Infrared photo exhibit shows world we can’t see

The Nemours pool becomes an otherworldly scene in infrared.(Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

You may have seen a lot of the things portrayed in Joe del Tufo's exhibit in the Mezzanine Gallery at the Carvel Office Building in Wilmington.

But not like this.

The Arden photographer has shot the 31 photos in "Spirit of Eden: Nemours" in infrared, a spectrum of light just beyond the range we humans can see, and the effect is spectacular. Blue skies brighten up everything else, which shows in shades of blue, white and gray.

The technique turns a bighorn sheep in Cody, Wyoming, into a magnificent marble-like statue, and stately trees into color-stripped forests that somehow seem alien. The statue of an angel becomes an avenging warrior rather than a peaceful manifestation of love.

del Tufo got into infrared work about 10 years ago. He had really admired some old black and white infrared shots from the West.

"My interest in it was purely visceral," del Tufo says. "I liked the way it made me feel when I saw it. When I first started shooting color infrared, it was even more so – like the were parallel worlds that existed right in front of us, just outside of our visual wavelength. Of course, that's basically the fact of it."

He tweaks his camera sensor to only give the sky color, pushing the blue a tiny bit toward green so the look would be consistent from shot to shot.

He's been photographing the gardens of Nemours Mansion on and off for the last five years, and the exhibit largely, but not exclusively, consists of shots from that former du Pont estate that's now held in trust by the same foundation that runs A.I. Dupont Hospital for Children. A.I. built the house for his wife as a copy of Marie Antoinette's petit trianon at Versailles. It's surrounded by French formal gardens enveloped by forested land.

"Of the places I've photographed in Delaware, Nemours is to me the best hybrid and man-made and natural beauty," del Tufo says. "I discover new things every time I shoot there, in infrared, color or just my eyes."

Quiz photo 3 in The News Journal Sunday:This should be a gimme if you read the story. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

The exhibits includes other photos, too, including spots around Delaware and some from Wyoming and Georgia.

His photos win raves from those who love them, like British vistual artist and filmmaker David McKean, a friend of del Tufo's since del Tufo began working with graphics. Among the things McKean is known for is drawing Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics covers. The Delaware man really liked McKean's style. They met at a graphics event more than a decade ago.

"People trust photography to tell them the truth, but you learn so much about the world when photography is allowed to lie a little in order to show you the world in a startlingly different and revealing way," McKean says in a blurb for a book that del Tufo is working on. "del Tufo's crystalline ice world really is around us, revealed by another mysterious natural force, chemistry. Life is just very strange, here's the proof."

del Tufo, 48, got into photography about 18 years ago, when his daughter Alex was born. He had just helped found the Wilmington design firm Mobius with Matt Urban and Barry Crell, and all the websites they were working on needed photos.

As with many gardens, looking up leads to beautiful sites at Nemours. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

"Everything needed to be photographed, so I bought the first Apple digital camera, before they came with phones, and went from there," del Tufo says. "Alex was my first victim; she's easily been photographed 10,000 times."

He's self-taught, but feels lucky to have been surrounded my amazing teachers.

"I like it because it helps me feel connected to things, helps me notice and take interest in things I otherwise would have looked past," del Tufo says. "I like the conversations that come out during shoots – there's a certain vulnerability that comes from being photographed that tends to bring out a deeper, truer conversation. I like sharing beauty, especially when people don't see it in themselves.

"I also like that it is a craft that can never be mastered. There are so many kinds of photography that I have not touched that I'd love to try in the future. And virtually every photo could be better if one of the million variables shifted. But I try not to think about that."

Quiz photo 5 in The News Journal Sunday: This is one of many towers around Delaware. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

He left Mobius at the end of last year to found another company, Moonloop Photography with Jim Coarse, a wedding photographer.

"I wanted to pursue photography," he says. "And I knew that if I waited any longer that would become a challenge ... But in order to grow I knew I needed to push myself, immerse myself in the work and see what I could do."

The first seven months has been more challenging than he expected.

"I am very busy, but I am often very busy with the business and networking," he says.

He's been doing wedding more frequently than he expected. He's still looking for his first infrared wedding, although he did some infrared bride photos.

He's selling his current infrared camera to buy one which more resolution so he can make bigger prints. The prints at this exhibit max out at 24 inches by 36 inches, and he's like to print larger.

del Tufo disagrees with critics who say people with cell phones spend so much time taking photos at events and uploading them on social media that they don't really enjoy the event.

Quiz photo 2 in The News Journal Sunday: This angel flies above a city of the dead. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

"I feel the opposite," he says. "I really have a lot of problems just attending concerts and events without a camera. My mind wanders and I start to imagine some of the shots I'd be getting if I had my camera in hand. Because the camera focuses me, it also brings me closer to what I am experiencing. And when I look at a photo a decade later, it all flows back through me as a story."

