Visibly different, part 13

Al Denelsbeck

So this one is cheating slightly, which you’ll understand in a moment.

Many years back, my first digital camera was the Canon Pro 90 IS, a more touristy model than serious, partially because that’s all that I was going to spend at the time, partially because I was still wedded to slide film. But after shooting quite a few images with it, I noticed something a little curious, and ran a couple of tests. The image below probably isn’t the one that sparked the curiosity – I honestly can’t remember which one did – but it illustrates the trait well enough.

female Widow Skimmer Libellula luctuosa on grape leaves
The dragonfly is a female widow skimmer (Libellula luctuosa,) but that’s not what clued me in – instead, it was much more subtle, but the kind of thing that you might recognize when evaluating images for their value. Notice how the foliage beneath the right wing is completely blown out, over-exposed into pure white? That’s actually a bit extreme, and not due to contrast or saturation settings within the camera. From time to time, I’d notice that sunlit leaves, almost to the exception of anything else, would get washed out in the images, and so I did a few experiments. My suspicion proved correct: the sensor itself was sensitive a little outside of the range of visible light into the infra-red spectrum, and so things that reflected a lot of infra-red were getting a little extra exposure. This particular photo even holds a more distinct clue, but really, I only noticed it when doing this post.

shadow of dragonfly wing reducing infra-red reflection
The blue arrow is pointing out the shadow of the dragonfly’s wing, where the exposure has dropped back down into range and shows green now. The wing, being almost perfectly transparent, shouldn’t be enough to reduce the light transmitted through it that much – but it likely does reduce or block infra-red.

I used to spend a lot of time on photography newsgroups, which were a wealth of information, and so I knew that most digital sensors were capable of capturing what’s called near-infrared, up to perhaps 1000 nanometers (nm) or so – our eyesight stops somewhere around 700. And the sensors today are still sensitive into this range – they’re just blocked with an IR filter within the camera body itself, but the Pro 90 lacked that filter. We’ll compare this to an image taken several years later with the Canon Digital Rebel (300D.)

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis dangling from underside of leaf
Of course, I have no images back-to-back, so I had to find one in similar conditions, but this is largely the same, shooting into open shade with the camera meter registering enough to get the shadowed areas in detail, while still having bright sunlit areas in the frame. But now they’re not bleached out, neither the paler undersides of the leaves nor the seed pods from what I suspect are hibiscus, there in the foreground. Because the Digital Rebel has that crucial IR filter.

But the lack thereof allowed my to use the Pro 90 to capture infra-red images, with the use of specific IR filters – technically, these were IR-Pass filters, blocking nearly all visible light while allowing IR to pass through. With those, I could produce lots of different effects, in the right conditions.

Jones Lake State Park in infra-red
In fact, there are companies out there that will convert your digital SLR into a dedicated infra-red camera, by opening it up and removing the IR filter in front of the sensor – or you can do this yourself, if you feel comfortable/daring. Since there are numerous IR-Pass filters out there for different wavelengths, it’s better not to embed one within the camera, but just use it in front of the lens instead. And because the sensor picks it up just fine, the camera can still autofocus, though since IR is significantly weaker/less plentiful than visible light, the exposure times lengthen significantly and a tripod is always recommended. Of course, making such a change to your camera means it’s worthless for ‘normal’ images, so better to adapt an older body, but if you’re intrigued, there’s plenty of information out there about it. Maybe one of these days I’ll convert the old Rebel over…

The return of Monday monochrome

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been slowly building a small collection of experimental monochrome images and figured they might as well show up today, because who wouldn’t appreciate more grey on a Monday? Plus, it’s been a while since the last one, though less so if you count the crossovers…

Anyway, here’s what I’ve come up with. Promise you won’t laugh.

obscured sunrise off Jekyll Island in monochrome
I don’t remember exactly what I did for this one, since it was a while ago, but from playing just now, I believe this is a blend of the Green and Blue channels after doing the channel separation thing, though I also did a little constrained contrast tweaking and dodged the area around the gulls to make them stand out slightly better. The color original is here, by the way. Each channel had strengths in different regions of the frame, so to bring it out the way that I liked, I couldn’t pick just one, but the main focus was certainly the contrast around the obscured sun.

sun peeking past Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Red channel
The color register of the original is a little wonky, coming from a slide film that didn’t mesh well with conditions, but selecting just the Red channel worked out. If your monitor gamma is adjusted right (or at least, like mine,) you should just see the windows on the shadowed side of the lighthouse (this being the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla, NC.)

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea in Blue channel
Juvenile green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) have a distinct iridescence to their skin, especially when seen close, and the Blue channel was the one that brought this out, this time around – many times, the Blue channel is blotchy and low in detail, which can still be seen if you look at the background.

light through giant leaves in Green channel
I did the light coming through these giant leaves as an abstract, many years back, I think in the butterfly house of the Museum of Life & Science, but it does okay in monochrome too, the Green channel this time. The original was all green, which might make you think that the green channel would be overpowered, but it all depends on the shade of green. Actually, few things that we might photograph come up in the unadulterated hue of green that makes up the RGB spectrum, so the channel usually doesn’t get too contrasty. Red is another matter, though.

bare branches against textured ice in Green channel
This one is also just the Green channel, though the original is monochromatic blue in tone. Just goes to show you…

[Actually, I boosted contrast a little too. Sue me.]

