PHOTO-of-the-MONTH
An ongoing series featuring a recent photo, together with a brief essay on its making.
Click on any image to download a full-resolution jpg.

#204- February 2026
"Witch HeadNebula"

#203- January 2026
"Spaghetti Nebula"

#202- December 2025
"Dancing Cranes"

Dancing Cranes (#1, #2); Bernardo Waterfowl Area, New Mexico

Established in 1939, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge along the banks of the Río Grande in New Mexico has become a major destination for birders and photographers, thanks to its picturesque setting between the Chupadera and the Little San Pascual mountains and its critical role as a winter stopover for tens of thousands of migrating cranes, geese, and ducks. For over a decade Anne and I have made annual winter visits to the refuge to view and photograph the birds. However, my impression has been that the numbers of cranes and geese have been declining progressively since my first visit in 2012. That subjective impression is substantiated by objective data, described in an excellent article by Christina Selby in the New Mexico Magazine, which I summarize with small edits below.


“Over the past few winters, something has changed—fewer and fewer sandhill cranes have wintered in Bosque del Apache’s wetlands. Like the Río Grande itself, the reasons why are complicated and evolving, requiring a deeper look across the crane’s migratory route as well as at the conditions at the refuge. There, a delicate dance is underway to balance visitor experience with the needs of the birds and other wildlife species while working to conserve water and other resources in a time of drought.

For millennia, the Rocky Mountain population of greater sandhill cranes has traveled a migratory path known as the Central Flyway, from nesting grounds in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Colorado to locations as far south as the large wetlands in southeast Arizona and the northern Mexico highlands. Counting their numbers began in the mid-1990s, and a recent three-year running average shows that the Rocky Mountain population of greater sandhill cranes sits at roughly 23,630 birds. Their overall population has remained stable or slightly increased over the last decade. For many years, about 80 percent of the population—around 18,000 birds—was counted in the Middle Río Grande Valley. However, in recent years the count was down to around 13,000, with Bosque del Apache hosting roughly half of those
.
For many years, Bosque del Apache was one of the few wintering grounds with enough food and water available to cranes, so nearly the entire Rocky Mountain population spent the winter there. However, in recent years, the Utah towns of Delta, Colorado and Jensen have increased corn production, leaving leftovers for the majestic blue-gray birds to feed on in agricultural fields. These areas also are remaining warmer; a shift possibly due to climate change. These favorable conditions mean thousands of cranes overwinter in these areas instead of continuing south to Bosque del Apache.

Bosque del Apache works under a cooperative management agreement with the state’s four Ladd S. Gordon Waterfowl Complex properties: La Joya, Bernardo, Casa Colorado, and Belén waterfowl areas, which stretch along the Rio Grande between Albuquerque and the refuge. The goal is to feed half the geese, ducks, and sandhill cranes that winter in the valley. Traditionally, these areas focused production on corn, which is big, easily visible for the cranes to key in on bright yellow kernels in a field. Moreover, because cranes can’t peel corn husks, the refuge staff can control the food’s availability by mowing over the cobs throughout the winter to ensure proper distribution. But there’s a problem; corn is a water hog and really intensive to manage. For reasons including lack of water and other resources, a large portion of Bosque del Apache’s corn crop failed in 2022. Visitors that year noticed a high concentration of cranes at Bernardo Waterfowl Area, where the corn crop outperformed Bosque del Apache.”


Over the last few years we have been dividing our visits to New Mexico between Bernardo and Bosque del Apache. The density and reliability of finding cranes and geese has seemed higher at Bernardo, likely in part because of its much smaller 1,675-acre footprint and encircling three-mile tour loop that makes the cranes very visible in the agricultural fields. Moreover, there is only a single pond for the birds to roost for the night, whereas it can be hard to choose which of the many ponds at Bosque del Apache might be best for sunrise or sunset photography. Other advantages for photography at Bernardo are that it is usually possible to get right down for a ground-level perspective across both the fields and pond, whereas views are often obstructed by raised berms at Bosque del Apache; and that access around the small pond allows clear shots to the east or west within a five minute walk.

My photos this month of a pair of dancing cranes were taken at dawn on a cloudy morning on the Bernardo pond. Cranes may dance to attract a mate or reinforce a bond between mated pairs; as a territorial dominance display; or, apparently, just for fun! Here, the former possibilities look more likely. Getting good shots of crane dances is not easy, and these are among the best images of dancing sandhill cranes I have achieved in over a decade of visits (though see here for the even more elegant Japanese red-crowned cranes). A first problem is that the behavior is unpredictable, so you have to be ready when a dance starts. In this case I was lucky that the pair engaged in a protracted dance, rested a while and then danced again. Second, despite my complaints that fewer cranes are visiting the reserves, a good photo demands a clean shot, isolating a pair. A dance in the middle of a dense flock is just a visual mess. This pair obliged by dancing at the edge of the pond, situated against a nice, non-distracting background of undergrowth. Third, the framing needs to be right, without clipping outstretched wings, but can’t be predicted as you never know how far away the birds will be. Luckily the field of view my 400 mm DO f4 lens with 1.4x teleconverter on a full frame R5 camera turned out to be just right. Finally, it’s a matter of catching the cranes in good poses without them overlapping awkwardly, with both in sharp focus and without motion blur. A fast lens, and camera with high burst speed and high ISO capability is a photographer’s friend for that.

#201- November 2025
"The Medulla and the Dolphin Head"
Two contrasting bubble-like nebulae

CTB1 Medulla Nebula

Sh2-308 Dolphin Head nebula

For this month I feature two cosmic nebulae that are of similar “bubble” shape. They appear of similar size as viewed from the earth,each about the width of a full moon, and both are fleeting events on a stellar timescale. However, they originate through different celestial mechanisms and show contrasting colors and. Both are emission nebulae, where the light is generated by fluorescence of gases ionized by ultraviolet light from stars. The predominant interstellar gases are hydrogen, which emits in the red at 656.33 nm, and oxygen which emits in the blue/green at 500.7 nm. I used a special dual narrowband filter that isolates light from the very specific wavelengths of hydrogen, and oxygen to produce these photographs. These are depicted here in “natural” colors, although many astrophotographers prefer to depict hydrogen in yellow and oxygen in blue for scientific or aesthetic purposes. Both the Medulla and Dolphin Head nebulae are very faint and required long exposure times to image, aided by the use of the narrowband filter which drastically attenuates light pollution and by venturing to dark sky locations in the California desert.

The upper photo shows the Medulla Nebula - CTB1, named for its resemblance to the brain structure though sometimes also called the garlic nebula. It is about 140 light years across and 14,000 light years distant. The Medulla nebula was discovered in 1955 by George Abell, who mistakenly cataloged it as a planetary nebula, giving it an alternate designation of Abell 85. It is actually an extremely faint expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements near its core that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas; primarily hydrogen, hence the predominant red coloration.

The lower photo shows the Dolphin Head nebula, SH2-308, a beautiful bubble-like nebula composed of ionized oxygen and hydrogen, surrounding a Wolf-Rayet star, EZ Canis Major. The nebula is approximately 60 light-years across at its widest point and 4,530 light-years away from Earth. Wolf-Rayet stars are in their very brief, pre-supernova phase of the stellar life cycle. They are very large, hot, and bright, putting out enormous stellar winds that shock the surrounding interstellar gases into interesting shapes. The Dolphin Head nebula was formed about 70,000 years ago by the star EZ Canis Majoris throwing off its outer hydrogen layers, revealing inner layers of heavier elements. Fast stellar winds, blowing at 3.8 million mph from this star, created the bubble-shaped nebula as they swept up slower moving material from an earlier phase of the star's evolution. The oxygen composing the nebula is ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the Wolf-Rayet star at its center giving a predominantly green/blue color, though some hints of  red are visible from ionized hydrogen. The star will eventually explode into a supernova, thereby subsuming the existing nebula and creating a new supernova remnant like the Medulla nebula. .

#200- October 2025
"Eared Grebe and Brine Fly on Mono Lake"

Eared grebe and brine fly on Mono Lake; October 2025

Following the theme from last month, my photo here features a pairing of wildlife; but this time real, terrestrial creatures, not a bat and squid pictured in a cosmic nebula!

I took the photo during a road trip along highway 395 in late October. At this season, enormous flocks of eared grebes are gathered at Mono Lake, arriving in late July and leaving by November or December. The lake is a crucial stopover for millions of these migratory birds, where they feed on abundant brine shrimp and brine flies to build fat reserves before their long journey south. The salinity of the lake is too high to support fish, making it a perfect, predator-free environment where they can safely rest in large groups at night and forage during the day. This is of crucial importance, as the grebes molt and become highly vulnerable during their sojourn on the lake. Moreover, they undergo dramatic physiological changes; the pectoral (chest) muscles shrink to the point of flightlessness, and the digestive organs grow significantly. Before departure for the wintering grounds, the process reverses with the digestive organs shrinking back to about one-fourth their peak size, and the heart and pectoral muscles growing quickly to allow for flight.
 
Almost the entire population of eared grebes in North America fly in the fall to Mono Lake or the Great Salt Lake in Utah.  To protect these and other migratory birds, Mono Lake has established, long-term protection through a state-mandated water rights decision that sets a minimum lake level to protect its ecological health, fisheries, and air quality. In contrast, the Great Salt Lake has seen only piecemeal protective measures, though a group of plaintiffs has filed a public trust lawsuit that claims the state of Utah has failed to protect Great Salt Lake and its unique ecosystem; potentially establishing a public trust doctrine to protect Great Salt Lake, like it protects Mono Lake.

