Shall we Speak of Mist and Shadows, the Truths hidden behind every Tree?

Posted on by

Location Taken: Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park, Ontario
Time Taken: June 2010

There are times when an imperfect photo transcends its imperfection, wraps it around itself, and becomes stronger because of it.

This, as you may have presumed was one of those times.

The conditions were horrible for photography. It was raining, somewhat foggy, and quickly getting dark. The lighting was already too dim for my camera to focus right, and there were certainly no interesting shadows coming out of the ambient glow that was all that remained of the day.

We had been planning on camping at Kakabeka Falls. Thanks to the rain that had been pouring down all day, that plan was washed away, and we ended up staying at the first hotel we found, some 20 miles or more down the road. Still, we stopped at the Falls, even though it wasn’t exactly tourist weather. I tried to take pictures of it, and well, technically, I succeeded. None of them turned out right though, not even this one. I’d been trying to get the focus on the trees in front, if I recall correctly. That didn’t work.

Instead, I got the focus, the exceedingly soft focus, down near the river in the background. The trees in the front blurred some. Meanwhile, a pure coincidence of light and the settings my camera chose for this shot made the pale fog glow blue in the distance. The photo I took not ten seconds after this one, of the exact same location, had the trees severely darkened and the background dull and uninteresting. The strength of this photo, the way it speaks of the hidden mysteries of the forests and rivers, I do not know how to create such art at will. At least, not yet.

  

The View of a Lifetime

Posted on by

Location Taken: Mount St. Helens, Washington
Time Taken: June 2010

Fantastic view, isn’t it?

There we were, visiting the fascinating expanse of Mount St. Helens, a place I have long wanted to see. We drove up the long winding road, past the ash-clogged river and forests of toppled trees. After parking at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, we went in to check out the exhibits, and decided to watch the informative film.

It was a rather nice film, too. Talking about the eruption, both the predictions before hand by experts, the events of the eruption, and why they didn’t match. (No geologist had ever studied a volcano that erupted from the side before, so they expected it to erupt from the top.) It also talked about the people who lost their lives due to the eruption, including David Johnston, the geologist who was observing the volcano that fateful day. Those people were almost all out of the exclusion zone, but since the predictions were wrong, the volcanic burst covered a much different area than expected. It did lead to fascinating tales of life and death that made the movie quite exciting even beyond the pure joy of geology. And then at the end, the screen was lifted, the curtains drawn back, and we were presented with a glorious view of the mountain through the windows behind!

Well, at least we would have been if it hadn’t been so foggy.

The fog was thick enough to cut with a knife and serve for dinner. We only had about 10 feet of visibility, and it was spitting rain as well. It had started getting cloudy about three fourths of the way up the mountain, long past the fabulous place we had lunch (They had a really good homemade jam soda). We still had a decent view of the ash-choked river the road goes along, and even had a decent view at Coldwater lake, only a mile or two from the Observatory. But that was one or two miles up a steep mountain, and the clouds closed in.

I really will have to go back there, on a day where the sky is clear. I’ve long been fascinated by natural disasters and would check out book after book on them. Mount St. Helens figures prominently in a lot of those books, since it was so closely watched and studied. It was one of those events that really stirred the country, a volcano erupting in the continental US!

Mind you, if it wasn’t for that publication, Mount St. Helens would only be a footnote. It wasn’t that impressive as far as volcanoes go, really, only ranking a 5 out of 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. Earth gets one of that size every 10 years or so. But notoriety counts for a lot for volcanoes. Mt. Vesuvius’s 79 AD eruption is still very well known to this day, even though it’s also a 5 on the VEI scale. On the other side, almost no one has heard of the eruption of Mount Toba in Indonesia, which was a full thousand times bigger than Mount St. Helens. Why? Because it happened around 70,000 years ago. It might have killed off all but a lucky 10,000 humans, causing an odd population bottleneck visible in our genetic code. Or said bottleneck could be random chance and measurement error, who knows? Still, it does seem oddly amusing that an eruption that caused 57 deaths, tragic as that was, is millions of times better known than something that reduced the human population most of the way to extinction. You find out the most fascinating things studying geology, or the most terrifying if you’re of that mindset.

  

A Laughing Visitor

Posted on by

Location Taken: Crownsville, Maryland
Time Taken: October 2010

I had a visitor on the day I brought my camera to the Renaissance Festival to take pictures of where I work. A little white caterpillar, investigating this interesting cart with this odd human standing right next to it.

It wandered up the side of the cart, then down into the interior of it, where I keep all the ices I sell, as well as such things as the napkins I serve the ices on, and my purse. It was checking out my purse when I pulled out the camera during a slow point of the day. I let it wander around for a bit longer, then I grabbed one of the napkins, let it crawl onto said napkin, then gently let it off at a nearby tree, away from the pounding feet of the busy path my cart is next to.

