Another Journey

Restless feet must move
along the curving roadway.
Encounters unknown.

Life is Interdisciplinary

On the mini-diploma that I got from my alma mater, it says I graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. But in reality I went to The School of Interdisciplinary Studies/Western College Program. I was there for three years and overseas studying in London for my junior year. I took a handful of classes on the main campus of Miami U., but always felt like I was a Western College student. To this day I never refer to myself as a Miami alumnus, but as a Westerner. And I don't carry my mini-diploma.

I stumbled upon the Western College Program, literally. I was in Oxford, taking the orientation tour with my dad and I spotted the older brother of a high school friend. Greg Russi was a Western senior-to-be and he immediately took us to Peabody Hall for an impromptu tour. Peabody was an amazing building--very old and funky. Greg knocked on a door and said "Hey Curt! Are you here?" A man looking like a Civil War general came to the door. It was Curt Ellison, Western's dean. Greg introduced me as a potential student and Curt and I spent the next hour talking books, baseball, and Civil War history. I knew Western was where I wanted to be.

My first night on campus, the entire Western community gathered on the lawn near our cafeteria. We formed a giant circle and holding hands, we sang "The Circle Game" written by Joni Mitchell. This may sound odd, but it set the seed for me of a lifelong sense of community and love for what Western stands for.

The concept of the Western Program was to give students a broad-based liberal arts education. It stressed the concept of classes and topics and learning being "interdisciplinary" or interwoven. Classes were kept small and informal. There were lectures and seminars and hours of discussions, often spilling over outside of class and lasting until the wee hours. We wrote papers, debated, and performed--never did we "take a test." some of our professors lived in Peabody Hall with us and most of our classes in the three core courses (Creativity & Culture, Social Systems, Natural Systems) were also held in Peabody, or elsewhere on Western's wooded campus. One part of one semester, all freshmen and sophomores studied Melville's "Moby Dick" very intensely from the different perspectives of our core courses. It was fascinating. My brain exploded with ideas.

After two years at Western, we were asked to design our own program of study toward a Senior Project. Then we built a course schedule, proposed a topic for our Senior Project and worked with an advisor to make it all happen. This academic path was not for everyone. Many of my fellow students could not handle all the freedom of having to chart their own academic course, or think about what they wanted to do, or even to write papers that were due "sometime next week." And many did not make it through the Senior Project phase, which was very similar to a mini-masters program. When you presented your Senior Project, you got a thumbs up or down (though they also assigned grades to satisfy Miami's need for numeric grade point averages). My Senior Project was on the role of the national newspaper press in the American environmental movement from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. I passed.

I learned so much at Western, and not just in class. The papers--hundreds of pages of them--helped me hone my writing. The interdisciplinary approach in the classroom also had application in life. And to this day, I find that problem solving is much easier when you look at the problem from a variety of angles. Our professors at Western challenged us to think rather than merely to memorize information to regurgitate on a test.

The students on Main Campus Miami called us "hippies" and laughed that we "talked to trees over there at Western." [It was the start of the Reagan years when I was at Western]. And it's true, we DID talk to trees, and to birds, and to butterflies, and most importantly, to each other. The Western students and faculty got together every Monday night for "Community Dinner" at the cafeteria. We were different and we were proud to be apart from the mainstream.

I credit my Western experience with landing my first real job at a New York advertising/public relations agency. When, during my interview, I was asked by the president of the company if I could write, I could state with complete confidence that I could, and that I really enjoyed writing. I think what I actually said was: "I wrote so many papers during college that I'm pretty sure I could write anything you asked me to right now." Pretty cocky for someone who'd spent the last year playing music in rock bands and burning people's dinners in a restaurant. She hired me on the spot.

Western College is my real alma mater. So I was much dismayed to see that Miami's outgoing president had presided over the killing-off of the Western College program. I won't rant here except to say that it's perfectly in keeping with the-bottom-line-is-all-that-matters philosophy that seems to be so much in vogue these days, especially in the U.S. Miami is a state school. Ohio, like much of the rest of the country, has been having a hard time economically, so I am sure, rather than fund a special (and tiny) learning environment, Miami's board of trustees decided to save the money. It's a shame.

Miami will be a lot poorer academically with the elimination of Western, and the university community will lose one of its most vibrant segments. I sent money to Western when I could and I recommended the Western Program to lots of students whom I thought would fit well into the non-traditional learning environment. Miami will have to figure out a way to continue without my financial support (which must have them trembling in their wingtips).

We western alums will still continue to hold our all-classes reunions once every five years. But over the coming years, no more Western graduates will join our ranks and so our numbers will dwindle with time, like the last living veterans of some long-past war. We won't ever have a parade, but I'm sure we'll form the circle one more time. We'll hold hands and sing "The Circle Game" together. That's the song of MY alma mater.

My Digiscoping Set-Up

My first digiscoping shot. A snowy owl that the entire BWD staff got to see along the Ohio River in WV in 1999.

