Figure 1 – Armani waisted, a study of floded cloth. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Hmm! It is a miserable rainy day in Massachusetts and as a result instead of venturing out into the woods I chose instead to walk at the local mall. The photographic pickings there are slim, but I did take the image of Figure 1 with my IPhone. It continues my study of folded cloth. This is actually the waist of a beautiful Armani dress in a store window. What drew me to it was the gorgeous slate blue color, although in the end, I chose the sepia toned black and white mode for the final; so that it would emphasize the folds, the tones, and the shadows. And then there is the texture and the feel of the fabric. It is the quinessential tone-on-tone.

I am for some reason reminded of the famous 1940 paper by Jane Richardson and Alfred L. Kroeber studying the trends in women’s fashions over the course of three centuries “Three Centuries Of Women’s Dress Fashions: a Quantitative Analysis,” which I read in college. There you have the essential point that cultural anthropological understanding may be enhanced by quantitative analysis – that secrets yield to measurement and numbers. Who would have thunks it? And what Richardson and Kroeber found was that, in general, there is an approximately one hundred year cycle to any given fashion parameter like waist line. That they swing or oscillate between extremes over the course of a century.

It seemed enough profundity for a Saturday morning. And it also seemed (seamed?) high time to get back to doing what I should be doing. But photographically I am pretty satisfied by the effect, and by the glory of folded cloth.

Figure 1 – Cat bowl caustic, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

It’s been a while since I posted about “Reassuring Moments in Physics,” that is reflects on a photographic encounter of something that requires a little physics to explain it. Such is the case with the image of Figure 1.

The other morning I went to give my cat a bowl of fresh water and I discovered that a beam of sunlight was reflecting off the surface of the bowl and casting a circular disk of light on the wall. Okay, that makes sense. Then I discovered that if I tapped my foot on the floor it created a shadow pattern on the wall that captured the structure of the vibrational modes of the surface. You may recall the scene of the vibrations on the surface of a glass of water in the movie Jurassic Park when Mr. T-Rex makes his first appearance.

The physical phenomenon at play here is actually pretty simple. If you create a concave depression on the surface of the water it’s going to act like a concave mirror and focus the light at the center. On the other hand, if you create a convex hill, it will act like a convex mirror and diverge the light thus creating a shadow. This is very much akin, indeed complementary, to the light patterns on the bottom of a swimming pool caused by wave distortions on the pool’s surface, which in that case act as lenses. These patterns are referred as caustics. The term caustic means to burn and appears to derive from the ability of lenses to focus the sun and to ignite fire.

In the image of Figure 1, taken with my IPhone, we see two types of caustics. The first are the circular waves radiating outward from the center due to the vibration induced by stomping my foot. The second the two v’s on the right and left hand sides caused by the sides of the bowl. I think that there may be some interesting variations of these images, but this is my first try at it.

Figure 1 – Purple sandpiper, Madison, CT, March 27, 2016.

It is officially spring, and time to get back out and photograph some birds. I found myself this chilly but sunny Sunday morning along the beach at Madison, Connecticut. That is an interesting spot, because the first birds that grab your attention are the herring gulls, and you get the impression that that’s all there is. But then you focus, calm down, and look around. There is a duck or two bobbing in the waves near shore and further out are the cormorants. Then I noticed a little bird hopping around on one of the small rock outcrops and started shooting with my camera as I approached. He was quite accommodating and in the end allowed me to get close enough to get sharp images with my 70-200 mm lens.

I love to photograph the shore birds and was very happy with the results here, shown as Figure 1. Identifying the bird proved more difficult than usual. The Merlin Bird Identifier App on my cell phone failed me for really the first time. I consider this to be an essential tool for bird photography and also I think that a test of the photograph’s quality lies in containing sufficient characteristic marks to make an identification. I am pretty sure that it is a Purple Sandpiper (Calidris maritima), here having Sunday brunch along the rocks. You will note as do some of the ornithology guide that it is a stretch to call it purple.

Canon T2i with EF 70-200 mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Happy Easter from Hati and Skoll, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

It has been a pretty sad week; so I thought that we could use a happy image today – without fuss or profundity or even religious symbolism. So here are a couple of Easter Bunnies. That is the Easter of children – of egg hunts, jelly beans, and chocolates. And we could all use to be children once in a while.

Figure 1 – The black-hole that is the center of the universe, (c) DE Wolf 2016, IPhone photograph.