But he does think too many people think it's so easy to take photos with a phone camera that photography and great photos are simple.

"To master it you have to work on it like any other craft," he says. "I believe my work now is better than it was two years ago and much better than 10. I hope that is always the case.

"And I do think there are elements of photography that are innate, just like any talent."

Contact Betsy Price at (302) 324-2884 or beprice@delawareonline.com.

From the maze looking toward the house at Nemours. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

If you go

WHAT: "Spirit of Eden: Nemours." photographs by Joe del Tufo

WHERE: Mezzanine Gallery in the Carvel State Office Building, 820 N. French St., Wilmington

WHEN: Through April 29. Open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

ADMISSION: Free

Bighorn Sheep in Cody, Wyoming (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Looking from the house toward the garden folly at Nemours. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Beribboned urn, or growling gargoyle, depending on your perspective, at Nemours. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Quiz photo 1 in The News Journal Sunday: You'll find this in a state park. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Quiz photo 4 in The News Journal Sunday: This piece of land lies off the Delaware shore. (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Moulton Barn in Cody, Wyoming (Photo: Courtesy of Joe del Tufo)

Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/1MEhttj

Source: Infrared photo exhibit shows world we can't see

Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

A secret photo shoot deep in the forests of Malaysian Borneo is helping researchers determine just how many marbled cats — rare, tree-climbing felines — live in the region, according to a new study.

Marbled cats (Pardofelis marmorata) are extremely elusive creatures. To get a better idea of the cats' stomping grounds, the researchers placed camera traps in eight forests and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, they said.

After four months of secret, motion-triggered infrared photography, the researchers found that marbled cats are most numerous in the lowlands where the forest is undisturbed. However, they did find a few cats in selectively logged areas. [See Camera Trap Photos of the Elusive Marbled Cat]

"We show that marbled cats can still survive in logged forests," said study lead researcher Andrew Hearn, a doctoral candidate at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "This lends further weight to the argument that such disturbed forests are important to the conservation of biodiversity and should be preserved wherever possible."

Little is known about the cats, which are named for their marble-patterned fur. They live in dense tropical forests, and are rarely seen, except for the odd camera-trap sighting. Perhaps that's because the species is listed as "near threatened," according to theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.

In the new study, the researchers used the surreptitiously taken photos to identify individual cats and estimate the species' population density and distribution. They found that the lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area had about 19.5 cats per 39 square miles (100 square kilometers). Tawau Hills Park had fewer — about seven cats per 39 square miles. The Tabin Wildlife Reserve, which was selectively logged from 1969 to 1989, had an estimated density of about 10 cats per 39 square miles.

These estimates provide "tentative evidence" that undisturbed, lowland hill forests have the highest densities of marbled cats, Hearn said. Other areas, including disturbed lowlands and undisturbed highlands, had lower densities of the cats, he said.

The camera traps didn't record any marbled-cat sightings within the plantations, although one cat was spotted walking along the forest-plantation boundary, the researchers added. They also photographed cubs in the Tabin North, Tawau and Ulu Segama forests.

The results of this exhaustive study suggest that the marbled-cat population may be somewhat higher in northern Borneo than it is elsewhere, but more studies are needed to verify this, Hearn said. For instance, researchers could use camera traps in other places in which the cats are found in the Indomalayan ecorealm, a region extending from eastern India and Nepal to Yunnan province, China; and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. [Photos: In Images: The Rare Bay Cat of Borneo]

But enforced regulations could increase the number of Borneo's marbled cats even more. Although poaching is illegal, the researchers found used shotgun cartridges in seven of the eight forests. However, they didn't come across any evidence that poachers are shooting marbled cats, the scientists wrote in the study.

Laws governing logging and forest conservation may also help preserve the population of marbled cats, Hearn said.

"We provide further evidence that logged forest may still be used by these cats, and should be preserved," he said.

The study was published online today (March 23) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Original article on Live Science.

Source: Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

Drone usage in real estate poised to take off

The use of drones to market commercial and residential real estate may be in its infancy but industry observers believe use of the technology as a competitive tool is on the verge of taking off.

The most obvious use of an unmanned aerial system (UAS), or drone, is to create new ways to market a property.

Drone analyst Colin Snow, founder of SkyLogic Research LLC, points out that drones can do things like create panoramas of a building or property in a more straightforward and cost effective manner than other traditionally used methods.

Currently, Snow sees drones being used more in the marketing of high-end homes. However, he does know of instances in which drones are used in commercial real estate for planning purposes and building information modeling.

See also: The amazing robo race

"For example, before going under construction, a developer might want to create panoramas of a potential view of a building so they can show it to investors or potential tenants," Snow said.