Now a demonstration.

autumn tree view with greyscale comparison
The one on the left is the color original of course, a slide from over two decades ago within Duke Forest, while the right side is just converted to greyscale. Now let’s look at what only the Red channel does.

autumn trees in Red channel
Definitely added a little more contrast in appropriate areas, and gives more of the impression of fall colors than just using greyscale. This is why I always encourage experimenting.

yellow autumn leaves in Blue channel
I liked the stark effect of this one. The original had very yellow leaves, a bit backlit, so using the Blue channel meant that the leaves dropped into darkness (Yellow is the opposite/complement of Blue in the RGB scale) – except where the white light shone through, since white is all of the colors at ‘full strength,’ the tops of their ranges. I tweaked contrast a little to make it starker and more otherworldly.

[By the way, I tried out many of the images on that linked page with channel clipping. Some had less of an effect than you might think, while others have appeared before as monochrome versions.]

sun peeking around Squire's Castle in Red channel
I was thinking I’d shown more of this castle previously, but apparently not, or at least I can’t find it if I did. This is Squire’s Castle in Ohio, done in just the Red channel to drop the details of those rock walls to the lower registers. Is it ominous, foreboding, or creepy? That’s kind of what I was trying for, starting from the imposing perspective of the original, but I’m not the proper judge of whether I succeeded. I’ll take a lack of comments to indicate that I did a fantastic, in fact insuperable, job of it.

And my favorite, at least from this round of experiments.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis deep in shade of ginger lily, in Red channel
So, one of the things that I intensely dislike about the new LED monitors is how sensitive their apparent gamma is to viewing angle – look at them from a position above or below the ideal perpendicular sightline, and the brightness changes drastically, so I have to remind myself while editing to sit at the right angle. This one is supposed to be very subtle, but if I slump a little, the Carolina anole (Anolis carolinesis) in there practically vanishes, much more so than in the original. This is the Red channel, by the way – the anole almost completely disappears in the Blue channel.

There – that should satiate those greyscale cravings for a little while. Unless you’re really weird.

Turtles and friends

Al Denelsbeck

pair of eastern river cooters Pseudemys concinna concinna basking on trunk
The other day the Ineluctable Mr Bugg and I went out to one of the many trails along the Eno River to see what was stirring for spring. The answer: turtles. Lots and lots of turtles. With just a bit else for variety.

To the best that I can determine, they were all eastern river cooters (Pseudemys concinna concinna,) though telling these apart from the yellow-bellied sliders that are common in the area is tricky – mostly, I’m going on the less-domed, more-flared shells. Well, that, and the fact that they were inhabiting a decently flowing river and not, you know, a pond that is the more-favored haunt of the slider. Either can be found in both of course, but the tendency is towards the cooters to be in rivers.

probably eastern river cooter Pseudemys concinna concinna showing colors under surface
This is a fairly common thing when trying to identify species, really: traits to differentiate one from another are “usually, but not always,” and the photos chosen to illustrate the type aren’t always much help. It’s one of the reasons that I rarely use one source when doing identifications. The exception is BugGuide.net, which can be very specific.

juvenile eastern river cooter Pseudemys concinna concinna basking high on snags
This particular juvenile, spotted from behind perched high on some snags, appears quite surprised when we snuck around front for the portrait angle, but it was probably just belching. We made with the stealthy-stealthy moves to get this angle, later realizing that it likely wasn’t necessary at all – the turtle showed no signs of abandoning its perch, and remained in the exact same location on our return loop over an hour later.

The night had been quite cool, with the chill extending into the morning for a bit, so the bright sunlight was enticing to the turtles, gathering energy from the solar heating of their dark carapaces, and anything that let them get out of the water was in use.

line of eastern river cooters Pseudemys concinna concinna crowding on a log
The degree to which they will dive into the water on approach will vary, often depending on how used to people they are and how often there are threats. Here, they were somewhere in the middle, usually abandoning their perches on approach but occasionally, if we were cautious, waiting it out to see if we made more ominous moves. At the pond near Walkabout Estates, the turtles are very quick to get into the water, despite seeing people going past all day long; the difference being (to my mind, anyway,) half of those people have dogs with them. Above, you can see the ripples from one escapee, though the others were less paranoid. Let’s go in closer on that big one.

eastern river cooter Pseudemys concinna concinna showing heavily-weathered carapace
The light angle was ideal to highlight the condition of the carapace, though whether this was from past attacks, disease, or simply age (or a combination of those) I can’t really say. It’s probably the most weathered/damaged carapace that I’ve seen on a local species, however. It was also the biggest specimen, implying a decent age, but the cooters don’t show aging rings on their scutes like the box turtles do, so I can’t judge a specific age from this pic.

