Windmill in color

Since returning to North Carolina, I've fallen back into the habit of not taking any photographs. As a result, my last shot of 2007 will have to be the color version of my second-to-last shot of 2007. I prefer the black-and-white, but at the same time, it's always nice to see the color as well so that you have a sense of what it really looked like.

Happy New Year.

Christmas windmill

I took this picture Christmas morning on a gravel road about ten miles west of Havana, Illinois. We were on a Christmas morning drive, and the barn sitting next to the windmill caught my eye. We drove down the road to shoot it, but once I got there, the windmill was the better subject. I like a lot of things about this old structure- most notably the brass blades, the mechanical components, and the dead vine climbing up the wooden base.

The glare off the blades is a little stronger than I'd like, but I didn't have a lot of options with this shot. We were parked in the middle of a country road, and "No Trespassing" signs were plastered on the fence in front of the windmill as well as on the barn beside it.

I'll post the color version of this picture next week. It's a different shot- the colors dominate it, whereas the structure is dominant in black and white.

Water tower

Today, my dad and I took some shots of this water tower in my hometown of Havana, IL. The water tower has some historical significance, although I must admit that I don't know what it is. I think it might be the oldest functioning water tower in the state of Illinois, but I'm not certain.

As for the picture, I actually like it a lot. Most of the decent shots I've taken over the past few years involved pretty easy to shoot landscapes and some dumb luck. This water tower is perhaps a less obvious subject, and I think it turned out pretty well.

Eagles on the Mississippi

Yesterday, we took a trip with most of Steph's family to Belleview, IA, which sits on the Mississippi River. There must have been 60 bald eagles on the river, just below the dam. Unfortunately, I'm a mediocre wildlife photographer at best, and most of the birds were on the far side of the river. I had to max out my zoom, which left me with some fairly grainy images.

Winter in Iowa

After a long layoff, the Christmas break has finally given me the opportunity to get out to shoot. Even better, the great state of Iowa is presently covered with a beautiful icy glaze. I braved the cold temps long enough today to get about 40 shots. None are great, but given that I haven't exactly been prolific lately, I'm going to post them anyway. This shot was taken just outside of Dubuque.

Around the neighborhood III

In North Carolina, the peak season for fall colors sweeps across the state from west to east beginning in mid-October. The higher elevations of the mountains turn first, and then by the very end of October or maybe even early November, the colors make their way to the Triangle.

This year, with a record drought, we didn't have much hope for a great season (by comparison, last year was remarkable in North Carolina), and whatever slim hopes we did have got washed out this week when almost half a foot of rain came down in Durham. Fortunately, before the monsoon began, I managed to catch a photo of one early changer just up from our place.

The tree itself isn't remarkable, but I like the sky and clouds in the background. Besides, even if it's not a great shot, it's about all of got right now.

Around the neighborhood II

This is essentially the same shot that I posted on Sunday, just in color. For a little fun, who can name the plant?

Around the neighborhood I

Since medical school started, I've had less and less time for hobbies, and in the interest of maintaining some semblance of fitness, what time I've had has largely gone to running and biking. That's meant bad things for my photography. Part of the problem is that taking good shots usually requires me getting off my butt and going somewhere worth photographing, and I just haven't made time for it.

Fortunately, fall is just around the corner here in central North Carolina, and fall has a way of making ordinary places look a little more photogenic. As a result, I'm going to try to take my camera with me whenever we take Riley for a short walk. Hopefully, I'll take a few worth posting.

Tonight was the my first try with this experiment. I'll post a similar color image later this week.

NC State Calendar

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that two of my shots would be in the NC State CVM Behavior Club Calendar. The contest had about 300 submissions, and 20 shots were included. The images for the calendar are now available online, and some of them are extremely good shots (none of those being mine).

I don't like to toot my own horn, but...

TOOT TOOT!!!

I just got word that two of my pictures were chosen for the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine animal calendar (don't tell my dog Riley that his portrait was the one submission that didn't make the cut). Granted, rumors are that they did not have as many submissions this year as in years past, but even so, I'm flattered and encouraged that somebody who knows something about photography liked my shots.

Both shots have already been posted here before, but I'll go ahead and repost them.

