Photographs by Frank

21 September 2013

Moon Light Madness

Filed under: Early Fall,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Tags: , — Frank @ 7:00 PM

Thursday was the full moon for September… the harvest moon.

I spent the evening at a Monadnock Camera Club meeting and therefore did not have time to photograph. However, I was so smitten by the moonlit drive home that, yesterday evening I headed out so see what I could photograph.

In preparation, I spent a bit of time in the afternoon using a wonderful program called The Photographer’s Ephemeris. This program shows you in what direction the sun|moon rise|set will occur on any day at any location. It is an incredibly useful tool for landscape photographers.

After a bit of exploration with this program, I decided that the view looking east across the south end of Gregg Lake was a good candidate for a moon rise photo. So I packed up my gear and made the roughly a quarter mile walk from the house to the lake shore. I arrived shortly after 6 PM and caught the last of the days sunlight on the shore as it disappeared behind the ridge to the west of  the lake. Sunset was 6:48 PM yesterday. As I waited for the moon to rise (7:17 PM), I enjoyed the peace and quiet and a loon out on the lake kept me entertained.

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Things did not work out perfectly. The moon did not begin to appear over the ridge and trees to the east of the lake until about 20 minutes after it rose; the sunlight was completely completely gone by this time. Thus, there was no light on the foreground as the moon rose.

I really should have tried this a day or two before the full moon not the day after… next month!

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I packed up and headed home in the dark… LED head lamps are a wonderful invention!

After dinner, I decided to head down to the bridge and the “civilized” end of Brimstone Corner and see if I could make photos of the north end of the lake by moon light. I think that I got a keeper… what say you?

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Technical note: This is a 1 min exposure (at f/8 and ISO 400). The only processing applied is noise reduction… and a lot of it!

The same is true of the moon rise photo (30 sec at f/8 and ISO 400)  immediately above.

12 September 2013

Retirement, Taking Advantage of

Filed under: "Camp",Early Fall — Tags: — Frank @ 1:00 PM

Yesterday (Wednesday)  was a hot, sticky, summer day.

After lunch, we decided to take full advantage of retirement and headed down to camp. We had the lake to ourselves.

I took the “ode rig” along, but saw only seven or eight odes (all on the wing) over the few hours we were out. Ode season is coming to an end and there are signs of autumn everywhere.

I spent some time wandering the woods near camp and practiced my photographic “seeing”.

Here are the results:

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Yes… the colors in the first photo (Decaying Bole #1) are “true to life”.

7 September 2013

Three Days in the White Mountains

Filed under: Landscapes,Summer,the White Mountains — Tags: — Frank @ 2:00 PM

This past week, Joan, myself and both kids  spent three days in the White Mountains. (At ages 28 and 30, “kids” is probably not politically correct, but hey, it is my blog!)

Back in May (when I retired) I had teased my former colleagues that I was going to go on vacation the day after Labor Day (i.e. the day fall semester begins). Thus, with this trip, I made good on my “threat”!

On Tuesday, we drove north to Franconia Notch and spent time at both the Basin and at the Flume. We were the last folks admitted to the Flume before they closed for the evening. After we finished the hike in the Flume, we headed to the Dry River Campground in Crawford Notch where we set up camp and ate dinner in the dark.

On Wednesday, we took the Cog Railway to the summit of Mount Washington and then hiked to Arethusa Falls (the tallest in New Hampshire).

On Thursday, we broke camp and headed over to Pinkham Notch. There, we did a fairly easy loop hike that took us to Brad’s Bluff and to Lila’s Ledge; both places have spectacular views of Mount Washington. I took no photos on this hike as I was out of “juice” for the little Nikon V1 and had left the charger at home. I have definitely put Lila’s Bluff on the list of places to return for some serious photography in the future.

Day 1 (black and white work):

(Please note that “Pemi” is the nickname for the Pemigewasset River which has its headwaters in Franconia Notch.)

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Day 1 (color work):

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Day 2:

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2 September 2013

A Loon and (Intimate) Landscapes

Filed under: Birds,Summer — Tags: , — Frank @ 1:00 PM

On Friday afternoon, I headed down to the lake and put the kayak in the water. I specifically left the “ode rig” at home and took only my little Nikon V1.

My intent was to force myself to look of things, other than odes, to photograph.

My thought was to cruise the shore line and to look for details that might make interesting photographs.

My inspiration  is the book “Intimate Landscapes” by Eliot Porter, in which the photographer concentrates on “details” in the landscape rather than broad, sweeping views. Porter was also a pioneer in using color film for landscape photography.

While on the lake, I had a close encounter with a loon, I had seen this loon on the surface a number of times, but was pretty much ignoring it since I had the 10-30 mm lens on the camera. However, at one point “he” popped up very close to me (and the shore). I was able to switch to the 30-100 mm lens and make a five or six  frames (in about 90 seconds) before he was gone.

