The other two

Al Denelsbeck

I told you this was coming…

The Girlfriend and I did a brief trip to Jordan Lake a week back, just checking out conditions before it turned cold (again) – there really wasn’t much to see, and the light angle was wrong even if there had been, but I did a quick snap of the pine pollen turning the lake edge into something from a horror drama.

pine pollen staining water and trees
That’s not one of the mentioned subjects, it’s a bonus, like how products advertise “10% more!” than a measurement 10% less to try and sound generous without doing anything (or, you know, like everything from Apple.) Below is the intended content.

Since she hadn’t seen it, we did the minimal hike over to check on the osprey nest, which showed no activity at all even though, to my eye, it looked like it was active.

nest of osprey Pandion haliaetus
We watched it for a minute or so, hoping to see someone peek their head above the rim, and of course I shot a couple of frames for closer examination when back home. But I had lowered the camera (the lens gets heavy, okay?) when I suddenly spotted someone arriving, which happened quickly because the surrounding trees prevent a decent view of the skies further from the nest. I swung the camera up hurriedly and fired off a few frames as soon as I got the bird in the viewfinder, knowing that the autofocus probably hadn’t tracked well, but hoping anyway since I had a scant second.

osprey Pandion haliaetus arriving with nest material
As feared, it wasn’t sharp – this is full frame and it gets no better when cropped, but at least I snagged the arrival with a good talonful of nesting material.

Now, often enough with birds, it’s the male that builds the nest and uses it to convince the female that he’s a good mate choice, but there are variations and I’ve never confirmed this for osprey (Pandion haliaetus,) so I can’t assure you that this is the male – the plumage on this species provides no clues. This isn’t far from Walkabout Studios, but it’s not a quick jaunt either, so staking out the nest to watch for mating behavior isn’t a casual effort. Not to mention that this vantage is easily visible to the ospreys too, and may make them antsy, so brief visits are better, at least until I’m sure that eggs have been laid. But our construction foreavian went ahead and distributed their new material as we watched.

osprey Pandion haliaetus arranging nest material
It flew off not too long afterward though, possibly because of our presence, more likely to keep working on the nest until sunset, maybe a little of both, but we took our cue and headed back. One down.

On the same warm day as the one daylight shot from the previous post, I also chased a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) around Walkabout Estates, if by, ‘around,’ you mean, ‘among a handful of fenceposts not two meters apart,’ and it’s me saying it so I do.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis basking on fence
Full confession: I only noticed it fleeing at my approach, having failed to spot it before then, but in my defense I wasn’t really looking either (I was actually watching for the reappearance of the racer, so the ground, not the fence.) But I remained motionless, knowing anoles, and sure enough it popped back into sight within a few seconds and resumed its basking location on the fence. I kept my movements slow and could get in pretty close before it started getting a little twitchy, whereupon I backed away just as slowly and let it enjoy the solar radiation. I was there to run the siphon hose anyway, so stepped outside the gate to do so. On returning, the anole was beginning to think it should be blending in better and had changed color – not too thoughtfully, given the substrate, but it’s likely instinctual anyway.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis quickly turning green
Color change in anoles is more linked to environment and mood rather than ‘camouflage,’ but if the mood change is between, ‘absorbing sunlight,’ and, ‘fleeing predation,’ the difference may be moot. There isn’t two minutes between these two frames, to give a faint idea of the timeline, though I’ve seen them change in mere seconds. That time, it was a faceoff in Florida between a Carolina anole like here, and the brown anole that’s crowding them out in that region. Both of them were doing their territorial signalling with the underchin dewlap, neither giving an inch, but then the Carolina changed from bright green to dark brown within two seconds, which prompted the brown anole (that’s actually the species name, Anolis sagrei,) to launch itself at the Carolina and start a mad chase around the tree. Curiously, the territorial coloration seem to be different, so what exactly the Carolina anole said with this change to dark brown, I couldn’t tell you.

But my subject here had decided I wasn’t quite what it wanted to see so close. Deciding to vacate its basking spot, it slipped up the backside of the fence posts, frequently peeking out to check if I had gone.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on fencepost having just consumed an ant
While this might be construed as commentary, I’m pretty sure my model had just consumed an ant while slinking up the fencepost, and was working it down – far be it from me to interrupt a meal. I even readied myself for video in case it spotted more ants, something that I want to capture on film, but it was not to be that day. There is little to no warning of it happening anyway – I know, because I’ve seen it a handful of times – and for something the size of ants it takes only a fraction of a second. Something like a moth, more of a mouthful, may take some effort to scarf down and present more opportunity, but I still have to be ready when it happens. Maybe someday soon I’ll do a stalking session with a longer lens, see what happens.

That catches me up, though there’s a student outing tomorrow so we’ll see what that might produce.

