Fall in Central Ohio September 2021

If I did a survey about people’s favorite season in central Ohio, I am pretty certain that fall would be the first choice for most. Summer is hot and the humidity can be oppressive. If you look at the ways climate change is impacting different regions of the country, wetter is our future. There’s lots of talk about steamy here in the summer. We see the sun for ten minutes in the winter. It’s beautiful when it snows and when the sun comes out. That usually happens twice every few years. Spring is nice. After a long and dreary winter, it’s wonderful to begin to see buds on the trees and the first flowers appear. But in central Ohio, the fall has it all. It begins with temperatures that are pretty much the same as the summer, but the humidity begins to dissipate. We get a few months of cool nights, warm days and low humidity. Fall can be spectacularly beautiful. We have so many different varieties of deciduous trees, each with its range of colors that result from the process of storing all the food they’re going to need once they lose their leaves and can’t do the photosynthesis thing for a few months. I am grateful that we have four equally divided seasons in central Ohio.

I love to shoot in the fall. I also have little doubt that most nature photographers in central Ohio also enjoy shooting the beauty of fall. As I’ve described before, I enjoy shooting small scenes or macro, and in the direction of abstracts. I haven’t given a lot of thought as to what brought me to that aesthetic, but it could be as simple as one shoots that to which one has access. I love landscapes and seascapes, but both are difficult to find in the middle of the city. I love shooting new places and travel photography, but I usually don’t take more than a few vacations during the year, even when there isn’t a deadly pandemic going on. During the fall, I’m usually out hiking and shooting a few times a week. I’ve divided my photographs by the months I shot them. This first blog includes my images from September. Almost all the photographs were taken at our metro parks.

First, I wanted to explain the long hiatus I’ve had since publishing my last blog. If you have no interest in computers, technology or me, please feel free to skip down to the pretty pictures.

After using the same computer since 2011, I decided it was time for a replacement. I was having issues with the way windows was booting and was concerned that I was about to have a hard drive fail. I was also accepting that technology had moved so far down the line in 11 years, that it was probably a good idea to take advantage of the improvements.

I’m a PC and Windows guy. My first computer was an Apple IIc. I was so turned off by how quickly Apple decided to abandon support and never looked back. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game for all of technology, but Apple has worked it into an artform, i.e., selling a new iPhone every year at $1,000 a crack.

There are two major factors involved in my computing decisions. The first is the way I use a computer to perform my work for the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association (SRNA). For our first couple of decades, we were a very small and volunteer organization. Our membership processes, our publications, outreach and support, and education were mom and pop operations that required some serious computing. I really had no choice but to embrace technology. I am acutely aware of the importance of the computer because when I did my dissertation research and wrote my thesis, there were no computers. I came home from two years of research with 10,000 pages of handwritten fieldnotes on yellow legal pads. I had to hire a typist to create my final dissertation, and every time changes had to be made, she had to retype sections of the draft. Without computers and the internet, I’m not sure what our organization would have been able to accomplish. With computers and the internet, we grew from a membership of fewer than 200 people to our current membership of more than 15,000 people from more than 110 countries. We are a small, rare disease community.

I’ve always been intimidated by technology. I had to learn to accomplish the SRNA activities. I had no choice. As fate would have it, very early in the history of the SRNA, I found my dear friend, Jim. Jim was diagnosed with transverse myelitis when he was 21 years old. He was paralyzed from the neck down and became vent dependent. That was decades ago. Jim would have been a technologist under any circumstances, but given the difficult hand he was dealt, his quality of life was very much dependent on technology. He has some amazingly sophisticated adaptive technology that allows him to independently control so much of his environment. I’ve written a lot about Jim and all this technology in my book which you can purchase on Amazon from the links on this website. Jim has very patiently guided me down the path of more and more complex technology. My son, David, also lives and works in an intensive technological environment. Between David and Jim, I have been able to learn enough to function.

Part of having a computer for 11 years was dreading all the work that goes into setting up a new computer. As the archivist and photographer for the SRNA for so long, I have terabytes of information stored on my computer. I also have a comprehensive back up system, both locally and to the cloud. The SRNA staff is located across the country and around the world, so we have systems in place that allow communication and collaboration without concerns for geography.

