Red and Orange (Panasonic GH1, Lumix 20mm f 1.7)

 

On a day off, especially if I am awakening in the morning during a photogenic season, or in a scenic place, I have to make a decision.

Do I get up, grab my photo gear and go out early, or do I “sleep in”. This is a decision that I usually make based on the weather.

If it’s cloudy, I stay in bed, knowing that the same shooting conditions that I would encounter at 6 AM will exist at 11. I can sleep a bit, have breakfast and coffee, and still get good light.

If it’s clear, I think about it. You have to get up very early, arguably before sunrise, to catch the very best light. If I can look out the window and can already see that it’s clear, I probably already missed the best shooting. Have to wait until sunset.

If it’s foggy however, particularly if there’s no rain, I’m up instantly. For fogs, or mists, in many ways and in their many forms provide a wonderful backdrop for landscape photography.

Landscape photographers need to try to understand the weather. It’s helpful to anticipate the atmosphere’s behavior in order to be present for the best shooting conditions. I’m not a meteorologist, but I know a few things:

I know that in the fall of the year, when a cold front passes after a period of warmth, fog will form in valleys, particularly in river valleys, while the surrounding ridges will be clear. The amount of fog will depend on the “dew point” of the atmosphere.

I know that a similar phenomenon occurs anytime cool moist air passes over warmer surfaces.

I know that it is not unlikely to have fog, when there is an ice storm in the winter.

I know that fog will occur at times I cannot predict.

Fog is like free bokeh (see definition here) provided by the atmosphere. When it is thin, it blurs and deemphasizes the background detail, focusing one’s attention on the subject.

When it is thick, it can transform the commonplace into the abstract. It can change a pedestrian scene, into a more magical vision.

It helps to have equipment that is relatively moisture resistant. Don’t underestimate the pernicious effect  of water vapor on electronics. Don’t bring warm cameras out into cool moist environments. If you do, water will condense onto the electronics, and lenses will fog. At the least, it helps to have a lens cloth available.  

Better yet, let the equipment equalize to the ambient temperature (I usually leave my gear overnight in a place where that can happen). Typically then, there will be few issues.

Every once in a while, Mother Nature helps us with our craft.

Take advantage of it.

October 18, 2010

Alright , I admit it. I screwed up A number of our readers pointed out that the real danger of condensation on camera lenses, and in camera bodies occurs when cold equipment is brought into warm environments. Bang, you got me. In my own defense however, I would say that I was trying to warn my gentle readers about the perils of using electronic equipment, in ultra-humid environments.

I am greatful that people are paying attention.

 I hope you’ll continue.

 

At the end of August, in the Appalachian highlands, there is often early evidence of the cool weather that is waiting its turn in the unfolding year.

Autumn touches the ridge tops far earlier than in the river valleys.

    Fall’s opening gambit generally occurs after a late summer hot spell. A strong line of storms usually heralds the season’s first outbreak of true Canadian air. One morning you awaken to a strikingly beautiful sunrise and a crispness that is shocking to one who is well acclimated to the warmth of summer. As the day progresses, the sharp reds of sunrise evolve into a deep blue, more like the skies of midwinter. There is a strong breeze. Small white clouds pass quickly overhead as if embarrassed to deprive us of the brilliant sunshine.

   The next several nights will be unnaturally cool. The day’s winds are becalmed; heat radiates quickly from the earth below. The fans and air conditioners so useful on warm summer nights will be stilled. Sleeping will be more comfortable, albeit with an extra blanket.

   There are potent changes occurring in the natural world. After the first few brisk mornings, other colors will accent the uniform green of the forest. First are the bracken ferns whose early autumn yellow contrasts with the larger cinnamon ferns that now assume a deep rust hue. Low in the canopy, small maples and dogwoods add splashes of red and yellow to the scene, sometimes one branch at a time. Wetlands offer a hiker the first preview of fall colors as the trees and shrubs in those places often change before their counterparts in better-drained areas.

   By mid-September, the hummingbird feeders in our yard hang abandoned, their usual dependents driven south by the early chill. Deer, which were scarce all summer, are beginning to reappear in the yards and gardens. Velvet-covered antlers distinguish the bucks, as they feed on acorns that now litter the lawn.

    On the ridge top scrub barrens, unprotected by the forest canopy, nighttime temperatures will tend to fall significantly compared to the surrounding woodlands. Hiking these areas on a fall evening, one can encounter rivers of cold air as they course though the landscape’s shallow draws, eventually to pool in the so-called “frost pockets.” Here, even in early fall; there may be freezes, which quickly melt in the bright morning sunshine.

