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Opportunity: "Environmental Visual Communication"

Posted by Neil Losin at 7:05 am on January 30, 2012

Jan 302012

Our friend Neil Ever Osborne, a Canadian conservation photographer and a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), has created a new graduate certificate program in “Environmental Visual Communication.” It’s a 6-month-long program, which includes a full-time summer “Applied Project,” for which students are placed with environmental organizations or other clients to create a visual outreach product. Osborne has previously taught visual communication and multimedia courses at Stanford University and elsewhere, but this is the first time, to my knowledge, that anyone has created an immersive, fully integrated program in environmental visual communication.

The list of courses is impressive: everything from “methods” courses, to help students learn the technical skills to make the most of their cameras and editing software, to more theoretical courses on visual and verbal communication strategies, to courses on business practices and professional skills for budding environmental media professionals. Take a look for yourself! I can’t wait to see who the instructors are — Osborne is well connected in the field (through iLCP and other channels), so I know he’ll pull together an all-star team to teach these courses.

Finally, one of the coolest aspects of the whole program is that it’s based at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, one of the top science and cultural museums in Canada. The resources of the museum, their expertise in bringing science to the public, and the connections with scientists who work at the museum really set this program apart. If you’re interested in communicating visually about science and the environment (and if you’re reading our blog, it’s a good bet that you are), take a serious look at this program! They are accepting applications now.

Day's Edge Year in Review: 2011

Posted by Neil Losin at 8:32 pm on December 31, 2011

Dec 312011

Is it really almost 2012? Between research, teaching, photography, and films, the last year has really flown by at Day’s Edge Productions. Let’s take a quick look back at some of the things that made 2011 a great year at Day’s Edge:

JANUARY: After winning a travel grant from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), Neil attends the Science Online 2011 meeting in North Carolina. He meets lots of new science communicators and starts using Twitter. Around the same time, Neil’s cover feature on burrowing owls is published in Birder’s World magazine.

FEBRUARY: Along with colleagues Molly Mehling, Kari Post, and Melissa Evanson, Nate and Neil launch SustainableFocus.org, a web magazine and online community for scientists, photographers, educators, and anyone interested in using visual media to communicate about science, nature, and sustainability.

MARCH: The Day’s Edge Productions website goes live! Nate receives the 2011 NANPA College Scholarship, and Neil returns to the NANPA college program as a mentor. In McAllen, Texas, they photograph some of the unique wildlife of South Texas. Nate and the other college students produce a short multimedia film in English and Spanish for Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

APRIL: Nate and Neil head to “the field” — Formentera for Nate, and Miami for Neil. Nate makes some short videos about his experiments, which you can see here and here. Meanwhile, Neil appears alongside cast members of One Tree Hill in a TV pilot called Wild Life: A New Generation of Wild, produced by award-winning photographer Ian Shive.

MAY: Nate continues his fieldwork in Spain, and is visited by Joris van Alphen. Joris, one of the world’s best young nature photographers, helps with fieldwork and co-produces a short film about lizard cannibalism: “Cold-blooded Cannibals.” Meanwhile, Neil’s article on territorial behavior in birds is published in Living Bird magazine.

JUNE: Nate finishes his field season in Formentera, while Neil returns to Miami to continue the work he started in April. “Cold-blooded Cannibals” wins the NESCent Evolution Film Festival!

JULY: Neil continues his field season, and Nate and Neil produce “Field Vision 6 – Anolemageddon!” a short film about Neil’s experiments in Miami, which is featured on the National Geographic website. Three of our films are screened at the Animal Behavior Film Festival, and “Battle of the Sexes” wins the top prize in the non-commercial division.

AUGUST: Neil and Nate travel to Austin, Texas to teach a Photography for Ecologists workshop at the Annual Ecology Society Association (ESA) meeting. Neil then heads for Puerto Rico to finish up his field season. Nate meets him there to help with research and filming. Together they create “Field Vision 7: Bite Force” – a short film about Neil’s work in Puerto Rico, which is featured on the National Geographic website. Still in Puerto Rico, Nate and Neil visit a remote cave to film “Snakes in a Cave.”

SEPTEMBER: Neil and Liz Losin launch their video “Neuroplasticity”, which was created for the Society of Neuroscience’s film competition.