Can’t keep up

Al Denelsbeck

I go through the winter struggling to find things to post, with virtually nothing to photograph, and then when spring arrives and I actually have a small lineup of recent photos, I’m busy messing with other projects. Go fig.

No, it’s not that bad – most of these are, what, two days old? But yeah, they could have been up a little sooner.

We had another spate of warm weather, including overnight, which certainly is enough to get one’s hopes up, yet there is a frost warning for the next two nights, so I’m still not going to plant anything yet, and the treefrogs are probably getting sick of this shit and preparing to move to Florida, after getting so well established at Walkabout Estates too. Can’t say that I blame them.

After one warm night, they could easily be found in various locations during the following day, loathe to go secrete themselves anywhere.

adult green treefrog Hyla cinerea snoozing in Japanese maple
This particular green treefrog (Hyla cinerea,) sporting a fashionable bronze hue, might have been kinda forced to be out, since the Japanese maple that it’s napping within had been removed from the greenhouse the day before, and the frog might have been tucked into the mulch in the pot. There were plenty of others around the yards, though, so I’m not ready to take blame just yet. Later that evening as the nocturnal treefrogs began to get active, we have an entirely different pose (and pupil dilation, for that matter) from the same specimen.

adult green treefrog Hyla cinerea in dynamic pose
This one is kinda of revisiting two previous images, the one found here and of course the gallery photo, though neither one of them has that distracting twig in the background. Aren’t I supposed to be advancing my skills?

pair of green treefrogs Hyla cinerea on interior walls of greenhouseEven if it had been removed from the greenhouse, there were/are still more in there, evident as night fell. I left the door open for a little while that night in case they decided they wanted out, but really, they’re better off within as long as their metabolism remains slower – there are few bugs for food, but the heater will keep the temperature from dropping too low until we’re quite sure the frosts have ceased for the season.

There were quite a few more out in various locations, most of which I’ll spare you because, seriously, I think there’s a few hundred images of green treefrogs in previous posts, and now I should concentrate on getting more behavioral photos (though I haven’t avoided these, I just haven’t witnessed much at all.) But we’ll do the slightly fartsy stuff for a moment.

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea at base of tulip leaf
This little juvenile posed reluctantly for me when I first ventured out, perched on the edge of a planter on the back deck, but when I came back around it had moved into a more camouflaging position and I used the leaf (I think it’s a tulip) for more of an indication of depth and scale. Body length maybe 30mm or so.

Another, not too far away, was not blending in at all on a piece of decorative driftwood.

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea on driftwood
I’m a little torn on this one, as to whether it should go vertically like this or horizontal. The actual position was mostly diagonal, and I was far from shooting in any kind of ‘normal’ position to get this, so anything goes at this point. If you want an accurate effect, push your monitor off your desk (don’t be lookin’ at this site with no damn phones,) and lean over it bent almost double and cock your head at an odd angle. If the monitor landed mostly face-up then you’re close.

Anyway, I have two other subjects that’ll be along shortly, in case you’re weird and don’t like treefrogs, though why I should cater to you in such a case is beyond me.

Visibly different, part 14

Al Denelsbeck

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris at flowers within NC Zoological Park
Our opening image comes from 2005, from within the Sonora Desert exhibit in the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro, thus it counts as ‘captive’ and/or ‘habituated’ even though, like many birds, it had the run of a large arboretum area – your call on how to classify it, if it’s important. I’d seen this female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) visit these unidentified flowers briefly, and so I maintained a discreet distance and waited it out. Sure enough, it returned, and I got my first hovering and feeding hummingbird shots. Considering that this was with the fairly basic Canon 75-300mm, not stabilized or fast or anything, I was pleased, and the profile perspective is nice.

So now we see where this led:

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris at blue salvia flowers
Not… hugely different, to be frank. Certainly better detail and lighting, but this is also a tight crop of the original, while the one above it is nearly full-frame. It was only five years later, this time at the NC Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill, but it’s not captive at all, and likely not habituated either – this was a wild specimen visiting the salvia plants. Again, I saw an initial visit and staked the plants out, knowing that hummingbirds tend to return within a few minutes. And the equipment isn’t significantly different either – Canon’s image stabilized version of the 75-300 this time, though on the Digital Rebel/300D instead of slide film. Being able to boost the ISO to 400 easily (without switching films) gave the most distinctive edge, but being in a much quieter area probably helped. I distinctly recall that it was something like 33°c out there, in patchy shade in August, and I was sweating copiously. Note, too, that hummingbirds tend to visit only briefly, and pretty much randomly, so autofocus was out (especially with that complicated background) and a tripod pointless, so I was pleased to nail the focus this well.

