A Few Photos from this Winter.

The first real snow of the 2012-2013 winter season in Northeast Wisconsin brought snow that stuck to everything.   It was really unusual in that the snow stayed stuck for weeks because of cold weather that immediate followed the snow fall.

Moody Morning Lake Winnebago Panoramic

Willow

Snowy Marsh

Snowy Boathouse Wall

Odds and Ends #2

Coontail Growth Time Lapse

Fishy Foo,  Photos of sunfish (centrachids) from my aquarium.

Young Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)

Young green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)

Head on view of a bluegill

Odds and Ends #1

# 1 Signs

Much of the current lake bottom of Butte des Mort, Winneconne, and Poygan was once marsh which was owned
by farmers and hunting clubs, so the lake bottom is the property of some individuals.  There is practically nothing
you can do with the property other than not have duck hunters place blinds on it.  

I find it pathetic that those who benefit the most from public land are those who abuse it the most.  However, it is
 certainly the minority of hunters that blast signs.  This sign shows a partnership between Pheasants Forever and the
DNR to clean up the area, and what better way is there to show your appreciation that to turn the sign into trash.

Waiting for the Eastern Glow

Predawn Glow

It has been far too long since I’ve watched the sun rise, or set.  Today I took the time to watch the sun come up over Poygan Marsh.

Myth and Magic

Every now and then nature takes my breath away, burns an image in my mind and leaves me standing with very few words in my vocabulary worthy of the moment.  I had many such moments growing up in the countryside of Waupaca County.  We were up on a hill and could see the woods up close to the north and five miles of farmland and forests to the south.  After I moved out, I still visited often.  One weekend I watched a large cloud building in the afternoon.  Now most clouds move on, but this one stayed.  I can’t remember how long, perhaps five hours.  It started before dinner, and billowed like a giant smokestack until after dark.  When darkness came, the cloud that was already a mysterious life form over the landscape revealed itself as a tortured entity.  It began to glow inside with steady flashes of lightning, boiling light that occasionally lashed out at the ground beneath, while the stars minded their own business above.  I’ve never seen anything like this since and I hope I never do, because some things should only be experienced once, so they can turn to myth and magic. 



Thunderstorm Boils - Purchase Photo

Zoomed In -Purchase Photo

No going back.



Fall Colors By Moonlight



I started this project in the winter, which can be a difficult time to come up with stunning landscape photos in flat marshes made more featureless with snow.  To get the project going on this blog and Flickr I searched through my archive of slides and digital photos.  One thing I realized was that there were many photos that I have taken over the years that I could not possibly retake in different light, or season.  Why?  Development has altered the landscape.  A house pops up here and there.  Some of the night photos I once took could no longer be done because of the spread of light pollution.  Although it seems I notice a new wrinkle every time I smile in the mirror, these photos are not old.  Most go back only ten to fifteen years.  I haven’t returned to these areas to photograph because sometimes it’s too aggravating or sad.



Slough Creek Sunrise



“Sunrise at Slough Creek” could not be taken again.  The barn is gone.  The big red barns are out dated for the modern farm, expensive to maintain and many are located at farms that are no longer operational.  So they fall much like the hay they used to store did to the sickle bar.  Behind where the barn used to be, two-lane Hwy 110 has been replaced by four lanes of Hwy 45 and 2 lanes of County Hwy S.  Highway 41 will soon loom even larger as construction of the 41/45 interchange continues.  The six lanes barely visible in the far horizon in 1998 will have turned into 12 in 2013.



Alfalfa No More



In the fields I used to frequent as a child there seems to have been some terrible mistake in crop rotation of corn, alfalfa, and soybeans.  Some crazy farmers have planted plastic beige and grey houses.  The first question every architect must ask a future home owner is what shade of beige or gray would you like your house to be.  No offense to those in beige houses--someone dropped my house and two dozen others on my street (most of them white and I’m sure made of old-growth white pine) in a farmer’s field a hundred years ago.  Same stuff different century.

Although not in one of our wetlands, this photo of a church is one of my favorites.  I’m about as religious as a moss covered rock, but I love the simple architecture of old rural churches.  This one sits all alone at the top of a hill.  I like the photo partially because it was taken in a -30 degree wind chill.  I guess I feel I earned it.  The spot where I took this photo is now home to an electrical substation.  I don’t think even a digital camera can photograph through a transformer. 

Development continues at a rapid pace.  When I surveyed plants and shorelines for the DNR in 2008 one marsh and two shorelines were destroyed within three months of my first visit.  So one of the things I’m trying to do with this project is to document changes in the landscape, natural and manmade.  When time and conditions allow I am using the GPS to geotag my photographs and get a compass heading.  Perhaps someone will come along years from now and wonder what’s changed, and be able to duplicate my photos.  Conservationists often use air photos to track changes in the landscape, but you can’t feel textures of hummocks dotting a sedge meadow from a satellite photo.  You can’t lament the loss of that meadow seen as a green spec from space that in a few years might break off as a floating mat and disintegrated in Lake Winnebago.  The same goes for the alfalfa field on a quiet foggy morning, or the wind playing with cattails in October.  

Country Church

For All You Camera and Photo Buffs

I've gone through most of the photos on Flickr from my archives and added camera, lens and film data if I can remember it.  For my old 35mm slides I'd have to tear through the cardboard or plastic to confirm what type of film I used, so I won't do that.  However it is safe to say they are probably all shot on Fuji Velvia 50 (RVP) transparency film.  I shot hundreds of rolls of it because of its sharpness and color saturation.  They still make it.  I shot mostly with Nikon film cameras in the past; N50, N6006, N80 and a variety of Nikon, Sigma and Tamron lenses.  I will make an effort to add the technical data from future photos.  Photos taken with digital cameras have all that encoded in the files and are available by clicking on the name of the camera in the upper right.  For scanning I'm primarily using a Epson V750 with very good results.