Mississippi River Archives

July 25, 2013September 14, 2023

Tower Rock, Full Moon and HDR

Warning: photo geek stuff to follow. If you’d rather just look at pictures of Tower Rock and the Mississippi River under the full moon, click them to make them larger.

I grew up doing Plain Jane photography. All I had to think about was film type (color or black and white), film speed, shutter speed, aperture and focal length of the lens. Color / black and white was easy: until I got to The Palm Beach Post, all my work photography was black and white.

I almost always used Kodak Tri-X film for everything except available dark photography, where I experimented with all kinds of exotic film and developer combinations to be able to shoot where you could barely see.

Film speed and f/stops determined how much light hit the film. If you wanted to stop action, you’d use a fast shutter speed and a wide lens opening. If you wanted lots of stuff sharp, you’d stop down the lens and be forced to use a slower shutter. It’s all about math.

Lens choices were equally easy: want to get lots of stuff in, use a wide angle; want to shoot something a long way off, grab a telephoto.

Menus have menu menus

My new Nikon D7000 has more menus than a classy restaurant. The submenus have submenus, most of which I have never explored. The other night, though, I ventured into the unknown. If I have time, I usually bracket my exposures: in other words, I shoot one at what the camera or I think is right, then I go an interval above and below that exposure in case the camera or I have made a bad first choice. I print or publish the one with the best action, composition, sharpness and/or exposure.

The problem is that film, paper and sensors don’t have the range of the human eye. We can usually see detail in dark areas and bright areas at the same time. Cameras can’t – or couldn’t.

Enter HDR

There’s magic in those menus. I opted to enter the land of High-Dynamic-Range imaging, better known as HDR. It shoots those same bracketed images, then allows them to be reassembled into one picture. To be honest, I’ve avoided fooling with it because too many people use it to create what we called in school “technically dominated art shots.” Pictures, in other words, where how you did it becomes more important than the content of the photo.

Just because it’s magic doesn’t mean that it’s always GOOD magic. The photo immediately above looks like it could have been shot during the day. It saved too much ambient light. It was taken at 9:40 p.m. when I had to boost the ISO from 200 to 1000. The three exposures for this shot were 13 seconds, 6 seconds and 25 seconds. All were at f/5. I told the camera to overexpose the image by about 4 times because the meter was sensing all the lights from the shore and the reflections of the water and stopping down.

The photo at the top of the page was taken at 9:04 p.m. when I had the ISO set to 200. The exposures were 13 seconds, six seconds and 25 seconds @ f/3.5. I told the camera to overexpose by a factor of 1.33. The colored blur is a barge making its way upstream.

Old ways sometimes better

Because HDR merges photos taken slight intervals apart, sometimes you lose nice detail that is moving. This single frame shows the whirlpool south of Tower Rock starting to form. You can just barely make out the swirl. I zoomed to 55mm and set the ISO to 200. The exposure was 15 seconds @f/4. I overexposed by two stops.

Boat with HDR

I’m not overly excited by this HDR shot of a towboat that conveniently paused across from us for some time.

Boat without HDR

This is a single frame from the sequence that made up the vertical photo above. I cropped it tighter (just a little bit too tight at the top) and turned it into a horizontal. I find the moon less interesting than the idea of a pilot feeling his way up the Mississippi like pilots have been doing since the days when travelers were first devoured by the demons inhabiting Tower Rock.

Now that I’ve been exposed to HDR, I’ll use it like a torque wrench: something nice to have, but not a tool I grab every day.

July 18, 2013

Big Magnet Passes Cape

Jim Stone, Central High School science whiz, emailed me all excited about a big magnet that was going to be passing through Cape on the Mississippi River. He sent me a link with a near-live GPS tracking do-hickey so I’d be sure to know when it was coming.

That’s Jim on the right. He’s a Professor of Physics at Boston University and an all-around big-whoop in the world of chasing tiny particles that may or may not exist and if he finds them I don’t know if he’s going to put them in a coffee can or what.

That’s not the way he explains it, but that’s the short version. The woman in red was just a tourist who stopped by the Trail of Tears overlook. Click on any photo to make it larger.

It’s coming! It’s coming!

The Paul Revere of the magnet world sent me a frantic text Wednesday morning: “Magnet already past Cairo. Will pass Cape in about 2 hours. I will miss it since I am just now boarding my flight. I’ll check when I land but will most likely catch it at St Louis or slightly south. It seems to be moving rather fast.”

