landscape – A Thousand Acres of Silphiums

Autumn Photography in the Shawnee – 2022

The following images were taken during the WGNSS Nature Photography Group’s trip to Garden of the Gods (GOTG) and other locations this past April. This group is currently being led by Miguel Acosta. If you are interested in joining us for one of the group’s monthly outings, please see details at http://www.WGNSS.org!

Many thanks to the photographers we met on the trail at Bell Smith Springs Wilderness who tipped us off to a spectacular mirror lake in the Shawnee. Miguel and I stopped at this location before heading back to St. Louis. The peak fall colors were obviously passed but this place screams potential and I hope to get there again next year. We had really nice conditions for this type of photography, with cloudy skies and winds which weren’t too bad. We could have found a few more compositions but the rains came and the winds got worse so we called it a day.

A different composition from the same scene as above.

The waters here were not as calm as to be desired for our purposes, but using polarizer and neutral density filters allowed us to get long shutter speeds that helped to lessen the effects of any wind-blown ripples on the water’s surface. All images in this post from this location were taken with shutter speeds between 20 and 30 seconds.

In the photo above the wind was starting to move pretty quickly across the wider portion of the lake. Using a shutter speed of 30 seconds allows the ripples created to appear with a more painterly appearance.

During this weekend trip, some of us enjoyed the camping experience while others chickened out and stayed at hotels or cabins. Similarly, some of us stayed late at GOTG to do a little astrophotography. Well, I should say that I stayed late. 😉 After my friends nabbed a couple of quick Milky Way images, they headed back to their air conditioned rooms and I was left by myself to work on the photo seen above. This photo was made by combining 213 30-second images in the computer to build the star trails with the iconic “monkey face” and other rock formations that GOTG is known for in the foreground.

This was a great weekend of friends, photography, hiking and camping.

Big Spring Country – Autumn 2022

landscape, Ozark Grist Mills

A few pics from a trip Sarah and I took in late October to see some of the big springs in southern Missouri.

The large effluence boil of the aptly named, Big Spring.

A bit of a different angle, this shows the water shooting down the effluent stream just past the primary boil, on its way to the Current River.

Nearly a two-hour drive west of Big Spring is Hodgson Spring and Mill. Always one of my favorites of the many spectacular Missouri springs.

Post Oak (Quercus stellata) at Victoria Glades C.A.

landscape

I can’t help but to marvel at this grand post oak every time I visit Victoria Glades in Jefferson County, MO. I’m always hoping to be there in good light and skies to take a worthy photograph of it. On a morning of a WGNSS Nature Photo Group field trip, I arrived a little early with this in mind. Not an interesting sky, but I used the bright sun to my advantage to create a starburst.

Baptisia sphaerocarpa (Yellow Wild Indigo)

landscape, native plants

This nice patch of Baptisia sphaerocarpa was found back in May of 2021 at Rick Evans Grandview Prairie WMA in Hempstead Co., AR. Although this species is found in a few of our southwestern prairies, most consider these to be introductions and not a native plant of Missouri.

*Baptisia* *sphaerocarpa* (Yellow Wild Indigo)

Blanchard Springs

landscape

Casey introduced me to this location early in the spring. This is Blanchard Springs in Stone County, Arkansas. With an average daily flow rate of ~10 millon gallons per day, it doesn’t fall near the top ten of the fantastic and popular springs found in southern Missouri. However, this amount of water finding its way through a limestone rock face and plunging ten feet or more makes this a spectacular spring indeed!

Blanchard springs is a fun and easy spring to visit in north-central Arkansas.

Chasing Waterfalls in the Shawnee

landscape, Uncategorized

Following a rainy period this spring, Casey and I visited a few spots in the Shawnee of southern Illinois. Some of these spots are well known, but can be difficult to visit. Another location is not nearly as well known, but easier to get to. The Shawnee really does canyons, large rocks and water features well. This is but a small sample of what can be found there.

Frosty St. Francois Mountains

landscape

A bluff face covered in ice along the the Little St. Francis

A few images from our recent deep freeze. Casey and I visited the St. Francois Mountains and collected some images along the Little St. Francis River and Little Rock Creek.

Nice shelf ice formed along the river. Hip boots and metal cleats, along with thinking about where you step, are all recommended.

Looking upstream, the ice-shrouded bluffs (~125 feet tall) can be seen through the trees.

A close up look at the frosted bluff face of this rugged river bed.

Finally, a small, ice-crowned shut-in along Little Rock Creek. More interesting shut-ins are found further upstream but those will have to wait for another day.

-OZB

Meeting new shut-ins in the St. Francois Mountains

landscape, Uncategorized

A sharp drop of approximately 8 feet (to pool’s surface) ends one of the nicest series of shut-ins – located on private land in Madison and Iron Counties (location 1).