OCTOBER: Neil and Nate head to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and met some amazing filmmakers from around the globe. Later that month, Neil (a National Geographic Young Explorer) gives a public talk about his research at National Geographic Headquarters in a NG Young Explorers Salon. At the end of the month, Nate and Neil launch “Snakes in a Cave”, which is featured on the National Geographic website.

NOVEMBER: Nate and Neil finish “The Runner,” a short film created for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Film Festival. Later in the month, Neil’s nature photography exhibit opens at the G2 Gallery in Venice, CA.

DECEMBER: “The Runner”wins the jury prize in the WWF film festival. Unfortunately, Nate and Neil can’t travel to India to accept the award in person, but will still be creating a film for WWF in 2012. “Snakes in a Cave” is selected as the 2nd most astounding animal video of 2011 by Scientific American.

It was awesome year and plans are already afoot for an epic 2012! Thanks for all your support in 2011, and Happy New Year to all!

Good Stuff of the Week: 10/21/2011

Posted by Neil Losin at 8:45 pm on October 21, 2011

Oct 212011

It’s been a while since we’ve posted an installment of Good Stuff, but here goes:

I was in San Diego for a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant workshop a couple of weeks ago, and I got to meet some of my fellow Young Explorers, which is always inspiring. This time, I was teamed up with paleonologist Jack Tseng and surfer / writer / photographer Shannon Switzer, and I think between the three of us, we did a good job showing the audience of UCSD undergrads and grad students that whatever your passions are, National Geographic can be a great organization to work with. One of the coolest things about the weekend was seeing the amazing bioluminescence in the ocean off the coast of San Diego… Here’s a pretty cool video showing the glowing, crashing waves and the glowing wakes of nighttime surfers!

I recently discovered this cool citizen-science project, School of Ants. The project aims to connect people with the nature around them by enlisting their help to identify the ants that live in their neighborhoods. Universities, K-12 schools, and individuals are all welcome to participate, and the creators of the site give you easy instructions on collecting your own ants. The tricky business of identifying the ants is left to the professionals — citizen-scientists send their samples to the project headquarters at North Carolina State University to be counted and classified. They’ve already made some cool discoveries! It’s possible that killing the ants will be upsetting to some participants, but this is the reality of most entomological work. The nice thing about ants is, there’s always “more where that came from!” The site also features amazing ant photos by Alex Wild.

You know Nate and I love discovering new ways that people are making science visual, and this one is a doozie: the latest album Icelandic singer Bjork, Biophilia, is heavily inspired by the living world around us, and has been packaged into an immersive app with unique visualizations and interactivity for each of the 10 tracks on the album. You can read more about it, and watch the “app trailer” (narrated by Sir David Attenborough!) here.

Finally, a cool online contest to get people excited about birds: Birding the Net, from the National Audubon Society. Various North American bird species will be “hidden” all over the web, and from October 10 to November 7, anyone can join the competition to see as many species as possible. Hints will be tweeted, and participants can share clues with one another as well. While birds may be virtual, the prizes are real, and include a chance to visit the Galapagos with Lindblad Expeditions. I think this campaign is quite cool, and with any luck it will inspire people to get out into the real outdoors and start enjoying nature!

Biologists are good people to know

Posted by Neil Losin at 1:04 am on October 19, 2011

Oct 192011

The bugs we observed in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Many individuals were aggregating around the fallen seeds of a tree that grew on the beach.

One of the things I love about being an evolutionary biologist is that members of the scientific community is pretty darn good at sharing knowledge with one another. Here’s a cool example: when I was in Puerto Rico for my anole research this summer, my field assistant Karen and I observed some really interesting bugs near one of our anole sites. I took a couple of cell phone pictures and posted them on Facebook to see if any of my biologist friends knew what they were. This is Step 1, and it’s often enough to give me the answer I’m looking for.

Not this time; I wasn’t really surprised, since Puerto Rican insects seemed like an esoteric area of expertise. But I wasn’t without clues. Someone suggested that the bugs might be soapberry bugs (family Rhopalidae), so I Googled the name to learn more. I quickly learned that I had had lunch with one of the world’s experts on soapberry bugs — Dr. Scott Carroll — just a few months earlier, when he had given a lecture at UCLA. I contacted Scott, and got this informative response almost immediately:

The flowers and unripe seeds of the bugs

“What you are encountering is the beautiful Dysdercus andreae. Dysdercus are the ‘cotton stainers,’ and this is the St. Andrew’s Cotton Stainer, named for the ‘St. Andrew’s Cross’ pattern on its dorsum.

