While it’s still today

Al Denelsbeck

Just a couple-three images from today, before it’s not anymore. I could be doing video editing, but the posts have been thin, so…

very young Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on rabbit statue
Going out to do some work on the car this morning, I espied this little guy and had to go back in to get my camera. By now you know this is a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) but to be honest, I’m not sure if this is the same guy that I photographed on the neighboring pelican statue (this is a rabbit, in case it’s unclear,) or the second anole bebby that I spotted some days back, or even a third one – it seems even smaller than I recall, especially when I expect to see them getting a little bigger each time I spot them, but who can tell? Makes no difference anyway – they’re quite welcome no matter how many, even when they seem to think that they’re not somehow. This one was already turning away to plot its escape route.

Then this evening, I was working on the computer when the lightning alert came through, and I looked at the activity band and the weather radar, suspecting there might be a show down at Jordan Lake, so I collected the Illustrious Mr Bugg and we went down there to see what was happening.

lightning over Jordan Lake
The activity was clear as we were driving down there (it takes about fifteen minutes,) but it was tapering off by the time we could set up. Still, a few good flashes were able to be captured, and this one is my favorite, even getting a little cloud definition in there from the light of the bolts.

Curiously, there was no evidence of ground strikes the entire time, nor even any recorded on the lightning trackers, but if we get nice cloud-to-cloud stuff like this, I’m good with it. The wind coming off the lake was fierce, stronger than most ocean winds that I’ve experienced, though not at all uncomfortable – the temperature dropped a couple of degrees at most while we were out there. But it had an unintended effect that I would rather not have had.

lightning image multiplied by wind shake
None of the discharges were long or flickering, as lightning will sometimes display – they were all singular flashes. So seeing this multiple image (this is almost full-resolution to illustrate it clearly) was very curious, especially since I have it in more than one frame. It’s simply evidence of the strong wind vibrating the tripod, even in the brief duration of the lightning burst, which is impressive. One frame, I might have credited to bumping the tripod, but I’m pretty careful about that and was using the remote release. The wind was so fierce, however, that conversation was challenging, so I can understand this, but I still would rather not have had it. Ah well.

Okay, back to editing…

Visibly different, part 29

Al Denelsbeck

Slightly different take on things this time, and multiple meanings to the title. We open with an image from exactly ten years today, of a species that I was not familiar with at the time.

[I admit that I initially wrote this months ago, and then realized the dates would line up and shelved the post until now, because why not?]

adult female magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis with egg cluster on underside of leaf
Finding this by chance on the underside of the leaf, back in July 2012, I was impressed with the almost-fluorescent nature of the eggs – they may, in fact, be faintly fluorescent in UV light, but I didn’t have the ability to check. This was a hint of some of the qualities of the magnolia green jumping spider (Lyssomanes viridis,) but not of the most distinctive trait. What I didn’t realize was, I’d already captured an indication of this trait two months earlier, but the connection wasn’t made yet.

In October of that same year, I found another, this time showing how their translucent body helped them hunt under leaves without being detected easily.

magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis with light showing through
Their pale color blends in well with the paler leaf undersides, and their transparency helps disguise them further, especially the telltale nature of their legs. Here you can see the eyes are a faintly different hue, but nothing of the really cool detail that I happened upon the following year.

magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis showing independent retinal motion
Most, if not all, jumping spiders have this trait, but since their corneas are fixed with the chitin, they move the interior of their eyes instead to focus and discern depth, and they can do this independently – it’s just that the light passing through the magnolia green allows us to see this. And it’s extremely weird to see the apparently floating dark discs of the retina wandering around within. Granted, you do have to be close to see this, since they top out under 10mm in body length.

