When given subzero temperatures, freeze soap bubbles.
This is one of those things that I have wanted to do for some years. Living in a place where the temperatures drop to levels well below those in your freezer that solidify water and can preserve slabs of reindeer meat, each year I enjoy a few days of dangerously cold weather. One can throw a pot of hot water up in the air and it turns into a spectacular cloud of steam and snow; no liquid lands on the ground! It is also possible to blow soap bubbles that freeze into gossamer ice globes. They are delicate and beautiful, and I have long wanted to photograph them.
Each year when the outdoor temperatures drop sufficiently, I have tried to do this. Invariably, there is too much wind—any wind is too much—and the bubbles wander away. The ones I can catch, usually burst before I can take their picture.
This year however, I had a new strategy. We recently installed windows on our outdoor screen porch. The temperature remains cold, but the wind is completely blocked. I can now make soap bubbles and they won’t get away!
This is adapted from a tribute that my father made at the memorial of his father, Theodore Olson, after whom we are both named, who died in 2002 at the age of 97. I post it here for the online access of posterity, and to provide a portrayal of the scientific mindset of a family patriarch that influenced not only his students, but his entire family and several generations beyond. Here is my father’s rendition of our family history.
The start of this story goes back almost 150 years. In about 1860 in Norway, Hans Opjörden left home and went to Oslo. Hans had the misfortune to be the second son in his family, and that meant that his older brother would inherit the family farm. Hans left home and headed off to Oslo, where he went to work in a shipyard building boats. After a while he decided he really wanted to sail on the boats instead of just building them. At this time Norway was a province of Sweden. Shrewdly, Hans changed his name from Opjörden to Olson (with a Swedish spelling) and got Swedish sailing papers.
He went on several voyages and along the way befriended a shipmate named Peter Magnus Peterson. We can imagine a conversation between them based on what subsequently happened. Hans confided that he’d really wanted to be a farmer but had no prospects of getting land—and that being a sailor was not his “dream job”, but was good paying employment.
The internet has evolved tremendously since its early days when I first tried to use web pages to show the results of my nighttime photography. Back then, our (dial-up) Internet Service Provider (ATT) offered a home page and a URL subspace to their customers. I took advantage of it and crafted some pages to hold my pictures and stories. Later, I acquired my own domain, nightscapes.net, found a host, loaded my stuff onto it and even got some professional help to re-organize when it became unwieldy.
I learned that maintaining a website can be a lot of work; the technology evolves, links and scripts break, web page conventions, html standards and visitor expectations change. I’m not a programmer (despite a lifetime of doing it), and my interests are in the art and science of images, not the latest network and browser technologies for supporting the latest desktop/laptop/tablet/phone displays.
So I was excited to discover a website service oriented toward photographers, a platform with a small army of support people who maintain it, with features that display photographs at their best, regardless of display or browser, keeping up with the latest updates to internet programming standards. They offer additional services for professional photographers (“buy print”, etc), and at an earlier time I might have subscribed to them.
But I am happy now to keep the shopping cart icons suppressed and not distract from the images themselves.
I have transferred my collection of nightscapes accumulated over the last two decades, over to smugmug, where you can find it at thorolson.smugmug.com. I know people don’t power-browse through large collections of pictures, so I consider this to be really more of an archive, to continue my project of making a digital coffee table book of my favorites.
But I will also use the site to display my more recent work, as I complete it. It will be a relief to have a way to do so without the overhead of manually creating and integrating new web pages for them.
I intend to make posts to this, my personal website, when I add new photographs. I invite you to subscribe or “follow” me, which will send you an email when new posts are made. If you are intrigued by the types of pictures I like to take, well, I take enjoyment in sharing them and would love to have you as a follower.
Andy Warhol, the celebrated pop artist of the 1960s, is credited with the quote “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Well, I guess we have reached the future, because here is our fifteen minutes.
We are the proud owners of a trailer that converts into a tent-like camper. It’s made by a US company, Sylvan Sport. We first learned about it from my cousin Bonnie Norman, an early adopter of nearly everything, and when I finally relinquished my VW Eurovan Westfalia pop-up (to a deserving family eager to enjoy and care for it), this was the obvious replacement. We have enjoyed our “Go Trailer” for several years now and somehow (from Bonnie?), Sylvan Sport learned of our enthusiasm and wanted to feature us on their website.
Our travel plans this last year were modified, along with everyone else’s in this time of covid rules. We didn’t make the cross-country trips we expected, but substituted numerous short trips to our wonderful Minnesota State Parks. I also redeemed a coupon from the Gerard sisters, to guide me in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a destination I was embarrassed to admit as a lifelong Minnesotan, I had not yet visited.
