Red Gate Bridge!

Twas' a beautiful day at "Ketelsen East" - beautiful blue skies and temps in mid to upper 40s! I know - in January! I took the opportunity to go to the carwash to scrub the salt and grime off the car as it is supposed to be dry for a couple days. I also needed to take a little walk and decided to explore Red Gate Bridge - built a couple years ago and used most every day, but have never gone to explore further.

Interestingly, when Melinda and I married here 10 years ago, to cross the Fox River (yes, to those from AZ where washes are dry 11 months of the year - a real river that always has water) one had to drive 4 miles north to Elgin or 4 miles south to St Charles.  How did we ever survive that!? In those 10 years they have built a bridge at Stearns Road, about 2 miles north, and this one, Red Gate, about a mile south.


Red Gate Bridge is a beauty! Most bridges are just that - utility above all. But Red Gate, whether required because of space limitations or what, has a curved approach from both directions! For some reason that makes it look much more gracious and elegant, if you could ever use those words for a bridge. At left is a photo from well up the east bank to get an overall view of the approach and crossing, and at right is a plaque on the entrance to the pedestrian crossing.


Of course it is also the only bike crossing in the area, and connects with paths on both sides of the Fox River. And I always love to go out on these pedestrian/bike crossings to get the view up and downriver. At left the approach to the pedestrian path is shown. Interestingly, a couple minutes later as I stopped to take photos, the suspended path bounced up and down considerably as folks walked their dogs and otherwise crossed the river. I expected it but was stronger than I thought! At right is an HDR (combination of 3 frames to show extremes of shadows and highlights) showing interesting patterns between vertical roadway supports and diagonal details of suspended path.


I love looking out over the river, as long sight lines (not interrupted by trees, residences or power lines) give clear views of the water, wildlife and river traffic (in warmer weather!). Didn't look down south into the sun (hanging low in this midwinter month), but looked north towards where I live. At left is a 6-frame mosaic with a 200mm telephoto taken from mid-river. "Ketelsen East is up just around the bend a little on the east (right) bank. From the east end of the bridge, I took another photo that had a clear shot to the grounds here. At right is shown a full-resolution to the almost exactly 1 mile to my place. The tan and pink buildings are on the grounds of the camp here and in fact, if you click on the photo, you can see the volleyball net to right center that is literally 50 feet from my house! I believe my place is blocked from my neighbors to the south or other neighborhood construction.


As I was leaving, I took yet another multi-frame panorama (still with 200mm telephoto) of the Red Gate Water Tower built a couple years ago. I took the first above photo from adjacent to the tower. I hope you agree that Red Gate is a beauty - sorry it has taken so long to document it here!

Holiday Season at "Ketelsen East"!

A few years back I used to give a year-end review of the highlights and lowlights of the preceding year.  My blog output has been so low the last couple years that I saw no point in doing a review. Last year only produced 27 posts, about half of my 2017 output, which was about half of my 2016 output! But on the optimistic side, though I only had one post in July and another in August, the year ended strong with 6 in December! So with today's start, I'm hoping the surge continues into the New Year!

I've been at "Ketelsen East" for almost 3 weeks, and as I posted a few days ago, got in a Carolina road trip early-on. It was quiet holiday with only a couple family gatherings, otherwise have been working on a couple projects at home and mostly hanging out watching the cold weather outside! Got in a single bike ride when it hit 50F one of my first days here, otherwise have been a slug!

But I'm always looking for photo ops, and while the winter scenes are pretty monochromatic, found a couple of interest just the last few days. Temps have hovered within a handful of degrees around freezing, so snow one day, then rain, then snow again! At least it hasn't made driving difficult, and the fresh snow a couple days ago, plus the clear skies made some interesting shadows on the boat dock a few yards from my house.


It seems strange to have a river without boats on it! Has been a weird year - high water and some minor flooding through the spring and summer has restricted boat traffic much of the warm season, and now these hidden rules I know little about, evidently restrict watercraft from even being in the water, so the river looks naked without something running it! This shot down the river was taken a bit before sunset shortly after the shadow pics above were taken...



