I Was Given a (Panda’s) Thumbs-Up

Recently the evolutionary science blog, Panda’s Thumb placed one of my photographs amoung  the finalists in a photography competition. I placed fourth out of six finalists in the ‘Minerals’ category with this picture of a fossil Huaxiagnathus orientalis , a Compsognathid theropod that I had photographed in a museum in Hong Kong.

Huaxiagnathus orientalis

This picture was taken through glass, hand-held without flash. I adjusted the contrast and warmth to make the bone structure stand out better. Comments for this included:

But the therapod–the therapod is iconic and looks almost like a Babylonian mosaic or an emblem of burnished gold. Well done! (Monado)

Thysse’s picture is wonderfully balanced, crisp, stunning, I love the colors… “Stalactite” is very mysterious and striking. (Sharky)

The winner of this category, James Kocher (see below) had a colourful image of  a 3cm cross-section of a 1.9 billion year old stromatolite, evidence of some of the earths earliest forms of life.

The winners of the three categories were:

• Stromatolites, the fossilized colonies of filamentary cyanobacteria and other microbes, by James Kocher.
• Nymphaea caerulea, the Egyptian blue Lily, by David Collins.
• Archilochus colubris , the hummingbird killing the yellowjacket, by Darren Garrison.

 

Fossil Avian Dinosaurs

I have finally posted the photos of ancestral birds at my Albedo Surge site. In this image you can see the fossil remains of Longipteryx chaoyangensis,  a Cretaceous (about 125 million years ago) fossil which was discovered in the Yixian Formation at Chaoyang in Liaoning Province, China. The photos are quite succesful when you consider they were taken hand-held, through glass and under glaring spotlights. Two of the images can be found in the newly released book, Top 100 Birding Sites from New Holland Publishers.

 

Update…

Over the last few days I have been working at updating AlbedoSurge, my SmugMug site. I have been going through the photographs I took during a 2007 family trip to Hong Kong and uploading them through Lightroom. I had a bit of problems with the Adobe Lightroom plugin for uploading, but that seems to be resolved now after an update. I struggle a bit when deciding what to upload – I try to choose the photos that not only appeal to me but also those that may have potential in the many diverse ways that images can be used in traditional and popular media. It is not always easy to guess which photos have that potential.

Sapeornis chaoyangensis

For instance, in my blog Evolving Complexity, I used some photos of early bird fossils that I had photographed in the Hong Kong Science Museum. These were discovered by a publishing company in England, and two of the photos will be used in a soon-to-be-published book on world wide birding sites! You can never tell which photos may find a market. That is not to say that I should not be choosy in what I upload – quality control and aesthetic appeal is still essential. However, I am learning to be aware of all the possible uses my photos may have.