Turns out the lake is big.
Tag Archives: Wood Lake – Richfield
Infrared bug
Another neat thing about IR is that you can see where a leaf is damaged and see what is causing the damage.
To be fair, you can do this in visible light too, but the bugs aren’t quite so cute that way.
Infrared heron fight
One downside of shooting with a special camera is that neat scenes, like when one great blue heron infringes on the territory of another, look rather odd. Still, I’m glad to have seen it.
Shifts
Sometimes infrared makes things look extremely different. When I am shooting my new camera, everything looks weird. Due to the oddities of how digital IR works, all the reds and blues are “flipped” from what you (usually) want. This results in bright red skies which can be very distracting. However, you can still see the differences. In this photo, for example, I could tell right away that there was something interesting about those seed pods because, outside of the camera, they are the exact same brown as the ground and the leaf.
Sometimes I just hold the camera up to my eye and walk around, just so I can see things differently.
Bug
Then again, sometimes you see something that wouldn’t be nearly as interesting in visible light.
Caterpillar
The problem with infrared, of course, is sometimes you see something awesome that would have looked better in human-visible light.
Damelfly
So why am I doing this? Well, one reason is that some animals are bothered by flash. This photo was taken with an infrared flashlight in one hand and the camera in the other. It’s not easy (and surprisingly tiring), but when it works, the camera can lock on and you get a photo like this in a way that the animal never sees any additional light.
This isn’t such a big deal for insects like this, but it matters a lot for nesting reptiles and birds as well as foraging mammals.
Wood Lake
When it works, though, you can get images like this.
See how different wavelengths of light are reflected directly (the trees across the lake) and indirectly (the trees on my side of the lake that are being back-lit).
Infrared Wood Lake – Hotspot 2
You can also deal with hotspots through colour shifting, like here. However, it’s better to just identify which lenses are and aren’t reliable so you can just do invisible light photography with lenses you can trust.
Infrared Wood Lake – False Colour
So I finally took the leap and converted my backup camera to infrared. Unlike my previous infrared camera, this one records a much larger range of wavelengths so it’s faster and allows me to a “false” colour view. The problem, however, is that some lenses apparently have a “hot spot” in which the center of the sensor collects more infrared light than the rest so you get colour shifting.
It works out OK when you can line it up with a lens flare.
Turtle Testing
Last night, I went to Wood Lake to test out my new infrared camera. This video is not from that camera.
One thing I’ve noticed about doing testing is that whichever camera test I take with me is not the right one for whatever happens. If I take my macro lens, it’s heron day. If I take my wide angle, it’s frog day. If I take my long lens, it’s beautiful light day.
So this time, I took my new infrared system (the reason why is in the video) and my new “backup” system that also has video capabilities. x
It turned out to be “turtle laying eggs” day. Of course, I did not bring my tripod. *sigh* (Still think it turned out OK.)
Wood Lake – Infrared
You don’t want to see what kind of bird chooses to live here, in infrared land.
Wood Lake – Infrared
They sure gots some mighty strong foxes ’round these parts.
Wood Lake – Infrared – Chaos
In the beginning, there was nothing but chaos. The chaos, however, was imperfect. Infinitesimally small bubbles of order, ineradicable, were spread throughout.
Over time, these bubbles attracted one another, merging. As regions of order widened, the world we now know began to appear. Small bubbles allowed for the existence of small things … a proton here, an atom there. Larger bubbles allowed these small objects to combine and, as the ages passed, stars began to form.
Order is, however, unstable and disturbances can happen. Some stars shrank away, vanishing into nothing. Others exploded, expanding the bubble of order into a bubble filled with a different form of chaos. This chaos, like all chaos, was imperfect and its bubbles of order allowed for the formation of what we now call asteroids, moons, and planets.
It was within the chaotic oceans of one planet, in particular, where order concentrated and became self-perpetuating. Where, after almost unimaginable time, order became self-aware and gained a sense of purpose. Order began to actively explore the chaos.
At first, such exploration was limited. Life was constrained to shallow seas where it could absorb order streaming from the sun, wrapping it around itself for protection from the chaos of the deep dark. Eventually, however, life expanded, bringing a higher form of order to the land.
Considerably later, life became intentional, exploring the chaos and spreading order upwards throughout time, developing communication, then language, then writing so order can be gifted to future generations, intensifying order into understanding and then knowledge. Life, however, is unstable and disturbances can happen. Conflict, fighting, wars … these all place knowledge at risk. To protect the knowledge, from misuse and abuse, it was hidden by life.
At first, knowledge was hidden within knowledge, the mere existence of writing being unintelligible to noninitiates. However, order marches ever onwards and as literacy became common, other methods were required. Life began to hide knowledge in chaos, burying it within the very material from which it was extracted.
At first, of course, knowledge was buried in the shallows and the cleverest of life fought amongst themselves to see who could bury it deepest and still retrieve order from the chaos. Alphabetic substitution gave way to polyalphabetic which fell to pre-defined keys and electromechanical rotors.
Today, such knowledge is wrapped within mathematics, a form of order drawn directly from the chaos that surrounds all, hiding knowledge deep within that chaos so it blends with the chaotic background of the universe itself.
However, such mathematics is imperfect. If one knows where to look, one can see deep within the hidden messages, infinitesimally small bubbles of order, ineradicable, are spread throughout.
Wood Lake in Infrared
There was a time, once, when no bridge yet existed.
Today, it does.
Between then and now, someone had a vision, a few collaborated on the design, many worked together to achieve it, and several cross it every single day.
The bridge, of course, goes nowhere.
Sparrow
The hardest part of getting shots like this is erecting the force field around the perch.
Sparrow
Once you get there, the top perch requires constant defense.
Infrared – Wood Lake
When viewed in infrared, every forest is celebrating Halloween.
Swallows
Sometimes, if you fly too quickly, you have to pause and ask your friend for directions.
Swallow
Swallows have evolved the ability to fly extremely quickly because the slower ones get captured and have their wings ripped off by true hope before they are able to breed.