    A walk along a lakeside trail in late September reveals further evidence of a transition occurring. One immediately notices the absence of frogs and tadpoles at the shoreline.  The latter have by now, matured into the former and have burrowed into the mud below the cooling waters. Migrating geese visit to feed and briefly rest. Along the shore, fruit still clings to blueberry bushes, though their leaves are already changing to crimson.

    Summer may yet fleetingly return for one more encore; bowing before it leaves the stage. Eventually the climate will change more definitively, and the forest canopy will explode with color. Fall has returned. Winter will not be far behind.

  

Creating interesting images in midsummer, in the northeastern United States is sometimes a struggle. 

 Now I’m not saying that there aren’t subjects to shoot. There certainly are. 

    Streams, waterfalls, lakes, sunrises and sunsets all are available in midsummer the way they are the rest of the year. It’s just that everything is a fairly uniform green. And one day looks like the next. 

   There’s little change or evolution in the landscape, like in the fall with the leaves that seem to change almost day-by-day; or more obviously in the winter, when a snowstorm can utterly transform the scenery overnight. 

   There is however, a pattern of subtle, but predictable events in rural landscapes. There is for instance, the reliable blooming of summer flowers. If one pays attention during the year, you can begin to date an image by what blooms are present. 

  In early July for instance, here in the Moosic Mountains, purple thistles decorate the sunny edges of dirt roads throughout the region. Three weeks later, the seeds and their white parachutes are grasping at currents of air. 

Cardinal flowers decorate the channels of ephemeral streams that have dried up in the warm dry summer air. Blueberries, their blossoms long gone, ripen on the branches of trailside shrubs. 

  Sunflower blooms appear on their towering stalks sometime later, generally in August, and often well into September, their appearance roughly corresponding to the eruption of yellow in fields of goldenrod, the scourge of allergy sufferers everywhere. 

    On local farms, hay is being cut, depending on the summer weather, for the second or third time. This applies a sweet aroma to the summer breezes. 

   Sweet corn starts to be harvested. Heavy green fruit begins to pull the thin branches of tomato plants downward. Vast armies of wheat stalks bend in unison, to the wind of midsummer storms. 

   For me the goal of scenic summer photography, and for that matter, all seasonal photography is to capture the essence…the feeling of the moment that I and others experience in our little nook of the world. 

    I want my audience to view an image with all their senses, and share the full experience; for instance, the chill of a distinctly cool August morning in the Adirondacks, after a cold front passes. I surely want then to see the glory of the sun as it burns through the early morning fog.  But I want them to inhabit the scene, and to imagine the fresh smell of the dew-laden grasses, and to hear, as I heard that morning,  the distant sound of a loon on this obscure little lake, shrouded in mist (I guess now that I have a GH1, I could just take some video). 

   I want to convey the feeling as a rivulet of sweat runs down the back of your neck, in the lingering heat of a summer evening, on an uphill walk to an old abandoned farm. 

 Or the satisfaction of a quick Saturday afternoon mountain bike ride to a reservoir high in the surrounding hills. 

 Or the joy of a paddle on the Susquehanna River as the sun sets over the surrounding mountains. 

  I want to evoke the memory of hunting woodchucks at a friend’s farm on an August afternoon…or the joy of the amusements and food at a volunteer fire department “bazaar”. 

Images shouldn’t always just be technically competent and well composed. 

 I believe they need to tell a story.

   

    

    

Gas Drilling In Pennsylvania   

This is the full text of an Editorial published in the Wilkes Barre, Times Leader on Sunday , June 6th, 2010. It is about the juggernaut of Marcellus Shale Gas drilling that is  steamrolling across the farms and wildlands of Pennsylvania.   

   Like many in our region, I am struggling with the issue of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. It’s hard to ignore the potential benefits. Gas drilling in Pennsylvania has the potential to tap a new source of clean-burning fuel applicable to many uses, from home heating, to motive transport, to the production of electricity.  In North Texas, where companies have been drilling gas wells in the Barnett Shale formation since the 1990s, gas production has added a significant number of new, good paying jobs to a struggling region. For land owners, gas leases offer the prospect of significant income in these challenging financial times. Unlike the wind energy boondoggle of several years ago, the gas industry comes with the prospect of very real and tangible benefits.   

