The Secret life of the Park

This video provides a "how to" glimpse into catching some of the park's often unnoticed visitors. Like so many things in nature, to the uninitiated, warblers  may remain invisible until one learns to start "seeing them". Every warbler in this video will pass through on our Minnesota flyways and are likely Fort Snelling visitors this spring. Birding Warblers

Project Noah

At our last meeting, I brought up Project Noah. Project Noah is a citizen-science program that allows people to report their "spottings" of plant and animal life to the Project Noah website. Spottings include common and scientific names, a photo, a map location, and a description of the animal or plant and its habitat, plus any other notes that the photographer would like to add. Other users across the world can comment on and "favorite" spottings.

Each photographer has their own page that consists of their "collection" of spottings. You can see my page by going to "Organisms" and searching on "Gordon Dietzman" (yeah, I'm an organism....) and then clicking on my name where it pops up.

Spottings can be added through the website itself or through the Project Noah app, available on iTunes.

The PN website also has a mission feature. A user can create and manage a mission for a specific subject, such as "The Life of Fort Snelling State Park". Others can add their pertinent subjects to that mission.

It's a great way to share with others what you've found and, in the case of a mission, to create an inventory of life within a specific area. Learn more at the Project Noah (www.projectnoah.org) website.

Using a PN mission might be a fun project for the club and also a way to share our photos in an easy to use format. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

Useful iPad photography applications

Here are the links to the iPad applications that I demonstrated at today's meeting as well as some others which I didn't have a chance to show:

• Chased by the Light: Jim Brandenburg's app - $9.99
• Stuck on Earth: Trey Ratcliff's app - Free
• 500px - Free
• Yosemite Photographer's Guide Michael Frye's app - $6.99 (here is a video by Frye giving a demo of the app).
• Michael Nichol's App - $3.99
• Camera Awesome! (SmugMug)  - Geared to toward the iPhone, but can be used on the iPad - Free (here is a video discussing SmugMug's motivation behind the creation of the application as well as a demo - 39 mins long but interesting points).
• National Geographic - 50 Greatest Photographs  - $4.99
• National Geographic - 50 Greatest Places - $1.99
• Craft & Vision: educational photography ebooks - app is free and one can purchase ebooks inside the app.
• Life digital photography guide - definitely on the high side at $14.99, but a very nice portable reference to have.

I would also be interested in hearing about other helpful applications that other people have found.

As was noted in the meeting, the iPad3 will probably be announced on March 7th and will probably be released by the end of March, which will drive down the prices of both the iPad2 and iPad.

(minor note: here is the link to Project Noah that was discussed at today's meeting as well). 

Enjoy!

Is technology a menace to photography

A podcast from the February 2012 round-table discussion at Wedding and Portrait Photographers International Conference in Las Vegas (Episode 46 from http://twit.tv/photo)

Topic: Is Technology a Menace to Photography?

Digital Bridge - Dragonfly Workshop

I found this workshop of interest given our recent exposure to some exceptional dragonfly photos.  The host of these workshops did a digital bridge presentation at one of our past meetings.    Dragonflies at MnSTA