It was a beautiful fall week and I took my usual collection of cameras. Sylvan Sport sent a photographer to capture it as well, and a writer later called to interview us. The result is a promotional piece on their website that depicts the experience nicely, despite being truly impossible to portray the full beauty of Boundary Waters.
By the miracles of modern technology (a technology I contributed to!), it is possible to self-publish a book without a minimum printing run of thousands or more. I recently took advantage of one of these services to make a limited edition of my collection of stories and essays, Nightscape Odyssey, posted previously on this site.
It was tricky to get the layout just right; it took two proofs, but I’m happy with the result and the experience was satisfying, especially taking delivery of the final copies. Even more satisfying was giving them away as gifts.
If you didn’t get one, it was because you probably aren’t one of my nephews or nieces, whom I felt should have some artifact of their odd uncle’s interests, and stories about what road trips were like way back when. Don’t worry though, if you really want a copy of this book, the same company that published them for me can make one for you! You’ll have to pay the going rate however, and you may find it more than you want to shell out for just another coffee table book. (https://www.blurb.com/b/10435240-nightscape-odyssey)
But if you don’t insist on an actual physical hard-cover book, Nightscape Odyssey can be had for free! A pdf version is available for download (20MB). I hope you enjoy it!
The path along Minnehaha Creek, a popular route for our daily walks.
Every day begins with coffee, of course.
Which fortifies me as I peruse the headlines and digest my various online sets of news sources.
Eventually, I reach my fill of virus and political news, but it can take several hours. By this time, it is mid-morning and I think about which collection of projects to work on that day. I have several categories: some of them are administrative, the overhead of life, like gathering info for filing taxes, or processing the mail that has accumulated, aging any viral contamination on its outer surfaces. Or making another pass at compiling the email addresses for my high school class, which drafted me onto its reunion committee.
Another category is more physically constructive. It includes working in my garage shop, on a woodworking project or attending to the never-ending items on the home repair list. If it is sunny, I will opt for the session in the workshop, whose clerestory windows provide a strong boost to the positive mood that comes from working with tools and material in my hands.
Lunchtime brings me back to the house to enjoy something delicious that Poldi has cooked up. These days in quarantine have led her to expand on her already extensive skills in the kitchen. I am the beneficiary. She updates me on whatever news she has gleaned from her sources.
The afternoon brings another set of options. We listen to the press conference of the state health department, absorbing the meaning of today’s covid infection and death counts. We once again are appreciative that as retirees we can easily isolate, but fear for our neighbors, friends and family, who must somehow continue to carry on with their business and livelihoods but must curtail it to conform to the allowed social distance.
While the sun is still amplifying the ambient temperature, Poldi and I strike out for a neighborhood walk. I have analyzed the relative risks of contracting the virus while outdoors and crossing paths with passersby, and our masks are at standby on our neck. If we engage someone for a conversation, or enter a storefront, the masks are immediately deployed. The outing in our neighborhood is therapeutic. Although I am an introvert, Poldi needs more connection. A walk around the block is not enough, but it helps.
The evening brings us back to home life. Poldi pursues her passion for cooking. I work on my various interests including my archives of photographs, wondering how best to curate them for subsequent generations and researchers. Yes, I know, it is a bit of hubris, but it helps me follow Carl Sagan’s advice when asked about the purpose of life: “To do stuff!”
Our evenings wind down in front of the television, finding programs and episodes that distract us and amuse us. We fall into bed, sometimes exhausted by the day’s events, and sometimes relieved by our shared life throughout the pandemic.
We are the lucky ones. We are confined to our home with someone we love. We wish you the same.
John checks for mail at Rural Route 2, Box 619, later to become 292 Heather Lane.
In 1965 we moved into a newly-built house on the outskirts of the town of Long Lake Minnesota. Today considered an “exurb” of Minneapolis, at that time it was a rural community at the very edge of urban influence. I turned twelve on the day we moved in and was starting to explore the possibilities presented to a teenager in those years.
The kitchen table holding rolls of film of various types and sizes, some already developed and sleeved, others containing latent images awaiting their delivery to a film lab. Also shown are my observing notebook and journal.
It has been a wonderful time-trip to go back and review my journal entries, voice memo transcriptions, collected travel brochures, and observing notebooks to recreate these stories. Some of the material was outlined and posted on an early web site, but the impact of 9/11 a few weeks after my return from this trip, combined with the urgencies of daily life with my active family, derailed the project. My notes and artifacts have been hibernating these years since in an ignominious cardboard box.
The film that I brought home was processed by a professional photo lab and carefully organized into sleeves and folders and correlated with my observing notes. The images that stood out became popular prints that I presented at art fairs and exhibits the following year. The others kept silently in their folders in my file cabinet until I looked for supporting images for these stories. I have enjoyed scanning them and discovering pictures that deserve more attention.
