Figure 1 – Solar Eclipse totality March 7, 1970, Virginia Beach, VA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Our discussion yesterday about the Mariner IV journey to Mars, in July 1965, led my mind back to the troublesome sixties. During the summers of 1960 – 1963 the impotence of childhood forced me to endure “dreaded summer camp.” It was not that there is anything wrong with cool lakes and beautiful mountains, it was just that “camp” in those days meant one thing, sports. We have since become more enlightened. And while I was not particularly bad a sports, I had no interest in them. I was already a budding scientist. Anyway, I so dreaded “camp” each year that when I got there I would immediately start counting down the days to that merciful day in August when it would be over. Not important, in 1964, I entered the very special world of New York’s Stuyvesant High School – for science brains like me – and the world became very different. The rest, as they say is history.

My point in telling this is that for years later I would have recurrent nightmares that I was back in “camp” and trapped for another summer.  This was until one night, maybe fifteen years later, when I realized in my dream that I was an adult and if I didn’t like it I could just leave. I was in control. I’ve never had that dream since.  And it is an important lesson, because I believe that much of the conflicts in life relate to the fundamental issue of control. Teenage rebellion is about expressing control. Raising children is about keeping your child safe but at the same time slowly allowing them independence. I think that this issue of control extends to religions, social groups, and even nations. It is a fundamental element of human conflict.

But back to July 1963. I had contracted the mumps and was in quarantine. There was to be a solar eclipse, but our camp was sequestering all the campers in the rec hall to watch a movie and protect their eyes from the sun. These people were idiots! My father rescued me and on July 20 1963, fifty-two years ago today I saw my first partial eclipse of the sun.

Fast forward seven years to March 7, 1970. A lot changes in seven years and you gain some amount of control. My friend Ed Grupsmith, my sister, her friend Caroline, and I went to Virginia Beach to see and photograph a total solar eclipse. Ed and I had our equipment and the whole thing worked out and practiced in detail. We had concocted a clever scheme of using direct positive copy film for black and white. If I remember correctly I shot black and white. Ed shot color.

It may sound strange and geeky, but seeing a total eclipse is life changing. The sun slowly became occluded. We captured the beauty of Baily’s beads, when the rough landscape of the moon causes glorious bright beads to ring the sun. And then suddenly alternating bands of light and dark traversed the beach. These are called shadow bands. The wind picked up, there was darkness, and the stars came out. All the startled seabirds began to squawk at the unexpected night. We could see the fiery trail of a rock launched from near-by Wallop’s Island NASA Launch Facility to photograph the eclipse from high altitude.

And as for the eclipse itself, Figure 1 shows a photograph that I took of totality on that day. It is like so many images of eclipses through the years. These inevitably fail to capture the intrinsic wonder. There is a marvelous three dimensionality to the actual event. The magnet field lines of the Sun pierce the nebulous solar corona.  You feel the fear of primitive people and you feel the power of modern understanding. Like I said, it is a life changing experience.

Figure 1 – The tree of love and remembrance, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

The true wilderness is one thing but in suburbia it becomes a matter of closing your ears and eyes a bit – well more than a bit. You’ve got to learn to ignore the sights and sounds of man, to shut  your eyes to fences and the periodic human spore lying about. Years ago in Ithaca, I would go into the gorges and position myself so that I couldn’t see the bridges or any human signs. I would let the roar of the waterfalls drown out the sounds of mankind – the street noises. Then I could marvel and imagine an unspoiled world.

The other afternoon I went into the woods – a sudden refuge of darkness in a brilliantly lit world. You can feel the coolness instantly and this frees you to let your mind wander. You shut your eyes to any intruding images of human habitation. Then I spotted this two-trunked black birch with graffiti all over it. I was dismayed at first. But then I realized that it was covered in little declarations of love. Judging, from the size of the trunks I would guess that this tree dated back at least to the 1960’s. What of these lovers. Their writings are now all stretched out – scars to the tree, but testimonials nonetheless. You wonder what has happened to all of these people. Have their “dreams lost grandeur coming true?”

The tree itself has been meticulously cared for by the stewards of the forest. There is a gouge covered in tar. And most remarkably, where a limb has broken off and the balm of creosote also applied, the scar remaining is itself heart shaped.  I shall call this the tree of love and remembrance.

Figure 1 – Aspirations and the texture of weathered wood, Glacken Slope, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is probably time to take a break from bird photographs. So I thought that today I would share an image that I took it a few weeks ago along the Glacken Slope. It is simply a picture of weathered wood, a study in texture and dynamic range. For photographers of my generation, it represents the aspiration, usually unfulfilled, to produce a photograph worthy of the Group f/64. Ah well…

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is but always to be blest.”