Besides marketing, drones can also allow landlords and developers to remotely inspect their properties. Small drones can go up on roofs and inspect otherwise hard to reach areas within the exterior of a building. This can be particularly useful during inclement weather periods, such as snowstorms.

See also: IoT, robots and drones: Triggers for digital transformation

Jeff Galindo, a Las Vegas-based Realtor and broker, has been a licensed private pilot since the late 1990s. He acquired his first drone in late 2014 mainly as a hobby but says he "quickly realized the capability to use it in new and innovative ways in a real estate business."

In the spring of 2015, the FAA gave him the green light to use drones for commercial purposes– a process he describes as "not easy."  Galindo has since been able to share what he says are "different perspectives" of real estate projects that some of his commercial and institutional clients are considering.

The bulk of the work he does with commercial builders is with land acquisition and feasibility development.

"With drones, we've been able to provide real-time aerial photography, for example, of vacant large land parcels that would have (previously) taken significantly more time at a significantly higher cost," Galindo said. "I've also used drone technology in my residential real estate business to enhance the view and marketability of a home to help consumers see the property in a different and unique way."

See also: Integrating drones into consumer and industrial IoT

Looking ahead, Galindo envisions using drones to work with energy efficiency companies to determine what, if any, energy efficiency gains or losses are taking place in a home, or even a whole neighborhood.

"For example, infrared photography lets you see if AC or heat is escaping or if insulation is failing," he said.

Overall, Galindo sees drones as a fledgling technology.

"We're at the very beginning of it, and there might be some misunderstandings around it, but I think there's a lot of good people in the industry trying to do good things and they will be for years to come," he said. "There's tremendous opportunity for smart, intelligent use of the tool."

Making drones accessible 

One of the reasons more brokers and Realtors aren't using drones is that getting permission to use them is currently not considered to be an easy process.

The Federal Aviation Administration is continuing to work on integrating drones into the National Airspace System. Wide-scale commercial use of drones is currently prohibited, but the FAA has created a waiver process for individuals and businesses interested in using drones for commercial purposes.

Drone analyst Snow notes there is pending regulation that would allow a more simple license for drone operators to produce commercial videos or photos of a property.

In a statement, BOMA International – the Building Owners and Managers Association - said it is working with a coalition of real estate associations led by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to encourage the FAA to find ways to make drone technology more accessible to the commercial real estate community.

NAR President Tom Salomone believes drone technology offers a "tremendous opportunity for the business of real estate and the broader economy."

"…NAR continues to support the integration of drones into the National Airspace and a regulatory landscape that allows for the responsible commercial use of drones," he wrote via e-mail.

###

The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and may not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.

We welcome the re-use, republication, and distribution of "The Network" content. Please credit us with the following information: Used with the permission of http://thenetwork.cisco.com/.

Source: Drone usage in real estate poised to take off

Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

A secret photo shoot deep in the forests of Malaysian Borneo is helping researchers determine just how many marbled cats — rare, tree-climbing felines — live in the region, according to a new study.

Marbled cats (Pardofelis marmorata) are extremely elusive creatures. To get a better idea of the cats' stomping grounds, the researchers placed camera traps in eight forests and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, they said.

After four months of secret, motion-triggered infrared photography, the researchers found that marbled cats are most numerous in the lowlands where the forest is undisturbed. However, they did find a few cats in selectively logged areas. [See Camera Trap Photos of the Elusive Marbled Cat]

"We show that marbled cats can still survive in logged forests," said study lead researcher Andrew Hearn, a doctoral candidate at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "This lends further weight to the argument that such disturbed forests are important to the conservation of biodiversity and should be preserved wherever possible."

Little is known about the cats, which are named for their marble-patterned fur. They live in dense tropical forests, and are rarely seen, except for the odd camera-trap sighting. Perhaps that's because the species is listed as "near threatened," according to theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.

In the new study, the researchers used the surreptitiously taken photos to identify individual cats and estimate the species' population density and distribution. They found that the lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area had about 19.5 cats per 39 square miles (100 square kilometers). Tawau Hills Park had fewer — about seven cats per 39 square miles. The Tabin Wildlife Reserve, which was selectively logged from 1969 to 1989, had an estimated density of about 10 cats per 39 square miles.

These estimates provide "tentative evidence" that undisturbed, lowland hill forests have the highest densities of marbled cats, Hearn said. Other areas, including disturbed lowlands and undisturbed highlands, had lower densities of the cats, he said.

The camera traps didn't record any marbled-cat sightings within the plantations, although one cat was spotted walking along the forest-plantation boundary, the researchers added. They also photographed cubs in the Tabin North, Tawau and Ulu Segama forests.