He sent the alert at 6:30; I got it at 8:30, so I figured two hours from Cairo would mean that I would miss it by the time I put my pants on. I pulled up the tracking chart and saw it was just making the curve down by New Madrid. Jim may be a great physicist, but he didn’t learn one basic rule: boats go faster downstream than they go upstream. It was going to be awhile before it got to Cape.

I had some interviews in Perry County, so I passed the ball to Fred Lynch and James Baughn at The Missourian. James managed to snag it as it was passing Cape.

A pretty day on the Mississippi

Jim’s plane landed and he caught the magnet at Cape Rock. I wrapped up my interview and blasted off to the overlook at Trail of Tears. The route I took was hilly and curvy and one where I know (I hope) every curve, so I made good time. The brakes sure smelled hot when I pulled in, though.

Jim wasn’t there, but I heard boat radio traffic that sounded like two barges were setting up to make a pass. Sure enough, way down to the south, I could see a towboat pushing a single barge with a white thing on top of it. It might have been unique, but it wasn’t too exciting to look at.

Passing the lookout

I called Jim to tell him it had arrived, but would probably take a good 20 minutes or more to make it out of sight. His timing was perfect: he made it when it was almost right in front of the lookout.

Wire break = kaput

A very nice woman was intrigued by the idea of something going by that was too big and delicate to be lifted by helicopter and couldn’t be hauled by truck from Brookhaven National Laboratory at Long Island, New York, to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the Chicago suburbs, its new home.

Jim went into great detail about how its core was created with a single coil of wire and if that wire was broken or damaged, then the whole thing was kaput. (I’ve been photographing the last generation of German speakers in the pioneer communities of Perry county, so I’m hearing stuff like “kaput” all the time.)

He went on to explain the calibration process and how they fine-tune it by placing a piece of paper under a single strand of wire until the magnet output is exactly even. Once that’s done, they throw a pet throgmorton (or something that sounded like that) into the middle of the magnet and check for deviation.

Check break room for refrigerator magnets

“If they find a deviation, I assume the first thing they check would be if anybody added a refrigerator magnet in the break room,” I volunteered. Scientists take these things seriously, so I could tell he was not amused.

When he thought I wasn’t looking, though, I saw him writing “Check break room for refrigerator magnets” in a small pocket notebook.

If you really want to know what the magnet is used for, check out the Fermilab website. My explanation is easier to understand.

Had time for burgers at Mississippi Mud

As soon as the target was out of sight, we headed up to Altenburg to the Mississippi Mud Tavern in Altenburg, where I had the second-best hamburger of the whole Florida-Missouri expedition.

I calculated that it was going to take about 1-1/2 hours for it to get 15 or so miles up to Tower Rock. My guess was pretty close. We had scarcely pulled in before we could hear the throb of engines coming up the river. The Miss Kate and her precious cargo managed to make it past The Demon That Devours Travelers, so we went upriver to catch it passing under what was (and may still be) the world’s longest suspension pipeline.

Passing the pipeline

We had a pleasant conversation with some guys enjoying the breeze and some brews. While we were standing there, Jim noticed a sign that had been used for target practice.

“What if somebody took a shot at it while it was in transit? That thing passed through Kentucky and Tennessee where somebody might have been tempted to take a potshot at something that looks like a flying saucer,” he obsessed.

July 3, 2013

Waving Goodbye at Lambert

Friend Anne and Wife Lila hopped on a plane at St. Louis’s Lambert Airport Tuesday morning. (Lila isn’t in the picture because she’s still on the shuttle.) Just as I started to pull off, I thought, “Maybe I should bookend the trip by getting a final shot of her leaving Missouri.”

‘It’s just my daughter….’

I got out of the car, called her name and watched heads swivel around. To avoid attracting the attention of the security folks, I announced in a loud voice, “It’s OK. I’m just sending my daughter off to school.”

(I’m pretty sure Anne paid that woman to say, “Looks more like his granddaughter,” but I could be mistaken.)

On our first day on the road, the server said, when I asked about an item on the menu, “I find that a little on the spicy side. The couple behind you ordered it, though.”

I started to get up. Anne put her hand on my arm. “You wouldn’t, would you?” Yep, I would. The server was right. The couple agreed that it might be a bit too spicy for a long road trip that late in the evening. Anne knew from that moment on to expect the unexpected. I have no shame.