It was very grey today, and I found myself looking for the sort of quirky images you find by looking with heightened perception at ordinary things. So I came upon a modern basket in a shop and fell in love with the evident spiral and deep three-dimensionality. It is a spiral or a vortex, and for me these little whorl-winds conjure up two associations. The first is the warp of a black-hole in the fabric of the universe, the gravitational field of its space-time. And the second is more intimate. Some of the native American of the American Southwest believe that your soul enters and leaves your body at the finger tips, where it forms the little spirals that we mundanely call fingerprints. This, of course, is ultimately the image of God reaching out to Adam in Michelangelo’s “Sistine Chapel,” the scene of the creation of Adam. Such is the universality of human myth.

Figure 1 – The pond from Otter Trail March 22, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

We have had what is in all likelihood the last of the winter, or early spring, snow, here in Massachusetts. Yes, I suppose that I am tempting fate. A couple of days later I went for a bit of a treacherous walk at the Assabet River Wildlife refuge. The snow at that point had both melted and refrozen and had a very crunchy texture to it. As a result, my presence was broadcast loudly to all of the wood’s creatures, who the dutifully head from me and my lens.  But I was still pleased to see a huge number of tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) freshly arrived from Mexico, gorging themselves on insects over the pond. The presence of the insects was invisible to me, which speaks even more profoundly of the keenness of avian senses. There was also a fine crop of very noisy blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) squawking loudly among the pines.

As always what was most beautiful was the coolness of the morning and the reflection of the sunlight off the surface of the pond. The surface periodically erupted into sparkles as the wind blew across it. Here these colors and glimmers complement the lifelessness of the snow and dried grasses and contrast with both the emerald greenness of the pines and the hints of chartreuse that spell the beginning of a new season. I tried to capture this in Figure 1, which was taken along the Otter Trail and captures some trees growing out of the pond in shallow water.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 113 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/800^th sec at f/7.2 with no exposure compensation.

Northern Cardinal trumpeting his spring mating call, Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Maynard, MA. © DE Wolf 2016.

We had a late spring snowstorm last night and, as expected, it didn’t amount to much – only about five inches and it is melting fast. So I can return to the view that since it is day one of spring it, actually is spring. And nothing is more representative of spring in New England than the mating call of the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis). It is distinctive, and once you hear it your eyes automatically search for the crimson bird at the highest point in the highest tree.

I remember this so vividly from when I was a graduate student in Ithaca, N.Y. I used to devilishly record the male cardinals and then play them back, which invariably led to a war of song. Perhaps we should have called it a birdsong selfie.

With all of this in mind, I took the photograph of Figure 1 of a particularly plump and scarlet male high in a tree and singing his heart out at the Assabet River Wildlife Reserve last weekend. Calling all lady birds and you guys stay out of my territory. The cardinals are such a treat! All I had was my 70 to 200 mm zoom, yet still managed a pretty acceptable image.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000^th sec at f/7.1. with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Muskrat at the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

If you visit the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge’s webpage, they inform you that if you want to see wildlife, go there near dawn or dusk. Well, the other morning I made it out early, but not that early, even though dawn is now driven forward by the hour of daylight savings time. It was obvious that the pond and the forest were coming alive.  Everywhere Blanding Turtles had crawled out on logs and tufts of Earth, usually in large groups, to soak in the precious sunlight. As I was walking the trail, I saw a fuzzy mass sitting on a stump that emerged from the pond and started taking photographs as I approached. I thought at first that it was a little beaver, and he was terrified or at least very nervous about my presence, I came withing five meters of him and took the picture of Figure 1. Yes, it is a face that only a mother could love.

I was troubled by the twigs in front of him but could not get around them. So after I knew that I had the image that I wanted I took a few steps forward. This immediately drove him into the water and his long round tail revealed that he was not a beaver, after all, but rather a muskrat – Ondatra zibethicus. I managed then to capture a decent image of him as he swam off, and you can see from the interesting wake that he is headed left, like a rower with one paddle in the water. Success in animal and bird photography is almost always in the sharpness of the eye.  At that point the muskrat dove only to reemerge among some reeds a distance off. Wildlife can be difficult to photograph because of its elusiveness. This only adds to its appeal. But it is not the elusiveness that intrigues us. Rather it is the reminder of a place that we ourselves came from, indeed that we have never truly escaped.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 180 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 2 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Muskrat swimming at the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, (c) DE Wolf 2016.