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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 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 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
By Jay, on April 8th, 2011% Howdy y’all! I hope everyone’s getting ready for the weekend. I wanted take a moment before mine starts to highlight two photography sites for my friends Lacy D and Gary Rea.
Lacy D. Photos is Facebook-based for now. Lacy really enjoys photography of automobiles and just about everything else automotive. She lives in the Southeastern US and down here, we just tend to see a lot more nice cars, cars shows, antiques, and customized cars. What can I say? The weather simply affords it when compared to the “rust buckets” cars become in regions where they put as much road salt down as there is snow.
So check out Lacy D Photos on Facebook: Photog’s (What’s That Behind the Camera?), and catch her on her Twitter page.
Gary Rea in contrast, lives up in the Pacific Northwest. He’s really interested in long exposure photography and light painting. Gary’s concentration centers around nighttime and low-light conditions by default. So, I can really appreciate his work and eyes because I am well-aware of what it’s like haunting the city streets late at night with camera gear.
You can find Gary at Gary Rea Photography
I like Lacy’s and Gary’s approaches to the . . . → Read More: Lacy D. Photos & Gary Rea Photography
By Jay, on March 19th, 2011% This is a rather unique combination of remote sensing and GIS applications for data visualization of tsunami damage in Japan. Remote sensing is defined as the technique of obtaining information about objects through the analysis of data collected by special instruments that are not in physical contact with the objects of investigation [Avery & Berlin, 1992].
Remote sensing plays a role in GIS [refer to this post] since the data collected in this form of “reconnaissance” can be geo-rectified and aligned with other useful data that have undergone a measured survey defining their location on Earth. Remote sensing of cultural, populated, or other land use areas [agricultural, forestry, ecology, etc.] on the surface of Earth is usually accomplished using photogrammetric tools. This can be film or digital photography from aircraft or orbital satellite platforms.
I think you get the idea. The combination of remote sensing and GIS is pretty cool. The second part of remote sensing is the analysis of the data, in this case, hi-resolution photographs comparing the before and after damage on the surface of Earth across the west coast of Japan. Instead of a typical side-by-side comparison, the authors presented the data in a unique visualization layer . . . → Read More: 2011 Japan Tsunami Unique Visualizations
By Jay, on March 8th, 2011% 
Real quickly, I wanted to pass this along for any teachers interested in taking their classes on some very cool, extremely useful trips over to Historic Yates Mill County Park located just south of downtown Raleigh on Lake Wheeler Road.
Yates Mill Educators Open House 2011 – Register by march 21st
It’s geology! It’s biology! It’s hydrology! It’s engineering! The history from local Colonial Era life forward has practical relevance and implications as well. The variety of topics can be graduated to any level of student. In fact, I went on the Guided Mill Tour that’s open to the public three times last summer. No matter what the age, everyone always walked away with some good knowledge and a new understanding of just how important the mill was and still is. If I had to guess it’s because the whole park is sort of like a laboratory-slash-model, and the young ones easily stay focused.
If you are interested as an educator, you will not disappointed, so check them out! But first, go to the link below and give the nice people there a holler just to make sure they can accommodate your classes and requirements:
Yates Mill Field Trips . . . → Read More: Yates Mill Educators Open House 2011
By Jay, on January 1st, 2011% Happy New Year everyone. You can all look forward to two months of scratching out 2010 and re-writing 2011 on all your signed documents, checks, and contracts!!
On a serious note, one of my approaches to life is to bring an ever-growing and developing quality to my life. We have a limited time while here, so we should strive to affect those changes, bearing in mind achieving a harmonious balance between work, creativity, and health. A mind—body—spirit model, if you will.
Good luck to you all, and please enjoy these photographs from the 19th Annual First Night New Year Fireworks on City Plaza in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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By Jay, on September 30th, 2010% 
Want to go for a walk? I went on a walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina last week while there for a geology conference. Many of you know that Charleston was the unfortunate victim of a rather large earthquake back in the late 1800s. Led by Dr. Briget Doyle’s fill-in of the Geology Department from the College of Charleston, we walked around the southeastern portion of the Charleston Peninsula for an overview of the earthquake and an account of the structural damage recorded in the repair work still visible today.
I will say that I did not get a lot of one-on-one time with Dr. Doyle’s substitute guide. He was busy. The whole conference seemed to have an aura of “busy” about it. Or, maybe it was “running late”? I’m not sure. There was definitely the sense of a shortage of time the whole week with just about everyone. Regardless, I thought of you, my beloved readers and guests, and obtained enough digital photographs to fill about 3 DVDs. Not that I’m going to show that many here! More that there are plenty to choose from. So let’s go for a walk around town and I’ll try to do this . . . → Read More: Charleston Earthquake Photo Tour
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