Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
Mallards, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 24, 2011
I have a few things to learn
After posting yesterday's picture of the Mallards and Wigeons I waded into my pictures from yesterday's shoot looking for some I could zoom in on to show off the bird's wonderful green iridescence that caught my eye in the reflected morning light as I was snapping away.
Well, the glow I thought I was capturing came out a little flat and mottled. Flat because the nature of digital photography doesn't capture the glow? Maybe, I'm not sure. But mottled by the sunlight reflecting off water droplets clinging to what looked from afar to be glistening smooth feathers. These guys were dabbling for breakfast and the droplets broke up the sheen I thought I was capturing.
But I got a few interesting shots anyway. It's such fun to shoot some pictures, only to find something entirely unexpected and wonderful in the images. Like this guy's reflection.
Iridescence is an optical phenomenon of surfaces in which hue changes in correspondence with the angle from which a surface is viewed.
Iridescence is often caused by multiple reflections from two or more semi-transparent surfaces in which phase shift and interference of the reflections modulates the incidental light (by amplifying or attenuating some frequencies more than others).
Conventional photography only records the specific effect of iridescence (not the phenomenon itself), just as it only captures the effect of three dimensions (representing them with two)...
Source: Wikipedia
Night camp
Site 10 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
Life is to be Lived, Not Controlled
No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I lived a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there's an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern.
.... Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? - diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that were to happen. .....Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.