John Wall's Natural California

Bugging Out

2008-06-27T16:03:00.001-07:00

Going digital liberated me from the expense of shooting film. Now if only gasoline would go digital as well! It's been a fun and educational year of photographing around the state's natural areas. I feel like I've just begun to scratch the surface. Unfortunately, this isn't my job. It's just recreation. And it's become a bit too pricey to keep up the pace, so I'm pretty sure I'll be saying good-bye to the blog. Hope you've enjoyed it even a fraction as much as I have!

Keep in touch with my current photography at my Flickr photostream.

New Macro Toy

2008-06-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

One day soon I hope to be able to produce photos almost as good as this guy, who not only makes great insect photographs but is a good naturalist as well. He was my inspiration for the new toy I got today -- the Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens. I know, I know. It sounds like a knucklehead gimmick that you might use once or twice before consigning to your spare camera bag in the closet along with the Holga, the star-effects filter and the Lens Baby. But in the right hands, as I hope mine will soon become, it's an excellent and very portable macro tool that gets you considerably beyond a 1:1 reproduction ratio.

To try it out, I took it into my little postage-stamp of a back yard and commenced to look for bugs. Problem is, my eyes aren't what they used to be. Any bug worthy of the Raynox treatment is probably too small for me to see. The spider pictured above was congenial enough to be a black spot on a white background, though, so I annoyed it with several attempts at making a portrait while I tried to focus on those freaky bug-eyed palps. Afterwards, I came inside to photograph a coin on a tabletop in case nothing else came out.

Working hand-held required the use of my SB-600 flash along with the other toy I got in the mail today: the "Ultimate Light Box System Bounce Diffuser" by Harbor. I attached the Raynox to my 105mm AF-D micro lens. None of the shots I made using continuous-servo AF made the cut, but I still think that's a promising approach. However, the three pix here were made in manual focus mode.

Sunflower Star

2008-06-21T12:10:00.001-07:00

The first thing I noticed about this crazy 18-armed starfish -- besides the fact that it had so many arms -- was how fast it was moving. I don't know if it could catch and eat a sculpin, but the sculpin weren't taking any chances. The books say the Sunflower Star eats just about anything, including fish carrion, and is the fastest sea star on the Pacific Coast. I was eager to catch up to my wife and the nudibranch-hunters on this trip, but next time I see one of these I'll follow it until it finds prey. Although this one (maybe just a youngster?) had "only" 18 arms, they can have up 24 and vary in color much like the more common and relatively sedentary Ochre Sea Star.

First Nudibranch

2008-06-20T11:27:00.001-07:00

When Pam and I first arrived at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve this morning, the sun was just beginning to strike the harbor seals at the far side of reef nearest the ocean, so we began our explorations in the shade. After wandering too close to the harbor seals I was hailed by a docent about my transgression. Lucky for me, since the docent knew where some cool reef critters were, including Nudibranchs.

I stopped along the way to hang out and photograph a Sunflower Star the docents had led us to while Pam and the docents continued toward the nudibranch area farther south. By the time I finally caught up with them I was just in time to see a nudibranch slip into deep cover. It's Pam's birthday weekend, though, so I was glad she at least had gotten a good look at it.

I kept my eyes peeled on our way back and saw this nudibranch (above and below) cruising over the fronds of some pink coralline algae. The sun was hitting the reef by then and really bringing out the opalescent quality of this Opalescent Nudibranch (Hermissenda crassicornis). I would probably never have thought to even look for nudibranchs in tidepools if not for this guy at Flickr's Bay Nature photo group.

The Speed of Digital

2008-06-17T17:59:00.001-07:00

I've only been shooting entirely digital since January, and I sometimes feel like I shoot too much and process too quickly. I ask myself: Am I becoming a hack nature photographer?! I return from a couple hours of shooting with nearly 300 pictures on my CF card, and I just start processing and uploading, processing and uploading.

