Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

This autumn has turned out to be wet, rainy, snowy and dark – not offering a whole lot in terms of opportunities for photographs.

The dragonfly days are long gone – it turns out that the trip I talked about on October 8 was the last of the year – I had hopped and expected for more, but the heavy snow fell shortly after that. I saw on dragon a week for so after the snow, but now I’m sure they are gone for good – well, till next May at least. A moth sat on the wall of my garage for the last 3 weeks. One day it moved about a foot. Otherwise it just sat there. A briefly warm day with high winds moved it on it’s way.

So that’s it for the bugs.

When I think of fall I think of glorious landscapes with bright colored trees and azure blue skies. Well, autumn can be like that. When it is it is often like that just for a few weeks at most, sometime just a few days. Getting in the right place at the right time can be a challenge. A suddenly drastic hard freeze, or major leave-sticking snowfall, can make the trees abruptly drop their leaves, leaving little chance to catch the color. A dry summer or wet fall can also mean a poor color season.

As I sit here this morning, the tulip tree outside my windows is a blaze of brilliant yellow leaves. It’s right on schedule since it always turns to bright yellow for Halloween. The other nearby trees, though, have either lost their leaves or are clinging to a few brownish / green bits of withered foliage. For them the season has passed.

It looks like the shots I took along the River Vista Trail at the Kalamazoo nature center will be it for fall colors this year. There are still a few places along the lake that seem to turn later in the season, and I’ll give those a try yet.

But for now I have decided to look back at pull some retrospective shots out of the portfolio. In part, this decision results from a project I’m currently working on, which has me culling together landscape shots.

I visited the River Vista Trail in 2003 for the first time. This is part of the Kalamazoo Nature Center, and the land bears the scars of past gravel mining operations. The soil is dry and gravelly, and the landscape rolls with hills that reflect the way the miners left it more than the way the nature made it. At any rate, it is one of the few areas I know of locally where there are truly sweeping vistas that can be photographed – typically Midwestern landscapes are all about finding the little slice of the landscape that rises above clutter and has something to say.

It’s hard to believe how much has changed, photographically, since 2003. Back then I had not yet moved to a digital SLR, and still had not made the transition to medium format film for landscape work. I had moved away from the limitations of transparency film for landscape application, and so all of these shots were taken on color negative film – Kodak Supra 100, to be precise.

Back in 2003 I scanned these, but then made the mistake of running them through an old image processing program that could not deal with 16 bit tiffs. My intent was to compress the TIFFS, since I was running out of disk space on the computer I was using then. The result was that the scans came out with wildly distorted colors – red skies and blue trees – which was interesting but not what I was looking for. I re-scanned a few shots, tried making a few large prints, and then just gave up on the project. 35mm, while better than digital, still lacks the resolution to make really large prints of highly detailed subjects.

But then – who needs large prints for everything anyhow? My attitudes have shifted a bit – these days I print the photo to the size it works at, and leave it be.

I’ve also developed a taste for B&W images. So after re-scanning the film from three years ago, I re-mixed several as mono-chrome shots. Using the channel mixer in PhotoShop – the standard process for converting images from color to mono – gives you a lot of flexibility. It’s very easy to simulate the effect of a B&W shot taken with a particular filter (like a #25 red) just by adjusting the channels.

And so, with the retrospect is the remix – and looking at the notebooks and storage boxes filled with thousands of negatives – I’m getting a sense that I could keep busy with photography for years without ever snapping the shutter again.

But what fun would that be?

Here are color photos from the River Vista Trail - followed by some B&W remixes:

They’re back!

It’s not even Halloween yet but we’ve already had a couple of snow storms – so it’s time to put up the snow crystal collection once again. This winter approximately 40 snow crystal prints will be on display at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute.

I put the crystals up last week, and they will remain on display until early March, 2007.

The sample shot shown here is one from a couple of winters ago. I’ve been playing around with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop to convert color images to mono-chrome. I gave it a whirl with a few of the snow crystals and it revealed some interesting possibilities. Assuming that I have a chance to get some new additions this winter, I’ll definitely be shooting with two colors of lights, and using Photoshop to enhance the contrast a bit.

For a comparison – you can see the original version of this crystal here, in the Snowflake Gallery.

One of the good things about this blog is that it helps me keep current with photos. In the past I’ve tended to just take photos and not do much with them. A few made it onto the website, and a very few made it into prints, but most just languish away in negative sleeves or on CD’s or DVD’s.

I’m working on a new project that has me looking back through some old files. I’m not looking for pictures of trees per se, but stumbled into many while looking through old CD’s.

