the left) with the ice now bearing slightly more evidence of the sleet that had begun at that time.

Turtle and Unnamed Islands in the backyard pond with minimal ice presence.
Again, that’s a fair amount of open water for a portion that was completely sealed over yesterday. But I include this because, about 2 PM this afternoon, things finally started in earnest.

Turtle and Unnamed Islands in backyard pond during heavy snowstorm
It is still snowing as I type this, a pretty good coating that has almost entirely obscured the tracks I left getting these images. Depending on when it stops, this may mean there will be distinctive evidence if the bear visits again, though without finding the feeders now, it might be bypassing us.

Japanese maple Acer palmatum tree in backyard under heavy coat of snow
Not too fartsy here, a bit busier than I wanted it to be and with greatly reduced contrast from the poor light, but at least it shows how much had fallen after two and a half hours. I also revisited the same subject from this morning, with its subtle change now:

lone leaf catching snow on coral bark Japanese maple Acer palmatum ‘Sango kaku’
Again, manual focus, which was even more difficult because I had the rain cover on over the camera and so was looking through a layer of clear plastic over the viewfinder – I’ll have to make some modification to that. This took several frames to get one that was sharp enough, also hampered by the fact that I had a mask on because my sinuses couldn’t stand the cold air today, and what this mostly accomplished was fogging up my glasses. The things I do for you guys…

When it first started in earnest, I went to the upstairs window and my duck-spotting perch and tried to get a few pics of the ducks swimming around with a blanket of snow on their backs, but the distance was too great:

mallards Anas platyrhynchos and wood ducks Aix sponsa practically obscured by snowstorm
Yeah, that’s nothing but the 50 meters or so of falling snow between the camera and the ducks, and this was as good as it got. Once I was down in the yard, the ducks headed out for The Bayou as usual, still not at all cool with our presence, even though we’re the ones putting down all the corn. Ingrates.

I got a slight opportunity for something else, though. This was what the lamp on the back porch looked like:

lamp on back porch with webbing from funnel weaver spiders catching snowflakes
The funnel weaver spiders simply adore two prime locations on the back porch: the one window, and this lamp. It doesn’t matter how many times I clear the webs away, they’re back within three days, but at least this one was serving to capture the snow ‘in midair,’ as it were, and that included some small clusters of snowflakes, without any ability for them to melt together into a mess. So I changed over to the macro lens and made a few attempts along those diagonal strands.

snowflakes caught on spiderweb strands
That’s not too shabby for a casual effort, without even an extension tube. The flakes were actually pretty big (even when they were cut in half.)

I may go out now that it’s dark and do a few time exposures by available light, though it won’t be many; I wanted to get these out while it was still January, get in one more post and 12 more images and all that. Plus I’m procrastinating over editing video clips…

We’ve had enough of this, January!

Al Denelsbeck

All right, fine, we’re about 10 hours late on this one. I’m betting not one of you out there exists noticed.

But yes, it’s still the 31st, so still time for the end-of-month abstract. And this one is timely, at least.

singular snowflakes on ice coat upon pond
Not that hard to figure out, so I won’t try to maintain the suspense, but this is the elaborate showing for the winter storm that was threatened to begin around midnight. Is this poignancy? I’m taking it to mean that the storm is moving in slower than initially predicted, and we’ll see a lot more later, but right now it’s fine. I have a few more shot this morning that will be along in a little while.

But right at the moment, we’ll examine two others, just for comparison.

lone dead leaf clinging to tips of branches on coral bark Japanese maple Acer palmatum 'Sango kaku'
Out searching for abstract images, I knew the coral bark Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sango kaku’) was standing out nicely in these conditions, so I picked an angle to do a few frames. This is with the Canon 18-135 STM lens, but I wanted to see how the Sigma macro would render it, so I went back out so armed.

lone dead leaf clinging to tips of branches on coral bark Japanese maple Acer palmatum 'Sango kaku'
And now, the Sigma 180mm macro. Both had to be manually focused because the subject was too small/narrow against the background for autofocus to hold it dependably, plus the light was decidedly low out there (and the Sigma does not possess any form of image/optical stabilization.) Not to mention my eyes are particularly stubborn about clearing this morning and my own focus is not dependable. They both could have been a tad sharper, is what I’m saying.

