Posts in Category: experiment
Northern Barred-Woodcreeper
Northern Barred-Woodcreeper: Danta Cocorvodo Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — On our way for a morning excursion to the observation tower at Danta Corcovado, we happened on a swarm of small army ants crossing one of the trails…two swarm lines actually… one just below my cabin and one further down by the bridge over the stream. It is amazing how many birds, including this Woodcreeper, are specialized ant swarm feeders. For the next few days I will be sharing some of these ant swarm birds. I did a little research this morning to refresh my memory. Army ants are nomadic. They do not build permanent nests like other ants but can stay in a camp or bivouac for up to 20 days, foraging in lines out from the camp and feeding the queen as she broods eggs (up to a million eggs a month so these swarms are huge). The new worker ants reach maturity just as the eggs hatch and the whole swarm has to move on, in order to find enough food to feed the new larvae. That is generally when you see the long lines of ants moving through the forest. If you look carefully you will see that ants are moving in both directions as they carry prey back to feed the larvae and the queen, which are being carried along in the rear of the march. They pretty much kill any living insect or spider, small reptiles and amphibians, even birds, that they encounter (though many army ants can not actually consume the birds they kill)…so they stir up just about everything that is able to get out of their path. A surprising number of birds have specialized in following the ant swarms and feeding on the insects, spiders, an small vertebrates which are exposed as they flee. Some of them have the word “ant” as part of their name, but the Northern Barred-Woodcreeper is rarely seen except when an army ant swarm is passing over an open trail…as one was on that morning at Danta Corcovado. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. Terrible light so equivalent ISO of 2500 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Clearing Before Dawn
Clearing up the snow that is. Carol had to play at an 8 am Mass, so I had the snowblower out Sunday morning before first light to clear up 4 inches of wet, clingy snow from the walk and drive. I finished just as the sky to the east was beginning to lighten, and had to try this hand-held twilight mode shot with the new Sony NEX 3NL. It takes 6 images and then processes them down into one with less blur and less noise than a single hand-held shot could manage in this light. I have had similar modes on other cameras. Some work well, and some do not. It looks like the NEX implementation is one of the good ones.
24mm equivalent field of view. f3.5 at a nominal ISO of 6400. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
4/1/2012: Tree Tops and Self Portraits. Happy Sunday!
And a happy April Fools Day to you too!
Yesterday I set out in the morning for a photo-prowl, trying to fill my out my diminishing stock of images for this column, and, you know, just poking around to see what I might be missing. It was a dull day, with heavy overcast, and, since it is also that dull season between winter and the real onset of spring in southern Maine, I did not have high hopes. I was pleasantly surprised to find a few early birds (Song Sparrow and Eastern Phoebe) already on territory and setting up for nesting, as well as a rich variety of fungi along the trails. I will feature a few fungi for tomorrow’s Macro Monday post.
I was called back early by a daughter needing the car and retired to my computer to do the post-processing, and when I looked up, the sun had broken through and what had been overcast was now a smattering of clouds adding interest to the sky. So back out I went for a loop around the trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.
It was not spring there either but the forest without leaves was full of geometry, texture, and light…the clear crystalline light of a late March afternoon. There was beauty there. The super rough bark of a tree caught my eye as that light picked out every intricate detail I and began to think about how to capture the effect. I had been messing, earlier, in the Yard, with the swivel LCD on the Canon SX40HS…pointing it forward on the camera and getting down under Forsythia flowers to shoot up. I decided to try it there in forest, on that tree. Wooo. Strange geometries. And that lead to a whole series of tree top images, taken with the camera at waist level, looking straight up. Notice the red maple flowers in the second tree top shot.
I had to keep leaning back out of the image to keep my hat from getting in…and that made we wonder if I was missing a self-portrait/profile pic opportunity. Mostly my face was completely in shadow, but I noticed that if I stood in an open area of the path, enough light reflected from the ground to make an interesting effect. So in the spirit of April Fools Day, here I am, framed against the tree tops.
My wife Carol says it is frightening and my daughter Kelia says it is somewhat disturbing. I just think it is funny. When I posted it as my profile pic on Google+ someone commented that it made them think of Tolkien 🙂 My response was that I am already bigger than a hobbit, and even than most dwarfs, and not near wise enough to be a wizard. April Fools.
And for the Sunday thought. Self portraits. Well, I am thinking that we are defined more by the things we look at than we are by how we look. This series of images that I post here every day, taken as a whole, is my best self portrait. It is a record of the things, over time, that I find beautiful, interesting, worthy of celebration and sharing. That is much more me than the shape of my nose or the luxury of my beard.
Paul said, in his chapter on love, that today we see only dimly as in a darkened mirror…we see and know only in part…but that a day will come when we will see clearly…when we will know in full, even as we are known. And that day is linked, inescapably, with the persistence of love…a love that is not defined by our ability to love, but by the perfection of the Creator’s ability to love. I have said many times that these images are one way I express the love of creation and the Creator that is working its way out in me, day to day. I would like to think they provide a glimpse of the me you now see only dimly, and know only in part. Of, in fact, the me I only see dimly, and know only in part. The me that is capable of the enduring love which we celebrate this Easter season.
And that is a lot, for an April Fool, or otherwise, to say.
8/17/2011: Experiment in Form and Color
When this posts, I will be somewhere between London England and Rutland Water, up on the edge of the Midlands where they hold the Great British Birding Fair each year. My internet connections over the next few days will be sporadic and totally out of sync with most people who read this bog, so I am preparing a few posts ahead and scheduling them. I may, if I get a super shot in England (it is a working trip and time will be very limited), replace one the scheduled posts with something more spontaneous, but we will just have to see about that.
This is one of a series of experiments…it started out as a photograph, but it is not that anymore. I have manipulated it in PicSay Pro on my Xoom Android Honeycomb tablet…in a process most akin to digital doodling. The original is along side here. PicSay Pro allows you to mirror, twist, squeeze, and otherwise distort your image, as well as to apply a wide range of effects from Lomo to HDR to Gritty to Glow. I did not keep track of the particular set I used on this image beyond the obvious mirror. Like I say, it is closer to doodling than to any thoughtful or intentional process.
You can see a growing set of these at my Experiments gallery on Wide Eyed In Wonder.