These are more or less the tip of the iceberg – there are note books and folders inches thick filled with negatives that need to be culled and worked with.

I was initially drawn to some fall color shots, and then to photos of trees in general.

The dead branch on the tree in the color shot detracts from the image a bit. But overall, I like how the light plays on the huge tree, and the early autumn colors in the scrubby vegetation behind it. As with many of my shots, that was taken in the Allegan Game Area, near the large parking lot where Swan Creek flows into the Wildlife Refuge.

A couple of the black and white shots represent some experimentation with exposure and development. The leaves of a big maple – another shot from Allegan – take on a light, luminous effect, almost like infrared. In this case though it’s the result of using an X1 green filter – the green having the effect of lightening up the foliage. The tree was standing at the corner of two small roads that run through the game area, and much darker green pine trees were behind it. The green filter can have a startling effect when the color of foliage is just right, and this is one good example of that.

The two shots of old oak trees represent and experiment with development processes. Those shots were both taken on Agfa APX 100 film, and then developed in Dektol – a paper developer that historically was used as a film developer as well (D72.)

Dektol is an extremely fast acting, high contrast developer. To compensate for that I use a fairly dilute mixture – 1:5 stock to water – and develop at a very cold temperature, about 60F. Even then, development times are short – I aim for 6 to 7 minutes. I also go very light on agitation – just two or three inversions of the tank during the development process.

The Dektol can result in a really pleasing tonal range – but then it can also ruin your negatives. In this case I liked how it captured the direct rays of the sun hitting the huge trunk of the old oak tree. Unfortunately the trees (there were a few huge old oaks there) were surrounded by much smaller trees and scrub, making it almost impossible to get a shot of them in their full glory. So – a more intimate shot of the massive trunk was the best to be done under the situation.

Some enlightenment philosopher – I forget which one – noted that humans were stuck in an existential trap, caused by artificial needs. Well, he didn’t use the word ‘existential’ but his point was the same. In our consumerist society we are all pumped up to acquire crap that really does nothing for us. It may assuage our anger, briefly, or seemingly justify the sacrifices we make to jobs or debt, but at the end of the day most Americans are just living to participate in the ‘crap cycle’ – consume crap, produce crap, consume some more…

It’s all about wanting more. As Bob Marley put it – “Now that you got what you want, do you want more? You think it’s the end, but it’s just the beginning….”

There’s not much that I want. I want Time, and I’ve taken Time. Having a nice car is something, having a big house is something more, having a boat and time share – even more. But all those things just hitch back to the yoke. If you want to be truly extravagant – take a year, or more, and do what you want to do. Time is the most precious thing…

But to do that requires a little re-calibration. One way I recalibrate is to drive my cars for a long time. A really long time. And so last week I was in the local garage, getting routine maintenance done. I was lingering in the parking lot after dropping the car off – the garage was closing, I was waiting for a ride home, the late afternoon sun was dazzling in the clear blue sky.

Good Used Tires. Edtir. Somehow the rack caught my eye and imagination. I don’t need much. Give me some good used tires and the light of the sun, and I’ll be ready to roll.  … 

I’m not sure how good a job the mechanics did, though. A week later an unusual snow storm swept through the area. The first snow usually doesn’t stick, but then the first snow usually doesn’t come in early October, and usually doesn’t lay down several inches of wet flakes.

But the first snow also brings an almost visceral response. Maybe it’s a holdover from childhood, but there is something exciting about every snowfall, and the first snowfall is more exciting than any other.

So on this day I drove to my job through the driving snow, only to get the and find steam pouring out from the hood of the car. A loose radiator hose – fortunately, I had hung a show a few days earlier, and my picture-hanging toolkit was still in the back of the car. A few turns of the screwdriver and the radiator hose seemed to be on nice and tight and new.

Just to make sure, I stole away and test drove the car, firing away with the Holga (I only took two shots of the used tire rack).

The photos of this year’s first snow don’t covey the sense of excitement that I felt at seeing the snow fall. But to be honest, that sense of excitement was tempered – in part by the freakish timing of the storm. But also there was the sense of drudgery and loss – another winter is coming, the summer photography season is for sure over. It’s hard, in Michigan at this juncture in time, not to feel a sense of malaise as the economy remains stuck n neutral, or slipping into reverse.

And so the shots of the first snow may not be as upbeat as I actually felt at the time – I was happy to see the snow, and happy that my repairs to the car worked.

Well, maybe later shots will be less jaundiced – at least the snow motivated me to clean out the garage and clear the space where I take snow crystal shots. The sheer simplicity of a snow crystals transcends all, right?

