Off on a field trip to Costa Rica

I am headed out in the morning on a field trip to the SE corner of Oregon. The Alvord Desert is a fairly large salt flat. There are geothermal hot springs all over the area and some dragonfly species that are unique to Oregon. Five species that are normally found in the Southwestern U.S. are associated with the hot springs in SE Oregon. They cannot live in the boiling water, but their nymphs do survive in the cooler water at a distance from the springs. The springs have dissolved salts of Boron, Sulphur and Arsenic and other compounds that would normally be considered to be quite toxic for insects. At Borax Lake, Boraxo was precipitated out of the water, dried and hauled over 100 miles by mule team drawn wagons to a refinery in Winnemucca, Nevada.This is a shot of one of the dragonflies found at Borax Lake, a male Libellula comanche. A small group of us try and make a trip to this area every year. It is a quest for better photos of the dragonflies, but also in hopes of lightning storms and the night sky and the Milky Way with no light pollution.

One of the guys going on this trip is good friends with the leader of a dig at a cave in the area. Like you say, there is not much to photograph, for the art of it. Most of the site locations are not made public, because collectors will destroy them looking for artifacts.When I was a kid they found a sagebrush bark sandel at Fort Rock Cave. I can remember being excited and blown away that they could find something that exquisite that was 9000 years old. That was before Mount Mazama blew.On my 2013 SW trip I spent a week at Mesa Verde shooting photos and then a friend and I explored Chaco Canyon and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. I am puzzled why the technology was so much slower developing in the Amercas compared to the old world. Bows were developed like 5000 years or more later.You were lucky.....you had one of those fun, exciting jobs.

I think it is, but will let you know when we get back. We may even have signal from the tower on top of Steens Mtn. It might be fun to post from the REAL middle of nowhere.

We are camped at Mann Lake on the east side of Steens Mtn. Bugs are attracted to my phone screen shining on my face.
so goodbye

This was from our camp at Mann Lake. The water level is lower than I have ever seen it. A lot of different species of waterfowl use this lake, but the strangest thing is that is a renowned trophy fly fishing spot. You would think it would be too warm but the fish are from the desert region and are adapted to the heat.Smoke from a wildfire to the north was just beginning to blow in. The next morning (Sat) visibility was down to a couple kilometers. The Alvord Desert. It is approximately 13 x 24 km in size. The wind always seems to blow and we sometimes see wheeled carts with sails, like ice boats. I have heard the can get up over 160kph. The dragonfly hunting was not as good as we hoped. There were a number of species that we did not see at all and of the ones we did see populations were low.This is a female Sympetrum corruptum. The tip of the abdomen is out of focus. My excuse is, "the wind was blowing".

Great! Coffee and a bagel are going to help me be the very 1st to break 10? Cream cheese and chives are just going to smear up my 10 and make it look like 1....Thanks A Lot!!!

Within my group of closest friends and travel companions (5 of us) this would not be considered a keeper, unless it was a really rare and sought after species. They would immediately point out the flaws. The five of us strive to produce images that can be printed 16"x25" or larger. Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

Borax Lake is quite small, but it is the largest body of water associated with a hot spring in the Alvord area. You can see one of my companions on the far right side for scale. The blue patch in the middle is where the hot water is welling up. A BLM guy told us that when they were doing temperature surveys of the lake, their thermometer melted when it was lowered into the spring. I would never go out there in a boat. There is an endemic fish, the Borax Lake Chub, that is only found in this lake. We find the nymphs of one species of dragonfly here also, Libellula composita. We see other species ovipositing but have never found their nymphs. The water has very high levels of arsenic as well as being alkaline and have a witches brew of other dissolved salts.It would be interesting to see if there are any genetic difference between Libellula composita found in Borax Lake and populations from the Southwestern U.S. This one of many springs at Mickey Hot Springs about 40 miles north of Borax Lake. It has boiling water and fumerals that whistle as the steam blows out. There are also domed areas that you can hear water boil inside of, which is scary. I go there to shoot photos, but it is one of the scariest places I have ever been and I am always glad when we leave.

I managed to get a little time to sort through some more of my images from Costa Rica.This first shot is a male Hetaerina titia. All of the species of Hetaerina, as a group, are called Rubyspots because of the dark patch on their wings. in some species the spot is very red and others may be from purple to brown. They all look quite magnificent with the sun lighting them from behind.

One of the things I enjoy in the tropics is traveling through rainforest on mountain slopes up into areas where there is cloud forest. I did not get as many opportunities in Costa Rica as I did in Ecuador. The forests seemed darker to me on this trip and especially when we were on the shaded side of the mountains. The darkness and clouds make everything seem hidden and mysterious. It magnifies the feeling of adventure for me and I can't help but think about what life here must have been like for the first people to live here.Anyway, here are a couple shots that were not the way I originally planned to shoot it but that I liked once I had. I thought about darkening the forest, but I like the hint of green and the feeling of depth that the treetops give me. One note, the monitors I am using to process and view my images are NEC Multisyncs that are profiled and calibrated. Most people set their brightness and contrast at the highest settings which from a photo point of view is too high. I had to turn the target intensity down quite a bit to get my prints to match my monitors. It only took me a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the new settings and then everything looked good. These step wedges should give you an idea if your monitor is too bright or dark.
On the top one you should be able to see 20 distinct shades and on the bottom 26 distinct shades. Brightness and contrast can be tweaked to see all the shades.

Yeah, that happens on my laptop, but my NECs are the same from every angle.

In some areas of Costa Rica we encountered lots of Iguanas, primarily the Green Iguana, with the scientific name Iguana iguana. Often they were habituated with humans and seemed to be major tourist attractions. This is one of my pals shooting with a flash diffuser that I made from a $1 plastic salad bowl with some foil tape lining the inside. I made one for each of us before the trip and it allowed us to get shots in the dim forest of fast moving subjects. The white disc you can see in the center is a hemispherical piece of styrofoam painted silver to block the main flash and bounce the light around inside the bowl. This is what I used when I shot the poison dart frogs.

This one was. He thought I had a treat for him. Some would only let you get about 10 feet away before they vamoosed. I had not noticed it until you mentioned it. Maybe it means a single image rather than video.

Ned, I'm not sure what you are saying.Are you saying that you can't see my photos until you click on a link?Or are you saying that your own photos don't show without clicking a link? I click an icon for sharing on the Flickr page next to my photo. It gives me 3 options: share, embed, and BBcode. I copy the BBcode link and paste it into the reply box here. There are some url sections in the link that I delete because they just add clutter to the post here.The options for sharing on the Flickr page seem to have changed a week or so ago. There was also an option for HTTP that is not there now.Posting here is a bit of a pain because I have to maintain a Flickr account for my Tanypteryx name that does not have my signature and copyright on the images and a separate flickr account with my real identity and information.

Dragonfly porn is the best.This is Libellula comanche a few years ago at Borax Lake in SE OR. Cop pairs of dragonflies has been one of the most prized photo subjects since I started shooting them. They are usually hard to approach and rarely seen compared to single adults. Getting a good angle is also difficult. Personally I always try to get the wings in focus also.