My notes from immediately after my return offer some advice. Though today I do not recall it this way, my last night in the field with the windmill was recorded as a miserable experience, a disappointment of trying to reach a closure by recreating the first pictures from the outset of my trip. Maybe seeing a successful film image a few days later, erased that negative emotion. Today I enjoy reciting the story of being lost in the hayfield; at the time, it was just too frustrating.
In my notes I wrote that I took too much stuff and my plans were too ambitious. Today, I’m not so sure. My internalized boy scout motto, “be prepared”, provided the tools and materials when I ran into trouble in the wilderness– situations that could not be solved by a quick trip to the mall for repair items. There were many times that I was glad to have the resources that I had brought.
As to the ambitious plans, they might have been a setup for disappointment, but I no longer see it that way. I am appreciative for all of the experiences and opportunities that presented themselves. Maybe this is just a way of life for me; there is far more to learn than I can possibly take in. In the years since, I have learned to live with this limitation.
The road trip format– travelling every day– was not particularly good for deep sky work. Because of the high overhead for setup and alignment and focus, it would have been better to stay in one location for several days. I made the error that first-time travelers to Europe often make: trying to fit everything into a whirlwind tour.
In the end, because I couldn’t do everything, I had to prioritize. I favored shots that couldn’t be made from near home—so the startrails with unique foregrounds took priority and the deep sky shots that could, in principle, be made from anywhere on a clear night, were secondary.
Today, GPS is ubiquitous. At the time, before cell phones, specialized receivers were required. I had an early model, a gift from my mother-in-law who rolled her eyes about the whole concept but took pleasure in my delight at receiving it. The GPS receivers were quite primitive by today’s standards of localized maps that show you the nearest coffee shops and the route to get to them; instead, they displayed your numerical latitude and longitude and could record markers (waypoints). They could also show a trail of breadcrumbs of your recent route on a blank background. If a major city was nearby, the display would show a mark and a label for it. Still, as limited as it was at the time, GPS was a terrific aid to my efforts.
In the days before smart phones, there were “personal digital assistants”, PDAs, and I owned a Pilot, that hosted helper programs before they became known as “apps”. One such program, Sol-2, told me the local sunset, twilight, moonrise, and moonset times based on my location, which I could enter by reading it from the GPS unit. This was extremely beneficial for my nighttime photo planning. Today of course, all of this is available from your pocket computer/smart phone.
I have often referred in these stories to the difficulty of getting enough sleep. With the demands of cross country travelling, and nighttime photo shooting, sleep is postponed until it can’t. I learned that an hour or two nap is extremely beneficial. Even if not fully sleeping, the momentary metabolism slowdown of just resting seems to help.
The solo time on the road was a contemplative opportunity. My mind wandered over many topics as the miles rolled by. Most of those idle thoughts went unrecorded, with no subsequent loss to society; others I made notes of and have tried to convey in these essays.
The opportunity to undertake projects like this do not occur often. When they do, they are not always apparent. I am indebted to my wife Vicki, who recognized the moment for what it was and encouraged me to embark on this adventure. She saw that this was exactly the right thing for me; I encourage everyone to support the dreams of their partner.
And for those of you reluctant to embark on something that is outside of your usual style, I encourage you to push past the discomfort and seize the moment.
Consider the lesson I learned from the visit with my old classmate (Tillamook Friends…). That story was the result of wondering if I should take a tangent trip to Tillamook to meet him. The easier choice would have been to not go, to stay in my introvert’s comfort zone and get back to my solo photography. But had I not taken that normally untaken option during that summer trip long ago, I would not have renewed a friendship that then lasted until he passed away last year, and I would now be regretting the missed opportunities to have shared in part of his fascinating life.
It’s another reminder that life is short. When risky or expensive or uncertain opportunities come up, take them. Most people regret the trip not taken.
And when you find yourself under a clear night sky, take a few moments to look up at the stars and contemplate our place in this corner of the universe. We are blessed to be here, to have a life to fill with experiences and activities, and to share them with the people we love.
The further east I travel in my homeward direction, the more difficult the nighttime photography becomes. The humidity, insects, and intermittent clouds are a deterrent, while the growing familiarity and attraction of the landscape call me like a siren song toward home.
I have traveled 8000 miles in the last six weeks under mostly accommodating skies. I have shot 40 rolls of film. I have been able to sneak preview some images, but most of my film is packed securely, guarding their latent images until I can bring them to some trustworthy lab to be developed. Regardless of their content, I will always be able to describe what I did during this windfall gift of time. These stories complete that goal.
I know that I am at the end of this astrophoto odyssey because today the sky is clear and beautiful and dry. It will be a marvelous observing night.
I know that my travels are done because even though the sky is clear, I want to be in my home tonight.