But this started a quest to see more of these, perhaps even capture it on video, and as luck would have it, they seemed semi-common around the new place when we moved. I was even able to find a tiny little juvenile…

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on parsley leaf
… as well as getting the same specimen onto the measuring scale long enough for a couple of frames…

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on millimeter scale
But the real accomplishment came due to two factors: housing a few adults in a small terrarium, and digging out an old digital USB ‘microscope’ since I did not yet have a camera body with video capabilities (despite the enormous income that this site engenders.) When one of my captives snagged herself a midge that I’d introduced, I had remarkable luck in getting her out of the terrarium, leaf-sprig and all, and onto my desk in front of the camera without any of umpteen things going wrong. This allowed for some nice closeups while she concentrated on her meal.

magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis with unidentified midge prey
And she was even complacent enough for me to switch rigs.


I’m not sure I can express how lucky this was. Jumping spiders are next to fearless, but also a bit hyperactive, and within seconds will often wander off or leap away from whatever location they’re within, up to and including onto the camera itself. This necessitates capturing them and putting them back where the camera and lights are, whereupon they often seem to realize that they were already here and move even quicker to depart. Of course, being this small means that you can’t even grasp them with tweezers, but usually have to slide a small card underneath them and transport them that way, and they’re well aware that they’re not restricted in any manner – I’ve had some rodeos that would probably have been quite amusing to watch. Yet my video subject here not only remained in place while the leaf she was on flew through space, she even allowed herself to be turned around gently (this being accomplished with gentle nudges from a bit of pinestraw.)

Further accomplishments involved catching one in the final stage of molting…

magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis in later stage of molting
… and a nice closeup where one showed off her fangs (chelicerae):

magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis showing fangs
My goals, at this point, would be to get video of more complete behavior, which would require extensive stalking out in a prime location, or the construction of a more elaborate terrarium, one that would allow natural behavior and minimally restricted access for videography, a tall order. Not helped at all by the numbers of the magnolia greens being reduced the past couple of years – perhaps the neighborhood is getting a bad rap.

BIAB: You’ve been…

Al Denelsbeck

I don’t actually care if you’ve seen either or both of these videos before – they deserve another look if you have, and if you haven’t, I’m pleased to introduce you to them.


Okay, the chances are fairly good that you’d already heard that one; I’ve known about it for a few years and I don’t even do the social media horseshit thing. It’s a duo (Stjepan Hauser and Luka Šulić) known as 2Cellos, and they’ve been doing rock and pop covers on cellos for most of their career – it’s probably safe to say it is their career.

But then there’s this one:

H/T Miss Cellania

The artist’s name is Moyun, and I can’t tell you much about her except that the instrument is a guzheng, a type of 21-string Chinese zither and, according to my source, she always appears with her face covered – her official YouTube channel is here.

A small thing that I noticed: The handle that she uses at the beginning is simply a tuning wrench, and she’s re-tuning a particular string to get the tremolo down, solely because her other hand is so busy – you can see later on that she accomplishes the same thing with her left hand.

What’s impressive about both videos is that, not only do they play the notes provided by the lyrics in the original song (which, I guess I should say, is ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC,) they also play the parts of several instruments: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass (guitar,) and drums – that’s outstanding. Moyun also taps out a rhythm with the fingerpicks on the outside of the sound board.

Of course, the above artists chose this particular song because ‘Thunderstruck’ is both recognizable and iconic. It’s been said that AC/DC has been “playing the same song” for years – at least, most of their lineup is instantly recognizable as theirs – but everything came together extremely well for this track, and while Brian Johnson has a voice that sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Gonzo from The Muppet Show, he knows exactly how to use it to best effect. The lyrics, while not terribly poetic, nonetheless form a distinctive melody that’s just as much a riff as Angus Young’s lead guitar, necessitating their use in the above instrumental covers – it’s not ‘Thunderstruck’ without being able to hear, “Broke all the rules, played all the fools,” in there.

Now I need to look up if ‘Thunderstruck’ has been covered more times than ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones…

Freeze!