  Given my previous modest involvement in environmental advocacy, I have been asked by a number of people to weigh in on the issue. Up to now I have been reluctant, as I was not knowledgeable enough to have an answer. I’m still not sure that I am. What I have learned however is sufficient to cause me great concern.   

    In my travels, I have spent a lot of time in the western part of the state, where small gas and oil wells have been a regular feature of the landscape for many years. They generally sit on a small footprint, and appear to have little impact on their pastoral surroundings. I once encountered a venerable, but functioning gas/ oil well in the middle of a lush forest that had grown up around the installation. Many of these are so-called “stripper wells” were drilled by landowners themselves, down to depths of 1500-2000 ft. They produce modest amounts of natural gas, and have had some problems such as “gas migration”, particularly the so-called “orphaned” wells, abandoned by their owners before being properly “plugged”.   

   So, at first blush, gas drilling wasn’t particularly frightening to me.   

   But… this isn’t your grandfather’s gas drilling.   

  “Fracing” is the process by which gas is extracted from the shale that lies roughly 5000-9000 ft below ground in this region. Suffice it to say that it involves injection under great pressure of very large volumes of water, sand, and what was, until recently, a secret mix of chemicals, now known to contain some really nasty toxins and carcinogens. This is done do fracture the rock and allow gas to be extracted. It said to be safe, because the process occurs a mile or more below the surface, far below the natural aquifers. As I understand it, a good proportion of the fluid is then recovered, and has to be dealt with at the surface. A pad site can house 6 to 8 wells, each of which will need to be fraced.     

Given the usual strict federal regulations that apply to industry, I wondered how such a risky process could be legal. It turns out that since 2005, gas drillers have been exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus the nation’s most potent and pertinent regulatory laws. Arguably, this is the only way that they could get away with injecting these toxic chemicals into the earth.   

   Each episode of fracing requires significant heavy truck traffic to transport the literally millions of gallons of water, plus the sand, and chemicals required. And what is the source of the water? Apparently in western Pennsylvania where drilling is well underway, it has been streams and rivers.  A Pittsburg television news team recently reported that in August of 2008, well drillers actually “pumped dry” Sugarcamp Run, a stream in Washington County.   

  Another huge problem is what to do with the toxic brine extracted from the well after fracing is completed. Our current DEP Secretary, John Hanger was recently quoted on the topic: “I am concerned about the capacity to treat the water…There is a problem looming.”   

  There are very few treatment plants in the state that are equipped to properly detoxify the mixture pumped out of the well head.  Some drillers have attempted to present the waste water to municipal treatment plants. Many have prudently refused the gift. In some parts of the state the water, which may not be completely detoxified by the municipal equipment, is still being discharged into the Monongahela River which serves as drinking water source.   

By the way,  brine samples from 11/13 Marcellus wells in New York tested by their DEC recently, were found to be radioactive, some at levels as much as 250 time the level allowed by law   

    If this large volume of contaminated, possibly even radioactive liquid is not treated, then it must be stored on the site. Where there are liquids, there will be spills…and there’s going to be a lot of liquids in holding ponds, in tanks, and in trucks driving on our roads.   

Also, has anyone considered how  the municipalities involved are going to pay for the rather drastically increased wear and tear on what have been up to now often lightly travelled rural roads and bridges?   

    I think of the Foster Wheeler incident near my home in Mountaintop. There, a relatively small amount of trichloroethylene, a chemical degreaser, escaped into the soil and fouled a great many water wells downstream. The solution was to run public water into the affected homes. What would happen to the value of your home if there were no public water nearby, and fracing water contaminates the local aquifer? Or worse, if drilling contaminates the public water supply, a scary thought with drilling set to occur near to the Ceasetown and Huntsville reservoirs.   

    I have a number of friends who own acreage suitable for drilling; others have been offered money for a well to be run beneath them from a drilling “pad” on adjacent land. I have heard them describe the money that they have been offered for leases on these properties, often where they reside. I own no such land, and I think I’m glad I don’t.  The temptation to sign on must be overwhelming.   

   I am concerned that these friends do not understand the intrusion on their lives, as well as those of their neighbors, that drilling on their property would involve. I also fear that the effects of such a violent and toxic geologic manipulation might cause problems far beyond the borders of their parcels. I hope that they’re testing their water supplies and perhaps the soils near to where drilling may occur, to establish a baseline. Someday that information may be essential.   

