Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

After talking about macro photography at Grand Father Mountain last weekend, I’ve been all the more keen on getting out into the field and actively shooting the dragonflies and other insect subjects that are now out in force.

So on Friday and again today (Monday) I headed out to the Allegan forest, looking for dragonflies and other interesting subjects.

Things started out slow on Friday. We’ve been on a weather roller coaster these last several days – when we returned from North Carolina it was dark, dank, and cold. That was on Tuesday – by Thursday temps soared into the mid 90’s, but then plummeted in thunderstorms and clouds that night.  

When I headed out Friday morning the skies were still cloudy and overcast. I had woken up at 3:30 am that morning, and checked the weather channel – which reported a temperature of 75 with high humidity. As I drove northwest to Allegan, I passed through a front and the weather underwent a major change – temps dropping to the low 60’s in the span of a few minutes. The hazy humid over cast skies changed to clear blue, with high clouds and strong winds.

It apparently had rained – really rained – just before I got there. The trees were dripping wet and the sandy soil, which usually passes rain water very quickly, was damp with a few lingering puddles.I hit a few favorite places – the coreopsis field off 46th street was in full bloom, looking as glorious as ever, but devoid of butterflies and dragonflies.

 

As a result I headed down 126th street towards Swan Creek. I drove by the recently clear cut forest and headed down a two track to an area where dragonflies, orioles, and other great subjects can usually be found. It’s an unusual place – you take the two track back a ways into the woods and come upon a circle up on a small hill. Guys come here and rip around, doing doughnuts in the sandy soil. As a result the circle has a pretty deep trench worn in it, and it looks a like some sort of UFO landing zone.

Nonetheless, the dragonflies and other insects were out in force here. As an interesting side note, the side of the sandy trench collapsed in the rain, revealing a stash of old stubby necked beer bottles (unfortunately empty – though one still had a rusted cap on it.)

So who came out here 25 years ago and buried their beer bottles? Well, you never know.

After visiting the go round I made my way down to Swan Creek, which was positively swarming with dragonflies. I also brought the pinhole camera, and took a d few landscape shots while there.

Today brought more temperate and mild weather. I let early and decided to take a new route into the Allegan Forest. After all – it’s 80 square miles (45,000 acres) and I keep visitng the same old places. So I just picked a random two track and headed into the woods a ways, parked when the road ended, and was rewarded with a gorgeous valley full of coreopsis and other wildflowers. I followed a path through a maze of honeysuckle bushes, and in and out of some wooded areas. All very rich areas for photographing insects – lots of dragonflies, and a few large butterflies.

After a few hours in this area I headed back to some familiar places. First was the old farm stead, probably my favorite place in the whole forest. Here again was an abundance of dragonflies, and I also found a maing pair of bee killers – a somewhat rare find.

The marsh at the far end of this clearing (the overall clearing is probably 100 to 150 acres) is a marsh that had been drying these last few years. Last year I walked all through the marsh – just one small mucky puddle of wetland, only about 10 x 20 feet in size, remained. This year there is at least 5 acres of full blown, see the water, wetland. The bull frogs were poinging and the sky was thick with dragonflies, I managed to get a nice shot of a blue dasher, but most of the dragons stayed out over the water.  

From there I wound up back at the coreopsis field, where I started on Friday. By this time the afternoon breezes were picking up, making it harder to get sharp shows as the subjects bounced around. I spent some time with a very cooperative 12 Spotted Skimmer, trying to get a decent shot of the dragonfly with the yellow coreopsis flowers in the background. Well, the results were so-so.

Overall, these were a couple of good days of shooting. I have other work to do now, and probably won’t be back into the woods till the end of the week. But these few sweet weeks of summer make for great days of photography.

More photos from these two trips:

Twelve Spotted Skimmers:

Exuberance is a great thing, but sometimes it leads you to do nutty things.

Until a few days ago I was quite exuberant about seeing periodic cicadas here in Michigan. The emergence of these insects got a lot of press coverage, and it looked like southwest Michigan was in for a rare treat. I had seen the brood XII emergence in Washington DC a few years ago, and was hoping for something similar here.

