“The Symbol” Video Update #3: Es Vedrà Trek

 Posted by at 2:48 pm on July 28, 2012
Jul 282012
 

Closeup of an Es Vedrà lizard. The combination of a deep blue body and yellow back is not found in any other population.

We visited dozens of islands during our month-long expedition to the Pityusic archipelago to photograph the endemic Ibiza Wall Lizard (Podarcis pityusesis). We photographed lizards clad in brilliant blue, green, and orange, cryptic shades of brown, and even black. But right from the start, we knew our expedition wouldn’t be complete until we climbed Es Vedrà. Es Vedrà is an island shrouded in mystery – it is visible throughout the archipelago, a monumental 1250-foot-high pinnacle of rock rising abruptly from the Mediterranean off the southwest coast of Ibiza. But Es Vedrà is uninhabited and off-limits to the public, so few people have a chance to explore it, and fewer still reach the summit. The island has inspired countless legends through the centuries. More importantly for us, Es Vedrà is home to what may be the most spectacular population of Ibiza Wall Lizards in the entire archipelago.

The most conspicuous terrestrial animals on Es Vedrà are wild goats, descended from domestic goats introduced to the island by humans centuries ago.

In the final week of our expedition, we finally had a chance to face Es Vedrà. This film chronicles our trek to the summit. Nate had reached the peak once before, so we had a rough idea of what lie ahead. Still, we knew we would encounter challenges along the way! Early on our hike, the pouch that held our wireless microphones got torn off my backpack as I pushed through some dense brush, and we didn’t realize the mics were missing until we reached the summit. Unfortunately, that meant that we couldn’t record our impressions when we were there. But in case the video leaves you with any doubt… it was SPECTACULAR!

We retraced our steps on the way down, and – miraculously – Nate managed to find the mics! What a relief!

Our other objective on Es Vedrà was to capture a high-resolution panorama from the summit, so that our friends and project backers could share our experience and get a sense of what we could see from the summit. You can explore the high-resolution panoramic image below, or use the cool full-screen interface at the Gigapan website, complete with annotated “snapshots” within the larger image.

Exhausted but happy, Nate, Amanda and I stand atop Es Vedrà!

The Symbol 7/21/2012: Photo Gallery 4

 Posted by at 5:20 am on July 21, 2012
Jul 212012
 

Click this image to check out our fourth photo gallery!

Our expedition to photograph the Ibiza Wall Lizard has come to an end! None of us can believe how quickly it flew by. We are sad to be leaving this place, but we feel confident that we’ve taken all the photos we need to put together a beautiful and engaging book about this incredible lizard species. Click here, or on the thumbnail image, to view a fourth photo gallery from our trip.

Since our last gallery, we’ve visited seven new island populations. The first was Isla Malvin Nord, which hosted brilliant green lizards with bright orange bellies.  Next we checked out the lizards on Dau Gran, a truck-sized rock off the cost of Ibiza Town. The population of lizards on Dau Gran are the result of intentional mixing; before the 20th century, there were no lizards on this tiny island. In 1930, the German biologist Eisentraut brought 20 green female lizards from Ibiza (Podarcis pityusensis pityusensis) and 8 black male lizards from Escull Vermell (Podarcis pityusensis maluquerorum) to this small rock to see what would happen if these populations mixed. Over the last 80 years, these two subspecies have interbred and produced an amazingly unique population of lizards that show clear characteristics from both original populations. Check out the photo gallery to see some images of this experimental population.

We left Formentera on Saturday the 14th. Over the next five days we visited populations in and around the west coast of Ibiza. The first island we visited during this trip was also the hardest island to reach. On Sunday the 15th, we set out to visit the majestic island of es Vedra. Es Vedra, an island off the southwest coast of Ibiza, is off-limits to the general public. It is an iconic location in the islands and has inspired legends for centuries. Many people say that es Vedra, which stands almost 400 meter out the sea, is the tip of the lost city of Atlantis. Others say it is the location where Odysseus was seduced by the Sirens. There are even legends, both recent and centuries old, that the island is a UFO landing site. There is something about the island that draws you in. From the moment we arrived in Ibiza and Formentera, we’ve wanted to visit this island.

A watch tower overlooks the islands of Vedranell (in the front) and es Vedra (the larger island).

We are producing a short film about our adventure to es Vedra, so I wont give away too many details. I will say this, though: our trip to Vedra was the most epic day of our expedition. To get there and back, we swam four miles, hiked for seven hours and managed to take some photos in between. We can’t wait to share our film about this trip, so stay tuned.