Virginia spring beauty Claytonia virginica and wild violet Viola papilionacea blooms peeking from ground clutter
In scattered places, some of the early wildflowers were appearing, like this Virginia spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) appearing in front of some wild violets (Viola papilionacea.) Elsewhere, patches of bluets could be found, and the mayapples were blossoming as well, but the overall landscape still looks a bit barren, faint hazes of green appearing atop a background of grey-brown branches and last year’s grasses.

Beneath one flower, a snail looked as if it might be feeding on a fallen petal.

unidentified snail feeding on old flower petal
I mean, it was definitely feeding at least from the surface of the petal, but I wasn’t sure the snail (and I’m not about to try identifying it) wasn’t actually swallowing the petal itself. There appeared to be a faint pinkish cast to the body, signifying the petal fragments within, but this was the only angle that I could get and it’s inconclusive. Other frames suffer from that ‘purple fringing’ around the highlights that digital sensors can be prone to, perhaps exacerbated by the Mamiya 80mm macro lens that I’d switched to after this one, so they were a bit misleading.

Spurred on by my spotting of a northern water snake less than a week before, we kept our eyes open, but in three hours of hiking along the riverbank no sign of snakes was even found. That is, until we were on the return leg and just before climbing the hill back to the parking area.

queen snake Regina septemvittata basking on river's edge
Queen snakes (Regina septemvittata) never get very large and this was a typical specimen, no more than 60cm in overall length, emulating the turtles to get some free energy. We managed a fairly close approach without spooking it, though small movements indicated that it wasn’t asleep (snakes have no eyelids so the eyes are no clue.) I eventually dropped down a bit lower for a different perspective.

queen snake Regina septemvittata with water sparkles in background
The sparkles were wholly intentional, but I shot four frames with distinctly different effects in each without changing anything – that’s just how variable the water can be. Queen snakes are one of the water snake species in NC, completely harmless and unassuming, often found basking on low branches above the water – I’ve never seen one more than a couple of meters from water, really.

We’re going slightly out of order here for a moment – I do hope that you will eventually find it in your heart to forgive me.

Back at the neighborhood pond many kilometers from the river, we did a quick pass to see what was happening. More turtles of course, these being the sliders, but a significant increase in cormorants.

six female double-crested cormorants Nannopterum auritum poised on pilings
We always have two or three double-crested cormorants (Nannopterum auritum) show up in the spring, but this is the first that I’ve seen six, and the favored pilings were in full use. These appear to all be female – really, the males are a lot more scarce. I’ll have to be making more visits to see how it goes.

And finally, my favorite frame from the river, doing the ‘strong close’ thing that I meant to mention in the previous post on composition and forgot – maybe I’ll go back and edit it, because it’s an important point – I should consider keeping notes. But anyway, a capture from early in the day.

belted kingfisher Megaceryle alcyon perched on distant branch
I’m still after a decent portrait of a belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon,) and this is a quite distant specimen shot at 600mm and tightly cropped – decent, but I want better. They’re very spooky in this area and definitely avoid close approaches, and our attempts at stalking were for naught – we were too clearly visible on the bank. Only once have I had one perch close by, this being when my camera was firmly attached to a tripod and unable to aim at the branch directly overhead where the kingfisher had just appeared. I tried very slowly detaching the camera for the shot, but I was far too close for this and the bird fled. Someday.

On composition, part 31: Format

Al Denelsbeck

This is somewhat of an odd one, but actually pertinent to not what you take photos of, but how you use them afterward. It’s something that I face constantly, mostly subconsciously, when doing the blog, so let’s bring it out in the open now.

If you’re doing a gallery show, or a book of your own or something similar, you can pick and choose the formats, the proportions and ratios (height:width,) and even the media that you like, which can give you options for dynamic range and textures and so on. But most of us don’t do that often/at all, and instead we’re displaying photos on social media (*blerk*) or on websites and blogs and so on. And these often impose subtle influences on our work, which we can take advantage of with a little forethought.

For instance, while computer monitors tend to be horizontally-oriented, the ‘landscape’ idea of width being noticeably greater than height, smutphones are most often the opposite, held vertically largely through force of habit (also influenced by the software thereon.) This blog, like many, is a columnar layout, which tends to favor vertical photo layouts over horizontal – I can keep the same pixel-width for most images to ‘fill’ the column, but for horizontal images, this means the vertical dimension (and thus the overall size of the image) is smaller. So vertical images just display larger and more impressively, which doesn’t bother me too much because I lean more towards vertical compositions anyway. Panoramic style images, where the horizontal dimension is better than twice the vertical, suffer the most of course.

fishing boats seen in front of rising sun, North Topsail Beach
This has an affect on the subject matter, because while the original photo may have been composed horizontally and well-balanced to use the frame to advantage, when constrained down to a particular display, the main subject might get reduced down so much that it has minimal impact, perhaps even losing crucial details. Then, we end up deciding if we chance this to keep the strong composition that we created, or crop the image down, losing various surrounding details, to enlarge to subject/focal point enough to retain the details of that. I do this too often: trying to decide if I want something fartistic (keeping the stronger composition) or illustrative (allowing more detail to be seen on the subject.) It often depends on the point of the post – what I’m saying with it, what I need to show, and so on. Even with insect subjects, I often try for portrait angles and decent layouts, including the surroundings dynamically and so on, but when it comes to trying to illustrate, the composition often goes out the window to slap a subject in the center of the frame with little else to be seen.

