jaustinimages

Hello Ashland

2010-07-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

Well I should tell you right of the bat that this post is me going to include much writing about how I don't have anything to write about. I'm hoping that both of the people (actually I'm pretty sure the reader count is up to three now – thanks Ann) will find this entertainingly ironic and that this will make up for the fact that I haven't posted anything in well over a month.

I've been thinking that I should be posting more often in this blog. I'm even feeling a little guilty – even though I'm not Catholic. And I've been thinking also that I need to get out with my camera and take some pictures.

The last couple of days here have been really hot (remember I'm in northern Wisconsin and that “really hot” means “in the 90's”. If I was in Georgia then “really hot” mean something else entirely. Kinda makes you wonder how tough northerners really are when they have to turn on the AC when then temp. gets over 80. Or maybe northerners need to redefine “tough” as something besides “doing stupid shit on a four-wheeler.”) and today the wind switched from the south to the north which means the air was passing over the lake before passing over land. The lake was cooling the air down and also moistening it and the end result was some fog blowing inland. I was riding my bike along the lakeshore and thought that it would be cool to take a picture and put it on the blog. Of course I didn't have my camera with me (I had taken the camera out of my bike bag because it was sitting inside of a hot car and I forgot to put it back in.

You know, it's not really true about me not having anything to write about. A lot has happened. Perhaps what I should have said was that I would be writing about how I have been slacking on getting out and taking pictures.

I have ridden my bike some...but not really all that much. I'm saving enthusiasm up for winter. I love to ride in winter...I'm weird that way. Still my bike is my primary mode of transport. I ride my bike for almost every trip in town and use it the vast majority of the trips I make out of town that are reasonable (how I define “reasonable” varies with weather, energy levels, time, etc. Most of the time I ride my bike out to my girlfriend's place, about 10 miles up the road. If that seems like a long way it may help to remember that I actually enjoy riding in the winter. I'm weird.... And the less gas I [and people in general] burn the better)

I've been camping some. On the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage; on the Namekegon River (both times were canoe-camping).

But the main reason I haven't posted much is the girlfriend I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. She has a place out in the country (I love being out of town) that's mostly wooded (I love the woods). She has a son who is about a year younger than my nephews. She is into alternative stuff (she voluntarily lived for years in a one room straw bale hut that was 12 x 20 and had no running water or electricity – it usually happens that I can trump most people when I tell about living in a 20 x 20 log cabin with no running water...but not her - mine was bigger, had more than one room, and had electricity). So anyway, the main reason I haven't been blogging is because of her. It's her fault.

It's been – insert some sort of superlative here – between Jenny and I

Well I suppose that not having big expensive lenses that can make things look close is an advantage in some ways. Since I only have one lens for my camera I almost never change it (only when I happen to borrow a lens from someone) and thus save money by not having to clean dust off of my image sensor and it also saves me from having to try and decide what lens to use in each particular circumstance. And in some ways it's actually let me experience more: I don't even bother trying to take a picture of the duck flying overhead (it would probably look like a dust speck on my image sensor anyway) and just watch and enjoy. But this picture is NOT an example of how a short lens is OK...this picture really isn't very good. I just like the idea that there is a rocky shore with cliffs so close to Ashland that you can see them with a regular old lens.

When I was in college I remember my friends and I making fun of the needless use of quotation marks in words that mean exactly what they are supposed to mean. I think of quotation marks are put in there to to let people know that you have just “coined” a word (or used a common word in an uncommon way but you can still be pretty sure that people will get your meaning even if they haven't heard the exact phrase before). As in: I'm excited = I'm feeling “caffeinated.” The best one my college buddies and I came up with was a sign on a bar that said Best Food “Anywhere.” But I think that this one tops them all. I found it in the basement laundry area in the apartment complex I'm living in.

The shore (of Lake Superior) in Ashland, while not being used heavily at this point, is littered with boards that I assume are from old docks that stuck out into the lake. I suppose it could be considered historical for them to be there – and I suppose it is, there are lots of pilings from old docks and stuff sticking out into the lake. But it seems to me that it would be quite a bit more “historical” (insert chuckle here after reading the last caption) to actually restore the lakeshore to how it looked 500 years ago instead of 100. Plus I think that it's kinda like littering to leave your messes around (and I consider old pilings a mess). Anyway, I'll get off my high horse long enough to say what you have probably already figured out by now: this is a chunk of an old board that washed up on the shore.

However, even though I wouldn't be sad to see the old dock/pier (is there a difference?) go, that doesn't stop me from being able to see that they still have some cool stuff in them. This is a piling made from a pine trunk and the white things you see radiating out from the center are knots from branches.

Goodbye Lancaster

2010-05-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

Well I moved into my apartment here in Ashland this last sat (May 1st) so I suppose that it is a bit tardy of me to just now be posting a blog wishing Lancaster farewell. But, as I said in my last post, I'm a slacker. Labeling yourself a slacker is quite liberating – it can used be to justify an otherwise lame excuse for nearly everything (but now that I think about it, being a slacker is itself a lame excuse).

Anyway, I thought I'd post some pictures that I've taken in Lancaster over the years as a way of saying goodbye to the place...not that I'll never be back (most of my immediate family lives there and I'll definitely be visiting) but as the gears of my life shift I find myself wanting remind myself that I'm definitely not fleeing from Lancaster...just that I feel drawn elsewhere. There are a lot of things about Lancaster that I'll miss.

In no particular order:

I was out on a walk/hike just south of the farmstead I grew up on (and my parents still live on) and was astounded by all the evidence of beaver activity around there. This picture is of a beaver tree that had been cut down and then gnawed along the trunk. I think I've put this in the blog before and mentioned that I've heard that this picture looks like a bunch of things that it isn't, including an elephant – and the person who said that was sober at the time....

For this one I managed to get out of bed in time and the angle of the sun was such that it shined on the frost on this plant (I believe that it's sorghum...in any case it was planted by a guy who wanted to encourage deer to live in the area) but not on the snow on the ground, so it makes for a nice contrast.

I love to just sit around and look at moving water (remember I'm a slacker and as such will find a bunch of reasons for sitting around. But of course there's a fine line between being a slacker and “smelling the roses.” Actually, as I see it, the “line” is more of an amorphous grey blob). And though it is obviously not water and – less obviously – not moving (the camera may not have picked up a breeze if had been blowing) it seems to me that snowdrifts are still worth “smelling the roses” over.

It's probably been at least 20 years but my brother and I used to sit on this branch which is in a cattle pasture just south of my parents' place.

This is the rise of a full moon over the hill directly to the east of my parents' place. Shooting night shots is easy in the winter since the night last so long. This reminds me of the long nights in Alaska (I lived in a cabin near Fairbanks for a year) and how the northern lights were out about half of the nights that were cloud-free...and nights started in midafternoon). Phew, it's kinda a stretch to go from a moonrise in Wisconsin to the aurora borealis in Alaska.

This one was taken in the morning in winter after the milkweed pods had long since broken open. I got the milkweed fuzz to looks all glow-y by positioning the camera lens directly in the shadow of the pod so the rays of sunlight lit up the fuzz in kinda of a halo around the pod. And another reason they look glow-y is just dumb luck. I've said before how my strategy for taking pictures is to take lots of them...and then edit the hell out of them when I come home. I took lots of pictures and got this single shot that turned out. I'm really not that good of a photographer....

This picture was published in the Lancaster newpaper and described as “haunting.” Well maybe it is that to others but it isn't to me having been there. The whole scene was lit by a streetlamp (there was no flash used to light this picture, and if you look close you can see a couple powerlines running though the picture on the right side) and was about as un-spooky as a night can get. Now, of course, there can be many definitions of the word “haunting” but the most immediate things it brings to mind are ghosts and general spookiness (at least that's what it brings to my mind but then again I'm a slacker/rose sniffer and so not to be trusted). It was incredibly frosty out there, and instead of feeling haunted, I was in near-disbelief about how beautiful it was.

I definitely remember that I put this in this blog before. This one is another example of the ratio of bad pictures to good (if you think it's good anyway) which, for this picture is 11:1. This bubble raft was spinning – part of it was caught in the eddy behind the rock on the far side of the stream and moving upstream the the other part was in the downstream current. So the upshot was that the bubble-raft was spinning in a clockwise direction.

Freezing rain falled on rock. Rock getted icy. Ice on rock reflect sky. Photo-dork come along and say “cool” and taked picture. It now in this blog. ...What a blog is?

If I remember correctly (I have a weird thing for being able to remember where I was when a particular picture was taken. Is now when I make some wise-ass crack about having a photographic memory? HAHAHA!) I had my rubber boots on (purchased in downtown Fairbanks at Big Ray's Outfitters for $10 six years ago. I believe in getting a good return on an investment) and was walking around in a stream in the park in Lancaster and happened upon this chicory flower. The water drops are from the dew the night before.

I've always thought this picture was cool. To me the leaf looks liquid-y and/or the water looks thicker than water usually looks. I don't get it...but then again confusion is a state that I've never had a hard time achieving. Maybe the reason I like it has to do with the cliché “simple mind, simple pleasures.”

Next time I'll post a post (redundant?) about Ashland (where I'm living now).

2010-04-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, as any of you that happen to be regular readers of this blog (all both of you) are undoubtedly aware it's been awhile since I posted something. I have a couple excuses for this – if you're interested in hearing/reading them then read on.

I haven't been feeling inspired to get out and take pictures around Lancaster. For a while there I made a point of saying that beauty is all around us and taking pictures is a way to capture that. And I still think that. But it's getting hard for me to simply zoom in on a leaf or a cool ice formation (or what have you) and ignore the cars whooshing by of the litter 5' away or the streambank eroding or etc. etc. I seemed like I was ignoring much when I was out taking pictures. I like being outside and one vehicle to get me out there is a camera. It'd be nice to be able to “take it all in” not “take bits and pieces in.”

I'm a slacker.

So on May 1st (hopefully it's then...I have yet to confirm this date) I'm going to be moving myself up to Ashland, WI. There are several reasons that I chose this town and some of them are listed here:

1)Ashland is right on the shore of Lake Superior. I've always loved Lake Superior, now I'll be living near it. And the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is close. Ditto Isle Royale. Ditto the Bois Brule River. Ditto the Porcupine Mountains. Ditto the north shore of Lake Superior. Ditto...you get the picture.
2)Ashland is very near the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. The C.N.N.F is over 1.5 million acres in size (I can't wait to load up my bike trailer and head into it and do some camping; or head out and just enjoy all the public land out there that'll be about 10 miles out my door.
3)I've always loved the “northwoods.” Lots of trees and comparatively few people. Don't get me wrong, I like people but I'm an introvert at heart and sometimes like to get off by myself.
4)Ashland is a college town. And the college is a pretty progressive and environmentally aware one at that. I don't want to talk smack about Lancaster but it's not terribly progressive or environmentally aware. It's taken me a while but I'm finally admitting to myself that I don't fit here. I get the distinct feeling that I'm viewed as kind of a weirdo...like I'm a mildmannered and harmless nutcase or something. Of course there's a good chance that this could all be in my head – I may just think that people think this way but they really don't (and, of course, there are worse things to be than a mildmannered and harmless nutcase). But even if they don't I'm sick of being the odd-man out. I do stuff like ride my bike for errands in town and mow my lawn with a rotary mower. This is pretty out there (for Lancaster, not for, say, Madison, WI). I can't begin to count the number of times that people have – good naturedly – told me that I'm crazy. And I am...in the sense that “crazy” means “not normal.” In fact, I'd rather have the population of Lancaster think I'm crazy considering what “normal” means in this neck of the woods. I mean, really now, I don't even like beer which if one is religious about beer (a good percentage of Wisconsinite males seem to be) then that's borderline sacrilege. I do like cheese though.

So when I was visiting Ashland last weekend I took some pictures. I was living out of my car for two days and slept out under the stars and there was a swamp with cattails nearby – and if the cattail-themed pictures get repetitive, well, no one's making you stay at this site. Enjoy.

Taken right near sunset the low-angle light caught the fluff of the cattails just so. Kinda wild how much the angle of light makes things look different. If I had taken this at noon it would be, at best, a ho-hum kind of picture. Well it depends, maybe you still think it's a ho-hum picture but it's at least less ho-hummy at this time of day.

The angle of the light couldn't be much lower in this picture. How many of you have watched as the sun goes down? It's really fast. Or at least it seems fast to a bumbling photographer out to take get some decent pictures. Reminds me of a quote from Albert Einstein, “When you are courting a nice girl and hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.”

The first two pictures were at sunset...this one is at sunrise.

I like birch bark. It just looks cool. Maybe that makes me lame but then again I already knew that I was lame.

OK now we're back in Lancaster for a picture of the evening light reflecting off the pond here in town. Even though I'm looking forward to moving, there are some things I will miss.

This picture has nothing to do with the move...and it wasn't even taken by me (I'm in the picture and my sister gets photo credit for this one). I include it for a couple of reasons: 1) it was really fun. 2) the two boys are my nephews and playing with them is one thing I'm going to miss about Lancaster. 3) I'm still kind of steamed at the jackass golf course manager (we're on a golf course in the picture) that came out of the clubhouse and told us to clear off because we were “tearing up the sod.” As anyone with functioning eyes in their head - and isn't drunk on the power vested in him by the Lancaster Municipal Golf Course - can see we are decidedly not tearing up the sod. It was a good time while it lasted though. 4) I aim to kind of make this blog into less of a “Joel's photos” blog and into something more along the lines of “fun stuff Joel does while still including photography” kind of a blog. Is it just me or do my pictures strike anyone else as boring after a while? Anyway, to keep me interested (and maybe both of you) I'll be mixing it up some.

drift

2009-12-14T14:24:00.001-08:00

Maybe a little explanation is in order here: these pictures are a progression. The first two were taken on the third of December (no snow yet). The final six were taken after the advent of snowshoeing season on the 10th.

It's pretty obvious that this was taken pre-snow. Just a simple picture of a stream. The light was too low here to handhold the camera but I didn't have a tripod with me so I had to sit down and brace my arms against my knees to hold the camera steady enough for a decent picture.

It had been a fairly warm November and we hadn't had much weather below freezing (a few overnight frosts but nothing major) and we had several nights in a row that dipped below freezing. The freezing made the ice you see here, the thawing (in the sun the next day) made the hole in the ice, and the wind made the small waves in the water coming up through the hole. And the sky was blue and it did a good, photogenic job of reflecting.

OK, so we had a big blizzard (well, it was big for us anyway. Probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal on, say, the town of Quincy City in Michigan's U.P.) here on the 10th. Schools called off classes. Cars went in ditches. This is good news: I like winter. I can now hike around on my snowshoes (though the snow isn't really deep enough that I couldn't get around without them – I just like snowshoeing) or ride my bike in the snow (this actually is – believe it or not - fun...as and as added bonus most people think I'm crazy – not that they didn't already and if “crazy” means not burning gas to get somewhere to buy unnecessary stuff then I'll gladly take being labeled “crazy.” Kind of amazing what insanity will allow you to do. Use a rotary lawn mower, ride a bike to the grocery store in the rain/snow/sleet...probably nothing that would warrant any special attention in, say, Portland, OR but in Lancaster, WI [population around 4000] I'm really out there)

I was out snowshoeing around the evening before I took these pictures (I hadn't brought my camera) and the light did such awesome things to the drifts (and their shadows) that my aim was to come back with my camera the next day and to an entire blog featuring just drifts. But when I got back out there the next day there were so many cool non-drift things that I had to take pictures of. Some of them turned out decent, like this one.