The pale band in the background is ice on the pond with a teeny tiny dusting of snow on it, and it’s interesting to see that the Sigma, with much shorter depth-of-field than the Canon, blurred this out so far that it blended more with the bordering darker areas and became darker itself, though the relative exposure based on the field of view probably had its own input. On topic for this week, however, is the bokeh, specifically on that second branch, which looks a little rougher with the Sigma than the Canon even though the Canon is not as far out of focus. And this does happen, depending on the lens and aperture design, but I honestly would have though the Canon would be worse because of its aspherical elements, which I’ve seen to contribute to some weird effects before.

It has apparently started to sleet as I type this, so we’ll see what transpires a little later on today. You know where to find the evidence…

Guten tag

Al Denelsbeck

I like this title, because if you try to pronounce it correctly, you’re mispronouncing it. Which is because it’s time (finally!) for the annual tag roundup! Tags are those little reference words at the bottom of the post to help you know what the content is and save you the trouble of actually reading the post, unless you have a poster of a certain nature, in which case they are also snotty commentary on the content, or highly questionable humor, or some obscure reference that only thirteen people in the world (none of them readers of course) would recognize. And each year, we choose a small selection of the tags that have only appeared once and recognize why they have only appeared once. It’s also a subtle (not really) way of drawing people back into older posts. With that warning being all that’s required by law, let’s plunge ahead, shall we?

probably get hit by a meteorite – The law of averages needs better enforcement, I’m thinking.

it’s not just a phase mom – The family photos that soon get hidden away.

Spanish moss? How dated! – Some redecorating did indeed take place, and we’re fine with that.

right on prom night – Seriously, don’t pick at them.

fussy fussy fussy – along with, “need more spiders,” and, “or maybe slugs.” Perhaps a little forewarning is in order. And a slick watermark.

really really questionable definition of humor – Along with, “samson was a fat fuck.” I blame my parents…

hopped up on corn dust – Some have to ham it up for the camera. Not me, of course…

yes that was on purpose – Okay, probably not subtle at all.

licking her will get you nowhere – Also, “or Out of Africa.” I’ve nothing to add here.

the water was cold – Excuses, excuses.

awwww – It says quite a bit, I think, that such a tag has only appeared once, but I’ll try to remedy that.

Hey Sailor – Also, “booty call.” Worse than trying to study in college with a ‘popular’ roommate…

I just don’t choose to – I mean, give me a real challenge…

puppy dog eyes – You should know by now this is a setup.

do you recognize this skin? – As well as, “you silly man.” Listen, you’re not going to get better warnings than these.

just the one taking the pictures – It’s journalism…

chili I could see – I mean, sure, even if we’re only talking about what provoked it…

but the brow’s about right – I’m not that limp-wristed, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Unimportus bloggeri – Or perhaps, Daguerrotypus creeperi. I don’t know, have at it…

Now, we take a look at the ‘special’ holidays that we all celebrated this year (right?)