This fuzzy visitor appears to be a young moth caterpillar, of the species Charadra deridens, also known as The Laugher. Yes, really, The Laugher. The adult moth has a complex mottled pattern for camouflage that, at least according to those who named it, looks like someone laughing. I’m not seeing it, in any of the photos I’ve looked at, but maybe you will.

I actually get a lot of insectoid visitors to my cart. It is outside, at the edge of a forest, about three miles from a large estuary off the Chesapeake Bay (technically itself an estuary). It’s a very good area for bugs to live in.

Some are quite welcome, like this caterpillar and the occasional preying mantis. I’m fond of preying mantises, and was really happy the day one decided to stay on my cart for a few hours, plenty of time for me to get a few sketches between customers (I didn’t have my camera that day). Others I have a live-and-let-live attitude. The local bees, which seem to be honey bees (most likely escaped from the hive outside the Bee Folks shop near my cart), love exploring my cart, following the sweet scent of the flavored ices I sell. When they visit, I keep the cooler closed so they can’t get in, and otherwise don’t shoo them off or anything. I’ve worked around these bees for years without being stung, even though I’ve had them land on me (one even landed on my nose!). As long as you don’t startle them by, say, flailing around trying to swat them or chase them off, they won’t hurt you. There’s also a few bugs I chase off or kill. Spiders I’ll evict, moving them off the cart, and I’ll kill ants, since they’re too numerous to relocate and I don’t want them to get in the ices.

I generally like having the insects visit. It’s one of the things that keeps me entertained when I’m standing around selling things for 8 hours in a row, much of it spent just watching the people and world around me. It’s always nice when the world comes to me.

  

Goose Geese

Posted on by

Location Taken: Columbia, Maryland
Time Taken: August 2010

I think today is a good day to be a goose!

I shall strut proudly around the lakes, my fine feathered lady following me. Look at my magnificent beak bump! It is magnificent!

We geese shall not fear any humans, even those with odd black boxes that make odd noises! These “cameras” are not to be feared either! Humans are puny things, who leave tasty bread treats for me and my flock! They serve us!

I shall spend my day strutting around, showing myself off! I need to impress the ladies, after all. Perhaps I shall swim, and catch tasty fish, to go with the tasty bread!

More humans, walking on this strange black trail! I shall ignore them, for they never do anything to me, though some bring with them the terrible beasts known as “dogs”. Those are to be feared!

Certainly not to be feared are artists whose brains have melted in the high temperatures that come to this area in late May! They are crazy, and start thinking they are geese, but they are mere imitators!  They do not have fine beak bumps!

  

The Spaceship has Landed

Posted on by

Location Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Date Taken: April 2008

The aliens are coming! The aliens are coming!

Ok, it’s just Wrigley Field all lit up for a night game of baseball. But my goodness, do they have to turn up the lights THAT much?

I was living in the Uptown neighborhood at the time, all the way at the top of a 17-story apartment building, and was really confused when I saw really bright light streaming in through my closed blinds. I couldn’t think of anything within a mile that would be that bright, or anywhere near my window, after all.

Wrigley Field was 1.5 miles away.

It actually took me a little to figure out just what I was looking at. I hadn’t realized that Wrigley Field was technically right down the road from me – the road being Sheridan Rd, a six-mile long road heading from about two miles north of where I was straight south nearly all the way to downtown. Although, it does change its name to Sheffield halfway through, about a block or two north of Wrigley Field, which is part of why I hadn’t realized it was down the road. I’d been to Wrigley Field before as part of a field trip once, well, at least I’ve been to the street outside it (urban geography classes have interesting field trips). And I’d been through the train station right by the ballpark, too, but the train station by where I lived was three blocks west of me, Wrigley field is another block or two west of the local station, and I largely think of the Red Line as straight north. (If you look at the official map you can see why, and also spot the jog between the Sheridan and Addison stops that throws that off.) With my map sense, I usually catch such things, so the concept of Wrigley Field being due south just threw me for a loop. So I took some photos.

By the way, I did mention two days ago about how stupid the corporate-sponsor-named M&T Bank Stadium was? Well, Wrigley Field also shares a name with a company: the Wrigley that makes chewing gum. It’s not a direct sponsorship by the company. It’s just a matter of the same guy owning both the company and the Chicago Cubs, and they named the stadium after the owner. Still, it does give some tips for corporate namers in the future. One, don’t make it obvious that it’s a company name (the whole “Bank” thing ruins it for the Ravens stadium), two, give it a decent sounding name that flows well off the tongue (last names are good for this, and keep the syllable count down), and three, give it 50-100 years to settle in with the locals. Wrigley Field has all three, M&T Bank is lacking all of them.

Both stadiums probably waste as much electricity lighting up the field for night games, though. Really, does it have to be THAT bright?