Then yesterday, New Year's eve, the rain came and we got a goodly amount, melting most all traces of the snow we had on the ground. I had to make a trip into the city (more about that in a future post), and drove in moderate showers over the course of the hour-long trip in and back out again. Didn't slow down the crazy drivers much here - everyone still drove 5mph over the speed limit with showers, mist and fog, so no traffic delays! When I got home I saw the berries from this bush adjacent to my parking area (unidentified), with their bright color and rain drops abundantly apparent! This is a 6-frame focus stack (combines exposures with slightly different focus settings to extend range of focus). with the 100mm macro when rain paused momentarily.




After a quiet night, woke up to no snow, but soon noticed a little accumulation this morning. Taking note, the snow was barely visible - tiny little flakes hardly seen, but enough to accumulate. I got the "big" macro (Canon MP-E 65mm) out to look for crystal structure, but none was seen. Shown here is a "still life" I found atop the AC cover where an acorn cap had fallen. The macro makes it much more interesting as it started filling with snow pellets - no other word for them - they look like little snowballs with no crystal structure... About 90 minutes later I went out again, and in the further accumulation it looked noticeably different - at right! These were taken at the lowest magnification (about 1X) and used a ring flash in front of the lens for shadow-free illumination.





Finally I cranked up the magnification to 3X or so (max is 5X!), and shot the snow pellets on my car windshield. Nice structure is noted, but little of the crystal variety... Of course, now that I've got the right equipment on hand, snowflakes will be rare!

Here for a while yet and am still looking for objects of interest!

The Season of Green!

Have been back at "Ketelsen East" for a couple weeks and have immensely been enjoying the Summer season here! The trip up was "uneventful", but then, how often do you have eventful flights?! The only time I can remember a flight I'd call eventful was when Melinda surprisingly upgraded us to first class - now THAT was memorable! So it was a dull trip, but at least I booked a window seat to watch the country roll by. And fortunately for me this time, the window was actually possible to look through! Often they are behind your shoulder and takes a contortionist to look thru, let alone try to take a photo.


It seems lately that the flights have initially been much further south than years past. A few years back, we almost always flew past the LBT Observatory on Mount Graham 80 miles NE of Tucson. This time I was able to look down on Willcox, a good 25 miles south of Graham, making targeting the LBT all but impossible. Similarly, instead of passing right over the Clifton/Morenci copper mine with a great view, it was again a good 15 miles to the north as shown here at left.  Even cropping the full zoom shot at right did little to get detail like the earlier version (see link).

It is always a challenge to locate the path taken along the way. Usually you can look for landmarks or unusual formations, even road or river intersections. Look for something that would stand out while perusing Google maps, while noting the time stamp on the photos so you can figure out where to start your search. We crossed the Rio Grande in north-central New Mexico - that was easy enough to spot the green ribbon of fields that must use wells pulled from the river. But which city was that? The railroad yards at center help locate it to Belen, New Mexico. The Rio Grande is the meandering little stream in the sandy channel in the lower right part of the frame.

Once past the Rio Grande and east of Albuquerque, I'm pretty much lost using landmarks. I figured we crossed up through New Mexico and eventually into Kansas. As a farmer boy, I could see the irrigated fields, yet, also saw square fields of golden yellow. My friend who grew up in Kansas confirmed that the golden fields this time of year was likely winter wheat, probably in the process of being harvested or about to be.

The chance to reorient myself presented itself when we crossed what I thought was the Missouri River. It seemed small, but was long and windy, so figured that was it. I shot the unusual twisty stream emptying into it shown at left and figured it would be easy to locate on the Google Maps, and I was right - took about a minute of searching to find the exact spot where the Nodaway River empties into the Missouri, about 15 miles northwest of St Joseph on the Kansas/Missouri border...

It got hazy and cloudy which made looking more difficult, so missed the Mississippi crossing. A few turns of the aircraft made locating more difficult too. I never spotted the Illinois River sometimes seen, and we were getting close to landing and me without knowing where we were! Finally another turn and I spotted one of the more striking landmarks - the twin towers of the nuke plant near Byron, Illinois. Evidently a storm had just passed and with the humidity, the cooling towers were belching a steam trail that could likely have been seen for a hundred miles! The towers themselves are 500 feet high and when trailing a steam cloud are quite apparent. I visited the place once, but never blogged about it - an eerie place at night!

