Night photography and my little journey to understand why

Exciting photo, eh?

Yeah, I know. But taking the image sent me on a little journey for which I’m grateful. You see, I needed to know a “why.” And it took a National Geographic article about gardens to teach me a lesson in night photography…

Blinded by the night: Through my naked eyes, this is how the night landscape near Kodiak Island’s Three Sisters Mountains appeared. No, I was not wearing sunglasses.

As I stood on the side of the road, guard rail on one side and a cliff leading to the ocean on the other, I had second thoughts about leaving the comfort of a warm chair near the woodstove to drive out the road in search of northern lights. The aurora forecast, on a scale of 1 to 10 was a “5″; full of promise, but all I could see was a faint eyelid of green spying above the horizon.

Thankfully, stars outlined the snow-capped peaks and clouds in front of me, but without light from the still-low gibbous moon, the landscape was, to my naked eyes and brain, dull, dark and dimensionless, like the photo above.

Not very encouraging. Since I was already outside, dressed in layers for 10 degrees F, I decided to make a few pictures anyway, because, well,  you never know — a mantra I use for those wedges of doubt. I snapped on a flashlight to locate a safe place in the gravel for setting up my tripod. Pulling off my gloves, I went through the motions of composing the scene through the viewfinder, using the flashlight to visually mark the corners of the image.

I squeezed the cable release and exposed a frame for 25 seconds. After the camera whirred for a bit, I pressed the preview button and was pleasantly surprised at what I saw: a pair of pink, oval clouds, pointing  like giant sausages to the mountain ridges below. And to the right, oh so faint, but clearly there, green bands of the aurora connected heaven and earth.

What a surprise. I would never have guessed that such color and shapes existed in the mountain valley that night. It was another valuable lesson in how to think like a camera. [Canon 5D Mark II, 180-degree fisheye lens, f/2.8, ISO 3200, 25 seconds]

What a change, from one scene to the next. I knew, intellectually, what was happening, but I needed someone, something to explain it to me. To remind me why. Again.

The next day, I spotted the April 2013 issue of National Geographic on the coffee table and paged over to the “Night Gardens” piece by Cathy Newman. It began with, “The sun vanishes. The pearl of a moon rises. Magic happens.”

I’m writing this because Cathy helped me understand the magic that unfolded on that moonless night above the ocean.

“Color is mostly irrelevant in a night garden. Because of how the eye sees, even the most incendiary reds and oranges turn into a monochrome of silver and grays under the waning moon. The retina, the sensitive lining of the eye’s interior, is layered with photoreceptive cells called rods and cones. Rods, which detect the intensity of light, can sense low levels of illumination. But cones, which distinguish color, require a threshold of light higher than provided by the fading moon. In the absence of that threshold, color washes away. (The long exposure and sensitivity of digital imaging do what the retina cannot, which is why we see color in these photographs.)

How wonderful it feels to discover answers in unexpected places.

My favorite gardening tool

Gardeners often ask me what my favorite tool is. It’s not a rake, cultivator hoe or pair of good gloves (though if you gave me a pair I wouldn’t argue).

My favorite tool is the No. 2 pencil. Not those mechanical jobbies; just a wooden one.

A simple wooden pencil can solve many of life’s challenges, like picking up a single spinach seed. [Marion Owen photo]

See for yourself. Pick up a pencil and roll it in your fingers. Think potential here. Like paper clips, Q-Tips, and toothpicks, pencils have more than one life. And for gardeners, it’s a dream-tool come true.

While pencils can’t pull dandelions or help you lose weight, there are many things they can do to make life easier. Let me explain the many ways I’ve fallen in love with the humble pencil, starting with handling seeds.

Starting seeds indoors is a ritual that I look forward to as the official kick-off of the growing season. After filling containers with potting soil, I can hardly wait to break Old Man Winter’s grip with the sowing of the first seed. But most seeds are tiny buggers and making a pinch of seeds go where you want them to go is like trying to mobilize a litter of kittens.

Oh sure, seed packets provide some instructions, like, “Sow seeds sparingly over the soil,” or, “As seed is very fine, they should be barely covered with soil.” Easier read than done.