Lock Teasers Day, January 9th
If It Goes Another Day You’re A Worthless Excuse For An Amateur Naturalist, February 18th
Make Noticeable Progress on a Project Day, March 29th
Overcome Absurd Obstacles Day, April 24th
Dumfroot Spaglokkit, the inventor of shutter lag, May 25th
Is that…? No… Is It? Day, June 18th
Create Meaningless Content Day, July 29th
Now You Know It Could Be Worse Day, September 24th
International Enough is Enough Day, October 27th
Harvest The First Of The Citrus From The Greenhouse Day, November 16th (you should know that we still haven’t picked the last yet.)
Question The Value Of One’s Own Judgment Day, December 29th

What, no August? No, no holiday for August last year, strange as that may seem. Perhaps there will be two this year…

Meanwhile, if you want to check out the previous tag roundups, well, they’d be found here:

2015: Tagged
2016: Tagged again
2017: Papa’s got a brand new tag
2018: So what did 2017 hold?
2019: Do not read tag under penalty of law
2020: Tagginses! We hates it forever!
2021: Tag ’em and bag ’em
2022: I don’t mean to tag, but…
2023: Tag me with a spoon
2024: You’re a Grand Ol’ Tag
2025: Something tagged this way comes

Man, I’m glad I can just copy and paste most of that from the previous year…

site statistics for 2025We brought the site stats up much, much better in 2025, with a post count of 260 (coming in third behind 2021 and 2022,) and a word count of 172,384, about average, bringing the total for the life of the blog up to 2,573,954.

But the image count was a new record at 1,123, beating out 2021’s total by 86 images, and I can confidently say the credit for this is due to Walkabout Estates Plus itself, brimming with photo subjects as it is. We did no special trips last year at all, being too busy with both selling the previous Walkabout Manor and doing work on the current one, so the vast majority of those images was within walking distance of the door. May had a total of 171 images uploaded by itself, though this still didn’t beat October 2020’s record for a month at 192.

Also worthy of noting was video uploads, coming in at 35 for last year alone, thanks to mostly the wood ducks and the nutrias. It was never my intention to branch out into videography seriously, because it’s more of an investment in time and equipment and so on – I just want to be able to capture behavior when it seems appropriate, but the opportunities have abounded this year, so here we are.

2025 was also a year of remarkable progress, especially when I look at posts from the beginning of the year. Then, I was speculating about whether I’d have to build a blind to even see the wood ducks from a distance, and whether or not they’d have the faintest interest in the nest box we constructed, as well as how much effort it would take to get better shots or video of the beavers, the first of which I’d captured in February. The year closed with not just evidence of the nest box in use, but multiple broods of wood ducks coming up into the yard, and beavers coming virtually right to my feet – as well as the discovery of nutrias visiting, then expanding to a brood of five young (and two adults) making themselves at home with inordinate boldness. Not to mention a snake battle to the death literally, actually, at my feet…

mother wood duck Aix sponsa on Turtle Island with at least nine of her brood of ducklings
It is safe to say, I am in my element, and I’m incredibly lucky to have The Girlfriend, who shares in (most of) my enthusiasm for all the critters to be found – as well as making the move to the new Walkabout Estates even possible, it must be said. 2026 is also off to a fierce start – I have umpteen video clips to edit together into a coherent whole, and keep adding to them, so those will be along eventually.

All in all, I can’t complain, and can’t feel like I’ve been slack. As always, we’ll see what the future holds.

But is it really?

Al Denelsbeck

We once again find ourselves at Freethinkers Day, and I’ve featured it a couple of times before, so you can also check those out for my perspective and recommendations. Frankly, I’m more in favor of calling it “Thinker’s Day” instead, or perhaps, “Are You Sure? Day,” because this is the part that really needs encouragement, as I’ve been reminded recently.

Something that is rampant, especially within this country, is mistaking an opinion, especially a strong and voiced one, with a reasoned opinion; we assume, far too often, that if someone is firmly, even emotionally behind some conclusion or viewpoint, that they’ve done the legwork and have good reason to be – even that they have exercised good reason. But the percentage of times that this is resolutely not the case is staggering, and I suspect there’s a far greater correlation between someone being non-committal or only mildly in favor or a particular viewpoint, and actually having thought it through. Because, let’s face it: the world is not full of absolutes, easy distinctions, or binary choices; it’s full of huge grey areas, and in fact, our reliance on absolutes, binary decisions, and polar opposites is not reflected in just about any area of real life. Forget good and bad, or good and evil, forget right or wrong, forget every “this or that” choice you might believe exists, because they simply don’t. Everything is a spectrum, and every worthwhile decision depends on careful comparison and aiming for the greatest benefit or the least harm, preferably a combination of the two. Easy answers are immediately suspect, and likely ignoring countless real-life factors; clear demarcations are likely far fuzzier and indistinct, when examined, than ever suspected.

