Morgan Fire Hike, Four of Four

To close this week's look at the Morgan Fire burn scar, here are some plants that fared well, are coming back quickly, and a bird that seems to be doing just fine. I was surprised that I saw no less life on this hike than I normally do -- lizards, birds, and numerous healthy plants.

I'm of the mind, and always have been, that fires are an important part of the natural cycle and should be controlled as they approach inhabited areas. However, fires in open spaces and wilderness remove fuel, provide opportunities for new life, and help restore an area. Yes, the side of Mount Diablo will be ugly for a year, maybe less. But that ugliness will yield to greener plant life next year, new growth which sequesters more carbon dioxide than old growth, and improved animal habitats.



A shrub protected by a rocky outcropping.



Grasses returning to a heavily burned area.



Macro of new grass.



I think this is a scrub jay, and it was doing just fine.

Morgan Fire Hike, Three of Four

I was curious about how the fire damage would look in infrared. I expected it to be extra black (it was) and the foliage to appear even whiter than normal (some did and some didn't.) I have a few infrared filters. Actually, they're visible-light cut filters that remove all light wavelengths below a certain point. With my K-7, the 720 nanometer filters work the best. These images were all taken with the 720 filter on and at apertures between f11 and f16. This led to exposure times up to 30 seconds, capturing cloud movement -- exactly the effect I wanted.


The Mount Diablo summit (observatory on the right peak). The darker area to the middle-left is part of the burn scar.


This tree's base and half f the needles burned in the fire. Those that remained were mixed between burned (brown) and healthy (green.) All the remaining needles reflected infrared light in the same manner, making the damaged and healthy needles hard to detect in this image. This shows that the infrared images with dark areas indicate heavier fire damage where more foliage was removed by the fire.



Here's the side of North Peak. The dark area is the burn scar; most of what remains there are charred, defoliated trees and shrubs. Note that the infrared images also allow much deeper shots that visible light. Infrared light blasts through pollution, haze, and ultraviolet light diffraction. Note mountains in the far background -- they're something like eighty miles away, I think.



I found that I really like the 77mm FA Limited for infrared photography. It lends itself well to sharp, deep-field images.

Morgan Fire Hike, Two of Four

In addition to my two FA Limited lenses, I brought my Sigma 50mm macro lens. This lens performs pretty well on the K-7 and in general is a very nice lens. Mosses growing on the trees along the path showed various levels of burn damage from total to partial and none. What surprised me most about the fire damage was that I expected it to be complete. However, even in areas of substantial damage the fire left some patches of plant life untouched. In some cases rocky outcrops appeared to protect them or divert the fire. In others, no clear reason for the fire's mercy existed.



Moss burned in the core but untouched on the fringes.



A closer detail of moss that survived the fire in relatively good condition.



This infrared shot shows moss completely burned by the fire, the black and twisted char clinging to its host tree's bark.



Only a foot tall, this sapling seemed to fare rather well considering the rest of the area. On Thursday we'll see more signs of the area's life returning fairly quickly.

Morgan Fire Hike, One of Four

Last weekend I trekked about a mile into the Morgan Fire burn scar. I drove up Mount Diablo and hiked from the summit down the Summit Trail toward North Peak. This afforded some good views of the burn area. As an added bonus, it's tarantula season so there should be some big spiders coming out of their nests soon.


On the drive up, the burn scar begins to emerge at about 15,500 feet. From the road, the damage's extent is somewhat visible. Here there's a hard break where the fire simply ended, and a lot of tilled ground, indicating a fire line.


The dark, burned area, here exhibits exaggerated darkness because of a cloud's shadow. That side of the mountain, though, is basically charcoal.


The fire moved up this slope, singing the bushes and leaving a macabre chaos of black, tangled arms reaching upward as if for escape.


Here the fire's extent is slightly more visible with darker, fire-damaged areas along North Peak's base.

Mount Diablo Macros

Monday I shared a few photos from my April 7th trip up Mount Diablo (yes, I'm about two months behind on posting photos this year.) I also took my K-7 that day. For lenses, I had my 50mm Pentax-A 1:2, 135mm Vivitar, a macro bellows, and my 31mm 1:1.8 FA Limited. I also brought my new Manfrotto Carbon Tripod With 3-Way Head - MK293C4D3Q2 (Google Affiliate Ad) tripod to test it on macro photos. I was pretty pleased with how it performed. At any rate, the trip's purpose was macro stacking. And some of the test shots I took for stacking macro photos worked very well. Since this trip, I got another macro bellows, this one with a built-in slide that will allow better macro stacks.


