Susquehanna at Pittston, May 5, 2018

I am tired and need to get to bed, so here's a photo I took on May 5, 2018 from the deck of Brews Brothers in Pittston a little after 6:00 PM. The day was bright,if a bit overcast, and the sunlight was glimmering on the Susquehanna, but the camera chose to interpret the scene as one of grim foreboding. What the hell, I'll take it, I thought. So here it is.

Reshoots

Me, after coming home from work 45 minutes late, taking my mom to physical therapy, going grocery shopping, scouting out a new view from Holy Trinity Cemetery, and taking my mom home from physical therapy: I'd like to go out and get some photos today, but I don't really feel like running out again. Besides, it's not like there won't be any more sunny days.

Me, a few minutes later: To hell with that. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. There may not be any more sunny days. Get those photos now.

So, with the sun rapidly sinking in the west, I went back to the cemetery and reshot the Nanticoke Panorama from a slightly different angle, and with much better lighting:

Click to zoom. See original post for details.

I then ran out to the Shickshinny Boat Launch (latitude 41.178696, longitude -76.106361 - put that in Google Maps and you'll be able to see exactly where I was standing) and took some new photos of the Susquehanna from more-or-less the same place I took the original image back on April 1:

Overall, I'm glad I went out and got these photos. I'm glad I didn't presume to wait on another sunny day.

Susquehanna from Shickshinny Boat Launch, April 1, 2018

This was taken around midday on April 1, 2018, facing west by southwest. I wonder how the same shot would look at sunrise, or sunset? I'll have to check it out sometime.

Seven days of nature photos, day 4: Moonrise over the Susquehanna

Of course I had to include a Moon photo in this series. It was hard to decide on which one to post. Ever since I got my new camera back in 2014, a camera that allowed me to take decent photos of the Moon for the first time, the Moon has been my favorite photographic subject. I even created a whole blog dedicated to it.

This particular photo was part of a larger effort. It was taken September 27, 2015, the night of a total lunar eclipse. I set myself up on the Nanticoke-West Nanticoke bridge, in a location near to where I photographed the shadow of the Earth, hoping to photograph the full Moon rising. I was thwarted by a thick layer of clouds, but eventually the Moon broke through and I got this and many other photos.

Compare the reflection of the Moon on the water to the shape of the sun pillar featured in a previous photo in this series. The Moon's image is being reflected by the surface of the water, while the light of the Sun, still below the horizon, is being reflected by ice crystals in the air.

The original of this photo, as well as the story of what went into getting it, can be found here.

Seven nature photos, day 3: The shadow of the Earth

Like yesterday's entry, the shadow of the Earth is a not-very-rare phenomenon that is nevertheless seldom seen. It is visible on pretty much any relatively clear day just before sunrise or just after sunset. The trick is, it's on the side of the sky opposite the sun. So you need to have the sunrise or sunset at your back to see this. As a bonus, just above the shadow of the Earth you will see a bright pink glow known as the Belt of Venus - the reflected light of all of the sunrises or sunsets taking place just below the opposite horizon!

Like yesterday's Sun Pillar, the shadow of the Earth and the Belt of Venus are featured prominently in a short story I've written - as is the bridge from which these pictures were taken. See the full entry from which this picture was taken - including photos of the bridge itself, and Venus at play in its girders - here.

Susquehanna (poem)

The theme for this year's Poetry in Transit was "River." For those who don't know, Poetry in Transit is a project led by Mischelle Anthony from Wilkes University to have short poems by local poets displayed in the advertising spaces of Luzerne County Transit Authority buses. The project has been going on for a few years, though I only became aware of it two years ago. I submitted an excerpt of an already-written poem last year, and it was chosen as one of the poems for display.

I didn't have a suitable poem to submit this year, so I realized I would have to create one. I mused on it while mowing the lawn - this is actually an excellent time to compose poetry or plot out stories - and tried to think of the images that came to mind when I thought of the Susquehanna river. ("Susquehanna" wasn't a requirement: the theme could just as easily have been used to compose a poem about River Tam, or River Song, or the River Styx.) The most pressing memory was one that was idiosyncratic and personal, and, I realized, would be understood by no one but me. The others were also personal, but wouldn't need the same level of explanation.

Books  pressed against the ceiling
a lifetime of memories at the curb
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at sunset
unseen fish breaking the surface of morning
girder shadows blue on the ice
thus will I remember you

I hate poetry that needs explanation to be understood. I have heard some excellent poems that made no sense without prefatory comments - and would future readers have access to these comments? So how could I explain the "Books pressed against the ceiling" line without doing this very thing?

And then it hit me: I could explain it in a poem - which I presented at the Poetry in Transit rollout event.

