The Hays Humm - September 2020
The Hays Humm
September 2020
Tom Jones - Betsy Cross - Constance Quigley
Juniper Hairstreak
“I was a tomboy growing up and preferred to spend my time outside exploring and discovering bugs. When I first looked through a macro lens, I was hooked…I am fascinated by the details and say ‘Oh wow’ a lot.”
Hays County Master Naturalist and photographer Shannon du Plessis and her Master Naturalist husband Kruger have taken advantage of their time at home during the pandemic lock-down and recent months of social distancing. They’ve been making substantial enhancements to a very special garden on their almost five acres.
“We’ve been spending our corona-cation putting up an eight-foot fence around a quarter-acre of our property and adding more native plants into the space, especially ones that bloom in the fall. We have three gardens in all — one with mostly lavender in the back, smaller gardens on both sides and across the front of our home, and the larger newly fenced-in garden, where I will be holding Pollinator Safari workshops.”
Kruger used large cedar limbs and trunks from the property to create defined beds in this space. A 3,500-gallon rainwater collection system serves to irrigate the gardens. And a small pond, with a solar powered pump for the waterfall, rounds out the lush habitat. Shannon and Kruger’s property is certified as a Monarch Way Station, Butterfly Garden, Wildlife Habitat, Pollinator Habitat, and registered with the Pollinator Partnership’s One Million Pollinator Garden Challenge.
In case you didn’t know, Shannon has a passion for pollinators. “I was a tomboy growing up and preferred to spend my time outside exploring and discovering insects rather than swapping clothes and drooling over David Cassidy with the girls.” Today Shannon still enjoys observing the behaviors and details of insects and other invertebrates, only she uses a camera and a macro lens, her preferred type of photography. As she puts it, “When I first looked through a macro lens I was hooked. I am fascinated by the details and say ‘Oh wow’ a lot.”
Shannon and I had hoped to meet at her home in the early spring for a tour and an opportunity to take some photographs together. But when our world took a sharp COVID-19 left turn, we caught up over Zoom instead. We talked about her photography and The Pollinators Project’s growing from its original start in 2016 to the present, with significant habitat renovations and an onsite workshop. The following is a summary of our conversation:
Could you tell us a little bit about your favorite camera equipment and your field routine?
I use a Sony a7Rii 42 MP full frame mirrorless camera with five-axis image stabilization and a Sony a7 as backup. For macro, I use a 100mm macro lens with Sony’s macro twin flash kit (shown in the photo of Shannon). The flash attaches to the end of the macro lens and has two telescoping arms with lights that adjust in position and intensity independently of each other. Both connect to a power box that fits into the flash shoe. I use the flash system to freeze the action or to illuminate subjects that are in shadow.
I have other glass for specific purposes; a Sony 24-105mm lens for wider shots, where I can still zoom a bit if I need to, a Tamron 150-600mm lens for birds and longer distance captures, and a Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 prime lens for street photography and indoor low-light situations. I bought the prime lens because I read that the 55mm field of view most closely matches our natural field of vision. I shoot mainly full frame, but I like having the option to crop the sensor if I need a little extra reach on a zoom. The a7 is as small as a point-and-shoot. I've gotten some strange looks from people in the field with that tiny camera attached to my Tamron 150mm-600mm glass.
Faceplant
I shoot RAW and import the RAW files into Capture One 20 for conversion to TIFF for printing and JPG for the web. I rarely use Adobe Photoshop to process my photos. I use the version of Capture One 20 designed for Sony cameras, so I get better RAW conversion than I did with Lightroom or Photoshop. Capture One 20 is set up to better complement how I work, and it uses layers. If I need to increase an image size, I use ON1 Resize because it employs fractal-based interpolation algorithms and results in a better-quality image than if I resize in Photoshop.
I abide by Nature First Photography principles, of which Leave No Trace is a part. I never pose or lure my subjects. I shoot in manual mode. Autofocus doesn’t work that well for my macro images. I like the freedom of deciding which part of the image will be in focus. After a while, I stopped using autofocus altogether. I customized a button close to the shutter to serve as a focus magnifier so I can zoom to check the focus before I capture an image. I miss some shots, sure, but the ones I get, I feel like I really got them instead of the equipment getting them.
Do you print your photos? What media have you used?