“These bugs are behaviorally and ecologically quite similar to the soapberry bugs (family Rhopalidae), but they are in a different family (Pyrrhocoridae). They feed on seeds of Malvales (cotton group).

“The beach plant hosts are either of two woody species, Hibiscus tiliaceous or Thespesia populnea. Your image shows the Thespesia, I believe. The individual flowers of these plants have the interesting characteristic of being open for just 1-2 days, with a color transition from light yellow to deep maroon. The adults and nymphs (e.g., several in lower part of image) both feed on the seeds. Oviposition is in detritus on the ground. They mate for a long time — post-insemination copulatory mate guarding, presumably. Once they begin oogenesis, females of these bugs histolyze their flight muscles, so all the eggs end up in whatever basket they are in. The males retain flight capacity.

“Caribbean slaves used to be required to catch a full quart jar of D. antica daily while picking cotton.”

Wow! Just like that, not only do I know what the bugs are, but I’ve learned about ten cool things about their natural history. Thanks, Scott! This kind of helpfulness is closer to the rule than the exception in our field, and that’s one of the great things about being connected to this community — the answers are never far away!

New video: Neuroplasticity

Posted by Neil Losin at 11:53 pm on September 27, 2011

Sep 272011

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or can you? For much of the 20^th century, scientists thought that the human brain didn’t change much after adolescence. But now, thanks in part to sophisticated brain imaging techniques, we’re starting to realize that the adult brain is actually quite dynamic! Many of our everyday activities can influence not only our brain’s capabilities, but its structure as well.

A few months ago, my wife Liz informed me that the Society for Neuroscience was organizing a video contest for their 2011 meeting. We’d been meaning to create a video together for a while, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. After some initial brainstorming and writing, a few days of shooting, and many hours of editing, we submitted this short film (below) to the contest.

We knew there would be plenty of competition – the annual SfN meeting is attended by tens of thousands of scientists, making it one of the biggest scientific conferences in the world. As expected, the video competition received lots of submissions, and unfortunately ours wasn’t selected as one of the winners.

You can see the winners here – I think the first place film, The Treasure Hunt, is really well done, and a very deserving winner.

But it’s not over yet! We have another chance to win when the voting public chooses the People’s Choice Award. Voting will start later this week, and when the online voting begins we’ll let you know how you can help us take home the prize!

Good stuff of the week 9/16/11

Posted by Neil Losin at 6:53 pm on September 16, 2011

Sep 162011

Ok, so it’s been a while since I’ve done a “Good Stuff” post. I’ve undoubtedly missed quite a lot of Good Stuff since the last one, but that’s OK. There’s always more where that came from.

I stumbled across this series of videos the other day, exploring evolution through hip-hop. It’s definitely not a general, textbook interpretation of evolution, but instead an interesting collection of more topical vignettes, some more tangential than others. Only 3 videos have been produced so far, but the production quality is consistently high (not unexpected, given that the project has been funded by the Wellcome Trust). Definitely worth a look!

This Nature Conservancy video features a really compelling character from Tennessee, speaking in favor of preserving green space in his (and everyone’s community). You’ll just have to watch to see what I mean. It’s a really refreshing perspective — I think we’re all used to hearing conservation messages coming from affluent, intellectual liberals. This message comes from a very different place, and because it defies convention, becomes even more powerful. Incidentally, this video was shot by my good friend Ian Shive.

My friend Molly Mehling recently pointed me towards Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, a nonprofit aimed at pairing adventurers (climbers, alpinists, etc.) with scientists to collect unique data from inhospitable places. By creating such partnerships, they aim to help scientists, of course, but also to empower adventurers to do more to protect the places they love. It’s a really cool idea, and they’ve already been getting some great press. I look forward to seeing more from this group.

Finally, our friend Neil Ever Osborne, a conservation photographer and Associate of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), has a new project: “Return of the Black Turtle.” This project is a great example of a scientist (Wallace J. Nichols) pairing with a photographer (Osborne) to tell an important conservation story. Osborne is funding the project through Emphas.is, a new crowd-funding platform devoted entirely to photojournalism projects. The project won’t get funded unless Osborne reaches his funding goal! Learn more about the project and contribute here.