I spent several hours by the lakeshore at South Tufa, armed with a 800mm lens and Canon R7 camera, concentrating almost exclusively on the grebes. In the late afternoon reflections of golden light on the tufa formations created colorful backgrounds on which to highlight the grebes, but by the time I returned the next morning the sun was high and the light monotone. To take advantage of the windless morning and still lake I decided to try something different and forgo reflections by shooting with the camera right down at ground (lake) level. This can create a “birds in heaven” look, with only the subject in focus within a totally blurred foreground and background. To accomplish this, however, involved getting down and dirty, lying stretched flat on the wet, muddy and smelly beach at the water’s edge. Further, I found the best way to get the camera as close as possible to the ground was to hold it upside down, squinting through the viewfinder with my left eye; a configuration that was uncomfortable and made it difficult to track and frame a grebe as it swam across before me. Thus, I gave up on any attempt to carefully compose images or anticipate action, instead just setting the camera on burst mode and shooting off over a thousand frames that morning. My photo here is one of few that worked – capturing a grebet perfectly aligned and in sharp focus together with its intended prey.

#199- September 2025
"The Flying Bat and the Squid"

#198- August 2025
"Panum Crater Sunrise"

#197- July 2025
"Black Mirror - Obsidian Reflections"

#196- June 2025
"Small and Close-up : Very Large and Far Away"

#195- May 2025
"Miniature Forests"

#194- April 2025
"Sadhu, Beads and Bells"

Bead-draped sadhu; Kumbh Mela, Pryagraj, India

Back to the Kumbh Mela this month for a portrait of a Sadhu (Hindu holy man), but unlike my previous photo (#192) which was taken in a “studio” session, this one was taken amid the chaos of the gathering of the Kumbh on the banks of the Ganges.

When composing photographs, I usually aim for simplicity - to “cut the clutter" - so that the main subject stands out clearly. In my previous photo that was easy, as we had posed a visiting sadhu in an improvised studio, sitting at the entrance of a dark tent positioned to create an almost black background. This yielded a striking portrait; yet one lacking any environmental context. Given that we were visiting the largest religious gathering on earth I also wanted to capture images of the sadhus in their temporary habitat among encampments on the flood plain of the river.

That was not easy, as there was an awful lot of visual clutter at the Kumb; people everywhere, trash littering the ground, tents, washing hanging to dry, smoky campfires – not to mention dogs, cattle, camels and elephants… As well as looking out for people to photograph, I needed to anticipate what the background to my shot would look like. Ideally, a background that was interesting and provided complimentary environmental context without drawing attention away from the main subject. 

On our second day at the Kumbh we took a long walk to visit an akhara where naga sadhus were encamped among vast numbers of hanging necklaces of sacred  rudraksha beads, and jyotirlingas, structures standing 11 feet tall crafted from an astounding 7.51 crore (750 million) rudraksha beads sourced from over 10,000 villages. Seeds from the Rudraksha tree, traditionally used in Hinduism as prayer beads are believed to possess spiritual and medicinal properties. The beads are a symbol of the sadhu's commitment to their spiritual practices, and the naga sadhus are known for wearing them extensively, sometimes draping themselves entirely.

All of this made for an overwhelming spectacle, one with great photographic potential, but a corresponding difficulty in distilling down to a coherent image. Rather than looking first for a photogenic sadhu, I thought I might do better by adopting a “Cartier Bresson” approach of finding a promising location and then waiting for a subject to appear. In the center of the camp, I found a long “tunnel”, formed by hanging bead necklaces and decorated by hanging brass bells. That would do well for my background, and I did not have long to wait before an extravagantly bead-draped naga sadhu appeared at the far end and began walking toward me through the tunnel. I took repeated shots as the sadhu approached to maximize the chance of capturing a good pose, while zooming out to keep him framed in relation to the background. The photo here was my favorite, where the sadhu adopted a pose with hands joined in prayer below hanging bells and bead necklaces.

#193- March 2025
"Aurora over Mt. Otertind"

Aurora over Otertind Mountain; Lyngen Alps, Arctic Norway

My photos for this month and last month were taken on two recent, almost back-to-back trips to very different locations and environments; to the heat and chaos of India for people photography at the largest gathering of humanity on the planet, and to the solitude and crisp arctic air of northern Norway. Although the two photos are vastly different, they nevertheless share a common theme in that both feature atmospheric phenomena – trails of smoke exhaled by a sadhu smoking a cheroot and, on a much larger scale, aurora evoked as a coronal mass ejection hits the earth. 
          
The solar cycle is now approaching a maximum. In anticipation of seeing auroral displays Anne and I had travelled to Iceland last winter, but with little success. This year our destination was arctic Norway  (Senja island and the Lofoten islands), locations situated right under the oval of auroral activity. Along the way to Senja island we stopped for two nights at Nordkjosbotn, a small town among the Lyngen Alps on mainland Norway, staying in a lodge called Vollan Gjestestuein that made for a cozy basecamp, and served excellent smoked salmon every morning for breakfast. A highlight of the Lyngen Alps is the view of Otertind, a stunning 4000ft mountain peak with iconic dual, jagged summit peaks. On our first afternoon we reconnoitered the approach to the mountain, driving gingerly on a snow-covered gravel road down the Signal River valley that runs along its base. However, the forecast that night was for 100% cloud cover, so we got a good sleep after a diner of traditional Norwegian salted cod stew (bacalao) at the lodge.  

Forecasts of auroral activity looked promising the next night. Although  the day dawned overcast with light snowfall, there was a chance of a weather window after dark. To check cloud forecasts, I had discovered Ventusky, a website that provides images of predicted cloud cover at one hour intervals with amazingly fine granularity. This showed a local clearing over the mountain anticipated to last from about 9pm to around 11pm. We thus set off after dinner, aiming to reach a viewpoint for Otertind before the cloud cleared. However,  problems navigating a tangle of small  tangle of roads revealed that our reconnaissance was inadequate, and by the time the mountain came into view the clouds were clear and a spectacular auroral display was already underway.

For next couple of hours the sky was lit up by constantly changing bands and explosions of auroral patterns. Many of these conveniently lined up behind Otertind from our viewpoint, while others appeared directly overhead. By eye the aurora appeared bright green, but the camera further picked up sheets of contrasting red/magenta glow. During these two hours I was constantly taking exposures and  changing perspectives to follow the displays as they moved around the sky. The photo here is just one example of an amazing diversity of the patterns that appeared. (Keep checking back on my website for many more to come…)

I photographed the auroras using a Canon R5 camera fitted with an 11 mm f4 Irix lens. Auroras span across wide swaths of the sky, and even with this super-wide lens I often could not fully encompass the displays. Another consideration is that auroras change rapidly, Long exposures thus result in blurred images, losing the sharp striations and fine details often present in the sheets of glowing light. Deciding on an optimal exposure time is thus a compromise between sharp, but noisy images with short exposures versus cleaner, but blurred images with longer times. Of course, the brighter the aurora the easier this becomes! Taking advantage of the low noise of the Canon camera, and AI noise reduction software I used a manual exposure of 4s at ISO 3200 with the lens wide open at f4.  

Next winter we plan another arctic aurora-hunting trip, and for that I will be tempted to buy a new Laowa 10mm f2.8 lens, that woul give an even wider field of view and capture twice as much light…

#192- February 2025
"Sadhu Smoking Cheroot"

#191- January 2025
"Pelicans on Misty Lake"

#190- December 2024
"Hammered Dulcimer"

#189- November 2024
"Luminous Lake"

Caddo Lake, Texas: November 2024

When selecting a Photo-of-the-Month I sometimes like to feature an ”experimental” image; showcasing that is a new technique, subject or way of looking for me. Examples include aerial abstract drone images (#187, 184) and fluorescent rocks (#185). This month’s photo follows on from the latter of these. Since my wife gave me a UV flashlight I have been looking for other things that might fluoresce. Nighttime wanderings with the flashlight revealed that some lichens and plants fluoresced nicely, so on a recent visit to photograph the cypress swamps at Caddo Lake I wanted to see if the Spanish moss draping the cypress trees would glow in the dark.

When visiting Caddo Lake we have stayed at the delightfully named Hodgepodge cottages, located in the equally delightfully named community of Uncertain, TX. Our cottage was just across the road from a private pier giving convenient access to the lake even in the dark. On our first evening I made a preliminary reconnaissance to explore the photographic potential. A single, pole-mounted light bulb at the end of the pier cast an orange light onto trees out in the lake, but this was dim enough that my UV flashlight evoked a clear blue fluorescence from the bark of nearby trees and the moss hanging from them. However, I was surprised to find that shining the flashlight onto the lake produced a much brighter, cerulean blue fluorescence in the water. I don’t know why this is so. Pure water does not fluoresce, and I presume the glow must arise from some tiny plants or organisms suspended in the murky lake.

The next evening, I returned to the pier after dinner, equipped with a camera and tripod to make long exposure photographs, aiming to make the glowing lake the star feature with fluorescence excited by UV light-painting across the lake. A shutter opening of 30 seconds (at f2.8 and ISO 1600) gave a good exposure for the trees illuminated by the pier light, but I found that my flashlight was not powerful enough to illuminate all of the lake surface within the camera view in a single exposure. The two photos here are each thus composites of three or four exposures, successively scanning the UV light across more distant parts of the lake.