On a technical note – these shots were taken using J and C’s Classic Pan 400, developed in Rodinal1:50 (and wow the grain you get from that combo!)

Friday the 13th of October. An Arctic Blast swept through the area this week – unusually early. Several inches of snow fell before the first solid frost of the season. And I wondered when the insect photography season will come to an end…

A week ago I hiked the River Vista Trail at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. It was a warm autumn day, with clear azure skies and bright early autumn colors in some trees.

As I mentioned last week, I was clumsy with the film. Tore the headers off two rolls, goofed up a roll or 35mm B&W that jammed in the camera. I shot two 220 format rolls of Fuji NPS color film, three rolls of 120 format Efke 100, one 35mm roll of Ilford Delta 100, and a partial 35mm roll of Neopan 400. The two rolls of NPS came back from the lab earlier this week – I’m still working through developing the Efke and the 35mm rolls.

(For those who are interested – Rodinal has been the developer of choice for all except the Neopan, which I plan to dunk in some of the remaining Microdol-X.)

Since I screwed up loading one roll of the NPS, I only had about 30 color shots to work with. The five photos in the image stream are the best of the bunch. Of course, bracketing used up several frames for each composition.

 Color shots of autumn foliage are a little like deep fried food. You could deep fry your socks, and they would taste good. The same holds true for autumn scenics - put bright colored trees under a blue sky into the frame, and things are bound to come out OK.

Well, with the recent snows the leaves will probably drop off the trees while still green – hopefully I’m wrong, but that seems to be the outcomes of these early fall snow storms.

So last week’s trip may have been both the start and finish of the fall color season. It’s a short season anyhow – just a few weeks at most – and this year it has perhaps been cut shorter than usual.

More photos:

 

Yesterday was a warm autumn day, and I managed to take some time out for what is sure to be one of the last productive insect photography sessions of the year. It was a brilliant day, with a deep blue October Sky stabbed by the first few brightly changing trees.

A warm day in October would be a cool day in August. This alone meant that the few dragons I saw were intent on soaking up as much heat as possible, and tended to land on the dark ground or a dark leaf, sucking up as much heat from the sun as they could.

We had a frost Thursday night – not a hard freeze, just a frost. Being such a transitional time of year it hit the northern part of the county harder than the south, and settled in low lying areas much more strongly than on hillsides. That too, though, took a bite out of the insect population. (Once there is a hard freeze, the insect population drops noticeably.)

So it was that there were few dragon out to photograph yesterday. I went to the McLinden Trails, a place that has proven to be productive all season long.

Unlike Friday, I traveled light. I didn’t even put the camera bags in the car. The insect photography rig was the only thing I brought, and I hiked out with ouly the camera and flash on a monopod, and a wallet of memory cards.

At the end of the day it was a productive trip, though I encountered very few dragon flies. The red dragon shown in many of these photos is probably the same individual – I photographed him on the way into the park, and then again at the same spot on the way out, a couple of our later. Otherwise, there were very few dragons to be found at all.  

I wanted to get a few shots showing the dragons with the brown or yellow autumn colors in the background – and I think a couple of the shots of the red dragon worked in that regard. They certainly are in contrast to some of the early summer shots, taken at the same place, showing a lush green.

Aside form this red meadowhawk, few large darners buzzed over the fields of now entirely brown grass. A few sulphurs and white butterflies were on the late blooming Asters, and several times I saw a large mantid launch itself from one tree top to another. As I walked out of the park, a very large mantis was sitting on the trail, warming up in the days fading rays. Its easy to tell when something happens for the first time. The first time you see a firefly in the summer evening, the first robin of spring, the first dragonfly of the season – those are thing you remember. But it’s harder to tell when something happens for the last time – until you’re a ways along in the time stream, and suddenly realize its gone. I don’t remember the last firefly I saw, or the last ebony jewel wing… Maybe these wll be the last dragons of the year – but then, and let’ s hope – maybe not.

If the weather forecast is to be believed, the first winter blast is due later this week – with snow rain mix and temps in the 30’s and 40’s. Well, the compute models always seem to exaggerate as they look far ahead, so maybe it won’t be so bad. But maybe the dragons are gone for another year.

Autumn is an in-between time. You never know what to expect – anything is possible, and everything is unreliable. So when photographing the natural world at this time of year, you have to be prepared for anything. And that means carrying around a lot of gear.

Yesterday I spent the day at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. I hadn’t been there for more of the summer, but with the Allegan Forest full of hunters and the fall colors well on their way, the rolling hills of the Nature Center seemed to be a good choice.