The next two days after es Vedra, the National Parks had a boat available to take us out to some new islands. During that time, we visited Espartar and Esparte – two islands that are separated from one another by less than 10 meters, yet have astonishingly divergent lizard populations. The last island we visited was Conillera, a large island near the Ibizan town of San Antonio, with a great view of all the western islands.

After over a month of photographing lizards on dozens of islands, we realized that we had forgotten something important – we didn’t have any photographs of the Ibiza Wall Lizard in Ibiza! And so, we spent the last day of our expedition capturing images of the Ibiza Wall Lizard on the island where they got their name.

While our photographic journey may be over, our work has just begun. We have countless photos that need editing and several videos about our expedition that we’ll to share with you over the next several weeks. As soon as these are ready, we’ll let you know!

To see our first three photo galleries go here:

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

Gallery 3

The Symbol 7/17/2012: In search of The Symbol

 Posted by at 8:07 am on July 17, 2012
Jul 172012
 

Nate photographs a store in es Pujols that is actually called "The Simbol."

When our last day in Formentera arrived, we still had one important task ahead of us: we needed to capture the sargantanas not as living organisms in nature, but as the omnipresent cultural icon of the island. So we each packed a camera and we set off on bicycles to visit each of the major towns on the island.

Starting from Es Calo, where we were based for our last week in Formentera, we biked to the island’s capital, San Francisco, followed by La Savina, Es Pujols and finally San Ferran. In total, we biked about 27km and took over 700 photos of lizards as motifs on towels, shirts, jewelry and much, much more.

Before our project on the Ibiza Wall Lizard even started, I tried to convince Neil that the lizards showed up as a popular motif everywhere on the islands, and that because of the lizards’ status as the symbol of these islands, our book would have a market in Ibiza and Formentera. I’m what you might call a pathological exaggerator. As a result, Neil was a little skeptical about how prevalent the lizards would actually be as a popular icon. Our bike trip surprised us both. It was unbelievable how much lizard paraphernalia we found. We found t-shirts, sandals, belt buckles, earrings, key chains, shot glasses, and every other object imaginable, all adorned with images of lizards or made in the shape of lizards.

Despite the abundance of lizard-themed items, we didn’t find a single item with actual information about the lizards. With our expedition coming to an end, we look forward to adding our book to the list of lizard-themed items that people can buy on these islands – and hope the book will fill a conspicuous gap in the islands’ lizard offerings!

Six of the hundreds of lizard-themed items that we photographed last Friday.

Neil and Amanda on the road to photograph the symbol of these islands.

A giant lizard sculpture created by a local artist eats Amanda's head.

The Symbol 7/14/2012: Video Update #2

 Posted by at 7:54 am on July 16, 2012
Jul 162012
 

from on .

About a week ago, our friend Joris van Alphen flew from Holland to visit us in Formentera. Together, we spent the last week intensively creating media. To say that Joris is a talented photographer is an understatement. This year, he received the National Geographic Emerging Nature Photographer Award, a new prize for “seriously talented photographers.” Last year, he also earned a , a prestigious grant award from the North American Nature Photography Association (this is where we met, in fact, as both Neil and I were given the same award). Last year, Joris visited me in Formentera and together we created the award-winning film “.”

Neil and I always joke with one another about the differences between our photographic styles – Neil is technical, precise and patient, and I’m, well… less patient. The fun thing about having Joris photographing alongside us is that he has a style that’s unique to us and we all really learn a lot when were working together.

We all get a lot of questions about our photography, so while Joris was here in Formentera, we decided to create a short film to answer some of those questions. We hope you enjoy it! And of course, use the comments section if you want to ask us anything else about our photography, our book project, or life in general!

Farewell to Formentera!

 Posted by at 8:25 am on July 13, 2012
Jul 132012
 

They say time flies when you’re having fun. And evidently it flies even faster when you’re working 12-hour days photographing lizards in an island paradise! Our time in Formentera is drawing to a close — we leave for Ibiza tomorrow morning, and we’ve got a busy schedule planned for the final five days of our expedition there. The local response to our project continues to be really encouraging… everyone we tell about our project seems excited that we are creating a book about their iconic sargantanas. And the local media have continued to cover our expedition as well; the total is now up to 2 TV interviews, 1 radio interview, and 2 newspaper articles about our work. The most recent addition to this tally is a really nice article (in Spanish) by reporter Carmelo Convalia in the most widely read newspaper on the islands, Diario de Ibiza. One of the nice things about this latest article is that it’s in color! We got the whole back page of the newspaper devoted to our project, with several color photographs. We took a quick picture of the newspaper (the front page is just for reference; the article about our work is on the back page), which you can check out below (click the image to enlarge).