Bow River

My opportunities for photography remain few and far between, so here's another one from the archives. This was one the first pictures I took in Banff. We were on the Bow River Parkway, and the picture offers a view of the road's namesake. The only reason this shot is a keeper is the train track. Artisitically, I think that tracks make nice leading lines, but sentimentally, I also like it because we were certainly very aware of the rail traffic in the park. Another interesting feature of the shot is the Bow River itself. The river has the opaque greenish hue of glacial melt.

Meeting my quota

It's been a month since I've been able to get out to photograph anything, which has led to a disappointing stretch of inactivity on this site. While I'm hopeful that I might have time for photography next weekend, I'm less certain whether I'll be able to get anywhere worth photographing. As a result, for now, I'm left to put up a C+ image from our Canada trip.

I took this shot at Emerald Lake in British Columbia's Yoho National Park. It's actually the second shot I've posted from that hike, with the first coming back in July. If the canoe in the foreground had been about a quarter mile closer, it could've been a really nice shot.

Flowers revisisted

When this blog was still in its infancy, I posted what remains one of my favorite shots, a picture of a bee on a flower. About a week ago, as I was going through some old shots, I came across a similar shot, shown here. It's the same flowers, just without the bee. While the bee certainly added something to the shot, the flowers alone were fun to photograph.

Canadian Sky

I took this shot in Jasper, Alberta. The clouds there were beautifully backlit.

One Final Shot from Moraine Lake

I think that this shot concludes the slideshow of our trip to Canada. Because Moraine Lake was the most impressive spot we visited, I thought I'd conclude with this one- it's a little overexposure away from being my favorite shot of the trip. There are also handful of additional photographs that I didn't post here but that are available on our website.

I start medical school tomorrow, and as a result, I suspect that my entries on this blog are likely to become much more sporadic. I have a lot of hobbies, and it's about to become hard to find time for all of them. Even if it requires me to post old shots, I'll try to get something up at least on the 1st and the 15th of each month.

Cheers,

N

Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies II

I took this shot as Stephanie and I were driving down the Bow River Parkway on our way out of the Canadian Rockies. As you can see from the picture, the rack on this elk was incredible.

Ideally, I would've taken a shot in which the elk had it's head raised. However, in Banff and Jasper, park rangers are really trying to crack down on tourists stopping along the side of the road in order to photograph nearby wildlife. There are legitimate concerns about it being unsafe for the animal and the tourist alike.

Just prior to encountering this beautiful animal, Stephanie and I had stopped at a park office to get a reimbursement for an overcharge on our park entry. To get that reimbursement, we'd been required to turn in our pass, which meant that we could no longer drive on any park roads, meaning that we'd have to take the equivalent on the interstate highway immediately out of the park. Disregarding that regulation, we decided to take the Bow River Parkway (officially only open to pass-carrying tourists) out of the park. Midjourney, we encountered this elk, and I stopped to photograph it. Almost immediately, a park ranger arrived to encourage us to get along our way. Normally, I would've stayed long enough to get another shot or two, hopefully capturing an image with the elk's head raised. However, knowing that we weren't even supposed to be on that road any longer, I decided to get back into the car before she could realize I wasn't supposed to be there... and before I could get the shot that I really wanted.

Day Six: Lake Louise

On our last day in Banff, Stephanie and I spent a few years in and around scenic Lake Louise. We started the day by taking a gondola ride high above town before heading back to the lake itself for a few final shots.

The mountain behind the lake is called Mt. Victoria, and the glacier on its northern face is called Victoria Glacier. At the base of the mountain, there is some more snow and then gravely rock angling to the lake. To give you a sense of scale, the distance from the lake shore to the point where the base of Mt. Victoria meets the gravel and snow is an almost unbelievable six miles.

Day Five: Hike to Borgeau Lake

I'm back in Durham (and badly sunburned) after an enjoyable day-and-a-half on North Carolina's Topsail Island. Stephanie and I are trying to pack in as much as we can before our respective orientations begin next week- hence, the delay on a new shot from our recent vacation in the Canadian Rockies.

I took this picture on our last full day in Banff National Park. That day, Stephanie and I took our longest hike of the trip- a 10-mile roundtrip trek up a considerable climb to Borgeau Lake. It was a beautifully scenic hike, but unlike other regions of the parks we visited, this particular trail was infested with bugs. In fact, we had to reapply insect repellant twice on the hike. While those bugs certainly present a nuisance for human traffic, I suspect that the many song birds on the trail welcome their presence. As you can see, this particular bird was in the middle of lunch when I snapped this shot.

Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies I

In the latter half of our time in Canada, we were fortunate to see a lot of wildlife, including some impressive large game that I will feature in a future blog entry. One animal, however, was a daily companion. Although I would call this cute creature a chipmunk, our guide to Canadian fauna called it a squirrel. In any case, they were everywhere, and they lacked all fear of humans, even crawling into our backpack during a brief stop atop Sentinel Pass.

Day Four: Mt. Rundle over Vermillion Lake

On Day 3 in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I drove the Icefields Parkway north from Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. It was an enjoyable day that included walking on Athabasca Glacier, hiking around Mt. Edith Cavell, and staying in a lovely chalet outside of Jasper, Alberta. Unfortunately, it was also a gray, rainy day, and none of the pictures from our third day of vacation were particularly impressive. I did take some shots of memorable stops along the way, and I'll link to them eventually.

But for now, I'll jump ahead to Day 4, when we left Jasper and headed back to Banff National Park for two nights in the town of Banff itself. Day 4 included a bear sighting, a return trip to Moraine Lake, and some shots of Mt. Rundle and its reflection in Vermillion Lakes.

This particular shot of Mt. Rundle illustrates one of the most fascinating aspects of the Canadian Rockies- namely, that they are remarkably different from the American Rockies. Mt. Rundle and many other mountains near Banff show their youth- they look like a continental plate that has been driven upwards after colliding with another plate, which is precisely what they are. Because they are so young, their eastern faces remain smooth, having not yet had time to have been textured by erosion.

Stephanie and I spent a lot of time comparing these young mountains to the mountains we know best, the Appalachians of western North Carolina, which are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. One of the striking things to us was how two ranges so different in appearance could both be so beautiful.

Day Two: Moraine Lake

We spent our second day in Banff National Park at stunning Moraine Lake, one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. After driving through some incredible mountain views en route from the village of Lake Louise, we started our exploration of Moraine Lake by taking a wonderful hike through Larch Valley and onto Sentinel Pass, one of the highest mountain passes accessible by trail in the Canadian Rockies.

After retracing our steps to the lake, we rented a canoe, like those shown in the picture, for a lovely paddle around this gorgeous lake. In addition to the shot that I've shown on this blog entry, I also took some shots providing unencumbered views of Moraine Lake.

Day One: Takakkaw Falls

After leaving Emerald Lake, Stephanie and I headed to Takakkaw Falls, officially Canada's highest unbroken waterfall (Vancouver Island's Della Falls is higher overall, but it's largest drop is broken by a rock ledge). The lower portion of Takakkaw Falls drops an impressive 830 vertical feet, producing a spray that will obscure camera lenses 200 yards away.

My understanding from photography classes and books is that protocol for American photographers is to use long exposures at waterfalls to produce silky, blended images. Unfortunately, to get that kind of an exposure without bleaching out your image, you need to use a very small aperture opening. The day we visited Takakkaw was bright enough that my long exposure images bleached out, even with my highest f-stop. In the future, I hope to artificially increase my aperture options with a neutral density filter. For now, I'm taking solace that, unlike the preferred U.S. convention, apparently Japanese photographers prefer crisper waterfall images. Consequently, we'll just pretend that this picture was intended to as a tribute to British Columbia's large Japanese immigrant population.

I also used my tripod and the delay feature on my camera to take a similar image with Stephanie and I in it.

Day One: Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park

The first destination for Stephanie and I after arriving in the Canadian Rockies was British Columbia's Yoho National Park. We started our day at Emerald Lake (after our planned stop at Takakkaw Falls was temporarily detoured by a rock slide). As you can see from this photo, photography was difficult our first day (as well as a few subsequent days) because of cloudy skies that obscured many mountain tops. However, for a few moments at least, those clouds added some intrigue to this view, and I captured a few shots before the mountains were fully hidden.

A few notes on Emerald Lake itself- high above the lake, one can find one of the most important fossil beds known to evolutionary biologists, the famous Burgess Shale. The fossils found there by Charles Doolittle Walcott tell the story of the Cambrian Explosion, a period of dramatic diversification of marine body plans. My interest in these fossils dates back to reading Stephen Jay Gould's A Wonderful Life as a college student, a book I'd recommend to all biologists interested in evolution and in good science writing.

Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies

After six great days in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I are back in Calgary this evening, with a scheduled departure for the U.S.A. tomorrow morning.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post pictures from our trip. This picture may have been the best shot that I took all week. I took it last Friday morning, as Steph and I drove to Moraine Lake, above Lake Louise, Alberta. Our entire day at Moraine Lake was fantastic, and the view on our way there, captured here, was the first of many highlights.

Crepe myrtles in bloom

From February through August in North Carolina, you can pretty much determine the date by noting which trees are in bloom. It starts around Valentine's Day with a burst of pinks before the leaves are even on the trees. The white Bradford Pears soon follow, and after that, a procession of colors takes you all the way into June.

When summer first arrives, it seems as though the trees are done blossoming, and other than the rhododendrons in the mountains, North Carolina becomes mostly green. However, it's only a brief pause before the summer's grand finale- in late June, the magnificent crepe myrtles begin to explode with color.

I love crepe myrtles. Their pink, fuscia, and lavender blooms have amazed me each of the seven summers we've spent here. Unfortunately, I think that they are difficult to photograph. My pictures never seem to capture their magnificence. This shot is no exception, but it is the best shot I took out of about forty yesterday. This particular tree sits just up the road from our place, in a boulevard leading into our subdivision.

Starting tomorrow, "Lucky Shots" will probably go silent for about 10 days. Stephanie and I are headed to Canada for a vacation, and unless our modest accomodations have unexpected internet access, I won't be able to post any shots until we return. Once we're back, I'm sure that the next several weeks worth of entries will be devoted to the shots we take up there.

-N

Raleigh hydrangeas with flash

This is the same shot that I posted yesterday, except that I used a fill flash here rather than just taking advantage of the ambient lighting. I'm curious as to whether visitors like this shot or the original one better.

One caveat to this vote- how you see the pictures will certainly be dependent on your monitor. As a result, there are two variables- personal preference and monitor settings.

Raleigh hydrangeas

For the next few days, Stephanie is pet sitting for a family in Raleigh. For a city of 300,000 people, Raleigh is unexpectedly liveable. The house where Stephanie is staying is magnificent. The home itself is gorgeous, and the backyard looks like it's taken out of a magazine. I went over there for a few hours this evening to see Stephanie and to photograph the beautiful yard. This was one of my favorite shots- in large part because hydrangeas may be Steph's favorite flower.

Eno River State Park

Today, I took my parents, who are visiting from Illinois, to Eno River State Park west of Durham. We went for a nice walk along the park's beautiful, rocky namesake. After spending 30 minutes taking pictures of a sunning turtle, I turned to this dragonfly for about 3 quick shots. As it turned out, the turtle pictures were nothing special, but I thought that this one turned out pretty well.

A little lesson for a little mind

Today, Riley learned something about our new place. There's a balcony-area overlooking our living room. Since we moved in three weeks ago, he had failed to make the connection that he could look over the balcony and see the room below.

Today, he finally made the connection, and I was able to catch his post-discovery excitement with a photograph. It's amazing how proud he can be of himself over such a simple thing.

In fairness to Riley, we have had the balcony blocked with boxes until recently, so although Mensa isn't likely to send Riley an invitation anytime soon, he hasn't exactly had daily opportunities to figure this puzzle out before now.

The End of an Era

I took this shot in the Fall of 2001 when I was a first year graduate student rotating in Dr. Bob Duronio's fruit fly genetics lab. These are chromosome spreads from larval brains. Whereas humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, fruit flies have only 4. In this image, the chromosomes from two cells are shown. From the cell at the top, you can make out all 8 chromosomes. The pair of X chromosomes are "v" shaped, whereas both chromosomes 2 and 3 are "x" shaped. Chromosome 4 is very small and looks like a dot (in the cell in the lower right, only one Chromosome 4 is visible. The other is likely hidden below one of the larger chromosomes).

I came across these and similar images as I was sorting through a stack of CDs on my desk at work. After almost six years as a research scientist at UNC, I'm hanging up my pipetteman for the last time today. As I've been sorting through six years worth of accumulated belongings, I've found myself being reminded of many things I'd long ago forgotten. As such, it seemed fitting to use today's blog entry to take a trip down memory lane to the beginning of my graduate career. These have been six wonderful years.

Moving forward, it's possible that I may never again be a scientist by title or by trade, but I hope that I am always a scientist by mindset.

Name that plant...

I took this shot at Raleigh's Ralston Arboretum last month, but I failed to note what this plant is called. For somebody who majored in biology and did graduate work in a biological science, I'm a pretty miserable botanist. Consequently, I could use some help. Does anybody know what this thing is called?