#188- October 2024
"Hawk Flying with Fish"

Black collared hawk in flight grasping fish; Rio Claro, Pantanal

This month I feature another photo from our trip in July to the Brazilian Pantanal. After two hotel nights in the city of Cuiaba to rest after the long flight we set out early in the morning for the Transpantaneira Highway, the main artery through the floodplain, looking along the way for the unusual mammals and some of the more than 360 species of birds found in the Pantanal. The area is especially good for wading bird photos—thousands of jabiru, American wood storks and great egrets congregate in huge flocks. We arrived about half way down the highway at our first Pantanal lodge, Rio Claro, in time for lunch. Our group then divided into three small boats and headed out onto a large oxbow lake to photograph a variety of birds in flight as they dove to catch fish thrown into the water.

We cruised slowly along the sinuous lake, looking for birds perched high on the shoreline trees, and maneuvered into a position near the opposite bank where the bird would be facing into the sun as it flew toward us. Although the hawks, egrets and kingfishers we were looking for are wild and in their natural habitat, they have become well accustomed to the ploys of photographers, and perform reliably for the camera. Our boats set out from the lodge armed with a bucket of bait fish. One of the local guides piloting the boats would take a fish, inject it with air (so it would  float) and, on a count of three-two-one, toss it to land in the middle of the water. Just like our dog waiting to be fed scraps from the dinner table, our chosen bird was eagerly awaiting the splash and swooped down to pluck up the fish and carry it away. I tried two different techniques to capture the action. For smaller kingfishers I focused on the splash as soon as the fish hit the water and held the shutter button to grab a rapid burst of shots, hopefully before the bird arrived. That was difficult,  and I mostly ended up with sharply focused water droplets and a blurred or out-of- frame kingfisher. With larger, slower flying egrets and hawks I started by framing the bird in the tree and attempted to keep it focused and in frame as it flew down and away. The photo here was my most successful, a mild crop from a burst shot at 15 frames/second (1/4000s, ISO 1600, Canon 5D, 400mm f8).

I had been finding this exercise in bird-in-flight photography tougher than I expected, but as this was our first time out our guide advised us to treat it as a practice session to hone our skills, and that we would do better on the next day.   However, that did not work out for me, and I was getting annoyed with having less success than the first day. In retrospect I might have realized that a general feeling of frustration and grumpiness is a first sign that I am getting ill; which was shortly confirmed by a positive covid test. So, one of my first photos ended up as my favorite.

#187- September 2024
"Abstract Drone Landscapes"

#186- August 2024
"Pantanal Jaguar"

Jaguar portrait with warm illumination; Cuiabá river, Porto Joffre

Anne and I recently returned from a visit to the Pantanal, a tropical wetland in Brazil that hosts the highest concentration of wildlife in South America. The Pantanal is the remnant of an inland sea, that normally floods during the wet season. As the waters recede in June through September they leave behind lakes, streams and waterholes teeming with fish and aquatic life that support an amazing diversity and density of wildlife, including world’s biggest parrot, the highest concentration of caimans and threatened wildlife like the giant otter. Notably, the Pantanal is home to the world’s highest density of jaguars, where they have uniquely evolved to dive into rivers to capture prey, which they hunt in daytime whereas elsewhere they are largely nocturnal.

That, at least, is the normal pattern of events. In recent years the Pantanal has been parched by a string of severe droughts linked to deforestation and climate change. This year the wet season did not happen, and wildfires have burned over 7,000 square miles, an area the size of New Jersey. The region we visited in July was spared wildfires, but what would normally be marshland appeared arid and dusty. As a consequence, our wildlife encounters were likely diminished as compared to a normal year. I particularly regretted not encountering a giant anteater – the mascot of my university.  Nevertheless, we had an amazing variety of wildlife sightings, and the severe drought this year opened areas to photograph jaguars along the river.

The heart of our visit was a stay of 5 days at Porto Joffre, a small settlement on the bank of the Cuiabá river. To get there we had a bumpy ride to the very end of the Transpantaneria highway; a wash-boarded, dusty dirt road penetrating 90 miles south into the Pantanal, crossing over 100 rickety wooden bridges along the way.  The rough condition of the road helps keep the Pantanal wild, but already some of the bridges are being replaced by solid concrete constructions and it would be a pity if the road were ever paved to open the area to mass tourism.

From our comfortable lodge at Porto Joffre we set out each morning and afternoon on small speedboats, heading upriver into tributaries in search of jaguars. From exposed vantage points and camouflaged lairs they monitor these rivers and patrol for caiman (South American alligators) that are abundant in the rivers and lie basking along their banks. The stalking behavior of a jaguar is to patrol slowly along the river, mostly staying hidden among trees and undergrowth so the only sign of its passing may be a rustling at the top of the vegetation.  At intervals the jaguar will stealthily approach the riverbank, or climb out on an overhanging tree branch, looking to pounce on an unsuspecting caiman which they aim to instantly kill by a single, massive bite to the neck or head.

The jaguars in the Pantanal have become habituated to the growing activity of commercial and sport fishing boats over the past few years, and now appear completely indifferent to humans. That is a good thing, both for the jaguars’ sanity and the convenience of those who come to see them, as there are more than 30 tourist “jaguar boats” operating on the river. The local guides who drive the boats are familiar with the habits of individual jaguars and are adept at locating them even when hidden in the undergrowth and invisible to the untrained eye. Once a sighting is made a radio call goes out and multiple boats converge at high speed though, depending on distance, that might take as long as 20 minutes to get to where the jaguar might hopefully still be present. Jaguar photography in the Pantanal is, therefore, not exactly a wilderness experience. Like land rovers circled around a lion in the Masai mara, we were sometimes among 20 or more boats surrounding a jaguar.

As a jaguar progresses along the riverbank the accompanying flotilla keeps pace, with some drivers heading their boats in advance hoping to provide their clients with better, head-on view when a jaguar emerged in clear sight - but perhaps to the detriment of the jaguar by alerting the caiman it is stalking. My experience was that photographing jaguars from the boat was both easy and hard. We encountered at least one jaguar on each outing, and it was easy to shoot off hundreds of near-identical images of these generally slow moving animals moving through vegetation. But, I found it difficult to create GOOD images. The “holy grail” would have been to capture a caiman kill. However, although we saw two attacks – one a successful kill – both took place within an overgrown patch of floating vegetation. Even though I fired off a well-timed burst of shots, they came out as only an indecipherable tangle of vegetation and limbs. Another good action shot would have been of a jaguar leaping, but my reaction time on the shutter button was too slow. Instead, as featured in this month’s photo, my favorite shots from the trip were more deliberately posed portraits, using warm light at the beginning or end of the day to highlight a jaguar against dark vegetation along the riverbank.

 
In terms of photographic gear, the advice from our tour leader was that a 100-400 or 100-500mm zoom lens would be all we needed for wildlife in the Pantanal. I found that to be the case for jaguars, as the boats were able to get close to these large animals without disturbing them. I also used an 800mm lens a lot for small birds and more timid animals on land. In both cases I took only consumer grade Canon RF lenses (100-400mm, f 5.6-8; and 800mm, f11). Although these did provoke some feeling of inferiority in the presence of professional L-series Canon “big whites” sported by many photographers on the river, I felt their light weight and smaller size made them much easier to hand- hold and maneuver in the confined space on the boats. Although limited to small apertures. Image stabilization took care of rocking motion of the boats at slow shutter speeds, and with a little assistance from AI noise reduction and sharpening in post processing I found the image quality was generally excellent.

#185- July 2024
"Yooperlites and Fluorescent Lichen"

Yooperlites and chalk dudlya; UCI Ecological Preserve

This month I show two recent photos that were inspired by an anniversary present from my wife; a package containing two fluorescent ‘yooperlite’ rocks, together with a UV flashlight to make them glow. Yooperlites are minerals containing fluorescent sodalite, discovered only in 2017 along the shores of Lake Superior, that display orange patterns against a blue background when excited by long wavelength UV light. Anne had seen a photo of these rocks in the Nature Conservancy magazine, and wondered what I might be able to create with them.

A quick test in the bathroom with the lights out showed that the rocks indeed glowed brightly under the UV flashlight. Then, I needed to come up with an interesting setting in which to photograph them. My morning walk the next day through the UCI campus ecological preserve gave a good answer in the form of a flowering chalk dudleya - a sinister, triffid-like cactus with a basal rosette and an extended stalk with outstretched silvery-white branches. That evening I hiked up again to the preserve and set my tripod next to the dudleya.  Placing the smaller yooperlite in the center of the rosette and a larger one at its base, I framed a composition with a wide angle lens while there was still sufficient light to see clearly. My photo here is a composite of two long exposures; a background shot at dusk while some color remained in the sky, and a second exposure selectively illuminating the yooperlites with the tight beam of my UV flashlight.

But that was not all the excitement for the night! As I shone the flashlight around it picked out a bright orange glow from lichen growing on rocks, and blue from dried vegetation on the ground. I had known that various minerals found in our local deserts were fluorescent and could make captivating photographic subjects, but I had not realized that lichen and some plant matter was also fluorescent. So, a new discovery for me, and I had fun wandering around shining the UV flashlight to discover new fluorescent compositions.