The firm opinion is usually (not always – again, grey areas) the realm of a strictly emotional response, settled on because the holder likes some particular aspect of it, and often bears no critical review behind it. I’m no sociologist, but I strongly suspect that many, perhaps most, decisions are made this way, and confirmation bias comes into play when finding the ‘rational’ justification for it afterward. “I hate cheesecake,” may start with tasting a particularly bad example, and then gets followed with, “It’s fattening,” “It has too much sugar,” “It exploits cows and dairy,” and, “It’s really a pie.” A frivolous example perhaps, but you can likely spot any number of firm opinions that people hold that have begun in exactly this manner.

Something to remember, too, is that emotions are mere guides to survival, simple internal influences that resulted in pushing us forward better than the alternative at the time; they are not exact, they are not dependable, and they are not useful or even accurate in every circumstance. Just like every other animal, we have them solely because they worked just enough to make it through the process of natural selection, but nothing in that process actually produces perfection. Think of deer, that have a habit of standing still in circumstances of questionable danger so as not to attract attention by noise or movement. This works for just enough of the time to make it through the selection meatgrinder, but fails when it comes to the semi-truck bearing down. And as much as we’d like to believe we’re something special and totally unlike every other species on the planet, we spent the vast majority of our development dealing with the same kinds of dangers and the necessity of quick decisions, and that’s what our emotions reflect. That’s all they reflect. While there are certainly circumstances where they work just ducky – we wouldn’t have them if they didn’t – this in no way should be taken to mean that they’re dependable or reliable. And the very aspect that we believe sets us apart from all the other animals, our reasoning and rational brain, is what needs to be exercised to get us safely past those circumstances where the emotions fail.

Another emotion that traps us continually, and gets exploited all the time by those who understand it, is conformity. We feel the need to fit in, to be socially accepted by those around us, because our ancestors survived by being tribal/village/community-based instead of individually. But this also means we very easily fall for being just as stupid as those around us, mistaking this internal drive for the assumption that they all know what they’re doing, and, “this many people can’t be wrong.” Yet here’s an easy, quick decision for you, one that really is dependable: Yes. Yes, they can. History bears this up repeatedly.

So that’s my suggestion of an exercise, for today at least but really, embracing critical-thinking means we do this as often as possible: Stop and ask ourselves, But is it really? Did I find the best conclusion, or simply the one that struck me as ‘Right’ at the time? Take a moment or three to think about whether or not some conclusion, some opinion, some decision, can really be supported rationally. And the much harder part, to seek out the other side of the coin (or again, not settle for such a binary aspect,) and argue against ourselves, the devil’s advocate position, to see if our viewpoint still holds up. It can be tricky, for sure.

I’m not suggesting being in a perpetual, existential state of questioning everything, because then we cannot make decisions at all – merely that we seek out those circumstances where we settled on some viewpoint or conclusion too quickly, without due consideration. The question is, how many can we actually find?

Here’s another thing to remember that goes hand-in-hand with it all: It’s okay that we change our mind. It’s commendable, actually; this is growth, this is improvement, this is increasing intelligence, this is becoming a bigger person, and it’s even (much as this seems like a counterpoint) an aspect of humility. Why stagnate perpetually with a decision or viewpoint that obviously could be better, in favor of… what, exactly? Not admitting that we’re wrong is not the same as not being wrong, and is often the exact opposite. Own up to it, get on top of it, and move forward. And confidently, forthrightly, admit to it as needed – more people need to see this happening to understand that it really is okay, because, goddamn, do we have far too many people that cannot.