Have you ever tried to pick up only 3 — count them – lobelia seeds? They’re so tiny, an ounce of them contains 400,000 seeds. How about the Cycnoches chlorochilon orchid? Each pod produces an amazing 3,700,000 dust-like seeds. Spinach seeds are monsters by comparison.

Maybe you’ve had similar encounters with handling small seeds. Here’s how a pencil can solve your seed-sowing problems:

With your containers filled with moistened potting soil, take a packet of seeds and empty it into a dish or the palm of your hand. Pick up a pencil in your other hand. If the tip is sharp, round it off a little. Touch the soil with the pencil to moisten the tip. Now, bring it over to the seeds in your hand and connect the tip to one or more seeds, depending on what you’re aiming for. Try it a few times to get the hang of it. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to pick up just the right number of seeds.

Now, roll the pencil tip on top of the soil to wipe off the seeds. Cover them with soil if necessary and mist them with water. This little trick makes short order of sowing seeds. In fact, it works so well, you’ll find yourself carrying pencils and seeds to parties so you can show all your friends.

The next step: transplanting seedlings

After seedlings have formed their second set of leaves, it’s time to transplant them into larger containers. Here’s where a pencil works better than a dinner fork or chopstick. It’s a trick I learned years ago while visiting a local garden nursery. I watched in amazement as the owner deftly separated out perfect clumps of pansies using a pencil. In fact, at transplanting time, all of her employees use pencils. “We’ve tried everything,” she said, “and pencils work the best.”

Pencils by the way, don’t really contain lead. That dark gray stuff is graphite and clay, which means you can use it for a swizzle stick to stir your favorite beverage. I think it adds a nice, nutty flavor.

I’ll leave you with a few more pencil tips. I didn’t make these up; I found them online:

• A good-size tree will make about 300,000 pencils.
• You can also impress them with this clever factoid: More than 14 billion pencils are produced every year–enough to circle the globe 62 times.
• Pencils didn’t have erasers on them until 100 years ago because teachers felt they would encourage children to make mistakes.
• The average pencil can be sharpened 17 times, write 45,000 words or draw a line 35 miles long. No doubt, that’s why novelists Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck used pencils to write their books.

Can using pencils help us in other ways? Hmm, I like to think so.

“Everything that slows us down,” wrote May Sarton, “and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”

There are times though, when we need to pause in our stormy efforts to do, do, do. To step back and admire the beauty around us. So put your feet up. Take a break. Consider picking up a sketchbook and a pencil.

Make your own spiced hot cocoa mix

After two weeks of vacationing in Hawaii, it was time to fly back to Kodiak, Alaska. Six hours in the air. My butt hurt. As the jet neared the end of the runway however, the pilot apparently didn’t like what he saw, or couldn’t see. He banked left over the Coast Guard base and climbed out of the fog to re-enter the land of pink and yellow sunrises. A missed approach.

After circling for 20 minutes, we landed. It was 7:30 AM and our eyes burned with sleepiness. We grabbed our backpacks and large box of Lion Coffee and Dole pineapples, and shuffled across the icy parking lot and drove home, counting dozens of bald eagles along the way.

Time to unpack. Zzzzip, plunk. A tube of sunscreen tumbles to the floor. Our clothes smelled sweet and tropical. Marty started a fire in the wood stove to take off the chill. Hot chocolate would help so I headed to the pantry…

I hobbled this recipe for hot spiced cocoa mix from several that I found online and in cookbooks. Over the winter I tweaked it with cardamom and other spices to come up with a recipe that I’m happy with; one that doesn’t lump up and is not too sweet. Feel free to play with it, adding or subtracting ingredients to fit your own palate. No recipe is sacred.

Spiced Hot Cocoa Mix

• 2 c powdered sugar
• 1-1/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process is best, but use what you have)
• 2-1/2 c powdered milk
• 1/2 c powdered vanilla flavored coffee creamer (optional)
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1-1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• Orange peel, grated or zested

Measure all ingredients except orange peel in a large, sealable container. Shake, rotate, whatever it takes to combine everything. To drink, put 2 rounded tablespoons in a mug and add some hot water. Add a little orange zest, stir well, and top off with more water. Makes 6 cups of cocoa mix, enough to share with friends.

Meanwhile, back in the laundry room, in the process of emptying pockets of coins, receipts, and granola wrappers from our last road trip to Oahu’s North Shore, I sprinkled beach sand all over the tile floor. I stopped to take a long breath. It was good to be home, feeling warm on the outside, thanks to my suntan; and warm on the inside, thanks to a tasty cup of hot cocoa.

Are snowflakes alive?

Janet was worried about my upcoming visit.

“I don’t know if you have heard, but we are experiencing a very dusty winter because of the lack of snow. Be forewarned that I have not started my spring housecleaning—which usually occurs just before my St. Patrick’s Day Party in March, so expect some dust in the house.”

Snowflake with a 1960s, Haight Ashbury look

“I promise not to bring my white gloves to Anchorage,” I assured her. “I’ll be outside most of the time anyway.”

When weather conditions in Anchorage, Alaska are just right for photographing snowflakes, I catch a jet to Anchorage and stay at Janet and Jerry’s house in the Rabbit Creek area outside of town. Cooler than the Anchorage bowl, the woodsy setting is ideal for moose and snowflake watching.

I’m easy to have around: I set up my gear on their back porch and–while the getting is good–I go back and forth to the porch, day and night, coming inside to grab a snack, pee or take a nap.

A few days before my flight, I spent some time researching the origins of snow. I’ve been curious about the white stuff for years. And as a gardener, I bow down to snow as a gardener’s best friend: It provides a protective blanket for trees, shrubs and perennials. If the ground is bare when a hard freeze claws at the earth, plants have a tougher time surviving.

So this is cool: snow crystals are not just beautiful shapes of inert frozen water. They’re alive. Okay, not quite like soil, but there is more to them that meets the eye, or camera.

Back to my friend Janet and her concern about dust, and having too much of it on the furniture. “I have tried keeping the basic horizontal surfaces clean,” she says, “but I get up in the morning and they are dusty again. Rather than ‘go crazy’, I have released on the phenomenon and just ‘walk on by’. Hope you can do the same.”

Tendril and clouds through kitchen window

To Janet, dust is the enemy; to a snowflake, dust is a necessity.

Really? To explain, we need to understand how clouds form and how they create snow. It begins when the wind pushes a mass of warm, moist air into a different mass of air, say, a cold one. Meteorologists call this a weather front, the mixing zone or edge where two air masses collide. Precipitation, including snowfall, often occurs along such weather fronts.

If the collision pushes the warm air mass upward, then it cools, causing water vapor to condense into water droplets—countless bazillions of them. Each droplet requires a nucleus on which to condense and these are provided by particles of dust in the air. This collection of liquid droplets is what you see from earth as clouds.

So now, if the clouds continue to cool, dust plays another role in making snow. Contrary to popular belief, water droplets do not freeze immediately when the temperature dips below 32 degrees F. Rather, they remain liquid in a supercooled state. Dust provides a solid surface, a seed if you will, to jump-start the freezing process much like a pearl in an oyster forming around a bit of grit.

In a matter of minutes, the frozen droplets will grow into full-sized snowflakes and drop out of the clouds, tumbleweeding their way down to Earth. “At the center of many snowflakes, too tiny for even the microscope to see, lies a solitary speck of dust that gave the crystal its start,” says Ken Libbrecht in his “Field Guide to Snowflakes,” available through Amazon.

Share this factoid with your friends: From the time a snowflake forms, to the time it touches down in the palm of your hand, it’s about 20 minutes. Amazing.

Remember I said that snowflakes are alive and somewhat related to soil? In the January 2013 issue of the National Geographic, Stanford University microbiologist Nathan Wolfe wrote an article about bacteria called “Small, Small World.” (“They’re invisible. They’re everywhere. And they rule.”)

“Above the air we breathe,” he says, “the upper atmosphere also contains microbes, floating as high as 22 miles above Earth’s surface.” Wolfe believes they could go even higher and there is evidence that some bacteria not only tolerate high levels of ultraviolet radiation, but “some metabolize and perhaps even reproduce inside clouds.

“In fact they may play a part in the formation of snowflakes that require a nucleator, or small particle, to crystallize around.

In 2008, Brent Christner and his colleagues at Louisiana State University showed that microorganisms were “the most efficient ice nucleators present in snow.”

“That’s right,” says Wolfe, “Snow is literally alive.”

Hopefully Janet can relax now, knowing that dust has a higher purpose.

Close up of a snowflake with a split center

Strawberry Reflections in Seattle

Christmas lights and decorations (see the strawberry, carrot and pear on the roof?) at Seattle’s Pike Place Market create color patterns on parked cars. Photo by Marion Owen, Kodiak, Alaska.

The rain had stopped so we decided have breakfast at the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. “Go to Lowell’s, you’ll love their lemon-blueberry pancakes,” the hotel clerk said. So lemon-blueberry pancakes it was, on the third floor, overlooking Elliott Bay. My husband Marty and I talked about little things, but mostly we watched the activity along the waterfront: leaves tornado-ing against buildings, cars inching in traffic, gulls hovering over litter…

We finished our coffee, left a tip and ventured down the wooden steps to explore the market: Quiet women with hidden stories gathered dried flowers into beautiful arrangements, men passed salmon back and forth like footballs at the seafood stand while onlookers snapped with their iPhones. A bearded man wearing a white butcher’s apron held out a chunk of apple at the end of a paring knife. “It’s a Pink Lady, crunchy and sweet,” he said.

As we sampled the fruit, Marty listened to the man’s shpeal about apples; my attention drifted absentmindedly across the display of fruits and vegetables, resting on a ski slope of artichokes. I’d eaten artichokes since I was a child growing up in Lakewood, Washington and spending summers on Puget Sound. Back then, a meal of Dungeness crab, artichokes, and sourdough bread–all finger food–was a cheap and easy way to feed five kids. Mom and Dad were foodies; Dad liked to follow recipes…

Dad, these ‘chokes are huge. Remember how we put peppercorns in the boiling water and I’d sneak a little lemon in the mayo? What do you think? We can have halibut and artichokes when you visit us in Kodiak next summer…

People swirled around me, but I didn’t really see them. Sigh. Marty squeezed my hand and we zig-zagged our way through the late-morning shoppers and onto Pike Street. A Christmas tree vender was strapping a small tree on the back of a bicycle and a family stood around Rachel, the bronze pig, to have their picture taken.

“Marty, see the wire sculptures on top of the roof? It’s a strawberry, carrot and pear. Let’s come back at dusk so I can photograph this spot.” I looked forward to the diversion.

Dad, why didn’t you get a second opinion? Doctors said the polyp wasn’t cancerous. At 84, did you really need the surgery? Something went wrong, though. What? In the hospital, I held your hand, stroked your hair. Did you know I was there?

For the rest of our stay in Seattle, I explored, walked and shopped by day and carried my tripod and camera after dusk. The cityscapes provided me with a subject and light palette that was much different than the Sitka spruce trees, eagles, surf, brown bears, fishing boats and sunrises I was accustomed to shooting around Kodiak Island.

Eager to explore more nightscapes (you can’t see tears in the dark), we bought tickets for the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit at the base of the Space Needle. At $19, tickets were pricey, but reviews looked good. Photos are encouraged, but with a hitch: “No tripods allowed,” the lady said as she scanned our tickets. I bumped up my ISO.

The Space Needle appears wrapped in a flower scarf when viewed through the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle. Photo by Marion Owen, Kodiak, Alaska

Inside the glass covered “greenhouse” I laid on the floor, and gazed up at the Space Needle and framed it with red and yellow flowers. Funny, the underside of its “cap” still looked like gills of a mushroom, just as I remember during the 1962 Seattle Word’s Fair.

Streetlights in downtown Seattle offer warmth and light to maple leaves still clinging to trees in late November. Photo by Marion Owen, Kodiak, Alaska

The next night, we dined at Mama’s Mexican Kitchen for dinner. It was Tuesday, so we were greeted with guitar music, singing and comfort food. After sharing a buenuelo (a crispy tortilla topped with honey) for dessert, we walked partway back to the hotel, savoring the cool air. I looked up at the lights, the maple leaves…

Dad, I’m right here, squeezing your hand. You’re my hero, Dad. I’m proud to have you as my father in this lifetime… there’s a spark of the Divine inside you, you know… I uh, have to fly back to Alaska tomorrow. I love you, Dad. I’ll see you again, okay?

Dear Reader: My father, Arthur Albertson Allen, passed away on November 13, 2012.

The edges of nature: When snow kisses the ocean

When it snows on Kodiak Island, something magic happens at high water. The black shale rocks are dusted with white, transforming them into tiny marshmallows. Then as the tide recedes, the snow is raked into the ocean, leaving a straight, horizontal line along the beach. Offshore, winter storms paint the rocky outcroppings with layers of water that freeze like candle wax. I came upon this scene last weekend while walking along a cliff. I’d brought my camera and tripod, though the dull light wasn’t very inspiring. Still, a little voice kept nudging me along. “Go a little further, there’s something waiting for you.”

Winter scenic one east side of Kodiak Island, Alaska. Marion Owen photo.

Thanks for stopping. May your week be filled with blessings. If you visit Kodiak Island, let me know, I’ll put the coffee on. You can also find me on Facebook at Marion Owen Photography and see more of my images at my main photography website: www.MarionOwenPhotography.com.

If you had minutes to flee a disaster and could take only one item…

If you had minutes to flee a disaster and could take only one item, what would you choose? Most people name a possession that can be impossible to replace: their photos. Photographer Allison  Kwesell traveled to Japan last November, armed with two cameras and donated Fuji instant film. Her goal: to help survivors of the earthquake and 20-foot tsunami build new photo albums by asking survivors if they’d like to pose and then giving them the instant prints. In an interview with The Rotarian, Allison recalls photographing a woman with her grandchildren in front of their temporary home. “She told me she was happy I chose to photograph her there, because it gave her the courage to move forward.”

Now hold those thoughts as you fly from Japan, across the Pacific Ocean, to Kodiak Island where I live. I’m in a grocery store, high-grading bananas, when a fellow shopper starts chatting about digital photography. “So, why do you take pictures, Marion? Are you going to sell them or something?”

A bumblebee dines on pollen grains alongside red velvet mites on a ragwort flower growing on Kodiak Island beach.

I stared at the bananas. Why do photographers take photos? Why do artists dab paint, write poems or knit hats? Is it to say something, call attention to ourselves, or prompt others to take the road less traveled? Of course, only you can answer why, but reading about Allison’s work gave me pause to dig deeper.

Later that day, while sampling an apple muffin, I pondered “photography” which, to me, is all about looking for great light and then finding something to put into it. So why do I take pictures? Two thoughts came to mind:

Thought No. 1: Practicing my art gives me an excuse to enjoy nature more intimately. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods calls it Nature Therapy. Meanwhile, it forces me to slow down (even the finest tea spills out of a jostled cup) and concentrate (“What’s for dinner”? has no place behind the tripod). Grace and guidance flows continuously within and without us, whether or not we’re conscious of it. Sometimes it manages to filter through in quiet prods like, “Look over there, drive down that road, tilt your camera down a bit.”

And many times, nudging me like a bird tapping my shoulder, is a comment from Galen Rowell’s provocative book, Mountain Light:

“One of the shocking realizations of adult life is that most of us are not fulfilling the most closely held dreams of our youth. Instead of pursuing dreams that were once integral parts of our personalities, we end up in one way or another fulfilling someone else’s ideas about who and what we should be, usually at the expense of our creative urges.”

Still with me? Here’s the kicker. Read this slowly. More than once:

Thought No. 2: All true religions tell us we are made in the image of God. Therefore, God is the very Essence of our being and “we cannot truly express ourselves until we learn to manifest His presence within us,” wrote Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi.

When I hear Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, my heart swells with hope. When I read about people like Allison Kwesell, I am inspired to create less from my head and more from my heart. Thanks, Allison.

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Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week. You can also find me on Facebook at Marion Owen Photography and see more of my images at my main photography website: www.MarionOwenPhotography.com.