The Extreme Ice Survey

(Mobile readers, as I feared, wordpress is not embedding the video in a fashion that will make it visible for you.  On my iPhone, it doesn’t appear.  My apologies.  Can’t be helped I’m afraid.  If you’re interested, track down the old lap top and have a look.)

As we contemplate today Western Pennsylvania getting hit by a blizzard (no kidding, check the weather channel, it’s true), it occurred to me that it might be useful to say a bit more about Earth Day.  Climate photography has many inherent challenges, not the least of which is the fact that climate change unfolds over time. We do of course have an app for that, time lapse photography.  One of my favorite environmental photographers, James Balog, established on-going time lapse monitoring of a number of the most threatened glaciers in the world, creating what he subsequently described as The Extreme Ice Survey.  He and his colleagues set up cameras at  strategic locations around the glaciers and equipped them for extended time lapse work.  This meant protecting and powering a large number of Nikons, mostly D200′s I believe.  If you click on the link above, you will see before your very eyes, the impact of global warming.  Massive glaciers are melting at an alarming pace.  Alarming?  Yes, remember he’s only been collecting imagery for five years. Have a look. Meanwhile, I’ve embedded a promo here that will give you an idea. James is also a film maker and his an exciting film on the Extreme Ice Survey out this year.

Photographers take note.  How can we be more creative and useful in documenting what is important about the natural world and how it is changing?

Happy Earth Day 2012

Happy Earth Day, 2012.  (The image below is a panorama, even though it doesn’t look like one.  You’ll really need to click on it, to see what we saw, just last week. When you click on it, you should then see a small plus sign on your cursor.  Click again and you’re there.)

Peppermill Pond, at the southern end of the Quabbin Reservoir.  May we be blessed by such wonderful places (and drinking water and fresh air) for yet another year.

Dancing with the Turkey Vultures

As the climate warms, species that one might customarily see rarely sometimes become more visible.  Turkey vultures are now very common in central New England, whereas before, they were more common on Cape Cod.  Further south, they are quite common.  On our recent visit to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, we happened to encounter a flock of turkey vultures, hanging about in some wonderfully abstract looking trees.

I know, everyone really wants to know if we saw the ponies.  Yes, we did, but they were, shall we say, working.  They hang out in the marsh and they eat.  My lens, though long, wasn’t long enough but more frustratingly, not once did they look up from their work so that I could get a shot with them looking at me.  Pictures of ponies with their heads in the marsh grass are, at least in my opinion, rather boring. So, not  wanting to be a turkey (sorry), we decided to hang with the turkey vultures.

I’ve been told on good authority (by my daughter, who really is a great authority) that when we think we’re seeing hawks in the sky, we may well be seeing turkey vultures.  They are about the same size (the turkey vultures appearing to be just a bit bigger), but they are far more social it seems to me.

However, social, on this day it wasn’t clear how well they were getting along.  They seemed very restless.

Of course, spring was in the air, and you know what that means.

Leaving us with much to consider.

Tech note:  All images shot with a Nikon D700 and 28 – 300 lens.  That lens is supposed to be mediocre at best according to “the internet.”  ”The internet” is wrong on that score.  Converted to black and white in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Early Spring at the Elizabethan Gardens

The Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo, North Carolina (on the Outer Banks of the State) are one of our favorite places to view cultivated flowers.  It is really a conservatory and classical gardens.  Those who aren’t familiar with the area should note that the name is a token of honor to Elizabeth the First, who sent Sir Walter Raleigh to the area to found a new colony, over a decade before my relatives made it to Jamestown.  Alas, it was not meant to be.  When the Colony’s founders returned from other duties (England was at war with Spain at the time, which slowed things down considerably) they found the Colony gone, a mystery yet unsolved.  There had indeed been conflict with the local Native Americans, but the evidence suggested that the departure of the surviving colonists was not hurried and the agreed upon sign, a Maltese Cross carved on a tree to indicate that hostilities had taken place, was not to be found.  Thus the name:  The Lost Colony.

The Gardens themselves are, for me, as much about their classical design as their horticulture.

Carefully planned paths and a wonderful tree canopy, coupled with statuary that is nicely integrated with nature make for a very contemplative experience.

I am, however, always drawn to the designs created by this great, and greatly loved, trees.

You mean you went to the Elizabethan Gardens and didn’t photograph any flowers? I wouldn’t make that mistake.  Even though it was only the third week in March, the flowers were on the field.

The tulips were well along.

We asked the Hostess there about the unusual weather.  She explained that the plants were running roughly a full month ahead of schedule.  Yes, it was beautiful, but one had the eerie since that something was wrong.  The Azalea’s were already past their prime.

Refuge

Throughout the United States, we’re blessed with a wonderful set of places, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  We had a chance to visit several recently. These images are from the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the coast of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not far from Hatteras.  The Refuge provides a home or a stopping point for millions of birds and other sea loving critters, each year.  We saw plenty of those folks during our visit, but I was struck by the use of the term “refuge.”  Perhaps its really a refuge for humans.

Just behind us, the damage to this fragile place wrought by Hurricane Irene was still clearly visible.  When you stepped over the dunes, however, that all seemed so far away.

Thanks to those who had the fore site to understand that our environment nurtures us on many levels.  It’s not just about biology.  FYI, you can get an App for that. The Park Service has released their “MyRefuge” app, available for free, from the App Store for those with i-devices.

Tech Note:  These were taken with the Nikon D3s and a 70 -200 mm lens.  I was dragging the shutter here, down to around 2 seconds, to get the smooth surf look. That required the use of about five stops  of neutral density filtration on the front of the lens. It was, however, a very difficult shooting situation as the sun was blinding. It was like shooting with film, in that the LCD on the back of the camera was useless.  I ended up shooting a number of these images, and praying.