Getting caught up with Accretionary Wedge #55 (Geo injuries) & 56 (Geo Photography)

I used to participate in the Accretionary Wedge on a regular basis but since the beginning of the year I've been sidetracked with other things and really haven't paid much attention to it.  So with this post I hope to catch up on a few of them.

#55 – February 2013: Maitri at Maitri’s VatulBlog – Geo-Injuries

March 2013 – No Accretionary Wedge
#56 – April 2013: Andrew Alden at About: Geology – Geo Photography
May 2013 – No Accretionary Wedge
#57 – June 2013: Evelyn at Georneys – “Seeing Geology Everywhere”


I guess I stopped with Accretionary wedge #55 With Maitri Vatul blog  Accretionary Wedge #55 Geo Injuries.

 The reason I never participated was because I've always had a healthy respect for the environment in which I was operating and tried to avoid injuries at all costs.  If it looked dangerous I would normally back out and not try to go somewhere where I felt I shouldn't be.
     With that being said  the most I've even done was twist my ankle on a field trip.  We were at a rest stop taking a break and some of us were throwing a Frisbee back and forth.  I ran to catch it and my foot found a hole that was just its size and it went into it about 6 inches.  It was just enough to cause me to fall down,  twisting my ankle as I went down.    Everyone else thought I was joking since they couldn't believe that little hole could do that to me.  The next day when I went to put on my boot it had swollen so much I couldn't wear it and had to stick to my tennis shoes.  Everyone including myself was surprised at how much it had swollen since it really didn't bother me much the day it happened.  We were heading home and I was glad I didn't have to use it much that day since most of the day was spent in the car.  By the time I went out into the field again it was totally healed.

I see we had no hosts for March - lucky me since I couldn't do it anyway.  

Now on to  Accretionary Wegde 56 - Andrew Alden About Geology accretionary-wedge-56-the-geologist-as-photographer.htm

When I take a photo I classify it into two types.  Point and shot - something like getting a special moment of a family member - I try to capture them as they really are not some posed thing.  I do take posed photos too, but prefer the more natural ones.

   And the other is usually trying to capture some geologic feature that is of interest to me.  When I go for these shots I'm usually looking for something to have as a scale so I can judge how big it is latter on or when I show it to others.   More often than not, its a coin when I take an image up close and when its far away I try to have something rather common in it, like a car, common tree or plant.   I guess that is why sometimes my shots are different than people who are doing it for the  esthetics - they usually don't want to have things like that in their photos.
       But I must admit that when I do take shots I do try to get them as pleasing as possible.  Sometimes it's calls for kneeling down and shooting upwards or going for a different angle.  Now that there are digital camera's I find that I'll take multiple ones that are slightly different where I'll change the lighting settings or try different settings on my camera.  Its so nice now because the ones you don't like or that are blurry you just delete.  And I like being able to look at the image right away.  In the past you had to wait days to find out if they turned out or not - and frequently you just couldn't get back to that location again to re-shoot it and had to settle on whatever you got hoping it didn't need editing also. Once I have the different images I then toggle back and forth until I can decide which one is the better image.  I always feel Napoleons quote 'a picture is worth a thousand words'  is so true and I keep that in mind when I share photo's too.
  Now I'm trying to decide which image I should include since it is all about the photo's.

This is a photo from Hot Springs.  I used the stairs so you could get an idea of how steeply the beds were dipping and the stairs were a good scale too so you could see how big this outcrop was.  I seriously doubt most people would be taking pictures of the back exit way  to the parking lot of a beautiful hotel - they would be taking pictures of the front and the insides.

 This one I took because I was blown away with the size of this quartz crystal.  You can see a penny sitting on it - It must have been four feet long and close to two feet in diameter.  If the penny wasn't there I don't think people could appreciate how huge this crystal was.

Most people also don't take pictures of boulders- to them its just a big rock.  But this one was so fascinating to see.  You could see the multi-directional fracturing that was there and then the voids that were created and latter filled in.  And you could see how there could be such large crystals grown insitu with fracturing like this and how porous the zones are.  Again there is a dime near one of the voids for scale. 


Again there was no Accretionary Wedge for may and I've already done Accretionary Wedge 57 with my sidewalk geology post.
Now I feel like I'm all caught up.