I kinda like pictures that tell stories. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say that the picture doesn't actually tell the story but it provides some raw material for the viewer to fill things in. “What happened here?” My inner Sherlock Holmes I guess. This one tells (with some help from the viewer) about the wind that blew these blades of grass around and made them carve tracks in the snow. And that the air was damp enough that it left frost on the grass. And that it wasn't warm enough yet to melt the frost. That it was sunny out. That some little critter burrowed a hole down into the snow (or rather it probably burrowed up into the light since there are a very few tracks on the snow to indicate that it actually came out...why didn't it come out? Did it see an owl? Was it cold out?)

If you could take a river and somehow pause it midflow and somehow retain shapes/curves/etc. From several hours/days in the past it might look something like a series of drifts. Ever watched, if the river has a sandy bottom as is clear enough, the river bottom being reformed as you watch? Compare that to drifts being formed.

You know the pictures of the bikini-clad surfer babe riding a big curling wave? Well this picture was taken of a steep hill that, if you use your imagination, it, and the snow on top of it, could be a wave in the ocean. OK so you have to use a lot of imagination. But continuing with the snow-as-water comparison of the last caption there could be a comparison in this caption between the surfer and the snowboarder/downhill skier...actually there is a comparison in this caption because I just made one.

I'm going to bank on the hope that the other captions were long enough and had enough substance to make up for this one. This is just a simple curving drift. It's simple but - I think – eye catching.

Porn

2009-11-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard the gripe with wildlife TV shows and photography and such that these things portray nature in a kind of un-genuine way? That looking at wildlife photos and video and such would lead one to believe that there is a moose behind every tree and a jaguar down at the every watering hole and a grizzly waiting around the next bend in the trail. Wildlife porn, I've heard it called. (I thought maybe I should explain the title of this blog article fairly early on...my mom will probably be reading this after all). The theory is that when kids go to nature that they expect all this great wildlife to be on display...and they're bored when it isn't. It really didn't do that for me. I can still remember the fam' sitting around our little black and white TV watching Marty Stouffer's Wild America (after The Cosby Show) and I don't demand constant wildlife viewing action in my outdoor experiences.

Even though the results are mixed (some kids are bored by the actual un-pornographic nature of nature and some kids' interest is piqued I wanna see that) this blog entry aims to show the readers (all both of them) that my photography is not just me happily strolling along wooded, pristine streams snapping pictures when I feel like it between sips of tea and bites of Fig Newtons.

This is really tough, knowing how much entropy to include in pictures. OK so it's not really all that tough. “Really tough” is climbing Mount Everest or having someone you love get killed in a car crash or something. But it does take some thought. Should I include the litter (or errant blade of grass or what have you) because that's how the scene really looks – or should I crop it out because it doesn't look “nice”?

This (somewhat mediocre...VERY mediocre, actually every single picture in this entry is mediocre) picture is a crop of the one directly below. The brighter colored leaves in this picture are floating on top of the water, the bland-colored leaves have sunk to the bottom.

OK, this is the non-porn crop of this picture...this is what's really there.

This is kind of like a picture I put in my last blog entry. Sort of anyway. It's actually just a zoomed-in version of the picture below it.

And this is the non-porn version.

Ahh. At first glance it's kinda questionable whether or not you'd see anything amiss here. Maybe I shouldn't tell you in hopes that you won't see it.

Insert long pause here so you think I'm actually not going to tell

See how the water is flowing in a smooth arc off of this rock? It's a little too perfect (to continue on the porn theme it's kind of like a picture in Playboy. Ahem, that is what I hear about Playboy anyway...never seen it myself. Mom, I can feel you blushing from here). It's so perfectly curved because this “rock” is actually a chunk of broken concrete culvert.

Happy happy joy joy (anyone else remember Ren and Stimpy? We didn't really watch much TV [except Wild America and Cosby] and we didn't even get the station that showed Ren and Stimpy but somehow my brother and I got ahold of a videotape of an episode that featured the amazing flying butt pliers. Trust me, you don't really want me to explain that one - besides that you can get a good idea of what it is just by the name which is pretty descriptively accurate.) this picture is pretty harmless. Just a cheesy “softwater” picture of a stream flowing. Yeah, it's all right but see the picture below for the whole scene.

So just for fun I Googled "'ren and stimpy' 'flying butt pliers' wrestling" and lo and behold I actually got quite a few sites where people actually recall (with fondness) the flying butt pliers episode. Apparently it was a classic episode.

red-hot lava

2009-11-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I managed to get myself out of bed just a little bit after sunrise, have a pancake breakfast (no peanut butter sandwiches this time) and then head for Memorial Park to see what there was to see/photograph. Well I must've been in one of those The-Grass-Is-Greener-On-The-Other-Side-Of-The-Fence moods because not long after I got there I started to think about how there would probably be all sorts of good pictures at another park here in town (Schreiner's Park. I was down there in the morning a week and a half ago and was wishing I had my camera because the way the morning light was hitting the water in the creek was kinda cool). So I saddled up my bike (which involves throwing my army-surplus ammo-box [that's my camera case] into the milk crate I have tied to a rack on the back of my bike) and took off. Well, it was certainly pleasant down there (I say “down there” because it's in a creek bottom) but the light wasn't hitting the water the way I remembered, and – even though I took lots of pictures – only one turned out to be worth a damn.

This picture I took a few days ago at Memorial Park. It had rained the night before and the rainwater had kind of run down to the base of this slide and posed all nice for me as I took this picture.

Have you ever taken a picture of something you saw – and thought it was going to be an awesome picture – but it didn't quite turn out because pictures have trouble capturing motion? I do that all the time – or rather, I don't expect them to be any good, and am surprised if they actually turn out to be decent. So anyway, this is kind of a ho-hum picture of a little wave action going on in a creek that runs through the golf course here in town...I thought this picture was going to be better.

It's surprisingly hard (for me) to get a decent picture of branches against the sky. The sky is almost always so much brighter than the branches and since the camera's light meter determines the exposure of the image by averaging the amount of light hitting it (can you tell by this half-ass explanation that I don't really understand how light meters work?) the sky (which takes up a much larger area of the picture) kind of overwhelms the branches. If I was a good photographer I'd probably figure out a way to trick the light meter into reading things differently (actually I do know how to do this by using “manual” settings on the camera - I'm just too lazy to do it). So I just simply don't take that many pictures of branches backed up by sky. But “If at first you don't succeed try, try again,” so I actually took a bunch (something like 10 or 15) and this one – to my surprise – turned out to be decent.

So this is the one picture I got (that was decent) after having my The-Grass-Is-Greener... moment yesterday morning and pulling up stakes in Memorial Park and heading for Schreiner's Park. This little water-tumble you see here didn't exist until last spring when a couple of floods came rippin' through this creek and scoured it down to bedrock.

OK so I'm going to try something a little bit different in this blog entry. I'm going to include pictures (in this blog entry these pictures were taken by me) taken while I was out doing what I like to do (not that I don't enjoy going out and taking pictures simply for the sake of taking pictures but you know what I mean). If anyone is horribly opposed to these non-fine-art pictures you can leave a comment telling me so.

So I'm kind of bike nut. I like to ride bikes in places where most people – even fellow bike nuts – would not. This picture is of my friend, Corey (who is also a bike nut and likes to ride in places where other bike nuts think it's crazy to ride, kinda like me) riding down a “low maintenance road” (that's what a sign warns at the start of this road – which, of course, draws people like Corey and I to ride it). As you can see the road is one lane dirt/mud. Corey and I thought it was awesome. Maybe I should say it again: we're nuts...or maybe we're totally sane and everyone else is nuts?

This is Corey again riding on a cool gravel road that leads up a bluff (from the Mississippi R. to the top of the ridge). This road had multiple (I think three) stream crossings. It was awesome too. This was taken on the same ride that the last picture was taken. It was a good ride...if you ask Corey and I. I know some road bikers that avoid riding on gravel like it's the worst thing in the world. Kind of like when you were a kid and playing on the playground and the play equipment was OK but the wood-chips below were the red-hot-lava. Gravel, to some roadies, is like wood chips. It might go without saying that dirt or mud or stream crossings would be like wood chips times ten.

familiarity

2009-10-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

So yesterday morning I leaped out of bed at the crack of 8 o'clock, slammed down a peanut butter sandwich (for anyone out there that thinks that it is not abnormal for me to eat such an unhealthy breakfast: I usually have pancakes [homemade] with yogurt on top) and went outside to get some photographs of the frost that came 'round last night.

I'm not really a big fan of Daylight Savings Time partially because it makes sunrise an hour earlier so photographing at dawn (when the light is great for photography) involves getting up an hour earlier. Since I am lazy and value my sleep (and just lying around in a nice warm bed even if I'm awake) DST isn't so good for me.

I was out taking pictures of the frost yesterday morning (this is one of the first frosts we've had...I like winter so I like frost since it tells me that snow is on the way) and came across this tree that – lo and behold – actually had some color to it (some of you may remember me lamenting the lack of fall colors in my last entry) and thought it looked nice against the blue sky.

OK so the these three pictures are of the same general area. Same trees, creek, etc. One was taken yesterday morning shortly after sunup, one was taken 4 days ago late in the morning, and one was taken in the winter of '07-'08. Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt and sometimes it breeds good photographs.

Water amazes me. I love canoing (though this wasn't taken from a canoe), I love a good rain (though if the rain is cold I like to have a good roof over my head, be it a tent or house or whatever), I just really like being around water. When I take pictures at Memorial Park (a park here in Lancaster) I walk along the creeks in the park and then do a lap around the shore of the pond. This is a picture of the surface of the pond with a leaf floating on it (obviously) that I happened upon as I was doing my customary circumnavigation of the pond.

Ever notice how meteorologists can't really accurately and consistently predict the weather more than a few hours in advance of the present? I've gotten so I don't really even pay attention to what is forecast to happen past 24 hours in advance. The only constant is change – or something like that. So anyway, sky/clouds/weather are an incredibly complex thing. I'm kinda glad that we can't predict it. So anyway (I'm aware that I just started another sentence with those same words), the sky is unpredictably cool.

Well, I'm realizing now that all the pictures in this entry have some form of water in them. Clouds, fog, frost, liquid, snow. I think that most forms of water enhance pictures. Wetness makes color saturation better. Fog can add to a photo's composition. Etc. This picture would look hugely different if there were no fog or frost.

Sometimes getting down on your knees can make for some decent photographs. That's the case with this picture. I feel as if decent pictures are surprisingly easy to take (even though I take a lot of bad pictures – the percentage of pictures I take that are worth a damn is somewhere between 5 and 10). My strategy most times is just to go out and simply look around. Cool things are there for anyone to see.

This was taken as I took a lap around the pond at the park here in town. There was a frost the night before last and when I took this picture the sun was hitting the frost on some tree branches above this water. So the frost was dripping onto the water as it melted. I got this picture (I probably took 15 or 20 to get this one picture) at just the right time. If you look (very) closely you can see that there is a little explosion of a water droplet directly above the splash. I suppose that if I was some sort of physics dude I could explain why that's happening. But I'm not really a physics dude, so I can't.

Chuck Norris

2009-10-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

It was a nice day yesterday, really nice – at least for late October in Wisconsin, sunny and in the 60's – so I took the opportunity to head down to Schreiner's Park (a park on the edge of Lancaster) to take some pictures. I generally have good luck finding interesting and photo-worthy subjects near water (it seems likely to me that I tend to find cool things near water because I like water so much. I doubt very much that I'd find many cool pictures around, say, a candy bar wrapper factory which, incidentally, Lancaster has. I rode by it [the candy bar wrapper place] on my way to the hardware store today and it has a rather disturbing smell coming from it...as it always does) so I walked along the stream bed for part of my photo outing.

This first picture is also one of the first I happened onto today. You can kind of tell that the leaves are floating in water (you can see the waterline around the edges). Also it had rained yesterday morning and as you can see some of the rain hadn't yet dried.

For this one, like the last, the leaves are floating on top of the water. I thought it made for a nice contrast since it looks as if the leaves are set on some sort of black background in a studio. But they aren't.

This is the stream itself, obviously. Last summer/spring (actually as I think about it we had two major floods last year, one in the spring and one in the early summer) water came rockin' and rollin' through here and scoured out this little waterfall (more of a watertumble methinks).

This is the back of a leaf that had fallen. Yee haw. Not much more to say. Sure, it's a nice picture but there's not a whole helluva lot to say about it. Maybe if I keep describing how little there is to describe in this picture this'll end up being a caption of average length. I think I made it.

We're having a pretty pathetic autumn here as far as fall colors are concerned. There are a decent amount of partially-rotten-and-brown yellowish leaves (but then again who wants to have a picture of a diseased yellow/brown leaf hanging around? Which begs the question: who would want a picture of a vibrantly colored, beautiful leaf hanging around? Judging by the number of leaf pictures I have sold, very few). But this was an example of a comparatively eye catchingly colorful leaf. Like I said: pretty pathetic colors this fall.

And I can't resist putting this up here. It has nothing to do with anything. I was killing time in the Milwaukee, WI airport while waiting for a bus that would take me to Madison, WI (I was on my way back from Atlanta) and was checking out this little art exhibit. There was a place to put comments which is where I happened to see this priceless artifact. After watching many episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger in college (thanks to Charlie J.) I didn't really picture Chuck Norris as one to be into either paintings or marching bands. Then again Chuck Norris never ceases to surprise...just watch a few episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger.

slant

2009-10-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

Since it has been a while since I wrote in this blog I'll reward your patience with a few more pictures than usual.

This picture reminds me of the blog I did where I posted pictures of bark. (See it here) They (the people in charge of making the park look all nice and pretty) had just taken a tree out near this one and it had scraped a little on this one...hence the fresh orange-looking bark.

I got to this before the dew evaporated - which is not to say I got there early in the morning because it was overcast and probably took most of the morning to dry anyway.

Ditto with the dew on this one.

This was taken fairly early in the morning. (To see an old picture I put in the blog in June of last year go here and scroll down)

I was walking along the edge of this stream and happened to notice how the water looked kind of swirly right here.

Point and Shoot II

2009-09-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

I am once again visiting Marqette. I was actually hoping to ride my bike here - and I started to but after riding three days I started to have some problems with my achilles tendons. I managed to ride to for three more days to Plover, WI where I had a friend who I stayed with for a couple of days then he drove me north and Spring drove south and we met up and they switched their baggage (me) so now I am in Marquette with Spring. This actually does relate to my post a bit because I didn't want to lug my big clunky SLR with me on my bike so I brought my small point and shoot camera with me. So like my last post, Point and Shoot all of these pictures were taken with my point and shoot camera.

I was hiking along a path in the woods and happened upon this leaf. Just feel like I should point out that I didn't change any of the colors that were there...the leaf really was hot pink like that.