I took my first digiscoping shot in 1999. The subject was a snowy owl in winter along some railroad tracks in West Virginia. I held the camera (an early Nikon CoolPix) up to the lens of my spotting scope (a Swarovski AT 80 HD, angled) and snapped away. I liked the results but little did I know I had gotten extremely lucky. A still, cooperative bird, easy to find in the scope, up close, no heat haze, perfect light...

I did not take another digiscoped image until I was in Florida three months later (to see my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates play the hated Cincinnati Reds in a spring training game.) My second subject was a tired migrant prothonotary warbler male in the grass at Fort DeSoto. On this day I took many digiscoped bird images--nearly all of them bad. I could not get the camera lined up properly with the spotting scope eyepiece, so I got black vignetting around the edges of my images.

Male prothonotary warbler taken at Fort DeSoto State Park along Florida's Gulf Coast.

A bit of research on the Internet gave me a solution to the vignetting (digiscoping was catching on worldwide): two plumbing rings, one fit onto the camera lens ring, one set inside the scope's eyepiece and the camera was centered every time. The down side of the plumbing rings was that the one resting loosely inside the scope's eyepiece would cooperatively fall out every time I hoisted the scope onto my shoulder. I lost at least a dozen rings this way.

For the next several years I committed the cardinal sin of zooming up too far with my digital camera, or with the scope's 20x to 60x eyepiece. In both cases I thought I'd get better images with the birds larger in the frame. I got larger birds all right, but they were as blurry as a Jim Morrison LSD flashback. I was doing something wrong.

Zooming in too far is one of the pitfalls of the inexperienced digiscoper. Yes the subject is larger, but it's almost always blurry.

Fast forward to 2005. I'm headed to Guatemala and I really want to digiscope some birds. I consult Clay Taylor at Swarovski Optik, North America for his recommendations. Clay is a digiscoping veteran and has tried nearly every combination of adapter, camera, and spotting scope known to birding humanity. He made a few suggestions then e-mailed me a list of cameras that were good for digiscoping and what you'd need to make them work with most spotting scopes. I was now using a Swarovski ATS 65 HD (still an angled eyepiece version--my preference). At Clay's suggestion I bought a Canon PowerShot A520 (about $185 at Amazon.com at the time I purchased it). This camera shoots at 4.0 megapixels (plenty for my purposes) and accepts threaded adapters--this is critical for effective digiscoping.

I also purchased from Canon via Amazon.com a Canon LA-DC52F camera adapter which "bayonets" onto the camera after a small ring surrounding the lens is removed. This is where the DC52F adapter slots into place.

The Canon DC52F (M52) extender (right) and the threaded half of the Swarovski DCA (left).

Removing the camera's ring exposed the bayonet threads to attach the DC52F extender.

With the Canon extender in place, the DCA is threaded on. I leave the DC52F and DCA connected at all times.

The two main components of the Swarovski DCA, the threaded extender (left) and the pressure-fit ring for the scope's eyepiece (right).

From Swarovski I ordered a DCA (for Digital Camera Adapter) unit (part #49206). The DCA performs tow important functions. It threads onto the Canon DC52F and it clamps securely around the eyepiece of the spotting scope (in my case a newer 20x to 60x zoom eyepiece). This creates a very stable set-up for the camera (with adapter in place) to nest on top of the spotting scope eyepiece. With one motion I am ready to digiscope any bird I have in the scope's field of view.

The Swarovski DCA's "inner" portion is a pressure-fit ring that enclosed the eyepiece. Tightened just right, it does not slip, but still permits the zoom eyepiece to be turned as needed. A plastic inner ring protects the eyepiece from being scratched. Note, eyecup assembly is removed.

The DCA inner piece in place and the eyecup assembly is screwed back onto the eyepiece.

Attaching the DC52F/DCA combo to the camera. With a twist it locks into place.

With my new, smaller (65mm) spotting scope and a new carbon-fiber tripod from Bogen Manfrotto, I was travelling much lighter and digiscoping much more efficiently than in the "olde" days. Of course this did not guarantee that I would take perfect images every time. I still had a LOT to learn about that.

I had to unscrew the eyecup assembly to put the inner portion of the DCA onto my scope's eyepiece.

The camera with adapter slots perfectly onto the scope's eyepiece.

I do not tighten the knob on the adapters to hold the camera in place. Instead I remove the camera and carry it in a hip pouch.

I will cover some of the techniques, tips, and pitfalls I've learned in my recent digiscoping resurgence in a future post. If you are impatient, hop on over to Mike McDowell's Digiscoping Blog where the digiscoping truth will set you free. In the meantime, here are images of my digiscoping rig. Special thanks to Phoebe Thompson, hand model, and to Clay Taylor of Swarovski Optik for his early and ongoing advice.
On my recent digiscoping trip to South Africa, I learned a lot more about the craft of digiscoping from some other digi-vets. I promise to share it all with you here at BOTB soon.