Susquehanna

Agnes came through when I was four and a half
young, but not too young to remember a time before then
it wandered up from the Gulf on a drunkard's walk
came ashore through New York City
and hit Pennsylvania

the rain came down and the winds blew for days
our basement flooded, but that was about it,
and then the storm moved further north and stalled out
dumping its load of rain into the headwaters of the Susquehanna

My uncle was getting married the day the flood came
the river carried away his wedding cake
A few days later he drove us to the edge of town, where Main Street in Nanticoke becomes the San Souci parkway, drops down to head for Wilkes-Barre
It dropped down into water. There was no more road after that
And the lights of Wilkes-Barre were dark

My father took us into the flood zone a few weeks later, after the river had receded and the cleanup had begun
the streets were brown, like the grass and the trees, yellow-brown and dusty
we found a glass decanter, probably from Avon, in the shape of an old Volkswagen
it had belonged to somebody, and now it was garbage
we kept it, heedless of the toxins that coated it

We went to his aunt's house
she had stayed there, had planned to ride out the storm,
and had to be rescued by boat from her second floor window
Her front room had held a library, hundreds of books, maybe more
the Susquehanna's waters had floated them out of their shelves, floated them to the plaster ceiling
held them there and kept on rising
when the water receded the books were ruined things, dead, destroyed,
but they had left imprints on the ceiling,
colored stains on the white plaster,
faint images of the covers of hundreds of books, jumbled and arrayed where no books should ever be
ghosts of the books they had once been

Books  pressed against the ceiling
a lifetime of memories at the curb
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at sunset
unseen fish breaking the surface of morning
girder shadows blue on the ice
thus will I remember you, Susquehanna

Moonrise over the Susquehanna, September 27, 2015

I spent some time on the Nanticoke-West Nanticoke bridge at and after sunset on Sunday, September 27, 2015. That was the night of the conveniently-timed (for the East Coast of the U.S., at least) total lunar eclipse described here. I wanted to catch the moonrise. I only had a vague sense of where the Moon would rise, within about sixty degrees, but I was hoping I would get some cool moonlight-on-water effects. As you can see in the image above, I did.

I wanted to get the moonrise because the Moon that night was going to be a "Supermoon," significantly larger than the average angular size of the Moon thanks to it being at its closest point in its orbit at the same time as being Full. This is something you can't really notice without some sort of measuring device, like an aspirin or pencil eraser held at arm's length - normally this will cover the face of the Moon entirely, but for a Supermoon it will not.

I had the timings of the Moon's rise memorized, but the appointed time came and went with no sign of it. I didn't realize until the next day that the time displayed on my camera was four minutes faster than the actual time, but even with such an allowance the Moon was distinctly absent. I began to suspect some supervillain had stolen it. Then it appeared, like headlights piercing the fog.

It had been above the horizon but hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. But that didn't matter: it was here now, and all was forgiven!

Until a minute later, when it vanished again behind another layer of clouds.

And so we began a waiting game, waiting for the Moon to clear the clouds and put on a show for me. After a few more minutes of being gawked at by passers-by who wondered why I was on the pedestrian walkway of a bridge taking photos of nothing, the Moon again broke through the cloud layer.

The Moon was safely clear of the thick light-blocking layers, so now it was just a matter of waiting for the sky to darken a bit to allow better images.

I posted my favorite photo of this sequence at the top of this post.

Finally, it was time to call it a night, head home, and get ready for the eclipse in a few hours. I grabbed one last image as I was getting ready to pack away the camera and tuck the tripod under my arm.

And so ended the first part of the evening's lunar photography.

An account of the Lunar eclipse of October 8, 2014 and the sunrise that followed

I was going to post this on my Lunar photography blog, Shoot the Moon, but then I decided it would be more appropriate to post it here and link to it from there.

I woke up extra-early on the morning of October 8, 2014. The weather forecast had not been promising the night before, and clouds had been thundering across the face of he Full Moon when I went to sleep a few hours earlier. Still, I dragged myself out of bed, took a shower, made coffee, ate some breakfast, and took a peek outside to see if I could see anything. A red glow in the West suggested that if nothing else, I might get some interesting cloud photographs. I made my lunch, gathered up my gear, walked down to the car, and headed for the Nanticoke-West Nanticoke bridge, where I would have a pretty good view of the Western sky - and maybe the eclipsed Moon.

Threading my way through the pre-dawn traffic in Nanticoke, including taking a detour caused by an ambulance parked outside of the local senior high-rise, I caught occasional glimpses of the Moon. The first seemed shrouded in clouds, but those that followed appeared to be clearer. I parked in the semi-paved lot on the Naticoke side of the bridge, grabbed my coat, a hat, my tripod, and a camera, and walked out until I was over the Susquehanna river.

6:26 AM: The Moon was there! Clouds darted around it, but I could see it.

6:31 AM: My camera was having a hard time focusing on a low-light target at infinity. I played with the settings a bit and realized that the standard Landscape mode would work best in this situation - but only once the eclipse had reached totality. Before then, everything was an unfocused blur. After totality, the Moon brightens up a bit, usually. (There was one that I remember from sometime in the late 1980's when the Moon actually became a dark purplish shade, and hung in the sky like a burned-out cinder. Through binoculars it looked ridiculously three-dimensional, like it was a ball hanging just out of reach.) Clouds were still present, but I decided they added a nice touch.