The results of this exhaustive study suggest that the marbled-cat population may be somewhat higher in northern Borneo than it is elsewhere, but more studies are needed to verify this, Hearn said. For instance, researchers could use camera traps in other places in which the cats are found in the Indomalayan ecorealm, a region extending from eastern India and Nepal to Yunnan province, China; and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. [Photos: In Images: The Rare Bay Cat of Borneo]

But enforced regulations could increase the number of Borneo's marbled cats even more. Although poaching is illegal, the researchers found used shotgun cartridges in seven of the eight forests. However, they didn't come across any evidence that poachers are shooting marbled cats, the scientists wrote in the study.

Laws governing logging and forest conservation may also help preserve the population of marbled cats, Hearn said.

"We provide further evidence that logged forest may still be used by these cats, and should be preserved," he said.

The study was published online today (March 23) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Original article on Live Science.

Source: Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

The Bootlegger Who Took Down the KKK

He was the most notorious bootlegger in the rural Midwest, and with the help of some gangster peers and an arsenal of Tommy guns he broke the back of the Ku Klux Klan at a time when that organization was a force to be reckoned with in southern Illinois. A household name in this part of the country in his day, he inspired terror and love in equal measures, and nearly a century after his death, his restless soul still calls out for our attention.

Some facts still resist untangling. He was either born in Russia in 1880 (by his own account), or in 1881 (so writes Wikipedia), or in what's now Lithuania in 1882 (his sister's version) or in 1883 (according to his gravestone). His name at birth was Schachna Itzik Birger, but everybody called him Charlie. His hideout, the Shady Rest, was situated on Route 13 somewhere between Marion, Illinois, and Harrisburg, Illinois, but there's no agreement among historians and aficionados as to the exact location of the site.

What's not in dispute is that he was hanged outside the Franklin County Jail in Benton, Illinois, on Friday, April 13, 1928, for the murder of Joe Adams, the mayor of West City, Illinois, and that he lies buried in Chesed Shel Emeth, a Jewish cemetery on Olive Boulevard in University City, Missouri.

Charlie Birger's defunct state notwithstanding, on a cold, dry February night close to 90 years after the last public hanging in the state of Illinois, a cheerful cohort is gathered at the former jail-turned-museum where Birger spent the last year of his life to see if the old bootlegger has anything to say for himself.

Benton is a city of about 7,000 people, located roughly an hour-and-a-half drive east of St. Louis, just south of Rend Lake, right off Interstate 57. Its town square, dominated by the Franklin County courthouse where Birger was tried, is also home to an antique row, and a few blocks away is a vintage auto museum. In the early 1960s, George Harrison's sister Louise lived here, and when the Beatle spent two weeks in Benton in 1963 — already famous in the U.K. but unknown here — Harrison played with a local band at a nearby VFW and gave an interview on WFRX radio in which he played a 45 of "She Loves You." (WFRX had earlier, thanks to Louise's persistence, become the first station to play a Beatles record on American airwaves.)

At the outset I'd intended to write a straightforward piece about Birger, but I'd made a trip to Benton the week before to take some pictures, and museum volunteer Bill Owens mentioned that a group of ghost hunters were coming the following Saturday. I asked if I might come and talk to them.

The Franklin County Jail Museum's reputation for being haunted sprang partly from a series of electronic voice phenomena (or EVP, in the parlance of that subculture) that a ghost hunter recorded at the jail in 2013. Also, an infrared photo taken from the exterior of the building at that time revealed what looked to some like an image of Charlie Birger himself peering out the window of his cell at the street below. (His supposed face, it must be noted, materialized in a window of the sheriff's living quarters at the front of the building, an area that would presumably have been off limits to him in life. It's understandable, though, that his ghost might prefer that window to the one adjacent to his cell, which offers a view of a full-scale replica of his gallows, built after the jail was decommissioned in 1990.)

At one point in a ten-minute video the ghost hunter posted to YouTube in 2013, a disembodied voice whispers "Should I stand by the screen?" while the camera is pointed at the screened window overlooking the gallows. At various points in the video other such breathy phrases as "Help me," "Tell me a story" and "I can't help it" can be heard, although in fairness they sound to some ears like currents of air blowing over the windscreen of a camera microphone. The video has been viewed more than 20,000 times.

I've been in the building several times in daylight and found the vibe unnerving; at night, of course, it's considerably eerier. As for my own attitude toward such things: A movie producer once asked me, apropos of a script I'd collaborated on about a haunted restaurant, whether or not I believed in ghosts. "No," I said, "but I'm scared of 'em." The movie never got made, but I stand by my answer.

Tonight's ghost hunters call themselves 618 Paranormal, an affable group of sincere, youngish men and women who cheerfully answer my questions as they busy themselves setting up video cameras and audio recording equipment in the cellblocks, the old jail kitchen and the long-unused basement, which features a door to an underground tunnel that, according to legend, once led to the county courthouse a few blocks away and then further on into downtown. It was through this tunnel that Charlie would have been led from his cell to the courthouse to stand trial.