Even though I figured I was finished with my El Polin Spring photos, I wondered what would happen if I went back this evening for another look, picked some new photos, and took my time processing them. Would I come up with something better if I took my time? Or would the new pictures simply melt into the homogeneity of all the other pictures I've already processed?

I don't know the answer. I'm my own worst editor. I like pretty much everything. Almost every shot was fun to make and remains meaningful to me, even stuff I shot many years ago. I just got a box of 200 sheets of 5x7 paper in the mail today and some replacement ink cartridges as well. I make prints of almost everything I like. It's the "Chron Folder" of my photography. Holy moly. I used to think I shot a lot of slides. Since I went digital, that's gone completely out the window. A brick of 20 rolls of slide film used to last me half a year. Since the start of 2008 I've got the equivalent of 70 rolls of film (2,522 photos to be exact) on my hard drive, and that's after editing out many, many files.

I don't think 200 sheets is going to last very long.

El Polin Spring

2008-06-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

Well I've wasted another perfectly good day processing photos (more feathers at Flickr). Time to wish my dad a Happy Father's Day and get out there to enjoy what's left of the day!

Prince of the Spring

2008-06-15T11:32:00.001-07:00

El Polin Spring in the Presidio turned out to be an excellent birdwatching spot. I'd parked up at Inspiration Point and walked down without seeing much. All the other people around were dog-walkers, and I thought I might just be taking my camera out for a walk if I didn't start seeing any wildlife.

But as I got closer to the spring, a variety of birdsong tipped me off to a lot of activity. I was down there for a couple of hours or so -- I lost track -- and shot nearly 300 frames. And I didn't even go into Continuous Shooting mode until I tried to catch the cowbird being fed by the sparrow (previous post). That number represents a lot of flash bursts too, and I'm putting in a good word for lithium batteries. I installed a set in my SB-600 so long ago I don't even remember, and they are still going strong. It's almost uncanny.

I saw quite a few bird species at the spring -- too many to include in a single blog post. Maybe I'll upload them all to Flickr eventually. But for now I'll start with the Allen's Hummingbird, Prince of El Polin Spring. The hummers were always there, always rambunctious, and were big fans of skinny-dipping in the spring. An occasional Anna's Hummingbird also swooped through. At one point there were four hummingbirds hovering over the spring in a moment of suspended animation. I imagined each one just couldn't figure out, for one brief moment, who to chase.

The Mafia Hypothesis

2008-06-15T10:36:00.001-07:00

After leaving the mourning doves (previous post) and continuing on my way back to the Jeep, I heard the incessant cheeping a young bird makes when it wants to be fed. I quickly spotted the bird and noticed it was being fed by a white-crowned sparrow. The thing that didn't compute was that the young bird was significantly larger than the sparrow. After asking about it online I learned that the youngster is a Brown-headed Cowbird, a species known to deposit its eggs into the nests of other species.

The BHC doesn't even bother to build a nest of its own, a habit it probably picked up in the days when it followed the bison herds around. A bird that needs to pick up and leave when the bison do has an advantage if it doesn't have to abandon its nest.

As for why the victim of this scam doesn't simply eject the trespasser's egg, the so-called "Mafia Hypothesis" (with studies backing it up) explains that a victim who doesn't comply ends up with a trashed nest and its own young killed by the adult cowbirds. Other studies show that over the course of the breeding season, the host birds usually still manage to raise their own young. (This Audubon page has lots more info.)

It's tempting to simply demonize the cowbird, and in fact over the last 25 years various government agencies have killed cowbirds in the belief that doing so will be good for other species (especially if that species is threatened or endangered). But cowbirds were doing their thing long before Europeans arrived. The greatest threat to songbird populations isn't predation by cowbirds (whose number also are declining), but almost certainly habitat destruction brought about by you-know-who.

Mourning Dove Series

2008-06-14T15:45:00.001-07:00

On my way back to the Jeep from El Polin Spring this morning I spotted these two Mourning Doves perched together in a snag near the trail. I thought they'd fly the coop as soon as they caught me looking at them, but they surprised me. They weren't going anywhere -- even after I hit them a couple of times with the Better Beamer!