Old Well II

This shot of UNC's Old Well was taken from the vantage point I've historically favored, across Cameron Avenue, just west of South Building.

For those who have not visited Chapel Hill, the Old Well is one of the two most recognizable landmarks on the UNC campus. Tradition says that freshmen should drink from the well the night before classes begin for good luck. Unfortunately, just down the road at NC State, tradition says that students should drive drive down I-40 to Chapel Hill in order to urinate in the the same well. As a result, I favor hygiene over history and photograph the well without drinking from it.

Old Well I

I took this picture of the Old Well in April when the azaleas were in bloom. Many azaleas were hit hard by a late freeze this year, and although the flowers at the well maybe weren't as spectacular as they sometimes are, they were still pretty impressive.

This particular shot is interesting because I didn't love it immediately. Honestly, I didn't pay it much attention at all. But in recent weeks, it's become one of my favorite Old Well shots that I've ever taken (and I've taken hundreds). As you'll see later in this series, usually my preferred view of the well is from a distance (for those familiar with Chapel Hill, I'm normally standing across Cameron in front of or beside South Building). This is a rare photo that I took from a different perspective. I like how the well emerges from the flowers.

Those who visit our home in Durham may recognize it as one of the two framed photos I put in our office. However, those who visit from Illinois are perhaps less likely to notice my shots, instead distracted by the adjacent wall with three framed newspapers, two of which celebrate UNC's victory over Illinois in the 2005 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship game.

No new shots in a month

Yesterday, I got out with my camera for the first time since early June. Unfortunately, I only took about five shots and none were keepers. It's been a hectic stretch, and something has needed to give. That something has been photography.

We're headed to Canada in two weeks, and I'm certain that we'll get some great shots up there. In the meantime, I think I'm going to spend the next two weeks putting up a series of shots of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina. In the unlikely event that I take some decent new shots between now and then, I'll preempt the series.

Waxing gibbous

As I'm still having trouble finding time to get out to take new shots, here's another older shot. I took this picture on the evening of New Year's Day in 2007.

Moon shots are more difficult than I ever would have expected. I fully utilized my camera's optical zoom for these shots in order to capture as much detail as possible. However, even with a tripod, it becomes difficult to keep the moon in the view at that magnification.

Additionally, the fuller the moon, the brighter the reflection off of the moon. As a result, I was using extremely fast shutter speeds for these shots, typically at least 1/500 second. On a full moon, even my maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 second is often too long to capture any detail, in which case the moon comes out looking like a big white ball without discernible features.

Spring flowers

I promised a new picture by the end of this week, but a series of evening storms this week has kept me from getting out with my camera. Additionally, we still aren't completely unpacked, and we've got family in town. It all adds up to no new shots.

To placate the masses, I offer a shot I took this spring instead. These flowers were in UNC's Coker Arboretum, a quiet corner of the Chapel Hill campus. I love the flowers, and I like the shot, although I should've plucked the green blade in the background, which distracts from the intended subject.

From the picture album: Pacific Coast

It's been a crazy week here in North Carolina as we move from Chapel Hill to Durham. As a result, I've had no time for photography and little time for blog updates. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to get out to take some shots of the full moon later this week. If I get anything good, I'll get them up here.

In the meantime, here's a shot that I took with my old Olympus when we were in California in October, 2005. This view can be found just north of Santa Cruz. It's a short walk on a trail from a nondescript parking lot on Highway 1. The day I took this shot, views were hard to come by in Northern California due to dense fog. However, at this region of the coast, everything opened up, and the views were spectacular.

From the picture album: Pilot Mountain II

This is another shot that I took at Pilot Mountain in December 2006. It's a closeup of the the southwest face of Big Pinnacle.

While Big Pinnacle is certainly a signature North Carolina site, it's perhaps less of a destination. A trail encircles the base of Big Pinnacle, but climbing is not allowed, meaning that one can't actually summit Pilot Mountain. Even so, the views atop the lookouts on Pilot are stunning, and if your heart is set on summiting a rocky peak in the northern Piedmont, you can always take a short drive down the road to Hanging Rock State Park, which is best known for another monadnock, Moore's Knob, with a moderate trail to the top.

From the picture album: Pilot Mountain I

I took this shot in December, 2006 soon after my wife gave me a tripod for Christmas.