Bill Owens opens the door and I peer in to see mops and empty bleach jugs. I take a few flash photos of the deeper part of the tunnel, but all I capture are some old soda bottles. Owens points out that the basement was where new prisoners were brought for intake and also for interrogation; for that reason, tonight's group has placed a remote camera down here. Gloomy and dusty as it is now, in Birger's day it certainly saw some grim business. All kinds of ghosts might be down here, or none at all.

This raises the question of why Charlie Birger's phantom in particular should haunt this building, or why anyone might care one way or the other. He hasn't been forgotten, precisely, though his legend has dimmed somewhat over the decades. Older residents of the region still remember stories told by parents and grandparents about the biggest, baddest bootlegger agrarian Illinois ever saw, and there may even remain a handful of elderly witnesses to the hanging, which was so well-attended that spectators climbed nearby trees to get a better view of the grisly affair.

Lurid pencil illustrations with descriptive typewritten captions of some of the Birger gang's doings, posted around the walls of the two cellblocks, may help to explain his continuing relevance. They were made years after the events they depict by one Harvey Dungey, a former member of the gang. He was a talented but untrained artist, and the drawings have a wonderful naïve quality, vivid but stiff, as though Grandma Moses had decided to document armed robberies, bombings and wanton murder. He intended to travel around the region showing the drawings and telling the story of the gang, but the lure of perfidy was stronger than that of art; in 1958, Dungey attempted to rob a tavern and was shot to death by a night watchman, leaving behind this remarkable trove of firsthand visual accounts.

Source: The Bootlegger Who Took Down the KKK

Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

A secret photo shoot deep in the forests of Malaysian Borneo is helping researchers determine just how many marbled cats — rare, tree-climbing felines — live in the region, according to a new study.

Marbled cats (Pardofelis marmorata) are extremely elusive creatures. To get a better idea of the cats' stomping grounds, the researchers placed camera traps in eight forests and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, they said.

After four months of secret, motion-triggered infrared photography, the researchers found that marbled cats are most numerous in the lowlands where the forest is undisturbed. However, they did find a few cats in selectively logged areas. [See Camera Trap Photos of the Elusive Marbled Cat]

"We show that marbled cats can still survive in logged forests," said study lead researcher Andrew Hearn, a doctoral candidate at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "This lends further weight to the argument that such disturbed forests are important to the conservation of biodiversity and should be preserved wherever possible."

Little is known about the cats, which are named for their marble-patterned fur. They live in dense tropical forests, and are rarely seen, except for the odd camera-trap sighting. Perhaps that's because the species is listed as "near threatened," according to theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.

In the new study, the researchers used the surreptitiously taken photos to identify individual cats and estimate the species' population density and distribution. They found that the lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area had about 19.5 cats per 39 square miles (100 square kilometers). Tawau Hills Park had fewer — about seven cats per 39 square miles. The Tabin Wildlife Reserve, which was selectively logged from 1969 to 1989, had an estimated density of about 10 cats per 39 square miles.

These estimates provide "tentative evidence" that undisturbed, lowland hill forests have the highest densities of marbled cats, Hearn said. Other areas, including disturbed lowlands and undisturbed highlands, had lower densities of the cats, he said.

The camera traps didn't record any marbled-cat sightings within the plantations, although one cat was spotted walking along the forest-plantation boundary, the researchers added. They also photographed cubs in the Tabin North, Tawau and Ulu Segama forests.

The results of this exhaustive study suggest that the marbled-cat population may be somewhat higher in northern Borneo than it is elsewhere, but more studies are needed to verify this, Hearn said. For instance, researchers could use camera traps in other places in which the cats are found in the Indomalayan ecorealm, a region extending from eastern India and Nepal to Yunnan province, China; and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. [Photos: In Images: The Rare Bay Cat of Borneo]

But enforced regulations could increase the number of Borneo's marbled cats even more. Although poaching is illegal, the researchers found used shotgun cartridges in seven of the eight forests. However, they didn't come across any evidence that poachers are shooting marbled cats, the scientists wrote in the study.

Laws governing logging and forest conservation may also help preserve the population of marbled cats, Hearn said.

"We provide further evidence that logged forest may still be used by these cats, and should be preserved," he said.

The study was published online today (March 23) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Original article on Live Science.

Source: Elusive Marbled Cats Photographed in Borneo

Elusive Marbled Cats Secretly Photographed in Borneo

A secret photo shoot deep in the forests of Malaysian Borneo is helping researchers determine just how many marbled cats — rare, tree-climbing felines — live in the region, according to a new study.

Marbled cats (Pardofelis marmorata) are extremely elusive creatures. To get a better idea of the cats' stomping grounds, the researchers placed camera traps in eight forests and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, they said.