No such luck. As it turns out, the periodic cicadas apparently aren’t to be found here in Michigan. My trip to the Allegan Forest a couple of weeks ago was exceptionally mis guided, since even the erroneous reports of the cicadas didn’t show them that far north. Well, I based my decisions on what I read in the newspapers – no wonder I missed the mark….

Yesterday, fresh back from North Carolina, I was planning to head out to the Dowagiac Woods, Warren Woods, Russ Forest, and other areas in SW Michigan – Cass and Berrien Counties – in hopes of finding some of these insects. But after reading Mark O’Brien’s account of his search in the same areas in his Six Legged Wonders blog. Well, if one of the state’s leading entomologists can’t find them there, they probably aren’t around to be found.

And yesterday was a cold, clammy, cloudy, and crappy day anyhow. Nonetheless, by mid afternoon I shook off the lethargy the comes from two days of non-stop driving, and wandered over to the McLInden Trails to see if any dragonflies were out.

I was treated to a real abundance of early summer dragonflies! They were out in force and despite the cool temperatures were pretty active. As often found on cloudy and cool days, they tended to perch down low to the ground, which made getting clean shots a bit difficult. But I’m happy with the shot of the Plains Clubtail featured here.

Aside from some interesting dragonflies, another treat of the day was a Mantidfly – which looks like a cross between a Mantis and a Wasp, but is actually a member of the Neuroptera order which includes lacewings and ant lions. Fascinating insect and while not a rare find, certainly a new find for me.

Technically, it is interesting to see how different lighting situations require adjustment. In bright full sun I happy click along with the flash unit set to zero compensation. But in the low light situations like yesterday (ambient light readings at ISO 400, f16 resulted in shutter speeds of 1/20th to 1/45th of a second – 3 to 4 stops less than what you’d expect in full sunlight) I found that I had to dial in a good deal of flash compensation. The clubtail was shot at -2 stops, and most other shots were at -1.5 or -2.0 stops flash compensation. Just shows that you have to be flexible, check exposures, and adapt to the situation as you shoot.

More photos:

Mantidfly: 

First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is…

Back from Grandfather Mountain. Michigan gives us a cold reception, with ‘see your breath’ temperatures and misty drizzly rain.

The Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography weekend was a great event. This was my first visit to the mountain, and I presented on macro photography techniques. I spent a lot of time tweaking, re-tweaking, and revising my presentation, and so spent a lot less time socializing and shooting. In the end the presentation seemed to go over fairly well, so I’m glad I spent that extra effort to get it just right.

The highlight of the weekend was meeting many of the folks from the Pentax Discussions Mailing List, the ultimate online forum for Pentax and K Mount related topics (and most everything else under the sun.) It’s great to put a face with the names of people you’ve ‘talked’ with, in some cases for years.

The Nature Photography weekend itself was an excellent event. Don Nelson and his Team kept things running like clockwork. Grandfather Mountain itself is a majestic location and incredibly rich environment for nature photography.

Tony Sweet made an excellent presentation showcasing his new work and giving a hint at the vision that drives his photography. Tony’s work is as new and fresh as it comes – a real inspiration to get out of the box and try new things. The most memorable quote from the weekend came from his presentation – something like “I went there with the intent of not take one ‘regular’ photo…” Great stuff.

Don McGowan presented on interpretive landscape shots, and treated the audience to many classic images. Gregory Georges brought everyone up to speed on the latest in Photoshop, Lightroom, and other tools, and Dick Ginkowski gave an excellent overview on how photographers can travel smart. Dick presented a slide show of outstanding images taken from just about every corner of the continent – demonstrating that his travel tips are based on his experience on the ground (and in the air.)

It all went way too fast and before I knew it Pam and I were on the road working our way north. We made it to Monroe, OH on Sunday, and then back to Kalamazoo late Monday.