Near Marquette there is a hill overlooking Lake Superior that is called Sugarloaf Mountain. I've photographed from the top of it -and posted those photos on here before...go here for a look at what this island looks like with snow on it - in the past. It's a pretty cool spot. It's also pretty accesible from the city of Marquette. It's only a few miles from town, so driving is fast...and if you are inclined to bike out to it there is a paved bike lane. The downside of that is that there are often quite a few people up there.

Walking along the beach I saw this feather from a seagull.

Wet rocks look different than the same rocks when they're dry. I think that they look better when wet. Anyway this rock was kept wet by wave action right along the shore of the big lake.

There is one section of beach that has as many pebbles and small rocks as sand. I just throught it was cool how this volcanic (at least I think it's volcanic - is anybody a rock-geek who knows?) swiss cheese looking rock had little rocks in it's holes.

Point and shoot

2009-08-10T10:23:00.001-07:00

Most of us have heard something like, “it's the photographer and not that camera that takes the pictures. So I set out to take a batch of pictures this morning on a regular old point and shoot camera (it's a digital Casio EX-Z110 for those of you who are into knowing that sort of thing).

As I was walking down the sidewalk to the park (where the rest of the photos are from) I looked to my left and noticed this spirea growing as part of the landscaping of a house. It rained last night and things were still wet so there are a few water droplets (what's the difference between a drop and a droplet?) still hanging on the leaves.

The water flowing over this rock makes, I think, an interesting swirly-type pattern.

I took a seat at the bottom of a slide in the park and happened to see this leaf. Interesting how many pictures I get that just kind of fall into my lap as a result of me being lazy....

These tree limbs were kinda mossy and caught my eye. Made me think of the Pacific northwest with the deciduous rain forest – of course the limbs out there are mossier but I didn't say that they looked just like their rain forest counterparts, just that they reminded me of them.

As I was walking along looking at the pond's edge I remembered that pictures aren't limited to just watery environments and that I should look up on shore. I saw this leaf and snapped a picture.

It was kind of the same thing with this picture as the last one. I had to look where it seemed unlikely for me to get a good picture to actually get a good picture.

Better late than never?

2009-08-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I typed on here. I really don't have an excuse...then again maybe I do: I wasn't really thinking that many people were reading what I had written here - that and I've been learning some illegal ninja moves from the government. Napoleon Dynamite's been teaching me. Speaking of Napoleon Dynamite, maybe a better excuse would be to say that I've been busy hunting wolverines with my uncle in Alaska.

Anyway, here are a few pictures that I've taken recently:

This was taken just a few hours ago in a little stream in Lancaster's Memorial Park. Today is a nice, sunny day (obviously, since you can see the sun's reflection in the water) - sometimes photography is just an excuse to get outside.

I thought that these leaves contrasted the green grass nicely. These leaves were on a small branch which had been knocked off of the tree they were on. I didn't steal this picture from some I took last fall.

Near the shore of the little pond in Lancaster's Memorial Park are rocks (probably put there to prevent erosion) and the combination of the rock and the leaf in this picture caught my eye.

Same thing with this rock: it was near the shore of the pond here in town. The water looks a bit on the murky side because the city puts something in the water (I believe it's called AquaShade) that doesn't allow light to penetrate very far so plants don't grow.

These blades of grass were floating (though they were still anchored by their roots) on top of some water in a very small stream in Memorial Park.

Not sure what it is, but to me anyway, birchbark just looks cool.

2009-04-02T04:17:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah, I know that this looks like I put these rocks there going for some sort of dubious and unrealistic "aesthetic effect" but I really didn't put the rocks where they are...and I didn't see any other tracks there either. This was right on the shore of Lake Superior and it would be possible that particularly violent winter storm waves washed these up here. And what initially caught my eye was the circular patterns in the striations in the rock. Pretty wild to think about the forces that caused that.

This tree was growing right on the shore of Lake Superior. As you can see the bank eroded over the years of the trees' life and left it hanging out over thin air. But you can also see that the tree isn't dead.

This rock was right on the shore of Lake Superior. Obviously the white rock (quartz of some kind?) is harder - and more resistant to erosion - than the grey. But that just about exhausts my knowledge of geology.

I went for a walk along a breaker (I'm not sure if that's the word to use - it's a thing that sticks out into a body of water - Lake Superior in this case - and protects a harbor from the big waves of the open lake) and saw this rock. Waves crashing on the breaker during winter storms had sprayed up on this rock and frozen to make this thin layer of ice. It then warmed up and the layer of ice started to melt which is why the ice looks grey (actually the ice isn't really grey, it is just melting and has cracked in so many places that there's almost as much white - from the cracks - as there is clear ice.) The green blobs you see are lichens growing on the rock.

This is a chunk of ice that washed up on Lake Superior's shore.

This chunk of ice looks kind of like those shiny rocks that have been put in a rock tumbler to take any roughness off of them.

2009-03-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

I had tried to go canoing (yes I am anxious to get back out on the water!) but the put in point was blocked by ice and the take out was ridiculously muddy – so I didn't get to go. Bummer. But I put on my rubber boots and waded around in the shallows and happened upon this leaf that was stuck to a rock under some flowing water.

This was taken near a road I was driving on to get back from work on Wednesday. I saw these cattails and thought that they might make a decent picture.

This was taken on another stream in the town of Platteville, WI. I was surprised that the water was as clear as it was. Around here streams tend to be clouded by agricultural runoff most of the year and are generally especially cloudy in the spring because of snowmelt.

It was warm here on Thursday and so things were melting. We had had a big thaw/flood/rainstorm last week that swelled the rivers and broke up the ice. The broken ice got pushed up onto the banks on the high water and when the water receded the ice was left up high. This pattern was made by water melting off of the ice and flowing down into the stream.

These are a few moss plants (technically I don't think they're plants but they're green and sort of leafy so I'll call them plants) that I happened upon when I was out walking on some trails near Lancaster. This time of year green things are at a premium, there are plenty of brown things but not much green. These plants are about an inch high.

2009-02-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

This is an island in view from the top of a hill (it's called Sugarloaf Mountain but it's not really a mountain it's just a fairly big hill) that overlooks Lake Superior. I've had some pictures taken from the top of this "mountain" in earlier blog entries.

It was fairly soon after sunrise when I got this picture. I took this a couple of weeks ago in Lancaster - most of the snow has since melted in a warm spell but it's back down in the teens as I type this.

This little weasel (I wasn't 100% sure what it was so I looked it up online and found out that a weasel [which is usually brown] is called an "ermine" when it's fur is white) wasn't too scared of me. I don't have a big zoom lens for my camera and had to take this picture with the same lens I use for all the pictures that you see on this blog...so I was pretty close - maybe 15 or 20 feet away from it. I was right out in the open, actually I was walking along and saw this little dude scampering around and stopped to have a look. He/she didn't seem afraid of me, curious mostly. Actually at one point he came running up to me and was only three or four feet away. (FYI this animal is only about 14 inches long including tail)

It had been warm and this ice had broken up and then was blown into this little bay on Lake Superior.

The lake had frozen the night before this picture was taken and then was windy/wavy the day after...when this pictures was taken.

This was taken in the morning. The sun was shining on the plants in the foreground but not on the waterfall in the background. Part of the reason that these plants are so frosty is because the mist from the waterfall froze on them.

I can't resist

2009-02-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is a recap of my experiences in the Arrowhead race. It has nothing to do with photography but now that the race is over with I'll be out taking pictures more and will update this blog more regularly.

The start of my thinking about the Arrowhead Ultra was when a guy came into the bike shop (where I work as a mechanic) in the spring of last year and was talking with the owner of the shop about this race – Arrowhead. I didn't know what it was so I asked them and they told me that it's a 135 mile race held on snowmobile trails up in northern Minnesota in February. At the time I thought that it would be really cool to do...but since I couldn't ride a bike at that point I didn't think too seriously about it. [A little background info: when I was about 16 I got fairly serious about riding bikes and rode pretty regularly until shortly after I was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was 25. From the summer I turned 26 through this summer (when I turned 29) I couldn't ride a bike because I had some coordination issues from the tumor. I finally re-learned to ride a bike this summer and will have been back riding on two wheels for seven months come February 9th.] I got to thinking about doing it pretty seriously in the late fall and finally sent in my entry fee at the end of November. I've been riding lots since then and sewing most of my gear (there aren't very many companies that make gear for riding your bike in the winter since most people are at least somewhat sane and don't participate in this kind of foolishness. The upshot is that you have to have gear custom made or make it yourself. I am cheap so I made it myself using my sewing machine and some ingenuity.

We (I had ridden up to the start of the race with another guy who had done the race once before and was doing it again) drove up to International Falls, MN on Friday Jan. 30th. Since it's a 12 hour drive we got there around 10 that night and crashed on the beds of the hotel room we had reserved. We went for a ride Sat. and it was warm and the trails were awful. Loose snow made for tough going. But it was in the 20's and was supposed to get about 40 degrees colder for the race start so the trails would probably firm up. Lance (the guy I rode up with) rode a bit on Sunday and he said the trails were in pretty much prime shape. The grooming machine had been through Saturday night and it had frozen so hard you almost couldn't see tire tracks when you rode. This was good news for me. We also got our gear checked (there is gear that everyone is required to take including: a sleeping bag rated to -20, sleeping pad, whistle on a string around your neck [so it would always be with you if you needed to call for help], stove, at least 8oz of fuel for the stove, pot, firestarter, some way to carry at least 2 qt. of water, 3000 calories of food, headlamp, a bivy sack or tent, a flashing light for both front and rear, and at least 10 square inches of reflective material on both the front and the back of your person.)

Then it started to snow Sunday night and things went downhill from then on – actually most of Sunday night it was a light, fluffy snow that wasn't a problem to ride through...but when we woke up on Monday morning (raceday, or more accurately the first day of the race) it had snowed more and was of a consistency that made riding hard. This was not happy news, especially for me on my skinny tired, single-speed bike (most of the other bikes were special snow bikes with gears. Actually only one or two other bikes had skinny tires. The specialized snow bikes have fat tires [3.7” or so mine were 2.4”] that float on top of the snow much more). We went out and ate breakfast at the Chocolate Moose in International Falls and then we headed for the start. The startline has virtually no parking so this isn't a mass start race, instead they shuttle racers from the hotel to the start and they start when they're ready. The result of which is that people start the race from a time between 7 and 9:30. I got going at around 8:20.

The start to the first checkpoint at the Gateway General Store about 39 miles:
The race starts with an out and back. This means that faster people have to pass the slower ones (for example: the runners start earliest but most get passed by bikers who can't ride when the runners start [because it's not light enough to ride until about 7:30]. This also means that the trail gets packed down by the sleds runners and skiers are pulling behind them. So the snow being fresh and unpacked wasn't all that noticeable for the first 18 miles (the length of the out part was about 9 miles, and then you turn around and go back those same 9 miles) but after mile 18 it got pretty sketchy and stayed that way for pretty much the rest of the race. It was about at this time that I let go of any idea of being competitive in this race. With the bike I had and the setup I had (a singlespeed and I hadpicked a gear that was way to hard to turn in the conditions) and the trail conditions I would've had to have been superhuman to keep up with the front runners.

I pulled into the Gateway store at about 4:20 (I was off and on the bike quite a bit on the way in to Gateway. I estimate that of the last 15 miles to Gateway I had to walk my bike for 10 of them) and pulled out at 4:45 and headed to Melgeorges Resort, which is roughly at the halfway point.

Gateway to Melgeorges about 34 miles
Shortly after I left Gateway I stopped to put on my sweater (it was cooling down and would eventually reach -12 that night) and put on my headlamp. I did all this before it got dark just because it would be harder to do if I couldn't see.

While the trail from the start to Gateway was fairly flat (there were some small ups and downs but nothing major). But here there were hills, lots and lots of hills. Nothing huge (this was in Minnesota after all) but they didn't really let up.

The miles seemed to go exceedingly slowly. At one point when I had been riding for more than 6 hours past Gateway a snowmobiler out roving the racecourse stopped to see how I was doing. I said I was doing fine and asked how far Melgeorges was thinking I must be getting close. His answer of “about 18 miles” pretty much floored me. The guy on the snowmobile left and there wasn't much for me to do except to keep going...which is what I did. I rode (and walked the uphills) for several more hours and saw the snowmobiler again. Since I was eager to get to Melgeorges when he stopped the first thing I asked was how far it was to Melgeorges. I was sure I was close...maybe half a mile, so when he answered “nine miles” I just about fell over. That was definitely the hardest part of the race. It had nothing to do with anything physical, but that answer of “nine miles” was a huge blow to my morale and, without question, the low point of the race.

The hose on my camelbak had frozen up because I had forgotten to blow air back through the hose (in case you don't know what a camelbak is it is basically a way of carrying water on your back with a hose running from the bladder on your back up to the front of you so you can suck it when you get thirsty. The hose freezes easily so I take a drink and then blow back through the hose so it doesn't freeze too badly). This time the whole hose froze and there was little hope of unfreezing it (sometimes it works to put the entire hose in with the bladder and the warmth of the liquid water will thaw it. But tonight it was -12 and the water inside the camelbak was starting to get slushy anyway, so there's no way it would've been warm enough to melt the ice in the hose). Now what to do? I took the bladder out and tried to drink directly from that but it closes with a screw top and the screw threads had frozen so I couldn't even drink from that. Now what to do? Time for some ingenuity. I thought of a possible solution: take the bladder out, turn it upside down so the warmth of the liquid water would melt the ice freezing the cap in place. I did it and it worked. I drank greedily but cautiously, I knelt down for stability, made sure there there was nothing below the water except snow (in case I spilled) and then leaned over the snow (if I did spill any I sure as heck didn't want it to run down my neck and freeze) and drank. An aside: I had never before had the problem of water freezing inside my camelbak, even when I rode in the Alaskan winter when it was much colder. I'm not sure what was different here but in Alaska I didn't go for any rides that lasted all day and into the next day as well.

Ok, so its early in the morning, I had been riding since 8:20 a.m. on trails in bad condition, and I had to get off the bike and push up every hill – that means that I had get back on the bike fairly often and the muscles in my hip that I use swing my leg over my bike seat was getting tired. There were many times where I'd swing my leg over, lose my balance and stumble around like an idiot and one time that I completely lost my balance completely and just plain fell over. I was really glad when I pulled into Melgeorges at about 4:30 in the morning.

Melgeorges is a heated cabin and had food and beds and I ate and grabbed about an hour maybe an hour and a half of sleep but the place where the beds were was in a loft directly above the living room where everyone was. There were people coming and going to talking and whatnot so sleep there was not all that relaxing. Also we found out that the first biker had finished! And we still had half the race to go.

Melgeorges to Wakemup Tipi about 39 miles
I was originally planning on staying at Melgeorges until about 7:30 (when it got light enough to ride) but ended up coming up with all sorts of excuses not to. There was no water available at the Wakemup Tipi checkpoint so I would have to carry all the water I needed until the finish so I made sure I was well hydrated (it turns out that I was so well hydrated that after I left Melgeorges I had to stop and pee every 15 minutes for a hour or two until I got it out of my system). I also told myself that I should probably wait until it warmed up some (remember it had got down to -12 the night before. I waited until 8:20 [exactly 24 hours after I had started] when it had warmed up to -5). I also ate enough food to see me through for a good long ways (I eventually realized that I had taken too much food and had to dump some along the trail. The wolves [I saw a bunch of their tracks along the trail] are probably loving eating all the summer sausage, brats, and cheese that I had pre-cut into bite size pieces so I could still eat them when they froze...but I'm pretty sure that a wolf would define “bite size” differently than I would).