Al Denelsbeck

I haven’t been shooting much recently, and a longer post in is the works but might be some time yet, so we have a little trivia for the moment.

The post title was the topic of a photo challenge thing I was participating in nearly twenty years ago – god I’m old (it just doesn’t seem like that long ago, but this is from 2004, so…) The premise was, every two weeks we’d get a simple mandate, chosen by round-robin among the participants, and we’d see how each of us would decide to interpret it. As usual, I considered a few different options before settling on my final choice, then set about trying to successfully portray it. This was in Florida, in May, so the more obvious interpretations were off the table.

At the time I was using the borrowed Sony F717, and here’s the thing about the earlier digital cameras: they had a shutter lag, a brief delay between pressing the shutter release and when the photo would actually be taken. This was measured in mere fractions of a second and wasn’t variable, but when it came to crucial timing, this had to be taken into account – or otherwise dealt with. What I had planned required timing down to milliseconds, as well as an exceedingly brief exposure (‘freezing’ the action,) not to mention that I had to trigger the event and the camera manually, not quite at the same time. So it was time to get tricky.

The thing about exposure is, it does not have to be controlled by the shutter; the shutter is just a manner of letting in the right amount of light, but this can be done in other ways. I arranged my set and materials and posted a strobe unit on a light stand close to the subject, then turned off all the lights (it helped that I decided to do this at night so turning off the lights made everything quite dark.) I then set the shutter speed on the camera for a few seconds. Get everything ready, trigger the camera, initiate the event, then trigger the strobe almost immediately afterward. The brief duration of the flash served as the exposure while simultaneously freezing the event at a crucial point.

I’m being vague, so let’s see what I’m talking about.

ice cube frozen in mid-air after bouncing in water puddle
The ice cube was a given of course, but I wanted the splashing water droplets, so I had to drop it into a small puddle of water and catch it as it rebounded; very fine timing between dropping it and triggering the strobe just after it bounced. I probably don’t need to say this, but it took a lot of tries, dozens I think. A few would have been successful if the ice cube hadn’t spun madly from hitting the counter obliquely, blurring it even in the brief flash duration. Each time, I had to ensure that there was an adequate water puddle beneath it, so frequent wipe-downs and re-dribblings were required. After the initial tests, I realized the water drops would show better against a dark background and used a piece of black plastic for the backdrop. A few tests were even spent determining the proper flash strength – strobes with manually variable output are immensely useful at times, but if you lack one, remember that distance and angle can adjust the light levels, as well as something as simple as a tissue over the flash head. It would also have looked better with a truly cubic ice cube, and/or a clearer one, but this is what came out of the plastic tray in the freezer.

Did all this effort garner me money and acclaim and swooning women? Yeah, right. I think some people liked it, but I don’t recall anyone being blown away, and the numbers of newborns named, “Al,” did not jump in the following year, so make of that what you will.

Visibly different, part 28

Al Denelsbeck

great egret Ardea alba on Captiva Island beach framed among driftwood
This is from 1995, though I’m not sure which month – I have nothing, no events or even photographic references, that I can connect to dependably, yet I’m going to say spring just for the hell of it. I was on my first unaccompanied tour of Florida, at this point on a beach on Captiva Island, and recognized the framing opportunity that I had with the great egret (Ardea alba) and the driftwood (Egisse lignum) – it was among the first images that I recall taking with the intention of making something fartsy and worth framing or display. It would have helped if I’d had better light conditions, or been using much better film, or even if I’d done the negative scan better – this is a very old scan (2002 I believe,) and while I undoubtedly have the negative in a binder behind me, I really don’t feel like redoing the scan for this post, since I know there’s only so far I could bring it up anyway. Nonetheless, it did display on my ‘beach’ wall for several years, even though I look at it now and go, “Yurgh…”

Now, here’s the thing: composition-wise, I’m not sure I would do something significantly different today, given the same tableau – I like the driftwood as a framing element and the depth-of-field is fine, so I probably would only shift position slightly to de-center the egret, and perhaps wait for different head positions or another bird to fly past in the background. Color-wise, I’d certainly be getting better results, even with the slide films that I’ve largely abandoned now, and I would most likely be out near sunset for visiting this gulf-coast beach, hopefully with far less overcast conditions. I was concentrating on photography for this trip, but not meticulously planning my timing as I tend to do now. Still, this was just casual poking around, so perhaps I’d still only grab frames as they presented themselves.