Pilot Mountain is one of the more dramatic geological features in North Carolina. Compared to the peaks found in the Black Mountains, Pilot's 2421 ft. elevation is modest. However, because Pilot Mountain is surrounded by miles of relatively flat farm land and pasture, this rocky prominence is striking. When most North Carolinians think of Pilot, they think of it's larger pinnacle, called "Big Pinnacle", which is the subject of this photograph.

There are a few interesting features in this particular shot. First, in the background you can see two other mountains in the front range, Sauratown Mountain and Hanging Rock. Second, near to the top of the photo, I was able to capture the early evening moon. This weekend, I will post another Pilot Mountain photo taken the same day.

Butterfly in the garden

This is another picture that I took on Saturday after my digital photography class. It was a difficult shot, because the subject wasn't particularly cooperative. I spent about 15 minutes chasing him around the garden but never got the perfect shot. This image is probably the best one that I did get. The backdrop is good (intensely green foliage with flowers), and I almost caught him with his wings fully extended... but not quite.

I used the following settings for the picture:

Shutter speed: 1/500 sec
Aperture: f5
ISO: 64
Flash: None

In retrospect, I wish that I had used a higher f stop to increase my depth of field. I also might've been able to remove some of the shadows with a flash. Unfortunately, you don't always get a chance to reshoot when you're dealing with a live subject.

Bee on a flower

This morning I took an introductory digital photography class with Melissa Southern, a Raleigh-based photographer. It was an absolutely fabulous course, and I learned a tremendous amount. I don't know that I am a better photographer now, but I am certainly a more educated one.

Some of the more interesting lessons dealt with macro photography, which essentially refers to close up images. I've always enjoyed macro photography... even before I knew what it was called. However, I didn't know how to utilize any of my camera's features to facilitate those kinds of shots.

This is a shot that I took as I was leaving the workshop. The shot was taken at the NC State University Arboretum. The shutter speed was 1/500 sec, the aperture was set to f4.5, and the ISO setting was 64. I set the white balance to sunny, and utilized the camera's macro focus feature for close images.

Becoming a better photographer

This morning, I'm off to digital photography workshop in Raleigh. Hopefully, I'll return a more sophisticated photographer. My main goal for the course is to learn to use many of the features that I currently neglect on my camera (aperture, shutter speed, ISO settings, etc.). Additionally, I regularly see the shot I should've taken after returning home and viewing the shots I did take. Perhaps with better understanding, I'll begin to "see" those shots before I leave the site.

Science as art final installment: A closer look at a controversial topic

For my final photo in this "science as art" series, I thought I'd try something different. This image is not as visually striking as the two previous ones, and I guess that calls into question whether it's really art at all. But perhaps, what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up with relevance.

This picture is a colony of mouse embryonic stem cells. It's a shot that my wife, Stephanie, and I teamed together to produce. My contribution was simply preparing the cells; she actually snapped the shot.

Typically, my tendency is to avoid controversy. I am notoriously poor at dealing with conflict. However, it occurs to me that most people with strong opinions on both sides of the "stem cell debate" have actually never seen an embryonic stem cell. As a result, my intention is not to advocate for a particular position (in fact, I think that both sides tend to overstate and mislead). Rather, my intention is only to provide information, here in the form of a picture that might provide visitors a look at something they've never seen before.

Above, I referred to the image as a "colony of mouse embryonic stem cells." That's because embryonic stem cells grow as bundled groups of cells. The large ovalish object in this shot is one such colony. The individual embryonic stem cells are the smaller units in the larger blob.

More science as art: Filtered fluorescence

This is another picture taken at work. It's three views of the same nucleus, with different filters in place for each shot. On the far left, the filter eliminates all light other than blue light. In the middle, the filter eliminates all light but red light. The picture on the right is actually a digital merge of the two pictures on the left, although filters do exist that would allow you to view both colors.

The blue staining here is the same DNA stain that I used in the "chromosomes dividing" shot. The red stain is actually an antibody that is recognizing a particular chemical modifcation in these cells. What's interesting scientifically (and also artistically) is that the regions where the blue is most intense, the red is least intense (which becomes obvious in the merge on the right).

As you can probably gather from the last two blog entries, I love fluorescence microscopy. It produces not only scientifically-compelling data but also artistically-striking images.

I'll finish this week long feature on science as art with a final image on Thursday.

