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Kansas Trees in Winter :

Kansas Trees in Winter

Updated: Sep 05, 2008 5:41pm PST

Kansas Trees in Summer :

Kansas Trees in Summer

Updated: Sep 05, 2008 5:40pm PST

Colorado Desert Trees :

Colorado Desert Trees

Updated: Sep 07, 2008 6:10pm PST

A Forest of Spiders : Went out for a walk in the woods by Clinton Lake. Stopped for a break, and saw a mama raccoon ambling out of the undergrowth and down the trail. Some minutes later, saw one juvenile raccoon shoot halfway up a tree, and then pause, staring down. Then, just seconds later, another juvenile raccoon scoots halfway up another tree, and then also stare downwards. Then yet another juvenile raccoon, the smallest of the lot, emerges, but instead of going up a tree, scurries down the trail after mama. Then there is a lot of rustling in the undergrowth, coming directly toward me, and I'm expecting another baby raccoon to pop out, but instead what appears is the cause of all the fuss: a skunk. Nose to the ground, apparently oblivious to all the panic and commotion it caused by walking through a clutch of young raccoons (all of whom must have encountered a skunk at least once before and have learned that discretion beats curiosity in this case), it walks across the trail just a few feet from me and then disappears into the undergrowth. Later on, down the trail, I come across the baby that had decided to take off after mama instead of climbing up a tree. And it became obvious why it made that choice: it could not climb very well. There was an old log off the trail and, upon seeing me it scrambled up with great difficulty, and then tried to swing around the other side, but instead got stuck butt up and so ended up staring at me through a hole in the log, with its butt in the air. I was tempted to help it, but I preferred not to scare it anymore than it already was. So I just watched from a distance. After a while it calmed down enough to right itself, and then started making this weird chattering noise interspersed with mews. Alarm calls? Panic calls? "Mama!" calls? I don't know, but if any of you do, let me know. Still later on the trail, I encountered two wild turkey hens (forest ninjas!) and a couple of deer, as well as another raccoon that was jumping from tree to tree like a gibbon. So, what's all this have to do with these photographs? Well, on the evening that all this happened, I did not bring my camera. So, a couple of days later, I returned with my camera gear. Same time, same place. No raccoon. No skunk. No wild turkey. No nothing. Oh well, I still love the forest ... and, what makes wildlife watching fulfilling is not so much just seeing stuff, but the *opportunity* to see stuff: I get a kick of knowing that, just around the corner, I *might* catch a glimpse of a bear/wolf/raccoon/elephant/Rhacophorus/Trimeresurus etc. etc. Aaaaanywayss .... while I got skunked on the raccoons, I did get some decent shots of these spider webs. Large swathes of the forest were festooned with them. There were a few vertical ones, but many, many, many, many more of these horizontal ones draped over fronds, bushes and the undergrowth. I've never seen these horizontal webs in such large densities or covering so much of the forest in tropics, so I was quite taken with them. And as the sun began to set, lighting up the webs, it was difficult to avoid photographing them. Of course, I had geared up for raccoon papparazzing, and thus had no tripod or cable release, which made good exposures with sufficient depth-of-field very challenging. Not to mention the meter kept getting confused by all the highlights. So I switched to full manual, guestimating the exposure, and trying to find the best balance between a high enough shutter speed to minimize the hand-shake and a small enough aperture to pull in a good DOF. Fortunately, there was no wind at all, and for this I thank the weather management authorities. The 16-35 f/2.8 II helped a lot: at the wider angle, even the apertures down to f/4.0 provided good DOF, and even shutter speeds of down to 1/20" or 1/15" had little noticeable handshake. That wonderful gem of a lens, the 70-200 f/4 IS (my "raccoon gun") also performed well enough thanks to IS, but I really could have used another stop of light. Even so, I had to dial in +1 to sometimes +2 EV in post-processing for many of these shots. Furthermore, because of the high contrast already inherent in the composition, I had to use a linear contrast curve instead of the stronger S-curve I usually use. But on the whole, while I think with a little more planning, time and a TRIPOD I could have done better, I'm happy with what I got. Oh yes, I should also mention one other ubiquitious denizen of these forests that made this whole experience a little less comfortable than I would have liked, at least psychologically: ticks!

A Forest of Spiders

Went out for a walk in the woods by Clinton Lake. Stopped for a break, ...

Updated: Jul 02, 2009 10:58pm PST

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