Conservation biologist Wallace J. Nichols. Photo by Neil Ever Osborne

Photography for Ecologist Workshop at ESA

Posted by Nate Dappen at 6:21 pm on August 15, 2011

Aug 152011

Thaddeus McRae photographs a large spider during the first day of our two day "photography for ecologists" workshop.

On Saturday August 7th, Neil, Molly Mehling, and myself flew to Austin, TX to teach a two-day photography workshop at the 96^th Annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting. On Sunday, we instructed a full-day workshop – Photography for Ecologists: Capturing Powerful Images. Photography is powerful tool, but not all photographs are created equal. When we are trying to communicate something with images, bad photos are often worse than no photos. By showing these ecologists a few basic artistic and technical techniques, our goal this first day was to help these participants become better photographers. We asked participants to bring their own cameras – whether they were digital SLRs or simple point and shoots.

One trick for taking better photos is to get down onto the same level as your subject.

Most of the workshop was held in-the-field at the UT Austin’s Brackenridge Field Laboratory, an urban field research station for studies in biodiversity, ecosystem change and natural history. Aside from the 105-degree heat, the workshop was a lot of fun and (I think) successful. The range of ages, career stages, and photographic skills of the participants varied widely. This kind of diversity made it a challenge to cater to everyone’s photographic skill level, but it also allowed students to ask one-another questions and share their own knowledge. For most of the day, we split people up into small groups and let them wander around taking pictures while we floated from group to group offering advice on new techniques and image composition. Between Neil, Molly and I, we have a wealth of lenses, camera bodies, and other photographic paraphernalia. Throughout the day, we lent this equipment to the participants, allowing them to see what they could accomplish with different equipment.

One of our participants takes a photograph of a Texas Spiny Lizard.

In the afternoon, after a long hot day, we returned to the Austin Convention Center and reviewed everyone images. I was impressed with some of the results. Many of the participants captured some striking images. There were of course, many bad images. But this is true of all photographers, even the most skilled. Luckily, not all bad images need to be thrown away – they can be post-processed in editing software. For the last hour of the workshop, I led a basic photo-editing workshop using Adobe Photoshop.

Two graduate student participants practice shooting with some of our lenses. One of the big fallacies about photography is that a nicer camera will make your images look better. The truth is that a good lens plays a much bigger part in creating beautiful images.

On Monday night, we held the second workshop: Photography for Ecologists: Putting Images to Work. The aim of this workshop was to provide some visual communication theory, practical resources, and small-group discussions about (1) the role of images in documentation and research; (2) the uses of photography in public outreach; and (3) participatory photography methods. We talked a little bit about how photography is such a powerful tool to communicate both with our peers and to broader audiences. We then broke-up participants into small groups so that they could focus on what images they could create that would best tell the story of their research to either their peers or someone outside the scientific community. One of the main points we wanted to get across was to get people thinking about creating intentional photographs rather than just taking snapshots. We are trained to think deeply about words when we write, but much less thought goes into communicating with image. Hopefully, participants now have a few new ideas about what they can do with their photography!

One drawback to this second meeting was that it was held from 8-10pm on the first night of the conference. That’s late after a long day of watching science talks. Still, 26 people showed up to our workshop. It was great to see people enthusiastic about spending more time communicating with images. Hopefully next year we’ll get an earlier time slot!

With some students gathered around, Neil and I demonstrated how to use flash and some artificial lighting to creatively expose thisGreen Lynx Spider.

Photography for Ecologists Workshops at ESA 2011!

Posted by Neil Losin at 11:07 am on August 1, 2011

Aug 012011

We are excited to announce two “Photography for Ecologists” workshops we are leading next week at the 2011 Ecological Society of America (ESA) Meeting in Austin, TX. The first session, “Capturing Powerful Images” (Sunday, Aug. 7, 8am-5pm; see full description here) emphasizes technical and artistic techniques that will make your images better. Participants will take a field trip to the Brackenridge Field Laboratory to hone their skills in the field. The second session, “Putting Images to Work” (Monday, Aug. 8, 8pm-10pm; see full description here) will help you learn new ways to use your images in research and outreach. The two workshops can be taken together or separately, and we promise you’ll learn a lot either way. We hope to see you there!

