Category: Photography

Volcanic Vortices

Volcanic Vortices bruce-omori-Extreme-Exposures-Fine-Art-Gallery-HiloBruce Omori, owner of Extreme Exposures Fine Art Gallery in Hilo, received the Windland Smith Rice International Award for his lava photo titled “Volcanic Vortices,” which will be displayed at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s annual exhibition in June. His winning photograph was selected from almost 20,000 submissions from photographers in 46 countries.

“On an early morning shoot at the Waikupanaha ocean entry, lava from the Kilauea volcano poured into the sea. This created a huge escape of steam, and as it rose, multiple vortices began spinning off of the huge plume,” Omori described in his photo submission description. “A vortex or two is a pretty rare sight—but when one after another kept forming, my fumbling with the lenses turned into a panicked rush to switch my telephoto to wide angle lens to capture this awesome scene of seven vortices in a row.” Thanks to Muriel Lighter

via Hilo Photographer Receives Smithsonian Museum Award | Hawaii Business.

Earth As Art

Click on the link to earth_art-ebook to download a pdf file of an amazing collection of earth views  from 16 NASA satellites

Some of the instruments aboard the satellites collect data in different ranges of wavelengths of light. These “spectral bands” break up all the visible and invisible light into chunks: the reds, the blues, the greens and even infrared, a wavelength of light that humans can’t see.

When researchers piece the image data back together, they can be selective about which “bands” of light are displayed in the final image. “The selection depends on the intent of the analysis,” Friedl wrote in an email. “An analysis of vegetation would probably select the red, green and infrared bands — vegetation is ‘bright’ in those bands and the analyst could differentiate between the types or health of vegetation.”

Phytoplankton Bloom, Baltic Sea, 2005 Massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form the first link in nearly all ocean food chains. Blooms of phytoplankton, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters.
Phytoplankton Bloom, Baltic Sea, 2005 Massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form the first link in nearly all ocean food chains. Blooms of phytoplankton, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters.

Friedl says analysts generally don’t go out of their way to make images look surreal, but this kind of spectral analysis can be used to great effect. “There are whole books written on what band combinations to use to bring out certain features,” he told me. Like rocks: When studying the retreat of the glaciers of the Himalayas, Friedl says, you can train software to recognize the light signature of exposed rock. And instead of directly measuring the glaciers themselves, you can see where new rock is getting exposed year over year.

via Earth As Art: ‘How Did Nature Do That?’ : The Picture Show : NPR.

In Focus – National Geographic Photo Contest 2011

In Focus – National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 – The Atlantic.

Eruption of the Cordon del Caulle

National Geographic is currently holding its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30. For the past nine weeks, the society has been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to vote for them as well. National Geographic was kind enough to let Alan Taylor choose among its entries from 2011 for display here on In Focus. Gathered below are 45 images from the three categories of People, Places, and Nature, with captions written by the individual photographers

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