And of course, if we’re trying to accommodate smutphones (I’m usually not, because they’re stupid and because I write too much to hold the attention of the smutphone crowd,) then we’re further constrained by the layout and the size of the screen itself, not favoring anything at all where the detail drops smaller, just because it simply won’t be seen. Yes, the user can pinch and scroll and get the effect we might have been after, but this is a) if they choose to make the effort, which isn’t the case too often, and b) if the effect isn’t altered or even ruined by ‘zooming in’ on small portions of the the image.

A little cheat in here: On the occasions that the image displays a lot of detail that simply doesn’t work well when constrained by the online dimensions, you can upload a much larger version to reside on the server and provide a link to this that anyone can click on. That way they can get the full effect as desired, but you don’t wreck the page layout.

Scrolling can be an issue. An image with a strong composition and a vertical layout can lose the impact when it stretches offscreen so the entire image cannot be seen at once, and because of our left-to-right, top-to-bottom culture, photos with the strongest part of the image towards the top almost present a disappointment through scrolling – the act doesn’t reveal any surprises, any improvements. It’s sometimes better to compose in such a way that the strongest element is towards the bottom of the frame, so the act of scrolling results in a discovery of sorts.

unidentified mantis on Dracaena grass
Worrying too much about this is pointless, however; there are too many formats, too many ways to see something online, and getting the same effect from all of them is impossible. We can’t require a browser width or ratio, we can’t force someone to use their phone horizontally (which is a shame – more on this in a moment,) we can’t pick image sizes or dimensions that work either way. And usually, the impact isn’t significant no matter what we do, amounting to a minor affect on impact and impression to the viewer – we can aim to give our images an edge, but it’s a minor little edge.

ring-tailed lemur Lemur catta portraitLess-than-column-width images, which may be placed alongside text (or ads or whatever,) present their own little foibles. Many images have a ‘direction,’ most noticeable if there are eyes in the image looking left or right, but even just the subject placement or the lines of the composition can influence us to believe it’s facing ‘left.’ As such, we typically want the direction to lead us ‘into’ the page or text, facing the center rather than the outer edge, though on occasion (like a book layout,) such implied direction can lead us on to the next page. Overall, however, picking the placement of the image to take advantage of this direction is better. Know, too, that people will usually see the image before they read the text alongside, so if the text really should precede someone seeing the image, don’t place it alongside, but above – sometimes well above, if the ‘surprise’ or ‘reveal’ is crucial.

[I have this thing constantly where, with text alongside of an image, I want to convey a description or idea before moving on to the next image, but don’t always have enough to fill the adjacent column space. This means either injecting a page break, leaving a big empty space below the text to get to the bottom margin of the image, or getting more wordy to fill that space. Sometimes both.]

I find myself now, while out shooting, thinking about how I’m likely to use particular images and trying to accommodate those uses. However, I also recommend being open to other uses as well, because we may always run into a client that requires a different format. While many subjects might lend themselves towards just a vertical composition, we can lose a sale if the image won’t work horizontally. Also, as I discovered when shooting weddings, the common print sizes restricted how I could use the frame: an 8×10 print is a different ratio than the camera produced (which translates more to an 8×12,) so ‘filling the frame’ would prevent it being used as an 8×10 print without cropping off something crucial, so shooting a little wide – letting the subject be a little smaller in the frame and including more space outside – allowed for cropping to common print sizes, as well as occasionally converting a vertical composition to a horizontal one, and vice versa. I’ve even discovered after the fact that they sometimes work better that way.

Don't shoot phone video vertically dipshitHowever, shoot video horizontally. Always. All video players are horizontal, so playing a vertical video always results in large blank areas to the sides, as well as reducing the video detail down to the shorter dimension of the player. So what if the subject is vertical? Every last filmmaker has been coping with the same idea for the past century and has always made it work, even making their screen ratios wider, so we can manage to do the same. Use a vertical pan if necessary, but turn that goddamned phone sideways.

Something that’s almost impossible to accommodate is dynamic range and gamma. Dynamic range is the range of brightnesses available throughout the image, from pure black to pure white, and gamma is closely related but refers to how the monitor/screen/jumbotron renders it. Everyone doing photography should have their monitor pretty carefully color-corrected and adjusted for the best gamma results, but this doesn’t mean that every viewer has done this, or even knows what it is. [One of the reasons that I recommend against judging exposures by the LCD on the back of the camera is that gamma is often not ideal, nor is it adjustable.] So while we may have an image that relies on subtle variations, these may be lost to an unknown percentage of viewers. There’s not a lot that we can do about this, other than either avoiding using such images or simply not worrying about it. The third option, which I employ from time to time, is to tell people how much they’re missing out if they can’t see all the details…

Edit 03/27: I can’t believe I missed this, but there’s a concept that’s used a lot and demonstrated to have a noticeable impact, and that’s the “strong open, strong close” idea. Basically, it helps to open and close our post/page/gallery/etc with compositionally, artistically strong images – good first impression, good last impression. Of the two, I’d say that the strong close is more important, and something that we can ‘build up to’ through the other images or text. And of course, the larger these can display, the better – not the place for a half-column image. As with everything, this shouldn’t be treated as a rule, but having the tendency is better than not having it at all. We can choose our images, and even the pacing of the text, with this in mind.

