Field Guide – Linda & Robert Scarth

Yesterday, as we drove toward Minneapolis to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, we encountered the gifts left by an early morning freezing fog. The landscape in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota looked as if it stepped out of a fairytale. One could imagine a Nordic scene or a pale Japanese cherry blossom setting for a story.

We were on a tight schedule as our admission tickets were for a specific time. These two trees were so striking that we had to stop. They are natural works of art that complimented the Asian art we viewed later in the day. The laceyness of the branches is reminiscent of the intricate patterns on some of the brass and terracotta objects in the Terracotta Warriors exhibit. Buckles, pots, tiles, weapons, and the carved hairdos of the warriors and their horses often had branching designs.

Art museums are the reference works for artists of all types. Photographers have much to learn about light from paintings. Sculptors teach how to present subjects within a composition or in isolation. Great collections like those in the Minneapolis Institute of Art need to be studied and enjoyed in small portions.

Yesterday we were immersed in the story of the First Emporer and his warriors and plan to learn more. We also visited several other rooms to look at more Asian art and some North American Indian artifacts. We quickly realized that we had to process what we had seen and heard about the warriors before adding more. There will be other occasions to absorb some of the other works.

This morning the message from The Writer’s Almanac included a poem by Maxine Kumin titled “In the Moment.” Written imagery can be as wonderful as visual imagery. The poem is replete with engaging mind pictures. There is one line that flew off the screen to deliver a memorable idea:  “… live in the moment, pursuing that brilliant dragonfly called pleasure.”

That sent us to look at some of our dragonfly images. There is much pleasure in photographing dragonflies. To see the metaphor of equating these fierce hunters with pleasure, speaks of the persistence needed in hunting and photographing dragonflies and the pleasurable reward when one makes a good image.

This Widow Skimmer (Libellula luctuosa) is probably a female. Immature males and females lack the white bands of handsome mature males with their whitish powdered abdomens (pruniosity). She does not appear to have claspers at the rear end which would be there in a male. The brilliant golden yellow streaks down her sides are like little stacks of gold bricks.

Though the poet was describing dogs, we photographers can benefit by living in the moment, especially when enjoying the pleasure of pursuing a dragonfly.

Last month while in the Northeast, we made a pilgrimage to The Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve near New Harbor, Maine. It was late afternoon and the tide was receding to reveal this quarter acre tidal pool. Rachel Carson studied the inhabitants of the Salt Pond which contributed to her book The Edge of the Sea.

The rocks at the outer edge are visible through the trees behind the plaque which was put there in 1970 by the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). TNC received the preserve’s original forty acres in 1966, just two years after Miss Carson’s death. Another 38 acres was donated in 1967. Miss Carson had helped to form the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

The shore is a marvelous mixture of rocks with a fascinating history. The gray bedrock called granulite is thought to be 420 million years old. The beach stones are multicolored from the various minerals and rock types.

As the tide receded a shallow pool became visible surrounded by a ring of rocky outcrops in the water. One could imagine a Stonehenge of the sea. It is a special place that inspires reverance for the natural world, as we watched the tide move out and the pond become a placid place of smooth water while the Atlantic Ocean outside the rocks continued to ruffle its surface.

The wonderful thing about beautiful rocks is that they do not run or fly away. Photographing them in quiet light revealed their various sized grains, textures and colors. No need for white umbrellas to diffuse light and deal with reflections from granite and quartz. The violent and hot history of the geology was seen in the traceries of various minerals and rock types weaving in and out in a multitude of patterns. Sometimes smooth bits of seaweed provided a counterpoint to the roughness.

As the light faded, we left and were grateful to those who protect one of the sites where Miss Carson explored, sat, thought, and considered how to alert people to the earth’s vulnerbility.

Last night, as we walked a trail to collect fresh milkweed for the ‘children’ (the five Monarch Butterfly caterpillars growing toward ‘chrysalishood’ on the corner table in our living room), we came upon several stands of Teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris).

Teasel is considered to be an alien weed in North America but the dried flower heads are also pretty additions to dried flower arrangements. The ones we found have white florets though guide books state that they are lavender.

In their book, The Metamorphosis of Flowers, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou have several lovely sequences of teasel images. We admire the work of these French photographers and were influenced by their work as we selected images for Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa.

Therefore, we brought several very prickly stems home to make portraits in our style.

Nuridsany and Perennou frequently photograph blooms, buds, seeds, etc. against plain, often dark green, backgrounds. We like soft out of focus backgrounds of several colors for portraits, both outdoors and in. In the field we hope to isolate subjects far enough from the background for it to fall out of focus. For table-top work, we use prints of out-of-focus flowers and foliage as backgrounds. We used daylight quality compact florescent bulbs without the light tent for general lighting, plus off-camera fill-flash for some images. This made varying patterns of light and soft shadows.

It is a good exercise to do variations on subjects done by photographers one admires. Artists and musicians have long done variations on a theme produced by another artist or musician.

BTW, the caterpillars are growing well and established on their new cuttings. They all hatched from eggs on plants we found last week. The last one was a surprise yesterday morning. We had missed the location of an egg on a leaf that was being devoured by a much larger, several day old caterpillar. The very tiny caterpillar quickly migrated to another leaf. It now has its own milkweed stem in its own jar.

Photography is one of the arts and sciences that develops and improves because of the community of photographers – teachers, presenters, friends, critics, inventors, engineers, collaborators and competitors. The distribution and sharing of knowledge and experience has burgeoned with the development of the www. Not only are we able to learn from one another more quickly but we have an important opportunity to thank those from whom we learn.

Today in his daily eNewsletter, Tim Grey asked his readers to go to his blog to post a comment about what they were going to do to photographically celebrate Spring. Since we have specific photo targets for today we posted a comment on his blog.