6:32 AM: I was on the walkway of the bridge, which is several feet wide and separated from the automobile traffic by a thigh-high guardrail. I had my tripod positioned so two of the three legs were touching the guardrail. Even in the hour preceding sunrise there was still quite a bit of traffic on the bridge. In this image, a car drove by just as the shutter opened. The reflected sodium vapor lights on the bridge created an eclipse-colored blur.

6:32 AM.

6:32 AM.

6:34 AM: I tried to establish context for these photos by pulling back to include the nearby disused railroad bridge. The camera did not take kindly to the change of state and lost focus.

The clouds settled in for a bit. I took a few more shots and got some fuzzy images. After a few minutes I heard and felt someone approaching on the bridge from the Nanticoke side. I was wearing a black longcoat but had made sure I was wearing relatively light-colored jeans and a beige baseball cap for contrast and increased visibility. I moved against the guardrail, pressed my tripod against it, and eyed the stranger warily: A stocky redbearded fellow, mid-30's, appeared somewhat unkempt. Could be some homeless guy, could be someone out for a morning constitutional. Could be someone who would want to steal my $400 camera and $30 tripod and sell them for enough money to get his next fix and maybe the one after that. 

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," I grunted back.

He walked past silently, then stopped and looked at my setup. "Whatchu lookin' at?" he asked, looking at the Western horizon.

"The Moon," I said. "Lunar eclipse. Snedeker's been going on about it all week." Joe Snedeker is a local meteorologist whose TV forecasts involve more clowning than actual weather information. But he had actually been talking extensively about the eclipse for most of the last week.

"I don't see it," the stranger said.

"It's - " I looked towards the horizon and the Moon was mostly hidden by clouds. "Aw, heck," I said, and hit the playback button on the camera. I had to go back a bit to find a decent photo. "Here," I said.

"Huh. That's pretty neat," the stranger said. "Well, have a nice day." He resumed his walk across the bridge.

6:43 AM: Nine minutes after the last shot the clouds cleared out for a while. The Moon was now much lower but the context was much easier to capture. Many outlets had been referring to this dramatically as a "Blood Moon" - apparently, that's another term for a total lunar eclipse. Despite the hype, I found this one had a rose-pink hue.

6:44 AM: I zoomed in a bit to capture the Moon as it sank closer to the treetops.

6:46 AM: The "Moon Illusion" in a photo. I pushed my zoom all the way to capture the dawn-faded and mist-shaded eclipsed Moon full size, and then I decided that wasn't a very interesting image. I backed off a bit and dipped the camera to include the trees. Reviewing this picture later I thought "My God, the Moon is HUGE there." It's not. I routinely take pictures of the Moon that fill much more of the image. But in this one you are clearly seeing foreground objects - trees that are less than half a mile away - and you're looking at the Moon in terms of them. Trees are big; the Moon is bigger than trees!

6:46 AM: Clearly, the end was near. The Moon was still well above the horizon, but about to pass below a local obstruction that would block it from view. Fun fact: by this point the Moon might have been much lower on the horizon, but its image was refracted up by the atmosphere. This can - and did - result in a condition called a selenelion, a situation where the setting Full Moon and the rising Sun are 180 degrees apart but both appear in the sky at the same time, due to both of their images being refracted above the horizon.

6:47 AM: Going...

6:47 AM: ...going...

6:48 AM: ...going...

6:48 AM: ...going...

6:48 AM: ...going...

6:48 AM: ...OK, we're gonna call it "gone" and move along.

So that was the end of the eclipse for me. Well, I thought I was seeing a bizarre atmospheric effect as the Moon began to peek up over the treetops again, much larger than it had been before. But this turned out to just be a cloud.

And there I was, with a tripod and a camera on a bridge over a river, on a crisp Autumn morning with the Sun rising in the east and some time to kill before I had to head to work. So I hiked out farther onto the bridge to get a better look at the Eastern sky.

I saw this:

6:50 AM: These beams are crepuscular rays - think of them as anti-sunbeams, shadows cast by clouds on the water vapor in the atmosphere.

6:52 AM: The crepuscular rays were strong and clear. A friend in Williamsport got almost the same images, so atmospheric conditions were similar across the area.

6:52 AM.

6:55 AM: Some of the gold-rose hue is leaving the horizon. The Sun will soon clear the trees, but that will be fundamentally uninteresting. Plus, I knew I should head home, review my images, and get to work.

As I walked back towards my car I realized that with such strong, clear crepuscular rays, I might be able to see the rarer phenomenon of anticrepuscular rays, shadows cast by clouds that stretch across the sky and converge on the antisolar point - creating a "dark Sun setting" effect. I turned to the West toward the railroad bridge that had given some context to my images, and...

6:58 AM: Yep.

6:58 AM: Exactly as expected.

I walked back to my car, went home, and got ready to head to work.