Untamed Science!

 Posted by at 7:16 pm on September 22, 2010
Sep 222010
 

A friend recently turned me on to a really cool website: UntamedScience.com. Untamed Science is a group of scientist/filmmakers (“Ecogeeks” in their own words) who create short, educational science videos for young audiences. When I started watching some of the videos on their website, I loved the dynamic, in-your-face approach they took. After watching a few more videos, I realized that one of their on-camera hosts looked really familiar. And when I thought about it some more, I made the connection: Suzanne Rutishauser was a long-lost friend from the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, where we both worked in the summer of 2004. I chatted with Suzanne last week about Untamed Science.

Untamed Science is currently focusing on producing educational videos for Pearson Education, the largest science textbook publisher in the United States. A few years ago, Suzanne and her colleagues had put several of their “small-scale, kind of low-budget” videos online. Pearson found them and liked what they saw: “We were approached by [Pearson Education] to put together a series of high school biology videos,” Suzanne says. They did just that (the videos launched officially in 2009), and the partnership apparently worked quite well: Suzanne adds, “Untamed Science [has] actually replaced the Discovery Channel as the primary film producers for Pearson Education.”

Why was Pearson Education so impressed? Because the Untamed Science videos were successful at communicating to kids. “It’s all meant to be very adventure-science based, so if we want to talk about the alpine biome, you can be sure that one of the Ecogeeks will be out there snowboarding… and then we stop to think, well what’s going on around us? What are the organisms that live here? What makes this biome the way it is? …The idea is to show kids that when they’re out doing the things that they love to do, there’s the natural world around them.” And it’s not just the content that’s engaging, it’s also the production. “[Kids] are used to fast cuts, MTV-style editing, and that’s really what we strive to achieve. Something that’s not going to be boring… The length of it is important too; the videos are meant to be a springboard for further discussion in the classroom… We’re mostly meant to be the hook.”

Science teachers have been very positive about the Untamed Science videos that accompany Pearson’s science textbooks. Suzanne is finishing up her Masters degree in tropical plant ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, so she knows firsthand how visual media, and video in particular, can help teach science: “Maybe people’s minds are wandering, or maybe they’re looking at their phones… people are distracted, but as soon as you turn on a video, it’s just instant: people’s eyes are glued to whatever screen it’s coming from, and they’re interested! So it’s really a way to captivate people, and once you have that audience, you have such a great platform for teaching.”

One aspect of the Untamed Science website that’s particularly neat is that you can register on the site and become an Ecogeek yourself, whether you’re a student, teacher, scientist, or just a nature lover. Members can post their own nature and science images and videos, and the Untamed Science crew even provides some valuable guidance on producing your own videos. Rather than just provide content, Untamed Science is empowering others to be creative and explore their worlds. Suzanne says, “It’s one thing to be an armchair enthusiast about the things that we’re doing and the places that we go, but it’s another thing for people to take ownership of their own backyard and say, ‘What’s out here?’ and ‘What’s cool about where I live and what’s around me?’” I couldn’t agree more.

I encourage you to check out the site for yourself. It’s well organized and there’s a lot of content to explore. Who knows – maybe you’ll even start calling yourself an Ecogeek!

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No rest for the weary

 Posted by at 7:09 pm on September 22, 2010
Sep 222010
 

Eastern Tailed Blue (Cupido comyntas) covered in dew before sunrise

I spent a very enjoyable week at home in Virginia visiting my family. (I also spent a beautiful morning photographing butterflies at Wakefield Park in Fairfax County, VA, and I’m including a few pictures here.) As I write this, I’m on a plane from Washington, DC to Los Angeles. Tonight, I’m getting on another plane to Sydney, Australia. From Sydney, I’ll get on another plane to cross the continent, finishing in Perth, Western Australia, two days after I left Washington!

Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) basking in the morning sun

I’m presenting some of my research on Dendrobates pumilio at the meeting in Perth. Before the meeting starts, and I will do some birding around Perth, and after the meeting, Nate Dappen and I will explore southwestern Australia for a few days.

Upon my return to LA, I have a couple of days to prepare myself for a Scientific Filmmaking workshop at Bodega Marine Laboratory in northern California, and I’ll finally be home in mid-October. I’ll try to update the blog between now and then, but I can’t make any promises!

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The cloud forest for couch potatoes

 Posted by at 7:36 pm on September 15, 2010
Sep 152010
 

Canopy in the Clouds is a really cool website created by a photographer, Drew Fulton, a tropical plant ecologist, , and a cinematographer, Colin Witherill, and funded by National Geographic Society Young Explorers Grants (the same program that has partly funded my dissertation research on anoles).

Through an intuitive interface, users can explore different areas of the cloud forest (from the ground to the canopy) through spherical panoramic images – you can literally look in any direction you like. These panoramas include clickable “hotspots” that illustrate aspects of rainforest natural history using additional still images or short video segments. It’s a great way for students to learn about an ecosystem that’s every bit as threatened as the tropical rainforest (if not more so!) but receives a lot less attention in the press.

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Science can be visual!