I chose to use the flash because the background was so bright, but the result was a little too flashy for me. When I was able to maneuver into a different position with a darker background without scaring off my quarry, I switched off the flash and fired off a few frames of what turned out to be a dovely courtship moment. Total elapsed time from photo #2 to #4 was 8 seconds.

The Kiss

The Consummation

"Is he still here?!"

Northcoast Redwoods

2008-06-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Because the weather took a wrong turn and the sun actually came out, I wasn't able to do much photography of the redwood forests at Prairie Creek or Jed Smith state parks. I settled for shooting a few wildflowers such as the Star Flower below. The forest looks gorgeous in sunlight to be sure, but a photograph loses much in the translation due to the huge range of light and dark that even digital sensors can't quite capture.

As I tooled south and took the exit to drive the Avenue of the Giants, one of my first stops was to help out a group of Turkey Vultures. They were working on a raccoon carcass in the road and were in danger of joining it in carcasshood, so I moved the critter well out of harm's way. A dead raccoon is surprisingly heavy. Anyway, I didn't think I'd photograph the redwoods at all, but I got lucky on the way home and hit a cloudy patch along the scenic route and stopped to snap a few frames. All the pix from my trip are in a Flickr folder.

Klamath Rivermouth

2008-06-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

One of my first posts on this blog, which began last July, featured a kind of "salmon solidarity" trip I made along the Klamath River from Iron Gate Dam to the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, I linked the pictures to a web site I have since ditched.

I'm a sucker for time-lapse photos, even when they're just "then and now" diptychs like this one. I like to see the difference in a place over time, or over different times of the year.

The Elk Meadow

2008-06-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Elk Meadow was elk-less when I drove in to Gold Bluffs Beach. It was a different story on the way back out. There were many, many elk to see, especially if you stuck around awhile. Everyone who drove by stopped at least for a little while to watch the elk go about their business of feeding. I ended up spending a lot more time with them than anyone, and saw dozens as they passed by my position along the road, thanks in part to an Allen's hummingbird that had laid claim to a Twinberry bush on the edge of the meadow.

The first time I noticed a Twinberry bush was down by Redwood Creek -- the one that flows out of Muir Woods toward Muir Beach, back in the '90s when I was just getting acquainted with Mt. Tam. I was surprised to see one growing at the Elk Meadow. It was kind of like spotting an old friend. When I noticed the hummer chasing away all interlopers at his bush, I knew I would be unable to leave until I was sure I'd gotten a shot of him feeding at the flowers.

Leaving Gold Bluffs Beach

2008-06-10T17:58:00.001-07:00

It was drizzling as I pulled out of my campsite. In fact, I just barely got my tent packed up before it started coming down pretty heavy. The wet fly went in one bag and the dry tent in another since I'd be needing it again that night.

As I drove out I reached a section of the beach I'd promised myself I'd stop to photograph. I'd forgotten all about it while in Fern Canyon, but now I was interested again. The only problem was the constant drizzle. It was extremely light -- hardly more than a thick fog -- but even so, in five minutes you'd be soaked. I waited it out, though, and ended up having a brief but enjoyable amount of time to spend exploring and photographing.

Gold Bluffs Beach

2008-06-09T17:47:00.001-07:00

I think I mentioned that the campground at Gold Bluffs Beach is practically a stone's throw from Fern Canyon. For $15 it's such a deal. They even throw in free drizzle and browsing elk. The sound of light rain falling on the tent really is kind of soothing, especially if your tent fly is well waterproofed and none of the rain is actually getting into the living quarters.