- Neil Losin, Molly Mehling, and Nathan Dappen

Here are a few images from last year’s workshop:

Workshop participant Ian Pulsford (Dept. of Environment, Climate Change, and Water, New South Wales, Australia) experiments with a macro lens.

Dror Yaron (Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab) encourages workshop participants to use the Gigapan robotic panorama system to capture a wide view of Panther Hollow.

Extreme closeup of a spider feeding on a harvestman. Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, PA.

New video: Driver ants!

Posted by Neil Losin at 7:00 am on July 18, 2011

Jul 182011

FBQ students James Liu and Lindsay Riley photograph leaf samples as part of a project on insect herbivory.

In early 2009, I had an incredible teaching opportunity: I was a teaching assistant (TA) for the UCLA Field Biology Quarter, a program that brings undergraduates into nature to perform their own original research. We took 15 talented students to the Makerere University Biological Field Station in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, where they had three weeks to come up with a research question, propose a testable hypothesis to answer their question, design an experiment, and collect enough data to test their hypothesis.

A large male Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) strikes a contemplative pose in the Kibale rainforest.

Not surprisingly, this task keeps them pretty busy! And keeping up with all the students as they conduct their research keeps the TAs pretty busy too. Nevertheless, we made time to appreciate the incredible nature all around us. Kibale National Park is one of the few places in the world where you can easily observe wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and it is full of other remarkable animals, from forest elephants to leaf chameleons.

One of the most conspicuous denizens of the Kibale rainforest is the “driver ant” Dorylus wilverthi, which can occur in colonies of up to 20 million individuals. These immense swarms of ants scour the forest floor for any living prey they can find, and they are capable – by sheer weight of numbers – of dispatching prey many times larger than themselves. Back in 2009, the only video-equipped camera I owned was a Panasonic LX-3 point-and-shoot. So when I encountered ant swarms in the forest, I used my LX-3 to capture a bit of video.

I didn’t end up with a huge amount of ant footage, but I decided to put together a short video using the footage I had. For music, I chose “The Swarm” from a 1977 album by Collin Walcott called Grazing Dreams. This was one of my first experiments in video editing, and to be honest, I didn’t expect much. But the music was so perfectly suited to the visuals that the finished product actually worked pretty well.

Ok, so I made this film way back in 2009. Why are you just seeing it now? Well, I didn’t want to use the music without permission, and until recently I didn’t really know whom to ask… Collin Walcott died tragically in an car accident in 1984. Luckily, my dad helped me get in touch with Lanny Harrison, Walcott’s widow, who generously gave me permission to share this video — and Collin’s amazing music — on the web.

So without further ado, here’s the video! I hope you enjoy it.

Driver Ants from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Good Stuff of the... month? 5/27/2011

Posted by Neil Losin at 4:25 pm on June 25, 2011

Jun 252011

With the beginning of my field season (more on that soon), there hasn’t been much time for blogging. So there’s a lot to catch up on! First, here are some cool things on the web that you might have missed in the last few weeks.

The devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri has all but disappeared from the news by now, but this op-ed from the Kansas City Star is definitely worth reading. The author compares the 2011 Joplin tornado with a huge tornado that caused the near-complete devastation of Greensburg, Kansas back in 2007. I just happened to drive through Greensburg a couple of months after the tornado, and the destruction was truly gut-wrenching. The resilient residents of Greensburg, however, have committed themselves not only to rebuilding their town, but to rebuilding it better. The new Greensburg might just be the “greenest” town in America.

The National Academies Press has taken the bold step of making ALL of their book titles downloadable — for free! — in PDF format. Many of these titles are aimed at scientists (things like “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals”), but there are plenty of others (like “Science, Evolution, and Creationism“) that will be accessible to any reader. Kudos to NAP for making such an impressive resource available to everyone!

Our friend Rob Sheppard posted some of his thoughts about what constitutes the “hand of man” in nature photographs. Rob’s blog is good reading, and this post is no exception.

If you haven’t already checked out the entries in the NESCent Evolution Film Festival, they’re worth a look. “Cold-blooded Cannibals” may have won the festival, but there are a number of really good entries. Check them all out here.

Finally, since I’m always on the lookout for good visual interpretations of science, this comic by cartoonist Darryl Cunningham caught my eye. Through an illustrated dialogue between a creationist and an evolutionary biologist, the comic addresses many of the common misconceptions about evolution and explains the evidence that supports the theory.

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