Are there ideal dimensions? Like, how big should an image measure? In short, there’s no simple answer – smutphones of course have ridiculously small screens while monitors have been getting far larger, diverging the display options tremendously. I’ve fixed a maximum width for the blog at 750 pixels, up slightly from the old standard a few years ago of 730, and I could probably go larger easily, but something to remember is that even people with huge monitors don’t often use a browser at “full screen,” nor are a lot of websites capable of accommodating this anyway – many are constrained in pixel width (which I don’t recommend, because it serves to keep your site displaying small when the monitors get bigger.) When sending by e-mail, my maximum dimension is 1200 pixels, allowing people to see detail as needed while still not glutting an inbox with enormous file sizes. When hosting one’s own site, bear in mind that space is potentially an issue, but even if ‘unlimited,’ load times for pages or galleries or even back-end stuff grows with larger files, so best not to go any larger than necessary. Especially when uploading to any outside hosting site, know what the display dimensions are and keep your images (and most notably videos!) sized close to this – perhaps slightly larger to account for their compression algorithms, but definitely do not upload full-resolution, full-size images or video to such hosts – all you’ll do is waste time and space. Even for websites, keeping the resolution down below a certain level helps prevent ‘right-clicking’ and image theft, especially of anyone thinking of making a print from your work.

All that said, I hope that this at least provided some pointers and guidelines, and if I missed anything, don’t hesitate to say so. Good luck!

American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua leaf on dark water with starburst reflections

Have to keep you informed

Al Denelsbeck

Just so you know, a year ago today I had the 2,000th post here on Walkabout, and this – this is the 2,285th.

That means that, should I keep this rate up, it’ll only be 2½ more years to reach the 3,000th post! The time just flies by, doesn’t it?

Regrettably, I have not gone back to redo the theme music despite intentions – I had set it aside after that post for a breather, which is apparently still taking place. This is in the face of reminding myself, every time I use it for a podcast or video, that I want to redo it. Boy, that just ruined the high that I had from the post count…

But while we’re here, have a pic, from six years ago today – ah, I remember it well!

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on Bartlett pear blossoms
[No I don’t…]

Visibly different, part 12

Al Denelsbeck

distant green heron Butorides virescens at top of branch
Our opening image this week comes from a negative from 1998, and I could almost give you the exact date – I know that it was on the grounds of the (then) Carnivore Preservation Trust on the one day that I volunteered with them. I had intended to do a lot more, but things changed. Anyway, this was my first photo, and first look, at a green heron (Butorides virescens,) having seen it cruise overhead and recognizing that it wasn’t the size, shape, or flight pattern of anything that I was familiar with. The range was extreme, and even with the Canon 75-300 lens I couldn’t get a decent look until I examined the prints after developing, but I was savvy enough at the time to say, “Hey, that’s a green heron, cool.”

A year or so later, I had done the switch to slide film and was visiting the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro, and from the walkway over a border marshland I spotted another – well, okay, it could be the same one, I can’t say definitively, but I’m going with a different one. I was a bit closer this time, but still using the 75-300.

green heron Butorides virescens foraging in marsh
Little better idea of the plumage now, and I watched for a couple of minutes in the hopes that it would snag a minnow while down there fishing, but no dice. The 75-300 wasn’t the sharpest lens that I’d ever owned, but it didn’t do too badly at that, especially for something that a) I could afford at the time, and b) I could carry around easily. Let’s go in for a closer crop.

green heron Butorides virescens in closer crop
That’s not bad resolution, especially handheld at 300mm, so I’m not complaining, but I did eventually trade up, both to the Canon 100-300 L (much older but specifically aimed more towards professional use and surprisingly sharp for such a light lens,) and to the Sigma 170-500, far larger and heavier, and a decent-but-not-great performer. Nowadays, the long lens is the Tamron 150-600 G2, which is even larger and heavier but pretty badass for a non-professional grade lens. This means expensive, but not as expensive as the top offerings in that focal length. And that was what I was using for the next image.

green heron Butorides virescens looking globular
Really, I’ll take any excuse to repost this portrait…

The longer lens of course helped, but what really helped is living very close to a pond where green herons (among others) resided during the summer, so I could visit frequently and spend time out there. Even with that, it took me a few years to get really nice portraits, as well as action sequences. The only other thing that I’ll credit this to is knowing that the species might be around and thus looking carefully at ideal locations, which allowed me to spot this one before I spooked it off. Most of the credit, however, goes to luck and perseverance, so if at any point in time you find yourself lamenting that your shots don’t look as good as someone else’s, recognize that often enough such shots are largely due to putting in the hours. Always work to improve the odds, of course, but know that a lot of success simply comes, “eventually.”