And while we’re at it, enjoy a piece of cheesecake.

Tip Jar 4: Bokeh

Al Denelsbeck

cherry blossoms against blue sky with good rendition of bokeh
“Bokeh” is one of those photographic terms that’s a little obscure, defined at times in different ways, and has a varying impact on composition. Basically, it refers to how the out-of-focus portions of the image look, especially the highlights. In the case above, it applies to the branches in the background, which we know are branches because we have a focused example that has the same colors and patterns; without it, we might be struggling to know what those were, and see little of value to them. Yet they’re an appropriate background, filling in the blank space and keeping the focused branch from being isolated, but they’re not otherwise distracting. And that’s the main point of bokeh: its presence helps the image, but it remains only subconsciously recognized (unless we talk about it, as we’re doing now.)

To achieve it, we need only one thing: very short depth-of-field, to permit the background to go soft and indistinct. Some people swear that specific lenses are the best, even necessary, for ‘proper’ bokeh, but this is hogwash – you just have to know how to use them, and I suspect that a lot of the reputation of lenses (most often, Leica brand) is mere confirmation bias. To get a really short depth-of-field, however, you need slightly specific conditions, to wit, a much greater distance from the focused subject to the background, than from the focused subject to the camera; your subject should be as close as possible, and so this often (not always) means macro or closeup work. And of course, the other factor for a short depth-of-field is using a large aperture, preferably wide open, and so this is easier with ‘faster’ lenses that feature a wider maximum aperture, such as f1.2, f1.4, or f2.8. But again, this is not necessary.

raindrop image showing starbursts and pentagonal bokeh circles
You can easily achieve short depth without a wide aperture, just with that distance disparity, but here’s what can happen: the bright portions of the image that are defocused end up shaped like the aperture opening, in this case pentagrams because the lens used had only five aperture blades. This is a most noticeable case, because the bright reflection from the raindrops that are out of focus stand out well against the dark background, but even without both the bright spots and the dark background, defocused elements still retain a portion of that blocky shape and can make the bokeh blotchier, so it’s better to be shooting wide open where the bokeh is affected by the shape of the lens barrel itself and will be round. However, a lens with more aperture blades, and/or curved ones, can help with this.

Note, too, that the smaller aperture used here (it was not recorded in the EXIF info, but probably at least f8, more like f16,) produced star patterns from the focused highlights on the drops, another compositional trick that has its uses, though it was overpowered and defeated by the noticeable pentagrams.

dewdrops on pine needles showing clean bokeh circles
This was taken in the same session but now wide open, very short depth-of-field, and this makes me think I was using an f2.8 lens, probably with an extension tube to get even closer focus. The circles look quite crisp, but also pay attention to the rest of the background. The other needles there leave faint traces of their lines across the frame, especially against the open sky, and this might be considered a little ‘busy’ or it might simply be considered appropriate. Either way, the effect is subtler than the other elements and so doesn’t draw much attention.

Notice, too, the effect with distance, as the circles get bigger and dimmer, but this is distance from the focus point; it can also take place with drops (or other elements) that come closer to the camera. And by the way, a dirty lens will often show distinct and fairly sharp shapes within those circles, so if you’re specifically after bokeh, it’s best to do a cleanliness check.

animated gif of two images showing difference in bokeh with different aperturesHere’s an animated gif (pronounced, “JEM-uh-nee“) comparison of two images shot back-to-back on a tripod, just different apertures. No real macro work here, nor specifically close, but the distance between elements is large enough. [I also used a handheld flashlight for one of the frames, which added highlights that did nothing for the image.] This begins to show another factor that affects bokeh, which is background contrast: the varying brightness of the leaves back there produces more blobs, and since the difference in distances isn’t as great as the image above, they have more distinction, not overrunning each other as much. For really nice smooth bokeh, the background should be as low contrast (in brightness or color variation) as you can achieve. This would have made the focused, foreground leaves stand out more and have a more distinct demarcation between them and the background.