This year I was fortunate to be introduced to two new-for-me shut-ins in the southern region of the St. Francois Mountains. Both of these locations are currently on private land and with assistance from a couple of friends, it was quite a thrill to be able to visit and photograph these stunning geologic features.

We would of have liked to have more flowing water on our couple of visits to these shut-ins (loc. 1), however, these creeks are both partially spring-fed so there is always at least some flow.

What surprised me most about both of these locations was that they were not covered in Beveridge’s “Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri”. I am not sure if this was because he did not know of them or because he chose not to feature them for some reason. I sure hope it was the later.

This phot was taken at the same location as the previous image, but in the autumn.

Definitely wild country. We pushed through witch hazel and other streamside brush, taking deliberate steps over slick-as-ice rocks to find the next small section of cascades.

The tile-red rhyolite porphyry that makes up the majority of this streambed matches well against the warm tones of autumn foliage.

My recent delves into geology and astronomy have really been eye-opening, tying together everything else I know of natural history into place. There is so much more for me to learn, with Geology I know almost nothing, but it has been such an aid for me in remembering that most of what everyone worries over is so insignificant compared to the real that is right under our noses.

Lava-gas bubbles (lithophysae), thought to be formed by expanding gases prior to solidification into rock, can be seen on this rhyolite protrusion.

Talk about your tile-red rhyolite porphyry!

Don’t confuse this with lava flows from Kīlauea. This is ancient igneous rock that solidified approximately 1.5 billion years ago.

This creek bed at location 2 is located in Iron County. Here, the rock would be considered more of a purple porphyry and is nicely capped by royal fern (*Osmunda regalis*).

Found near the creek at location 2 was this splendid Lobelia cardinalis (cardinal flower) growing against a bed of Conoclinium coelestinum (blue mistflower). A nice October find.

This is all I have to share from these two locations for now. I am looking forward to visiting again with hopefully more water flow and at different season. Thanks for visiting.

-OZB

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) Comet

astrophotography, landscape

The NEOWISE Comet, whose actual name is C/2020 F3, was a pleasant surprise for the astronomical community who await such events as a newly discovered comet. First discovered in late March, the comet grew steadily brighter, eventually becoming the brightest comet to be seen in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. According to the experts, this comet had an orbital period of about 4,400 years prior to making its latest trip through the inner solar system. It will now be another 6,700 years before beings on earth will be able to see it again.

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) Comet image taken at 200 mm focal length

I have long had a very strong interest in astronomy and astrophotography and the current pandemic has allowed me to do quite a bit of studying on both topics. Hopefully soon I can get the practice in this area that I desperately need. Although it has some issues, I was relatively pleased at capturing the closeup of the comet pictured above.

Although I had a star-tracking mount that would have been perfect for this situation, I had not yet used it so I did not make this the first time. This image was “untracked” using a full-frame camera and a 200 mm lens. It is comprised of 20 “light” images (the actual photos of the comet) taken at 3.2 seconds per exposure. The aperture was f/2.8 and the ISO/gain was 6400. I combined these images with 10 “dark” frames for noise reduction purposes.

The processing here could be better and I might give it another try sometime. But, both tails of the comet are visible and I think the background stars came out alright as well.

After awhile the comet began to dive towards the horizon with the remnant glow from twilight. I happened to show up at Lee’s Bluff on the same night as accomplished Missouri nightscape photographer, Dan Zarlenga, and so we both turned our tripods around to the south and found this lovely scene. Here, the Milky Way has recently risen above a nice foreground of trees. Again, I wish I would have been a bit more prepared with a plan, but I guess this isn’t too bad.

-OZB

Playing Around with Infrared

landscape

I have had some opportunity lately to try for infrared landscapes with my converted Canon 5D mkii. There is still so much I want to try with this, but between summer laziness and a lack of time and opportunity, I get by with what I can. The image above was taken in an Illinois woodland.

I found this white oak in the same woodland and it screamed for the IR treatment. I’m still getting the hang of processing the images from the “supercolor IR conversion” of this camera. Although the basics are simple, I find the plethora of options one has in processing these files to be a bit intimidating. I’m trying to go a little more on the subtle side with these, but there’s a fine line between just enough and too much.

These final three images were taken at Hughes Mountain C.A. – a place that I find begs for the infrared photographic treatment. These were taken on one of the evenings of potential for extra color from the Sahara sandstorms. There was nothing extra for the sunset due to these storms other than increased haze, but the high clouds made for interesting skies in IR.

Finding green plants in the glade areas is important in getting the contrasts for an IR image. This hasn’t been a very wet summer but there was some green still left among the rocks. Optimally, it would be best to try in late spring to early summer to get this setting just right.

So these were some of my first serious attempts at IR landscapes with the newly converted camera. If you have any suggestions for improvement, particularly in the processing area, I would be grateful to listen.

-OZB