Early to the party

Al Denelsbeck

Yesterday, The Girlfriend and I were checking out the progress of various plants in the yard when I glanced down at one of the rosemary bushes and stopped dead. This particular bush had a little extra alongside, one of the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) egg sacs/oothecas that I’d collected less than a month ago, affixed to a tall stick planted almost in contact with the bush. And that egg sac, against all expectations, was hatching out. In fact, I caught it in the latest stages, but soon enough to get a little action anyway.

newborn Chinese mantids Tenodera sinensis clustered on end of branch
Now, this is way early, close to a month before the earliest for any previous years witnessed, and roughly two months before some of the latest ones, so it’s safe to say that I wasn’t expecting this at all. There’s still some concern over getting another overnight frost in the next month or so, but they didn’t bother checking with me on the best season for emerging so they’re on their own.

I was a bit past ideal time to capture this, since it seems most had already hatched out and were scampering about on the branch that I’d attached the egg sac to, as well as on the rosemary itself, but a decent cluster of them were still dangling beneath the sac while they got their legs in operation and detached themselves from their suspending filaments.

newborn Chinese mantids Tenodera sinensis starting to become mobile
I was shooting by ambient light, having detached the flash because I was using the tripod for video work at the same time and the macro rig uses the same quick-change plate – maybe someday I’ll correct that, but it wasn’t today. So I was mostly shooting wide open and thus focus was a little short, but adequate to the task anyway (and I’ve got a ton of other photos from previous years’ sessions anyway.)

newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis on egg sac still showing faint swelling of forehead
As I’ve illustrated previously, they emerge with a bullet-shaped, swollen noggin with only dark spots delineating the eyes, but this swelling soon goes down while the eyes stand out – this one’s almost completely through its transition. Is this fluid that fills out the eyes? Got me – I doubt I could effectively dissect one to answer that question even if I was so inclined, and so far, no source that I’ve found has provided the solution either.

But as you know if you read the post right before this, I shot some video clips of this.


The day was pretty warm, but a seriously gusty wind was at work, not that they seemed to notice very much – the ones still dangling were getting quite a ride, but once on their feet they weren’t hampered visibly by the wind at all. Just in the short time that I was out there, most of the mantids were dispersing from the stick-and-sac out across the rosemary, which you can see here for scale (if you’re familiar with rosemary, anyway.)

newborn Chinese mantids Tenodera sinensis dispersing among rosemary
In fact, given the wind, I was a little surprised to find that only one seemed to have gotten entangled (besides the curious entrapment of the one in the video) – often it’s more, and a couple of years ago the number of newborns that did not survive the hatching process was much higher. We’ll get a little peek here.

rescued newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis with another entangled in background
Front and center is the one that I released from the egg sac, quite mobile now but still with its two hindmost legs tangled by a bit of filament – I felt pretty comfortable that it would disentangle itself within the day. Not so much the one in the background, visible all throughout the video; all legs were wrapped together with that one, likely from a gust of wind at the wrong time, and I wasn’t about to try releasing it. I’ve tackled it before, and the legs are so fragile while the filament is so tough that the risk of injury is very high – you’ve seen how big the scalpel blade is, and that’s the smallest thing I’ve got to manage the job. The filaments are but a few hundredths of a millimeter in thickness, so even seeing them takes serious magnification – I’m afraid that one was on its own.

Notably, by early yesterday evening, not one mantis could be seen with careful examination of the rosemary bush, and that was by both The Girlfriend and I. Where they’d all gotten to so quickly, I couldn’t say, but the temperature was already dropping so I’m surmising that they were sheltering down in the leaves and litter at the base. We’ll see what shows up in the next week.

Meanwhile, I’d started the day off with the idea that I’d photograph the pair of downy woodpeckers that may be making a nest nearby, but that got sidelined by this (and various household things.) So there may be still more pics coming soon. Ah, spring!

Had I known…

Al Denelsbeck

Today, I suddenly discover, is a holiday, though why anyone would want to celebrate this is beyond me, but it’s Take Far Longer On A Project Than Planned And Ruin Your Schedule Day, which is why you’re seeing this here instead of another proper post. That’ll arrive shortly, but longer than I have left in the day, so shortly, tomorrow.

Don’t you just love downloading an updated bit of software in the hopes that it will correct a recurring problem with the older version, only to find that not only did it fail to fix this, it started crashing on its own for no determinable reason? I know I do. I just eat that shit up. Mmm yummy.

The software in question was/is Kdenlive, which is video editing software – overall, it was working better than OpenShot, which I’d been using earlier, but it was prone to video stuttering in the preview screening, which can be hard to sync voiceovers to and is just annoying on its own. The problem is reduced with the latest version, and truth be told, OpenShot had audio stuttering which is far worse, but neither one is acceptable and I’ve simply been coping. Yes, stuttering in both programs would seem to indicate something with my system, but as yet I have not determined what, and there’s more than enough RAM to cope.