The terrain between Melgeorges and Wakemup Tipi varied quite a bit. There were lots of hills (some were very very steep) interspersed with flat sections. The 15 miles or so directly before Wakemup Tipi were probably the most hilly of the entire race. Or at least they just felt that way because by then I'd already ridden about 95 miles.

I stopped shortly before dark to get out my headlamp before it got too dark to see what I was doing and was kind of startled how fast my fingers got cold when they were out in the air. It was also about this time that my camelbak froze up. I didn't think too much of it, thinking I could thaw it at Wakemup Tipi where it'd be warm and I could sit down by the fire. And then I got to Wakemup Tipi and the idyllic vision of what the tipi would be like came crashing down. Inside the tipi was small and there were already four people there so we were tripping over each other and in the way; there was a fire but it wasn't burning well (they were using unsplit, full size logs, so there was lots of smoke and only a little fire. The smoke made my eyes burn and water and was almost intolerable...far worse than a smoky bar); it was so small that there wasn't room for chairs so I had to sit on the ground; and it wasn't warm inside so even with all my clothes on I was starting to get cold. So I ate a little bit and left.

It wasn't until a few miles down the trail that I remembered my water was frozen. I didn't even think about going back.

Wakemup Tipi to the finish line: 25 miles
(The moon was out and it was beautiful. I rode about half of the final 25 miles by moonlight and would've ridden more except in the few spots there were bike tire tracks I couldn't see them without my headlamp on.)

It was kind of a morale blow to realize that unless I stopped and got out my stove and melted some snow that I would have no water until the end. But I wasn't really wild about trying to fire up the stove because it was cold (it would drop to -29 that night) and, gadnabbit, the finish line was close (if you define 25 miles as “close”). So I ended up eating snow to tide me over. Now, I'm aware that eating snow isn't always a good way to go. Takes up a lot of energy melting the snow down to water. But I wasn't going to be doing this snow-eating thing for all that long. At one point I took in a huge chomp of snow, it was too much for my tongue to handle and it got frostbite. Whoops. From then on I took daintier licks of snow and let it melt and then gave my mouth time to circulate warm blood back to where the snow had cooled it down. (In case anyone is wondering what frostbite on your tongue feels like it is just like when you take a swig of hot tea [or coffee or whatever] and you burn your tongue. It isn't really fun, and your tongue is sensitive for a while but it's not like it's the end of the world or anything). I also didn't want to eat much food since it takes water to digest. The end result of all this was that the first thing I wanted when I finished as a big glass of water and food (since the finish line was at a casino I had a bacon cheeseburger [it actually tasted great at that point in my life but it would've been horrible at most other times, it was far, far worse than something from McDonalds] at the casino deli which was the only thing open that late. I finished at 12:06 a.m. Wednesday morning, Feb 4th). I crossed the line as the 12th biker (there were nothing but bikes in front of me) 39 hours and and 46 minutes after I started.

The terrain from Wakemup Tipi to the finish was almost dead-flat. But I had been riding in the tracks left by previous bikers and some snowmobiles had been through fairly recently and had 1) covered the tracks and 2) had chewed up the trail so even though it was flat it was still a struggle to ride. By now I was having some serious problems turning the one gear I had and had to alternate between sitting down and pedaling, standing up and pedaling and just getting off and walking. The temperature was dropping and I had almost all of my clothes on (I would've had them all on, it was damn cold, but I didn't exactly relish the thought of undressing to get more layers on out in the air and with nothing but snow to stand on. I'm not sure what the exact temperature was but I had on a facemask and had put that on and when I got to the finish and took it off you could tell where it had covered because where it hadn't covered was red from being cold).

Epilogue
During the race I kept thinking something like, “there's no way in hell that I'd do this again next year,” but now that the race is over and I'm warm and my thirst and hunger are sated my thinking has changed. I'm not saying that I'll definitely do it again but I'll leave the option open for further consideration.

One reason I gave for doing this race was that it was “something to do”. I work as a mechanic in a bike shop and winters are slow and having something to do is nice. Keeps me from getting cabin fever.

Some of you may remember me doing a similar race in Alaska called the Susitna 100 back in '04. It's a 100 mile race held on snowmobile trails in the Susitna River valley. If I were to compare the two I would say that Arrowhead is much, much harder. It's longer (100 miles versus 135 for Arrowhead), hillier (much of the Susitna 100 was on frozen lakes and rivers), colder (it got down to around 0 at Susitna. At Arrowhead it got down to -29) , and more remote (at the Susitna 100 there are five checkpoints, at Arrowhead there were three). But I also realize that the weather conditions play such a huge role that comparisons based on doing each race just once don't carry much weight.

excuses

2009-01-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

OK, so I haven't been updating this blog very much...but I have a semi-good excuse. I have been riding my bike quite a bit in preparation for the Arrowhead 135 which starts Feb 2 at seven a.m. Riding my bike “quite a bit,” means that I did a ride Thursday morning that started at two o'clock a.m and lasted 'til about nine a.m and another yesterday that started at 12:40 a.m. and ended at 8:40 a.m. Even if, like me, you like riding your bike, that many hours is still a long time to ride. So that's my excuse...maybe after Arrowhead I'll get back to a more normal blog schedule.

Since it has been a while since I posted a blog entry - so I've had a while to take these pictures – these pictures are from all over. There are some taken at Lake Superior, one in Marquette, MI, and a few in Lancaster's Memorial Park.

Since I tried to excuse myself and my irregular blog entries with my riding my bike in training for Arrowhead I thought it would enhance my credibility if I included a picture of myself directly after a training ride.

I woke up one morning and was making breakfast when I looked out of the window and saw this frost on the glass. I thought I'd take a picture quick before I made pancakes. I never find myself lacking in things to take pictures of – if I'm in the right mindset. It is virtually impossible for me to not find something interesting around (whether or not that something makes a good picture is another matter – one of personal opinion).

This leaf should get some sort of award for being weird.

This leaf by itself wouldn't be all that interesting – but the shadow it casts in combination with the leaf make it worth noticing. I got lucky with the light hitting it just right to make the shadow look this way.

This was an awesome sight to see. I'm afraid a picture doesn't do it justice – maybe a video would. You can see the waves in the picture and if you use your imagination you know that since waves move, the water/ice you see in the picture was moving and heaving around with the surges of the water. (This reminded me of a documentary I saw on the filming of Shackleton on the ice-pack of Antarctica. They filmed in the summer and the ice-pack was mostly broken up and heaving around with the surges of the Antarctic Ocean so they had to hunt around for chunks of pack-ice that were big enough to film on.) Last time I was visiting Marquette, MI (November) I saw surfers in this bay (they were wearing drysuits).

This was taken from the top of a big hill overlooking Lake Superior. You can see that the sky was blue except for out over the lake, where – I assume – moisture from the lake was evaporating into the air to make the clouds you can see.

This is just another picture of the same chunk of shoreline taken last Nov.

I tend not to like cheesy things, and so – in general – pictures of sunsets are not things I like all that much...and I don't take pictures of them all that often. But the colors the sunset was making bouncing off these clouds and back at me was just too tempting. (Once again you can see the clouds over the lake while the rest of the sky was clear)

2009-01-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

When I finally rolled out of bed yesterday morning I looked out to see everything was coated in a layer of ice that would make for some pretty cool photos. So skipped breakfast – I did gulp down a PB sandwich though - and headed outside to get some pics. It was fairly cool (in the teens) so the ice didn't melt off of stuff...including the street. [I walked on the street to the park because the sidewalk was ridiculously icy, at least the street had some salt and gravel on it] At one point I almost wussed out and turned around and walked back to my house because it was so icy. I'm glad I didn't because the footing got much more sure shortly after the spot where I turned around (truth be told I actually did turn around and started to walk back to my house, then I thought better of it and turned around again. I don't think it's a good way to go through life being entirely prudent all the time.)

So I got out to take some pictures in the morning for about an hour. I came back here, had breakfast, did some editing of the pictures I took that morning, and did some work to ready gear I'm taking on the Arrowhead 135 (the big bike race I'm doing – if you're wondering why I've been slacking off on this blog, I have been doing a lot of riding my bike and fabricating gear for the race [since biking in the winter is such a fringe sport nobody really sells gear for extreme cold - like 20 below - so I have to make virtually all of it with my imagination and sewing machine]) coming up in less than a month, ate some lunch (which was late because I had breakfast late) and then took off to go and take some more pictures.

In the afternoon I had some snowshoes with me since when I was out in the morning the snow was such that it was frozen on top but the frozen part wasn't thick enough to support my weight so I continually punched through. Kind of annoying. With the snowshoes it was much better. Plus the snowshoes I have have crampons on them so it made my footing a helluva lot sure sure. A funny side note on the crampons on my snowshoes: since the traction is so much better with them on I wore them when I was walking on the icy roads back to my house. I got a few strange looks from passersby as I walked down the street.

This picture was taken in the light just before sunset in the late afternoon.

Here's a picture of my feet in my snowshoes. You can see how far they sink into the snow or - more precisely – how far they don't sink in. Makes photography, or anything that involves walking in this kind of snow, much easier.

This was taken in the morning. I hadn't really noticed before how the ice freezes in shapes inside the water drop. One thing I like about photography, and something I try to convey in my photographs, is that I'm learning new stuff when I get out there with my camera.

There are a line of rocks that are big enough to discourage people from driving on the grass of the park. This is one of those rocks with the freezing rain on it.

Here is another picture of frozen freezing rain on the same rocks as the picture directly above but it was taken back in '07. The ice on the rock was a bit thicker and the blue is caused by blue sky reflecting in the ice.

wet foot

2008-12-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

There's snow on the ground now, it's been there for a couple of weeks. So when I took a walk with my camera this morning I was trying to get some cool winter pictures. I went to a park here in town (which is only about 3 blocks from my house) that has a pond. I was walking along the edge of the ice where the bank meets the pond and saw a cool ice formation out on the ice but near shore. I figured I'd take a picture of it and walked closer to it, still on the snow because I wasn't any too confident in the strength of the ice. When I got close the snow I was on broke and I fell down into the water...the snow had drifted over the ice so when I thought I was stepping on dry ground I was really stepping on ice. It was only shin-deep but it still got my heart going and my feet wet. If I'd have been thinking I'd have taken a picture of my feet in the water - like I sometimes do for this blog. But I wasn't thinking much - just reacting.

This is just down the shoreline from where I had the ice break from under my feet.

I thought that the frost on this leaf was kind of cool

The ice on the pond collapsed a bit (my theory is that the ice wasn't very thick in the first place and when we got some snow it pushed down on the ice) and when it collapsed it meant that the water under it had to go somewhere so it flooded on top of the ice so the snow on top of the ice melted and then refroze as ice. (This reminds me of the time that I was XC skiing across a lake when I noticed that my skis were dragging more than usual. I looked down and they were covered with slush. It's kind of disconcerting to be in the middle of a lake and have water getting onto your feet - even if you know that the ice below the water is plenty thick to hold you up.) All this to explain why the background of this picture looks the way it does.

This time of year there are even fewer golfers on the golf course as there are bikers on the road - so I can get on it to get some pictures with no fear of being brained by an errant golf ball. There is also a stream that flows through and some of the ground near it is spared by the mowers...this grass stem got spared (O sweet irony! the peice of land nearest my house that is sort of untouched is on a golf course. Go figure).

This picture and the one below it are of the same stretch of stream. The one above this caption was taken this morning - the other was taken in January of last winter.

Four seasons

2008-12-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

On my drive south from Marquette on the 24th of Nov. I stopped at several places I had stopped at when the weather was different – there was no snow.

I really like living in a place that has four seasons. I actually like winter/cold/snow. On another note on the subject of winter: I signed myself up for an winter endurance race that is held in northern Minnesota on the Arrowhead trail that is 135 miles long. The race covers the whole distance. You have a choice of whether to do it on skis, running, or on a bike – I'm going to do it on a bike. Wish me luck - I'll need it. It's going to start at 7 am Feb. 2nd and will finish after 60 hours, which is the cutoff time (hopefully it will take less than 60 hours but it may take me more than 24 hours to finish). I'd be happy to post some pictures on here of my training if anyone is interested.

This is a picture of some ice on the middle fork of the Ontonagon River at Bond Falls. The Ontonagon is a small river but Bond Falls is pretty big.

This is a bigger picture of Bond Falls. As you can see it's not a single sheer drop – it's more like a closely-spaced series of mini waterfalls that're about 3' high on average.

These are some icicles that formed on some rocks alongside Lake Superior. I managed to get this right after sunset. This picture was taken as a wave was coming in but if you time it right – when the waves are out so there's no water – you can quickly dart around this rock sticking out onto the sand on the other side. OK this is hard to explain...from above the rock would look roughly like a “V” with the point close to the water's edge so that when a wave comes in it gets wet and between waves it's dry. There's sand on either side of the “V.” Time it right and you can quick run from one side of the “V” to the other between waves.

These are the “dells” of the Prairie River. I have a pretty good idea of what a “dell” is but I looked it up in my Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary so I could explain it better (if a better explanation is necessary). It says, “a secluded hollow or small valley usually covered with trees of turf.” There, happy now? But I was curious what the difference is between a “dell” and a “glen” so I looked it up. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says that a glen is a “secluded narrow valley.” That should clear it up.

Excuse

2008-11-29T08:12:00.000-08:00

Well here's my excuse: I signed on for some software that would look at the number of pageviews there were of my blog since Oct 13. Well this software wasn't working right (my fault not the software's), I wasn't aware that it wasn't working, and it was telling me that nobody had looked at the blog since mid-Ocotber. Not very motivating. I found out that was wrong and that there actually are people reading the blog. (I must say that I am kind of flummoxed by the fact that people would voluntarily spend their free time reading my gibberish.) So that's my excuse for not writing any blog entries for a while.

Since it has been so long since I entered last, I'm going to split up my photos into a couple entries – this one being from Nov 13th to Nov 23rd. (I actually didn't take all that many pictures while I was in Marq. because at that point I thought that nobody was looking at the blog anyway, so I didn't have to much motivation.)

So November the 13th I headed north to Fond du Lac (my ultimate destination being Marquette to visit Spring, my girlfriend) to visit a high school friend of mine who we used to call “Beast.” Good times. From there I headed north to Marquette and stopped along the way to take a few pictures at Daves Falls. Some of you might remember some other pictures I had on an earlier blog entry of these same falls. None of the pictures of the falls itself turned out to be worth a damn but there were a few of the area right around the falls that were OK. I wish that I had made more of an effort to take better pictures of the falls itself so you could compare what it looked like this summer and what it looks like now (or the way it looked on Nov 14).

I like history. But as an unabashed lover of nature I have to lean towards thinking that these pilings from an old dock in Lake Superior near downtown Marq. are kind of an eyesore not really a desirable historical relic. Seems like we should clean up our messes.