I find printing frustrating and have been known to curse during the process. I do my own prints so I can ensure the printed image looks the way I intended. From Capture One 20, I export a TIFF to print and a watermarked JPG for posting online. Based on print settings and paper profile, I can view a soft proof on screen before I print to my Epson 3880 printer, which takes paper up to 17 inches wide. I calibrate my monitor (I have an iMac) regularly, but still burn through a couple of test prints (sometimes more; hence the cursing) before I like the result.
For printing, I use Palo Duro SoftGloss Rag, Arctic Polar Satin or Luster, and Polar Pearl Metallic when the subject would benefit from a slight metallic sheen, all from Red River Paper. I’m old school and frame my work to conservation standards in black gallery style frames with a two-inch white mat all the way around. This preserves the photograph for longer than most people’s lifetime.
Can you share a story about a photo opportunity that was especially exciting or inspiring?
I have an inspiring story and one that should have been. I got to meet and visit with wildlife photographer Art Wolfe when he was in Austin a couple of years ago. I was surprised by his sense of humor, but disappointed in our conversation. I wanted to ask about post-processing, but he is so famous and so sponsored that he is removed from much of post-processing and printing, having assistants do that for him. So I had a nice chat with one of his assistants.
In the fall of 2017, I called my husband and screamed, "I've found my people!" I was attending the annual Texas Butterfly Festival, a multi-day event with field trips and workshops in and around the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. I was immersed in butterfly photography with other first-timers, old-timers who had attended from the beginning, and volunteers who drove us to the locations in vans. I made friendships that are still going strong today. The amount of knowledge in the group was staggering, and we all shared our stories, tips, and experiences with each other. It was several days of complete bliss with a group where I felt I truly belonged. I’m sad and angry that the border wall is threatening the lands in and around the National Butterfly Center and the fragile ecosystem there.
How did you get into photography and what has that journey been like?
I turned 50 on 12/12/12 (cool date, right?), and rather than have a midlife crisis, which frankly I had been looking forward to (wink), I bought a Sony DSLR camera to take on vacation. I owned a point and shoot for snapshots, but had no real experience with photography before the end of 2012. I had always had trouble sitting still until I got the camera. Turns out that photography is a meditative experience for me, whether I'm waiting to capture a scene or running around while capturing an image.
I’ve had a little bit of success with my art in exhibits and contests (including Naturescapes), and one of my photographs is published in a book about cockroaches. I’m not making that up (The Cockroach Papers: A Compendium of History and Lore, by Richard Schweid, figure 20, page 168), and I think it’s hilarious! Thanks again to David Womer for letting me take photos of his specimens the year after I graduated from the Master Naturalist program.
Flutter
Has being a Master Naturalist changed or influenced your approach to photography?
Absolutely! It’s changed more than my photography. When we bought our property in Wimberley, we planted grass, the wrong kind of grass. We were drawn to the Master Naturalist program because we had a little bit of land and didn’t know how best to tend it. The first week of our training, which was in 2013, about two and a half years after we moved here, Kruger and I looked at each other with a mixture of embarrassment and relief; while we’d planted the wrong kind of grass, we were so happy that we hadn’t wanted to spend the money on a riding lawn mower. We would have ruined our property! We had no idea about invasives versus natives. We hadn't fully considered that our property is its own ecosystem and part of a larger one.
Master Naturalist training helped my photography with the information I learned about flora and fauna and what I’ve learned from the real friendships we’ve made with people who are so generous with their time and experience. Being with others who also enjoy that kind of photography, I’ve gained a renewed enthusiasm for my macro photography. I discovered and contribute to iNaturalist.
Kruger and I were eco-conscious to begin with, and becoming Master Naturalists gave us more information and more tools for activism. I learned that pollinators are responsible for one in three bites of food we eat. Love steak more than veggies? That’s cool. Pollinators are needed to grow the feed that the cow ate before it became your steak. In 2016, I began The Pollinators Project and teamed with Ann Rolling to sell pollinator prints at that year’s Butterfly Festival, which brought my photography to the intersection of art and activism. I donated 40 percent of the profits to the EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens, where they were planning a pollinator garden. I continue to donate a portion of pollinator portrait sales to organizations involved in pollinator conservation.