  I honestly believe we should slow down the rush towards widespread drilling.  Let’s drill some wells in carefully selected sites.  See what happens. If everything comes out OK, drill a few more. After all, it’s not like the gas is going away any time soon. What’s the big rush?  The potential downside is huge.     

  Perhaps we should wait for the results of recently announced EPA study, commissioned to investigate the surge in reports of drinking water contamination in sites near to where fracing has been used.   

   I fervently hope that we can find a safe, cost-effective way to exploit this wonderful resource with out permanently ruining our aquifers, wild places, and watersheds.   

I’m just not convinced that we have, as of yet.   

                                                                                   Henry F. Smith Jr. MD   

    

 

 

The Mountain Laurels are starting to bloom in Pennsylvania.

    This is our state flower, and its emergence marks the point where our climate finally evolves from the fickle whims of April and May, to the soft summer weather of June. It is a moment of unconscious celebration for people who begin to open their pools, grill in the evening after work, and sit on the porches at night, listening to the distant call of whippoorwill.

   Here in the northeastern part of the state, we are beginning to see the delicate clusters of white blooms open up on the lower altitude woodland slopes in our region. By mid to late June they will bloom in abundance throughout the northern third of the commonwealth.

   I have for the last fifteen years, taken a week of vacation at this time, to wander the mountains, either by backpacking, or more recently, because of the burgeoning weight of my photo equipment, and a bad knee, car camping and day hiking. The laurels, and their cousins, wild rhododendrons, provide the forests their last splash of widespread color before they settle in to the monotonous green of summer. Arguably, it is the last time until fall, for a photographer to use wider lenses in the forest. After the laurels are extinguished,  longer focal  lengths become more useful to capture the later blooming wildflowers which are scattered throughout the woodland greenery.

I have several striking memories of this time of year involving Mountain Laurels:

   I first hiked the West Rim Trail of north central Pennsylvania in mid June, perhaps eighteen years ago. I was mainly a mountain biker at the time and hadn’t backpacked in years. I didn’t realize at the time, the different conditioning needed to carry a pack over distance. The rugged trail, plus the weight on my back played hell with my feet.  The weather had been wet, and I remember being extremely eager for the trip to end. I was getting close on the third day. The last portion of the trail diverts west into the Tioga State Forest, apparently to avoid Coulton Point State Park which hugs the rim of the” Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania”  in that location. Within the last four miles of its northern terminus, the trail leaves the woods to once again skirt the edge of the gorge.

   The Pine River gorge at this point is roughly 800 feet above the river, and the edges are swathed in laurel, which was in full bloom as I emerged from the forest on the path as it swerved to edge of the ridge. My jaw dropped at the beauty. White blossoms were everywhere, densely surrounding the trail. To my right was the spectacular vista off the ridge. I photographed it at the time but the small pocket camera and I were inadequate to the task, and the results were unpublishable. The memory of this, however, was worth every blister.

   A year later, I was on the Loyalsock Trail in the Wyoming State forest. This is a very vertical trail, laid out I am told by an Explorer troop, which must have had very sadistic leadership.

   I was in better shape that year and enjoying as I recall some wonderful June weather with blue skies, seventy degree days, and fifty degree nights. Hiking with several friends, we lugged our heavy backpacks up another of the seemingly limitless up hill climbs that mark the trail’s early miles.

    I remember cresting a hill, and looking down on a relatively old growth stand of trees on the vast wooded slope below. The canopy was quite high, perhaps 150 feet. There was a feeling of being in a vast verdant space. The forest floor was lush with white laurels, all in full bloom, a carpet that extended for as far as your eyes could discern. All of this was dappled with shafts of sunlight, occurring at random spots where the leaf cover was spare. No one could help but to stop, and stare. Though it was only 11 AM, we found a log on which to sit, and ate our lunch early.

June is a wonderful time of year in the eastern mountains.

 Perhaps God makes the Mountain Laurels bloom, just to remind us.

     

  In the eastern United States, where there are mountains, there will be streams.   

    It’s inevitable. Elevated terrain enhances precipitation, which is absorbed by the soils, gathers together, and then works to find the easiest route off the mountain. In the moist, temperate climate of Pennsylvania Appalachians, this means that thousands of cold, swift brooks cleave the earth in their gathering rush to the valleys below. Many start as tiny flows, emerging from the rocks at a point somewhat below the crest of the ridge. Depending on the vertical rise of the land and the watershed they capture, they gather speed and volume as they cascade off the mountainside.   