Fluorescent lichen on rocks overlooking the UCI Research Park; UCI Ecological Preserve

#184- June 2024
"First experiences with drone photography"

Unlike a painter who starts with a blank canvas and is limited only by their imagination and talent, a photographer has relatively few tools to translate a scene into a photograph that communicates more than the bare reality of a scene.  One of the main tools is simply deciding where to place and point the camera.   Among the many aspects that made Galan Rowell an exceptional photographer was his skill as a highly accomplished rock climber and mountaineer. He could get himself – and his camera – into locations that few others could.  My days as a climber are long gone, so that avenue of photography is no longer available to me. But I had been wondering for quite a while about taking up drone photography to get different viewpoints. Sometimes I would find that the perfect angle to shoot a waterfall lay on the wrong side of a cliff edge,  and drone photos on Instagram of braided glacial rivers in Iceland showed intriguing abstract patterns that are inaccessible from ground level.

Learning to fly a drone always seemed a bit daunting, as did the regulations and restrictions on drone use, but an opportunity came when Anne signed up for a cooking class in “fabulous fruit desserts” at the John. C. Campbell Folk School. The school offered a class in drone photography that week, so I could both learn to fly and sample Anne’s creations at the same time!

After a doing some research on drone models I bought a DJI Mavic mini4 pro. This is a sub 250gram drone, meaning there is no need to register it with the FAA, and its remarkably small size allows the drone, controller, and batteries to fit easily within a few compartments of my camera bag. Despite its size, however, the little drone packs a lot of computing power, with GPS, return to home function and omnidirectional collision avoidance sensors giving confidence to a novice pilot.  Unlike an airplane there is no need to keep flying forward to stay in the air. If in trouble I can just let go of the control sticks and the drone will hover in place, giving plenty of time to decide on a next move. Altogether I found it fairly intuitive to pilot my drone, though I still need to fully master how the forward/back and left/right relationships between the controller and drone flip depending on which way the drone is pointing. My maneuvers often begin with a quick jig in the wrong direction before correcting and heading off the right way.

While I found it easier than I had anticipated to gain a basic mastery of the mechanics of drone flying, I suspect it will take me longer to learn how best to compose good drone photographs. A large part of that is adjusting to a completely new viewpoint, but also the diminutive camera on my drone has some limitations. Although the sensor surprised me with the quality of its 12 Mpix RAW image files that can be pushed quite far in Photoshop without falling apart, the camera has only a single, fixed focal length lens. While the  medium wide perspective this provides is a good compromise for general use, I do miss the ability to zoom to gain different perspectives And, the effective close-focus distance is quite long.  This is not a limitation of the lens, but rather the collision avoidance system of the drone, which skitters to the side if I get closer than about 5ft of what I am trying to photograph. Although that feature can be turned off, I am not going to risk it!

Vegetable garden, John C. Campbell Folk School

I took the photo above on my very first drone flying session. After a morning in class to review the regulations and mechanics of drone operation, we went outside for instruction on how to fly. Once I had figured out how to get the drone in the air and moving under control, I started looking around for things to photograph. We were flying next to a vegetable garden, where the Folk School grows much of the produce we eat in the dining hall. The linear rows of plants looked as if they might make a good subject from above, so I flipped the camera to look directly down and hovered at a height to encompass several rows. The resulting photo gave a pleasingly abstract impression, with a muted color palette, and was an encouraging start

Scorpion and Grasshopper; Ricardo Breceda sculptures, Borrego Springs

This second photo is from a visit to Borrego Springs a few weeks later. My primary aim was to photograph the metal sculptures of Ricardo Breceda under the Milky Way, but I brought my drone along thinking that the sculptures would also make good subjects for daytime drone photography. Visiting in June the temperature was over 110oF, and the little town had largely shut down in the heat.  Sadly, that included the ice cream/fudge shop, which closes each summer, but the lack of visitors had the advantage that I had the sculptures to myself, without worry of disturbing people with a buzzing drone.

To get this shot framing the grasshopper within the curl of the scorpion tail I had to maneuver the drone as close as the collision avoidance would let it approach, and then fight a little with the controls as the little brain in the drone wanted to back away. In this case the relative sizes and separation between the two sculptures gave a nice composition; without a drone a very high stepladder would be needed... I was less successful in photographing other pairs of sculptures, which were generally so far apart so that when I moved in to frame one at a good size the other appeared too small. A larger drone with a zoom or multiple lenses would have been good there, allowing me to position the drone further back and then zoom in to balance the size of the two subjects.

#183- May 2024
"Inspiration from Marbled Paper Print"

Inspiration from Marbled Paper Print;; John C. Campbell Folk School, May17, 2024

For this month, something completely different; a creation originating from a recent one week visit to the John C. Campbell Folk School where I took a class on drone photography. That will likely be the subject of a future featured photo, but my inspiration here came from the work of a student in a different class. At the end of the week all the students presented their handiwork – which ranged extensively from blacksmithing, glass fusing, fruit desserts, and basket weaving  to bookbinding – at a “show-and-tell” gathering. These presentations made nice subjects to photograph, and I was particularly taken by the work of a class learning the ancient craft of paper marbling, employing  a technique of aqueous surface design to produce patterns similar to smooth marble.

The patterns are created in a bath of water by floating rings of ink or paint that may be manipulated by blowing on them or by carefully using a human hair to stir the colors. Finally, the patterns are transferred to an absorbent sheet of paper to create a unique print. Most of the work at the Folk School looked to have been made using the first of these approaches, but one print stood out for its fine level of detail and repetitive but individually dissimilar floral patterning.

The image below shows just a central part of this striking print. Obviously, I can’t take any credit for merely photographing someone else’s artwork, but I did wonder whether I could use it as a starting point to create my own interpretation. My image above is one result of a pleasant afternoon playing in Photoshop. To generate it I duplicated the image as a second layer, horizontally flipped this, and overlaid it on the original using a “difference” blending mode to generate a higher frequency of spatial details and range of spectral colors.The direct result of this processing was too dark, so I adjusted curves, color temperature and individual hues to taste. [Click HERE to download the full resolution image in a new tab to better appreciate the level of detail].

My photo is thus a combination of a centuries old analog art technique together with digital processing. Notably, however, all successive steps in the process turned on the skill and judgement of two humans – no generative artificial intelligence involved!

What did my processing add? It is probably a matter of taste whether you prefer the original or my version. But I would say that they are surprisingly different, to the point that it is hard to recognize one as the starting point for the other. The marbled print is akin to the endpapers and covers frequently found in older books, whereas my “Photoshopped” version is more reminiscent of a fantastically detailed stained glass window.

#182- April 2024
"Milky Way over the Spiral Labyrinth"

The Spiral Labyrinth, Southern Arizona, April 12, 2024

Anne and I returned home last week from a 2500 mile road trip to view the total solar eclipse in the Texas hill country. The eclipse was a bust for us, as clouds covered the sun at just the wrong time. We had a good view of the initial phase of the partial eclipse through thin, high clouds, but then a bank of thunderclouds approached as totality neared. I had set up a camera with telephoto lens to photograph the eclipse, running at 3 frames per second. The last shot with the sun visible showed an exceedingly thin arc of light, captured about 2 seconds before the onset of totality! All we experienced was a few minutes of relative darkness.

But there were other rewards for the long drive. On the way out we found a beautiful spot to camp in the KOFA Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona, surrounded by a profusion of wildflowers among the saguaro cacti and ocotillo. Returning to KOFA on our journey home only a week later the flowers had largely gone to seed, but I had a specific destination in mind that I had wanted to photograph for several years - the mysterious Spiral Labyrinth located on BLM land just outside the KOFA Reserve.

 The labyrinth is a 60-foot-diameter spiral of gravel scraped from the desert floor, leading to a pile of rocks in the center with a likeness of Kokopelli, along with small beads and trinkets left by people who have walked the labyrinth. There seems to be no information on the internet about who constructed the labyrinth, but a scan through the timeline on Google Earth reveals that it was made in the summer of 2010. Given its age and current pristine condition it seems someone must continue to maintain it.

To find the labyrinth we drove about 3 miles from US 95 down the graded dirt road leading to Palm Canyon. It is just visible from the road when you know where to look. If you come to the KOFA Reserve boundary, turn back about 500 yards. There is a large, surrounding flat area convenient for camping; but the view might be blocked by a parked RV, as in this Google Earth image..

My idea was to photograph the labyrinth at night, centered below the arc of the Milky Way.  Our timing was right, with the Milky Way rising in at about 2:00am, long after the crescent moon had set. I fell asleep stretched out on the desert floor looking up at the stars until the alarm went off after a few hours and I wriggled out of my sleeping bag into the comfortably warm night air. I had previously set up my tripod and equatorial tracking mount at dusk, positioning it so that the spiral just fit within the field of view of my 11mm Irix super-wide lens and guessing where the Milky Way would rise. In the dark, with the Miky Way now visible it was obvious that I had guessed wrong, so I had to reposition and align the tracking mount on Polaris.

I used an exposure of 2 minutes at f4, ISO 1600 for both the foreground and sky. After some experimenting I found that I could get a good illumination of the labyrinth using a small LED panel at its lowest intensity, achieving an even lighting by walking back and forth along an arc outside the spiral while the shutter was open. However, with the camera in landscape orientation to encompass the width of the labyrinth, the Miky Way was cut off at the top of the frame. To create the final image I thus combined a single shot of the labyrinth (remembering to turn off the tracking…) together with three shots of the sky taken after rotating the camera to portrait orientation.