This is right along Daves Falls.

This was taken in Governor Dodge State Park on the trip to Fond du Lac.

Snow was falling but it was still kind of warm when I took this picture of a tamarack tree in Marq. Some may remember from high school bio (or an earlier blog entry of mine) that tamarack trees have needles but are deciduous – they lose their needles each fall – so this tree isn't dead, it's just getting ready for winter.

This is the view partway up Sugarloaf Mtn. which is a big hill near both Marq. and Lake Superior. The top of this “mountain” is rocky and only has a few trees on it to obscure the view of Lake Superior.

This picture was taken at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. You can see that the view of Lake Superior is pretty awesome from up there – even when it's kind of hazy up there.

Daylight

2008-11-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

These pictures were all taken within the last two weeks but their origins are so scattered that me trying to tie them together with some kind of story would be a losing proposition.

I will say that I'm kind of bummed by daylight saving's time pushing the sunrise time earlier. It was kind of nice to be able to sleep until 7:30 and still be able to see the sunrise.

This was taken in the early morning before the dew evaporated off stuff. I thought the low-angle light of the early morning (when the sun is "low angle" it just means that it's low in the sky. As opposed to the light at midday when the sun is overhead and light from it is harsh this low-angle light is generally much better for taking pictures) made some interesting shadows on this leaf.

I had on my rubber boots and was doing my whole streamwalking technique when I came to a pool of slow water and saw these leaves floating on the top of the surface tension.

This was taken in the same stream as the last photograph was in.

This the pod of a milkweed taken with the sun directly behind the pod. That's why the fuzz on the milkweed seeds are so lit up. I guess that I'm assuming that y'all are familiar with the way milkweed seeds are. In case you don't know I'll give a brief description of them. They're kind of like dandelion seeds. They have lots of fuzz that catches the wind and carries seeds around. A little trivia: I've heard of people using milkweed seeds for emergency insulation in clothes...like when you go through ice on a lake. And you can make cord out of the stalks.

I was at Devil's Lake State Park when I saw this leaf and how it makes an interesting contrast with the rock behind it. The rock is a quartzite boulder that had broken off a steep embankment and rolled down to the bottom.

River

2008-10-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

On the way back from Marquette two weeks ago I drove along the Wisconsin River from it's source at Lac Vieux Desert most of the way along the river to where it empties into the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien, WI. Here are some of the pictures I took of the river along the way.

This is the dam at Lac Vieux Desert that holds back the water that makes up the

source of the Wisconsin River.

A stretch of the upper part of the Wisconsin River. This is probably a few miles from the dam in the last picture. Fun fact: the word "Wisconsin" comes from an Indian word "Wees-Kon-Sin" which means "place of gathering waters"

This is on the upper Wisconsin River you can see that the river is quite a bit bigger than it was at the headwaters but not nearly as big as it will get downstream. The water looks a bit on the low side here.

No picture essay of the Wisconsin River would be complete without a picture of a dam. There are some 26 dams on the approximately 430 miles of the river. It is so good for dams because it drops more than 1000 feet from its source to its mouth (for comprison's sake the Mississippi River drops about 600 feet from where the Wisconsin River runs into the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans...a distance of over 1000 miles).

Even though it's dammed all to hell (I apologize for the pun, it wasn't indended...I can almost hear you all groaning) it still has some rapids left in it. Here are some just downstream of one of the dams in Stevens Point, WI.

This was taken after dark (obviously). You can see the river (this is on the lower part of the river) but the main subject of the picture is the sky...and the stars...notice the big dipper. If you look really closely you can see that stars aren't points of light they are streaks. That's because I had to leave the shutter open for over 2 minutes to get enough light for this picture and the stars moved a little bit in that time.

2008-10-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the fan club for Joel Austin Images that is on Facebook in case any of you want to see some more pictures of mine http://www.facebook.com/pages/JOEL-AUSTIN-IMAGES/8347354341?ref=s

On the drive south from Marquette last weekend I took 4 days to get back and did some camping on the way. Here are some of the pictures I got:

I was camped for the night at a boat landing on Dinner Lake. Since I got there fairly early in the day I was kind of on the prowl for something to do. I decided to take a hike in the woods directly north of Dinner Lake. As I was leaving I thought, “I should be bringing my compass,” but didn't go back to get it. Turns out I should have. I walked for maybe 15 minutes away from the road and then decided to turn back before I got in too deep to find a way out. Well after about 30 minutes of walking I pretty much knew that I had better consider the possibility of being lost. I wandered around a bit, maybe half an hour, and then heard a dog barking. Dogs usually mean people so I headed towards the sound. I ran across a four-wheeler trail and followed that to within sight of a house. At the house were two big dogs that weren't tied up that could've given me some rather severe perforations to my flesh...an idea I don't exactly relish. So I turned around on the four wheeler trail and followed it the other way. After several dead ends I realized that my choices were to go back and brave the dogs or prepare to spend the night out in the forest. I chose the dogs. I went and asked directions back to Dinner Lake. After I got back I looked at a map and realized that I'd have been walking a LONG way if I'd have really gotten turned around. In my defense it was an overcast day, the wind changed direction while I was out there and the terrain was pretty nondescript.

Also on the drive south I drove a course that followed the Wisconsin River which starts on Lac Vieux Desert. Lac Vieux Desert is a lake partially in Wisconsin and partially in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and so the Wisconsin River flows south almost the entire length of the state. I got pictures along most of its length and they will make up a later blog entry.

The plane of this picture is vertical and the water here is flowing straight down this rock...the only reason those leaves are there is that they've been caught on the moss. This is taken on the upper part of Bond Falls.

This is the lower part of Bond Falls on the middle branch of the Ontonagon River which is in Michigan's Upper Penninsula. This falls just happened to be on the route I was taking to get home so I stopped to check it out.

This was taken very near Dinner Lake on the morning after my near-miss getting lost. By the way those aren't dying pine trees, they're tamrack trees which lose their needles each fall.

This is a closer picture of a tamarack tree. Like I mentioned in the last caption it's not like a pine tree which is evergreen. It is a deciduous conifer and it loses it's "leaves" each year like most broadleaf trees do in this climate.

This is just a closeup of the bark of a red pine tree.

This is a picture of leaves and water. The water is very clear and some of the leaves are floating on top of the water and some are on the bottom. The distortion running up and down near the middle of the picture is caused by a wave.

Quotes

2008-10-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (actually starting Thursday evening) I headed north for a visit to Marquette, MI to see my girlfriend, Spring. I hate driving but I love the “northwoods” and since I am kind of keen on her too this makes the drive bearable.

I started driving in the late afternoon of the 9th (last Thursday) “camped” at the village campground in Wilton, WI (I put “camped” in quotes there because I didn't actually set up a tent. The sky was clear and I decided that the possibility of rain was, hopefully, remote so I slept under the stars) and was on the road before five the next morning. I'm usually not an early riser but it gets dark early these days and there isn't much to do except have a campfire or go to sleep. Part of the nice thing about a campfire is the camaraderie it brings about...so since I was by myself and camaraderie wasn't an option I was asleep by 8:30. One nice thing about not setting up a tent is not having to take it down in the morning...I was on the road 15 minutes after I woke up.

So I had plenty of time to get to Marquette (or so I thought, more on this later in this paragraph). One downside of getting up so early is that nothing is open. I was getting low on cash and wanted to stop and get some. I don't have an ATM card so I had to stop about 2 hours up the road in Stevens Point since they have a branch of the bank I use there. Problem was that I got to Stevens Point at seven and had to kill time until they opened at eight. So I lost an hour there. I got the cash and drove for about another hour and a half and stopped to take some pictures. Taking pics took maybe an hour or hour and a half. I drove some more and stopped for lunch at a city park in Eagle River, WI. It was there that I learned that I was still 2 ¾ hours away from Marquette. Ugh. It was pushing one o'clock (central time, I lose an hour going to Marquette, which is in eastern time and so by their time it was two o'clock) and since I was kind of eager to see Spring (we don't get to see each other any too often being 8 hours apart) I kind of hauled ass to get there. So even though I had gotten up and got on the road early I still was in a rush to get there.

These are some of the pictures I took on the way up there are some that were taken while I was there.

It had sprinkled a bit of rain on this leaf that I saw when I was trying to get some pictures of the dells on the Prairie River in northern Wisconsin.

Interesting contrast of colors on these leaves (I think they are raspberry)

More interesting contrast between the leaf veins and the rest of the leaf.

I got this on a hike up to Hogsback Mountain. It's not really a mountain but it is the highest point in the Upper Penninsula and the view from up there was pretty awesome. The fall colors were at their peak and Lake Superior was not to far off. Too bad I had my camera set to manual, (and so it was set to expose for pictures in the much-dimmer forest on the way to the top and not the brightly lit and exposed-to-the-sunlight top) and all the pictures were terrible.

One day was breezy so there were a few waves on the lake. I managed to get this one. It was one of about 10 pictures I took of the waves. This was the best one.

This was also taken near Lake Superior on a beach right near her house. It had been windy and the tips of the grass got bent down and rubbed back and forth in the sand to make the curves you see in the sand on the left side of this picture. I've seen these curves before in both sand and snow and seeing them always strikes me as seeing a story...you can see what made those curves. And you know it was windy even if it isn't now.

Later-than-summer

2008-10-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

I really like the fall. Taking good pictures is much easier because 1) the leaves are changing color 2) the weather is generally awesome 3) it's cool enough that it actually feels good to be in the sun 4) the sun is coming up later in the morning so my lazy ass can stay in bed longer in the mornings .

Some of these pictures are the product of the later-than-summer sunrises. And some are the product of the earlier-than-summer sunsets which, frankly, I'm not such a big fan of. But I'm definitely a big fan of a climate that has four seasons...and having light drop off as winter approaches is all part of the game. I lived for a year in Fairbanks, AK and at the peak winter we had four hours of dusky light and about 20 hours of dark. And that dusky light was really awesome. Everything looked pretty cool...except for maybe the oil pipeline. I'm one of the crazies that actually rode my bike all winter up there and I can remember riding to work by the moonlight (I had a headlamp on my bike too...but I usually turned that off and rode in the dark [once your eyes adjust to them the stars and moon are surprisingly bright when the ground is snowy] unless there was a car coming and I turned it on so the car would be sure and see me) and then riding back home by moonlight. Another perk of being that far north and having it be so dark is that I saw the northern lights probably half of all nights that were cloudless. [By the way, in case you're wondering, the coldest I temperature I rode in was 40 below, which is cold enough for grease to start freezing.]

So a few of you may have noticed that I had a blog entry up a few days ago and then took it down the next day. I wasn't happy with it. So I nixed it.

This was taken at sunset over the Mississippi River backwaters on Goose Island which is just downstream from Lacrosse, WI. I was here because I was paddling my new solo canoe.

This picture is a product of the later-than-summer sunrises...and the changing color of the leaves.

OK this picture takes a bit of explaining to make sense. Half of the bubble-raft you see (the white part of the picture) is in that water that's moving downstream after it spills over the little watertumble that is between the rocks in the picture. The other half of the bubble-raft is in the eddy behind the mossy rock on the left (in the picture) of the watertumble. The water there is moving upstream and so the bubble-raft is spinning. I used a fairly slow shutter speed to capture the motion of the bubble-raft.

Another product of the later-than-summer sunrises and fall colors.

This was taken in the fairly early morning before the dew had completely dried off of this chicory flower.

This leaf was on one side of a creek and it was in the sunlight (obviously). The other side of the creek was still in shadow which is why the background is so dark.

Aerosmith

2008-09-25T13:03:00.001-07:00

I went down to the Bertom Lake (now is time for my usual reminder that Bertom “Lake” is really Mississippi River backwaters and not a lake at all) and did some paddling around in my canoe. I beached my boat on a little sand/mudbar just off the main channel, ate some sandwiches and carrots and then laid down for a rest and then got up and wandered around on the island I was on and took some pictures. This is some of what I got.

It's kind of fun to realize that the island I was on this weekend probably would have been split up into several islands if the water had been high – like it was this spring. It's been said before but I'll just point it out again: rivers (or at least the land around them) changes from year to year and season to season. Spring (my girlfriend, not the season) and I went for a little paddle down a small river near here (the Grant River) this weekend. Both she and I have seperately paddled that stretch of river before. This spring the river flooded and some pretty drastic changes from pre to post flood. I have paddled the river several times since the flood and the evidence of the power of moving water always leaves me a bit agape.

This is just a climbing plant twisting its way up a dead stick on the island I was on at Bertom Lake.

I was walking along on the island when I looked down and saw what looked like the cucumber plant that is growing in my garden (“was growing” would be more accurate since it died towards the end of the growing season and I hacked it up and buried it). As you may or may not know a cucumber is viney and climbs a bit. This curly-cue is what it would use to climb – if there had been anything to climb. But it's not a cucumber plant. There weren't any cucumbers and besides, what the hell would a cucumber plant be doing growing in an island on the Mississippi backwaters? But since there weren't any flowers it would be hard for me to ID. But it looked pretty similar to a cucumber.

Last Sunday afternoon I took a small hike, my destination being a small patch of woods near town here. It's not public land and I was trespassing the whole time...but really now, who's going to object very strongly to a guy out wandering around with a camera? It's not like I was carrying a chainsaw around with me or taking pictures of areas sensitive to national security. And plus the woods are fairly secluded so I don't think anyone saw me anyway. It's kind of funny, I didn't get a single picture that was very good while I was in the woods – but I got three that were decent on the way to the woods. (this brings to mind those cheesy – but true – Aerosmith song lyrics [as well as a fairly common cliche]: Life's a journey, not a destination).

On the way to these woods you walk down a street that's lined with crab apple trees. This tree had quite a few apples...more than the other trees.

Walking to the woods I noticed this tree that had leaves on just one branch that had changed color and were drastically different than the rest of the leaves. This is a picture of that branch.

You have to walk through a field of grass to get to this patch of woods I was heading for. Parts of the grass field were plowed and planted this spring. I think this is a wildlife food plot. Since the point of a food plot is to not harvest it - and let the wildlife do the harvesting this winter - the plants were still there. This is the seedhead of a sorghum plant silhouetted against the setting sun in that food plot .

Just pictures and captions

2008-09-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken in the morning before the dew had been evaporated by the sun and air. The sun was hitting the seedheads of this grass but not the ground at the base of the plant. So it looks like the seedheads are glowing white from the light hitting the water on them.

I was doing my walking down a streambed (I was wearing rubber boots. Streams are getting a bit nippy this time of year) and saw this morning glory growing on one of the banks in the morning sun. So I took a picture.

This dragonfly is either dead or so slowed down metabolically that I could get very close to it. I appreciated its cooperation because I don't own a lens that would let me take pictures that are this detailed. Sure I get pictures of details of thing but I have to get very close. I don't have lenses that let me zoom way in. Aside: This picture is a good example of why I find taking pictures fairly easy. I simply go outside and move slowly enough to observe stuff. The stuff is already there and, I would say, beautiful – even a dead dragonfly. And even though I don't really know what/who I'm grateful to, I am.

