A Thousand Acres of Silphiums

Uncategorized

Okay, I think I’ve settled on a title for this blog. Silphium are one of my favorite groups of plants native to the prairies of the United States and I pulled this phrase from my favorite book, “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold. If any of you are wondering, that book contains a lot of the message I will be trying to bring forward in this blog.

P.S. Check this out: http://www.gatewaygalleryonline.com/matchickggo.html

It seems the moniker “Ozark Light” is pretty popular with nature photographers of the region. I’ve gone to see Greg’s photos at this gallery in the past and I’d highly recommend his work.

Ozark Dynamism

"monochrome", landscape

Elephant Rocks is one of my favorite locations in the Missouri Ozarks to visit and make photographs.  I don’t think it’s a big surprise that this would be true for many nature lovers/photographers.  I love the fact that one can make good photographs here any season of the year and almost any time of day.  If you face the right direction you can find good light on a good composition on almost every visit, not just in the narrow window of the “golden hour”.  However, if you can get there with perfect light and an interesting sky the outcome can be better than good.  My favorite time to visit is early in the day.  This is not only for the better light, but for the fact that I have had the place entirely to myself for a couple or more hours on several occasions.

I was fortunate to find an interesting sky on this visit.  I found that converting this one to B&W really played the dynamic sky against the interesting texture of the boulders below.  Inscribed on one of the rocks you can see the name of one of the many quarry workers who harvested the granite species of rocks from the surrounding area.

Technical details: Canon EOS 50D camera, EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens @ 10mm, ISO 100,  f/16, 1/15 sec

Caterpillar Graveyard

Uncategorized

On my way to an unexplored nature preserve (fodder for a future post) in the northern foothills of the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois I drove past a graveyard on Illinois Rt 3.  The golden hour light and the frost that was covering everything made me turn around and stop to take a few images.  This looked to be private property and I did not want to overstay my lack of welcome so I shot a few pics hand-held and got out of there quickly.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 28mm, ISO 320,  f/11, 1/160 sec

The place was much larger than these images make it to look.  I think there was potential for some great images if I wasn’t scared of being fed to pigs 😉

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 35mm, ISO 320,  f/14, 1/30 sec

Why couldn’t they give cars a similar paint job?  These things never seem to rust.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 35mm, ISO 200,  f/11, 1/40 sec

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 28mm, ISO 250,  f/9, 1/40 sec

Finding A Sunset

landscape, sunset/sunrise

Columbia Bottom Conservation area, where this image was taken, and Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary across the river are famous for the birds and other wildlife they support.  I have enjoyed birding these places, located at the confluence of North America’s two greatest rivers- the Missouri and the Mississippi, for more than five years now.  But, there is another reason I love being able to visit these locations.  These are two of the closest places near St. Louis to see open skies, open skies without hills, trees, building or too many power lines and utility poles.  I love shooting sunsets here because of the amount of sky that can be captured.  True, I did not cover much sky in this image.  This was due to the limited clouds in tonight’s sky.  If there were more clouds throughout the sky I would have loved to have let the sky cover two thirds or more of the frame.

 

It always saddens me when I’m driving to or from work and see one of the many spectacular sunsets or sunrises from the car and know I can’t be out in nature trying to experience that moment and capture it in a lasting image.

 

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens @ 16mm, ISO 100,  f/16, manual-HDR (7-images)

Alluvial Furnace

"monochrome", landscape

This image was taken on a chilly October morning as I was driving to make my first visit to Tower Rock Natural Area in Perry County near Altenburg, Missouri.  I am always looking for a nice composition I can capture that features fog or mist.  This rarely happens because it takes so long to drive from the city to a pleasing spot like this where fog may form.

Technical details: Canon EOS 50D camera, EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens @ 19mm, ISO 100,  f/14, 1/80 sec

Devil’s Walking Stick

macro

Rising from the alluvial plain that the Mississippi River carved in eastern Missouri and Arkansas is the geological feature known as Crowley’s Ridge.  This ridge, composed of sedimentary soil known as loess, is populated with flora and fauna that are more-closely related to ecosystems of the Appalachians then they are to the closer, mountainous regions of the Ozarks to the North and West.  One of the uniquely eastern species that is commonly found along Crowley’s Ridge is the devil’s walking stick, Aralia spinosa.  This image was taken at Morris State Park in South-eastern Missouri.