On a side note, this is our 200th blog post on Day’s Edge Productions! We hope all of our readers will stick around for another 200!

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The Symbol – Photo Gallery 3

 Posted by at 1:52 pm on July 12, 2012
Jul 122012
 

Click this image to check out our third photo gallery!

Time is flying by here on the islands. None of us can believe that we only have one more week of our expedition to photograph the Ibiza Wall Lizard. We got back to Formentera from Ibiza on July 1st. Since then, we’ve photographed lizards on a handful of small islands. The natural reserve kindly boated us to Isla Negra Nord, Penjats, Malvin Nord and Dau Grand. We also waded out to the island of Espalmador. The lizards on each of these islands were all different colors. No matter how many uniquely colored lizards I see, its always a wonderful surprise to arrive on a small island and find a population of lizards that is totally different from any others that we’ve visited.

In addition to documenting some of the color diversity among islands, we made a serious attempt to photograph some of the hard-to-capture behaviors of these lizards. We still haven’t gotten all the images we want, but we’re happy with a lot the photos we’ve captured so far. To see a gallery with some of our favorite images from the last week and a half, click here or on the photo above. We hope you enjoy our photos!

In addition to taking pictures, we’ve been working hard to create another video updated. That should be done in another day or two. So stay tuned!

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By land, sea and air

 Posted by at 11:44 pm on July 10, 2012
Jul 102012
 

Islands: they’re hard to get to. It’s why biologists find so much to study on islands, but it means they can also present major logistical hurdles… a blessing and a curse!

Things never go quite as planned on a field expedition. You have to roll with the punches and be ready to improvise. This trip has had a few unexpected hurdles (and, to be fair, unexpected opportunities), but one of our major unanticipated challenges has been getting to all of the small islands around Ibiza and Formentera. In the course of his research (starting in 2009), Nate developed a close relationship with the Natural Reserve office here in Formentera, and in past summers they have graciously provided him with a boat and driver whenever he has needed to collect data one of the many uninhabited islands near Formentera.

Javi (in the green jacket) skillfully navigates Formentera’s Natural Reserve boat toward Islas Negras, small islands between Ibiza and Formentera (Ibiza is in the background). Javi and Edu (in the red jacket) were a fun – and knowledgeable – team to spend a day on the water with!

Unfortunately, we arrived in Formentera to find that the situation had changed. Despite the Natural Reserve’s best efforts to help us, we’ve only gotten access to their boat for one day so far, and worse still, the boat is now out of commission for repairs, so we probably won’t get to use it again! But in the absence of our “Plan A,” we’ve improvised. We’ve swum to a few islands near the shore, towing our gear in a raft. We’ve used an inflatable kayak. And we’ve gotten help from the National Parks office in Ibiza as well – we’ve been out on their boat once already, and we’re looking forward to spending more time with them when we revisit Ibiza next week. In any case, we’ve learned that nothing is certain until we’re actually on the water, so we always make backup plans for photography here on Formentera… and we’re ready to hop on the boat at a moment’s notice when the opportunity presents itself!

We’ve only got nine more shooting days on the island! There’s still lots to do, of course (we’ll never get all of the images we want!), but we’re really happy with our progress so far, and we can’t wait to share the fruits of our labors with all of our Kickstarter backers and blog readers! More news soon, so stay tuned!

Boats aren’t just useful, they’re fun! Here Liz is enjoying the ride to the Bledes islands with the National Parks boat in Ibiza.

Nate and Amanda work together to inflate the “Explorer 200,” a small raft that we’ve used to float our gear to some nearby islands, as we swim alongside it.

Our field crew embarks for the Bledes Islands (with their all-black lizards!) on the Ibiza National Parks boat. Jorge, in the foreground, generously shared with us his considerable knowledge of the islands and their wildlife.

When islands are fairly close to the shore, kayaking is an option. Here, Liz paddles toward the island of Cala Salada with our photo gear safe and dry in the kayak, while we swim behind her.

Boats moored in the harbor at La Savina, the main port in Formentera. Thanks to the Natural Reserve office in Formentera, this is where we embarked for Islas Negras, with their orange-bellied green lizards.

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The Symbol 7/6/12: We made the paper!

 Posted by at 12:00 pm on July 6, 2012
Jul 062012
 

Hi all! Good news. The local television channel aired a short special about our project today! We’ll share that with you as soon as they send us a copy. In addition a local newspaper, La Ultima Hora, printed an article about our book project yesterday and included a few of our images. The article is printed in Spanish, but its not very complicated. So for those of you with limited Spanish skills, I think you can still get the gist of whats being said. Check it out below!