Anyway, that tells you a video (which has been completed now) is on the way so, lucky you! But the holiday had to get out of the way first, and there’s no chance that I’ll have the post done before it becomes Monday. Stupid holidays.

Should I be flattered?

Al Denelsbeck

… or, what?

Hearing some activity from the nearby pond and it being a warm night, I decided to grab the camera, with just the Mamiya 80mm macro attached, and go take a peek at what was going on. Just so you know, all of the photos here were captured in less than forty minutes – one of those effortless excursions.

On getting close, it became apparent that all of the noise was emanating from just one source – well, one species – and that species was the American toad (Anaxyrus americanus.) It took me a moment on drawing up to the water’s edge to spot any individuals, which seems amusing in retrospect.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus perched in weed bed
It didn’t take long at all to realize that the pond’s edges were brimming with them, both in and out of the water, and as intent as they were on fulfilling their propagational duties, they were paying little heed to my presence. And it got worse.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus calling from weed bed
Capturing them in mid-call was remarkably easy, even as I was perched on a steep bank trying not to slide into the water while focusing on them by the light of the headlamp. But as I walked around the water’s edge, it became clear that I had to watch where I set foot very carefully, because as I said, they were intent on other things. No, not plural – just one other thing.

pair of American toads Anaxyrus americanus during courtship
The downward angle is actually indicative of how close they were; the darker female had just hopped across my sandal as I was photographing a different individual. The paler one is a male, and only moments later he attempted to close the deal, but she shrugged him off with a series of ‘chuckling’ protests – lucky you, I decided to record some audio on my smutphone, and you’ll hear this sound (from a different rejecting female) as the recording gets a little quieter near the 4 second mark. Mind you, it also gets louder, much louder, because another at my feet started sounding off and I was able to hold the phone less than a half meter from her, so be warned.

mating calls of American toads Anaxyrus americanus

I feel I should tell you, below is the solo artist from that recording, as I put the phone away and aimed the camera for the next round of calls.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus calling
The toads weren’t the only species out, but I was a little surprised to see this one. Still, its timing was pretty good, even if it was just a few meters too far away from the bulk of the activity.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon sipedon at water's edge
This is a northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon,) fairly good sized at roughly a meter in length, harmless to humans but certainly a high-level enemy of the toads. I had just told Mr Bugg yesterday that I didn’t think the snakes would be out yet, so this demonstrates my powers of prognostication. But as I said, if you’re gonna stir yourself for spring, do it while the toads are plentiful and preoccupied.

tail of northern water snake Nerodia sipedon sipedon showing identifying markings
This image was taken specifically to show how to differentiate the northern water snake from the almost-identical banded water snake: the banded water snake maintains the crossing bands/stripes all the way to the tail, while the northern sports broken bands like these towards the rear of the body. Of course, it always helps if the snake has cooperatively left its tail in plain sight and not hidden within pondside litter or under the water, but both species are harmless, so differentiation is only for the pedantic bloggers.

I also made a few attempts to catch the very active tongue while extended, because the snake wasn’t preoccupied with getting some action and was thus suspicious of the way the light kept moving around, so it sampled the air trying to get a baseline on what was happening. Catching the tongue isn’t as easy as imagined, since it seems like it remains out flickering long enough, but I have plenty of frames, of this and other individuals, where it has retracted as soon as I trip the shutter. Tonight it took three or four attempts.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon sipedon showing tongue
Now, I hung around for a little bit to see if either the snake would move a little further along in pursuit of the many toads, or if a toad would blunder into the snake’s radius. I didn’t have long to wait as a toad came hopping along the shoreline in my direction – in fact, directly towards me, as it quickly sought and surmounted my sandaled foot and perched there, this to all appearances being very deliberate.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus perched on author's foot
The thing is, this was the third time this evening that a toad clambered atop my foot, and they weren’t that thick on the ground. I had a brief suspicion that they were mistaking the dark rubber for a female, but this was dispelled by remembering that the first, at least, had demonstrated it was itself female, so this didn’t fit. And then this latest one further dispelled this.

American toad Anaxyrus americanus calling from author's foot
Yes, that’s the toad actually calling from her position on my foot. I was remaining motionless, mostly, but the headlamp was swinging around and the camera flash was going off, not to mention the foot was likely flexing at least a little from shifting weight and balance, so the toad had plenty of clues that I was not a rock. So, should I be flattered, or put those sandals in for a wash-up?

I waited, in fact bent down now with the smutphone to try and get head-on-video of the toad calling, but possibly the proximity of the phone (or her disdain for Samsung) prevented her from calling further, and she soon abandoned its perch – not in the direction of the snake just a little offshore, which by now had become too suspicious and was slowly nosing away. I decided to wrap it up for the night and started back.

But I took a small side trip (which I’ll explain in a moment,) and ended up alongside some overflow channels that often retained water, catching a movement therein, which revealed a successful couple.

pair of American toads Anaxyrus americanus in amplexus within water
That’s a pair in amplexus, the act of the male grasping the female around the abdomen and riding there until she entered the water and began depositing eggs, which he would then fertilize. Which they were, in fact, in the process of.

pair of American toads Anaxyrus americanus in amplexus, showing egg string
That little beaded string is the egg mass, and they can get quite large – I suspect I caught them towards the beginning of the process. Ain’t reproduction grand?

