forsv: potpourri of thoughts

Botany Photo of the Day

Inspired by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, the gardeners and plant enthusiasts at the University of British Columbia's Botanical Centre have grown their very own photo blog. The first entry, on April 5, 2005, of a Chinese parasol storax, let it be known that these pictures would be painterly and lush. From a close-up of ferns, a Himalayan blue poppy, or this delicate fragrant granadilla, the diverse plants of Canada and the plentiful holdings of the UBC garden bloom forth. Categories include mosses, conifers, and the always-popular flowering plants. If you're the type who thinks fungus is don't-touch-that gross, dare to view these beauties. The garden syndicates its content through RSS, so plant a feed and see a new picture blossom each day.

60 second story

This literary contest asks writers to compose a short story, then record themselves reading it (in roughly 60 seconds) with a digital camera. The resulting low-bandwidth video clips are then posted online, and they are generally pretty strange. Most contestants place their cameras on top of their computer monitors and read aloud, lending themselves a strange blue-green pallor. Some of the more tech-savvy have constructed short films, with quick cuts and zooms. While the rules state that the stories must be "complete" and have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a lot of them lean towards the abstract. Our favorite story is "Charles," about a fire-breathing Japanese monster with a Godzilla complex. We also really dug the auteurism of "Pillow, Pillow" by Jason Nelson. Decide for yourself.

Photospot

A photo blog about learning Photography using Digital Camera! Check out it is a place to share tips, tricks, techniques, tutorials, ideas, experiments and experience related digital photography, including digital cameras, image processing software and photography in general.

photography Chinese style

Their Circular Life

We're not sure what to call this one. Interactive time lapse photography? Visual urban ambience? Regardless, it's clever, evocative, and strangely calming. Here's the premise: stationary cameras took several hundred images throughout 24-hour periods in five urban settings in Italy. Using a tool akin to a virtual iPod click wheel, you can scroll through the day's events in a train station, two public parks, a traffic intersection, or a canal in Venice. This soothing meditation on urban life is as much about sound as it is pictures; depending on the time of day, you hear birds twittering, traffic roaring, children playing, etc. Feel free to speed things up, slow things down, or stop time altogether. Can we settle on "visual haiku"?

The Orchid Show

February 26 to March 27, 2005

Imagine this: You are a conservationist rushing down the Amazon River in a dugout canoe, surrounded by dense, almost impenetrable jungle. You paddle over to the muddy riverbank and begin making your way through the trees and vines. And suddenly you see it: the rare orchid you've been hunting for months, ready and waiting for you to uncover its secrets.

Want to continue the journey? Then visit The Orchid Show at The New York Botanical Garden. This year's show will transport you to exotic, orchid-packed places on two continents. You'll wander through the jungles and cloud forests of Asia and the Americas, where thousands of brilliant orchids—delicate, elegant, fascinating, bizarre—drip from the vines and nestle among the ferns. Visit the camp of a botanist who’s tracing the orchid family tree, and learn how one particular variety ends up in your ice cream. You’ll not only discover the sensual allure of orchids, you'll learn what's being done to protect these precious plants and their natural environments.

The Orchid Show experience includes tours, gardening demonstrations, lectures, family fun, and a vast array of orchids for sale at the Shop in the Garden.

Orchid Collection

Some are no bigger than your thumbnail, while others are the size of your hand. Some mimic bees and butterflies, while others resemble a lady's slipper. And some simply defy description. Throughout the year, you can see the seductive stars of the Garden's tropical plant collections—orchids from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas—in changing displays in the Conservatory and the Orchid Terrarium in the Library Building. Marvel at rare orchids growing as they would in nature in the Conservatory's rain forest galleries. In March, celebrate their spectacular beauty and diversity with the annual Orchid Show, where thousands of orchids, from miniatures named 'Pinhead' to giant violet vandas, fill a luxuriant tropical landscape.

Aerial Photography

Super-cool aerial photographs. Go to the "Portfolio" page and keep clicking through.

Andy Goldsworthy

A new kind of poetry is created when Andy Goldsworthy works with stone, wood and water — our world never looks quite the same again.

Goldsworthy regards all his creations as temporary. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever he notices: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns.

I like all his work but one of my favorites is 'Wall'. Come walk alongside Andy Goldsworthy's extraordinary Storm King Wall. Created over a two-year period, the 2,278-foot-long site-specific sculpture was made using stones gathered from the Art Center property. The first part of the wall weaves in and out of trees, following and extending the path of an old stone wall that had existed previously on the site, meandering downhill to a nearby pond. The wall's second section emerges out from the other side of the pond, continuing its westward "walk" uphill. According to historical maps, another wall originally existed in this vicinity, but its remnants are gone. The wall's full extension physically links disparate areas of the property, from the trail overlooking Moodna creek to the south fields and the western border.

10x10

Described as "an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time," 10×10 is the brainchild of graphic designer Jonathan Harris. The site automatically collects and graphically displays the most important words and photographs from three of the Internet's top news sources (Reuters World News, BBC World Edition, and New York Times International News). The result is a grid of 100 images, each connected to a single word. Click on an individual photo, and the image enlarges in a pop-up window that includes a series of related headlines linking to the day's news reports. Images and articles are updated hourly, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Because it runs without human intervention, it reveals the most important issues of the moment -- free of bias, politics, and hidden agendas. Take ten for 10×10 and see what's happening now.

Lake Effect Snow on Earth

Credit: SeaWiFS Project, NASA

Explanation: What are those strange clouds stretching out from these lakes? The clouds are caused by cold air moving over a warm water and result in bands of lake-effect snow. The rising bands of moistened, warmed air that drop lake-effect snow alternate with clear bands of falling cold air. During a winter, such bands can create hundreds of centimeters of snow more than upwind areas only a hundred kilometers away. During this lake-effect snowfall of 2000 December 5, practically all of the state of Michigan, USA got covered. A cold northwesterly wind over Great Lakes Superior and Michigan created the unusual clouds. The above image was taken with NASA's SeaWiFS satellite.