It’s funny that I haven’t advanced beyond this, despite numerous attempts. I have plenty of feeder shots of course, but that’s both kinda cheating and not terribly marketable nor fartistic, so my goal has been to get them at flowers, preferably with good surroundings. To that end I’ve planted countless varieties of hummingbird attractors, few of which have thrived, and none of which have actually attracted any hummers routinely. As I type this (possibly long before it actually posts,) I’m prepping for a large bed of cardinal flowers this spring.

But I’ll throw in this next one for giggles.

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris approaching feeder in front of Mamiya camera
When I was getting ready to sell my Mamiya 645E camera body, I needed some illustrative pics of it, naturally, and it was the right time of year to stage this. So I set it up on the tripod aiming the right way, took a seat with a good perspective, and waited it out. Cooperatively, it only took a few minutes before another female came along, and I snagged this frame, then simply cropped out the feeder – dramatic! I’m also still after a good shot of the ruby-throat that gives the species its name, but that’s only found on the males, and curiously the light angle needs to be just right, or the feathers appear almost black. And no, direct flash is not the right angle – I know, I tried.

Monday multichrome

Al Denelsbeck

pink azalea blooms
Justa buncha pics, celebrating spring – little exposition, so the TL;DR crowd can have their safe space too. These azaleas are from the expansive lawns at Walkabout Estates.

Meanwhile, these aren’t big enough to show off much yet, but it’s a sign that the ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) that The Girlfriend bought last year is doing fine.

new buds on ginkgo biloba tree
She just purchased another of these this past weekend, a dwarf variety that may remain potted on the deck.

We can’t have April without another appearance of these little flowers.

flowers of blackhaw viburnum Viburnum prunifolia
But this time, I can tell you what they are, since you’re old enough now: they’re from a blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolia,) which seems far too harsh a name for the pleasant little tree, but parents can be cruel.

But enough about the expansive yards here. How about a couple of photos snagged before meeting with a student?

red Japanese maple leaves against blue sky
This Japanese maple was backlit in places, so I maneuvered around until I could get a nice contrast of the colors, then cropped down pretty tight to concentrate on just a handful of leaves. If you stare too long you’ll burn out your red and blue retinal cells.

And then, considerably less color, but still cool – today’s favorite.

exposed tentacly roots of unidentified tree
I don’t know what this tree is right now, but I’ll find out. And I can’t determine why I like root systems such as this, but it’s probably something suppressed from my childhood that’s best left unexamined.

Man, I didn’t even break 250 words – whoops, there we go!

A test of patience

Al Denelsbeck

Not much of one, but enough, anyway. You’ll see what I mean.

So in checking out the back twenty of Walkabout Estates today, I noticed that the sound of a leaf fluttering in the breeze was being remarkably persistent, and I looked down to find a sizable black snake stretched out across the dried grasses and leaves, vibrating its tail in a warning manner. It’s not just rattlesnakes that do this, though they have the handy noisemaker to enhance it, but this one had some dried leaves and so it wasn’t quite as ominous. Apparently it had been sunning itself and was trying to tell me to get lost, even as it slowly nosed into a patch of grasses. I was (stupidly, once again) without my camera, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get photos of it stretched out, but it was at least 1.5 meters in length and 4-5cm in width, and so I considered it an eastern rat snake.

I went in and grabbed the camera and came out cautiously, to find the snake peeking out from where it had secreted itself – I got two frames before it drew back in again.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor peeking from ground clutter
That’s a standard garden hose that I was using to drain an overflow trough, and in midbody the snake was about twice the diameter. It withdrew right after this, so I went back in to get the long lens and tripod to do this right.

Unfortunately, the place where I had the clearest view and the best light (unlike the photo above) was also in the snake’s line of vision, and it could see me set up and squat cross-legged on the ground, so it wasn’t venturing forth as quickly as it just had. This became a test of patience, both of us trying to out-wait the other. Eventually, I could just see the nose of the snake within the shadows.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor barely visible behind grasses
I didn’t realize it at the time, but these photos made it apparent when I examined them closely: the snake had holed up in a drainage pipe, an extension of the downspouts from the house, completely obscured by the winter detritus – that explained how it had concealed its significant bulk so completely.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor peering from drainage pipe
After another minute or so, it advanced very slightly, just enough to show that it was advancing. We’re not talking fast, here.

Another few minutes, and the head was raising slightly.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor lifting head from ground clutter
Part of the problem was, every once in a while, it would waggle its head from side to side slightly, which I wanted to get on video, but this meant changing my hand positions and likely alerting the snake that I was still indeed animate, whereupon it would hold still again for a while.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor lifting head higher
By now, i was getting enough of a look under its neck to realize that this was not an eastern rat snake, but instead a northern black racer (Coluber constrictor constrictor.) Which was a little surprising to me, since I’ve never seen one anywhere near this size, impressive even for a rat snake. But it helped explain the time that was elapsing, since this species is cautious by nature.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor with head well raised from grasses
Naturally, with clear photos I could go back and compare the chin markings against those of the black racer that I’ve (twice) found in the vicinity. Aside from being noticeably larger (not outside the realm of possibility,) this one was marked differently, so I’m pretty certain it’s not the same.