Jim directed me to a company specializing in custom built computers. I bought a Puget System’s computer in 2011. That I used this computer for 11 years and that it worked for me effectively for all that time is really all I need to say about the quality of their computers. So, I started the process by going back to Puget Systems. I was on the phone with my point of contact salesperson explaining everything about how I use a computer and for what purposes. We had several conversations, one of which involved my taking him on a video tour of my entire set up and my network. When Pauline and I did the remodel to our house to make it accessible, we had the house wired with CAT 5e cable to create a LAN. We have a firewall router in the basement on the backside of our internet company’s modem which provides internet access to all the wired rooms in our house. We also have a Netgear router that provides wireless access throughout our house. We can plug into ports in the rooms that are wired or we can get the wireless signal everywhere.

After he listened to my entire megillah, he put together the components of a computer he thought would work for me. They did a great job communicating with me throughout the process and the computer shipped just before Christmas. It arrived in a very large box. The most difficult part of the set up for me was carrying this computer up the stairs to my study. As I have no cartilage left in my knees, I had to put the computer down on each step as I moved up.

I had done a thorough job of preparing for the transfer by cleaning up and backing up files and folders and researching some of the more complicated processes, like moving Lightroom to a new computer. An expert actually wrote a 20+ page article on the process which I read more than once, and I also watched a few videos describing how to do it. Two important things happened since 2011 that simplified the entire process for me, the cloud and a password manager in the cloud. The first thing I did on the new computer was to log into my browser, install the extension for my password manager and sign into this program.

All my software is now based on a subscription which I pay for either monthly or annually. There are no discs involved in loading software. Jim told me about a program you can download that provides an inventory of all the software on your computer. I ran the program and had a printed list of the software I needed to install on the new computer. All I had to do with my email programs was to sign in electronically to my accounts. Through my password manager, I was able to sign into all my accounts to access the programs to install. Almost all these sites are able to determine that I’m on a Windows 64-bit PC; you don’t even need to search for the appropriate software, they do it for you. I had my software downloaded and installed in one day. As my new computer is blazingly fast, it took less than a day to transfer all my files onto the new computer. Installing Lightroom and setting it up wasn’t a snap, but I got it figured out.

When I was working with the salesperson at Puget Systems, I told him I wanted technology that would be sufficient to ride this thing into the sunset. That’s precisely what he put together for me. It is a great computer. I spent a lot of money on this computer, but if it lasts me for ten years, what I spent will be a lot less than the cost of three computers over the same span of time. And I won’t have to deal with setting up a new computer three times over that period.

The SRNA is the first factor influencing my computer needs. My photography is the other factor. And for more than two decades, I was also the SRNA/TMA photographer. As a rare disease community that is spread across the globe, our gathering was always an important event. I’ve taken many photographs at our education programs, our fundraisers and our family camps. Many of my photographs are used in our publications, our website and on our social media.

As a digital photographer, my computer needs are dictated by this endeavor. I use the Adobe software to organize and work my images and to create videos. These are large and sophisticated programs that require lots of processing power, including in video cards. Having a good processor, lots of ram and a good video card are necessary. As the raw digital files I create with my camera are large, disc storage is also required. I purchased SSD drives for my new computer which makes working and storing images so much faster. I have three large drives in this computer. The smallest is for my programs and the two larger drives are for photographs, video and all my files. With so many files on my computer, it is imperative to stay organized. It is also critical to have a good back up strategy. I use CrashPlan as my backup software. Fortunately, they have a device wizard that took me through transferring my backup processes to a new computer. I back up to a local external drive and I back up to the CrashPlan cloud. The program manages both backups and they are done in real time. Any changes made to a file or the creation of a new file is backed up within 30 minutes. The program is also set up to give priority to the quickest backup, thus the external drive is backed up before the cloud.

I’m relieved that I was able to get into this new computer with minimal time and hassle. I’m loving how effectively it manages everything I do with computing. I do hope I can ride this thing into the sunset. If you are looking for a great computer that is going to last, I highly recommend Puget Systems. They offer technical support for their computers for the life of the equipment. Their technicians are excellent and they are patient. When I was setting up this computer, I wanted to move the system files to the appropriate drives, the my pictures and my video to my D drive and my documents, my music, desktop and downloads to the E drive. I read the instructions about how to make these changes. I followed the guidelines carefully and managed to royally screw it up. I called their technical support and he took control of my computer and fixed the problem and took care of moving these system folders. That service is invaluable to a person who knows just enough to be dangerous. They only use the best and most reliable parts for their computers and they run all kinds of tests on the computers before they are shipped. They include all the tests and results in the shipment. Puget Systems is a great company with good people, and they make exceptional computers. That was not a paid endorsement.