I stopped along a road on the way back from Platteville to get this picture. It's just a tall type of grass that had nice-looking seedheads on it – so it caught my eye. I was pleasantly surprised at how this picture turned out. I was thinking that maybe the sun would be burnt out (so white that it loses its sharpness) and the seedheads would look black. But I got lucky and got, what I think is a decent picture. “Lucky” is the operative word here – I took a bunch of pictures that didn't turn out to be worth a damn.

Dewey

2008-09-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

I went to the park right near my house the other morning and got a few pictures. As you can see there was a heavy dew the night before. I must say that I'm not a big fan of it getting dark earlier in the evening, but it sure is nice to be able to get at a reasonable time in the morning and still be able to get pictures taken in the early morning sunlight.

This is the leaves of a spirea (a plant commonly used for landscaping) taken as I was walking to the park. Even though my destination was the park I try to notice stuff on the way to the park (and on the way back, too).

This is just a leaf that was laying in the dewey grass. Nothing all that special going on here, I just thought it looked cool.

To get this picture I had to crawl down a cement embankment. The way the morning sun was hitting this leaf looked kind of neat from the top of the embankment so I decided to climb down closer...and my efforts were rewarded, I think, but you can be the judge.

This a dewey clover plant. I was just walking along a stream (I tend to like water) looking for things to take pictures of in the stream when I looked down and saw this.

Beginning

2008-09-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

I'll start at the beginning: I rode my bike to work yesterday. To get there in time to be ready to work at 10 I have to leave here at 7:40 or so. (A side note, the weather is cold in the morning and warms up during the day so I had to wear all these clothes for my ride in the morning and then had to carry them back with me on the way back. I carried them back in a plastic grocery bag tied to my handlebars with an old inner tube. Not pretty but it worked.) So after work I had to ride the 17 miles back home plus I took a little longer route since the weather was so nice. So anyway, the point of explaining all that was to give me probable cause for being tired - which I was. As a result of being tired I just kind of wanted to sit around. But the weather was nice and I wanted to be outside. So I ended up taking my camera with me and sitting around outside. I got a progression of pictures of the moon rising. I was sitting there long enough that you can actually see the moon move as the pictures progress. (Another aside: it's amazing to me how fast the moon moves. Once upon a time a little over a year ago I was driving back into Lancaster [the town I live in] one winter night. The moon was about to set over the dome of the courthouse. I thought it looked neat and since I had my camera and tripod with me I decided to stop and take a picture. So I got out of the car and got my tripod all set up and was getting all pumped to take this cool picture when I looked up saw that the moon had set in the short amount of time it had taken me to set up my tripod.)

Ridiculous

2008-09-05T09:52:00.001-07:00

This is getting ridiculous. It's been a while since I last typed at ya'll on this blog. I haven't taken many pictures in the meantime. So I thought I'd make a blog entry out of some old pictures – and two new ones - I've got sitting on the hard drive of this computer. Here they are:

This was taken in the late winter. The open water is caused by a spring bubbling up and the sun was warm enough to melt a bit of the snow on top of the ice and it made this pattern as it drained off the ice and into the water.

I got up fairly early one foggy day last winter and managed to get this picture. I have no idea why the frost is just on the leaf edge.

This last weekend my girlfriend and I took a canoe/camping trip on the Manitowish River in northern Wisconsin. This was at one of the campsites.

It almost dark and I was driving home from the aforementioned camping trip when I saw this semi parked in the little town of Cataract, WI. This caught my eye because it seems ridiculous to have the word "horseradish" painted so big on the side of your truck. If was the driver I'd feel a bit sheepish.

This was taken in November of last year. Frost does funny things.

When I got this picture the sky was clear (hence the blue reflections) but it had been raining before this and since it was cold enough to freeze it froze on this rock to make this thing layer of ice you see in this picture. The rock isn't smooth so that explains the ups and downs you see in the ice. Alot of people have trouble grasping what this picture is of, and, frankly, I have trouble explaining it...but alot of people think it's still cool to look at.

This is a small drift of snow that was sticking up into the sunlight. The darker blue is snow too but is a bit lower and not sticking up into the light.

Chumps and nitpickers

2008-08-18T17:45:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago we had a really nice evening here in Lancaster. The moon was very nearly full, the sky was mostly clear, and the temperature was in the 70's. And when we have weather like that I feel like a chump if I spend much time inside...so I went outside – and took my camera and tripod with me. It was pretty much dark – most of the light was coming from the moon (or from the sun reflecting off the moon, I should say to please any nitpickers in the crowd) so the tripod was a must because there would be no way in hell that I could handhold a 30 second exposure. I took a bunch of pictures and the two I put on here were the best of those.

I did some canoing on Sunday and took my camera with me. It was an awesome day. I got to the landing and on the water at around 10 a.m. The water was pretty low (I was at the Mississippi backwaters) and I had a hard time getting around in my canoe because there were spots that were too shallow for my canoe (or the water was only 3” deep which is plenty to float the conoe but it's hard to paddle in only 3” of water). I usually try to go in places where powerboaters can't go (they're noisy, smelly, make waves, etc.) – and that wasn't much of a problem. There were some deeper channels that the powerboats were confined to – they couldn't really go lots of places.

Moonrise over the Lancaster golf course.

These leaves I happened to see as I was done taking pictures (or thought I was done) and heading home. It was dark out but I didn't use a flash at all. I used the light from a street lamp to light things. The leaves are green in daylight but they look orangish here because of the way that the camera “sees” the light (different types of lights have different wavelengths...which is why pictures taken under fluorescent lights make people look like zombies).

I had found a little sandbar on a little side channel and beached my canoe and ate some lunch. I noticed a reddish/pinkish flower that looked interesting so I decided to walk over to and take its picture. As I was walking towards the reddish/pinkish flower I turned back and looked back towards my canoe (it's amazing how often you can see interesting things that you just walked by by just turning around and looking) and saw that the way the sun was hitting the Arrowhead leaves was pretty cool. So I took a picture - and this is it. I have read that its usually a good idea to have the sun behind you so the things you take pictures of are well lit. Well that may be true much of the time but some things look pretty cool when they're backlit. For this picture I was facing directly into the sun and the sunlight was coming through this leaf. And the picture I took of the reddish/pinkish flower was out of focus and pretty boring.

Some people might not find this picture all that appealing. And I wouldn't blame them – it's a dead leaf stuck in mud for crying out loud. But I must confess, I kind of like it.

I was walking around in the river and decided to take a picture of my feet like I do fairly often for this blog. I walked a ways and when I walked it stirred up the mud. I was going to wait until the mud was washed away in the current to take the picture. Well, the current was awful slow and after a bit I reasoned thus: “This is the Mississippi. Its supposed to be muddy. I should take a picture to represent that...and plus I am sick of waiting for this damn mud to clear.” So I took the picture with the mud clouds in the water. [You can see my reflection in the picture. No I wasn't wearing a shirt. Yes, I got sunburned.]

I always thought that this flower was a just a plain old Water Lily. But according to my Peterson Wildflower Field Guide it's an “American Lotus” that's in the water lily family. There are a huge amount of them growing in the Mississippi backwaters and when you're in water that's shallow and the bottom is muddy it's pretty likely that they're going to be around. They can make getting around rather interesting...but they're another barrier to keep powerboats away from me. This is another example of a backlit picture.

PS If you are interested and have a Facebook account you can go to it and see some more of my pictures there. Just put something about this blog in your friendship request.

Non-bark

2008-08-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

This last weekend my mom's side of the family had a family reunion...which was timed to coincide with my cousin's wedding. So I got to travel to exotic Lansing, MI and got to take a few pictures there. Although I didn't take all that many pictures I did take a few. And those, along with the non-bark pictures that I took when I was taking pictures for the all-bark blog entry, should be enough to make a blog entry.

The leaf in this picture was directly between the camera lens and the sun. It makes for good lighting to see the veins of the leaf. This was taken during the photo shoot for my "bark" entry.

These are maple seeds and leaves, this was taken when I was taking pics for the all-bark entry.

This is chicory growing on a roadside near my aunt and uncle's house near Portland, MI

This sunflower was in my aunt's garden.

On the way back to Wisconsin we stopped at a rest area along the interstate and this plant (is it some kind of ivy?) was growing up all over the place.

So I took a picture or six and this was the best.

These leaves were growing on small trees growing off a stump.

This is water from a small stream in Memorial Park here in Lancaster. This was taken along with the bark pictures.

Bark

2008-08-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

This was the picture that got the wheels turning in my head that an all-bark blog entry might be cool.

So I was walking around Memorial Park this morning and was just out taking my usual mix of random subject pictures and happened to be taking a picture of some birch bark when it kind of seemed to me that it would be an interesting photographic endeavor to to a whole blog entry of just different kinds of bark. I didn't really think, seriously, about actually doing it right at first. But the idea kind of grew on me. So I made it a point to take as many pictures of bark (different kinds of trees, different light, different aged trees, etc) as was reasonable. I got back to my house and looked at the pictures and decided that they're good enough to put on here (a few of them anyway). So here y'all are: an entire blog entry on a subject that some people would say is pretty mundane.

Some of the pictures were taken of small trees and so were taken kind of close up so that the trunk would take up the whole of the picture. This picture is taken of an absolutely huge oak tree...and I had to stand about 4 feet away to get this picture.

This was taken last winter at Governor Dodge State Park. I just think that the bark looks kind of cool. It's taken at what used to be an old homestead (the "refridgerator" [springhouse] is still there) and the family living there had planted a bunch of white pine trees that were much older than the rest of the trees around. This is a picture of the bark of one.

South

2008-07-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

The Drive South:
So Spring had to work at eight in the morning on Monday so I just left when she went to work. That meant leaving at around 7:30 eastern time (a big part of Michigan's U.P. is in eastern time) and then driving on and off and stopping to take pictures and for snacks and whatnot I got back to Lancaster at 8:30 (in good ol' central time) that evening. I stopped and took pictures at four waterfalls on the way...unfortunately most of the pictures were taken in the midday sun. The harsh light of the midday sun makes for bad pictures. So I was at these cool falls and taking all these pictures that I thought would be cool but turned out to be kind of junky. Your eye (and brain) does a much better job of taking in and interpreting contrasting light than cameras do. To use an example relating to this post if you take a picture of whitewater rushing between the brown rocks of a canyon the camera's light meter chooses settings for the camera that average the light bouncing off of both the bright objects (the whitewater) and the dark objects (the brown rocks) and so the whitewater is overexposed and burned out and the brown rocks are underexposed and look like a black blob. So anyway, my excuse for not having many good pictures is that the light was bad for photos.

The falls I stopped at were Long Slide Falls and Smalley Falls (both were on Sullivan Creek), 12 Foot Falls and Daves Falls (both were on the Pike River. Some readers may remember that I stopped at Daves Falls three weeks ago on my way back from Marquette as well). In my opinion the coolest to see was Long Slide Falls. It was a small rocky stream and the falls were small enough that you could get close to them without fear losing your footing, falling and being swept over them to your death. “Intimate” would be a good word to use to describe them. Unfortunately the pics I took weren't very good.

These three pictures are virtually the only decent pictures I got out of the drive back south.

Since I got only a few pictures that turned out to be worth a snot I decided to include some pics of rivers that I've taken in the past. I took all three of these pictures last October when I was on a photo trip to northern Wisconsin.

This was taken on the Black River (not the one with the falls that I showed in the last blog entry...the river in western Wisconsin that gave Black River Falls [the town] it's name) just below the dam that backs up the river to make Lake Arbutus.

This was taken on the Eau Claire River at Big Falls county park. The falls are very cool but the name “Big Falls” strikes me as pretty unimaginative. I managed to get extremely lucky with the light for this picture. It was taken just as the sun was setting and the low angle of the light caught the water just right.

This was taken in Willow River State Park kind of near Minneapolis/St. Paul. I am not generally an early riser and the morning I got this picture was no exception - but the canyon this falls was in was deep enough that the sun didn't shine directly into the canyon until well into the morning...which is when I got this picture.

North

2008-07-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

I just got back yesterday from another road trip up to Marquette to see Spring, my girlfriend. I didn't get many pics while I was up there...we were too busy enjoying each others' company for me to spend much time taking pictures. One has to keep one's priorities straight.

I spent parts of three days driving up there. I left Wednesday, camped that night and Thursday night and then arrived in Marquette Friday, spent the weekend in Marq. And then headed back Monday morning (giving myself all day to travel which I broke up with frequent stops to take pics. So anyway, the point of this whole paragraph is that I took a few more pictures than will fit in one blog entry, so I'll do two entries: one for the drive up there and one for the drive back.

The Drive North:
Do y'all remember a few weeks ago how I talked about forgetting to take the camera attachment for my tripod with me and how, because of that, I set the shutter-speed fast enough for handholding and just underexposed the pics? (See blog entry "Rolling" posted July 9th) Despite their obvious technical incorrectness I got word that some people still thought they were cool. I was out taking pics near a stream that runs through Platteville, WI shooting some of the plants growing hear the water that were in direct sunlight. I had just been on a trail near the stream that was shaded and had set my camera to “Manual” to adjust for the lower light conditions in the woods. Now that I was out in the sunlight the settings needed to be changed (or, as I usually do, I need to set the camera to automatically set the shutter speed and aperture and stuff...the camera is really much smarter than I am when it comes to stuff like that). Anyway I forgot to change the settings and exposed several pics. I also forgot to look at the LCD which would have shown that the pics were horribly overexposed. I thought I was getting these cool pictures. Some of the leaves I was shooting had contrasting color in their veins. The veins were one color and the main part of the leaf was different. So when I finally saw the pictures I was kind of torqued off...but after a second they started to kind of grow on me.

I stayed one night at a Forest Service campground that was directly on the Brule River (in this place the Brule makes the border between the U.P. Of Michigan and Wisconsin). As is par for the course for me I spent quite a bit of time walking around in the river (which is pretty small here...hip deep was about the maximum depth right here). I took a picture of my feet in the river.

This picture is of a fern that was leaning out over the water of the river. The background of the picture is water in the river. It looks so dark because the sun was shining on the fern leaf but not on the background.

It was kind of tricky (and we couldn't be sure in our identification without being able to see the leaves) but Spring and I identified this as some kind of Arrowhead. This was also on the Brule River.

I bought a Gazetteer of Michigan just so I could have some sort of clue as to how to get around and where natural features are. But road names are not included on this map...which is kind of frustrating. So anyway, I saw a waterfall on the map but didn't know how to get there because roads didn't have names. So I stopped in the very small town of Republic to ask directions on how to get there. I went in a bar and the people seemed friendly enough...and not too drunk. I pointed to the falls I wanted to go to (they weren't named on the map kind of like the roads) and said, “I want to go here.” They gave me directions and I thanked them and left. I still couldn't find this damn falls so I stopped and asked directions again. Turns out that the first set of directions got me to a different falls (in their defense, the falls were on the same river).

This is Black River Falls, the mystery falls I talked about in the last paragraph.

Sugarloaf Mountain (“Mountain” being a relative term...this would have been considered a small rise if we were in the Rockies) is close to Marquette and overlooks Lake Superior. And plus the weather was awesome. We climbed it and enjoyed the view and roped a kid into taking our picture while we were up there.