To end our long trip, I was happy to get a good astrophotography photo as some consolation for missing the solar eclipse...

#181- March 2024
"Locomotive #93 - Night Photoshoot"

Locomotive #93 - Night Photoshoot at the Northern Nevada Railway. Ely NV

This month’s photo features a new subject for me. Last summer we had rented a cottage  in England situated next to the line of the North Yorkshire heritage railway. Steam trains would pass by, right at the end of the garden! That piqued Anne’s interest in steam railroading, and after we returned home she discovered  that the Northern Nevada Railway organized winter photoshoots from their museum/depot in Ely.

“World-class photographic opportunities, steam locomotives pulling vintage freight and passenger cars that are original to the railroad… Billowing white clouds of steam plus plumes of black & gray smoke towering above the canyons and valleys. A photo shoot is an opportunity to photograph the original Nevada Northern Railway equipment as it was during the day. Our photo shoots have the original equipment operating on their original rails and in their original context.”

That sounded fun, so Anne booked a ticket for me and we set off in February on a long road trip to Ely through the basin and range of Nevada, with bonus opportunities for landscape photography along the way. The photoshoot began with an orientation/safety briefing then, along with about 30 photographers, videographers  and railroad enthusiasts, we had the afternoon to shoot locomotives and rolling stock in action around the depot. Locomotive 93 was the star of the show; a black behemoth built in 1906 rumbling down the tracks emitting clouds of steam and vast plumes of dark smoke.  Not an ecologically friendly mode of transport, but visually much more engaging than its diesel-electric companion. Photos from this daytime photoshoot are HERE
.
That evening, a special aspect of the photoshoot was an opportunity for night photography. The railroad staff set up a scene, driving locomotive 93 down the track alongside a small depot and arranged strobe lights for controlled illumination. The procedure was that the strobes would be fired at regular intervals once or twice a minute, with a three-two-one countdown announced before each flash. To capture photos I set my camera on a solid tripod, adjusted composition and used bulb exposure mode, opening the shutter in advance of each flash. It took me several tries to figure out an appropriate combination of aperture and ISO settings. But once I had got a good exposure the opportunities to experiment further with framing and lighting seemed rather limited as the locomotive and strobe lights were in fixed positions and, with 30 tripods in a rather tight space, it was difficult to find new angles. With the temperature dropping well below freezing at an altitude over 6000ft it was tempting to head back to the hotel!  However, this was a one-off opportunity, so I persevered and discovered nuances by slightly changing the composition, and by varying the time between opening the shutter and the flash to balance illumination from lights around the depot with the strobe. For the photo here, I stopped down the aperture and anticipated the flash by about 20 seconds so the shutter would be open long enough to create a ‘sunstar’ effect from the locomotive headlamp.

My photos of the railroad were, of course, photographed in color (there are very few monochrome digital cameras available). However, the locomotive was built long before the era of color photography. For such historic subjects a black and white treatment more effectively portrays a 'period' feel, and the tonal range in B/W can be pushed further to create a more dramatic impression whereas this would appear unnatural in a color photograph. And, the locomotive is pure black to begin with!

#180- February 2024
"Two trees in mist"

Bosque del Apache, November 22, 2023

Yellowstone National Park, January 31, 2024

Solitary trees always make an attractive and popular subject for photographs and Instagrams (e.g. here and here): and if the trees are veiled by mist that always adds a sense of mystery.  So, for this month I selected two recent photos from my travels this winter, featuring isolated trees in mist. But, the trees are not the sole or even primary focus of the images. In both cases I framed them to complement the main foreground subject.

TOP. A sunrise photo from a to Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge taken in early winter, when the migrating sandhill cranes had already begun to arrive while the trees still retained fall colors. The best place to find the cranes for sunrise photos used to be at the Flight Deck, but in recent years they have tended to roost for the night in the roadside pond near the Refuge entrance. On our second morning at the Refuge a low mist hung over the pond, alternately thickening and clearing to reveal cranes settled on the water in front of a lone tree at the southern end of the pond. Among the numerous shots I took that morning this is my favorite, just catching first light from the rising sun while the mist obscured the distant mountains and isolated the tree and cranes, forming a uniform background to create a simplified composition.

BOTTOM. Another early morning photo, taken on Geyser Hill in the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone National Park. My main subject here was the thermal Doublet Pools, with their deep blue water and yellow-fringed edges - but I further wanted a composition to place the pools within the surrounding environment and in particular to feature the surrounding ice-frosted trees. The possibilities to find different viewpoints are restricted In the thermal areas of Yellowstone as it is illegal (and likely lethal!) to step off the boardwalks. However,  I found a position where the serrated conjunction between the pools conveniently lined up to create a leading line toward a prominent frosted tree in the background. Steam rising from the hot pools and blown by fitful light winds veiled and then revealed the tree and distant snow-covered hills, so I again took many shots from the same viewpoint. For my final selection here, I chose a shot where the steam rose in an inverted V pattern behind the tree, mirroring its shape and isolating the single tree while encompassing a clear view of the wider landscape behind.

#179- January 2024
"Aequoria - The jellyfish that won a Nobel Prize"

Aequorea victoria (Crystal jellyfish) ; Long Beach Acquarium

This month’s photo features crystal jellyfish from a visit to the Long Beach aquarium.  They make an attractive subject, with the vivid colors in the photo coming largely from the blue/purple lighting used to illuminate the jellies. But something else is also visible. The thin ring of light around the rim of the jellyfish is actually being generated by the jellyfish itself – a glow in the dark, that would persist even if the lights were extinguished. This is an example of bioluminescence, a phenomenon analogous to the glow of fireflies, but arising through a very different mechanism. The elucidation of that mechanism over several decades is the basis of one of biotechnologies most indispensable tools; one which I use in my own research studies.   So this month, instead of discussing the photograph, I thought I would digress and give a brief account of how the crystal jellyfish led to the award of a Nobel Prize.

The story began in 1960 when a young Japanese biologist, Osamu Shimumura came to the USA on a research fellowship without any defined research project in mind. The head of the laboratory he joined had been fascinated by the bright luminescence of the crystal jellyfish found in abundance around the marine biology lab at Friday Harbor, and suggested to Shimorura that he should try to figure out how the jellyfish glowed. Collecting thousands of jellyfish, Shimomura prepared a “squeezate” from the luminescent rim of the jellies. After months of work he succeeded in extracting a protein – which he named aequorin after the Latin name of the jellyfish, aequoria victoria – that glowed green when added to water containing calcium.

Shimomura’s discovery and purification of aequorin proved to be a very useful research tool. Every cell in our body uses tiny changes in level of calcium in the cytosol to control crucial functions such as contraction of heart and skeletal muscle and transmission between nerve cells. By injecting aequorin into cells it became possible to record these calcium signals by the tiny flashes of light they produced. Shimomura was thus soon bombarded with letters from scientists around the world requesting precious samples of aequorin, which he gracefully fulfilled by going to Friday Harbor every summer to collect and process literally tons of the highly abundant jellyfish.

A second chapter in the story of the jellyfish arose from Shimomura’s observation that although the jellyfish glow green, his purified aequorin glowed a deep blue,. He found an answer to this conundrum in a second protein he was able to isolate from the jellyfish along with aequorin; a green fluorescent protein (GFP) that was excited by light energy from the aequorin causing it to emit a green fluorescence.  For many years the GFP remained a mere footnote in Shimomura’s paper describing aequorin, and all the excitement among scientists lay with aequorin. However, that changed as the techniques of molecular biology developed to enabling the isolation, cloning and sequencing of the gene for the jellyfish GFP. In crucial experiments Martin Chalfie injected cells with DNA encoding GFP and showed that they would fluoresce without needing any other factor from the jellyfish. Beyond individual cells it soon became possible to express GFP even in live animals (glow in the dark mice and pigs!). These were not mere scientific playthings, because the GFP could be genetically targeted to specific cell types or tagged to specific proteins; for example, to aid study of cancer in mice by making the tumors glow and to study the movement of individual immune cells in the spinal cord during multiple sclerosis.

The final chapter of the jellyfish story belongs to Roger Tsien, who took the GFP from the jellyfish as a starting point to engineer fluorescent proteins with improved properties. The native jellyfish GFP has a relatively weak fluorescence, and is only a single color. Employing molecular genetic tools, Tsien systematically mutated GFP to make it brighter; and produced variants (colorfully named for vegetables and fruits; tomato, cherry…)  that glowed in different colors, so different cell types or proteins could be visualized at the same time. And, circling back to the beginning of the story, Tsien engineered GFP to become calcium sensitive, creating a better tool to study cellular calcium signaling and supplanting the use of aequorin.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008 was awarded jointly to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP".  But, of course, none of this would have been possible without the jellyfish…
 

#178- December 2023
"Caddo Lake"

#177- November 2023
"Minimalist Steller's Sea Eagle Portrait"

Steller's Sea Eagle; Hokkaido, Japan, February 2023

Originally espoused by Ansel Adams, a theme among landscape photographers is that of “pre-visualization”. The idea is that photographer envisages in advance exactly how the final image should look, and accordingly figures out all the details of how to get the shot; where to place the tripod, how to frame the composition, what lighting and weather conditions are needed and so on... That obviously does not work well for wildlife photography where, with limited exceptions, the subject does what it wants, not what the photographer wants. Thus, this month’s photo is more an example of “post-visualization” -  the identification and composition a final image from within an extensive sequence of chaotic individual frames.