Stuff to remember

Once she gets past the cringing and embarrassments, I hope she’ll remember all the cool stuff we saw and the people we met.

The gas tank read somewhere between “Low Fuel” and “Who gets to walk for gas?” when we pulled out of Wib’s, but Anne and Lila wanted to shoot a sunset. While they were making art, I was looking at this mailbox and thinking that sometime over the next couple of days, maybe a mailperson would come by and take the survivors back to civilization.

Boat traffic on the Mississippi

We stopped at the overlook in Trail of Tears State Park only to be greeted by a nice ranger who said, “This part of the park closes at 7:00 and it’s 7:05.” Anne must have batted her eyelashes at him, because he waved us on, saving me from having to pull out one of my “we’re newlyweds” stories. I knew there was a reason to bring her along.

Bald Knob Cross

Looking up and to our right, we saw one of the clearest views of the Bald Knob Cross I’ve seen in years. Anne resisted directing any bald knob comments in my direction, for which I was grateful.

Spectacular rainbow

Shortly after I took this photo of an irrigation system, the temperature dropped about 15 degrees and we were met with a gust of wind that sent umbrellas flying, accompanied by a brief squall. After the storm moved on, a double rainbow of incredible intensity formed off to our side. It’s the first time I can recall actually feeling like I could see where it was touching the ground.

Good persimmon crop

I can’t take anyone to Missouri without showing them the Lutheran Heritage Museum in Altenburg and Tower Rock. We coasted into town after the museum closed, but we spotted Gerard Fiehler pedaling down the street. He recognized my van, pulled over and agreed to open the museum for us even though he was hot and sweaty from mowing.

If they don’t fall or get blown off, it looks like Mother’s favorite tree is going to have a good crop of persimmons.

Flood not so good for fish

We spotted lots of vultures sitting on the wires of the suspension pipeline, but didn’t think much of it. When we drove out of Wittenberg and over to Frogtown, we saw lots of white wading birds off in the distance. When we got past where the old train depot and church would have been, we noticed all sorts of white objects in the fields.

They turned out to be huge carp and other fish who had come in on the flood waters, then gotten trapped when the waters went out quickly. My guess is that the white wading birds were going after the live fish because they weren’t bothering the carrion. The vultures had probably had their fill for the day (or like their food a little riper).

Years have taken toll

The years and high winds have taken their toll on this old barn seen on the way back home from Altenburg. You can click on the photos to make them larger, by the way.

Here are earlier Anne road trip stories:

Don’t forget First Friday

If you missed me at Hastings, stop in at Annie Laurie’s Antiques on First Friday, July 5. I’ll have Snapshots of Cape Girardeau calendars and Smelterville books. I’ll be there from 6pmish until 10 or when I start snoring and Laurie kicks me out.

July 2, 2013

View from Thebes Courthouse

Mother, Friend Anne and I hit the Thebes Courthouse just before sunset, just in time to watch a slow freight rumble across the railroad bridge.

Sky kept changing

Every time we would start to get into the car to leave, the sunset would change color or shape.

Courthouse has spectacular view

We didn’t see the famous “green flash” when the sun disappeared, but we didn’t feel cheated. Here are photos I’ve taken of and from the courthouse over the years.

Muddy mistake

Most of lowland Thebes was covered with Mississippi River floodwaters this spring. I noticed in the fading daylight that the roads had been graded and there was a big pile of mud off to the side of them, so I assumed they were clear when I drove toward the river.

Big mistake. A brief downpour had turned the mud on the road to something slicker than ice. I knew I couldn’t stop or I’d never get going again, so I tried to keep it slow and straight until I got to a point where I had to make a right turn. I was able to kick it around, but about 75 feet down that road, the car went into a slow-speed skid.

I used all the techniques I had learned over years of winter driving. At the last second, I cut the wheels to the left and tried to use the front wheel drive to pull me out of the slide, but we ended up bumping up against the curb, which stopped us.

I give my passengers credit. Unlike Friend Jan, who would have been pounding on the dash and screaming, “We’re all gonna die!!!” Anne sat stoically and braced herself for the impact. Mother said she’d have screamed, but she was busy biting down on a pillow to keep from doing it.

We exited Thebes no worse for wear, but it took me three bucks in the car wash the next day to get all the mud off.