 Posted by at 8:31 pm on September 13, 2010
Sep 132010
 

One of the recurring themes of this blog is that science can be represented visually, and that using visual media to communicate about science is a powerful approach. There are lots of great projects out there that integrate science and visual media, but most of that synthesis happens at the edges of science, not at its core. What I mean by this is that scientists may be willing to step outside their comfort zone and use visual means to communicate with the public, but we don’t often do so when we talk to each other – instead, we tend to fall back on an old, reliable mode of scientific communication: the peer-reviewed journal.

I’m always encouraged when I see that the communication infrastructure within science is adopting new ideas, and a couple of efforts on this front have caught my eye recently (pun very much intended). The Journal of Visualized Experiments is a peer-reviewed journal “devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format.” The journal seems to focus on methods-intensive publications, like new research protocols. Such topics are particularly well suited to a video treatment, because a researcher can actually see the new protocol in action, rather than having to learn it from a text article. Sure, if you watch a few of these videos, you’ll see that they can be a little dry, but remember that these are scientists making them… We aren’t trained to communicate visually, but more we try, the better we’ll all become.

The second website that caught my attention was the Video Abstract page of the journal Neuron. In addition to a conventional text abstract, submitted as a part of every manuscript, Neuron (and other Cell Press journals) allows authors to submit a “video abstract” to summarize their paper’s important findings. Some of these video abstracts are downright watchable, even for a non-scientist. And again, I think our ability as a field to use visual means of communication can only improve with experience.

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Nature photos: a story in an image?

 Posted by at 4:16 pm on September 12, 2010
Sep 122010
 

Nature photography is an increasingly crowded field, and it’s hard to stand out among all the photographers creating incredible images. I’ve written before about the proliferation of internet forums for photographers, and how these forums can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they foster healthy competition among photographers and encourage participants to step up their game and improve their images. On the other hand, forums have the potential to stifle creativity by perpetuating a particular style of image ahead of all others.

As I’ve mentioned before, one forum that breaks that mold is , and the group of Indian photographers who run that forum have created a new online meeting place to share nature photographs that tell a story: . Their goal is to move beyond pretty nature pictures and focus on images that actually illustrate natural history. And best of all, they try to foster collaborations between photographers and biologists! The site is young, but there are already some amazing images posted and some interesting discussions happening – I encourage you to take a look!

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My new Canon 7D: Dud or Stud?

 Posted by at 9:24 pm on September 1, 2010
Sep 012010
 

I managed to get out to Malibu Lagoon State Beach for a few hours on Sunday to test out my new Canon 7D camera. Did it live up to my expectations? Did I live up to my expectations? Keep reading for my impressions and a preliminary verdict.

A month ago, I had three Canon SLRs: the 5D Mark II, the 1D Mark IIn, and the 40D. Even I’ll admit that three SLRs is too many for one person! So, as I mentioned last week, I recently sold my trusty 1D Mark IIn and 40D, and invested in a Canon 7D to replace them. I had a couple of reasons for investing in the new camera.

Snowy Plover portrait

A Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrina) rests in the sand at Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Image is full-frame, taken with 500mm lens, 1.4x teleconverter, and 60mm of extension tubes.

First, because I’m shooting more video these days, I wanted to have two video-capable SLRs. My Canon 5D Mark II fits that bill, but my 1D Mark IIn and 40D did not. I haven’t done much testing of the new video system in the field, but I will say that the camera is set up for video much more sensibly than the 5D Mark II; more of the video controls are easily accessible right on the body itself – you don’t have to delve into menus to find the controls you need.

Second, I wanted an “action” camera that yielded larger, higher-resolution files than my 1D Mark IIn. The latter is a fantastic camera, but its images – at 8.2 megapizels – are a bit small by today’s standards. By an action camera, I mean one that (1) can capture images in rapid succession, and (2) has an autofocus system capable of tracking fast-moving subjects.

The 7D did not disappoint on the first front. At a zippy 8 frames per second (the same as the 1D Mark IIn) I was able to capture nice multi-image sequences of flying birds at Malibu Lagoon. In testing the 7D’s autofocus capabilities, I re-confirmed my long-held suspicion that I am terrible at photographing birds in flight – I need a lot more practice before I can reliably keep a moving bird steady in the frame with my 500mm lens! I can report, however, that I captured at least as many sharp images with the 7D as I have in similar conditions with my 1D Mark IIn, and my rate of keepers should go up with more practice!

Snowy Egret, backlit

A Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) hunts in Malibu Lagoon.

The high pixel count of the 7D, and particularly its high pixel density – i.e., the large number of pixels packed into a relatively small sensor area – concerned me when I first read the specs after the camera’s release last year. Small pixels usually mean more “noise,” which manifests itself as spurious color or grain in digital images. In addition, such extreme resolution would seriously test the quality of my lenses.

Luckily, I found that, even with a 1.4x teleconverter attached, my 500mm lens delivered images that were very sharp when viewed at 100% on the computer. I don’t think I’ll need to be investing in any of Canon’s new supertelephoto lenses any time soon! The 7D images weren’t overly noisy, either. Even at ISO 800, I got images that were quite presentable, and with some software noise reduction in post-processing, I won’t be surprised if ISO 1600 images are usable too.

In short, I’m very happy with what I’ve seen so far from this camera. It should make a great replacement for the 1D Mark IIn and 40D, and a perfect complement to the 5D Mark II (which is better than the 7D in low light and with more static subjects).

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