After leaving Fern Canyon, I didn't go far. I'd noticed some tree snags that looked like promising sites for birds' nest cavities, and indeed a short time spent observing from afar yielded the nest of a Hairy Woodpecker. "Junior," as I called the nestling inside the hole, was making so much noise I half-expected a predator to come along and snatch him out of there. Indeed, although the mother woodpecker flew consistently to the hole with food despite my presence nearby, the daddy woodpecker was quite perturbed. He kept coming by with a beak full of bugs, but seeing me, he'd squawk and flit around without ever bringing the goods to Junior. After mama woodpecker had dropped off bug-load #6 or so, and papa woodpecker was still showing distress at my presence, I figured I should just head on out of there and give the guy some peace. I mean, it's almost Father's Day, right?

Back at camp I spent a leisurely evening reading the latest issue of Harper's magazine in the comfort of my livingroom. Yes, yes. I know. It's a rough life, but someone's got to do it.

More later. The updated Flickr folder is here.

Fern Canyon

2008-06-08T13:30:00.001-07:00

The more I use Lightroom, the more I like it, especially the ability to batch-process images. I'm sure there's lots more to like that I haven't discovered yet, but I'm already a much happier camper than I was even earlier today.

But onward to Fern Canyon. As I told the park ranger at the entrance, I somehow spent two years at Humboldt State University without ever finding out about this place. She told me she discovered it after a year-and-a-half at ole HSU. I waited for her to stick her tongue out and say, "So there," but she was above such things.

Ordinarily I like to have a place all to myself when I'm doing photography. You need the space to let things happen, to let your awareness take things in, to let your soul soak up the atmosphere, to let the creative spark find dry tinder. Despite the fairly frequent arrivals of other visitors, though, I actually did get the place somewhat to myself, and it was enough. There was room for everyone, including someone seeking a little artistic solitude.

I was lucky with the weather, which was dreary and clammy. The overcast sky, as one astute hiker also noticed, created an excellent, even light in the narrow canyon.

I'm only posting two of the photos I shot here on the blog. The rest, including more shots from the trip that I haven't even processed yet, will be found in a Flickr folder.

Getting to Fern Canyon

2008-06-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

I thought my first stop would be Fern Canyon, but I was distracted along the way. Heading north on Hwy. 101, you turn west at Davison Road where there's a large elk viewing area. Unfortunately, the elk might have been viewing me, but I didn't see a single elk. It was about 11 a.m. on Thursday when I arrived, so I took my time driving the dirt road out to my destination, stopping to photograph the wildflower above and the primeval woods below.

Out at the coast I paid the $15 camping fee at the ranger kiosk and found an excellent campsite at Gold Bluffs Beach. I started to hike with my camera backpack toward Fern Canyon when I realized the trail was actually a road. So I turned around and drove all the way to within one-tenth of a mile of Fern Canyon. I still managed to find a distraction on even that short jaunt -- the tree below with the ferns growing in it. The tree made me think of Richard Preston's book, The Wild Trees, in which he writes about the diversity of the largely unexplored redwood forest canopy ecosystem.

Learning Curves

2008-06-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Between the new computer and new software, I'm lucky to be able to do anything anymore. Just getting this picture out of Lightroom and onto the web took quite a bit longer than waiting for the wind to stop blowing so I could make the exposure.

Having just been in redwood country this morning -- Humboldt and Del Norte counties -- I still have redwood sorrel on my mind. As I checked out some of the forests I was struck by the large carpets of delicate sorrel with just a few small trails of reddish-brown duff webbing through them. The main visitor areas near the roads would be devoid of sorrel altogether, but wherever people didn't tread were carpets of green.

Metson Lake, Golden Gate Park

2008-06-04T18:38:00.001-07:00

Even in the city, if you want to find wildlife, first find water. I was hanging around Golden Gate Park's Metson Lake with a friend after we'd been led on a wild hawk's nest chase by our wives. There was no hawk's nest, so we ambled around a bit before settling on a bench by a nice lake with a fair amount of good habitat for critters.

At one point I spotted a small bird that zoomed onto the far side of a nearby tree. Even before I could walk over to check it out, it zoomed away into the distance. I staked out the area anyway and was soon rewarded with another incoming zoomer. Pygmy Nuthatches. They had a nest in the tree.