I’m a perfectionist and probably spent too much time hunched over the laptop, working on the presentation. I had left with high hopes of shooting tons of photos on the mountain, but at the end of the day Pam and I only managed to get out on a couple of hikes. I took a lot of alternative gear – the Vivitar panoramic toy camera, the Holga, and the Kinoflex Pinhole – all of whice saw virtually no use. Well, maybe next year…

Pam and I have been on the road these last couple of days, working our way down to the northwest corner of North Carolina, for the Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography workshop. I’ll be presenting on field techniques for macro photography, and am looking forward to meeting in person some of the folks from the Pentax Discussions Mail List.

I was in North Carolina last year, really just by happenstance. Then I stomped around in the DuPont forest, shot a lot of waterfalls, and also explored the Blue Ridge Parkway. The scenery is a far cry from the Midwestern woods I usually shoot, but it’s something to awaken my slack and sleeping senses.

After a few nights in Knoxville we made it to Grandfather Mountain today – a much longer drive than I anticipated. Aside from some a few minor puzzlers presented by the MapQuest directions (“Does 19E North really run due South?”) things went smoothly. After checking into our lodgings – the Smoke Tree Lodge, a most excellent accommodation – we found the mountain without event.

There we had a chance to make some acquaintances and learn about the planned events for the next couple of days. After that it was up to the top of the mountain, and I promptly picked up shooting where I left off last year – digital infrared landscapes of the smokey mountains.

Well, there really was no choice choice - the haze coving the mountains and the filtered but direct June sun, just screamed for the IR treatment.

That of course meant shooting with the *ist-D (as noted in earlier posts – the K10D IR filters really do block most of the IR light.) The great advantage this year was having a true wide angle lens (I used the DA 18-55, since my Hoya RM 90 IR filter is too small for the DA 16-45.) Having a tripod was also real handy – no more resting the camera on a crumpled hat on fence or sign post, like last year.

I only shot 25 exposures – really just a handful of framed up shots (it pays to bracket with those digital IR shots). Then we left the mountain, took a wrong turn, and found ourselves back at the Smoketree some time later.

Fiddling with the images in Photoshop on the laptop has been interesting. Aspirin popping interesting, and ultimately I’m not sure what the heck they look like – this monitor makes me marvel at the heretofore unseen details of some of my older shots, and cringing and some of the newer shots that seem way out of synch.

Well, calibration will be a home project. Don’t know if there will be any other updates from the road, but certainly something once I’m back home.

Yesterday brought a fine and glorious late spring afternoon – with sunny skies and temperatures in the mid 80’s. It was memorial day, and though I was tied up getting ready for a trip, I slipped away from travel preparations for a few hours to visit the McLIndon Trails – a site that I have concluded in the premier local hotspot for dragonflies.

It must be the grassy fields- this one time farm was converted to an amphibious vehicle proving grounds by the Ingersoll-Rand Corporation in WWII. It is now a community park and well field – with grassy fields (no native prairie here) and abundant ponds, wetlands, and the larger adjacent Campbell Lake.

As with last summer, the McLindon trails seems to be ramping up for more interesting dragonfly shots. This trip – the third for me of the season, produced some adequate results, but nothing outstanding. As with snow crystals or other seasonal work – it takes time to get back into the goose and in practive for shooting another season of insect shots. But the Dot Tailed White Face is a less than common find, and the Calico Meadowhawk is one of  the first of the perching dragons – like the Pennants, Meadohaws, and Dashers - of the season. Hopefully, they are signs of more good subjects to come.

The couple hours spend at McLIndon were rewarding in other ways as well. While it did not produce photographs, I observed several darners dancing up and down in flight – the seady up and down, curved swoop and climb – really made me understand the origins of the Darner moniker.

And the real surprise of the day – a Monarch butterfly ! Flying purposefully through the park. I don’t recall seeing one so early in the season, and I can only hope this is a sign of more monarchs to come.