Let’s jump ahead 21 years now.

sunrise on North Beach Jekyll Island among standing driftwood
This is instead Jekyll Island, Georgia, and the image still displays on our walls, a large canvas up over the fireplace. I knew the scenic opportunities of this location, and set my alarm to get up way before sunrise to have time to hike down to this location and be there at first light, which is roughly 45 minutes before the sun actually breaks the horizon. No grab shot here – I ambled back and forth a bit to find the layout that I liked best with the three trees, and even though the sunrise didn’t do anything too elaborate, shooting wide at least captured the gentle gradients of the sky, while I recognized the emphasis of the tree limbs towards the right and used that accordingly. For a lot of other frames I chose that furthest tree to use in different ways, much closer to the camera. I do have to note that the tropical storm that blew through the following year toppled all of these trees and so this particular composition isn’t going to be duplicated.

The question remains: will I one day look at this frame and go, “Yurgh,” as well? My instinct is to think, No, it’s pretty strong as an image, I won’t ever be able to dismiss this readily, but at the same time, if I did progress that far artistically, I’d be pleased with myself. Only time will tell.

*

[I have to note that I went to three different online English-to-Latin translators to produce a Latin name from “drift wood” up there, and two said summa silvam while one said egisse lignum, which I liked better. A botanist might tell me that the real name is Juniperus communis mortid or something, but whatevs.]

You guys are late

Al Denelsbeck

I think, anyway.

Over at the neighborhood pond the other evening, right as the beavers would be making their appearance (and were,) my attention was distracted by a pair of subjects quite close by, and so I switched focus over to them.

pair of juvenile green herons Butorides virescens newly fledged
This is a pair of juvenile green herons (Butorides virescens,) and judging from their appearance and behavior, they’d recently left the nest – like, that day, I’m guessing. This was surprising to me, because I thought the species would have nested and fledged out weeks ago, but perhaps this is a second nest after an unsuccessful first? I’d already seen evidence this year of young ones sticking around the tree that hosted a nest in years past, but this was in an entirely different location, and I haven’t (yet) spotted this nest even though, given their predilection to remain locked to this one longneedle pine tree, it’s in there somewhere. Regardless, the video does a better job of illustration, despite my horrible videography skills.

[If it seems like I’m terrible at finding/tracking, bear in mind that I’m still required to use the LCD on the back of the camera for video work, and this destroys my aiming instincts, made much worse by working at high magnification; I’m a little slicker with my eye to the viewfinder at least, and I might get better with more practice. While I have an external monitor that I could be using, this would likely make it even worse because it would be significantly misaligned from the camera and lens axis. Meanwhile the microphone, while on a separate arm and a vibration isolating mount, nonetheless picks up a little too much camera noise, especially from zooming and loosening the ballhead lock, and I’m not sure how much I can do about that, but I’m looking into it.]

We’ll close with one of the images that you hear being snapped during the video recording, a portrait that seems way out of proportion to all the framing adjustments I was making because of numerous intervening branches and the constant repositioning of the birds, not to mention the fading light. I’m good with it.

pair of juvenile green herons Butorides virescens posing quite well

Sorting finds n+1

Al Denelsbeck

It’s happened before: when sorting through recent photos to see what is discarded and what is kept (and subsequently sorted into appropriate categories,) I will find a photo or three that I didn’t feature back around the time that I took them, but feel they deserve some recognition. This happens often enough, in fact, that I decided to make it a category, but since I don’t know how many times I’ve already done it, we’re just assigning that unknown value to n and going from there.