This also shows a trait that is very hard to predict, and only occasionally appears in the viewfinder when composing the shot: you can see things blocking the bokeh circles in the frame that has shorter depth. The lights that produced the bokeh circles aren’t actually blocked by those intervening branches or leaves, but they are when defocused, leaving sharp silhouettes across them. Sometimes this is distracting and takes away from the overall composition, sometimes it isn’t, but if you really don’t want them, you should probably shoot several frames with slight differences in position between them, and this is one of the few circumstances where chimping at the image in the LCD of the camera afterwords can tell you something useful.

A more egregious example of bad background contrast is below.

bad bokeh from too short distance disparity and a too complicated background
So, two factors that produced the wrong kind of bokeh here: not enough distance between subject and background, and most especially, way too much contrast in that background. Bright sunlight will often do this, so it’s something to avoid or at least be aware of, but really, even in low contrast light, the colors themselves, from the moss and the branches, would be clashing. Overall, this is a situation to avoid, since no amount of tricks or technique would render decent bokeh in such conditions.

Yet, there’s a simple trick to improve it: crop tightly to enlarge a smaller portion of the image. This will increase the apparent blurriness of the background and set it further apart from the sharper elements. It won’t always work (and not very well with this one,) but it can sometimes improve the overall appearance of your composition and the bokeh therein.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis in extremely short depth-of-field showing only faint impressions from background of imageThis is an extreme example, and even though unrecorded in the info, I recall this lens – this is the Mamiya 80mm macro, likely with the coupled extension tube, wide open at f4. The color of the mantis matched the background so closely that there is only the faintest difference in hues between them, and the depth so short that everything went out of focus within a very short distance. The bokeh now provides only the barest of impressions of the back and the forelegs, producing a quite abstract image very simply. Luckily, most of the face of the mantis was flat to the camera so it wasn’t going out of focus from mouth to antenna too badly. But you can’t get much smoother bokeh than this.

And no, this is barely cropped at all, but it did indeed require a fast and dedicated macro lens to achieve. Longer focal lengths tend to help, because the shorter, wider focal lengths increase depth-of-field, making it much harder to achieve that crucial separation.

Bokeh is naturally an ideal element in portraiture, providing something nondescript and non-distracting for the background, and I can’t give you any decent examples because I don’t do portraits and I rarely feature anyone without express permission anyway, but we can do a similar example:

solitary dewdrop on tip of leaf backed by smooth bokeh
This, however, shows a small mistake, one that’s easy to make yet I should still know better. Even well out of focus, the background benefits the subject much better when it permits the subject to stand out distinctly and draw the viewer’s attention more, and contrasting color or light helps this. With the dewdrop lensing the background so well, especially the darkness surrounding the plant, it would have been better shifted slightly left to fall against the brighter leaves/bokeh there, instead of bordering a dark patch – it just would have been that much more distinct. There’s even a triangle of deeper green among the lighter, and the drop could have been positioned so that this ‘pointed’ to it. However, if I read the conditions right (since I don’t recall the circumstances of this image at all,) I was also using a flash, and so this appears in the image much different from what I was seeing through the viewfinder, and thus I remain completely blameless.

I’ll close with two of my favorite abstracts demonstrating bokeh handily, and while they both look digitally edited, these are exactly as shot save for cropping; they’re what can be done with short depth-of-field. Both are macro, one much tighter than the other. The first is simply dewdrops in a dense cobweb, with the backlighting causing numerous internal reflections from the drops. The second is flowers on a streambank with the glitter trail of sunlight off the water directly behind.

Good luck with it!

extreme closeup of dewdrops in spiderweb with widely varied defocus and bokeh effects

bluet Houstonia caerulea flowers on streambank against bokeh circles of glitter trail on stream

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