Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

Last weekend I managed to get a few nice Blue Dasher photos, but I haven’t had a chance to prep them and get them up on the blog here. So, here are a couple of retrospective shots from the archives that I prepped a while back.

These photos were taken in late June, 2008, in a field off 44th Street that was a riot of blue vetch. Like so many other fields in the Allegan State Game Area, this one was just a square, cut out of the woods, with woods surrounding three sides and the road bounding the fourth.

These blue dashers are always striking subjects, and in this case I tried to get him lined up with the hazy bluish vetch in the background. I’m looking forward to photographing these creatures again, once the summer warms.

Last week I found myself in the flatlands of Indiana. The corn was just getting started. This place was pretty flat - the earth seemed to stretch out forever in all directions. At day’s end the setting sun lingered on the horizon. With no hills or buildings to obscure it; sunset lasted forever, bathing the land in the sweet light that comes at the end of a long summer’s day.

Here’s a snapshot of some trees in a place where the grass was left to grow long.

That little Nikon camera really came through with this shot. I pulled a 12 x 18 inch print of this image on the Epson 3800. The quality is great - good enough to exhibit - and I supect that the image will hold up for a 16 x 22 inch print. I can’t ask for much more form any digital camera at this point, but from a compact point and shoot? That’s great.

Last Sunday I paid another visit to the McLinden Trails. This park is always a great place for dragonflies – it seems that I can get more photos here in an hour than I can muster in the Allegan Game Area in a whole day.

This visit was brought two pleasant surprises – the first sightings of the season (for me) of blue dashers and meadowhawk dragonflies.

Things are moving slowly this year, and the appearance of both species seems to be at least two weeks later than in prior years. (Checking the archives here confirms that.) And even now, I’ve only seen a few individuals of each species. Here’s a shot of the first blue dasher of 2009:

This subject still has immature coloration – it will probably be a couple of weeks before they show up in their blue and yellow splendor.

And here’s one of the two immature meadowhawks I spotted on Sunday – it obligingly posed on a flower:

I can’t identify the species from immature individuals – it expect it will be one of the “red’ meadowhawks – either a ruby, whiteface, or cherry faced meadowhawk. In a few days it will be flying around in its scarlet finery.

Aside from new sightings, I also spotted several species that are now well established. Aside from the Dot Tailed Whitefaces and Rapids Midland Clubtails, I also spotted several Widow Skimmers, including several males sporting the immature male markings, with black bands on the inseides of their wings. In time in smaller white bank will appear outside of the black bands.

Here’s a shot of a male wideow -if you look closely, you can see a hint of the white markings just starting to appear in the male’s wings:

And here are two female (or immature) Spangled Skimmers:

Dragonflies weren’t the only subject of the day – the trails were full of butterflies, including skippers, cabbage whites, and the occasional fritillary and red spotted purple. Here’s a snap of a cabbage white on a white flower:

As a parting shot – another image of the immature meadowhawk:

Note to self - visit McLindon more often!

I’ve been carrying the Nikon Coopix P6000 with me as I travel around the midwest. Here’s a shot of the wild Rocky River - a remote wilderness nestled in a place called Cleveland… :-)

Continuing on with the wildflower round up - Jack in the Pulpit. I don’t run into these flowers as often as I used to, and it seems to be even rarer to find one in good shape for photographing. This one is from May 1, 2009.

A week ago Sunday I made a brief trip to the McLindon Trails to look for dragonflies. The many acres of grass and fresh, clean water – both a pond and a fast flowing brook – make this place a haven for dragonflies.

I arrived under heavy, overcast skies, with thunder rumbling in the distance. As expected, many species were out in abundance, and Calico Pennants, in particular, were very abundant. In the short time I had before the rain settled in, I managed these few shots of this late spring / early summer dragonfly.

Yippie! On Monday I received an advance copy of my new book – The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder . This project has been in the works for over a year, during which time I’ve been privileged to work with physicist Jon Nelson and the great people at Chronicle Books. The book will be available in stores later this year – you can read about it in Chronicle Book’s catalog, here.

The 2009 spring wildflower season is all but over. But every year I learn something new that helps me with future shoots. This year’s revelation is a simple one – watch for the pollinators. In those early days in spring when you’re not sure if the wildflowers will be out or not, check to see what bees, flies, and other pollinators are flying around. If they are out, the flowers are out. Of course.

Here’s a native bee in a trillium flower:

About a month ago, I added a Nikon CoolPix P6000 to my camera bag. For some time now I’ve wanted a compact camera that’s easier to carry around than a digital SLR, but one that is also capable of producing decent prints. The P6000 isn’t without its problems, but does a good job of filling that bill.