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26 August 2013

Pitcher Mountain

Filed under: Monadnock Region,Odontates,Other Insects — Tags: , , , — Frank @ 10:00 PM

Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon found us (myself, Joan, Katrina, Suzy and Lyle) atop Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard, NH.

Pitcher Mountain is the site of some world-class wild blueberry picking; there are acres and acres of terrain specially maintained to promote blueberry bush growth. The blueberry season is winding to a close, but the hike to the top of the mountain is usually rewarded with spectacular views in all directions. I did not bother with landscape photos this trip… harsh mid-day light, a cloudless sky and a bit of haze don’t do justice to the scene.

Rather, as one might expect, I concentrated on the insects! There were dozens of darners patrolling territories and hunting on the summit but rarely landing… the one frame of a darner I show here is the only one I made. Darn those darners!

I saw one other dragonfly on the summit… a female Eastern Amberwing. A new species for me. She was quite cooperative and hung around for maybe five minutes or so.

In between hunting darners, I was able to keep myself entertained with the grasshoppers. The butterfly was spotted at the trail head as we arrived back a the road.

We stopped for ice cream at the new place on Route 10 (in Marlow) before heading home. It was delicious and well worth the short drive in the “wrong” direction. Dinner was not needed last night!

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Saturday’s Crop (of Photos)

Filed under: "Camp",Odontates,Other Insects,Summer,The "New" Yard & Environs — Tags: , , — Frank @ 8:00 PM

After I finished “Big Red” on Saturday morning, I spent some time poking around the yard with the camera. There were many darners about and they would infrequently perch in one of our apple trees, usually too high up for a good photograph. These darn darners are always an exercise in photographic frustration. They are, however, fun to watch! I did get one decent darner photo.

There have been small numbers of autumn meadowhawks (of both sexes) in the yard over the past few days. One  female allowed me to make exactly three frames of her  obelisking before she went on her way.

Another unusual sight in the yard was a mating pair of Eastern Forktails. This seems a little late in the season for mating behavior in this species. More unusual was to find them mating in our yard which is a quarter mile from water (the beaver swamp in one direction and the lake in the opposite direction).

In the afternoon on Saturday, I headed over to camp with Joan, Katrina and Joan’s cousins Suzy and Lyle. While they swam and chatted, I cruised, with camera in hand, the lake shore near camp.  The slatey skimmer was very cooperative and posed for me until I decided that I was done. I can not say the same for the clubtail (which allowed me only the one frame) and the orange bluet (two frames) before they flew off. I had never seen an orange bluet on Gregg Lake before.

I ended the day with the vesper bluets under close to ideal conditions (calm and in good light). This species prefers to alight on lily pads and other vegetation in water that is too deep to wade, thus one needs the kayak. They also, as the “vesper” in their name suggests, only come out at the end of the day; as the light starts to wane.

For most of the time I was out, there were no vesper bluets around. However, as the shadows grew longer more and more appeared, seemingly out of “thin air”.  There were mostly males about; I would estimate 10-20 males for every female.  The few females I observed were already paired up and either flying in tandem or in a mating wheel. I saw no ovipositing behavior while I was out… it was probably too early in the evening.

Single male vesper bluets very aggressively attack paired females trying to get them to un-pair from their chosen mate.  This behavior is difficult to photograph but great fun to watch live.

Here are the photographs (the first four from the morning and the second four from the afternoon):

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Making Cameras, Not Photographs

Filed under: Off Topic — Tags: — Frank @ 6:00 PM

The language we use to describe photography is sometimes quite curious… most folks talk about “taking” photographs. “Taking”, in my view, is not the correct word. One implication of  “taking” is that something (maybe the subject of the photo?) is diminished in the act… if I take candy from the baby, the baby lacks candy, if I take a photo of the same baby, she or he looses nothing!

The proper phrase for the act of tripping the shutter is “making a photograph” as this is inherently an act of creation. I am not sure that I have been successful in convincing any of my circle of  photography acquaintances in changing their use of the language, but I’ll keep using “make”, not “take” in this regard. I’ll keep tilting at windmills too!*

Oh well… back to the main act.

I note that, again, have not written a blog entry in over a week. This is because I have been spending time making photographic apparati rather than making photos.

First, I decided that it might be worthwhile to stabilize the relationship between camera and lens in the apparatus I described a week, or so ago in “Experiments in Optics“. The result is show in the first photo below and the four photos following are test shots from around the yard. Now all I have to do is find some time and energy (it is heavy!) to take it further afield. (Kevin… I’ll definitely try some flowing water.)

In addition to this decidedly nonstandard photographic contraption, I also spent a couple of days constructing a classic sliding box camera for 4″x5″ film. I used another old lens I had lying around; an 6.5” f/4 doublet with an aperture but no shutter. I have no clue as to its former life. Instead of ground glass for the back, I used a piece of an el cheapo (2 for 99 cents at Ocean State Job Lot) plastic chopping mat. These are textured on one side and smooth and shiny on the other and one can form an image on it just like ground glass.