The photo portrays a Seller’s sea eagle, one of the largest raptors in the world, taken just offshore of Hokkaido’s Shiretoko Peninsula across from Russia’s claimed Kuril Islands. We had cruised out on a small boat from Rausu harbor for about 30 min to find drifting pack ice that would provide a good background to photograph eagles as they swooped down onto the ice to catch fish thrown by the crew. After a little practice I found it easy to lock on to an eagle in the viewfinder and, using eye-detect autofocus, follow it down onto the ice while acquiring a rapid burst of shots. The captain positioned our boat close alongside the ice, so there was no need for a long telephoto lens. Instead, my little Canon 100-400mm RF lens served well. Despite its low cost as a ‘consumer’ lens this gives sharp images and, together with my R7 camera, made a very light combination that was effortless to hold singlehanded. I usually framed wide (about 300mm), both for ease of keeping the eagle within the frame, and to avoid clipping outstretched wings or another eagle that might come in to fight for the fish.

Given the 30 frames per second burst mode of the R7, I acquired nearly 2000 frames in the hour we were with the eagles. Back home, my task was then to select the keepers. Quickly scanning through the images in FastRawViewer it was easy to identify good poses and action shots of eagles squabbling, but I nearly passed over the RAW shot that provided this month’s photo. At first glance it was yet another among hundreds of rather cluttered shots of an eagle flying across the ice; but then I noticed the possibility of extracting a “picture within a picture”, isolating just the head and prominent orange beak of the eagle centered and silhouetted against the black underwing feathers. Having framed wide, I needed to apply some  strong cropping to isolate the subject, but with a sharp 35 Mpixels to start with, and with some enhancement from Topax Gigapixel, there was plenty of resolution left.

My aim was to create a simple graphic image, in a minimalist Japanese style. Cropping alone largely accomplished that. The only post processing I then needed to apply was to adjust the highlight levels, so that the background appeared an almost uniform, non-distracting negative space, while retaining just enough detail to separate the white upper wing feathers  and place the eagle in the context of the ice background..

#176- October 2023
"Baily's Beads"

#175- September 2023
"Capturing a Polar Bear Leap with a Cheap Lens"

Svalbard, July 2023

Capturing a Polar Bear Leap – In praise of cheap lenses.

A week on a ship in the pack ice watching polar bears confirmed my initial impression that they are rather laid-back creatures. The bears wander around slowly, often settling down for a nap. That makes sense,  given that they never know where their next meal might be coming from. They need to conserve energy. However, this generally languid behavior gives a misleading impression. Polar bears are, of course, immensely powerful animals, but they only occasionally display that power. To photograph rare instants of dynamic action you need to be ready, with the camera already to your eye, tracking the bear and ready to press the shutter button. In that regard it helps to have the right lens on the camera – but not necessarily the most expensive, optically perfect lens the camera manufacturer would like to sell you. A mundane, but important factor is simply weight. Optical perfection goes along with more and bigger glass elements in a robust metal body. A perfect lens is perfectly useless if it is so heavy you had to put it down to rest tired arm muscles when the decisive moment occurred!

This month’s photo offers a counter example. A polar bear captured at the instant of leaping between two ice floes using an inexpensive, light, plastic-bodied lens.

When developing lenses for their new ‘mirrorless’ cameras Canon took an interesting approach, introducing several inexpensive ‘consumer’ lenses in addition to a family of superb, but extremely expensive “L” series lenses. My choice in making the transition to mirrorless cameras, and specifically in deciding which lenses to bring on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the pack ice, was to go with the consumer lenses. Almost all of my polar bear photos were taken with either the Canon RF 100-400mm or RF 800mm lenses. One rational was price; my two lenses, purchased during frequent sales, cost a total of $1,300. For comparison, the combined cost of equivalent L series lenses (RF 100-500mm and RF800mm) is almost $20,000! But, beyond that, I thought I might actually do better with the cheap lenses.

Clearly the L lenses are superior (or why would people spend so much money!). However, by employing some innovative technologies (including moulded aspheric lenses and diffractive optics) the Canon consumer lenses achieve surprisingly good optical characteristics. A main drawback is that their much smaller apertures let in less light; but that is mitigated by the high sensitivity of modern cameras, the stabilization built into the lenses, and new developments in AI noise reduction software. Indeed, given the bright 24hr light in the high Arctic I had no problems getting a shutter speeds of 1/1000s or better to freeze the motion and water drops of my polar bear. And, any deficit in ultimate sharpness could be fixed by judicious application of AI sharpening software. So, not too much of a deficit with the consumer lenses, whereas a big advantage is their size and weight. For comparison with the equivalent L lenses, my little zoom weighs 18 vs. 42 oz; and the 800 mm 36 vs. 93 oz. Both are much easier to transport and carry with no worry about airline carry-on baggage allowances. Most importantly, both lenses proved almost effortless to handhold while shooting.

My leaping bear photo was taken using my Canon R7 camera with the 100-400mm zoom (giving an equivalent focal length of around 500mm);  a combination so light I could easily hold it one handed. Looking through the viewfinder I had followed the bear for several minutes as it slowly approached the ship, and was ready to fire off a burst of shots as it reached the tip of the ice floe. I doubt whether the final image quality is much inferior to what could have been achieved with a 500mm prime lens costing >$10,000 more (you can download the image at full resolution to judge for yourself), and the overall experience was certainly more pleasant with lightweight gear. Perhaps the only negative was having to overcome an inferiority complex setting down my little plastic lenses next to the behemoth ‘big guns’ glass wielded by most of the other photographers on the voyage.

#174- August 2023
"Star trails, meteors and T Rex"

Borrego Springs, California; August 13, 2023

After two years of being washed out by a bright moon the Perseid meteor shower this month coincided a nearly new moon, so we went off to the desert for a couple of nights watching and photographing meteors at Borrego Springs. This is the only designated Dark Sky community in California and, while not fully as dark as some mountain sites, has advantages of an almost guaranteed clear sky, relatively short driving time from our home and pleasantly warm nights. On the other hand, daytime temperatures over 100 F precluded camping at our usual site in the badlands, and we rented an apartment so we could sleep and rest in air-conditioned comfort during the day, and wake at around midnight to watch the metor show.

Moreover, the numerous metal sculptures of fantastical creatures created by Ricardo Breceda at sites around outskirts of the town make a unique foreground against which to photograph the night sky. From a previous visit to photograph the Milky Way I remembered a pair of giant T. Rex sculptures that serve well for meteors. Moreover, as well as forming intriguing silhouettes, the dinosaurs are located half a mile down a rough dirt trail, where I thought there would be a better chance of having them to myself during the well-advertised meteor shower.

On the first night I set up my camera with an ultra-wide (11mm, f4) lens, pointed toward the north east to frame the meteor radiant (their apparent ‘source’) together with the the two dinosaurs. I manually focused on a bright star, set the interval timer to take repeating 30s exposures, and left the camera to run by itself while I lay out on the sand to watch the meteor show. After about 3 hours the camera had accumulated some 300 shots and the first glimmer of dawn started to brighten the sky. Viewing the camera screen in the dark it was hard to hard to tell whether I had caught many meteors, and after downloading to my computer the results were disappointing.  Although the stars and Milky Way showed up bright, there were only a few frames with meteors, and they were faint even at times where I remembered seeing a bright streak.

However, as we were there for two days, I could try something different the next night. Because meteor streaks typically last less than a second, shorter than the exposure time, the light captured by the camera depends only on the lens aperture.  I thus thought a wide aperture (f1.8) 50mm lens might work better, even though the narrower field of view would catch fewer meteors. And, to avoid images of the stars becoming too bright I planned shorten the exposure to 15 s.  However, a hitch in my plan became apparent as we drove out along the dirt trail, finding vehicles and a several people already at the T Rex sculptures. To avoid disturbing them, and to avoid their lights disturbing my photos, we stopped at an isolated patch of desert so I could acquire undisturbed shots of the night sky, even if lacking foreground dinosaurs.

My plan B was to create a composite photo, with meteors superimposed on star trails. Shooting directly  toward the north star on a fixed tripod  I again let the camera run for about 3 hours, now accumulating some 600 shots. Once back home I started to stack all the individual frames in Photoshop to generate a composite, discovering that around 60 were sufficient to produce an effective star trail image. On the other hand, meteors appeared only sporadically; but with 600 frames to look through I could find a good number. For each meteor I selected and clipped out the streak, and added progressively added streaks  to the star trail image as a separate layers using the ‘lighten’ blend mode in Photoshop. Because the camera was fixed and not on a tracking mount, the radiant of the meteors rotated along with the stars through a 45 degree arc during the 3 hr exposure,  so the superimposed meteor trails no longer appeared to originate from the same point.  To fix that, I manually adjusted the angle of each trail so that all now appeared to arise from a fixed radiant beyond the top right of the star trail image. Finally, I wanted my dinosaurs back, so after flattening the star trails plus meteors image stack I blended this with an earlier shot of the dinosaurs silhouetted against the faint light of a dawn sky.

