Obscura /  by Todd Henson

Obscura is an Inverted Worlds image born of inverting a photograph on itself in various ways and seeing what happens. For these images I don’t feel any need to retain any semblance of reality, though in some of them I do. This one is more abstract than many of the others I’ve done, beginning as clouds in the sky and turning into whatever it is this has turned into. 

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Schoolhouse Number 18 - Marshall, Virginia /  by Todd Henson

The grounds of Schoolhouse Number 18

After the US Civil War, during Reconstruction, Congress required former Confederate states such as Virginia to institute new constitutions before they’d be allowed back into the national legislature. In 1869 Virginia voters approved a new constitution, one element of which was the establishment of a free public education system. A number of new schools were built, one of which was Public School #18 in Fauquier.

The front entrance of Schoolhouse Number 18

For its early years from its construction in 1887 until 1910 it served local white children. A newer school was built in the village of Marshall in 1910 and after that point Number 18 served local African American students. The school closed in 1964. Miss Sadie Hill’s students in grades 1-5 were then transferred to Northwestern (now Claude Thompson) school.

The side of Schoolhouse Number 18

Fauquier County and the Marshall Regional Historical Society began preservation efforts at the property in 1986. The metal roof had helped keep water out and did a good job preserving the interior, much of which has been retained. A sign states that the blackboard, floor, walls and ceilings are all original, though a new stove from the period was donated. The exterior cupola had to be replaced but they recovered and reinstalled the original bell within it.

Public School No 18, 1887

Schoolhouse Number 18 and the gardens

Today Schoolhouse #18 sits on a small plot of park land with beautifully maintained gardens. It is the only 19th century one room school left in Fauquier County.

Kudos to you if you happen to notice the mockingbird perched atop the bell cupola in most of the photos. I hadn’t noticed it until I loaded the photos into the computer to organize them.

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Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron /  by Todd Henson

A juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

Some species of heron seem very common in the greater DC area, such as great blue and green herons. But night-herons rank among the species I rarely see. They tend to be a bit more secretive, perhaps more often out hunting at dusk and night, though as these photos show, they can also be seen by day.

Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron

What we have here is a juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron. There are two species of night-heron in the area, black-browned and yellow-crowned, and if these were adults you’d more easily see why each is named as they are, though the yellow crown on an adult may be difficult to see. Adults are very distinctive and easy to identify. But the juveniles can look very similar. This one is more grey and has various markings on the feathers that help identify it as yellow-crowned.

In late July of 2008 we found several of these juvenile yellow-crowned night-herons walking the pathways around the pools at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, in Washington DC, where they grow lotus and water lilies and where large crowds gather to see the blooms each summer. Night-herons may be more secretive, in general, but given these were juveniles and that they seem to have hatched in an area where many people gather, they were very bold and unafraid, seemingly ignoring the people and focusing on the water and any prey they could find.

Juvenile yellow-crowned night heron moving towards the water

Technical Note

A quick technical note to admit to my mistakes and to demonstrate that even when we make mistakes it’s often possible to salvage something of value from them (beyond the obvious learning opportunity). On a previous photo session I’d been photographing in a very dark area and had my camera’s ISO set very high (1000 was high at the time). I’d forgotten to set it back to normal when finished, and I’d forgotten to double check my settings before setting out this morning. So for much of the morning I kept wondering why I was able to achieve such high shutter speeds (1/8000 second). Well, it’s because my ISO was set way too high for a bright sunny day.

Lessons Learned

So, what lessons did I learn from this experience and from the mistakes I made?

  • Reset my camera settings to my typical values after each photo session. That way I have a known place to start from next time I pick up the camera.

  • Always double check my settings before my next photo session, just in case I’ve forgotten to reset them. This is when I can also change the settings to suit whatever environment I’m going into if I know to expect a certain level of light.

  • If something seems off in the field, such as unusually high shutter speeds, then stop and double check all my settings. I could have found my error and corrected it much sooner.

  • It’s often possible to salvage worthwhile material even after making what seems a stupid mistake. Granted, these photos will never be as technically good as they could have been. I have lost some data to noise. But thankfully it was a bright sunny day with few dark areas so the noise was surprisingly minimal and I was able to pass the photos through Lightroom’s noise reduction process to lessen the digital noise introduced by the high ISO. The photos work perfectly well for a blog post showing off a species.

Portrait view of a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

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