2021

This location, nearby to the synonymous Shaver's Creek Environmental Center, involves a short walk through some lakeside woods to the point where Shaver's Creek outlets into Lake Perez. The flow rate of Shaver's Creek was slow on this date, leaving ample opportunity for iron films to spread over the surface. My only regret is that I didn't get down through the brush to take some close-ups. I've revisited this site a few times, but haven't seen the amazing film blanket phenomenon that I saw on this day.

No films on this day - indeed, I don't think I've ever seen films at Ender's Falls. It's likely that the flow rate is too fast. However, I thought this image was rather stunning, and so wanted to include it in the gallery. The humic-rich amber color of the water at Ender's Falls has always fascinated me.

Showing off my slide collection here. At some point during my undergraduate thesis I realized that I might be able to sample films by using microscope slides, and so I ordered some oversized microscope slides to work with. What started as a bit of a game to capture the best photographs I could of films turned into something rather resembling a trading card collection, except that in this type of trading card game, all of the cards are holographic ultra rares!

Though part of the appeal of hunting for iron films to photograph is to find beautiful specimens, I think the dull ones deserve recognition as well.

These photos were not taken by me, but by a family friend. One of the benefits of becoming known as the "iron films guy" amongst friends and family is that people I know will send me images of iron films that they see in their day to day lives.

One of the things that surprised me most about this undergraduate survey project that I took on was that I saw a lot of wonderfully vivid films forming in cold or even freezing conditions. I thought that their formation would taper off, but that appears to not have been the case!

Some more wonderfully vibrant films. One of my favorite things to see is chunks of vibrant, older, thicker film embedded in a plane of fresh new silver film. I find it beautiful!

A few days later, some new films have further matured from a silver color to a rich gold.

Some bright new film growth.

Buckingham Seep is the name I have given to a series of of small iron-rich groundwater seeps near the Rust Brook effluence in the nearby Buckingham park. This day, January 11th, was the first time that I had discovered the site and so I eagerly photographed all that I could. The films were exceptionally thick, richly patterned, and vibrant. During this trip I noticed a number of groundwater sampling stations. It appears that someone, at some point, was aware that the groundwater might warrant sampling.

One of these images shows the contrast between a dull, old film with a bright young silver film. This area is the site of sampling for one of my slides. A few days later I returned to the spot and witnessed this new growth.

A new year of films! Rust Brook films have a propensity to become rather dull, which I think is likely a consequence of iron flocculates adhering to the underside of the film. One of the interesting aspects of studying films closely is that you can start to learn microhistories of the surrounding environment. For example, being able to estimate when leaves or sticks fell or when animals such as bugs interact with film surfaces. It's a level of peering into the past that feels somewhat uncanny, although ultimately of little consequence.

2020

Some moody winter photos with a few films. A good end to a bad year!

Some wonderful whole-puddle films. I always really enjoy seeing entire bodies of water being covered with film. I've also included a picture here of some slides that I created by sampling iron films from the water surface. My collection now has over 100 iron film samples. The process is easy and it's surprisingly effective to sample these films with this method and preserve their physical appearance.

Like I said, nearly every day.

I was still going out to this Rust Brook site nearly every day.

Even at this point in the semester, I was still working on surveying films for my senior thesis.

More wonderfully frosty film development. Starting to get cold now, but films are still forming!

Not a particularly prolific day for films, but a great day to admire the orange sediment!

My attempt at capturing film in a jar. Iron films are so fragile that they shatter at the lightest touch, after which they sink to the bottom and produce a rusty orange precipitate.

Some wonderful frosty films on the banks of some puddles. I found that these sites were often fringed with a light dusting of films at the water's edges.

These are some of the more wonderfully patterned films I've had the pleasure of photographing. However, because they were so small I had a lot of trouble getting satisfactory pictures.

Even just one day later and there are many more films to photograph. It's often very easy to go overboard.

These pictures were taken as part of my undergraduate senior Biology department thesis project. As I was unable to do any labwork due to COVID, I resorted to doing near-daily surveys of film development at the Rust Brook site instead.

A few days later and these films have slowly matured to a partial orange hue. What a thrill to frequent the same spot and watch film development over time!

Returning to Rust Brook a day later, films were still young and silver, but more numerous.

Some fresh films forming the day after some precipitation. It is around this time that I developed the idea to do my undergraduate senior thesis project about monitoring the development and occurance of iron films in the Rust Brook area. Unfortunatelyy, due to COVID, I wasn't able to have access to lab equipment or space. Though it was a "last resort" for me, I actually quite enjoyed the experience. The paper I wrote was exceedingly flawed, but I learned quite a bit.

These are some of the least vibrant films I have ever encountered. Luckily the surrounding foliage and sky were working overtime to make up for it.

No films on this day, but I loved the way that the bright orange iron-stained sediments at the Rust Brook stood in stark contrast to the fresh white snow.