In action, the ground glass and its frame get replaced with a film holder that I forgot to take make a photograph of of this blog article.

The last two photos below show “Big Red”.

Now comes the big step…  setting up a darkroom. Fortunately I won’t  need anything too fancy if I stick to lith film. I figure that I’ll use the negatives to make cyanotypes and maybe, eventually, silver contact prints. We’ll see if I follow through. Setting up a dark room from scratch in the 21st century… I must be nuts! Stay tuned!

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*When I was teaching, I used to tilt at another, similar windmill.

Both students and faculty invariably use the word  “give” when it comes to grades. I gave Sally a B on the last test. Professor Jones gave me a B in biochemistry. Wrong!

On the first day of each semester, I would announce to my students that I had never, ever, ever, never given a grade in my teaching career. Invariably, this led to many puzzled looks. Only some of the puzzled looks disappeared when I continued by saying that the grades in my courses are  earned by the students.

For years, I would bring up this issue of proper language around grades with my windmills faculty colleagues. I never got very far there either!

19 August 2013

Another Trip “Down Back”

Filed under: Amphibians,Odontates,Other Insects,The "New" Yard & Environs — Tags: , , , — Frank @ 11:00 PM

About 4 this afternoon, I donned my waders and spent about an hour and three quarters near the beaver pond “down back”.

I was surprised by the lack of meadowhawks… I saw only two or three along the margin of the beaver swamp. There were small numbers of darners out of the meadow… I saw maybe a dozen total while I was out. I also saw a single sedge sprite.  The most numerous ode present were the spreadwings (I don’t know what species). I saw roughly three dozen.

When I arrived at the edge of the beaver pond I found a convenient spot of open water and knelt down keeping the sun off my shoulder. I was happily watching and photographing spreadwings when I noticed a small (first joint of the thumb-sized) frog not more than I foot from my knee. I don’t know if he was there when I knelt down or if he appeared after I settled in. He was too close to photograph with the ode rig, so I backed up slowly. He was completely unconcerned and I was able to photograph him (see Green Frog #1).

A short while later I noticed two more similar sized frogs near by. One was too close to photograph and partly covered by some grass. The other made for a nice photograph (see Green Frog #2). I decided to try a different angle on the second frog and, as I went to move my position, I almost put my knee on a much larger (fist-sized) green frog. I was able to back off without disturbing him and made Green Frog #3. The big guy was more wary than the smaller fellows and fairly quickly jumped out of sight. I went back to photographing the second frog head on (see Green Frog #4; note the blood-sucking flies, one on each eye!).

The sedge sprite made a brief  appearance while I was photographing the frogs and I was able to get two frames before it disappeared again.

Eventually, I stood up and moved off a short distance. While I was moving I found the orange butterfly and was able to get a clear view for just a single frame.

I was entertaining myself with the spreadwings at the second spot when I heard the clatter of dragonfly wings. The sound of dragonfly wings hitting vegetation or each other is quite unmistakable.

I quickly located the source, a female darner down low in the grasses ovipositing. I was able to get two frames before she moved off to another spot without a clear line of sight. After short interval she moved again, this time to a spot about a foot in front of me but she only stayed for a second or two before flying off out of sight. I went back to photographing spreadwings.

After a few more minutes, I decided that it was time to make supper so I headed back up the hill to the house.

That’s my story for today and I am sticking to it!

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18 August 2013

Garden Amphibians

Filed under: Amphibians,Summer,The "New" Yard & Environs — Tags: — Frank @ 6:07 PM

My CWS* was down in the garden this afternoon picking green beans… 10 pounds of them from the look of the pile… and other vegetables when she told me that she had seen two small frogs amongst the leaves in the garden.

Luckily, I was finished picking up the piles of shrub trimmings she had left in the driveway because, upon hearing this news, I headed straight for the camera!

These “fellows” are very small… roughly thumbnail-sized.

Here are the photos (two individuals, two poses)…

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*CWS… Chief Wildlife Spotter.

Experiments in Video

Filed under: Odontates,Summer,The "New" Yard & Environs — Tags: , — Frank @ 6:00 PM

Yesterday evening a feeding swarm of dragonflies (large darners) formed in our yard. This is a regular late summer happening. Usually I simply watch in awe when this happens as there is no way to capture this spectacle with still photography.

There were literally hundreds of five or six inch dragonflies flying about, seemingly at random, preying on insects too small for me to see. (Hopefully some were the mosquitoes that eventually found me while I was making these videos!)

Remembering that my little Nikon 1 V1 could do video (including slow motion), I set the camera up on a tripod and experimented with video.

This unedited clip is in real time:

Here is an unedited clip in slow motion (5 seconds of real time):

One more edited clip in slow motion (about 2.5 seconds of real time):

None of the dragonflies are in focus… I am not sure how one could get them in focus as they are moving very fast and randomly. I hope that one gets a sense of this interesting behavior anyway. However, it is no substitute for seeing it live.

I think that I will stick to photography in the main!

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