In real life, that fly was pretty big.


Selective focus macro, made by stacking but only focusing on part of the image.


Made from about 30 razor-thin focal slices.


I would lichen this to moss, and algae. Maybe both.


Stacking macros isn't the only use of a bellows, though. With the 135mm attached, I managed some good very-close shots from a number of feet away. This lizard was skittish, but I was able to get these shots from about three or four feet.


I think this is a fence lizard, but I'm not sure.





Some flowers. I used the flash on this shot. Yeah. I was surprised by how well it turned out, too.








And, when on Mount Diablo, it's good to get some area shots, too. It's a scenic place. This was made by stacking about six shots to get maximum depth of field without stopping down too far. Look closely under the bench and you can see a stitching error.


A multi-shot panorama of the observation building. The individual shots weren't stopped down very far, so each image had a different focal point, similar to the technique I used in the image above.

300th Post

For my 300th post, I decided to post photos from my first SLR -- my Pentax K1000. Unfortunately, I only have about three photos from my Mount Diablo trip that turned out well. So this will be a short 300th post. I'll make up for it tomorrow with a dozen photos of Fort Funston.


A tree.


Looking out toward Brentwood and Livermore.


Flowers. There are some bugs in there somewhere, too.

So, three photos for the 300th post. It only took 18 months to get here, so maybe in another 18 months we'll be able to celebrate the 600th post with six photos.

First Infrared Film Experiements and a Bluefire Police Bonus

I've had two rolls of infrared film sitting in my fridge for about six months, waiting for an opportunity to use them. So I used them camping. I shot four copies of the same image -- ISO 400 with no IR filter, and then ISOs 6, 10, and 12 with an IR 720nm filter. The final images in the series are a Photoshop-generated composite of each image.

400

6

10

12

Combined

I find the combined image to be the best. Not only because the horizon is level, but also because the shadows have suitable darkness mixed with suitable detail and the overall infrared look gives it a desolated field suitable for the somewhat beat-up concrete.

For this shot I wanted to try a deep-field shot. In the 1930s, using PLATE cameras and infrared-sensitized emulsions, the U.S. Military was taking pictures with fields of view up to 330 miles (from airplanes.) Even today with great cameras, fields of clear view are not much more than 70 miles or so from an airplane (that's partly an estimate, partly a guess based on my own experience photographing the planet from airplanes.)

So, for reference, there's a tall bump on the left horizon line. That's Mount Tamilpas in Marin County, 35.36 miles as the crow flies from Juniper Campground.

400

6

10

12

Stacked images

Again I like the stacked image the most. Photoshop does a nice job of selecting each image's best qualities and ignoring the worst.

For my camera, I used my Pentax K1000. The lens was my Sigma Macro 50mm. Film: Rollei IR 820. This is a fabulous film and I strongly recommend trying it for fun, artistic expression, and experimentation.

As an added bonus, some images I took with Bluefire Police: a 64 ISO microfilm with a great amount of detail and pretty intense contrast. My scanners does NOT like this film, though, so there's a bit of scanner noise in the images.

Overnight Camping Photos

Last week I camped Monday night on Mount Diablo in Walnut Creek, California. I stayed in the Juniper Campground, the highest on the mountain, and took a site I thought would have good views. Here are some of the remaining images (the others being the star trails from yesterday.)


Night must have been truly terrifying for primitive man. Heck, I had three raccoons in my campground off and on and that was terrifying enough. Sly little buggers, raccoons.


Sunset over Walnut Creek, California. Not an easy capture, but the result is pleasing.


Actually, this isn't from the campsite. This is from the visitors center at the summit, looking North to Concord and Clayton.


This is also from the summit, looking South, toward Danville.


Sunrise at the campsite, in the same place where I took the plane and star trails photo.


Sunset from the campsite.


Sunset from near the campsite. With views like this, how could anyone not love this campsite? This is a wonderful place to spend a few nights.