I set up my camera and whipped out the trusty SB-600 flash and Better Beamer, and suddenly both nuthatch parents were in the spindly branches of another nearby tree, chirping their brains out. The chirping seemed to be a very insistent alarm, but they weren't facing my direction. I looked deeper into the tangle of branches and saw, on the other side of the crown, a young and spritely Red-Shouldered Hawk. I quickly (too-quickly) moved into position and promptly scared it off. Fortunately, the nuthatches were more obligated to stick around to feed their young chicks.

A couple other critters I photographed around the lake were the Cardinal Meadowhawk and Allen's Hummingbird below.

Not A Wilson's Warbler

2008-06-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'd have posted these pix I shot last weekend sooner, but I've been busy trying to sort things out with my new computer. A Dell service rep in India was able to log onto my computer with me, and we solved my two problems in a mere 2-1/2 hours. The first problem took about three minutes. The second involved getting the music on my iPod into iTunes, and even the expert in India learned something by the ordeal.

Anyway, I hadn't even planned to go out and shoot on Sunday morning, but when I saw that the sun had come out I couldn't resist. I was eager to get over to Glen Park again, having been wowed recently by this San Francisco park I'd never been to before. There was lots of bird life, and I even had a small slice of the place to myself for a little while. That's when I was able to fire off a few frames of the Wilson's Warbler, a very cool-looking little bird that my slightly shaky picture does not do justice to.

Soon enough, though, the dog walkers were upon me. The first ones grilled me on why I do photography, with questions like what do I do with the pictures if I don't sell them. You never think of the right response at the time, but I might have asked what use are their dogs if they aren't selling them. You enjoy your dogs, and I enjoy my pictures. I'll bet they'd even enjoy a picture of their dogs.

Anyway, the Wilson's warber got away, but I chose not to overlook the more obvious denizens, an American Robin and a Dark-Eyed Junco.

Back to the Bank Swallows

2008-06-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

You can't see what's going on in those holes, but you know there's a nest in there, and that in that nest are cute little baby bank swallows, and that those cute little baby bank swallows are being fed by their harried parents. So where does all the poop go?

Lucky for all concerned, bank swallows have a kind of natural diaper service. The babies produce something called a "fecal sac" which the parents grip in their beaks and dump out on the beach. That's something you might want to remember if you're observing the swallows and you suddenly feel something kind of weird fall down the back of your shirt.

Bobcat Surprise

2008-05-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Immediately after firing off the frame that caught this picture, the bobcat took off. At the time, the phrase "like a greased bat out of hell" came to mind.

It's not every day you get the pleasure of sneaking up on a bobcat.

I had been poking around the edge of the woods on Mt. Tam when I heard a large animal moving in the dry redwood duff on the other side of some thick brush. I carefully ducked for cover and couldn't believe my luck when I saw the bobcat about twenty feet away from me. He didn't see me and was somewhat intent on traveling out into the open chaparral. I took off my shoes and followed along in my socks, hoping to get close enough to get a picture.

Moving silently behind the bobcat presented one main problem. The cat wouldn't turn to look at me, and I didn't want to settle for a picture of its hind end. I ended up having to call out to it by making the same noise I use to call any cat. Sorry, but I don't know how to spell that sound. Anyway, the cat turned to look, I snapped the picture -- and phoom! he was gone.

Wide Open Spaces

2008-05-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Immediately upon leaving one of my old jobs as a newspaper reporter and photographer (I worked for a couple of small daily papers where it's common to do both tasks), I drove east over Sonora Pass to visit Mono Lake. Although I'd always loved the photography side of my job, there was a special feeling I got while shooting among the tufa formations and gulls, along the wide-open lakeshore buzzing with alkali flies, surrounded by desert scrub and volcanic cinder cones, and nary a human soul in sight. I guess I'd describe the feeling as a sense of coming home. I felt I was exactly where I ought to be, doing exactly what I ought to be doing.

