Honey Run Falls

Honey Run Falls is found in Honey Run Highlands Park in Knox County. Honey Run is a small creek that cascades over the cross-bedded Blackhand Sandstone formation falling a total of twenty-five feet. Stream discharge is highly variable depending on the season and precipitation so it may be a trickle or a raging torrent. The falls are immediately surround by hemlock trees yielding a soft green halo. The brown to tan sandstone is mostly covered with lichen and moss providing additional color.

There are many options for photography. Honey Run Falls changes with the seasons. The trees may be covered in leaves or be barren. The leaves may be green, yellow, brown, orange or red. In winter the falls may be choked with ice or there may be just a few icicles. Wide angle shots can include the surrounding rock faces and the pool at the base. More narrow shots may be restricted to the cascade of water coming down the rock face.

Slowly I’m learning what experienced photographers already know, there is often a shot within a shot. The wide angle view is composed of many small views each of which may be worthy on its own. I find myself forgetting about shooting small but I get results that please me when I do. 

Bright sunny days can be a challenge as bright rays of light come through the trees forcing the photographer to choose between blowing out the highlights or severely under exposing the dark areas. So go on an over cast day or early in the morning or late in the evening. Whatever time you choose you’ll find some good shots at Honey Run Falls. 

Fibonacci

I’m always on the lookout for an opportunity for a good photo. As it is currently -6 °F at the present time I’m not outside looking for photo opportunities. Instead I’ve been perusing images that I shot within the last year and flowers look good right now. I notice that many of the images show the seeds occur in lines that spiral out from the center. What's even more interesting is that there are two sets, right and left spirals as in the blackeyed susan. The question is why? 

About 800 years ago, give or take, an Italian mathematician named Fibonacci introduced a sequence of numbers to European mathematics. Here is a part of the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc and it goes on forever. The sequence is calculated in the following way. The first to numbers are 0 & 1. Subsequent numbers of the sequence are the sum of the previous two. So the third number is 0 + 1 = 1, the fourth is 1 + 1 = 2, the fifth is 2 + 1 = 3, the sixth is 2 + 3 = 5, etc. After you get through about 10 numbers the last number in the sequence divided by the second to last number in the sequence begins to converge on 1.618………… The is the golden ration 1.681/1.  Supposedly a rectangle with dimensions where the width divided by the height yields 1.681 is the most pleasing rectangle. My big screen television is 1.77, my laptop is 1.47, both in the ball park.

This number sequence can be used to create a Fibonacci spiral. A square is constructed for each number in the Fibonacci sequence where the length of the side of each square is a Fibonacci number. Each successive square shares a side with the previous square. A curve is drawn in each square that is portion of a circle with a radius equivalent to the length of the side of the square. When linked together the curves become a Fibonacci spiral. Damn, I did a pretty good job drawing that thing. The Fibonacci spiral closely matches many spirals observed in nature; flowers, pine cones, nautilus shells and even galaxies. In many flowers the spiral shapes are Fibonacci spirals and the number of spirals are Fibonacci numbers.

Here are pictures of two examples. In the sunflower there are 34 right-handed spirals and 55 left-handed spirals, notice 34 and 55 are Fibonacci numbers. In the case of the other flower, 13 spiral left and 21 spiral right. You guessed it, both Fibonacci numbers. Why the spiral? My understanding is that it leads to an efficient packing of seeds on a disc. The center doesn’t get to crowded as seeds are added and there is sufficient but not excess space on the outer parts of the disc to accommodate more seeds as they are added.

These two pictures are the best examples of Fibonacci spirals that I have. I hope to take more in the future and they may appear on this blog. However if you are too impatient to wait a Google search will turn up many more images. 

In the beginning .......

I’ve done some blogs in the past and after a brief period of enthusiasm for each of them they’ve all petered out. I guess it’s time to try a new one, photography.

I’ll start at the beginning. In 1975 if got a manual (no automatic features whatsoever) Olympus OM-1 SLR camera with one prime lens, probably a 50 mm but I don’t remember for sure. I was then working on my masters degree in geology and needed something to document observations in the field. I used it mostly for work but did a little “fun” photography and dabbled in b&w darkroom work. I enjoyed it. As I transitioned from being a student into a career that involved mostly laboratory work the camera got put aside and forgotten. When I picked it up many years later I found it was badly damaged. Perhaps one of my children dropped it while playing but I don’t know.

Fast forward to the digital camera age. After a few point and shoot cameras, I received an entry level D3200 Nikon DSLR camera with two lenses as a Christmas gift. That was about three years ago and for the following two years it mostly sat in the closet unused. I was totally intimidated. White balance, ISO, scene modes, auto focus. What are these things and how do they work?

Starting about a year ago I took some pictures in AUTO mode or one of the scene modes; landscape, night, sports, etc. It was nice, not great, but nice. Very unsatisfying! My wife then told me about the fellow named Paul who teaches a course entitled The Fundamentals of Photography at the Kroc Center in Ashland, OH. At that time he was in the middle of an eight-week course so I had to wait.

I enrolled in the class that started in June 2018. To start we put a battery in the camera, changed the lens and turned on the camera. In other words it began at the beginning which is a very good place to start (I think Maria said that in the Sound of Music, that but it might have been the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz). Paul taught us about f stops, ISO, the exposure triangle, depth of field, angle of view, shutter speeds, and so on and so forth. He gave us weekly homework assignments to take photos; first in the Program mode, then Shutter speed, Aperture and finally Manual mode. The latter was a revelation, just like my OM-1, my happy place. We learned about trade offs. Do you want a faster shutter speed, then you’ll have to open up the aperture. All of photograph is a trade off. To get one thing, you have to give up another. When the class ended I had some basic knowledge and was full of confidence. 

Seven months later I’m now convinced my photographs are lousy, though other people tell me they like them. When I come home and download my images I invariably see that I took the wrong photo, if framed it incorrectly, I didn’t focus well and on and on. My confidence is down. But I’ve learned a lot. Experience will make me better. You do things differently in the digital age. For one thing you can shoot all the photographs you want, thousands if you like because digital film is cheap! If you don’t like your photo, go home and do some processing.

So that’s where I started. I lack confidence and believe I take poor photos but I’m going to put them online and ask you to look at them if you view this blog. Lucky you.  HAHAHAHAHA