|
|
By Jay, on May 3rd, 2012% 
The Raleigh, North Carolina area is a peneplain. The area has been devoid of any mountain building events for quite some time so the land surface has very low relief. As a result, outcrops of exposed metamorphic bedrock across the Piedmont physiographic province are few and far between. Additionally, bedrock may be covered by a literal veneer of dense soil and/or saprolite which conceals the bedrock below by mere inches.
But fear not! I am a trained geologist and have become adept at finding these obscure bedrock outcrops. So for reference, and in case anyone wants to go and visit, lets start with a map that I cobbed together.
Site Location of Bedrock Outcrop along US-401 South, Raleigh, North Carolina – photo by J. Sents, 2012
I used the Wake County iMAPS GIS [Beta] for the base layers used to create the map above. The location presents itself as an unpaved, unmarked parking lot. Along the southern edge of the lot, a stand of trees and bushes conceals the exposed bedrock. So a few days after the initial identification of this site, I made first contact with my camera and compass.
Bedrock Outcrop Photograph facing South – photo . . . → Read More: Raleigh Bedrock Outcrop
By Jay, on November 29th, 2011% Well, I say quick, but not entirely. It took me 3 hours to hike up to this location. Then I saw this scene. I thought it looked pretty cool but knew it was going to be difficult to develop unless I went black & white.
The location shall remain unnamed for now. I’ll give you a hint though: I’ve been here before and posted some other photos from this place. It’s a long story that I hope to have cleared up in due time.
Enjoy this Day After Thanksgiving photograph:
The day after Thanksgiving – I think WordPress nerfed the image quality a little – photo by J. Sents, 2011
By Jay, on October 8th, 2011% 
The predecessor post to this one below lays out the story of the mystery fragment of copper I found at Kure Beach, North Carolina near Fort Fisher. So I gathered up some photographs and sent them along to the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology. Here is the reply verbatim:
It looks to me like an expansion ring from a 40mm Bofors machine gun/cannon projectile. The projectile was steel but the copper expansion ring was designed to catch the rifling in the barrel and often broke away when fired. The grooves that are visible in the “lighted relief” photo look like rifling marks. In the attached photo you can see one that remained on the projectile after firing–this one was found on Kure Beach also.
Kure Beach 40mm Bofors Round – photo by UAB of NC Office of State Archaeology, 2011
Anyway, that’s my best guess. We see dozens of those things every summer when people are out beachcombing. Kure Beach was an artillery training camp during WWII, focusing on anti-aircraft weapons practice. Evidence of this activity is all over the beach, primarily the result of beach renourishment where a dredge boat removes sediments . . . → Read More: Copper Fragment Update!
By Jay, on October 2nd, 2011% 
Earlier in the Summer on a trip to Kure Beach, North Carolina, I just happened to find a small piece of copper in the Coquina Rocks. In a nutshell, the Coquina Rocks are essentially a partially submerged outcrop of sedimentary rocks found near the southern end of Kure Beach near the Fort Fisher Recreational Area. More on Coquina Rocks later…
I was walking along, carefully maneuvering through the Coquina Rocks during during Maximum Ebb Tide this one day. Many people apparently scout the micro-lagoons formed in the cracks and crevasses of the rocks during Low Tide looking for sharks teeth. I really don’t care for sharks, let alone their teeth but these people do. I looked down and saw a gold-red glint with a hint of bright green. Below are some photographs of what I found:
The rule is for scale. It is a standard engineer rule with 1/10th-inch graduations. What is the green stuff? Well that would be considered a marine concretion. First, the environment here is [or has been] oxygenated enough that copper and copper alloys would corrode and oxidize. Chemically unweathered copper is a golden, reddish-brown in most cases. An oxidized copper surface is usually black . . . → Read More: Marine Concretion on a Copper Fragment
By Jay, on June 29th, 2011% Digital photography is like numerical computer modeling: It’s all one giant sensitivity analysis.
By Jay, on June 13th, 2011% I found some weird Raleigh geology yesterday afternoon that I’ll have to do a little looking into. Before that though, I wanted to give a big thanks to the Photography Committee of the 15th Annual Komen NC Triangle Race for the Cure. The event was held on the beautiful campus of Meredith College and in the surrounding neighborhood along Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday June 11, 2011. The early stormy-looking clouds from the previous evening gave way to the typical sunny, warm North Carolina day.
I was invited to participate as a volunteer photographer. Pretty cool considering I didn’t think I was necessarily at this point in my amateur skill level. It was definitely a new and interesting type of shooting… similar to a parade but a lot faster in pace. I learned a lot. What was I doing here? was all I kept asking myself once I realized that this was a big style deal, and it probably ranked up there with a professional-tier event.
My duties were two-fold. I was to gather images on a free-roaming basis of each of the three 5 kilometer [5K] races, of which there were 25,000 people running or walking in . . . → Read More: Komen Race for the Cure Photographs
By Jay, on May 12th, 2011% I just came across this fun little online tool. You can practice all your manual photography from the comforts of your own computer chair now! Pretty soon we won’t ever need to leave home…
Online SLR Camera Simulator!
source: www.photojojo.com
Have a good time playing your new SLR camera video game. Too bad a vast majority of the action is going on outside
By Jay, on May 8th, 2011% 
This is a pretty cool site a friend just shared with me. Thought I’d pass it along quickly for the astros, photogs, and other sky watchers. It’s called Photopic Sky Survey—a very high-resolution interactive photographic visualization tool for the Milky Way Galaxy produced by Nick Risinger.
Photopic Sky Survey – Nick Risinger 2011
If you click on the page name plate in the lower right, you can read more about the technical details. Enjoy. And to all the mothers out there, Happy Mother’s Day!
By Jay, on May 1st, 2011% I had a chance to get out, get some exercise, and check out a place I’ve been interested in geologically for some time. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any prep time to look into the specifics before hitting the road. So, my trip yesterday to Hanging Rock State Park in west-central North Carolina swiftly took on a preliminary recon mode.
I managed to hike Hanging Rock Trail to the top, and then made it down to Lower Cascade Falls in the northern parcel of the park, located in Danbury, North Carolina north of Winston-Salem. I’ll study up on the geologic setting responsible for some of the structures and geomorphology before reporting back [and returning to Hanging Rock]. That should be interesting. In the mean time, please enjoy a couple of digital photographs I took at the aforementioned points of interest:
. . . → Read More: Hanging Rock State Park Recon
By Jay, on April 14th, 2011% 
Want to take better digital photographs of rocks, cars, cities, people, nature, or just about anything? Well if you read some of the articles I do, you’d better have about $30,000 handy, because you’ll need about that much to cover the costs for all the cameras, equipment, and gear I often see for suggestions. That doesn’t help a lot of us that wish they could take better photographs but can really only invest—in terms of money AND time—to the level of a point-n-shoot digital camera.
If you don’t care to capture better photographs and are content with blurry, low-quality party pics, then I suggest you support my sponsors and then close this browser for I just saved you a few minutes of valuable time. If you do seek improvement then stick around and read on. I’m going to provide you with my Five Basic Tips for Better Point-n-Shoot Photography that I believe will dramatically improve the quality and composition of your photographs in a relatively short amount of time and effort on your part. So let’s get started from the bottom up…
#5 – Know Your Camera
You have to know the ins and outs of your camera so well . . . → Read More: Five Basic Tips for Better Point-n-Shoot Photography
|
|