I have not sold as many pollinator portraits as I would like, which is why I am learning how to make them more artistic. It’s a fun challenge. I want to keep the subject tack sharp, so I can’t just toss a filter on the image, which would be boring anyway. I also don’t want to overdo it, because it is nature photography, not digital art. I've been trying some new tools. I have stopped using Nik Collection in favor of Topaz products —Topaz Studio for creative treatments and Topaz DeNoise, which leaves the sharp part of the images sharper than Nik Dfine does after removing noise. After a learning curve, I have started using a Wacom tablet when I need to do more detailed work such as isolating the detailed edges of a bird’s feather from the background of an image.
I’m also contributing some images to Chris Middleton’s e-Learning for Kids Facebook page. I would not have gotten involved in pollinator conservation or helped The Wimberley Valley achieve the International Dark Sky Community designation had I not become a Master Naturalist. So yes, it impacts my photography, but also my life. It’s a real treat to be included in your group of Master Naturalist photographers — a group whose photographers I’ve admired. I think the practicing is paying off!
Could you share a tip or two and give us your best advice for a beginning hobbyist?
My best advice is to say that advice from other photographers has its place, but it’s your art. Trust your gut and your vision. That said, I have a few things that have helped me. (1) Take a bunch of pictures. And then take a bunch more. Don’t forget to look up, or get on the ground, or move a couple of steps closer. The act of taking photos has improved my images the most while also helping me discover different kinds of photography and more interesting vantage points from which to shoot. (2) Know your instrument and set up your camera to serve you. Missing a shot because you stopped to figure out how to change a camera setting can be heartbreaking. Don’t ask me how I know that! (3) Take images that you like. Your excitement about and enjoyment of your subject comes through in the resulting images — people can tell that you love it.
“I shudder to think about how Kruger and I might have been spending our time at home during this pandemic had we not become Master Naturalists. We might have bemoaned the boredom of being stuck at home while just outside is a world of fascinating life happening on our property. Just last week I was practicing a new technique on some flowers in our garden and a small crab spider had made a home inside one of the blooms. I imagined it saying to a startled me, ‘Surprise!’”
Though currently paused due to COVID-19, Shannon leads Pollinator Safaris, three-hour intensive macro photography workshops, where one can “enjoy exclusive access to photograph beautiful butterflies, other pollinators, native birds, and the occasional frog or Texas spiny lizard…and learn why pollinators are important, how to garden to attract them, and how to photograph them and other wildlife even in tricky situations like a windy day.” She invites you to visit her photography website (which also contains a link to her workshop): https://www.shannon.photos/
“We all miss the ‘live’ chapter and summer meetings and COVIC has made for a difficult training class. But these difficulties have shown what a wonderful chapter we have. The Zoom training class is doing better than we expected — this requires a class every week into October and so far attendance has been extraordinarily high. The monthly Zoom meetup and chapter meeting are great and I encourage everyone to ‘tune in’. This extraordinary newsletter caps it off. We are getting through this mess together.”
During this time of Covid-19 anxiety and staying at home, Dick’s forum post was a welcome message of hope. I am thinking about the future and the uncertain changes it may bring to the HCMN Chapter. I know many of us are getting through this mess together. But what about others who are struggling to earn volunteer time because many of their favorite projects are on hold? Some are considering leaving the Chapter. Now is the time to plan for adapting to the challenges we have all experienced. The path forward is to maintain and expand our efforts within the broader community for the long term benefit of Chapter growth.
The Future of Outreach
One option is to extend our community education efforts, but the question is how? Do we want to expand speaking opportunities for Master Naturalist or other experts we bring to the table? In particular, should we start now developing relationships with additional organizations, particularly ones that enhance the diversity of our outreach efforts? Should we be doing more with schools and other youth groups? Should we be ramping up site visits and other opportunities to reach out on a more individualized basis? Clearly this is a good time to reflect on where Outreach Education should focus both near term and looking towards a future when more normal activities can be resumed.
Tier 1 Project 7-Violet Crown Trail
Fourteen miles of new, single-track, nature trail traversing publicly owned lands in Hays County about six miles West of Buda, with trail heads at Bliss Spillar Road and at the FM 967 crossing. Built to high-quality, sustainable trail standards.
The Future of Projects - Significant Increase in Hays Co. Parks?
The Hays County Parks & Open Space Advisory Commission (POSAC) proposed a long list of parks and natural areas. The Commission recommendations support a bond package in the range of $75 to $80 million to fund new Hays County parks. On August 11, the Hays County Commissioners Court voted 4:1 to approve the call for a bond to put it on the ballot in the November election for parks and open space. If passed by voters, the new parks create opportunities for HCMN projects and volunteer support needed to make them suitable for public use and wildlife management. I have included a photograph and short summary of the top 7 Tier 1 projects recommended by POSAC. There are many more recommended. Future growth of our Chapter will put us in the best position to deliver on our Mission. If you have not seen the full presentation, it is well worth a view. View the full POSAC presentation here.