And not once did it ever twitch away from facing directly towards me. I was a good five meters off, to avoid making it hesitant, but this was obviously not enough. It has been fifteen minutes since the first peek out of the drainpipe, and no motion that it made was enough to attract anything’s attention.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor very extended from ground
Now another eleven minutes had passed, with the snake extended better than 20cm off the ground, and we’d reached an impasse: my sitting position wasn’t the best, and my right leg was in some serious pain, to say nothing of the 3D printer running on my desk that really shouldn’t have been unattended that long. Conceding the victory to the snake, I started packing up the equipment, but it wasn’t until I stood up that the snake finally withdrew into the pipe again. As I was shifting position, I thought something had hung up on my foot and was dragging around, until I realized that it was my foot, fast asleep and feeling nothing from my cross-legged perch. So, little lesson: make sure that you’re really comfortable when you do stuff like this. But hey, I made a decent attempt anyway.

The weather was quite warm today, so much so that I opened the greenhouse to vent a bit, and noticed some of the lizards scampering around – below is a juvenile American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) that played hide-and-seek with me around the deck, but proved a lot easier to get a sharp photo of than the racer.

juvenile American five-lined skink Plestiodon fasciatus sunning on deck
That brilliant blue tail is a defensive mechanism, but not an indication of toxicity like the bright colors of many other species. Instead, it detaches easily when the species is attacked, and will writhe energetically for up to several minutes when it does so, hopefully attracting the attention of the predator while the skink slinks away. A new tail grows back within a few months, and it’s unclear whether the skink even feels the detachment. Only the juveniles have this bright coloration, though – presumably the adults have learned how to avoid attackers. I also don’t know if the adult tails detach quite so effortlessly, though I’ve definitely seen adults regrowing their tails.

Anyway, that was this afternoon’s encounter, and little lesson. I’m looking into a nice massaging lounge chair for my shooting blinds.

Don’t look at me

Al Denelsbeck

If you have noticed that any place where there should be video is instead showing some home page of Vimeo, my video clip host, this is not my doing, and I can only say that I just noticed it. I’m guessing Vimeo either has some glitch in its system, or has decided to change the way that embedded videos are handled without bothering to inform anyone. I’ll wait it out a day or so and see if it fixes itself, and if not I’ll see what I can do. Not looking forward to the prospect of changing over fifty embed links for all the clips that I’ve uploaded in the past few years…

This is why I consider keeping anything in “the cloud” to be stupid, and just asking for trouble. Servers fail, business go under, and in some cases, they simply help themselves to your info regardless. I’d rather control how and where my stuff gets stored, and yes, every one of those clips sits right here on my main computers, plural, and will get uploaded to a new host if necessary.

Anyway, sit tight, we’ll see what happens.

Be sure and tell ’em Large March sent ya

Al Denelsbeck

It was on this very day, seven years ago, in a deep fog just like this, that we had the first abstract we ever seen.

Well, okay, it was the first of the month-end abstracts, even though I didn’t know it at the time, and quite frankly, it puts a lot of those following to shame, and today will be no exception. So what do we have as March’s golden parachute?

long exposure of river oversaturated
Ehhhhh, it’s… showing the effort, anyway. Actually it’s a grab shot during the Eno River outing, slowing the shutter speed down to soften the water, but I was working without a tripod, allowing the image stabilization to keep it sharp, which was definitely pushing the function a little too far. And then of course I boosted the saturation just for drama. Plus I could do without that little branch on the right, which I missed at the time – cropping it out would take away the frame’s balance, though why (if I was already shamelessly GIMPing it all up) I didn’t just remove it in post, we’ll never comprehend.

How about another attempt? [Your avowals that this is totally unnecessary fall on deaf ears.]

twisty misshapen roots looking creepy
One of these days, I’ll determine what kind of tree this is, because I’ve seen it many times before, always on the banks of a river or stream. The roots are often exposed, though this may occur from erosion long after the tree is established, and always quite Cthulhu. I can’t believe that spellcheck actually has that in there…

Anyway, I knew this one was in the running for the month end, because of course it was – there are multiple faces you can wring out of it if you try, and probably even more if you’re partaking of various recreational pharmaceuticals. If you are, I’d suggest playing the sound file here while you’re at it. And upload the reaction video.

Aw, what the hell – we’ll revisit the first in only the Blue channel.

same river ripples in only Blue channel
That’s a bit more abstract, isn’t it? Or am I reaching?

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.

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