Nate

I’m a photographer, filmmaker and scientist based in Miami, Florida. I’m my PhD work I investigate the coevolution of the sexes. Specifically, I study color evolution in males and females of a lizard species living on a group of Spanish Mediterranean Islands. I believe that photography filmmaking and science compliment one another—that it takes critical thinkers to produce great art and creative ideas solve scientific problems. More importantly, I believe that the tools provided by photography and cinematography can be a powerful way of communicating science. Neil Losin and I started Days Edge Production for just that—to teach people science in an entertaining and fun way.

Hi Everyone,

Neil and I are proud to announce the launch of the Day’s Edge Productions website: www.daysedgeproductions.com! Day’s Edge Productions is our new multimedia production company, creating science and nature media for every audience. Please take a few minutes to browse the site — check out our videos and photos (more coming soon) and tell us what you think! We look forward to hearing from you! You can also follow Day’s Edge on Facebook and Twitter.

Along with the new site’s launch, Neil and I are merging our separate blogs into a single Day’s Edge Productions blog. We’re still going to be writing about the same stuff — science, photography, video, and related topics — but now you’ll have twice as much to read! Our blogs have been on a bit of a hiatus recently because we’ve been working on the new site. But we should be back, blogging at full tilt, now that the site is launched. Make sure to update your RSS reader if you’ve been following our feeds.

Apparently in support of this year being the International Year for Biodiversity, Oxford University Press is making a Conservation Biology textbook freely available. Please pass this email to as many schools, wildlife clubs and others you can and/or print it and give it!!

PS-Please post and disseminate to other networks and colleagues!!

Download the 350 pp book free at:
http://www.mongabay.com/conservation-biology-for-all.html [1]

Sodhi, N. S. and P. R. Ehrlich (Eds.) Conservation Biology for All.

Over the last few months, I have been working alongside a team of scientists and media experts. We are excited to announce the launch of SustainableFocus.org, an online community and magazine developed to address the growing need for visual communicators, scientists and stakeholders to collaborate on issues of science and sustainability.

The mission of SustainableFocus.org is to foster the use visual media amongst the scientific community. By sharing resources, facilitating discussion, and fostering collaboration, we empower our members and challenge our peers to engage with broader audiences using visual media. When art is used to communicate science, information critical for sustainable decision-making and positive change can reach and motivate broader audiences.

Once you visit the site, however, you’ll also find that many of the resources available at SF are not just about outreach. We have dedicated sections to research applications of digital photography, potential funding sources, and resources to improve peer communication skills – all of which anyone can learn from and/or contribute to.

Among many other attractions, the site has original articles by a diversity of experts in science, communication and visual media. We have a community blog, forums, image and video galleries, a plethora of web resources, a calendar marking important dates for conferences, photo/film competition and fund sources, and a diverse membership of scientists, conservationists and media experts.

We need your contributions to make SustainableFocus.org a thriving community. If you have a moment, please visit the website, create an account, and start sharing and learning (www.sustainablefocus.org)!

You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter

I saw a few videos by this guys about a year ago. He’s been getting a lot more attention of vimeo recently and has mastered the use of time-laps videos using dSLRs and automized dollies. Once I started looking more into his work, I realized he’s also an awesome photographer. Check out his vimeo videos here (my personal favorites are the two posted below) and here is a link to his personal website: http://www.in-perfidia.com/

Stomacher – Untitled/Dark Divider from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

A lack of scientific literacy in students graduating from Universities is a huge problem throughout the united states. Bard College, a university with a reputation in the arts is trying to do something about this – forcing its students through intensive science programs. Click here to see the NYtimes article.

As an evolutionary biologists, one of my research interests revolves around sexual coevolution – how males and females coevolve together. One concept in sexual coevolution is the idea of sexually antagonistic selection, a form of selection that favors the expression of a specific trait in one sex, but disfavors the expression of that same trait in the opposite sex. Knowing this, my brother recently sent me a funny (and slightly offensive) comic about the topic:

“Our mission is to further environmental and cultural conservation through ethical photography” …iLCP

That about says it. The iLCP or the International League of Conservation Photographers is a non-profit organization made up of some of the best nature photographers in the world. These all-star photographers try to communicate conservation science using photography.

They recently released a short video called Witness: Defining Conservation Photography. This short documentary briefly describes what this organization is and defines the emerging field of conservation photography. While the production value of the film isn’t great, the imagery in spectacular and the message is clear. Check it out:

Witness: Defining Conservation Photography Feature from iLCP on Vimeo.

This group has produced many other spectacular videos about science and conservation. Among them: A Climage for life_MediaStorm (below)

A Climate for Life_MediaStorm from iLCP on Vimeo.

Or Great Bear Rainforest Rave (below)

Great Bear Rainforest RAVE from iLCP on Vimeo.

Check out all of their stunning videos at : http://vimeo.com/ilcp

I hopped onto vimeo earlier today and happened upon this video created by NPR (Click here for their videos: NPR) about research on why people cannot seem to walk in a strait line without visual landmarks. I thought it was interesting and well made and wanted to share it. Fascinating!

Check it out:

A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

“Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route would reveal you are doomed to walk in circles.”

I spend most Christmas/New Years in a small Italian town called San Severo, in an agriculturally intense area of Puglia. During this years trip, I spent a little time taking pictures of some the places we visited and put together a little gallery. To see it, click here or on the banner below.

We spent one day driving to a lovely, hilltop town called Santa Agata de Puglia. On the way, we passed the barren winter fields that litter Puglia’s rolling Apennine foothills. These hills are now covered with windmills and every year I come back more and more seem to be popping up. I find these wind-powered giants majestic in a weird way and spent some time trying photograph them as parts of the landscape.

For New Years we drove to a relative’s house in L’Aquila, a medieval town in the Abruzzo region that was mostly destroyed a few years ago in a terrible earthquake. I took a few shots of the devastation in the city, which is literally being held together by wooden and metal braces. I also got the chance to spend a day hiking on Gran Sasso, the tallest mountain in Italy south of the Dolomites. Enjoy the images, and if you feel so inclined, let me know what you think!

In the fall of 2009, I took a introductory documentary film class at the School of Communication in University of Miami. One of my classmates was Julie Hollenbeck. Julie has a background in TV and journalism and was way out of our league in terms of her filmmaking abilities and knowledge of the field. He background in journalism and love for the ocean has motivated her to produce award winning films about ocean conservation and science. I wanted to share her website so you can check out a few of her films. Click here to see her site.

Also, check out the trailer to the film she produced in our class: “reef or madness

To see the full video click here.