Blue Planet Photography

Here’s an update on the bald eagles nesting on Hornby Island. Sometime this week is the estimated hatch date. Today (4/24) at 15:00 MST the birds are still incubating.

You can see the live streaming video, with sound HERE.

This is one of the coolest video sites around. Being a biologist I catch myself making observations, looking at behaviors related to ambient sounds like dog barks, raven calls, etc. For most people it might seem kind of boring, just a bird sitting on a nest. But, once the eggs hatch….

Hey, I’ve been watching the video and at 15:42, the incubating bird (both male and female incubate and it’s hard to tell teh sexes apart visually) got up (2 eggs), stretched, called to its mate, checked the eggs, then sat back on down at a slightly different angle with its face away from the sun. I thought there might be a feeding, it’s about that time of day, but no.

Check it out. It’s very cool.

Here’s a story about a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who built a passive solar heating system in his home and hasn’t paid a heating bill in 25 years. The article is at Livescience.com.

While the heating is very efficient, the article doesn’t mention how the system operated in the summer and how the home was cooled and/or heat transferred away from the home. Cooling a home via alternative sources is harder than heating, since most cooling processes create heat as a by-product.

When we think of Royalty Free (RF) images I think the majority assumes that the entire photograph will be used, or at least a cropped down version to fit whatever printing specs are required. Maybe some photoshopping and other manipulation in other cases. Not much different than would occur with a Rights Managed (RM) image. However, I’ve heard stories of photographers being asked to shoot “components” which were then added into Royalty Free images. If you can imagine a scene of a couple at a beach having a great time with a cold drink. In an historical situation, the scene would be photographed more or less as is or at present, the same photographer would create the various components later composited into a single image. What if you were asked to photograph a series of arms, hands, feet, holding, wearing, interacting with various products and then those photos were used to composite into RF images that you could have easily shot?

Are assignment photographers heading toward being “component photographers”? “Hello, we’d like to have you photograph some products for us. We just need some component shots with specific lighting conditions because we already have the images we’d like to drop them into.”

How does a photographer who is against the principle of RF reconcile shooting component images that will be digitally “implanted” into RF imagery? Does that photographer have any real control over how the images are finally used? Does the photographer shoot themselves in the foot by declining such jobs? Would they know this information from the start or is it information that comes out after the fact?
What will the future landscape of professional photography look like?

Kodak announced today (NEWS) that they will raise the price of consumer and professional film 3% to 17%, citing the “unrelenting increases in the costs of raw materials used to manufacture film”.

If you want to know what’s going on at any given moment around the world, where do you look? CNN may not have all the up-to-date information and certainly not when you want to hear it, see it, read it. I was sent this link to the Havaria Information Service - AlertMap, a product of the National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications, Havaria Emergency and Disaster Information Services in Budapest, Hungary.

In graphic format on a world map, flashing icons show what is going on right now across the globe. Epidemics, floods, earthquakes, bird flu, volcanic eruptions, wars, etc. The newest activity is marked with a flashing red circle, and the newest seismic activity by a yellow circle. Icons show you what is being represented, from bioterrorism to vehicle accidents and clicking on the icon sends you to a page with information on that event.

Below the icon map is a listing of all the events, from storms to volcanic eruptions. It’s interesting to note that there are 57 volcanoes listed as currently erupting around the world, including Mt. St. Helens. I don’t know what their definition of erupting is, but I think this list would need more researching if you were going to rush off to view an erupting volcano or escape to safety based on the information presented on this list. Interesting nonetheless, however. It goes to show how active our planet is. We only hear about volcanic eruptions, for example, when they are spectacular or when lives and property are in danger. Many eruptions are small, steamy, or non-threatening events.

Nemaha County, Kansas and Clay County, Missouri both had hail measuring 5.08 cm in diameter in the past 24 hours. That’s 2 inches in diameter. Ouch.

In the U.S over the past 4 days (4/10/06 - 4/14/06) there were 19 reported aircraft accidents or incidents with 8 injuries. Three of them were in North Carolina, hmmm.

RSS feeds and links to Google Earth are also available. You can also sign up to receive free email updates of new activity so you’re never far from being up-to-date on global disasters.

Spock is a much better photographer than Captain Kirk is a singer. Spock is also a lousy singer, but at least he has other talents he can use. Not so for Kirk.

Don’t believe me? Check it out.

It’s a sparsely designed website lacking any information about his history with photography. I’ve read other places that he’s been a professional photographer for 40 years in addition to his acting duties, but I can’t verify that. It would be nice if the site included a photographer’s bio. Perhaps that information is in his books.

An interesting site to look at nonetheless.

Here’s another list of newly discovered animals, insects, physical properties, documents, and other things we thought we knew but now stand corrected.

The human species is an arrogant one. We think just because there are 6 billion of us crawling all over the surface of Earth that we’ve seen it all, that we’ve discovered everything, and that we know almost everything. We know a lot, seen a lot, discovered a lot relative to past history, but we don’t have a clue what’s coming next.

New species of hammerhead shark discovered

Transitional fossil showing how tetrapods could crawl on land

Heat-loving bacteria under the ice in Antarctica

New species of parrot and long-tailed mouse found on island of Camiguin in the Phillipines

“Lost World” found on island of New Guinea - new plants and animals discovered

Hancock House Publishers in Surrey, British Columbia was founded by David Hancock, biologist and film distributor, in the 1960s as Hancock Wildlife Conservation Center, which became Hancock House Publishers in 1971. Hancock House publishes books on western history, native culture, nature and wildlife.

They have a Wildlife Research Division in which David Hancock is avaiable for presentations on bald eagles, turacos, grouse, the arctic, native Alaskan culture, and more.

They also have live streaming video of a nesting bald eagle pair on Hornby Island, British Columbia. Available through the website and for Windows Media Player 9, you can find the link HERE. The view is in to the top of the nest, so you can see the incubating female (or male) sitting on the nest and if they get up you can see the eggs or chicks, depending upon the date. If all goes well, you’ll be able to follow the progress of the birds all the way through fledging.

The bald eagle pair laid 2 eggs, the first on March 21 and the second on March 24. Predicted hatch dates are April 26 and April 30. The video even includes sound.

Hancock House and those involved in setting this up should be commended for a job well done in creating an important educational resource. Thank you.