Category: Seeing

Physics and Photography – Scaling

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I do nature photography as a hobby, it is something which I really enjoy.  I make my living  teaching experimental physics.  As a photographer I am drawn to close up (i.e. macro) images of the flora and fauna in the Indiana Dunes.  By removing the context which is usually associated with common things like a spider web or a leaf, you can see them in a completely different way.  Physics can be described as the art of noticing the patterns which exist in the world around us, and then trying to tease out the underlying mathematical relations which describe them.  Scaling is a concept that describes how some patterns in nature appear repeatedly, in different phenomena and at vastly different size scales.

On the surface you might not think that there is much overlap between the two disciplines of nature photography and physics.  But the more time I spend out on the trails, taking photographs and observing the world around me, the more I see the “physics” in these common everyday things.  In particular, the concept of Scaling in physics is becoming ever more apparent in the subjects I choose to photograph out on the trails.

Spider Webs and Galactic Voids

These two images represent two completely different things.  The top image is a close up view of a spider web.  The bottom image is a scientific representation of how galaxies are distributed throughout the universe.  I see a remarkable similarity between these two different phenomena.  Both exhibit the same filamentary structure surrounding empty voids.  Even more striking is the difference in size scale.  In the image of the spider web, the empty voids are a centimeter or so across, whereas the galactic voids are on the scale of  hundreds of mega-parsecs across.  That works out to a factor of  100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in terms of size difference!

Close up photograph of the filaments of a spider web along the Tolleston Dunes trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park.

A computer simulation of large scale structures called voids and filaments which have been observed to exist at the largest scales in the universe. Each dot in this image represents a single galaxy. Image taken from a paper by Gaite, Jose. (2013). Halo Models of Large Scale Structure and Reliability of Cosmological N-Body Simulations. Galaxies, vol. 1, issue 1, pp. 31-43. 1. 10.3390/galaxies1010031.

Autumn Leaves and Satellite Maps

Another example of the same patterns and structure appearing in very different phenomena at different size scales is illustrated in these next two images.  One is a close up photograph of a leaf as it begins to decay and change colors in early Autumn.  The second image is a screenshot from a Google Maps satellite view of central Europe.  Notice the similarities in how the veins in the leaf connect the dark spots of decay much like how the roads in the satellite image connect cities.  Both the veins in the leaves and the roads on the map divide into smaller and smaller segments, dividing up the surrounding areas into finer and finer chunks.  This remarkably similar behavior is present on scales of a few centimeters in the one case and over many kilometers in the other.

Close up photograph of an Autumn leaf taken along the Tolleston Dunes trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park.

A screenshot of the network of towns, roads and fields in central Europe taken from Google Maps.

Noticing these connections between such disparate subjects is incredibly rewarding.  It also keeps me coming back over and over to these same trails, the more familiar I get with them the more they reveal.  Nature Rocks!

Nature Is Brutal

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Have you ever had the experience of noticing something for the first time, and then seeing it everywhere as if it had never been there before?  This happens to me all the time when I am out on the trails.  Most recently it happened with spiders, Goldenrod Crab Spiders to be specific.  I saw what I thought was a dead moth on bright yellow flower petal and took a picture of it.  Later while reviewing my images from the day I saw why the moth was dead, a large yellow spider was dining on it.  The spiders yellow body blended in so well with the yellow of the flower that it was almost impossible to see, until you noticed it was there then it became obvious.  Turns out these are hunting spiders, they can be either white or yellow and they sit in a flower waiting for a pollenator to come along and then they pounce.  Once I realized what I had found I spotted them in some of my other photos which I had thought were only of a nice flower.  These spiders are so fascinating I decided to start looking for them more actively while out hiking.  On my next trip out to the Indiana Dunes I choose a trail which I knew would be rich in yellow and white wild flowers.  Sure enough I found dozens of them along the trail, at least half already having captured a pollenator and chowing down, which makes them much easier to spot.  When it is just the spider lying in wait, they are almost impossible to see, even when you are looking for them.

If you think about it, it really is a brutal world out there.  Sudden death lurking in the midst of such beautiful wild flowers.  Each of the following images has a Goldenrod Crab Spider in it, some of them might be difficult to spot.  But they are there, lurking, waiting, hungry…

On first glance this may look like a photograph of a yellow wild flower. But look carefully at the bottom of the central disk. The reddish coloration on the forelegs make this one stand out better than most of the ones I’ve come across which are solid yellow.

In this image, taken on the Tolleston Dunes trail, you get a really good look at the eyes and mandibles of these beauties. Kinda looks like it is doing yoga, but it is really waiting for some insect to approach the flower and then those forelegs will spring like a bear trap and then it is all over for the prey.

Trap set and ready to spring…

Although most of the Goldenrod Crab Spiders I see are yellow, white is their natural color. Knowing that will help you locate the spider in this purple flower.

Once you realize how these things operate, you learn to key in on suspiciously stationary insects. Although the crab spider in this image is really difficult to spot, the bumble bee that was just lying there was a dead giveaway.

This image really shows how easy it is to just walk by these guys. He is pretty much dead center in the photograph. You can really see how a bee or moth would simply never notice until it was too late.

The bumblebee gives a solid que to how large these spiders are. The size of their legs and bodies is impressive.

Without the black insect in its jaws, this one would have been almost impossible to spot among the stamen in the center of the flower.

By the size of the prey I would say this one is just working on an appetizer while awaiting something bigger and meatier to come along.

This was a pretty unusual case of a yellow bodied spider on a white flower. He must have relocated recently as it can take a week or more for their bodies to change color from yellow to white. He still got his meal though.

Once you get accustomed to seeing them, this is the most common pose when not feeding.

I’ve cropped in a lot on this image, but you can clearly see it in the middle.

Most of the white ones I have found are on blue or purple flowers which tend to have white parts near the center. The tips of this guy’s legs give him away.

This was the image that started it all. I only saw the moth when I took the photo and it was only later, when I was reviewing my images on a large monitor that I noticed that bulbous yellow body.