The nuke plant told me we were going to head in straight east to O'Hare, likely over "Ketelsen East". The storm that passed through before we did evidently left a lot of rain - some of the fields of corn had impromptu lakes standing in them!

Continuing eastwards, sure enough, the urban areas started, and I was able to pick out Randall Road that traverses north-south on the west side of most of the towns our here west of Chicago. Even before seeing the Fox River, I knew we were near the normal path, likely passing about a mile north of "Ketelsen East" on the way in. At right, spotted in the Fox River to the town a few miles north of me was the Grand Victoria Casino - permanently tied to the dock from back in the day when casinos had to be on "boats", even though the Fox isn't navigable by something this large... So thus ended the flight - dull and boring, right? Well, not when you are paying attention!

So by the time I got by baggage, got
picked up, went to dinner w/the friend who drove me home and got out to the house, it was dark, and it wasn't till the next morning that it hit me - it was GREEN outside! You have to realize that when I'd come up, Tucson hadn't had measureable rain in 4 months, and it was dry, mostly sporting shades of brown and grey. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz stepping into the Technicolor world of Munchkin Land after a B&W existence! The daytime view out the bathroom window at left gave the first hint that "we weren't in AZ any more"! This is an HDR image, where 3 different exposures were combined to sample the extreme levels of illumination. This still life has appeared before in the blog, with the results of a blizzard outside the window from 2.5 years ago! Looked a little different then!

Stepping outside later in the day confirmed it... While I had been here a mere 6 weeks earlier, the trees had not fully leafed out before my departure, so the appearance was totally different. The shade under the 80 foot tall oaks and hickories was nearly impenetrable! And GREEN - did I mention the GREEN! It was dazzling to the eye it was so green. The shot at right above is looking out from my little stoop towards the north, taken with a fisheye lens stretched a little to look a little more normal.

The photo at left shows a shot towards where I just took the above image. The cottage is surrounded in several sides with plants, ferns shown here on the NE corner.

Taking an amble towards the river and looking back towards the house, you can see some of the trees still towering over the house - and of course, the American flag Melinda liked to hang while we were in residence, shown at right...

And of course, it isn't all green! There always seems to be something in bloom, and even as I arrived, the day lilies were nearing the end of their season. Here is a focus stack of 6 frames to extend the range of sharp focus.

Lots more to blog, lets see if I can start a trend and get more than one every month or so!

Weather Roller Coaster!

I'm still at "Ketelsen East" in Illinois, and really enjoying the weather! Of course, it is February, so you never know what you are going to get, blizzards to Spring-like conditions, and we've actually seen it all the last few weeks. When I last posted, we were enjoying single digit temps (F) and below, and since then they set a record 9 consecutive days w/snow - a total of 18" in places! The map showed that amount very close to us, but seemed a little less outside. Still a massive amount! But while the last few Winters have been mild, we've got professionals here, and the roads get cleared pretty quickly. Picture at left show what the house looked like, and at right is a picnic table 30 yards from the house! It really was a winter wonderland, but difficult to walk in snow that deep! At least it was cold with all that snow and it was light and fluffy - perfect for shoveling!

Shortly after all that snow it cleared again and got cold - resulting in some really pretty sunsets! At right is one showing the deep snow reflecting violets and orange colors from the last of the twilight. The bluish color is from the blue of the clear sky illuminating the snow - it can also be seen in the shadows of the tree and picnic table above. With the sun shadowed, the predominant light is from the blue sky...






A few days later warmer temperatures came, highlighted by a day of temps pushing 70 (!) and 2" of rain! Even 14"+ of snow won't last long with that! Of course, all that snow plus 2 inches of rain totals something in excess of 3"+ of rain, so now all the rivers are flooded, the Fox River outside the house included! At left is shown the snow and a week later when it is all gone, with the river at least a little out of its banks. And at right I've done a before-and-after closer to the house, after I cleared the sidewalk around the house and now with all the snow gone.

