Out to Space

Jonathan Harris spent 9 days, photographing Inupiat Eskimos annual whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska. 3214 shots were taken in 5-minute interval, even when sleeping. And he does not waste any of them by lining them up as an interactive interface. It beautifully tell the experience he witnessed this old tradition of the tribe.

Caution: Rainbow-dolphin lovers may fine some of the images disturbing.

I cannot remember how long ago I have not googled myself until last night. Amongst the usual associate and photography sites, one surprising result is from Google Books. Thanks to this new beta version of Google search engine, I have found my first photograph published in a book.

Apparently, one of my good old rainbow lorikeet photographs is an illustration in a scientific book, Extinction & Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Bird by David W. Steadman. I gave the permission to use the image in the book two years ago but thought that the author was not going to use it because I had not heard from him since. So I forgot about it.

Although the black & white version in the book blanches the colourful feature of the couple from the original web version and, in fact, they are not captive animals as captioned, I feel honoured that it is a part of an epic research of birds in the region.

Sprinkled across the tropical Pacific, the innumerable islands of Oceania are home to some of the most unique bird communities on the planet, and they sustain species found nowhere else on earth. Many of the birds that live in this region are endangered, however; many more have become extinct as a result of human activity, in both recent and prehistoric times.

Reconstructing the avian world in the same way archeologists re-create ancient human societies, David Steadman—a leading authority on tropical Pacific avian paleontology—has spent the past two decades in the field, digging through layers of soil in search of the bones that serve as clues to the ancient past of island bird communities. His years of indefatigable research and analysis are the foundation for Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds, a monumental study of the landbirds of tropical Pacific islands—especially those from Fiji eastward to Easter Island—and an intricate history of the patterns and processes of island biology over time.

…

Dr. Steadman came across the image through the Web as well as I discovered the book from the same channel. It is a wonderful world of the Internet.

This morning, I have just received a letter from Australian Museum dated 19 July 2005. It also encloses a receipt of Up Close and Spineless competition fee and photographs (above) I sent back in the year. Obviously, they did not win anything.

It must have been stacked away somewhere in the Museum for over two years. Nevertheless, the following year submissions (below) were sent back on schedule. No luck this time either.

I have forgotten all about the long lost photographs. In fact, I thought they were shredded and did not even bother putting any picture through the competition this year. All this time, my subjects of photography have been shifted from urban wildlife to something else. Heaps of insect images, including a photo essay on backyard micro ecology, are still in the archives, waiting to be processed and published on-line.

I am still very interested in these topics. However, watching animals in their habitats is no different from observing people and documenting their impacts on our surroundings. That is my role to contribute to the world, I guess. That leads to the next project on a bush walk. Hopefully it will happen before the trip to Thailand in November.