Streaming II

2008-07-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

I spent the better part of this morning and part of the afternoon with wet feet (those are my feet in that first picture). I repeated my streamwalking technique (like I wrote about in a blog entry a while back) once again in order to get a different perspective on things and take what I hope are some decent pictures. Plus it was a pretty warm day so having wet feet wasn't a real downer or anything.

The weather said it was supposed to rain all of today. So I went for a bike ride last night (that's right "bike" as in two wheels. After 2 years 11 months and 4 days I can ride a bike again) and it rained. Not really a big deal, it was a warm rain so it didn't matter. And, if it's a warm rain, I kind of like riding in the rain...but I know I'm weird that way. What is kind of annoying is that it didn't rain at all today (or at least it hasn't yet). This year has really shaken my faith in meteorologists...not that there was much faith there to begin with. They just don't seem to have any idea what the hell the weather is going to be like for anything farther away than 15 minutes. But, look on the bright side: I got to get out with my camera since it wasn't raining.

Obviously this wasn't taken while I was standing in a stream. I happened to see this leaf when I was walking back to my house, with sloshing shoes, after my first streamwalk of the day.

I had a bunch of pictures of leaves and a bunch of pictures of water. So when I saw this I thought, "score," and took a picture.

I wasn't the only one walking in the stream. Well I guess this waterstrider wasn't in the stream so much as on it. You can see how clear the water was. It's maybe a foot deep here. (OK so maybe it's not very obvious what's happening in this picture. The waterstrider in on top of the surface tension of the water [OK that's probably obvious] and the rocks in are covered with a foot or so of water. You can see the light that is bouncing off the rocks distorting as it passes through the water.)

I don't even remember taking this picture. I probably bumped the shutter release on accident. Obviously the shutter speed was WAY too long to get a clear picture. When I was going through the pictures on my computer after I got back to my house I took one glance at this picture and was going to just delete it because it wasn't in focus and kind of muddled anyway...but I didn't. It's kind of growing on me now.

Rolling

2008-07-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

This evening (I'm typing this on Tuesday and will post it on Wednesday morning) I went for a little walk in Memorial Park to take some pictures. I lugged my tripod along with me which is pretty usual...when light is fading - or I suppose I use anytime the light is low, like in the early morning - I use my tripod quite often. What is not usual, what I try not to do, is forget to bring along the part of the tripod that attaches to my camera. Whoops. Being the lazy sort I didn't bother to go back to get my tripod attachment...I just used shutter speeds fast enough to handhold and underexposed the pics and then used my computer to lighten them. Y'all can be the judge as to whether or not they turned out to be worth a snot. I'm of the persuasion that it's a good life strategy to play the hand you were dealt. So if you were, like me, dealt a hand that includes being forgetful enough to forget essential stuff you will have to learn to roll with the punches...and, in this case, take pictures even if you can't use your tripod.

Here's an example of a picture that I took without benefit of a tripod. It was severely underexposed but a little computer work made it decent.

These leaves were on a branch that had blown down in the wind I talk about later in this entry. They were floating in the water of the pond here in town.

Monday was a day I spent mostly in the car driving back from Marquette, MI. If you've seen my car you will know that I'd rather spend time in many other places than in my car. It's kind of beast. I was up there (Marquette is in Michigan's Upper Penninsula right on Lake Superior) to visit my “special friend.” It was a awesome visit since she was there...and it didn't hurt that I love Lake Superior...but I didn't get too many pictures. I got a few though. It's a helluva long drive and so I stopped several times to kind of decompress along the way. One place was at a waterfall where I managed to get some decent pictures. Well, I think they're decent enough to put on here. (I do take alot of pictures that aren't good enough for this blog)

This is Lower Daves Falls. This is a small stream. The average width of the river in this picture is maybe six feet to give you some idea of scale.

This is Upper Daves Falls.

This is a tree I saw while sitting taking a "rest" (remember how I said I'm lazy)

at Lower Daves Falls.

So on the final leg of my drive, as I was about to come into Lancaster, there was a pretty intense storm brewing off to the west of town (for those of you who don't know, I live in Lancaster, WI) and I stopped to get a few pictures of it. You can see in the picture that there was a pretty vivid line between the dark storm cloud and the rest of the sky. The place I stopped was just east of Lancaster on County Highway A and was on top of a ridge. When I got out and took some pictures the wind was picking up pretty good and the weather looked volatile enough to breed tornadoes...so I was kind of nervous about being there. Their weren't any basements around to hide in if I had needed to. I suppose that if a tornado had come along I could have hung out in a culvert 'til it blew over...but really now, who in the hell wants to spend much time lying in a culvert?

A picture to illustrate the clouds I talked about in the previous paragraph

the chicken or the egg?

2008-06-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

This is just a picture I took a couple of days ago at the park here in town. Sorry for the cheesy "soft water" look of the picture. It was dusk so there wasn't much light and I had to use a tripod and a slow shutter speed.

I took this one at about the same time as the last one. I took it earlier in the evening though when there was enough light that I didn't have to use my tripod. I had to repeat my Streamwalker technique to get this shot.

I am, at heart, a lazy person. Which works well with my photographic style (or maybe my photographic style is a result of my being lazy. This seems like it is one of those “which came first? The chicken or the egg?” things that pretty much can't be answered and, frankly, it seems to me that spending much effort trying to answer it is silly). Seeing interesting things is often an issue of just plain slowing down so you can see them. It has been said (and it seems kind of obvious) that you'll experience more if you walk down a road than drive down the same road in an air-conditioned car doing 60. And you can't get much slower than not moving...which is often just what I do when I'm out taking pictures. I get out and walk (slowly) around and then stop and sit. It's not as if I'm tired...I'm just lazy. But it's surprising how often it happens, when I'm sitting, that I see something I wouldn't have seen if I had just walked by. And it's also surprising how often the picture I take of that-thing-I-wouldn't-have-seen-if-I-hadn't-been-sitting turns out to be decent. The picture of the blue ice is an example of that. I had been out wandering around in a state park that is right along the Mississippi River and decided to just sit down and hang out for a while. It was a sunny day (the water is blue from it reflecting the sky) and it was pleasant to just sit there in the sun. These chunks of ice floated by slow enough that I got several pictures of them and this one was the best. So the moral of the story is to SLOW DOWN.

My lazy ice picture

I went out in the evening a couple of days ago and took a walk around the park near my house. [A digression: vanilla works awesome for keeping gnats away from you...and it doesn't smell like hell.] I got a few decent pictures. It's amazing to me how many of my pictures turn out to be of leaves.

In winter it may be frost on leaves, or some derivative of ice.

In spring baby leaves are a fun thing to photograph.

In summer the leaves are fully developed but can be backed up by

grass, sky, other leaves or whatever.

In fall leaves can be worthy of a picture all by themselves.

Don't get used to this

2008-06-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday I took most of the day and went on a kind of picture shooting spree so I have plenty of new picture material for a blog entry...so I'll post one.

I went to Bertom Lake (yeah, I know I've said before in this blog that this's not really a lake, it's part of the Mississippi backwaters...but it bears repeating) to go canoeing and the road I usually take under the railroad track was blocked by all sorts of debris from the flood we had here a little bit back. Plus the road was under several feet of water. The combination of the two make for tough driving, especially in a Mercury Tracer station wagon. So no canoeing. But I walked over the railroad tracks to where the road continues on the other side and walked down to where the boat launch usually is. Most of the road was under several inches of water so I was wading. (Nothing new here, coming from me Mr. Streamwalker) It was interesting seeing how the water was and evidence of how high it had been.

This picture is taken of some of the high water at Bertom Lake. The green leaves you see are not a skillful use of Photoshop, they're just reflecting off the water's surface.

After I had finished with my walk to the flooded Bertom Lake boat launch I went to the village of Cassville and walked around a bit in a park of theirs. I went to one of the boat launches and saw kids riding their bikes off the end of the dock into the water. Awesome. Seriously.

It's kind of hard to see on here but on the right side of the picture you can see kids on the dock with bikes. On the left - out in the water you can see a sign that is where the boat ramp is.

This is a picture taken of a leaf on an oak tree up on a Mississippi River

bluff at Nelson Dewey S.P.

I then went to Nelson Dewey State Park to eat the food I had brought with me. Then while I was there I took some more pictures. I walked around on top of the bluff in the sun and breeze and thought it was those two things that were keeping the bugs away. I then headed into the woods and down the bluff and there were few, if any, bugs out. There was a stream down at the bottom of the bluff and I took a few pictures but this stream was kind of the opposite of the one at Schreiner's park (the park I wrote about in the last entry where I walked up the stream bed) and the bugs were bad (and since my bug spray and stuff were in my car back at the top of the bluff I had no choice but to tolerate them). I took a few shots and then skeedaddled back to my car.

Here's a picture of that stream.

After I got back to my car I decided to drive to Glen Haven (an extremely small town that I wouldn't expect any of you to know) and then take Dugway Road over to county highway A and then take CHWY A back to Lancaster. The main attraction here was driving on Dugway Rd. Dugway Rd. is called Dugway because it is dug into a bluff alongside the Mississippi River. It is pretty cool. Back a while ago we used to ride our bikes from Lancaster to Dugway Rd. and then back (about 60 miles roundtrip) just so we could ride on Dugway. It's that cool. Or maybe we're just that weird.

Dugway Road.

Streaming

2008-06-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

I'm trying something new here: the text I use to describe the pictures will be the color of this text just to make thing clear.

I went for a walk yesterday night to get some pictures (OK maybe the frickin' awesome weather swayed my decision some too). If any of you are familiar with Lancaster and its parks I went to Scheiner's Park. If you're not familiar with the park I'll describe it briefly: low-lying, mostly wooded, fairly primitive (the only bathroom there is a porta-potty) and, because of all the trees, feels rather secluded. I had heard that the same flooding that I wrote about in my last entry was pretty intense here. So I went to check it out. First thing I noticed were the gnats. The second thing I noticed was that I had forgotten any bug repellent (some of you who have been following along with this blog for a while now may remember that I said before that I prefer to wear clothes that bugs can't bite through as opposed to putting on repellent. Well, I forgot both). They weren't biting that bad they were just really damn annoying...so I decided to go ahead with my photography and just tolerate the infernal bugs. I photographed for a while and then decided to walk up the stream bed (I like water and plus walking in the stream bed makes for an unusual perspective for taking pictures – unusual because you don't see many people dumb enough to walk in stream beds because the overwhelming majority of stream beds have streams in them too which most sane people avoid walking in). This stream is primarily fed by springs (most streams are that are this small in southwest Wisconsin) and it was on the chilly side. But the good part is that the harassment by the gnats virtually stopped when I got down in the stream bed.

The flooding in the stream must have been quite a sight to see. I wish I had been there at the time. The stream bed was quite scoured – there was rock along the whole length of the stream bed, and in some spots was down to bedrock. In some spots the high water had dug the stream bed out three or four feet. I put a picture in here that I took last night and one from a long time ago so you can see what the nature of the stream used to be and how it has changed.

The top three pictures were taken at Schreiner's Park. The top one is one I took a while ago. The second one has nothing to do with the flood. The bottom one is of the same creek that you can see in the first picture. They're not taken in the exact same spot but can give you some sort of comparison. The stream before the flood was pretty tame. There were a few spots where it flowed over a few rocks but nothing like what is showed in the third picture.

This morning I decided to get up early (early in this case is shortly after 6 so it's not really like I was getting up before dawn or anything) and take some sunrise pictures. I walked around in the park near my house (Memorial Park) and took pictures for about an hour. [A side note: the next time I go to this park I will be taking something to keep the bugs from biting] When I got back home I went to look at the pictures on my computer and something must be be screwy with the light meter on my camera because every single one of them was hugely underexposed. So all the pictures were dark (there were quite a few that were almost black) and I decided to just delete the whole lot of them...which is just what I did. Then I reconsidered. Every once in a while the pictures that turn out to be the best are the ones that some photo tech-geek/snob would say are junk. So I thought it would be worth a try to resurrect these pictures, so I went to my “edit” button and did an “undo delete” and took a closer look at the pictures. It turns out that, with some photo editing love, the pictures (some of them anyway) became decent...but I'll let you be the judge, you can see the pictures below.

Just What We Needed

2008-06-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

It has been raining a lot here lately...so when it rained hard for several hours yesterday it caused some problems. The soil was already pretty much saturated from the rain we've been having so when it started to come down again it caused a bunch of runoff (side note: one of the things I remember from my Hydrology class in college was that the technical term for runoff is “Horton overland flow.” Why they felt a need to coin a term for what is essentially runoff is funny in a kind of ridiculous way...but I digress). That runoff collected in the creeks and rivers and caused some problems. I'm 28 – not an old timer but not a spring chicken either - and I've never seen water as high as it has been this spring. Two times now it has been unusually high – over Lincoln Rd. which is the road my parents live on and I grew up on. I cannot remember another time it came up over the road. I wrote about, and took some pictures of, the flood we had earlier this spring in another post. I took a few pictures of the flood yesterday. They were taken after the peak of the flood after it had stopped raining and I could get out with my camera without much fear of it getting rained on. You might be able to see evidence of the water being higher than it shows in the pics.

I went to Governor Dodge State Park after work on Tuesday. I did some canoeing Tuesday evening and then Wednesday morning I got out with my camera a bit before I had to be at work (but, unfortunately didn't get a single picture worth sharing). The water was very high there too (this was before the flooding but after we had had a significant amount of rain). If you're not familiar with the park it has a couple of man made lakes. Below the dam on one of the lakes was some pretty wild white water. It is a small stream but was fun to watch. There were some slow, deep spots a little ways below the dam and there were literally hundreds of fish (bass and bluegills mostly and you won't find these in streams naturally, they are lake fish. I've used my schooling [I had a double major in Fisheries/Limnology and Biology] more in this post than the past few years put together) that had been washed over the dam.

Fog and pine tree picture: This doesn't have much to do with anything here but it was taken just upstream of where one of the flood pictures was taken. It shows you what size the stream is usually.

“Golf Carts” bridge picture: this is the same stream as the one in the fog picture.

The picture with high water flowing under and around a bridge with trees in the background: this is the same stream as the previous picture and the fog picture. The channel of the stream is under the bridge (obviously - they would not have put the bridge over dry land) but you can see there is much too much water to fit in the channel.

Light in the old stone building: This has nothing to do with high water (obviously). It's just a shot of the old stone poolhouse in Lancaster. I remember going through here when we went to go swimming and playing “shark.”

Picture of the green leaves on the maroon background: I actually went out this morning and took this. The reason I chose this particular picture is because these are the same two trees that you saw in the first picture under the “Mosquito” post I did a few weeks back. Then I was standing under the tree with the maroon leaves (I was standing under this particular tree because it was the closest to where I was when it started raining) and the tree with the green leaves made up my background – this time it's the opposite. The leaves are much more vibrant in the picture in the “Mosquito” post because of the way the light was hitting them.

If any of you readers are living in the area I have an exhibit of my photos at Rountree Gallery, in Platteville, coming up in July. The exhibit starts the 2nd of July and lasts through the 2nd of August. The artist's reception in going to be on Sunday July 13th from 1-3. It'd be cool to see you there.

