Catfish Ponds Roll 241

ABOUT THIS GROUND

Flat alluvial farmland in the Mississippi Delta, between the Yazoo and the Mississippi, where the catfish ponds are cut into the fields in rectangular blocks, each banked by levees and held under water. This is roll 241, frames 079–091, flown for the National High Altitude Photography programme on 4 October 1985 on nine-inch colour infrared film, from about 40,900 feet at roughly 1:59,500. On that film the ponds and the fields divide cleanly: standing water returns almost none of the near-infrared and comes back black, while the crops and levees around it register red.