It almost seems like an early spring with temps in the mid-30s, and now magically the Canada Geese have returned! They all disappeared somewhere when it was cold and snow-covered, but those that over-winter obviously have a hiding place and they are now out again to play!

The Family Unit!

One of the things I look for in filling up my time at "Ketelsen East" is to watch for sandhill cranes. Particularly since we fell in love with watching them overwinter down at the Whitewater Draw wetlands in southeastern AZ, we kept an eye out on the nesting pair we discovered about a mile from our house here in Illinois! The highlight last year was when I drove through the neighborhood where they hang out and I was able to shoot them through the open window of my car with a telephoto lens - getting the ultra-closeup at left!

So it was with some concern that a search of the usual haunts in the area where I would routinely see these cranes during my month here in April turned up nothing! Finally I asked some birders that I ran into on a walk and they indicated there was a nesting pair at another nearby body of water, so I held on to some hope they were still here.

Then on this trip, I startled an adult crane while on my bike ride, so I kept an eye peeled for them again. Finally about 10 days ago, near the above site where I photographed them in a neighbor's back yard, I spotted them across the small body of water. As is usual, a human on foot gets their attention right away and they paid close attention as I shot with my 300mm across the pool.

So this morning after my bike ride, I packed the 300mm lens and went out to the pond again intending to shoot them again. Coming over the rise where I could get a view of the water, no cranes. I pulled off the road for traffic behind me to pass and while debating what to do noticed they were almost right next to me under a tree - not 40 feet away! Lowering the window I started shooting with the 300mm and got some nice images of both adults and the youngster - again, them paying scant attention to me as long as I was in the car! This may be the closest I've been to a youngster and you can see that it hasn't developed any of the red coloration on its forehead.  It is tough to tell if this is the same family unit that was here last year - will have to do some comparisons of the close-ups to see if I can tell!


And what I can now say honestly is the closest shot I've ever gotten of a sandhill crane, I present the following macro photos of a crane feather I found on my first outing to photograph them above! I found a couple adjacent to the tree where they were standing today and they both share the brown/tan coloration of the cranes. The larger of the two is over a foot long, so can't imagine any other bird species it would be from. The two are from the larger feather, from the tip at left, to the quill end at right showing the branching from the feather barbs. These are both focus stacks of several exposures to extend the depth of focus.

I'm glad I located my crane buddies and will have to keep a closer eye out for them during my time here!

It Can Stop Anytime!

One of the joys of "Ketelsen East", especially after surviving the "hotter than hell pre-monsoon season of 2017" in AZ, is that it rains on a regular basis! There is nothing like opening your windows and listening to a summer storm pass and lull you to sleep. Of course, the more violent ones with close lightening and thunder might cause you to re-close that window, but still - the rarity of a cool summer night with windows open is a real joy.

Of course, the payment one makes while living next to a river is that river will rise! Normally our little homestead lies about 40 yards from the bank of the Fox River, but the other morning after another 2" dumping overnight, I awoke to blue skies, but the body of water only about 20 feet from the house! 


I haven't worried much though - it was about this high in the Fall of 2008, shortly after our marriage. We got over 10" of rain over the long weekend and it quickly jumped to this same level. The photo at left shows a comparison image of the canoe racks the camp uses. The image at the top is from 2008 and the lower from the weekend. It appears this cycle is an inch or two higher than that one.

It is a little disconcerting to look out the sunroom windows and ONLY see water, but even with that last 20 feet to the house, it would have to come up a good foot to 18 inches to get into the house. We don't have a basement (unlike some nearby houses), and the drone of water pumps can be heard at night when it is quiet! At right is an HDR image, combining 3 different exposures, so that the fruit basket isn't black, nor the outside an overexposed white, showing our truly "riverside view"!