Another visit to Rust Brook. This place became my haven over quarantine - it was a quick drive from my house and was very often completely empty. I found that the films on this visit were extremely vivid in coloration.

Films aren't always stunning, but they are always exciting to see no matter what!

Some pictures I took of iron-rich drainage that I found after taking a ride on the Sagano Romantic Train. Most of the iron films that I see in the U.S. are in effluences affected by acid mine drainage, where large areas are contaminated with mine wastewater - or in iron seeps, where iron-rich groundwater comes to the surface. In Japan, however, it was mostly in small artificial drainage areas.

I had the amazing opportunity to study abroad in Kyoto during the Spring semester of my junior year. Though ultimately the trip was unfortunately timed and cut short due to the spread of COVID-19, I had two wonderful months at Doushisha University and with my host family.

Potentially unsurprisingly, I also saw a good amount of films while I was in Japan, most of them being in artificial drainage pipes, waterways, and the like. Some of these films ended up being particularly vivid, and I am very proud of these photos.

Photographing water pollution in random urban gullies, however, got me a few looks. On one occassion, while taking a picture of some iron films on the side of the road, I heard a passerby say to his friend (translated to the best of my meagre ability, of course), "tourists will just take pictures of anything".

No films here, but some iron-rich flocculate deposits that I saw at the Fushimi Inari shrine. Even when trying to do touristy things, I ended up taking pictures of iron film and flocculate.

Some of the first films that I saw on my travels in Japan. These thin silver films were in a small farm plot in the suburbia surrounding Kyoto, Japan. I often find that in areas without significant amounts of visible iron oxides (e.g. orange sediments, slicks, or flocculates), any films that form are more than likely to be silver ones. Silver, being the first color that thin-film interference optics produces, means that the films are only a few nanometers thin.

2019

I attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate, which is where I learned about Leptothix discophora and iron films in general. Surprisingly (or not!) I also encountered a few films on campus.

During the Summer of 2019, I took a break from my field station job to travel to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with some of my friends and coworkers. The main event of the trip was an 11 mile loop hike at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which was an absolutely stunning natural location. I took more than a hundred pictures - some of which were iron films!

Not to be mistaken for iron films, the following are images of other biofilms that formed inside of a series of "biological batteries" that I constructed as part of an experiment during my REU at Trout Lake Station in the summer of 2019. Note the "roy g biv" color ordination - the biofilm colors in these images proceed in the order of the rainbow. These films are not examples of thin-film interference, which is the optical phenomenon by which iron films get their characteristic hues. Though both might look at a glance to be "rainbows", the thin-film spectrum does not proceed in rainbow order, as seen here.

Additionally, you may notice that the "coloration" of these films is radial in nature. This is a consequence of the photographing method, as the iridescent effects of these films was only visible when a bright light was shone on the film. In contrast, thin-film intereference effects, as seen in iron films, are inherent to a specific section of film due to the fact that thin-film color effects depend on the thickness of a film in any one location. In these images, the "rainbow" effect moved alongside the flash of the camera, while the blues and hues of a true iron film would remain in place when the angle of light is shifted - though they may be visible or invisible from certain angles. This is a result of these "iridescnent" effects being due to diffraction as opposed to thin film interference like iron films.

During the summer of 2019, I was employed as an REU intern at Trout Lake Station, WI. Though most of my days were spent doing early-morning field monitoring, me and the other interns at the station were able to plan a few trips. One of these was to Bond Falls in the upper peninsula. Though I didn't expect to see any films here due to the nature of the site (films and fast flowing water don't mix, after all) I did see a few.

More unusual films, viewed a few weeks after the original encounter. As the summer continued, I enountered films like these less and less. This makes me think that the film material builds up over time in the subsurface, and is released in large amounts during disturbance events (e.g. my giant foot stomping around in the area). With frequent disturbances, it's likely that there wouldnt be enough time for the material to build back up again.

More mysterious films from the northwoods of Wisconsin, this time from a shallow puddle on the trail to North and South Sparkling bogs. I was able to witness these films physically bubble up from the bottom of the puddle in real time!

Over the course of summer 2019, I worked as an intern at Trout Lake Station in the northwoods of Wisconsin. My responsibilities included weekly field monitoring, which entailed that I travel to a series of bogs in the area and take physical depth profile measurements (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, etc).

While I was certainly expecting to encounter my fair share of bacteria at the bogs, including Chlorobi , I was not expecting to see surface water films. Even more surprisingly, I was not prepared to watch them form before my eyes in mere seconds - acting wholly unlike the films I had grown to love. These films sprung to the surface of the water from disturbed puddles and bog shoreline, forming strange and liquid-like patterns on the surface of the water. They were vibrant, pitted with holes, and seemed to bubble up from the depths. I found myself counfounded in that moment - here I was seeing films, and confusing them with oil. The films swirled, moved, and formed like fluid. And yet they broke, shattering cleanly at their edges.