Being outside stalking nature with a camera was -- and remains -- one of the greatest sources of well-being I know. Ironically, I was on my way to spend the summer living with a friend and his fiance in New York City's East Village, and all these years later I still make my living in the city and find re-creation out beyond it.

Every now and then, though, I like to poke around the city in the company of a friend who actually prefers to photograph in the urban jungle. Although I live in the city, I'm still kind of a fish out of water when it comes to finding inspiration in the urban scene. Part of the reason I keep at it is the sense I have that looking for inspiration here will actually help my nature photography. Keeping in touch with inspiration is like tapping into the Fountain of Youth. It's the only way to keep from getting stale or bogged down in cliches. I guess my hope is that by challenging myself to find inspiration in the city once in a while, I'll have a deeper experience of nature's landscapes too.

In the diptych below you see a trace of our innate human desire for the wide open spaces even within the city. On the left is the Ferry Building during the weekend farmer's market where the sense of space comes from a high ceiling naturally lit with skylights. On the right is the atrium in the Hyatt Regency Hotel where one person has found her own distinctly civilized patch of open space in the heart of San Francisco.

Tiburon Mariposa Lily

2008-05-23T17:06:00.001-07:00

[This is the last post in the series that begins below with "Nemesis Bird."]

I covered a large swath of Ring Mountain this morning on a quest for this rare wildflower and only found it moments before I'd have burst into a weeping nervous breakdown for failing yet again. I'd learned through an email group that the flower was in bloom and I was determined not to go home until I found it, but by now my excellent morning light and calm atmosphere were history.

Although I did not have good directions for finding the flower, I did have one indispensable clue. The flowers were growing at a wooden "trail" sign.

It was actually the Ithuriel's Spear that tipped me off to the sign. Although I saw a wooden post that could have been a sign, it was canted at an angle that made it impossible to read, even with binoculars. I had been roaming the mountain for about 3-1/2 hours by this time, and the two bites of overripe banana and glass of orange juice I'd had for breakfast were no longer providing sustenance. I was feeling a little peckish, but I figured that even if the sign was yet another dead-end dud, I'd at least get to check out the pretty purple wildflower growing out of a rock.

When I crossed a ravine and reached the sign, I felt a little chill of ecstasy on the back of my neck. "Trail", it said. And then I saw one of the flowers, and then another and another. The little mariposa lilies were nicely camouflaged in the dry, brown grass and seemed as light and papery as onion skin.

The sun was high and harsh and the wind was up, but photography was still possible, if somewhat challenging. This is precisely the kind of situation where having the company of a non-photographer hiking partner requires the promise of much chocolate and/or beer for putting up with what comes next. (My horde of beer and chocolate is safe since I was alone.) You don't want to feel rushed. You just spent nearly four hours looking for this opportunity, and now you want to savor it. And savor it I did.

Ring Mountain, Tiburon

2008-05-23T16:42:00.001-07:00

It's always nice to visit Ring Mountain, and I like to get there around sunrise. Although the locals use Ring Mountain for jogging, dog-walking and so on, it's also a pretty decent natural area considering it's bordered on all sides by housing developments and offers scenic vistas of the Richmond Bridge and San Quentin State Prison.

My wife was the first person who took me up there to see the "rings" -- Native American petroglyphs -- for which the mountain is named. Its other claim to fame is that it hosts a rare and unusual-looking wildflower that grows nowhere else on earth. As I confessed to a gentleman hiking up the mountain as I was heading down late this morning, I have searched in vain for the Tiburon Mariposa Lily in the past. I once thought I'd found the motherlode only to discover, red-faced, that I'd found the related but very common Oakland Star Tulip.

Ithuriel's Spear

2008-05-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

I was seeing a lot of this guy all morning and liked the look of its purple blossoms. Only problem is, they usually grow down on the ground among tall stalks of dry grass. You can't take a picture of them without getting a lot of chaff in the bargain. But as I was out wandering around this morning I spotted this lone specimen growing out of a crack in a serpentine boulder and standing out like a flag.