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The Symbol: Photo Gallery 2

 Posted by at 5:40 am on July 5, 2012
Jul 052012
 

Hi Everyone! Last week, we spent three days visiting Ibiza and some of its surrounding islands. On our first day, we were lucky enough to have the Reserva Natural de Es Vedra take us out on their boat to visit some the islands off of Ibiza’s West coast. We spent the next few days kayaking and swimming to a few coastal islands to photograph even more populations of Ibiza Wall Lizards. We were blown away by the diversity of lizard behavior and color found on each island and want to share some of the images we took during this adventure. Click here or on the thumbnail image to see the second photo gallery from our trip.

On our first day in Ibiza, the people from the Reserve took us to three small islands: Bledes Plano, Escull Des Cap Vermell, and Es Frare. The amazing thing about these three populations is that the lizards living on each of these islands are much darker than the lizards found on Ibiza and any other islands. The lizards population of Bledes and Escull Des Cap Vermell are almost completely black – they are known as the subspecies Podarcis pityusensis maluquerorum. No one really knows what’s responsible for this unique coloration, but researchers suspect that it may have something to do with a mutation in the gene responsible for melanin production. On Es Frare, just south of the Bledes Islands, the lizards are an intense dark blue. These lizards are also a putative subspecies -Podarcis pityusensis frailensis. They look like an intermediate population that shares color characteristics from a black and a blue population of lizards.

On our second day, we stuffed our photo gear into my inflatable kayak and headed out for another island on the west coast of Ibiza – Cala Salada. Liz navigated the kayak while the rest of us followed her in the water with snorkels and face masks. This small island has a putative subspecies of the Ibiza Wall Lizard: Podarcis pityusensis calaesaladae. The lizards here were indeed unique. While some lizards resembled those found on Ibiza, the vast majority of the lizards expressed a bright orange phenotype! We spent the day photographing the lizards and snorkeling around this amazing little island.

On our last day in Ibiza, we attempted to visit the island of Murada off of the North Coast of Ibiza. We’d heard rumors that the lizards on Murada were also black. Murada is miles away from the Bledes islands – meaning that the black lizards here must have evolved to be black independently of the other black lizard populations. Unfortunately, it was a windy day. From a distance, it looked like we still might have a chance to land on Murada and take some pictures. Neil and I packed a limited amount of gear into a dry bag, inflated the kayak, and head out to the island from the port of San Miguel. Once we got out of the port into the open sea, ten foot swells rocked us up and down. When we finally got to Murada, and circumnavigated it, we discovered the only place where landing was reasonable was being smashed by huge waves. Seasick and disappointed, we returned to Ibiza empty handed. Hopefully we can return to Murada later this month when the weather is more cooperative!

We returned to Formentera on Sunday to watch Spain win the Euro Cup Finals. Over the last few days on Formentera, we have visited several new populations and captured more great images. Two days ago, our Dutch friend, Joris van Alphen arrived. Joris was last year’s National Geographic Emerging Photographer of the Year. Last summer, he came out to the islands for a week and we worked together on . One of those films won Best Film at the NEScent Evolution Film Festival. You can check it out below:

from on .

Over the next week, we plan to work with Joris to make another film and release another couple of photo galleries, so stay tuned! Also, you can check out our last photo gallery by clicking here!

The Symbol: Video Update #1

 Posted by at 11:30 am on July 2, 2012
Jul 022012
 

Hi Everyone! Last week, we spent the first day of our expedition hiking through the Trucadors Peninsula, wading out to and then hiking across Isla Espalmador, before swimming to Isla des Porcs and Isla Torreta. It was an amazing day of photography and adventure.

We’ve created a short video about this adventure, which you can watch below!

Trucadors is interesting because unlike the rest of Formentera, it lacks vegetation. While the lizards on most of Formentera are blue or green, the lizards on Trucadors are brown, and match the sandy terrain almost perfectly. Once we got to Isla Espalmador, Isla des Porcs, and Isla Torreta, we found that the lizards at each location were quite distinct – both in terms of their color and their behavior. We got some great images of these lizards. You can see some of them by clicking here.

Neil and I have a lot of photo equipment, and getting all that gear to these small islands was a challenge. We resolved this issue by acquiring a small inflatable raft, filling it with our gear and towing it behind us as we swam to the islands – a risky but effective strategy.

We got back to Formentera last night from a successful three-day trip to Ibiza. We visited a handful of new islands with incredibly distinct lizard populations. We’re looking forward to sharing those images with you in a few days!