After four months of secret, motion-triggered infrared photography, the researchers found that marbled cats are most numerous in the lowlands where the forest is undisturbed. However, they did find a few cats in selectively logged areas. [See Camera Trap Photos of the Elusive Marbled Cat]

"We show that marbled cats can still survive in logged forests," said study lead researcher Andrew Hearn, a doctoral candidate at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "This lends further weight to the argument that such disturbed forests are important to the conservation of biodiversity and should be preserved wherever possible."

Little is known about the cats, which are named for their marble-patterned fur. They live in dense tropical forests, and are rarely seen, except for the odd camera-trap sighting. Perhaps that's because the species is listed as "near threatened," according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.

The marbled cat has a furry and long tail, which it often holds horizontally while walking, the researchers wrote in the study. The tail acts as a counterbalance when the cat is climbing trees, and is likely an adaptation for a tree-climbing lifestyle, they said.Credit: A.J. Hearn and J. Ross

In the new study, the researchers used the surreptitiously taken photos to identify individual cats and estimate the species' population density and distribution. They found that the lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area had about 19.5 cats per 39 square miles (100 square kilometers). Tawau Hills Park had fewer — about seven cats per 39 square miles. The Tabin Wildlife Reserve, which was selectively logged from 1969 to 1989, had an estimated density of about 10 cats per 39 square miles.

These estimates provide "tentative evidence" that undisturbed, lowland hill forests have the highest densities of marbled cats, Hearn said. Other areas, including disturbed lowlands and undisturbed highlands, had lower densities of the cats, he said.

The camera traps didn't record any marbled-cat sightings within the plantations, although one cat was spotted walking along the forest-plantation boundary, the researchers added. They also photographed cubs in the Tabin North, Tawau and Ulu Segama forests.

The results of this exhaustive study suggest that the marbled-cat population may be somewhat higher in northern Borneo than it is elsewhere, but more studies are needed to verify this, Hearn said. For instance, researchers could use camera traps in other places in which the cats are found in the Indomalayan ecorealm, a region extending from eastern India and Nepal to Yunnan province, China; and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. [Photos: In Images: The Rare Bay Cat of Borneo]

But enforced regulations could increase the number of Borneo's marbled cats even more. Although poaching is illegal, the researchers found used shotgun cartridges in seven of the eight forests. However, they didn't come across any evidence that poachers are shooting marbled cats, the scientists wrote in the study.

Laws governing logging and forest conservation may also help preserve the population of marbled cats, Hearn said.

"We provide further evidence that logged forest may still be used by these cats, and should be preserved," he said.

The study was published online today (March 23) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Source: Elusive Marbled Cats Secretly Photographed in Borneo

Disease Detectives Find A Really Good Reason Not To Drink Date Palm Wine

i

To collect sap from a date palm tree, a man peels bark at the top of the tree and attaches a pot to collect the liquid. Majority World/UIG via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Majority World/UIG via Getty Images

To collect sap from a date palm tree, a man peels bark at the top of the tree and attaches a pot to collect the liquid.

Majority World/UIG via Getty Images

Sometimes the answer to a health mystery lies in a swig of booze.

In Bangladesh in recent years, there have been repeated mini-outbreaks of a disease called Nipah virus – three people here, four there.

Some people develop no symptoms. But in others, the virus can progress from a fever to fatal brain inflammation within a week.

A few years ago, epidemiologists figured out that people were likely getting Nipah from drinking raw date palm sap, a sweet drink popular in the winter, when the sap is easy to tap from trees pierced with a spigot.

i

A bat clings to a palm tree as it eats sap just above a collection jar. Courtesy of Emily Gurley hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of Emily Gurley

A bat clings to a palm tree as it eats sap just above a collection jar.

Courtesy of Emily Gurley

Bats also like the sap and were caught on infrared camera licking streams of it dripping into collection pots. "So you get bat saliva into the stream," says Dr. Stephen Luby, an epidemiologist at Stanford University who worked on solving this initial mystery few years ago. If the bats were shedding virus in their saliva, then a person could get the virus from drinking contaminated raw sap. "We also have some pretty dramatic photos of bats peeing into the date palm sap jars," says Luby, another possible contamination route.

i

While climbing a date palm tree, a bat pees into a sap collection jar. Courtesy of Emily Gurley hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of Emily Gurley

While climbing a date palm tree, a bat pees into a sap collection jar.

Courtesy of Emily Gurley

After that revelation, the government of Bangladesh launched a don't-drink-sap campaign.

That should have been a blow to the virus' ability to pop up periodically. But 14 cases were recorded last year; eight of the patients died. Researchers were puzzled. The patients' friends and relatives said they didn't drink raw sap and hadn't come into contact with sick people or animals. How had these people caught the virus? Were they all infected the same way?