Here’s a rundown of what I like and don’t like, about the camera:

Likes:

1. Size, weight, handling: Like I said, I wanted something small and compact to easily carry around. This camera can easily fit into a jacket pocket, and in a pinch even fits in a shirt pocket. It’s light enough that you don’t even know you are carrying it. Nonetheless, the all-metal body has a solid feel to it – Nikon really hit the right compromise between diminutive size, lightweight, and rugged construction.

2. Image Quality – this hits on several of the camera’s features. The high megapixel count, great optics, image processor, and RAW file support result in excellent image quality. The one caveat is that noise levels above ISO 200 start to become problematic, and at ISO 800 and above they degrade image quality. That does result in slow shutter speeds and so it is hard to freeze action - but between the Vibration Reduction and the incredible depth of filed at all apertures (no need to stop down much) I find I can get good hand held results in many situaitons.

Here’s a hand held shot of the Kalamazoo River, taken from a bluff along the north bank:

The photo is unremarkable, but I printed it at 11 x 14 and then again at 16 x 22 inches in size. I was amazed at how well the detailed held up. I had hoped that the camera could produce acceptable 11 x 14 inch prints, and it seems to be well able to do that, and more.

3. Infrared Capability: Hey wait? That’s not on the spec sheet?!!

Shortly after I got my camera, I bought a filter adapter off eBay, and of course the first filter I tried was an R72 IR filter. Here’s a hand held shot of the park in downtown Kalamazoo, one of my first IR test shots.

There are issues and work arounds needed to get consistent results with the IR filter – I plan to devote a future post to that topic – but overall, the camera kicks out some great IR images with the R72 filter, at shutter speeds that are fast enough to hand hold. Nikon ought to put that on the spec sheet.

That’s what I like – and that covers almost everything I want from the camera - plus a little extra with the IR capability. Here are a few things I don’ care for, but tolerate.

Dislikes:

1. Poor close focusing ability: It seems that every compact camera suffers from this. The macro focusing ability is at the wide end of the zoom range, and while you can get close to the subject there is poor magnification, limited ability to control the background, and wide angle perspective distortion in the shot. Here’s a shot of a very compliant Common Whitetail that illustrates these problems:

Yes - I was able to get the camera close to the subject, but so what? It’s a poor shot. Bottom line – this camera, without modification, is a poor choice for macro work. But, sadly, it seems that every other compact out there suffers form the same problems.

That said – I’ve had decent luck using close up filters and reversed lenses on the filter adapter. More on that in another post, but here is a better closeup of a much smaller insect taken with a 50mm lens reverse mounted in front of the camera;s built in zoom:

2. Mutually exclusive features: This is a minor nit, since I don’t use a lot of the bells and whistles built into the camera, but many of the features of this camera do not work with each other. Shooting RAW mode excludes almost all of the special features – no scenic modes, no digital zoom, no lens distortion correction, no high D-range shooting, etc. In the case of shooting RAW this is understandable – many of these features involve modifying the raw capture, and so are incompatible with RAW mode which aims to present the raw data in an uncorrupted format. But there’s no reason why auto bracketing is incompatible with RAW. Same thing with the macro scene mode - which simply restricts the lens to the zoom range when macro focusing is available, and sets the AF to focus on the closest point.

Bottom line – if there are some features you want to use, make sure they all work together.

Other stuff

Here are a few things that I neither like nor dislike:

1. GPS: I’m not sure that I’d want to use this, but it seems to work fine. It is slow to get a fix, though – in a field under blue sky with no trees nearby, it takes 5 to 10 minutes for the GPS to get locked in. By comparison, my rather old Magellan Explorist 200 was able to get a lock within 2 minutes in the same situations. But it does get a fix and it does work.

2. Optical viewfinder: it’s nice to have and I use it a fair amount, but the distortion is horrible and it crops so much of the image that it’s of very little value for serious composition.

3. Battery life: I read a lot about how the battery doesn’t last long, so I decided to test things out. Granted, I had charged my battery several times by the time I tested it, but I managed to get over 500 RAW captures from a single charge. No use of flash. Overall, I can’t ask for more.

Overall - I’m happy with the camera. Is it on par with a DSLR? Not quite… Does it produce Medium Format results? Are you kidding??? Is it a great little camera you can stick in your shirt packet and still use to get good 11 x 14 inch prints? You betcha!

I am standing by the edge of the pond. The vegetation here is thick, and I had to make my way in carefully – the wild raspberries have been mostly washed out by the rising water, but the ones that remain are tall, thick, and full of thorns.

