Figure 1 is a photograph that I took at the San Diego zoo of a polar bear. For me it is a great exception. I don’t like to photograph at zoos. First, because it feels like a cheat, and second because I am ambivalent about zoos. The San Diego Zoo is a world leader in conservation of species and for the polar bear, whose habitat we are melting rapidly, this is essential. And also I have always, since I was a child, loved polar bears. The San Diego Zoo of 2023 is truly a far cry from the NYC Central Park Zoo of 1960. Back in those days there was always an aspect of gawking at the animals, which seemed subject to an attitude that “man has dominion over the animals.” Maybe that is it. I am pretty sure from documentaries that I’ve seen, that this polar bear, indeed any polar bear would eat me for lunch without giving it a second thought. One of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons comes from 1980 and shows two polar bears eating an igloo. One says to the other:

“Oh hey! I just love these things!… Crunchy on the outside and a chewy center!”.

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 340mm, 1/2500 th sec at f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode.

No animal is more majestic than the elephant. His dried, battle scarred, and wrinkled skin evokes a sense of knowledge and wisdom. And certainly, what they know and what they remember can raise a sense of shame and perhaps guilt in us. In taking Figure 1 at the San Diego Zoo, I focused on its eyelashes, which could certainly be the envy of so many would be models. Their primary function is to protect the eyes from dust and insects, but here they represent one more connection with humans.

“The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?”

David Attenborough

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 275mm, 1/800 th sec at f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode.

The Alpha, the head of the pack, the top dog- there’s always one. Figure 1 shows the alpha sea lion on his throne proudly soaking in the rays of a chilly but bright January Day. He seems oblivious to the squeals of his subjects around him. On our first visit to La Jolla cove, I was amazed at how close the tourists got to these behemoths in order to take selfies. The king was largely tolerant, only offering the occasional scolding bark – better by a long shot to taking a bite out of said stupid human’s rear end. Ten feet seemed to be the tolerable limit.

Behemoth is an interesting word . The biblical beast appears in the Book of Job. it is a primeval chaos-monster created by God at the time of creation. He is paired with the other chaos-monster, Leviathan. These two beasts will , we are told, become food for the righteous at the end-time.

Job 40
15 Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox.
16 Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly.
17 He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
18 His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron.
19 He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword!
20 For the mountains yield food for him where all the wild beasts play.
21 Under the lotus plants, he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.
22 For his shade, the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him.
23 Behold, if the river is turbulent, he is not frightened; he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.
24 Can one take him by his eyes, or pierce his nose with a snare?

Seals and sea lions recognize their pups by breath scent, which leads to to the tender moment of Figure 1 that I have entitled “A mother’s kiss.” For me this is the best photograph that I took on my trip last month. And I realized that we want so much to anthropomorphize these cousin mammals of the sea that we are drawn in particular to behavior that we see as “human like:” a smile. a kiss, or a laugh. And what can be more human-like than a mother kissing her child. I waited and waited and finally got exactly what I wanted.

“Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul”

Judy Garland

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 220mm, 1/400 th sec at f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode.

TC and I attempted to escape the perils of winter in the Northeast this year by spending January in Southern California. We should have stayed longer as we are now being hit with winter storm after winter storm. But the trip was a great success photographically. I have been working on the images all through February and now am ready for the great reveal.

I have also concluded that we are Sunday Explorers – a nice walk along the water’s edge, lots of wildlife to photograph, and, of course, a nice lunch! What can I say? We are spoiled.

A totally remarkable place on this trip was La Jolla cove. I think that we went there four or five times. The why is obvious from the image of Figure 1. There you come face-to-face with enormity – the enormity of the Pacific, the enormity the Earth, and the enormity of life on Earth. Here nature meets man often to sad effect, I came upon a Brandt’s Cormorant with what I thought at first was a white feather on its chest. In reality it was one of those plastic six-pack ties – so sad – and nothing to be done.

Still in the picture, I hope you can get a sense of the enormity of the place. Here three cormorants bravely battle the sea to defend their rock. The Pacific defies its name and pounds bird and rock with enormous force. For a moment you can ignore the presence of man and urban outcroppings to see the world as Darwin did on his “Voyage of the Beagle” almost two hundred years ago.

Darwin’s great champion, Sir Thomas H. Huxley said,

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.”

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 200mm, 1/3200 sec at f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode.

Halloween again and the colors are splendid! On that foggy day I came across the lichen covered bench of Figure 1 along the path Great Meadows. Always lonely benches on foggy days are reminiscent of lichen covered gravestones in some of our historic cemeteries. Here the nineteenth century is never too far behind us, and these woods intellectually and in spirit belong to Emerson and Thoreau.

“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Today’s image I’m calling “Cobweb and Thistle,” and it is just in time for Halloween. It was taken at the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge with my iPhone XS on that foggy day of October 24. Dried thistles abound this time of year. Here the flycatching cobweb has been thwarted by the rain. Or perhaps, you know my propensity for thoughts mythical, perhaps it is a glimpse into the revelries in the fairyland the night before (meadows being. prime spot for fairies after all) – a mixture of air, water vapor, and the not so tangible substance of cobwebs. There was chill enough in the air without bring the fairy people into this. As C. S. Lewis pointed out in “A Mighty Girl,”

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

Yesterday I went for a walk at the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, MA. It was very damp and foggy and the ground was covered with wet fall leaves; so I had to tread very carefully. Finally, I came to a clearing along the river and took Figure 1 in an attempt to capture the fog. I have always had trouble photographing fog. Partially, I think this is because that while the idea in some cases is to capture an image of the fog as subject, more often, as here, it is to capture the effect of fog on the landscape.

Fog is not loss of light; it is loss of resolution and dynamic range. It is noise. It is a flattening. Most significantly in working up the photograph the goal is not to defeat the fog but to embrace it. There are Fourier Transform methods enough that can extract the scene from the fog, but that is not the point.

Here it took me quite a while to realize that the image needed brightening, not moody darkening. Curiously, I see in Figure 1 not a full depth of visual range, but four distinct planes as if they were cardboard sheets. The first is the foreground, clear and distinct, the leaves and the berries. Then, second plane, the orange trees on the left. Third are the grey silhouetted trees. And finally is the distant hills and the sky. Interesting! What might in a sharp photograph be a continuum of distance is flattened by the fog to these four distinct planes.

Before winter comes and while autumn is in all its glory, I thought that I should post at least one fall foliage scene. Figure 1 is from one of my favorite places the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. It is always glorious, especially in fall and winter. Here, the colors of the distant trees reflect once more in the pond, caught her in the waning light of late afternoon. I shutter a bit to think of the coming darkness – just a few weeks from the advent of the return to standard time. I thought we weren’t going to do that this year, but I was wrong.