 Spangled Skimmer:

In late May the insect photography season gets back into gear, and warm weather brings out the first opportunities for serious insect photography. I set aside most of the day Friday for what I hoped would be one of the first serious insect photography sessions of the summer. Unfortunately, the warm and dry weather of the prior week gave way as a cold front came through, an Thursday night brought a steady rain that continued into the next morning, along with markedly cooler temperatures.

The rain let up as I neared the Allegan forest, and as I headed out into the fields the skies were clearing.

My goal was to find and photograph some of the 17 year cicada that are set to emerge this summer. I had seen the cicada brook in Washington DC a few years ago, and hoped to see a similar show here in Michigan this summer.

I did not have any luck with the cicadas – perhaps they have not yet emerged, though in some fields there was a continuous drone of cricket like chirping that may have been the cicadas. Hopefully the next few weeks will bring a chance to actually see these insects. The fairly cool temperatures and gusty breezes made the day less productive than I hoped. There were lots of damselflies along swan creek, and I spotted one completely unknown insect flitting along the edge of the creek (which is actually a pretty wide lake at that point.) It was flying though a large patch of poison ivy, but I till managed to get a few shots of it (and thankfully avoided exposure to the poison ivy!)

 

The best shots of the day cam from along Swan Creek. Afterwards I visited several areas near the Kalamazoo River, and then back to the favorite field off 48th street. A Plains Clubtail was a new find for me, but aside from it there were few other active insects – though the spicebush and tiger swallowtails are just starting to emerge, and I spotted my first mature male white tail and mature 12 spotteed skimmers of the year.

The lupine was flourishing and seemed to be everywhere in the woods – which should make for a good brood of Karner Blues. The wild strawberries were also in bloom, and feral irises poke up at some locations. In a few weeks the coreopsis should be out in force, and the insects should be more abundant.

At last the winter seems to be truly behind us (here in the last week of May.) The waters in the local streams and ponds have finally warmed to the point were dragonflies and damselflies are out in force again, even though the trees are still not quite at the point of having their full foliage, and the plants of the field are sill stunted and short.

No matter – the spring wildflowers have come and gone, and now it’s time to move onto shooting insects. From my perspective, it’s that simple.

The K10D s one new thing this year. Pentax seems to release their new cameras in the last fall – just in time for holiday shoppers but too late for insect photographers (at least in the northern part of the northern hemisphere.) So using the K10D for insect shots is a bit of a new thing this season.

Well – just a _bit_ of a new thing. The camera is very much like my old mainstay, the *ist-d, in terms of fit and feel. Acclimating to it for insect photography has been a complete non-event – though I really appreciate the greatly enhance speed and responsiveness of the new camera. Plus, the 10 megapixel sensor does seem to squeeze out more detail in the insect close-ups.

I visited the McLInden Trails both Friday and Saturday. It’s sort of my refuge of last resort – when I have little time available but want to get out, the McLInden Trails or the Kalamazoo Nature Center are the two places I head to. They are both close and offer quick access to natural areas, where it’s possible to get some good shots.

At McLindon the dragonflies are still fairly scarce _ I managed to get one shot of a ground hugging species that I have yet to identify. Several immature common whitetails were also in the park.

The damselflies were out in greater force, and of course the ever present American Coppers were jealously guarding their territories.

Between the two trips, and maybe four hours of shooting, I only managed to get four presentable shots. Nice shots, but nothing great. But hopefully a harbinger of a good insect photography season yet to come.

As a photographer, I often go out and seek photographs. When I do this I usually have an idea of what I want in mind, and the surprise comes in how the pre-determined theme is ultimately realized.

It’s great when something unexpected creeps into the picture. And it’s even better when something completely unexpected appears, at a completely unexpected time and place.

For me, this usually happens around the house. The old familiar environment still harbors a wealth of surprises, and new things pop un in places and times least expected. That’s why I added the “Around the House” category to the blog here – just a chance to share the expected and sometimes surprising image that trips through the most familiar of places.

Today’s image is a simple one - a small jigsaw puzzle, a wand with a plastic carnation on it, and golden light from a late burning lamp.

I have nothing to say about the photo, other than it was a surprise.