Fresh green grass stalks break the surface of the pond. Maybe it will revert to a marsh again, after all…

A flash of gold catches my eye and I turn to see a serpent, draped on the tall raspberry bushes. She’s almost at eye level – more like chest level – four or five feet above the ground. She seems unconcerned by my presence – a Ribbon Snakecommon garter snake. It seems pretty relaxed, maybe this is one of the snakes I photographed a few weeks ago.

Wait a minute… This is the Allegan Forest, not the Amazon Forest – I don’t expect to see snakes hanging from the branches here. After a few moments, the snake glides away – sliding into the bushes on which it was perched, weaving itself into the shadows below.

A few moments later, I have the next encounter with a snake. This time I’m lying on my stomach, trying to get a shot of a dragonfly perched on a stalk, just inches above the ground. As is usually the case, I get no photo. But as I turn to leave I suddenly realize that I’m eye to eye with a blue racer. The snake is much smaller than the ones I saw a few weeks ago – this one is only about 3 feet long. I can’t even photograph it – it’s too close. I rise up and step aside, and the snake darts off towards the water’s edge, and the thick bushes there.

Well, this morning is off to a good start…

Of course, I’m more concerned with finding dragonflies, so I scour the fields off 48th street to see what is new. As in the past few weeks, dot tailed whitefaces remain in charge. They are actually incredibly numerous – I try to estimate how many appear in a square yard of the field, and it seems like there are at least 3 and sometimes as many as 6. Here are a couple of shots of the dot tails:

Aside from the dot tails, twelve spotted skimmers have also appeared. Though they are never as abundant, these dragonflies are much larger and more elegant in their flight. Here’s a snap:

Leaving the pond and fields along 48th street, I head to the coreopsis field a mile or so away. In the past week the coreopsis has really come into bloom, but I only spot a couple of butterflies on the flowers. I spent a bit of time pursuing this eastern tiger swallowtail, only to find that it had a nasty bite out of the top layer of one wing – close call with a bird, most likely:

So I wound up wandering through the open field. The coreopsis looks great, and will only get to be fuller in the next few weeks. After wandering and watching for a while, I found a handful of Rapids Midlands Clubtails, which I first spotted last week in the fields north of the river. While the individuals I spotted last week were vibrant yellow, the ones I saw this week were much more greenish yellow. They still liked to pose on the sandy soil – here’s a shot:

From there I moved on to the fields to the north of the river. I saw a delta spiketail, but was not able to get a photo. The Rapids Midland Clubtails were still prominent, and I managed this shot of a mating pair – hmmm, maybe the difference in color has to do with gender.

All in the all, the spring dragonfly season is off to a good start. I’m surprised to not see any Blue Dashers. But they should be along in due time.

A parting shot of the garter ribbon snake, high up in the brush:

The spring wildflower season has passed, but I have quite a few images here that are waiting to be posted. So… It’s time for a Wildflower Roundup. Ummm - not the herbicide, but rather some wildflowers shots, with little commentary, from the last few months.

This was taken in mid may - a fine time for May Apple. It’s easy to miss the lavish flowers that these plants bear, since they are hidden under the large umbrella like leaf.

Here are a couple of shots, taken in the Allegan Forest.

The pair of green darners joined in mid air, lumbered along as a pair for a few seconds, and then descended to the base of a small plant. I was in the north end of the field, almost half a mile from the pond that is the source of so many dragonflies.

The darners were either oblivious to or unconcerned by my presence, so I knelt down and manage to get several shots of the pair.

Leaving the darners to their embraces, I scouted the rest of the area. My hope was to find a few new species of dragonflies – new arrivals for this season, that is. I only found a few immature white tails and lots of dot tails, so I decided to head back to the car to try some different fields.

Just as I started the engine, though, a Spangled Skimmer landed on the honeysuckle bush next to the car. This was my first sighting of this species this season, and I grabbed the camera to get a couple of shots.

From there I moved on to the fields off 44th street, a few miles away. The lupine is blooming like mad and the coreopsis has started. It looks like this will be a great year for coreopsis. Unfortunately, I saw few dragonflies and so ventured on to the areas north of the river.

Like last spring, the fields here were full of yellow and black clubtails, and they are back again this year. I’m having a heck of a time identifying these – I think they are Rapids Midlnads Clubtails, but the marking are not exactly like the ones I see in reference photos. At any rate – they seemed to love to obelisk on the sandy soil, and this one struck a pose that conveys the clubtail attitude:

Here’s a less interesting composition that shows the marking smore completely: