Photo This

Nope, not a post about boogers. Sorry.

Way back in 2010 we visited Vroman’s Nose when there was snow on the ground, so what better place to strike out for during spring? I expected a mild, gorgeous day full of baby bunnies and nesting pairs of birds flitting about; I got a sun-baked, windy cliffside with no trace of Peregrine Falcons. Not a problem though, a perfect day for a picnic, and you know what I like almost as much as birds that eat other birds? Moss. Maybe it eats other moss, I don’t know.

Packing a macro lens, I was looking down more than I was looking up. Anywhere a bright patch promised enough sunlight for a decent exposure, I stomped off, heedless of deer ticks, for a close up view. When you’re looking for details, the world changes in a way, and you notice things you’d never noticed before. Quick note: you can click on any image to go to the flickr page, where you can see larger versions, which have much more detail. I suggest it.

Like this moss. Guess what, I am really bad at identifying moss. I can point out club moss, because that’s easy and relatively nonspecific. This is not a club moss. This is a fruiting body, I think; you can see the bed in the slightly less magnified photo below.

This amazes me, it looks like some alien forest. Avatar? Don’t need that, looking close enough at what we already have is crazy enough.

This, another moss, looked to me like a rolling sea, or acres of grain being blown by the wind. I’m repeatedly surprised by how our world on a small scale can often look like our world on a large scale. Then again I always thought the orbits of electrons around an atom’s nucleus resembled the orbits of planets around stars and satellites around planets, plus I didn’t pay a lot of attention in chemistry class.

These curly little mosses were near the ones above (actually you can see one of the above mosses at the bottom). Both blanketed a large rock, most likely successional species after lichen colonized it. I explained this phenomenon in an earlier post about Dyken Pond.

Most interesting were the above… I don’t know. This must be some kind of fruiting body, but to me it looks more like the Sarlacc that swallows Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi. That’s at a little over 1:1 (see below), so that central green stalk is about 1cm tall, for reference.

The vegetation near the cliff of Vroman’s Nose is adapted to punishing winds and relatively cold temperatures. The macrobiology consists mainly of hardy trees; twisted krummholz near the edge, with some hardier deciduous varieties mixed with evergreens a little further in. Those trees are uniformly covered with (what I believe are) liverwort, along with some mosses. The liverwort is the dull, leafier structure above; they’re easily mistaken for lichen (by me). Liverwort tends to thrive in moist conditions, which makes sense here when you realize that the rough tree bark collects moisture in the form of dew and may secrete its own moisture as well. The moss seems to be along for a free ride, conveniently.

So many leaves were budding, they made excellent closeup subjects. I have no idea what kind of plant this leaf is attached to! But it looks awfully nice and fuzzy, right?

Like other high-altitude, competitive local environments, Vroman’s Nose has lush beds of wild blueberries (or these may be huckleberries, hard for me to tell), which should blossom soon and produce tiny, amazingly flavorful fruit in late summer. If you camp in the higher elevations of New York, collect some of these for breakfast pancakes. Trust me. For now, they give some pleasant ground cover.

I’m coming to grips with my own issues with heights; as I’ve said before, it’s not heights I’m afraid of, but falling. It’s not uncommon for rescues to be performed, and I don’t want to know how painful it is to fall far enough to need a rescue. Still, I went near the edge for a few photos, which is more than I did last time.

To get into gear talk for a minute, I’ve discussed inexpensive macro solutions and macro photography while hiking before. Since this was a low-impact hike, I brought along a dedicated lens and packed an all-purpose zoom. The macro photos here were made with a Canon FD 50mm f/3.5 Macro lens, adapted to the modern EF mount (think of it as the granddaddy of the current EF 50mm f/2.5 Macro). The trick here is that unless the adapter has an optical element, slowing and degrading the lens, you cannot get full infinity focus with an FD lens. For macro photos, I’m not concerned about infinity focus, which makes it a perfect inexpensive solution; $30 or so for the lens and $15 for the adapter. Since the adapter then acts as a thin extension tube, at maximum magnification (including the original dedicated FD25 extension tube) this gets just over 1:1 reproduction. For dedicated macro shooting, this is the setup that I’m happiest with after three years of experimentation — but it still doesn’t quite match up to a modern lens designed for the Canon system.

Here’s the thing; I am generally dismissive of macro photography. It’s often a cheap thrill, photos of flowers simply for the fact of the super closeup, not for any real consideration of the subject. A very “look at me” kind of photography. I consider myself a (very) amateur naturalist, so I justify these photos as studies of local flora and fauna. Do I know what the insect above is? No, but I’m fascinated by the way it’s adapted to blend in with trees in its habitat. Look at the very large version and the antennae look like tiny individual beads strung together. I am not into macro photography simply because it looks cool, but because I’m trying to examine and understand the world around me.

So that’s another trip to Vroman’s Nose. My last note is this: if you’re coming from Albany, don’t take I-90 or Rt 88. Those are the easy ways to get to Middleburgh, but if you spend some time with a map and look at Rt 146 or any of the other backroads, you’ll drive through some quiet country with amazing scenery. Get a gazetteer and enjoy New York!

If you want someone who is much better at finding and describing the small, seasonal things in our Capitol Region, check out Saratoga Woods and Waterways. If you want to know things about microbiology you will subsequently not want to know, I heartily recommend The Artful Amoeba. You can also see a slideshow of allll my Vroman’s nose photos.

Yesterday a hole in the world opened that will never be filled again. Tom Genovese, a dedicated, loving, and passionate son, brother, and friend to many, was killed in a collision while riding his motorcycle.

There are few people out there like Tom. I got to know him a little over a year ago, when I wrote an article for All Over Albany on the opening his cafe. I came to call him a friend shortly after, drawn in by his warmth, magnanimity, and sense of humor. I imagine that happened to most who met him. Tom was an engineer, environmentalist, swing dancer, wonderful owner of two of the best dogs ever, entrepreneur, community builder, great guitarist and singer, and most importantly an excellent friend.

He was also passionate, the cafe being a prime example. He devoted the last two and a half years of his life to realizing this dream, and celebrated the first anniversary of its opening just a few days ago. Not many people would endure the struggle and hardship he saw during that time, and even fewer would would smile as much as Tom did throughout. He had an extraordinary ability to shake off whatever bothered him, always finding a way to laugh.

In the short year that I knew him, Tom left a trail of fond memories. Friendly arguments over which chips to serve with sandwiches. Watching his dogs try to eat the ice on the puddles at the top of Buck mountain in December. The slightly awkward “loincloth” pouch he wore on a hike up Roostercomb, and the mean campfire pancakes he made in the morning. So many visits to the cafe, with odd stories about customers, his unique open mic hosting talents, and the comfortable, homey feeling he nurtured there so quickly. More than once I ran into him on the street, Danny and Bosco offleash but always glued to his side. In fact, that’s how many people knew him, “that guy with the dogs”.

I spent a few hours last night at a friend’s house where many of us had gathered, to console each other and try to understand and make sense of what had happened. The number of people there and the mix of emotion are a testament to who Tom is. Yes, there were tears, but there was plenty of laughter too. To say that his closest friends are devastated is an understatement; without warning, they lost an irreplaceable gem of a human being.

Tom’s official obituary has more details. He touched so many lives, and will be remembered and missed in all of them. This has been mostly my own way of grieving and coming to grips with reality, so thanks for reading.

Bye Tom.

2012 marks the third year I’ve visited the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, only named the #2 Winter Carnival in the world by National Geographic. Beating out parties in Canada and Japan is pretty impressive considering the town’s population hovers around 5,000. Who knew we had a world-class event tucked away in the frigid Adirondacks? Answer: National Geographic, but now you know, too.

Each year has a theme, and this year’s was Alien Invaders. You can see a few of them above, abducting terrestrial life forms. As usual I accompanied my friends in the carnival group the Gimps, best known for never participating in the yearly theme. This time they were killer bees. As in the classic SNL skit, complete with sombreros, which raised concerns they would be interpreted as illegal aliens (they had been permanently banned from the carnival years ago for gratuitous use of “EAT ME” in an Alice on Wonderland theme). Bright yellow stripes and bee antics seemed to do the trick and there were no international incidents.

In 2010 and 2011 I went with something of a photojournalistic angle, focusing on the parade, the costumes, the ice castle and winter events. This time I decided to use the warm welcome my extended family of Gimps gives and come at carnival in a more documentary style. You may be asking, what’s the difference between photojournalism and documentation? Well, it’s quite simple: obviously I’m just using impressive words to sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Instead of staking out a spot on the parade route and shooting every float going by, I followed the swarm of killer bees to their staging area. Since they had the second to last float, this was perfect, passing by all the other groups on the mile or two walk out and making it back to the finish line about halfway through the end of the parade. Hanging out while the gimps were getting prepped was much more interesting than being roped onto the sidewalk and waiting for the parade to pass by. Maybe because they are pretty interesting. Bees on a frozen lake? Why not.

Walking back up the route, through the crowd, gave me a chance to shoot some of the other paraders and the spectators. I wanted to give a sense of what it’s like to be in the crowd, instead of the slightly antiseptic results I came back with in years prior. There’s a certain energy and enthusiasm we don’t get here in Albany at, say, Tulip or Lark Fest.

My impression of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival has been one of high alcohol consumption, which may just be a byproduct of the people I hang out with while I’m there. After the parade there was some hotel room drinking, some food and drinking at the Moose Club, some drinking and very noise-tolerant dogs at the Rusty Nail, and drunken bee bowling. I called it a night before the swarm invaded the Waterhole, a popular local establishment I had been forcefully ejected from last year.

By the time we were near the ice castle, with ice UFOs gorgeously lit up, I was looking forward to getting horizontal. So, no photos of the castle for me this year, but honestly, it will be hard to ever top Mark Kurtz’ shot from that Nat Geo link. If you’ve never been to the carnival, you owe it to yourself to check it out at least once, see the official website for details. Think about reserving a room sometime around right now. I highly recommend checking the slideshow for larger photos, more not shown here, and a better idea of what it’s like to hang out with the Gimps for a day.

Special thanks to all of the hospitable residents of Saranac Lake, especially the police and fire departments who maintain a semblance of order. Until next year, happy carnival!