Heading back to Walkabout Estates, I paused at a roadside ditch because I thought I’d heard the call of a bullfrog, and didn’t even have to search, it being almost as obvious as it could be.

large American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus
This is an American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus,) many times larger than the American toads, but you don’t have to take my word for it, since it was complacent enough, and I was slick enough, to get my foot into the picture again.

American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus with author's foot for scale
I think that should serve as a decent comparison. Safe to say, had this one hopped onto my foot, I wouldn’t be going anywhere, and might have been walking with a limp afterwards.

But there was one more thing that happened tonight (well, it looks like it was last night to be accurate, as midnight approaches.) On the way over to the pond, I’d switched on the headlamp and caught some light high in the trees. I had to dodge back and forth to ensure that it wasn’t one of the various streetlamps in the area shining through from a distance, but it blinked on and off and shifted a little bit, so I was certain that I was seeing the reflections from the eyes of something. They vanished as I drew closer and didn’t reappear, so I abandoned that quest to go find toads. On the way back, I tried again, and saw it again, so this time I took the softbox off the flash, boosted to full power, and fired off a frame.

eyes reflecting from high in tree
The range was too great, especially since the macro flash isn’t the most powerful thing that I own, but I did at least get the reflection, and a hint of the trees. Once back home, I brought the image into GIMP and boosted the brightness a bit at full resolution to see what was hidden in the shadows.

enhanced inset of previous image showing North American raccoon Procyon lotor
That’s just enough detail to make out the side of a head, with one rounded ear pointing to lower left, this being a North American raccoon (Procyon lotor.) It’s funny how few I see in the immediate area, because it seems like it should be ideal for them, but as you can see, this one was definitely being shy, and sneaky enough to peek out with only one eye.

So yeah, productive enough to start making up for winter. Everyone rejoice!

Briefly, birds

Al Denelsbeck

Yesterday, the Indomitable Mr Bugg and I got out for a short outing down at Jordan Lake, checking out conditions and taking a shot at sunset. The latter didn’t really pan out, despite the number of times that we’ve seen terrible skies in North Carolina go completely clear by sundown, but we still managed a few pics here and there. The first stop was over by the nest that was first spotted last year, and pinned down precisely almost a month ago – I regret to say that I hadn’t been back to check on progress/occupancy until now, but at least this trip filled in some blanks.

osprey Pandion haliaetus perched above nest
Yes, the nest is easily visible through a gap in the trees, one that won’t even disappear once the summer foliage is fully established. And yes, the nest is apparently in use this year, though not by bald eagles but instead by osprey (Pandion haliaetus.) Eagles would have been more welcome, since getting this close to an eagle nest would be stunning, but hey, I’ll take the osprey. Unfortunately, the viewing angle is much lower than last year’s family, so likely little will be seen until the young are close to fledging age, and I’ll remain on the lookout for other nests.

Meanwhile, a nice stretch by the occupant, or bellhop or whatever title applies.

osprey Pandion haliaetus stretching above nest
The downside of this is, we were just as visible (probably a lot more so) to the osprey, which may make the nest occupants a little anxious, so we’ll have to monitor their behavior carefully so as not to spook them off.

There wasn’t a lot of activity at one of our old haunts down by the water – well, not the activity that we were after, anyway. There was practically a traffic jam of boaters at the ramps due to the warmer weather, while the recent rains had driven the lake level up well over a meter and thus flooded out the paths along the edge that we would hike along to spot more species. And as the day wore on, the sky became heavily overcast and so the light went to shit. But before that happened, I managed a number of frames of another osprey as it wheeled overhead.

osprey Pandion haliaetus cruising overhead
The afternoon was gusty before the clouds rolled in, and the bigger birds were taking advantage of this. A plethora of vultures was wheeling around practically in formation, and a couple of juvenile eagles were spotted at a moderate distance, though I obtained no really promising photos of the latter. And seagulls, but I routinely ignore them now unless there’s some kind of fartistic or behavioral composition I can do with them. There were plenty of cormorants, mostly remaining at a distance, but one fishing specimen cruised close by and did some proud poses with its catch.

double-crested cormorant Nannopterum auritum in water with captured fish
Double-crested cormorants are now Nannopterum auritum instead of Phalacrocorax auritus, because they have to keep selling bird books I suppose – I actually put red asterisks in my Sibley’s Guide by all the scientific names that I’ve found that are outdated, and there’s a lot of them. Meanwhile, I tweaked this image slightly because, while I did indeed dial in some exposure compensation for the brightness of the water, it wasn’t actually enough, so it’s been boosted slightly in post. As dark as it was, I still caught enough color from its eye to show up when brightened.

But anyway, the photography season is getting going, so the number of posts and photos (current photos) should be improving soon.

1 … 88 89 90 91 92 … 318