[Does anyone know why the first variable presented is almost always ‘n‘? Is there a clever reason behind this, or is it just short for “number”? Please make up something else if this really is the answer.]

Anyway, I had to go through 1,055 images tonight, but it went quicker than normal because of the large percentage that fit into just two categories: Birds and Mammals. My Mammals folder, always a rather thin one, has expanded nicely courtesy of the beavers, but more on them will be along shortly. For now, we have birds.

great blue heron Ardea herodias silhouetted against sunset ripple patterns
I could have saved this one for the end-of-the-month abstract, but I think I’ve already done one like this – I know I used a similar image for a bullshit post. I just liked how a bare amount of facial detail from this great blue heron (Ardea herodias) remained visible in these lighting conditions.

Next up, we have a cooperative juvenile bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus):

juvenile bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus glaring down from above
I’ve featured images of this same eagle before – maybe even in two separate posts – but I liked how this very tight crop still held up in sharpness and detail, and gives a very different impression from the reality of a remarkably mellow raptor.

And finally, an osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

osprey Pandion haliaetus almost directly overhead preparing to dive
Offered in contrast to the previous image, this isn’t too majestic or noble, and that’s the point – I liked the awkwardness of it. It comes from being underneath the bird as it prepared to dive after a fish, cropped tighter for the drama… or, whatever. It has the look of someone who has definitely bounced too high and not quite accurately on the trampoline. But that goes without saying.

By the way, I always have something to listen to when I’m sorting, and this last batch took one episode of The Geologic Podcast and half an episode of the original Hitchhiker’s Guide. However, there are still 204 video clips awaiting my attention, and those take a lot longer…

A bit more useful

Al Denelsbeck

Feeling bad about not illustrating scale very well a few posts back, I revisited the same subjects (well, two of the three) to do a better job. And got a bonus as well.

This still remains kind of a pain in the ass, however – closeup video at night has a lot of issues, and the 7D really isn’t optimized for this. But it’ll be a long time (e.g., significant income) before I decide to upgrade to serious video equipment, so this is what we have for now.

A small side note: At one point the other day, I’d seen a bird dart over to snag something near the Japanese maple that has been hosting the anoles, actually crashing against one of the low branches that I’d seen an anole on, and I was a little worried that the bird has just snagged my photo subject, though I’d checked carefully only minutes before and saw no sign of it nearby; more likely the bird was after a dragonfly. Still, this is what happens in nature, so we’ll see how long and how often I can find any of these again.

I have other video coming up soon-ish – still hoping to get some more clips to add to it. You know where to find it when it appears.

Visibly different, part 27

Al Denelsbeck

yearling white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus peeking from roadside
My oldest image of a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) dates from… actually, I have only a vague idea of when this was taken, which is somewhere around 1990-93, and no recollection of where. I scanned the negative a few weeks back and now can’t recall if the frame edges were rounded (which would indicate that it was taken with the Wittnauer) or square (Pentax) – probably the former, given the distance and quality. It was a grab shot taken from the car, but really, that’s all that can be said.