Technical details: Canon EOS 50D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 160,  f/11, 1/4 sec

Crystallofolia & Armadillos: Hawn State Park Presents its Inspiration at Every Season

macro, wildlife

I spent a fantastic Saturday hiking and making images in the Missouri Ozarks yesterday.  Any day, even a bad day, in nature beats about anything else I can think of doing.  Some days I barely take the camera out of the bag, instead concentrating on hiking, birding, botanizing, etc…  Other days, like yesterday, it took me close to six hours to hike the North loop of the Whispering Pine Trail of Hawn SP because I stopped so often to set up the camera or observe some wildlife.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 100,  f/14, 1/13 sec

My primary photographic subject turned out to be these exquisite crystallofolia, or “frost flowers”.  I have wanted to get some pictures of these things for a while now but they can be quite difficult to find, needing specific requirements to form.  I could spend a few paragraphs attempting to explain this mysterious and ephemeral natural wonder.  Instead, I will lead you to the well-written document by Missouri’s own Ted MacRae.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 100,  f/18, 1/6 sec

As the title of this post suggests, Hawn SP is a destination of mine at least once a season.  I have rarely visited this spot in Ste Genevieve County and gone home without seeing something new, something extraordinary or at least come away renewed.  There are no shortages of photographic potentials and it is one of the closest spots to St. Louis where I really feel I have gotten away from it all.  Even on the busiest days it is rare to come across other people on the trail.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 100,  f/18, 1/3 sec

Getting near the trailhead on the way back I heard some rustling in the leaves.  I followed the sound to what at first looked like a large opossum.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it was an armadillo!  This was the first live armadillo I’ve seen and photographed.  When I came across this guy my camera was of course attached to my tripod and strapped to my pack.  I had Canon’s new 100mm f2.8 macro L lens attached at the time.  I did not think I had much time before this guy slipped up and over the ridge she was heading up where I would lose her to the poor light on the north-facing side.  Therefore, I did not try and swap lenses to something a little more useful for this type of encounter such as the 70-200mm or 400mm.  Of course when focus is sharp, this lens has no equivalent in sharpness and image quality; however, autofocusing this lens under this situation was challenging to say the least.  I’ve read reviews saying this lens was a slow dog for autofocus, but that’s not what we buy macro lenses for, is it?  Anyway, besides a larger portion of focus failures than I’m accustomed to, I guess I managed to grab a few images that I am relatively happy with.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 320,  f/4, 1/250 sec

Like many small mammals in the Missouri Ozarks, Armadillos have poor eyesight and must rely on their hearing and smell.  The section of the trail where this took place had a fair number of Oaks and of course at this time of year the forest floor was covered with a noisy blanket of dry fallen leaves.  I made enough of a racket running up the hillside that she was definitely aware someone was following her.  She often stopped and listened and as the previous image shows, she would raise up on her hind legs to get a good whiff of the potential predator on her tail.  Thankfully, I’ve been told I smell almost exactly like an armadillo, so she probably was not too alarmed by my presence.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, ISO 320,  f/4, 1/800 sec

As usual, I reluctantly left Hawn in the early afternoon and proceeded to my evening destination – Hughes Mountain Natural Area, which is another place that never disappoints (although I still haven’t had too many interesting skies like I hope for).  I knew there would be a full-moon rising shortly after sunset and had a few poorly conceived ideas about what I wanted to do.  I took some images of the sunset and watched as the brightest, reddest and coldest moon I have ever seen rise almost directly opposite the sky from the sun.  In the end, it got too cold too quickly.  I played around with the moon in some images but I doubt I got anything I’ll be happy with.  I believe this image is showing the four hills that make up Buford Mountain and Bald Knob to the South-west of Hughes Mountain.  I’m still not close to have the sunrise/sunset images I’m looking for from Hughes Mountain.  One of these days everything will line up and I will hopefully get closer to what I am after.

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 65mm, ISO 160,  f/11, 3.2 sec

Overall, another fantastic day.  I’ll be trying to rest my legs today.

Ozark Bill Said Let There Be Ozark Light! “Tatanka”

"monochrome", Uncategorized, wildlife

This is the first post of Ozark Bill Presents – Ozark Light!

This image was taken on a trip that the wife and I went on this past fall.  Our destination was Big Spring SP to stay in the cabins a few days.  On our way out-of-town we stopped at Lone Elk Park to hopefully catch some sexual excitement of the Elk rut.  Not too many Elk were seen doing interesting things on this visit.  We did, however, get to watch some bison up close.  I converted to this sepia-toned version using PS-Elements 9 and Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 software.

Tatanka is the Lakota word meaning “bull-bison” or “buffalo”.  Did you know…?  Buffalo is not the correct name for this species as the name buffalo is used to describe species in Asia.

Technical details: Canon EOS 50D camera, EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 191mm, ISO 640,  f/6.3, 1/80 sec