The Difference of Day and Night

[Mistwalker]

Some of the articles I am working on for magazine publication have me out working on some interesting elements at night. With my strained financial situation after a recent necessary major investment in new equipment, I have to combine or overlap as much of my work as possible in order to reduce my expenses and wear and tear on my truck as much as possible. Thus most of my travel, once on location is done on foot after parking in one place and working my way around in what is often a three to four mile radius. It reminds me of old times in my youth, just under better circumstances thank goodness. Two of the articles, one for a magazine and one for the website, go into how some things are easier to see and positively identify at night using synthetic light, which shows off their shapes better, or color differences more so, than natural sunlight will. So I've been conducting a lot of rather covert roving night-op photo shoots in some of the more obscure areas of the city to get all the images I am after. It's an activity I strongly recommend using a buddy system for should you get into the idea yourself. I'll go into more detail the specific plants and color differences in the article, was just sharing a few pics as a preview today.

To the naked eye during the day time, most of the green plants in this image look almost the same shade of green, at night with synthetic light there is a huge difference.

During the day, it's very hard to notice the fruit and flowers hidden under the leaves. They blend together too well until the husks start going yellow and tan. With the different angle of the synthetic light at night, the differences are more easily noticeable.

 

[plue]

Interesting observation. I'm usually too bagged after a long day out when it gets dark to notice. I'll keep a lookout to see what I can notice next time I'm out past sundown.

 

[TrainedBullets]

That’s seriously cool.

As odd as this is, I haven’t used a light in the woods for more than 30 years, save once when I spotlighted a big black bear coming towards me on a trail.

I’m going to have to reconsider killing that habit, at least every once in a while.

 

[Mistwalker]

Interesting observation. I'm usually too bagged after a long day out when it gets dark to notice. I'll keep a lookout to see what I can notice next time I'm out past sundown.

It was something I observed when I first started my flora studies in the southeast US about 35 years ago. It may have even inspired those initial studies, which I have been doing ever since. In my late teens applied to the 4 year urban survival exercise I underwent as an orphan on the streets after my mother was murdered and I found myself looking after several other kids whose beginnings were not so good as mine, and who had no clue what to do on their own. Now my flora database of images has over 4K files in it of various plants in all their stages of growth, digital photography is so awesome, and I use that for the slideshows in my presentations and for my written works. I had already essentially grown up in the woods or in the south Florida wilds as a kid with my father. Then we spent a few years fishing and trapping commercially together. Which meant a lot of time living in the woods along the shores of various bodies of water. So I started noticing the difference between what was visible in the foliage in sunlight compared to the weaker synthetic light hitting it at a much more shallow angle early on, just moving around camp or out hunting firewood or other resources at night. The circle of light from the torch does a few things simultaneously. It narrows the field of vision and focuses it on a smaller area so your brain isn't so overwhelmed with all the lines, it highlights the plants in front and puts the rearward plants in shadow which lets you see more detail of the leaf shapes of the plants you are looking at, and it illuminate parts of the plants that are usually in shadow. So in some cases like the ground cherry above and Solomon's Seal, you see the flowers and fruit that are usually hidden more easily. I had also noticed the difference between colors seen in one type of lighting compared to another when I noticed an old vest I had looked green in sunlight, but was brown under the fluorescent lights in the store. The difference between sunlight, and then realized that sunlight vs LED light has a similar effect on some foliage.

That’s seriously cool.

As odd as this is, I haven’t used a light in the woods for more than 30 years, save once when I spotlighted a big black bear coming towards me on a trail.

I’m going to have to reconsider killing that habit, at least every once in a while.

It's really not odd at all. At least not to me. For the most part I won't use a light at night, in the woods or in the city, because it limits my field of review shatters my night vision and gives away my position. But it is something I have studied through my work over the years. The urban studies started when I was a kid living on the streets after learning what I had learned commercial fishinh, but later were continued when I worked in security and it was part of my job to shine a light around at night sometimes.