The other advantage of a high river is that we get dozens of carp grazing in the yard! They seem to like the grass, seemingly to wrench it out of the ground along the shallow edge. Walking up to them carefully, they appear to be up to 18" long and up to 5" wide, sometimes in groups of 3 or 4.  Soon enough as the water recedes, there will be a plethora of fish trying to get back to the main stream. I've tried before to catch them by hand and it is harder than you can imagine! A large fishing net helps, and I rescued a few, but mostly the egrets and herons come in and feast in the yard! Melinda witnessed a heron swallow a fish almost as large as he was, and was barely able to get off the ground again! Might be fun to try to record those photons!



Since these photos on Saturday, the Fox seems to have dropped a couple inches today even though it rained hard yesterday.  Looks like the peak has passed!

Fishing Season!

I'm currently at "Ketelsen East" in the western suburbs of Chicago, enjoying some "real" Springtime weather! After already threatening to break 100F about the time I left Tucson 10 days ago, the cooler temperatures, rain, flowers and outbreak of green here is a welcome sight! And we've had it all - 4" of rain over last weekend, and tonight there are freeze warnings in the area, so Summer still seems a long way off!

But with the downpour this weekend, on Monday the Fox River jumped out of its bank and got within about 50 feet of the house here! The image at left shows the water as it came up the "canoe beach" at far left and filled a depression in the middle of the lawn as shown. As the water drops back down, usually carp, some of pretty good size (I've seen up to 20" long!) are trapped in the "yard pond"! Somewhere I've got pictures that Melinda took of me trying to catch them by hand (hard) or with a large fishing net (easier) to dump them back in the river. After I gave up that earlier time, the herons and egrets move in and they were gone in a day.

So I wasn't really surprised, but startled when I saw my first great blue heron appear just before sunset tonight. The only telephoto I have is a 500mm Nikon mirror lens of '70s vintage given to me by a friend, and I rushed to install the adaptor that lets me use it with my Canon camera. Unfortunately I missed his playing with a sizeable fish, but got a nice portrait at left in the "yard pond" before he moved back over to the main river channel for some fishing where only his head is visible.


It started raining pretty hard again, and my last view of him was standing on the bank looking across it, or perhaps looking downstream at a kayak that was bearing down on him as he took off a few seconds later as they passed going upstream. If there are still fish in the pond, they will be back, though other than the one I saw the heron play with, I've not spotted any...

Snow Flurries!

I've been at "Ketelsen East" for a few days taking care of some business with the house here. While the weather can be unpredictable in January, it has been unseasonably warm the week I've been here. Till today it hasn't been below freezing, and fog has been more of a driving issue than snow or ice.


So I was sort of surprised to see that we'd received some snow flurries overnight. No accumulation to speak of, but still something worth documenting! In cases like this, I do what I normally do - grab the macro and go close! I didn't feel like kneeling in the mud to get snow pellets in the leaves on the ground, so looked for something a little higher to shoot. Fortunately there are some evergreen shrubs, I think a variety of Japanese Yew, that formed a nice, high contrast background for the snow, shown at left. I was hoping to see some signs of snowflake or ice crystal structure, but as you can see, there is little sign of that. I moved over to a patio table and shot an isolated oak leaf and acorn shell covered with snow as well.

The little acorn shell looked cute enough, sort of like a sake cup full of snowflakes that I moved in to another for its close-up. And oh yes - these are all focus-stack images to increase the depth of field. The yew photo is composed of 12 frames, the leaf 14, and this little acorn cap combines 18 frames, each with a slightly different focus setting, combined in Photoshop to extend the depth of focus...

So I was disappointed that I didn't catch any crystal or snowflake structure, but so much of that depends on temperature, humidity and other conditions that I've learned that catching snowflakes to document is really a hard thing to do! Looking out the window a couple hours later, it was snowing again! Calm winds, the HUGE flake conglomerations were mostly falling straight down, so I went out again to see how they looked under the macro.

BETTER! First, the flakes were huge! The yew "leaves" are about 2mm wide, so some of the flakes were considerably larger! It was still tough to find a complete snowflake, but at least there were parts of them visible. The temperature was pretty much right at freezing, so they were melting over the space of a few minutes, so likely would have been better if it were a few degrees colder. Still, overall it was nice to catch a little of what I was looking for... Forecast is for colder temps and more flurries without much accumulation, so I'll keep on the lookout...