I would say that I fell into my aesthetic in photography/art half assed backwards. And that characterization explains a lot about my approach to so much of my life. It happened to me, I figured out what it was after it happened and after doing my best to make sense of it, I found a way to make it work. That’s a wild proposition for someone who is such a neurotic planner, but it is the reality. Careening through life in a haphazard, random fashion, loaded to the gills with an exceptional talent for rationalization. Chaos makes the world go round, even for the neurotically organized.

I didn’t have a particular strategy for seeking out an image. I walked, I looked, and I took the photograph of something that moved me in some way; pretty much thoughtless and unplanned. If you take enough photographs and you are conscious, you are going to notice a pattern in what you are doing. One of my photography instructors described this pattern as a person’s shtick. I loved that characterization and I think about that notion all the time when I am out shooting. Some photographers specialize in a type of photography. Most of the professional photographers gravitate to a specific area and they hone their craft in that direction. Landscape photography, nature photography, street photography, travel photography, portraits, pet portraits, macro, night or long exposure, fine art, there are numerous specializations. As I was in anthropology, I find myself as a generalist in photography. And as in anthropology, it is somewhat impossible to make it as a photographer as a generalist. Good thing I’m not aspiring to make it. I enjoy street photography but I’m a bit wigged out about taking photographs of people without their knowing I’m doing it. I often like the results, but I wrestle with the yuckiness of feeling like it is a violation of a person’s integrity. I really love night photography but go to bed way too early to give myself the opportunity to shoot regularly after the sun goes down. I am aware of my limitations and go with the flow. I would love to shoot from interesting perspectives, like lower to the ground or on the ground, but once down I can only get up with significant pain. I also can’t get the experience of being covered with insect bites out of my mind.

After shooting thousands of nature photographs, I’ve figured out the pattern, i.e., my shtick. First, I don’t feel guilty about taking pictures of plants without asking permission. I’m also a very deliberate photographer when it comes to working my camera. My family regularly complains about how long it takes for me to take their photograph. With the six grandkids, there is constant movement. Plants don’t complain and even with a breeze, plants don’t do a lot of moving. I can take my time working through what I want to do and the settings on my camera that will achieve my aims. When it comes to my aesthetic, what inspires me, what draws my eyes? I figured out backlit when I noticed that I am way more interested and excited about shooting on sunny days as opposed to cloudy days and that I was looking at subjects as I was looking into the sun. Some photographers prefer to shoot when the sun is low in the sky, the golden hour. I don’t mind the sun being out in any part of the sky. In addition to backlit, I’ve also learned that the light reflecting off water creates a magical feel to an image. I don’t just look for backlit, I seek out subjects where I can shoot into light reflected off a body of water. If you hike and shoot often enough, you figure out where these places are located and the times of day this approach is going to be possible.

I almost always prefer a shallow depth of field. Often the shallower the better. I create abstract patterns in a background with interesting shapes, textures and colors. I spend as much time scoping out these backgrounds as I do seeking out the subjects. I’ve created enough of these images that I can envision how a background is going to appear just from the objects, patterns, textures and colors that I see. I look to separate a subject from the background in much the same way a portrait photographer works to focus the attention of the viewer onto the person. I love finding the smallest parts of nature that form the most incredible patterns that most people don’t even see when they are walking down a trail. Dew drops or frost make for some wonderful enhancements of any plant, flower or leaf. The patterns and symmetry in nature is a wonder to me even after being aware of this phenomenon on a regular basis. I am drawn to the small scene; I often think of the close up or small scene as just a miniature landscape. I have more control over a smaller scene. Nature can be fairly messy and I’m usually seeking a neurotically organized pattern. Branches break, leaves tear, trees fall down, dirt splatters, insects eat, animals poop. I can often avoid the imperfect by looking small. I can also capture a really nice image by finding the imperfect in a compelling way.

So, there you have it. These are my images from September 2021 presented by the location of my hike and shoot.

Highbanks Metro Park

(These are slides - look for the arrows).

Scioto Park

Bigelow Pioneer Cemetery