Local Names and Habitations

My past work in writing and in science and nature outreach could be summarized as walking around outside and bringing back some kind of report. So while I’ve never thought of myself as a skilled photographer, carrying a camera in the woods has come naturally to me for years. These photographs are selected from my central Pennsylvania wanderings over the past couple years. Since I am an angler, waters and watersheds are an organizing theme. The majority were taken within a short drive from Gettysburg. My exhibit title comes from a speech by Theseus near the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He speculates on the need for the artist’s pen to give to messy lived experience “a local habitation and a name.” It seems to me that’s the point of any report, scientific or artistic, from the natural world. My tool in most of these “reports” was a Nikon D5300 camera, the kit zoom lens, a fast prime lens, and a 14mm wide angle lens. The night sky photos use the wide angle lens and a 25-second exposure. The long exposure stream photos were taken in the low light of dusk with an 8-second exposure. I used Adobe Lightroom and the GIMP for processing. Three photos were taken with a Google Pixel XL cell phone.

Ian R. Clarke is an adjunct associate professor of English and also an astronomy lab instructor and director of the Gettysburg College Hatter Planetarium. His poems have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. Ian also writes the monthly astronomy column for The Gettysburg Times. He has been a writing tutor, a naturalist at a summer camp, and home schooling parent of his four children.