I miss my backyard. . .

My backyard in Kennesaw wasn't always teeming with wildlife. The foxes that lived under the house were only there for three or four months. (When they finally left, I filled the entry to the den with concrete.) The deer were only occasional visitors, and I only saw the one pileated woodpecker and the one scarlet tanager. The rabbits, which showed up sporadically, only served to remind me that the grass needed mowing again. And even the turkeys, which were more numerous than my neighbors and seemed to be there daily, weren't there all the time.

Sometimes, when the critters were elsewhere and the azaleas weren't in bloom, I'd have to really look for something to photograph. Oftentimes, it came down to pondering just what the light was doing at that particular moment.


When it rained, my drainage problems were evident. There were areas in the yard, just off the patio, where I could find a couple of inches of standing water. It wasn't a big issue because, while it was raining I didn't need to be outside and, after the rain stopped it was usually gone in a couple of hours; soaked into the red Georgia dirt or transformed into the steamy Georgia summer air through evaporation. That was fortuitous because, if I stayed out from under the trees, I could take my camera out. I like the shot above because, while a regular puddle would have reflected the house or the woods or whatever, my puddles reflected none of the details beyond, just the simple light itself in shapes driven by the partially submerged arrangement of pinecones, needles, and (ugh!) weeds.


But it never stayed that way for long. It could be just the way I remember things but the shot above is my picture of the Georgia summer. When the direct sunlight burned down, the translucent oak leaves warmed even what was in the shade. Though with a little breeze to take the edge off the heat and humidity, summers were not only survivable, but pleasant - at least long enough to take some pictures.


Earlier, in the spring, when the dogwoods were still blooming and the temperatures, hot or cold, were not an issue, I'd take my camera, climb the bank, and wander through the woods behind the house looking. For what? Shafts of sunlight or, when you couldn't see the shafts themselves because the air was so clear, the resulting islands of bright foliage in an otherwise dark forest. And sometimes, if I was lucky, the foliage itself would be especially bright with dogwood bracts.


One interesting phenomenon of the light in the woods was the halo effect that surrounds a partially occluded light source (in this case, the sun). If you look closely, noticed that twigs and pine needles perpendicular to the rays of the sun catch and reflect the light in a glint, just as the straight edge of a wing sometimes reflects a radar beam, (sorry, I learned what little physics / optics I know as a sailor and later as a defense contractor.)


Here's another picture of the same thing in a different spot the same woods. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the phenomenon is a function of the diameter of the twig - pine needles probably all fall within the range of acceptable diameters - and it's orientation with respect to the light source. If the area you're studying has a sufficient number of small enough twigs or pine needles, enough of them should glint to create the halo.