Field Project - The Year in Photos

Field 12-21-2014

Last year at Winter Solstice I had an idea for the blog.  I decided that once a week I would post a photo of the field that I walk by every day.  I thought I'd share photos of the crops growing.  The field has been in production every year since I have lived here.  I thought it might be of interest to record the changes in the field from the beginning of winter, through the planting and growing season, and the decline of the field back through autumn and winter.

Field at Winter Solstice 2013

Well, surprise me!  No sooner had I started taking my weekly pictures than the field went up for sale.  No one purchased the field until well beyond the time crops are normally planted.  The new owner put in a few personal plots and left the rest of the field fallow.  So instead of having pictures of rapidly rising corn or soybeans I ended up taking pictures of what happens to a field as it is left lying fallow.

Field at Vernal Equinox 2014

I suppose that watching what grows in a field when it is left to itself is also interesting, but my photo project was not going as expected.  What I saw growing in the field were various weeds most of which I cannot identify.  I could identify a couple: mullen and jimpson weed.  The mullen sends up long spikes.  The jimpson weed has white trumpet shaped flowers in the spring and prickly pods in autumn.  Mustard plants sprang up in fields even though they were not intentionally planted.  A number of people do grow mustard and other greens around here, and I expect that the seeds were spread by birds. In the spring, Morning Glory flowers were seen along the edges of the field along with dandelions and buttercups.  The new owner kept the edge of the field mowed, so they did not take off as well as they might have.

Field at Summer Solstice 2014

Overall, I guess I was surprised at how rarely it was raining on Sundays, which was the day of the week that I took the pictures.  Some days it sprinkled, but only on two occasions was it raining hard enough that I had to take an umbrella with me.  Many days it was overcast, but that did not necessarily lead to rain.  I think I only have one picture of the field with snow on the ground.  We had more snow, but generally it melted before the day I was taking the picture. 

Today's photo was taken at 9:00 am.  The temperature was 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were calm.

Field Autumn Equinox 2014

Although we have had freezing temperatures overnight on many nights, the temperature has always come back above freezing during the day.  We have had a few days when the temperatures have stayed in the upper thirties, but most days the temperature has been in the upper forties to lower fifties.  I guess that accounts for why we have so much greenery still in the field. 

At this point, I am still mulling over whether I want to continue to take photos of the field for another year.

Field Winter Solstice 2014

On one hand, I would still like to do a long term project of the crops growing.  On the other hand, I am not so sure what the new owner's intentions are with the field.  The owner may plant in the spring as usual.  However, if his intention is to hold the land fallow until it can be used for organic farming, it could be another couple of years before anything is growing there except weeds.  I suppose in a worst case scenario, he decides to put up houses there.  I guess I will mull this over for another week before I make a decision.

I might add that one of the other reasons that I started this year long photo shoot was to try to engage artificial intelligence.  Last year I was surprised to see some animated photos stored in my photo section that I had not created.  The first photo was a series of photos I had taken of a walking stick I was working on.  The photos were pictures of moon phases that I had carved on a walking stick.  The animated picture showed the stick turning and showing the moon changing from full to waning crescent to new to waxing as the stick turned.  At first I thought someone had hacked into my account, but as I read on I came to understand that an artificial intelligence program had recognized the pictures as a sequence and had animated the photos.  On one hand, it was kind of cool, but on the other hand it kind of creeped me out as it meant that some sort of Artificial Intelligence was going through the pictures and possibly the text from my blog.  (This was before the whole Edward Snowden thing so at the time it was not generally known just how invasive that the internet turned out to be.)

The second animated photo was from a single shot.  It showed bare trees.  Although the text indicated that the scene was photographed in autumn, the AI had added snow falling.  Again kind of cool, but showed that it was interpreting what was in the photo, at least to the point that it could determine time of year.

The third photo was an interpretation of two similar pictures of our Christmas tree.  Our tree has fiber optics that change colors.  The AI was able to determine that the pictures were of the same subject but that there were color differences in the fiber optics.  It posted a photo to my account showing the lights twinkling.

These photos got me to wondering whether the AI could was only looking at an  individual blog post or whether it could take a look at a series of blog poss and could make determinations that it was the same scene taken over the course of time.  If so, could I signal the AI that I wanted it to give me an animated photo of pictures taken over time.  So the answer to that question is that it has not done so.  I have checked back regularly throughout the year.  Now I am posting a series of pictures to see if it will do so with a series of pictures posted on one blog post.  I'll let you know if it happens. 

It could be that the animated pictures were done to introduce a newly available program.  Or it could be that after the whole Snowden thing that it was dropped because people were so upset to learn about what was going on with the internet data gathering.  Or possibly there is another AI program that has decided that I am only posting innocuous art work and doesn't feel the need to spend resources on monitoring it.  So who knows what is really going on here.  Either it will give me the photo I am asking it to give me or it won't.  Hard to say what is going to happen here.