Ah, South Dakota. A transition state between the lush prairies and farmlands to the east, and the arid mountains to the west. A bit of both co-reside in this state, and tonight I find myself in a stretch of farmland where the grass has been harvested into giant tootsie-rolls of hay and left at random locations in the field. The mosquitos are fierce, a sure sign of nearby water sources that feed these fields. I do not have my mosquito suit, having left it at home, the land of ten thousand lakes, certain it would not be needed elsewhere.
But I have found another windmill artifact, this one apparently still serving its original purpose, pumping water from the aquifer below to the surface where it can be put directly to agricultural use. Perhaps the catch trough is the source of some of these mosquitos!
There is no wind to make the carnivores work for their blood meal, they land with impunity on any moist skin, and all of my skin is moist tonight. The temperature is 65 degrees, and the dewpoint is the same!
The windmill is about a quarter mile in from the road. I pull off to the side at the field access, an open gate and a vehicle bridge over the gulley. I don’t dare drive into the field, this is not my domain, but I am willing to lug my equipment into place, taking several trips for the tripods, cameras and batteries (to allow the dew heaters to prevent the lenses fogging).
There was not a whisper of breeze, but whatever wind had previously been blowing had left the windmill blades facing south, a fortuitous placement for my composition. I had long wanted to make a direct superposition of the windmill on the North Star, to have the startrails perfectly circumscribe the fan of blades, and here was my chance! I set up the cameras and was surprised where they had to be placed. After a moment I realized that this was exactly right. At this latitude, Polaris was at 450 elevation, the cameras needed to be very low and aimed high to get the composition and angles to work. Even with my wide-angle lenses, the cameras hugged the ground to get the view I wanted.
On my knees to set the tripods, aim the cameras, set the dew heaters, focus and aperture, I finally opened the shutters. I could relax for a while. The exposure time was going to be 80 minutes, exactly one-eighteenth of a day. I had determined this time by counting the number of blades on the windmill, 18. It was a detail that only a mathematician could appreciate, but I have long had suspicions that there are underlying mathematical principles to the esthetic response. I could indulge my intuition in this farmer’s hayfield.
I looked around at the hayfield and realized that I was now surrounded by a thick fog. I could not see more than a few yards in any direction. So this is what happens when the air temperature falls below the dewpoint! I was well aware of the condensation that happens when a lens, radiating heat into space, drops its temperature: it fogs! And so here was an example of the air itself, not just a glass or metallic object, dropping below the dewpoint. Fog!
I experienced a moment of fear. I was out in the middle of some field, I could not see, and I was not sure where my car, or even the road was. Worse, this would ruin the pictures I was taking. But looking up, the sky above was clear. I was in a circular container of fog with the top still open. I could not see any farmhouse lights, my innate sense of direction is poor, but I had the stars to guide me!
If I was not familiar with the sky I would have remained a little frightened, cocooned by a featureless mist with no pointer back to my home base, the car. Instead, I felt somewhat protected. I couldn’t see the traffic on the road, but then again, they couldn’t see me. Their headlights couldn’t penetrate to my camera setup, and no one would wonder what I was doing in the middle of this field. The sky above was open, and my pictures were progressing just fine.
Knowing that I had been traveling north on the road, with the field on the right, I took the steps west, leaving my cameras behind in the fog, until I encountered the road, then north until I found my parked car. I was back at my base camp. I now had a problem. How do I get back to the cameras when their exposure time was up?
My GPS tracker was the answer. I set a waypoint at my car’s location, and then headed back into the fog with the navigation device to find my cameras, this time by “dead reckoning”. I had only a sense of their direction relative to the car and so I set off hoping to see the silhouette of the windmill in a reasonable range. If I didn’t find it, I could always return to the car by aiming for its waypoint, and try again. The GPS signals have no trouble penetrating fog. Fortunately, I found the cameras on my first foray. In a truly worst case, I would have had to wait til morning for the fog to burn off in order to find them. The exposures would have been long ruined, but I would have recovered my equipment.
With markers at both ends of my route, I could now make my way back and forth through the night, each time wandering a slightly different route, but always ending up on target.
Eventually however, the sky covered up completely and even my guiding stars could not be seen. I’m glad this didn’t happen earlier in the evening, before I had my GPS markers set. I would not have been able to find the car so easily. As silly as it sounds to be lost in a hayfield, it would have been a frightening experience. As I packed up and ferried my gear back to the car, following the GPS breadcrumbs, I contemplated the situation I had encountered. My windmill whiteout was a personal lesson in the loss of orientation that explorers experience when they meet more dangerous whiteout conditions. I would advise modern explorers to bring their GPS units!
“Polar Windmill”, a remarkable confluence of opportunity, weather, and technology. This was the last night sky photograph I took on my Nightscape Odyssey, coming full circle to the first.