I spend the day hiking the River Vista trail. This is a meandering path that works its way along through an area that was once a gravel pit. The trail runs along a ridge line, possibly an old railroad track bed. The are several deep depressions – areas once excavated for gravel. One side of the field is bounded by an active railroad track, with the Kalamazoo River beyond that. The other side is bounded by some of the highest hills in the area.

I had hopes of shooting dragonflies – in the spring and summer the area is pretty productive for dragon and damsel flies. There are two small retention ponds at the base of the valley the are usually very active with dragonflies.

I also had hopes of shooting fall colors. This area has been productive in the past, and I was surprised to see how far along some of the trees were this early in the year.

To cover all my bases, I took along the Lowepro mini-trekker, loaded with the Pentax Mz-S, the standard collection of lenses, several rolls of 35mm B&W film, an X’s Drive II, Compact flash cards, and a few water bottles and a Holga to boot (its amazing how much stuff you can cram into one of those bags!) I decided to carry the *ist-D insect shooting setup – camera, lens, flash, and monopod – outside of any bag, on the theory of having it handy for insect encounters.

To cover possible landscape shots, I took another bag with the Pentax 6x7, three lenses (55, 105, and 170 mm) filters, film, and light meter. Along with that I brought the heavy duty tripod, to support the 6x7 camera.

Altogether, this added up to close to 50 lbs of gear, which made hiking up and down the hillsides a little slow. As it turned out, the insects were a complete bust – I wound up taking only a handful of shots, and only one is even passable.

Landscape work was more promising. I shot three rolls of 120 B&W, and two rolls of 220 Fuji NPS. The fall colors and clear blue sky looked great – we’ll how the images come out once the film is developed. I also shot a couple of rolls of 35mm B&W, mostly detailed studies of the cracks and effervescence in the ruins of an old coal hopper.

Logistically, it was a bad day for film. Twice I wound up accidentally tearing off the leader of a roll of film while loading it into the 6 x 7 camera. That’s a new thing – and it was a real pain. It for certain ruined the first few frames of each roll, and may well have affected the entire roll. In addition, the camera counter got out of synch when I ripped the leader on a roll of 220, and I wound up merrily shooting away for a while before I realized that the roll was long over. To top it off, the first roll of 35mm Delta 100 I loaded up jammed after just a few frames – resulting in having to pull it out and toss the roll. Fortunately I had just gotten started with it, and was able to re-shoot what I had started.

Well, we’ll see what comes of all this. No new photos with this post – the shot of the River Vista Trail is from a couple of autumns ago. The NPS is waiting for a trip to the lab next week, and the B&W is awaiting development. More next week when the results are in.

Honey bees are one the first insects to show up in the spring, found in crocus flowers as early as the first week of March, frenetically gathering food between snowfalls. And honey bees are also among the last insects seen in fall, working the flowers of autumn aster.

So here it is – October. Its been a few weeks since I’ve been able to get out and do some serious insect photography. At first, today looked like it would be a bust, as I woke up to rumbles of thunder and pouring rain that went on for hours. But by 2:30 pm the sky suddenly cleared, and by 3:00 I was on my way to the McLinden Nature Trails, which has been so productive earlier in the summer.

I only got about an hour – by 4:15 dark clouds rolled in from the west, and in a matter of minutes the light dropped by 3 stops and the winds picked up. But the hour was time well spent, resulting in a handful of insect shots.

The autumn aster is out in full bloom. The goldenrod has peaked and is fading – still blooming in lower, cooler areas, but in general just another shade of brown in the fall meadows.

Once again, McLinden preserve did not disappoint when it came to dragonflies. There were several large darners buzzing about over the fields, but as usual they seldom perched and presented few opportunities for photographs. There were also some smaller meadowhawks, but they were skittish and dashed off as soon as I approached.

One species of dragonfly paused a few times, giving me a chance to get some shots of it. I haven’t been able to get an ID on it – the bulging shape of the first and second segments of the adomen should make it easy to narrow down, but so far my field guides have come up blank.

While shooting the dragonflies, a large mantis flew into the camera – it actually seemed to blunder into the flash and bracket, and after struggling for a second it landed a few feet away, providing the last shot of the day.

These days, this time of year, you never know which outing will be the last one. One a hard frost hits, the numbers of insects will drop dramatically. And while dragons can still be found late in October and even into November, it’s all a matter of the luck of the weather, time and circumstance. You never know when something has ended until its already over. Just as I can’t remember the last firefly I saw this summer, or the last ebony jewel wing, same too I won’t know when I see the season’s last dragon, until the time comes when I realize I’ve seen dragons namore.