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) “An Essay on Man“

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 149 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/400th sec at f/11.0 with -1 exposure compensation

Figure 1 – Gadwall ducks, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Slowly, the ducks are returning to Fresh Pond.  So far this summer there have been mostly Canada geese (Branta Canadensis). But then last week there was the beautiful black duck (Anas rubripes) that I photographed and then this past Tuesday I was walking along the path and spotted a group of Gadwall ducks (Anas strepera) swimming against an active pond with great determination.  The Gadwall is not that common in Massachusetts. So I guess that I should be cautious about my identification. And I welcome correction from readers. What the guide books do say, is that if you see a group of “mallards” (Anas platyrhynchos) without any green heads (characteristic of males) then they are probably gadwalls as opposed to a group of female mallards. Figure 1 is an attempt to photograph them.  The image does not meet my usual standards of sharpness, although the middle duck, the one I was focusing on, came out reasonable sharply.  But the back-lighting of a cloudy sky just didn’t give me what I wanted.

I have been pondering this image quite a bit. While sacrificed in sharpness, I really like the stop action.  There is to my eye a real sense of motion against both wave and a strong head wind. The image seems almost to be a watercolor with subtle pastels, and that is in its own right very pleasing. So I’ll leave it as an experiment and let you decide.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 184 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/3200th sec at f/7.1 with +1 exposure compensation

Figure 1 – The vernal pool by Black’s Nook, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Off of Black’s Nook there is a vernal pool. Vernal pools are little wet spots that teem with life but whose depth and degree of inundation change over the course of the seasons. Most vernal pools will dry up completely periodically.  This one I have yet to see completely dry, but am convinced that the right summer drought would do it. What makes vernal pools unique is the variability of nutrients, salts, and acidity as the pool has more or less water. The term “vernal” comes from the assumption that it is at its highest water level in spring and summer..

That is a very technical definition. In another sense these are mysterious secretive places that require a bit of focus and concentration to see all of the life they contain.  In the case of Black Nook’s pool that is hard because it is in a protected part of the forest and you can only view from a respectable distance.I have observed it through the seasons: frozen in winter, surrounded by melting snow in spring, and now intensely green with vegetation in the heart of summer – shades of Vivaldi for sure. It was the greenness that brought it to my attention on this particular day. It was a verdant celebration, a microenvironment of rich emerald color that was tricky in its own way to photograph. I am drawn to this kind of lush greenness, I think because it reminds me of a panorama in the American Museum of Natural History of my youth depecting the Jurassic era. I am sure that the depiction does not meet modern interpretation, but it is engrained. So “Welcome to Jurassic Park!”

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 98 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500 sec at f/10 with -1 exposure compensation. My camera is usually set forr bird photograph f/7.1 and central spot metering.  Here I went to f/10.0 and multispot metering to increase the depth of field.  These carpets of algae and plant matter I find overwhelm the exposure and it is necessary to cut back a stop if you want green instead of saturated white.

Figure 1 – American black duck )hen). Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA by the Glacken Field. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I spotted this lone American black duck hen gliding quietly from behind a chain-link fence and a thicket of trees.  I walked quickly forward to find a place, where the trees would not obstruct my photograph and positioned the camera carefully so as to look through the fence and then I waited. Ducks are, in general, pretty wary even if protected from people. Here I got one of the most enjoyable aspects of bird photography, that moment when the bird notices you, turns her head, and watches you inquisitively.

I will admit to some confusion about identification.  The dark bill throws me. But I assume that this is the olive color that the guidebooks speak about for females. In English we make the distinction of the darkness of the feathers in this duck species.  It is a black duck. Taxonomists were clearly more concerned about the color of the feet.  Her formal Latin name means ruddy-footed duck, and indeed as she turned away from me these reddish feet were clearly visible.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2500 sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Cthulu, Glacken Field, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA.

There is a region of the Fresh Pond Reservation that is referred to as the Glacken Field, where it is almost invariably shady, and you have enter a little forest. You go “into the woods” and you know what that means! My mind invariably begins to wander from its most scientific task of searching out and identifying bird species to one more mythic and primordial. It was here that I found Merlin’s tree and the Lady of the Lake. It is such a magical place with mysterious steps leading up the hill into the woods, as if to “a secret garden.”

In several places the well-worn tree roots breach the path.  These invariably turn my memory to the not so encouraging, yet existential, quote from William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis:”

“Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

Turns with his share, and treads upon.

The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.”

But also I begin to look for patterns, for faces. The troll of Figure 1 is such a pareidolia.

The news has been so terrible lately that the world seems destined to desolation and decay that I saw Cthulu in this face. Cthulu derives and evolves from the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. The mythos focuses on ancient imagined deities often referred to as  “Great Old Ones.” The most powerful of these is Cthulu himself. These are terrible gods that once ruled the world. But they are now dormant, imprisoned beneath the sea or Earth. They are dormant, but watchful, and will rise again when mankind itself degrades to such a point that the cosmos frees them.

This is what I was thinking about when I took the image of Figure 1. Perhaps it would be best to get back to the birds. We have become so good at ignoring the terrible, of keeping our eyes in the trees and not looking down at an inhumane world.

““Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”

H.P Lovecraft “The Dunwich* Horror”

* Dunwich is a “mythical” town in Massachusetts

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm, ISO 1600,Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation,