The Extreme Ice Survey

(Mobile readers, as I feared, wordpress is not embedding the video in a fashion that will make it visible for you.  On my iPhone, it doesn’t appear.  My apologies.  Can’t be helped I’m afraid.  If you’re interested, track down the old lap top and have a look.)

As we contemplate today Western Pennsylvania getting hit by a blizzard (no kidding, check the weather channel, it’s true), it occurred to me that it might be useful to say a bit more about Earth Day.  Climate photography has many inherent challenges, not the least of which is the fact that climate change unfolds over time. We do of course have an app for that, time lapse photography.  One of my favorite environmental photographers, James Balog, established on-going time lapse monitoring of a number of the most threatened glaciers in the world, creating what he subsequently described as The Extreme Ice Survey.  He and his colleagues set up cameras at  strategic locations around the glaciers and equipped them for extended time lapse work.  This meant protecting and powering a large number of Nikons, mostly D200′s I believe.  If you click on the link above, you will see before your very eyes, the impact of global warming.  Massive glaciers are melting at an alarming pace.  Alarming?  Yes, remember he’s only been collecting imagery for five years. Have a look. Meanwhile, I’ve embedded a promo here that will give you an idea. James is also a film maker and his an exciting film on the Extreme Ice Survey out this year.

Photographers take note.  How can we be more creative and useful in documenting what is important about the natural world and how it is changing?

Images that Change the World – Updated

I recently had a wonderful video drawn to my attention by Stephen Gingold, a terrific nature photographer from central/western Massachusetts.  (You can catch up with Stephen’s blog here.)  The video, only about three minutes long, presents the work of Philip Hyde.  Hyde was a student of Ansel Adams and one of the founders of what might now be called the environmental photography movement.  Hyde’s work raised awareness of man’s impact on the environment and provoked a number of critically important conservation initiatives.  As we contemplate the fact that this year humanity resumed increasing the amount of carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere, the fracking of rocks to find natural gas (which will greatly impact the water supply in places like Pennsylvania) and the recent effort in the House of Representatives to link continuing the tax cut for the middle class in the US to the building of an unneeded sludge pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast (those two things have a lot in common now don’t they), Hyde’s memory seems more relevant than ever.  Oh, and he was also an incredibly gifted photographer.

Update:  This blog has proven quite popular which is great, but, typical for me, I neglected to provide you more information about Philip Hyde and his recent exhibit. You can find that at the blog written by his son, Landscapephotographerblogger.com. This is one of the most interesting and sophisticated blogs on environmental, nature and landscape photography on the web. If this is an interest of yours, check it out.

New Exhibition of Print Work at the Sorenson Center for the Arts

I’m happy to announce a new one artist exhibition of my work scheduled for the Richard W. Sorenson Center for the Arts at Babson College.  The exhibition is titled “Boston’s Water” and presents 13 black and white prints from the Quabbin Reservoir, taken over the last three years.

I have to say, staging an exhibition is far more work that I had realized.  Getting the right print of each image is only the beginning.  Framing is tough, but hanging the images has to be the worst. Luckily, I had the invaluable assistance (actually he did it, I assisted him) of Mark Lorenzo from the Sorenson Center and his colleagues.

The exhibition itself is kicking off a celebration at Babson of the Principles of Responsible Management Education developed under the leadership of the United Nations and to which Babson is a signatory. It is indeed the case that many of us involved in business education care deeply about the profound failures of ethical fiber and will we have all encountered over more than a decade.  Honestly though, it is an uphill battle. Students, even those interested in business, are very discouraged about our ability to right the ship and engage in commerce in a sustainable manner. Part of what is needed is better government regulation of commerce, but that’s not enough.  As a teacher, I see everyday the intense interest that students hold in making the world a better place (yes, believe it or not, business students as well). We have to help them realize their dreams.

I want to thank Elizabeth Goldberg, Associate Professor of English at Babson and Michelle Oshima, Director of the Sorenson Center for the Arts for signing me up.  I also want to thank David Akiba, Photography Instructor at Babson and an enormously talented fine art photographer himself, for his advice in pulling the exhibition together.  The exhibition is housed on the second floor of the Sorenson Center at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in what is becoming the new photography exhibition space.

Institute Park, Under Construction

Institution Park in Worcester, Massachusetts began with a bequest from Stephen Salisbury III in 1887.  Salisbury, of the famous Worcester family, intended to create a park that bordered the Worcester Polytechnic Institute but at the same time would be open to the public.  One condition of his bequest however was that he would take charge of the Park’s design, according to Evelyn Herwitz in Trees at Risk.  The Park has a fascinating history which you can read about at the web site of the Friends of Institute Park.  I was not aware for instance that there was once a tower on the grounds and that there was a bridge to the island in the pond at the Park.  As the history also reveals, however, like most other parks, it’s been a long and winding road, with periods of reinvigoration followed by neglect.  I’ve come to understand that that’s the nature of the beast, as Herwitz details in Trees at Risk.  The important point is that it’s not always neglect.  Neglect breeds activism.  In the absence of the activism, we’ve got a real problem.  Happily, Institue Park is now undergoing some significant reinvigoration which you can read about here.  We visited the Park recently.  I focus here not on the renovations, which are coming along, but the experience of the Park as it was, which illustrates to me both the beauty of it’s design, as well as its need for a bit of sprucing up.

To me, the carefully planted rows of great trees has always been the hallmark of the Park.  That being said, for others, I’m sure the Pond is the centerpiece.

The banks of the Pond are home to a wide variety of wildflowers, really doing their thing this time of year.  These are “spotted joe-pye-weed”, at least that’s what Chris thinks.  Identifying these things isn’t as easy as it might seem.  (But I just wanted so much to use the name “spotted joe-pye-weed.”  You have to love the names of wildflowers.  That’s got to be a story in and of itself.  At any rate, if we’re wrong about the name, please post a comment.)

Many of the trees standout on their own as character trees. If only these trees could talk…

But alas, some of them are beyond the talking stage.

The life of an urban tree is not an easy one as Herwitz points out.  Institute Park was first developed roughly 120 years ago, so it is inevitable that the population of trees turns over.  Again, this is where we come in.  Places that matter require our attention.  We are grateful that Institute Park is receiving some needed attention and anxiously await the results.

Tech note:  Shot on Kodak Ektar 100 film, believe it or not.

Water, Water Everywhere

You learn something new everyday.  This morning on the Weather Channel’s Wake Up with Al show, Al did a short piece on the history of Las Vegas.  I didn’t know, but should have been able to figure out, that Las Vegas was actually built at an oasis in the desert.  Vegas sits in the Mojave Desert.  But the town it self was founded where there was water, and plenty of it.  The area was green, good for agriculture.  In fact that was it’s claim to fame before the rest of the story we all know well.  That’s all gone now.  The asphalt, reflective buildings, etc. caused the springs to dry up in the 50′s.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts we have, for now,  plenty of water.  I’ve shown imagery from this location before:  Hank’s Meadow at the Quabbin Reservoir.  This lovely spot is off the road that runs through the Quabbin Park in Ware and Belchertown, Massachusetts.  The Meadow is clearly marked and there is good parking.  All you have to do is walk toward the water.  It was hot that day, or so we thought.  When we came within about 15 feet of the water, the onshore breeze of the Quabbin weather system hit us.  The temperature dropped a good ten degrees and suddenly everything was pleasant.  All you could hear was the sound of the wind and the waves.