The answer, it turns out, lies in a fact that the patients weren't sharing with disease detectives. Even though alcohol consumption is restricted in Bangladesh because of Muslim law (it's heavily taxed and available to foreigners at fancy hotels and certain bars), some men drink date palm wine on a regular basis.

People make tari, or palm wine, by collecting sap overnight from trees pierced with a spigot, the same way they collect raw sap. They let the sugary liquid sit for a few days fermenting in a jar, and the result is a drink with about the same alcohol content as a beer (about 5 to 8 percent) that sells for the equivalent of $2 a gallon. The main customers are men, mostly bus drivers, day laborers, rickshaw pullers and farmers.

For some people it's a daily habit to drink with friends at the end of the day, like having a glass of wine with dinner, says Dr. Emily Gurley, an infectious disease epidemiologist who directs a team of disease detectives based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. But, she says, drinking alcohol is "stigmatized within the community. Relatives might not want to talk about it because it might make people perceive your family poorly or perceive your loved one who just died badly." (Taboos can get in the way of disease detection in the U.S., too – like in a salmonella outbreak in the 1980s that, after interviews failed to dredge up a common link, was finally traced to contaminated marijuana).

So the group had to tread carefully during interviews with surviving patients, or for those who didn't make it, their relatives and neighbors. "We didn't go specifically asking about fermented sap, but we did ask, 'How did they know each other? What did they do together?' " says Gurley. They also relied heavily on locally-trained anthropologists, who knew much better than the physicians and epidemiologists how to gain trust.

The research group — consisting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its equivalent in Bangladesh, a group called EcoHealth Alliance and the health research organization where Gurley works — found that of the 14 cases, the eight men who died of Nipah virus all drank tari every evening. They got fevers, which progressed sometimes to seizures, confusion and comas before death. The six women, who all survived, had likely caught the virus while caring for the sick men.

Even though the number of Nipah cases has been fairly small — between 2001 and 2014 there were 30-plus small outbreaks in Bangladesh and India — scientists are concerned.

"This is a disease that goes from animals to people and then it can go from person to person," says Luby. "These are the bugs that we worry about." Because if a strain of Nipah crops up that's capable of jumping between people more efficiently, it could be a real problem.

The usual host for the virus is the jumbo-size fruit bats in the Pteropus family, also called flying foxes. In Malaysia, it jumped from bats to pigs to people. But in Bangladesh, the virus has shown itself capable of hopping between people. In one case, it jumped four times after first infecting someone through sap.

"I think we are in watch-and-wait mode with this virus," says Eddie Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. As he wrote this week in the journal PNAS, there are a few things a virus would need in order to have pandemic potential. Nipah is lacking a few.

First, it's not very good at passing from human to human. Second, Holmes explains, "Nipah is associated with a very high mortality rate in humans and as a general rule — and this is really only a generality — viruses with such a high virulence usually do not lead to pandemics." From the virus perspective, it's not a very good strategy to kill off everyone who is infected so quickly that they don't have time to spread it to others first.

But the virus could evolve the ability to move more easily between people.

"The really important outbreaks to watch are not the 'accidental' exposures to bats, but those where there has been human-to-human transmission: the more of these that occur, and the longer they occur, then the more Nipah virus will be able to adapt fully to humans. This is clearly the concern," says Holmes.

In the meantime, Luby, Gurley and colleagues will continue tracking the clusters of cases that are certain to pop up across the country.

Luckily, there is an easy way to keep people from getting it: bamboo covers to protect the containers of sap from bats at night.

And there's one thing, Gurley says, that works better than anything else at convincing people it's worth taking time to use the covers: infrared photos of bats taking a swig. "When you show people that bats are urinating in and licking the sap, there's a disgust factor there," she says. No one wants that spiking their drink.

Source: Disease Detectives Find A Really Good Reason Not To Drink Date Palm Wine

FOCUS ’16: Golden shot is ‘best of show’

Lisa Schneider's Let It Rain took Best of Show at the Focus '16 photography show sponsored by the Wilton Arts Council.

Of 175 photos entered by 106 photographers from Connecticut and New York, Lisa Schneider of Wilton took the Focus '16 Best of Show award with Let It Rain, an image she caught while on safari in Africa.

The show opened on March 5 at Wilton Library, and awards were given during a reception on March 11. Presented by the Wilton Arts Council, the show was open to adults, high school students, and children in grades five through eight.

Judges were international photographer Daryl Hawk of Wilton, photojournalist Larry Untermeyer of Westport, and former photojournalist Debbi Morello.

Both Hawk and Untermeyer, who were at the awards ceremony, gave Schneider's photo a score of 10, while Morello scored it a 9.

"It had that 'wow' factor," Hawk said of Let It Rain. "When I saw this photo I fell in love with it immediately.

"It has not been manipulated or altered," he added. "I have great respect for that."