#173- July 2023
"Down Low with a Polar Bear"

#172- June 2023
"Pair of Ezo Red Foxes"

Ezo red foxes (Vulpes vulpes schrencki) ; Notsuke Peninsula, Hokkaido

On our recent tour of Japan the last location we visited in Hokkaido was the coastal town of Rausu, close to the northern tip of the island. Our main objective there was to photograph sea eagles fishing at sea and on pack ice, but as the two scheduled boat excursions were only in the mornings we drove during the afternoons along the Notsuke peninsula; a curious question mark-shaped narrow spit of land extending into the Nemuro Strait between Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands. The spit curves around a large expanse of wetlands, forming an extensive wildlife refuge where we hoped to find ezo red fox and sika deer. The ezo red fox is a subspecies red fox that thrives in Hokkaido, as well as the Kuril islands and Sakhalin.  They are majestic creatures, with lustrous, meticulously groomed coats contrasting with the snowy winter landscape.

Our first encounter was with a fox right by the side of the road as we were driving past. With sparse traffic our driver could safely pull up alongside, and I scrambled to figure out how to open the window to photograph the fox using the minibus as a blind. I eventually got photo; but not a good one, looking down at a high angle on the fox which had then wandered off the snow onto the edge of the road.

Our bus drove a hundred yards down the road we got out and walked slowly back toward the fox, which appeared unperturbed by our presence. Indeed, there are concerns that tourists may be feeding them to get a snapshot. We stayed a good distance away, where an 800mm lens on a crop-frame camera nicely filled the frame. But, our fox that afternoon had a rather mangy looking tail, and I was unable to get photos with a good background. The following afternoon we did better, finding two pristine foxes on a snowbank between the road and the beach. My photo this month shows the foxes amicably settled down on a snow-covered pile of fishing nets. Standing on the road I was at eye level with them for a nice perspective, with the sea behind as a blue background to contrast with the red fur. Even with an 800 mm lens this pair were rather far away so the image quality is not perfect, but I very much like the elegance of the pose, the colors and the simplicity of the photo.

#171- May 2023
"Looking up into a Forest of Desert Candles"

#170- April 2023
"Red-crowned Cranes on White and Black"

#169- March 2023
"Burrowing Owls"

#168- February 2023
"Red-crowned Crane Dance"

#167- January 2023
"Royal Spoonbill Greeting"

Royal Spoonbills at the Whataroa White Heron Sanctuary

On our recent campervan tour of the South Island of New Zealand I had mapped out a route starting from Queenstown,  looping along the west coast then crossing Arthur’s Pass to the east coast and finally returning to Queenstown over the mountains. One objective was to try to add to our tally of penguin species, visiting Monroe beach on the west coast for fjordland penguins, and Timaru on the east for little blue (fairy) penguins. Another highlight was to visit the Whataroa White Heron Sanctuary on the west coast, to see the only nesting site of Australasian white herons (kotuku) in  New Zealand.

The nesting site can only be visited via a tour. Lacking internet access we could not book this in advance,  but luckily two places were open for that afternoon  when we arrived at the tour office. Getting to the nesting site first involved a 45 min ride in a minibus through agricultural fields, ending at the edge of a rainforest. Some years ago, this journey was by a much more exciting jet boat ride, but floods and diversion of the river channel has made that infeasible. From the end of the road, a pleasant 10 minute walk along a path and boardwalk through the prehistoric Kahikatea rainforest brought us to a two-level wooden hide.  Up to that point the way ahead had been hidden, and the windows of the hide suddenly revealed a spectacular view,  with white birds nesting densely through a semi-circular weep of dense trees around a shallow lagoon.

There were several tens of pairs of elegant white herons in clear sight, with chicks at various stages of development in each nest. In addition,  I had not anticipated that many of the white birds were actually royal spoonbills; not quite as elegant and refined a bird as the herons, and maybe a little comical with their enormous black spoonbill beaks, but attractive in their own right. Moreover, in contrast to the more sedate herons, the spoonbills would erupt in a frenzied dance when one returned to the nest to join its partner, with the lush crest of feathers on their heads erupting into a spectacular white crown.

We had only about 45 minutes at the hide, so I had a hard decisions on how to  divide my time between the different birds. The distance from the hide to the nests was such that I could nicely frame individual birds (the herons and spoonbills are of similar size) with an 800 mm lens on a crop-frame camera (Canon R7), but this extreme magnification made it difficult to quickly find and move to a new subject. Most of my time I spent with the herons, while listening for the cacophony of an approaching spoonbill as a signal to switch to a nest whose location I had previously noted. My framing of the birds was all over the place as the pair danced around, but by using the high-speed 30fps burst mode of the R7 I was able to get a few shots without clipping their wings or feet..

#166 - December 2022
"Pereira Windows at Dusk"

#165 - November 2022
"Medieval Cloisters at Lake Crowley"

#164 - October 2022
"Zen and the art of flower photography"

Nature reserve near Brasstown, North Carolina

Anne and I recently returned after a week at the John C. Campbell Folk School in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. I attended a class on ‘Photography for the Zen of it’, and embraced the spirit of this theme by looking for compositions with simplicity and tranquility. This was facilitated  by the location of the school campus in a bucolic environment among wooded hills and open grasslands, making a remarkably serene and pleasant place to spend time away from the hustle of the world.

My photo this month was taken on an excursion to a nearby private nature preserve. Most of the reserve comprised woodland not very different from that around the school, but a unique feature was where a small stream created a boggy area covered in small white flowers (Parnassia palustris).  Confusingly known as grass of parnassus these are not a grass at all, but actually a showy flowering forb. The peculiar common name comes from ancient Greece where cattle grazed this species on Mount Parnassus. So, an obvious and attractive subject to photograph, but extracting a simple and elegant composition was not going to be simple as the flowers were densely scattered among grasses and fallen leaves on the muddy ground.  Sacrificing dry feet in the cause of enhanced mobility across the bog I decided the best opportunities lay with flowers along the edge of the stream, where I could position them against a dark background of the water.
The parnassus flowers were mostly growing in tight clumps, which looked too cluttered, so I continued searching for individuals along the stream bank. However, after framing a nice example in the viewfinder I decided that the composition was now too simple! Although the flowers are striking, with five creamy white distinctively veined petals, a single flower would not be enough to raise a photograph above the ordinary. I needed some additional element as a complement. As I had initially moved a fern to the side to obtain a clear view I tried letting it return to its original position alongside the flower – but that just resulted in an oddly asymmetrical composition. Then I had the key idea of gently hooking the flower within a branch of the fern, visually fusing the two as a single graphical element.

That looked good, and by trying a few camera angles I framed my entire subject against dark blue reflections of the sky from the stream. But then I needed to deal with a remaining technical issue, arising because we had travelled by air with only carry-on luggage and I had not brought a tripod. The lighting under the trees was dim, so to get a shutter speed fast enough to deal with camera shake I needed to set a wide aperture on the lens, with a resulting depth of field too narrow to encompass the curvature of the curving fern and keep it in sharp focus.  Modern camera technology solved that problem, and I set my Canon R5 to acquire a sequence of 12 focus-shifted exposures that I could later merge in Photoshop.
A final, aesthetic consideration was which way up to present the final image. Because of the way I was holding the camera, the picture on the computer screen initially came out upside down -   so I flipped it right way up. I thought that looked fine, but when our class instructor Rick was reviewing our work, he suggested the composition might look better inverted – so, a reverse flip as you now see! On balance I agree with him that this inverted orientation works better, creating more Zen-like extra level of abstraction.

And, although my description of the making of this image may read as rather mechanical, I was completely absorbed during the ten or fifteen minute process in narrowing down from a cluttered landscape to elegant simplicity. Perhaps in a way of Zen. (“Simply observe.  Become completely absorbed into the location that you are at. Be there and actually be there, not somewhere else in your mind thinking about something very insignificant.”)

#163 - September 2022
"Gannet in flight with puffin wingmen"

Rauðinúpur Cape, North Iceland

During our recent trip to Iceland our original plan was to circle clockwise around the ring road, cutting inland across to Egilsstaðir. However, inspired by a captivating VIDEO we decided instead to take a long detour to the very tip of Iceland at Rauðinúpur Cape where the northernmost colony of gannets can be found. That turned out to be one of the most rewarding days on our trip, both for the birds and our discovery of a remote, tranquil part of Iceland, far from the masses of tourists that have taken over much of the island.

To reach Rauðinúpur we followed coast along road 85 and turned due north on road 870, which becomes ia gravel road just outside Raufarhöfn village and continues to end  at the farm Núpskatla. An interesting feature along the way is a sign warning not to get out of the car until one reaches the farm. (The arctic terns here are fierce!). From the farm a path crosses a gravel bar and ascends steeply onto the top of the cape, where two isolated sea stacks come into view. From a distance the flat top of the eastern stack appeared completely white, but coming closer this resolved into a dense mass of hundreds of nesting gannets. The edge of the cape falls off to steep cliffs, and while providing a level view across, the closest safe [position is still about 100 meters from the gannets. Even with an 800 mm lens, I could not closely frame individual gannets, so my final photos usually needed some heavy cropping.

My photo above is of birds, a gannet and two of the puffins that nest along the cliff edge, that flew a little closer to the camera.  A strong wind was blowing from the east (right), and the gannet carrying nesting material was hovering effortlessly with wings outstretched. On the other hand, puffins are denser birds, with small wings, and this pair were having to work hard to make progress into the wind. I like the transient composition here, where the puffins happened to line up behind the gannet, bringing back memories from having watched the second Top Gun movie.

