The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Photography & Images

Taking & making images.

Boott Cotton Mills Museum: Along the Line

We stopped at Lowell MA to visit the New England Quilt Museum (photography prohibited) and the Boott Cotton Mills Museum (photography encouraged). The NPS, among others, managed to salvage the buildings and restore some of the machinery, to the extent that one room on one floor of one building has some running cotton mills:

Boott Cotton Mill Museum

A bit more detail:

Boott Cotton Mill Museum – line detail

The original mills used water power, as did much of New England’s industry, but moments after Watt worked the bugs out of that newfangled steam engine, water power was history. The museum uses a huge old electric motor, mounted on the ceiling, to drive the line shafts above the mills; the vibration shakes the entire building and they hand out ear plugs at the door, despite having only half a dozen mills operating at any time. The working environment, horrific though it was, attracted employees (largely young women) from across the region; it was a better deal than they had on the family farm.

Employees were, of course, prohibited from using cotton to plug their ears…

They sell the cloth in the museum shop and we’ll eventually have some kitchen towels.

2012-10-20
Monthly Picture: Laboratory Study of the Grasshopper

My father drew this in his Sophomore Biology Laboratory Notebook:

Laboratory Study of the Grasshopper

Can you imagine the attention span required to draw that with no obvious errors? The next four pages contain a hand-written discussion of the grasshopper, with two corrections; he filled the entire notebook using a pen and four colors of fluid ink.

Here’s a closer look at the grasshopper (clicky for more dots):

The Grasshopper

I cannot imagine assigning that task to present-day students…

Things were different in 1927, when he was 17 years old. They were about to get really different; 15 years later he was in the South Pacific.

2012-10-15
Dismantling a Gas Tank

That gas tank has evidently reached the end of its life:

Cutting up spherical CHGE gas tank

Many of the nearby gas pipelines end in open stubs and a concrete crusher worked over one of the pads for a long-vanished cylindrical tank, so it looks like they’re scrapping the whole installation. I think the project to install an elevator for the Walkway lands nearby, which may explain everything.

I took the picture from the Walkway, aligning the SX230HS lens through the chain-link fence. Occasionally a small lens wins over more glass!

2012-09-17
Orb-Weaving Spiders

August was the month for giant orb weaving spiders; a pair of thumb-sized monsters took up residence under the gutter over the patio. One started by anchoring its web to the handrail by the steps:

Web anchor on handrail

While we like and encourage spiders, that anchorage didn’t last long and, yes, I must strip and repaint that railing…

There’s a horizontal web at the corner of the gutter over the back door:

Orb spider at gutter – light

Changing the exposure to favor the spider loses the web strands:

Orb spider at gutter – dark

Cropping that one down around the spider shows they really are the stuff of nightmare:

Orb spider – detail

The other spider prefers a vertical web attached along the gutter and anchored to a patio chair, which means I can get between the house and the web to see the spider’s tummy:

Orb spider – ventral

We leave the lights on in the evening for their benefit…

2012-09-16
Monthly Picture: Paper Wasp Nest

Found these paper wasps building their nest on a painted brick post:

Paper wasp nest with eggs

That’s a new nest with eggs a-cooking!

They were minding their own business, but they’re in a very public area and won’t last long…

This is a dot-for-dot crop from a larger image, with just a touch of unsharp mask to bring out their hazard warning stripes.

2012-09-15
Hummingbird Moth!

A Hummingbird Moth recently visited the Butterfly Bush:

Hummingbird Moth – left side

They’re heavy-bodied moths and, unlike those butterflies, never alight on the flowers to dine. Their wings are clear and never stop moving:

Hummingbird Moth – wing

It’s impossible to not see a face looking back at you, even though that’s a proboscis down the middle:

Hummingbird Moth – front

They don’t stay very long and are extremely flighty, so the picture are catch-as-catch-can: hand-held with the DSC-H5, roughly dot-for-dot crops, and only the last one got any color correction. I didn’t have time to set the usual one-stop underexposure, so the colors washed out a bit. I really like the first picture; almost all my mistakes canceled out.

2012-09-09
Painted Lady Butterflies

Painted Lady butterflies seem to be spreading northward, along with the Giant Swallowtails, and three visited the Butterfly Bush at the front window:

Painted Lady – dorsal

The underwing shows four eye spots as distinguishing features:

Painted Lady – underwing

Painted Ladies have odd-looking “faces” on their front end:

Painted Lady – front

The proboscis works wonderfully well on deeper flowers than these, but they’re not passing anything up:

Painted Lady – proboscis

Another view:

Painted Lady – right side

The refueling tube stows neatly for flight:

Painted Lady – proboscis curled

One had a few notches taken from a wing:

Painted Lady – left rear

You can’t ask for prettier colors:

Painted Lady – right front

These are all hand-held with the DSC-H5 wearing the 1.7 teleadapter, underexposed by 1 stop to keep the dark background from burning out the butterfly colors. The images are very close to dot-for-dot crops from much larger pictures, with a touch of unsharp mask, and no color fiddling at all; bright daylight and a gorgeous subject come out beautifully!

2012-09-08