Editors Reference: The Photographs and information below were taken from the Hays County Parks & Open Space Advisory to Commissioners Court as a public download from their website.
TIER ONE PROJECTS RECOMMENDED TO THE COMMISSIONERS COURT
With the pandemic limiting everyone’s ability to gather together, some of the Hays Master Naturalist projects that members had been doing are not possible at this time. These are primarily in the area of education, such as teaching school groups about conservation and leading public hikes. Most of the MN projects can be done at a safe social distance or are done alone.
Getting in your 40 hours of volunteer service and 8 hours of AT gives you the satisfaction of being able to say you were “certified” in a certain year — and you get a pin for that work. There are many MNs in Hays County who do not try to get those hours but who are still “Active” members. They participate in projects and programs and engage in leadership projects. The only requirement for continuing as a Master Naturalist is to pay the $20 annual dues.
We welcome your participation in volunteer projects and attendance at Advanced Training events, but it is not necessary for you to complete the service and training requirements for certification in any given year. You are still a Member and we want you to be part of us.
If you are looking for projects that will enable you to put in some hours during the pandemic, here are some suggestions:
Serving on a chapter committee (Diversity or Outreach) via Zoom.
Building or maintaining trails, trimming limbs, filling bird feeders and monitoring bird nesting boxes, weeding plant beds, removing invasives, watering garden areas, doing bird or plant species counts, gathering wildflower seeds, performing water tests on rivers and creeks.
Using your creativity to help develop resources for citizen science activities through Minding the Hill Country, Project 1903
Writing for the MN newsletter or your local newspaper, helping to put together educational eNature materials for kids, writing for our public web site (beautifulhayscounty.org).
Measuring and reporting rainfall on your personal gauge through our CoCoRaHS program (Project 803 FR; up to 2.5 hours a month)
THANK YOU
NEWSLETTER CONTRIBUTORS
Jane Dunham
Dick McBride
Christine Middleton
Shannon du Plessis
Jeri Porter
Photo of Yellow Warbler by Betsy Cross
It seems to me that during our tours at Jacob’s Well, there always is a great deal of interest in our “cedars,” good, bad or ugly! I am reading “The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing” by Ken Roberts which is a great story about the people who spent their lives cutting cedar in the Texas Hill Country.
Roberts spent his formative years in Austin and had casual encounters with the “choppers” as a child. He is retired from Southwestern University and as part of his retirement plan he wanted to explore the stories of the chopper culture. This book is a fine example of local literature, relating the history of people who played a very important role in the formation of the hill country as we know it.
These folks are generally of Scots-Irish heritage and, as such, had the reputation of a fairly rowdy bunch! They worked hard, made more money than most others of the working class at the time, picked up and moved at will, were fiercely independent, lived in very closely knit families, often were involved in making moonshine and didn’t run from a fight. A lawyer involved in legal matters of some of the community stated that “The reputation the family had was that there hadn’t been a natural death among the male members for three generations.”
They came to this part of the world via the Appalachians, working their way westward until the wood played out at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. All the while, life was changing as the land was farmed, fenced and overgrazed. The cedar harvested by the cutters was old growth, likely having been standing for hundreds of years, quite unlike the cedar we find today which they would refer to as “sap cedar.”
Roberts also writes about the beauty of the hill country, quoting from Frederick Law Olmsted (designer of New York’s Central Park and sent on a mission to inspect the landscape of Texas), “For sunny beauty of scenery and luxuriate of soil, it (the hill country) stands quite surpassed in my experience. I believe no region of equal extent in the world can show equal attractions. The whole extent...is covered with the finest and most nutritious grasses...The streams which, in other parts of the State, are thick and discolored with mud, flow here clear as crystal.”
When the old growth cedar harvest was mostly completed, the “choppers” either moved on to other areas or took jobs in other fields of work, thus the culture ended.
As interpretive guides, or those of you with an interest in our local history, I encourage you to read the book. Roberts tells a good story and it is obvious he has done his homework researching these folks, giving them some dignity not often afforded this hard working class during the mid 20th century in Central Texas.