Given how common this species is across the continent, I have surprisingly few images of them – far, far fewer than of mantids and treefrogs. And among those are few behavioral images, which I really should correct, but deer don’t motivate me as much, perhaps because so many people have photos of them that I aim for slightly more obscure species. Nonetheless, the quality has improved over the years.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn approaching up driveway
Dating from 2007 now, this was taken with the Canon Pro-90 IS, cropped a bit. Another grab shot from the car, but this time in the driveway on my way into work while a curious fawn slowly approached the vehicle; this makes it, like, three times closer than the above frame. From what I’ve observed, fawns seem to need to learn the ‘headlong flight’ behavior that the adults often exhibit, and when young enough will show little discretion, but this may be an aspect of the trait they possess when very young, where they will lay down in a spot of their mother’s choosing and remain there regardless while the mother forages, presenting a frequent issue with people ‘rescuing’ ‘abandoned’ fawns. When they’re old enough to get around dependably, then they learn to flee questionable circumstances.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus doe at edge of property
Now we’re up to 2010, using the Canon Digital Rebel at the very edge of my rental property. Deer were semi-frequent visitors, but again, I didn’t spend a lot of time chasing images. This doe was quite close and I was using a longer lens (the 75-300mm,) but this is also cropped a little – it appeared in the early days of the blog in a slightly different framing.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck, about six points, looking at photographer from developing fog
Perhaps the most fartistic of the collection, which isn’t saying much at all, this dates from last year – I just liked the twilight fog and the white clover flowers. This was now taken with the Canon 7D and the Tamron 150-600mm, and by all rights it should have been worse than this given the poor light and long focal length, handheld well after sunset. Still didn’t achieve a really scenic background, however.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn peering from trees
And this… is just eight days old, quite likely the same fawn as seen vaguely here, though no adults were in sight. I spotted the fawn (well, no, it was already spotted) just outside the fence as it fled, and knowing that it wouldn’t go too far before pausing to assess the situation, I fetched the camera – same rig as the previous image – and quietly followed its path, getting rewarded with a couple of frames of suspicious looks before the fawn fled again. The light quality, the focus isolation from the background, and that teen-hipster beard all make it work much better than the others.

The major differences? By the largest margin, just the accumulation of opportunities. Again, these may have demonstrated much more improvement, within a shorter time span, had I dedicated more effort towards pursuing the species; great images can just happen, but making the effort to improve the odds will usually mean they happen much more frequently. I know that’s not a really deep insight, but occasionally we need the motivation to make the effort. Believe me, once you snag some wonderful shots after spending a lot of time in the pursuit, it gets easier to do – you have proof that it works.

Meanwhile, they’re all dead-on portraits, aren’t they?

Got enough?

Al Denelsbeck

I was busy taking care of things in the backyard when I realized that the calls of a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) seemed a bit too clear. It’s quite common to hear them as they wheel overhead marking territory, but this was fixed and quite close. It took no effort at all to spot it sitting on a dead branch just off the back of the property.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus being obvious and complacent
This is fairly uncommon; unlike the red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered tend to be a bit more secretive, alighting in thicker foliage where they’re not easily spotted, and I’ve spent plenty of time trying to find one that I knew, from the calls, was right there and yet couldn’t quite lay eyes on it. This one probably couldn’t have been more obvious if it tried, and I was in plain sight myself no more than 15 meters away. It stayed put as I got the camera, and even as I returned to my chores.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus from a different angle
The one thing it didn’t do was offer up any calls while I was shooting, the only evidence that it even recognized my presence. Well, there was another bit, and we’re about to get to that. Eight minutes have passed between the first image and this one, and you can see how the sun has moved on and thrown more shadow on my friend here, but at least I got a nice frame with some lighting into that eye. It hadn’t moved – the change in perspective is due to shooting from different parts of the yard, which really isn’t that big, so you get a faint impression of how close the hawk was, even though these frames are significantly cropped.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus making eye contact with photographer
Eventually it made eye contact, though even this wasn’t an indication of anxiety because it remained where it was – it spent far more time looking over its shoulder at something behind it than down at me, though I saw nothing back there myself. Most likely, it was hearing something stirring in the undergrowth and was watching for prey.

Given that this was only 20 meters, if that, from the nest that I featured six years ago, it remains possible that this was one of the young raised therein, or even a parent – but not likely. Six years is a long life for most birds in the wild, not to mention that we’ve always had plenty of the species around, so who knows? So although I haven’t spent a lot of time the past few days in chasing pics, I can present a handful that represents a little activity. And I’m working on some stuff that will appear here eventually – just want to get it right.

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