When we spoke with George Lepp on his seminar presentation in Peoria, Illinois on Saturday, we told him how much we appreciated what we had learned from Tim Grey about Photoshop when he taught at the Lepp Institute. We think that the good foundation we learned from Tim contributed to the quality of the images in ‘Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa’. Mr. Lepp mentioned how feedback to teachers makes it all worthwhile. A post on Tim’s blog was our chance to thank him publically.

That reminds of another photographer who worked for Lepp Institute. Jeff Greene lent us a Canon EOS 10D kit to use for a few days after our first class at the Institute. The image at the top of this post was made using that camera. That led to our migration to digital photography and the progression of Canon EOS cameras as we continue to upgrade to expand the photographic possibilities that new technology offers.

Attending occasional seminars by photographers and image optimizing gurus (think Photoshop experts) continues to be part of our routine. On a much smaller scale, we write this blog and do presentations about photography in our home range to say ‘thank you’.

It is said that one of the thousand places one should visit while living is the Monarch Butterfly Preserve area east of Morelia, Mexico. We were there last week and our hearts are still flying in the swirling cascades that occurred when the wintering Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus) took flight from their dense perches on branches and tree trunks in the mountains of south-central Mexico.

Our journey to two small patches of ground occupied by millions of butterflies was led by Dr. William Calvert and Bonnie Chase. Bill is one of the scientists who located the wintering grounds in the 1970s. Bonnie is a champion of logistics and planning for such trips. Travelling with them and the rest of our group was a pleasure that will be long remembered beyond the meeting of the butterflies.

Bill’s passion for the butterflies and the need to protect their habitat is inspirational. We met one of the local men who has been guarding the areas, now part of the preserve, for 35 years. This year the known wintering grounds within the large preserve area is only 1.9 hectares (4.75 acres) spread in small pockets above 9,000 feet elevation in the middle of the mountain belt across southern Mexico. This is the smallest area since the butterflies were located and reported in the scientific and popular literature in 1976.

We were told that a butterfly tagged in Clinton County, Iowa during fall of 2008 was found along a path in the preserve during the winter of 2009. The many nature center and school activities collaborating with programs like Journey North and Monarch Watch are adding to the knowledge about this wonder of the natural world. Searching the www and your local library will reveal more information on this amazing little animal that can travel from Canada to Mexico, not eat all winter and then begin the journey north the next March or April. A few mate before heading north. We saw a newly laid egg on a plant in a village near the preserve.

Though we took several lenses of different sizes, we mainly used our 70-200 mm zooms. At one point the best way to see and experience this amazing spectacle was to lie down on the path and look straight up into a cascade — sometimes remembering to press the shutter.

Eggs figure in many proverbs and are sometimes overlooked as subjects. Winter cold can keep even the most intrepid photographer inside, especially when keeping camera batteries sufficiently warm is necessary. Tabletop photography can be fun and instructive. Where better to practice lighting and composition approaches? Art students sometimes practice perspective and shading while drawing spheres and other rounded shapes.

These lovely eggs, from some ‘rare breed’ hens owned by a friend, offered studies in color, shadows, and shapes. In this image there is both cross and top lighting. Even though the light is diffused it makes a collection of overlapping shadow puddles of varying intensity that repeats the curves of the eggs.

Some photographers, especially working in black and white, use fruits and vegetables to make abstract studies where shadows and shapes are emphasized. We work primarily in color but try to think in black and white when composing images. Thinking in black and white can help produce images with more depth and adds a third dimension to this two-dimensional art form.

Eggs are a symbol of Spring. After another single degree Farenheit night, we are ready for Spring.

We looked through a new window today into the early life of Aldo Leopold in Burlington, Iowa. It was fascinating to learn more about the boy who grew up on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. From there he became the man who still implores us all to ‘think like a mountain’.

Steve Brower and Jerry Rigdon, experts on the Leopold and Starker families, guided a small group to several of Aldo’s childhood haunts and showed a presentation about how growing up in this particular time and place were underpinnings to his ethics. The afternoon concluded with coffee/tea in the home in which Aldo grew up.

The window above is in the entry and is special among the handsome doors and windows throughout the home. It is a combination of the romantic beauty and sensible utility that was Aldo’s heritage. The family who now owns the home allowed a group of supporters of the Johnson County Heritage Trust to experience this beautiful house while thinking and talking about the culture which produced the house and the man.

Aldo and his siblings had a wide ‘home range’, exploring creeks and caves, boating on the Mississippi River, hunting, fishing, and observing the plants and creatures in the area. Family outings were frequent. The children were strongly encouraged to write about what they saw, did and thought.

On the morning walk we all scrambled up a bluff to one of the caves in Aldo’s known exploration area. Looking out over the creek valley below was another window on Aldo Leopold’s world. More power to windows!

We have not posted lately because we have been away on a photography trip. More on that later. This morning we opened The Gazette, the Cedar Rapids and Eastern Iowa newspaper, to find Orlan Love’s article about our book, Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa, leading the ‘Accent’ section. His kind words were a wonderful way to start our day. A check of The Gazette web site provided a link we can email and also link here.

In this time when newspapers are economizing in many ways, the reproduction quality of several of our photographs on newsprint is outstanding. The space provided for the story is also impressive.

When Orlan was interviewing us, he offered a compliment equal to the those by Piotr Naskrecki and Peter Raven on the book jacket. Orlan said his copy was going to have a spot next to the works of John Madson on his bookshelf. John Madson sits next to Aldo Leopold in the bookcase closest to this computer desk. Madson had an economy of words and expanse of imagery that we so admire and use as a guide in our photography. One of our favorites is Madson’s description of a shrew as ”looking like a miniature mouse that has been whittled to a point.”