#162 - August 2022
"Puffins with bokeh balls"

Grimsey Island, Iceland; June 17th 2022.

Anne and I returned last month from a trip to Iceland, our first foreign venture since the start of the covid pandemic. Iceland is high among our favorite places to visit, with the amazing volcanic landscapes and waterfalls fulfilling my photographic aspirations. But this time my motivation was to photograph birds - in particular, the puffins that come to nest in the summer. To that end we had booked three nights on Grimsey, a tiny island just off the north coast of Iceland; the only part of Iceland to lie within the Arctic circle; and a 'puffin paradise', summer home to literally hundreds of thousands of sea birds.

On our first night on the island the sky was clear and, as we were within a few days of the solstice, there was a rare opportunity to photograph puffins by the light of the midnight sun. The island is long and thin, oriented in a roughly NNE/SSW direction, and small enough that any part is within easy walking distance.  I set off in the late evening toward the cliffs on the NE side of the island, which would catch the sun as it dipped toward the sea.

Much of the art in bird photography lies in finding a good background. Although action shots of birds in flight or displaying interesting behaviors might stand by themselves with only a uniform sky as background, static ‘posed’ portraits need something extra. One of my initial objectives here was to photograph puffins silhouetted against the sun, which was still a little way above the ocean even though it was close to midnight.  After finding a nice group of puffins isolated on a protruding rock near the top of the cliff face I tried to line them up with the sun. That did not work as, other than rappelling down the cliff face,  I had no way to get lower than the birds. However, I could line them up with sunlight reflecting from the sea, and that produced an interesting effect as glints of light as the sun caught wave crests. Looking in my viewfinder  myriad orange circles flickered on and off. I could control the number and frequency of these events by moving slightly so my puffins lined up with the edge of the sun’s reflection, or were more directly aligned. For the photo above I chose an orientation that nicely filled in the background with bokeh balls, without saturating and intermingling the patterns together.

The term bokeh originated in Japan, referring to the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image or the way a lens renders out-of-focus points of light. It is most prominent with long telephoto lenses (in this case, 800mm) when focused on a relatively close foreground subject with a distant background.  The effect is frequently used to pleasingly blur out the background and draw attention to the foreground subject; but with specular reflections like the glints of sunlight from wave crests the bright point sources of light become enlarged into circles defined by the lens aperture.

#161 - July 2022
"Jökulsárlón ice shard"

#160 - June 2022
"A triptych of landscape abstracts"

#159 - May 2022
"Osprey aerial confrontation"

#158 - April 2022
"The Rotunda at Penn Station"

#157 - March 2022
"Orion nebula - a first try at astrophotography"

The Orion nebula, photographed in December 2021 from the KOFA National Wildlife Refuge

[I am late this month in posting a new photo - part procrastination, but also to leave Sir Ernest pinned at the top for longer, especially in light of the recent finding of his sunken ship, the Endurance.]

My photo here of the nebula, of course hardly compares with images captured by numerous amateur astronomers using even small 'real' telesopes, let alone the big terrestrial observatories and the Hubble. But, it's a satisfying first for me, achieved using the camera and lens I use for bird and wildlife photography.

I took the photo during a 4WD camping trip to the KOFA reserve in southern Arizona, a remote 'dark sky' location. The weather was mild and the sky cloudless, so we slept out comfortably on the ground with just a camping mat and sleeping bag. After a thin crescent moon set during twilight we could fall asleep looking up to vivid stars, galaxies, meteors and satellites. The next evening I stayed up later to see what my camera might be able to capture beyond what was visible to the naked eye. The Orion constellation is one of the very few landmarks I can identify in the night sky, and I knew the nebula was close to the three stars of Orion's belt,.so that was an obvious target.

Some technical details of the gear I used: Canon R5 at ISO 1600, 30s exposure; Canon 800 mm f11 lens, necessarily used at f11; mounted on an iOptron equatorial tracker with a RRS BH 40 ball head, The weight of the camera plus lens was a bit much for the small tracker, and all a bit wobbly, but by using electronic shutter and the built-in intervalometer I could get exposures after the vibrations had died away. A useful trick I had learned was to align the tracker on the north star during twilight, when it is the only bright star in the vicinity. Otherwise, it is difficult to identify during full darkness in relation to numerous surrounding stars that appear almost equally bright through the alignmet 'scope. Looking at my first trial image on the camera screen it seemed I had achieved a good alignment, as the stars were sharp without noticable trailing.Satisfied that all was well I set the camera to capture multiple shots, which I could later stack to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the final image. However, something went wrong. It seemed the tracker partially seized up, and in the end I found only two acceptably sharp frames to stack.

Anyhow, I was happy with the final result. My aim was to end up with an artistic photo rather than a strictly scientific representation. I thus accentuated the colors and brought down the wide dynamic range to encompass the intense core of the nebula while retaining faint outer whisps.

#156 - February 2022
"Commemorating Sir Ernest Shackleton"

#155 - January 2022
"Squabbling Cranes"

Ladd S. Gordon Waterfowl Complex, New Mexico, December 30, 2021

Anne and I took a long drive between Christmas and New Year to visit the wildlife refuges along the Rio Grande river in New Mexico. The our main objective was Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge,  which attracts tens of thousands of wintering sandhill cranes and geese. This year, however, we found disappointingly fewer birds than on several previous visits. A chance meeting with another photographer provided an answer. The reserve is managed by arrangement with local farmers to grow corn for the wildlife, and a recent storm had decimated many of the fields at Bosque. But the birds quickly pass on among themselves information about where food is to be found, and we were told that many had moved up to the Ladd Gordon Waterfowl Complex, about 40 miles further north along the river.

On our last day we drove to this smaller reserve, which consists of a 4 mile visitor loop around irrigated fields, with a large pond at the southern end where the cranes and geese roost overnight. The birds had indeed come to the right place, and we were greeted by the highest density of cranes I have ever seen, all gathered together in a single field and overflowing onto the dirt road. From a photographic perspective this was maybe too much of a good thing, as the sheer number of cranes formed a solid grey background that largely precluded any hope of isolating individuals.  An exception was when a pair of cranes would take umbrage and leap into the air above the crowd for a beak-to-beak confrontation. These incidents never seemed to result in injury or even bodily contact but entailed some wonderful gestures of aggression before one of the pair backed down.

Squabbles usually lasted only a few seconds, making it difficult to get a lens focused on them before they ended, but the vast number of cranes packed together without social distancing provided lots of opportunities. To get the right perspective I needed to be photographing down low, to highlight the squabbling pair against a distant, blurred backdrop, rather than having them merge into the mass of birds below. Lying on your tummy in the dirt quickly gets uncomfortable, so here I was grateful to take advantage of a dry, concrete-lined irrigation channel next to the field. Settling down in this, with my head and camera just above the rim and level with the field I was able to photograph in comfort for a couple of hours before the light began to fade.

#154 - December 2021
"Grytviken Abstracts"

#153 - November 2021
"Beam me up Scotty"

Happy Canyon, Utah.  May 2012

Back to the archives for this month’s selection. A photo from a remote, difficult to access slot canyon, comparable in beauty to Antelope Canyon, but without the crowds. On my visit I had the entire canyon to myself.

Getting to Happy Canyon is half the fun. There are two approaches: a long hike, including a rappel; or a short hike after driving a rough high-clearance 4x4 trail. I took the latter route, driving along Poison Spring Canyon, then branching left along track 12020, a ledge road cut into the side of the cliff during the 1950’s uranium mining boom and untouched since. After about 16 miles  a fallen boulder - literally the size of a house - blocks the way, but I found an excellent campsite shortly before, with a wonderful view down to the Dirty Devil river.  The next morning, I continued hiking along the old road until directly opposite where Happy Canyon exits into the main canyon of the Dirty Devil. At this point a few cairns marked a faint but easy trail switchbacking down to the river. The water was running low and warm, making for a pleasant barefoot crossing on a flat sandy bottom that took me within a few yards of the canyon opening. [A detailed route description is HERE].

Once in Happy Canyon it slotted-up and became fantastic about 5-10 minutes from the river, with no major obstacles. Although not very narrow – in most places wider than outstretched arms – the high walls of the canyon filtered the sunlight through multiple reflections leaving only a dim red glow. In a few spots however, meanders in the canyon allowed direct shafts of sunlight to penetrate. One of these sunshafts enabled the trick to create my ‘selfie’ as a ghostly apparition.
Because the direct sunlight is enormously brighter than the reflected, diffused light reaching the canyon bottom, a camera exposure set to correctly expose the canyon walls will ‘blow-out’ highlights exposed by the sunshaft so they appear a uniform bright white. This is normally something to be avoided, and when photographing in slot canyons I usually frame my composition to avoid such hot-spots. But here I wanted to deliberately create an overexposed self-portrait, and after finding a sunshaft set up my camera on a tripod to frame a wide view of the sinuous canyon walls.  Using a 10second timer to trigger the shutter I had a little time to move into position and adopt a suitable pose. Something of a hit and miss procedure, but I could check the result on the camera screen and go back for a few other tries before the Earth’s rotation cut off the sunshaft.

 Being alone in a remote canyon is really what enabled this photo. Although Upper Antelope Canyon is famous for its light shafts, the density of visitors nowadays would preclude even setting up a tripod, let alone getting a clear view of the canyon without crowds of people.

#152 - October 2021
"Steelscape: UCI Continuing Education Building"