I still do not know what these films are. I have not seen them since, and they are (to the best of my knowledge) completely undocumented in the literature or elsewhere. The two photos I have found online ( here / here )that resemble these that I saw at Trout Bog refer to them as iron films. Yet there are many physical features that make them distinct, which I hope to outline in a future article. I hope to encounter these films again someday so that I can sample them and analyze what they are made of. I find it likely that these films may be organic in nature, possibly originating from the decomposition of organic matter.

A particularly prolific photography day at Rust Brook. Films do particularly well when they're not being disturbed by precipitation, so I always like to head out to film spots when its been sunny for a while! Some of my favorite film images come from this outing.

I've talked about Rust Brook at length in a previous entry. Here are some small, very blue, very reflective films that I saw on January 1st. What a great start to a year!

2018

Central Pond, so named for its location, is a shallow brackish-water pond sandwiched in a low-lying dike between the upper and lower lobes of Appledore island. Brackish in nature, Central Pond is fed primarily by a combination of fresh rainwater and incoming ocean waves which are able to breach the short distance between the shore and the pond during storms. Between precipitation events, water held in the pond will slowly evaporate, leading to a fluctuating water level. Because no rivers or streams flow into the pond, the water surface is often still, making it a great place for iron films to form. Anecdotally, the pond is popular with birds on the island!

I was able to witness this wonderful display of iron films in Central Pond towards the end of my stay at Appledore Island for a field science course. These videos were taken shortly before a storm, hence the somewhat dull lighting.

Rust Brook is the name that I have chosen for a 100-meter long effluence that discharges into Hawley Brook, a short stream in the larger Farmington River watershed. Hawley Brook originates in a low-lying, marshy area within Found Land Park in central Connecticut, where assumedly it is fed via runoff from the surrounding higher-altitude land encircling it. From there, the brook flows through the forest, under Huckleberry Hill Road, and then into Countryside Park where it feeds two resevoirs. From here, the water continues on to ultimately discharge into the Farmington River.

Rust Brook, in contrast, is a man-made drainage effluence. While the beginning of the Rust Brook is inset into its surrounding area, with relatively defined banks, the stream significantly spreads out the further downstream you go. Where the brook discharges into Hawley it is more of a fan of waterlogged rusty-red soil as opposed to having any sort of streambank.

As one can tell from looking at the photos below, Rust Brook was named for its high iron content and rusty-red appearance. While the water in Rust Brook is not actually red, the bottom of the stream it coated in a thick layer of iron precipitates.

Iron films, such as the ones that I've photographed on this trip, are indeed natural phenomenon, but it is likely that Rust Brook itself is an instance of acid mine drainage (AMD) - though in this case it may also be referred to as acid rock drainage (ARD) because there is no mining operation involved.

The likely origin of Rust Brook's source of water (and potentially contamination) is from Buckingham transfer station, which is the site of an old decomissioned dump that used to be active until the late 1970's. Surrounding the dump is a dug out drainage ditch that usually runs dry, but on rainy days will fill with runoff from the dump and drain into a pipe, which then travels under Huckleberry Hill Road and presumably ends where Rust Brook begins, in Found Land park. However it is interesting to note that there is no charcteristic iron precipates on the dump-side of the pipe. Only after the water enters into the pipe and out the other side does the iron seem to precipitate out. In fact the dump side is often dry (not even a trickle) meanwhile Rust Brook continues to run steadily even during longer periods without rain. This gives me the impression that there is another water source feeding the brook - one that is unknown to me. I wonder if the iron is coming from the dump, or from somewhere else ...

This shiny blue color is a common appearance of very thin iron films - in fact, the films are usually a silver hue in color, but reflect the sky above them like a mirror. On a sunny blue day, this imparts them with a reflective blue color.

The Farmington River has never been a good location for me to look for films. It's fast-flowing nature and steep banks tend to prevent films from forming; even these that managed to form had to do so in the shelter of puddles along the rocky shores.

Sometimes, iron films seem to form on mud. It's my guess that they are actually forming on surface water, per usual, which then subsides due to a lowering of the water level (e.g. days after a rain initially causes an increase in water level). Once the surface dries up completely, though, the films seem to disappear.

During the Fall of 2017, I took an introductory writing seminar at Oberlin College that was about living in the Vermilion River watershed. The course concerned the natural history of the Vermilion river and the land surrounding it, starting with molten rock and glacial till and continuing to the present. As part of this course, we were visited by the photographer Linda Grashoff, who intoduced us to the phenomenon of iron films and the bacteria Leptothrix discophorawho may play a role in causing them. I was taken by the wonderful coloration of these films and subsequently began noticing them everywhere. My fascination with iron films has (evidently) continued to this day.

For more pictures of iron films in the Vermilion River watershed, please visit photographer Linda Grashoff's wonderful blog: Romancing Reality. I owe my current interest in iron films to her photography and book They Breathe Iron.

These are the first iron film photos that I ever took (on a class tripto the Chance Creek Nature Preserve), so I hold them dear to my heart.