Science as art: Chromosomes dividing

I thought I'd try something a little different for this week by keeping all of my new shots on a "science as art" theme.

This is a shot I took at work a few years ago on a fluorescence microscope. In the image, you are looking at the nuclei of mouse cells, which I have stained with a blue DNA dye called DAPI.

There are two nuclei in the middle of this shot. The one on the right is the nucleus of a normal, resting cell. The nucleus on the left, which looks kind of like two blobs close together, is in the middle of cell division. In technical terms, we'd say that we've captured this cell in anaphase of mitosis.

The blue strings in each blob in the nucleus on the left are the actual chromosomes, which are being pulled to two separate poles. Eventually, the cell membrane (which is invisible in this shot) would invaginate, and those two blue blobs from the cell on the left would become the nuclei of two new daughter cells (similar in appearance to the nondividing cell on the right).

Red moon on Jordan Lake

I've been wanting to get a nice moon shot over Jordan Lake for some time. On Wednesday, the moon was pretty spectacular and one phase short of full; when I saw it, I was pretty bummed because I thought I'd missed my chance.

Even so, I decided to head out to the lake on Thursday night to see what I could get. Moonrise was 8:36 PM. I worried that I would have too little light for a good shot. For all its merits, my camera doesn't do great at high ISO settings, and I really wanted to get the moon shot with some sunlight still lighting the night sky. Sunset was 8:21 or so tonight, so I thought it would be tight.

These sorts of shots are tough, because the window of opportunity is so short. At best, I get a good shot 1 out of 20 attempts, and I had only a few short minutes to make it work (with long exposures limiting how many takes I could get in during that interval). Additionally, it's a tough exposure. When the moon is still low in the sky, you need a pretty long exposure. That's nice because it also lets you catch the trees and lake (even though dark). However, a tripod becomes essential with those 2 and 3 second exposures. And then, as the moon rises and gets brighter, those longer exposures start to cost you some definition.

This shot ended up being my favorite. By the time I took it, it was a little darker than I had wanted for the shot, but I was having tripod issues a few minutes earlier when the light was brighter, and as a result, the moon came out a little blurry on those shots.

Tulips at Duke Gardens

I took this shot at Duke Gardens in Durham, NC one evening in April. At the time, I was really into shots with repeating units, where one unit in the foreground was in focus whereas background units were blurred.

The gardens at Duke are beautiful, particularly in the Spring. There are typically a lot of great photo opportunities on the grounds. However, on this particular day, I wasn't overwhelmed... until I got to these tulips. They were spectacular. I was especially impressed with the texture on the petals themselves.

From the picture album: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Southwest Colorado's Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a remarkable place. The nearly-vertical canyon walls drop over 2000 feet to the Gunnison River, providing spectacular views along the length of the 12-mile national park. The view shown here is of Painted Wall (pictured on the right), the sheerest cliff in the park.

I found photography difficult in the park. In general, I find canyons challenging. Until the sun gets high in the sky, shadows complicate one's task. Consequently, I was disappointed with many of the shots I took at Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

Morning on the French Broad

I took this picture last weekend when we were in Asheville, NC.

The French Broad is a beautiful river. It's anything but mighty, but it's got enough rocks and rapids to keep it interesting. The night before Stephanie and I took a 5-mile rafting trip down it. It was a pleasant, albeit very tame, introduction to whitewater for both of us.

Horses near Asheville, NC

This weekend, Stephanie and I went to beautiful Asheville, NC for a few fun days of rafting, riding, and running.

This picture was taken about half a mile from our rental cabin. Ideally, it would be standard dimensions. Unfortunately, I failed to notice a telephone wire running through shot. As a result, I had to crop the photo to eliminate that unsightly line.

From the picture album: Ocracoke Island, NC

I took this shot in August of 2006 at Ocracoke Island, NC with my Olympus C-3000 Zoom camera.

Ocracoke is a magical spot. It's the least developed island on the NC coast "accessible" by car. And even then, I use the word "accessible" loosely, as getting to Ocracoke requires a ferry ride from either the mainland or from Hatteras Island.

It's a place without outlet malls or miniature golf courses. It's a place where the beach remains unblemished. You won't find 5000 square foot homes towering over the dunes. In fact, you won't find any homes at all within a half mile of the beach. It's the North Carolina coast the way it was 100 years ago.

We spent a week there with Stephanie's parents, and I'd go back again in a heartbeat.