Tear

2008-06-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I had left the widows open in my house and woke up when it started to rain at about 2 in the morning and went charging around the house shutting windows. I hadn't bothered to turn on the lights and when I was heading towards the last window to shut I tripped over something I had left out on the floor, a pair of sandals. I fell down and my foot kind of hurt but I didn't think much of it. After all it's pretty normal for your foot to hurt when you hit something hard enough to trip and fall. So I shut the last window and then just thought I'd give my foot a quick glance to see what was up. Turns out it was wounded pretty badly (I have no idea how this happened, sandals don't have anything sharp on them, my only guess is that I hit the sandal hard enough to tear, not cut, the skin on the bottom of my foot). I was not able to locate my bandage material that I usually keep around so I had to go hobbling around the house (trying not to bleed too badly on the carpet) looking for my first aid kit that I take camping with me. I eventually found it in my car. I couldn't see the cut/tear very well because it was on the bottom of my foot but got a bandage on it and went back to bed.

So the whole point of that last paragraph is to say that I am not going to be able to get out much with my camera in the next couple of days...but I wanted to do a blog entry so I'll have to make do with some older pictures. [Actually the on of the mirrored leaves is fairly new]

Turtle picture: In late May I was on a canoe trip and we stopped to camp at a park in Hayward, WI to camp. A turtle was there laying eggs. When I was back at that same park in September of that year I was able to find this newly hatched turtle.

Windblown snow and leaf picture: I was out walking around in the Lancaster golf course this past winter and saw this. It had been windy and the wind did this.

Windmill picture: These are some of the electricity generating windmills at the wind farm near Montfort, WI.

Mirror leaf picture: this is pretty self explanatory...or it seems like it is to me but I saw the whole scene when I was there so maybe I'm biased.

Floating leaf picture: This was taken in fall and this leaf was floating just below the surface of the water of the pond here in Lancaster.

Mosquito

2008-05-27T06:36:00.000-07:00

Thursday I took off in my canoe to do a little camping in the Miss. River backwaters. The water was up so I had a limited choice of campsites...but I found one...a damn good one too if I do say so myself. It was on a small island that would have been bigger except during this high water the water on the south side of the island was higher than it was on the north so, as is the case with water, it flowed downhill. The upshot of this was that the water flowing past this little island was moving pretty quickly and was gurgling and generally making water sounds. It was nice. Especially when trains went by...they were covered some by the water noise which, I think, are much more pleasant than the sound of a train rumbling by. Actually the sounds would have been pleasant even if there were no trains going by.

This trip of mine was the first this year that involved many bugs. The mosquitoes are back. [Last year I was fortunate enough to go canoing when there was a pretty major mayfly hatch going on. It was cool. There were an unbelievable number of them. Good thing they don't buzz in your ear and don't try to suck you blood. Heck, they don't even have mouthparts. I'll put a picture on that I took last year during the hatch.] I don't like using bug spray if I don't have to, even though I have some non-DEET spray, so I wear a nylon windbreaker (unless it's hot, then I'll deign to put on bug spray...the main reason that I don't like bug spray is that I'm sort of a bone-head and forget bug spray sometimes and want to know how to protect myself from bugs in those cases) that they can't bite through and sometimes a headnet if the bugs are bad, though they weren't bad enough to warrant the headnet this time. The water sounds at my campsite were good for drowning out the sound of buzzing mosquitoes. (Later on I actually did put on some bug repellent to test the stuff and see if it actually worked and I think that it was mainly the smell of the stuff that did the repelling. At least the smell would have repelled me.) I cooked my meal on a stove that my dad made out of a coffee can (my meal was rice and black beans). I like the idea of using stuff that other people would pass by in search of something better...and in this stove you burn little sticks of wood, twigs really, that most people would think weren't enough to make a meal. So I didn't have to spend half an hour gathering wood. Since I'm lazy this worked great. I just walked 10 feet away from my “kitchen” and broke off a few branches and presto! I was done gathering wood for the night. I'm definitely lazy. Even the little island I was on (it was about 40'x100') had WAY more than enough wood.

Oh yeah, I took a few photos on the trip too.

Today (I'm writing this on Sunday the 25th) I left to go out for a trike ride. About 10 minutes after I left I noticed that there were some pretty heavy duty rain clouds rolling in. They covered the whole western part of the sky so I thought, “there's no way in hell those are going to blow by.” I had left the windows open in my house so I had to come back and shut them. I got back, shut the windows and then went out to hoe weeds in the garden until the inevitable rain started. Well you guessed it, the clouds blew by and it didn't rain. So I resolved to go for a little walk with my camera and see what I could photograph. By the time I was ready to go some more clouds had rolled in but by that point I had made my mind up to go...so I went, and besides the last set of dark clouds had blown by so I was not trusting my skill (or luck, as most meteorology seems to be) in predicting weather. I took a few pictures before it started raining and I had to head back to my house. My neighbors probably think I'm an idiot, they were having a get-together on this Memorial Day weekend and were all out playing that toss-the-beanbag-into-the-hole-in-the-plywood-thing-that-is-40-feet-away game on their lawn. They saw me ride by and then a few minutes later ride back and then after a bit I walked by again with camera in tow only to get rained on and trudge back again.

Anyway, here's what I would caption the pictures with if I was smart enough to figure out how to put captions on them:

The one with green background and maroon leaves: this was taken after my ill-fated ride and after I decided to take a walk. This was taken while standing under a tree while it was raining.

The one with all the bugs: they're mayflies and there were alot of them.

The one with red leaves and green veins: this was taken on a bluff above the Miss. River at Nelson Dewey State Park near Cassville.

The one with the purple flower: taken while field testing out the foul-smelling bug spray at Nelson Dewey State Park.

P.S. I haven't really been a big mushroom fan my whole life...but I must admit that those morels tasted good after they were fried in butter.

.500

2008-05-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

[First of all, the picture with the morel (morels plural actually...one's kind of hidden) is posed. Not real. I had a request for a morel picture and then just a few days later I was given a bunch of morels and so I decided to take a picture. I walked to the nearest park and found a place that, to my unexperienced eye, looked morel-y and put 'em down and took a picture.]

I haven't been out of Lancaster (the town I live in. Yeah, that sentence ends with a preposition...Mr. Jonas would be upset) too much to get pictures. But here are a few I took at the park about two blocks away from my house just yesterday. Well the one with snow in it was taken in February of '07 but I thought it was kind of cool to see how sights change with the seasons. If you look at the top two pictures you can see that they're taken from similar vantage points. Things in them are pretty much the same...except, of course, the season. Oh and the top picture was taken on a canoe trip to the BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) about two years ago. So really only half of the pictures were taken yesterday. If this was baseball I'd be batting .500 and doing pretty well.

SURPRISE! You can still see the old website!

2008-05-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

Hello, it was just brought to my attention recently that the old, flash-based JAUSTINIMAGES is still up and running. I had foolishly thought that I took it down when we decided to update/upgrade JAI...but lucky for you I was wrong and you can still check out the site and even order prints from Joel at http://www.jaustinimages.com/home.htm.

SO...look into that, browse the site, and put that tax refund $$ you stashed away towards some art (for your pathetically bare, uninteresting walls) created by an extremely talented photographer, JA. And because this is a photography blog I feel compelled to post a photo on here...and as Joel's webmaster-brother I have access to all of his photos. I'll post two of my favorites.

2008-05-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I did a canoe trip on the Kickapoo River near Wildcat Mountain State Park with a group of people that the River Alliance of Wisconsin organized. Besides being the only person paddling a solo canoe (to be fair there was another person paddling solo but it was in a tandem canoe) I was the only one to tip over. It was only in about a foot of water and the bottom was nice cushy sand so everything was fine...it was just a little embarrassing to have half of the group float by me, go around the same corner, and under the tree that tipped me over, and NOT tip over. It would have made me feel like less of a moron if someone else had tipped too....

Anyway, after the canoe trip I took the opportunity to go do a little photography in the area.

The bedrock in that area is mostly sandstone (there were some pretty cool rock formations along the river but I was generally too busy paddling to think seriously about doing any picture taking. I didn't want to make the group I was paddling with wait for me. I really hate to have people wait for me...I don't mind waiting for others but I have a thing about making people wait for me) and there was a little stream which had dug out a shallow cave in the sandstone. It had also dug itself a waterfall of maybe 20 or 30 feet. It is a very small stream and in the winter the water falling splashes as it hits the ground and freezes. No surprises here, most waterfalls do that. What was surprising was that there was a big chunk of ice still there (keep in mind this was May 10th). Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either unless I saw it so I took a picture of it to post here for all you doubters. It was irregularly shaped but was something like 12 inches thick and maybe four feet across. I can only imagine how big it was in February.

I did other stuff yesterday but I got out with my camera again today on the Rountree Branch (a stream that feeds into the Little Platte which feeds into the Platte which feeds into the Mississippi River) in Platteville after getting off of work at the bike shop in Platteville. Now I am sitting at my computer typing this while listening to the radio to try and get local weather. I am not a big fan of the station I am listening to. I, actually, am not a big radio fan at all. But this has nothing to do with photography so I'll shut my yap.

[PS In another entry I kind of highlighted that taking good pictures isn't as easy as falling off a log. My point was not to bitch and moan and say that you have to work your ass off to get good pictures. The point was not to get down on yourself for not taking pictures that you think are good.
I actually don't think I take pictures that are all that good...but enough people have said otherwise that I think it's worth trying to get my pictures out there where people can see them.]

2008-05-01T08:10:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures I took last night.

I wasn't out for very long and the light wasn't so great. So even though I took more than 20 pictures only four turned out to be worth a damn...and of those four these two were by far the best. The others were kind of ho-hum water shots. Not very good. For any picture that I put up for display there are many many more I took that didn't turn out. Maybe the lighting wasn't so good or something is slightly out of focus or [insert any number of things that can go wrong...this reminds me of the time when I was out with my camera and a dog ran up to and started sniffing around at me and my camera and stuff. I realized later when I looked at the pictures I had taken that the dog's wet nose had put a smudge on the lens and all my pictures had a blurry spot in them]. It's amazing how many pictures I take that are just plain bad. I would be embarrassed to show 'em. So if you think my photography is decent or maybe even good you might think that I can go out and take pictures and they all turn out well...well it ain't that easy.

An Attempt to Canoe and Photograph

2008-04-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

[After reading the start of this it would be reasonable to say to yourself, “What the hell does this have to do with photography?” Keep reading and I'll try and tie it together.]

Yesterday I went to Bertom Lake to canoe and photograph (actually it's not a lake at all, it's the backwaters of the Mississippi River), or maybe I should say I tried to go to Bertom Lake but the water was so high that I couldn't even get to it. Usually there is a road that goes under the railroad track to a parking and boat launch area. That road is under about 5 feet of water right now. I could launch my canoe from just about anywhere and could've tried but the water was moving pretty fast (maybe three mph...which is very fast for Mississippi backwaters) and was flowing between the trees and it was cold and it was muddy and it was...you get the picture, it was easy to justify not paddling. And when I got home and was unpacking my things I didn't have to unpack a paddle because I forgot to bring it in the first place. So even if I'd have wanted to canoe I couldn't have.

We've had some pretty intense rains here lately. It's pretty messy in the river bottoms. In lots of places water backed up behind culverts (or even bridges) and came up over the road. I've also seen some mini landslides. Where a road has been cut into hillsides and the uphill side of the road is steep sometimes a bunch of dirt comes sliding down onto the road. Kind of weird to be going along and you look over and there's a chunk of sod or a multiflora rosebush on the road next to you.

OK. To tie this back in to photography I didn't get to photograph from my canoe so I went to a State Park that is partially on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. The park entrance is fairly low and a stream that flows into the Mississippi had flooded and washed part of the road away...and that is the only way up the bluff (by car anyway). So even my plan B was a bust. But, as they say, “when life gives you lemons...” so I tried to make lemonade by taking pictures of things that you don't get to see unless there's an over abundance of water.

2008-04-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

I got out to take some pictures yesterday. The picture to the left is one. It was also the first time this year that I got out in my solo canoe. I have been out canoeing a couple times but that was in a tandem canoe. Don't I sound like I'm trying hard to be all cool by distinguishing the difference between a tandem and a solo canoe? Sweet. I'm definitely not, I just happen to have a solo canoe.

Anyway, it was good to get out again. Even though it wasn't all that warm it was sunny - and that makes a big difference. It was a little breezy too but if I found a place out of the wind but in the sun it was pretty warm.

The river (the Mississippi) was up and the current was moving a quite a bit. So it was hard to take photos from the canoe because when you put the paddle down long enough to pick up the camera you were not where you need to be to take a decent picture. So I landed the canoe on a backwater island (a sidenote: since the water was high it almost covered the islands and you had to paddle through some big trees that are usually up on shore to get to dry land). After having lunch on the trunk of a fallen down tree I took off on foot on the island to see what I could see. Later in the summer the islands will be so overgrown with tall grass that walking will be much, much harder to walk, but for now it is clear...last year's grass has fallen down and this year's is short. I saw a pelican riding along on the current of the river. I have seen pelicans on the Mississippi before but they always catch me a little off guard - they seem like they don't belong...or maybe I should say that they seem like strangers from somewhere else, like Portugal or something. I also saw lots of beaver sign...but no beaver. I saw a few bald eagles flying overhead on the wind.

Though it wasn't when I was on the island I saw, from my canoe, a fox (he or she was on the railroad tracks near the water at the base of the bluff looking back up the bluff), a Canadian goose on it's nest, several muskrats, and all manner of ducks and geese on the water and flying around. I was paddling along when something near my canoe made a small wave. I thought it was a frog or something and didn't pay much attention to it...but then LOTS of other creatures started making waves. I couldn't see any of them so I'm guessing I stumbled upon a school of fish and when they swam off they made waves. Reminds me of the time last year when I was out canoeing and the carp were fighting each other (I presume it was the males fighting each other to breed with the females) and didn't pay any attention to me even when I paddled up right next to them. I was close enough to touch them...and I did. I just reached out and touched them. Strange.

Hunger finally pulled me off the river to the village of Cassville where no places were open for eating (the grocery store was even closed) so I had to get junk food (a Snickers bar, some sour octopi, and a Sun Drop to drink) for supper at the BP station there. Then I went up to Nelson Dewey State Park that has some nice views of the river. It is up on the bluffs near Cassville. There was a nice sunset to see. While I think that sunset pictures are cliche I admit I took a few. The sun set and I drove home.

I unloaded my canoe in the dark and went inside to look at my pictures (I have a digital camera) and see if I had any good ones.

High five,

joel

THE TEMPORARY JAUSTINIMAGES

2008-04-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Joel Austin Images website is currently under construction.

Eventually this blog will be incorporated into www.jaustinimages.com as a tool to keep you updated on current goings-on in the world of Joel Austin, photographer extraordinaire.

For now, until the new and improved website is completed, it's all we got.

Check back often to view, order, or just plain gawk over the most recent photos taken by Joel.

There will be other random updates, tidbits, and reminders as well. Things you're not going to want to miss. Urgent stuff. So favorite this page ASAP and don't forget to visit frequently! We'll try to do the same.

ENJOY!