    Mountain streams serve as the punctuation for the many long wilderness trails scattered throughout the commonwealth’s wild areas.  In planning a trek through the wilderness, attention must be given to the availability of water at points along the planned route. Knowing the location of streams is essential to avoid carrying large amounts of the heavy liquid.   

    Many of the small mountainside brooks are seasonal, with no surface water present during drier years. Coming upon a parched stream bed when you were counting on replenishing your water stores is a distinctly unpleasant experience.   

     Where the mountains are steeper, the topography becomes more interesting. In the deepest draws of the northern mountains, the sun rarely penetrates to the forest floor. Legions of ancient hemlocks line the steep side walls of these eastern canyons, cut by eons of the action of water against rock. Glens form, where the land forms force the water to fall abruptly in altitude, increasing its hydraulic power. Ricketts Glen is just one example of this; there are many other spectacular falls and glens which are often quite remote and visited only by intrepid souls.   

    Hiking in the Tidaughten State Forest, deep in a within a mountain glen, I once found a mature American chestnut tree, blooming on a  spring morning. So remote was its location,  it was untouched by the blight, which kills its more accessible relatives while they are mere spindly adolescents.   

   Because of the severity of the terrain in ravines and draws, loggers in the past may not have had sufficient access for harvesting. These draw and ravines, deep in our state forests are wonderful places to experience true “Old Growth” forest. Here you can find four-to-five-hundred year old relics from our pre-colonial past, in this case White Pines and Hemlocks that tower two hundred feet and more over the forest floor.   

   The climate in these sheltered places is much more constant and gradual than on the nearby ridge tops. Shielded from the sun, snow lingers much deeper into spring.  It is cool here, even on hot summer days, especially where the streams run strongly into the warmer months.   

   On one of the more established hiking trails, such as the Loyalsock or the West Rim Trail, more often than not, a  stream crossing will have acquired a fire ring and informal tenting sites. These are generally fine places to overnight. On a clear winter nights, they can be warmer, the dense cover of conifers preventing radiational cooling.   

    Summer rain is shed initially by the hemlock canopy, making such places are a clever hiker’s refuge in wet weather. The rain comes down eventually however as the accumulated water drips slowly, over days, from the fine interlaced needles.   

  On a hot summer day, glens and ravines are cooled by the shade and the cold creek water. After the sun sets, cool air descends through the ravines from the mountaintops, clearing the air of biting insects, and providing a lovely sleeping experience.   

   Sadly, there is a real threat to these wonderful ecotones. An insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid is spreading throughout the state, threatening to wipe out the hemlocks that shelter these lovely places. There are efforts to control the parasites, but they have only partially successful. If they do not succeed, there will be a fundamental alteration of woodland and stream ecology in the eastern forest.   

 Visit these lovely places while you still can.

We had a forest fire here in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania earlier in the spring. It burned off several hundred acres, threatened several homes, and scared the crap out of other people who imagined that it would consume their properties. This is pretty much normal for April in our corner of the commonwealth.

I watched from the home of a friend, who has a deck with a spectacular view of the conflagration.  The action was perhaps a mile away, on the next ridge over.  Even from that distance, we could see the flames leaping far into the night sky, as though they would consume completely, everything in their path. As is usually the case, this does not happen. Millions of years of evolution have equipped trees and shrubs with the tools to survive wildfires; they tend to regrow rather stubbornly.

I drove through the affected area today.

Already, several weeks later, there are signs of healing with the green grasses and bracken ferns punctuating the charcoal forest floor. Some of the smaller trees as well as the less fire resistant species will die, but most seem to have survived. Much of the fire occurred on scrub barrens land, for which burning is the agent of perpetuation.

 Today, the chestnut oaks on the burn site are in bloom as though nothing significant had happened.

In a year, only the blackened tree trunks will suggest that there had been any forest disturbance here.

Nature, in this case fire, creates renewal. The results can be jarring when a favorite landscape is involved, but most often, the changes wrought by fire are natural and even helpful to the ecosystems involved.

 What is most disturbing is that a fire strips away the shroud that hides our human misdeeds. With the ferns and underbrush gone, it is the nonflammable human refuse that remains, revealing the obscene way, that at least here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, we tend to abuse our surroundings.

I have never understood what possesses a person to toss their garbage into the countryside.

If you don’t want to pay for garbage pick-up, find a dumpster somewhere, take it to work, to your parents, whatever.

 Please don’t do this.