Vihan Jayawardhane, a fifth grader at Cider Mill School, took third place for his photo of a chameleon, called Tree Hugger. — Jeannette Ross photo

Untermeyer said he was drawn by the way "it tells a story. The colors are so exquisite … the walkway takes you right into the picture."

Schneider took the photo three years ago in South Africa. "We were out on safari," she told The Bulletin Friday evening, "when a terrible rainstorm came. We went to a lodge and were in a covered outdoor courtyard. I just turned and saw a woman. I saw the light on her shoulder. I thought, 'This is a spectacular moment,'" and she managed to get off half a dozen shots with her Nikon D7000. "It was all of 30 seconds and she was gone.

The moment she caught is of a woman wearing a yellow skirt and yellow headscarf walking along a path with the sun casting a golden light on the grassland in the distance.

"I think I took two photos that had people in them besides my family," she said of her trip, and "about 2,000 with animals and scenery. I knew when I took it it was a special capture. I'm happy others feel the same way."

Photography has been a hobby since college for Schneider, who has lived in Wilton for 20 years. "It's always been a passion of mine," she said. "This year I made a private resolution to do more, and entering this show was a first move."

Schneider has entered the Focus show twice, the first time 14 years ago and this year. Her second entry, A Favorite Spot, was awarded an honorable mention.

"It's an honor to have both recognized," she said. Sarah Moore, a senior at Wilton High School, took second place in the high school division with her infrared photo Red City. Sarah said she likes the way infrared picks up the light reflected off an object instead of the actual color.

She took her photo of a building surrounded by foliage from the High Line in Manhattan. It was not until she was editing the photo that she realized she caught the city skyline with the Empire State Building in the background.

Hawk praised Sarah's creativity and use of contrast, likening it to a professional level. "It's beautifully executed in printing," he said.

Untermeyer said it was "quite different from everything else. What makes it work is the foreground — it frames the building and the sky."

Strong show

Both judges agreed this year's show had reached new heights in the quality of the entries.

"The work keeps getting stronger," Hawk said. "What I noticed this year is the trend to manipulate photos is decreasing," a trend he was happy to see.

"This is a beautiful show," Untermeyer said. Of the four he's seen, "this is the best. There's a lot of talent."

He liked the fact the awards were mixed, not all adults or all children, "but some of the kids are as good as adults."

One of those students was Connor Golden of Weston, whose photo Times Square took first place in the youth division. It had a "really extraordinary combination of black and white and color," Hawk said of the shot of the Manhattan subway station.

He also praised Tracks, a thirdplace winner in the high school division by Katie Sailer of Newtown, commenting on her sophisticated eye. Katie explained that she was outdoors after the first snowfall and noticed tracks in the snow. "I thought, 'Wow, this kind of looks cool,' so I took out my phone and just took a photo."

"She has the ability to see what other people cannot see," Hawk said of the shot.

Also in the youth division, Vihan Jayawardhane, a fifth grader at Cider Mill, took third place with Tree Hugger, a chameleon he photographed in the Sri Lanka rain forest Sinharaja.

"It's just one of the many colors it could have been," he said of the reptile, adding he was more interested in photographing animals than scenery on that trip.

The photographs — color and black and white — feature all types of subjects, including urban scenes, still life, animals, people, landscapes, and close-ups. The show will be on display through April 1. Most of the photos are available for sale.

Source: FOCUS '16: Golden shot is 'best of show'

Spectral Edge wants to drive its infrared photo-enhancing tech into every smartphone

Smartphone cameras are so good these days it can seem almost churlish to yearn for improvements. And yet enhancements continue to shave away at imperfections as engineers turn the screw to optimize multiple aspects of image capture hardware and software.

To wit: U.K. based startup Spectral Edge has developed a mathematical technique for improving photographic imagery, blending data captured by a standard camera lens with an infrared shot of the same scene in order to enhance the depth and color of the photo.

Its computation photography technique, called Phusion, works especially well for sharpening detail in shots taken on hazy days or when elements in the scene have been over-exposed, according to MD Christopher Cytera.

"It's bringing extra detail into the picture that you can't necessarily see with a normal camera. Because infrared penetrates through mist and fog much better than visible light. And so when you have a picture with a little bit of mist, little bit of fog you get a much more stunning effect," he tells TechCrunch.

"The secret sauce is being able to combine… the infrared with the visible light picture in a way that's pleasing," he adds. "There's been other techniques to combine the two in the past but they don't end up with pictures that are nice to look at."

For example, weapons systems used by the military to identify targets have already been using infrared to enhance visibility. But in that case the resulting imagery is enhanced only in a utilitarian sense — i.e. to help identify targets. Phusion is designed to serve up better natural looking pictures. You can see some before and after examples on its website.

The hard maths underlying the technique involves mapping the rate of change across the entire scene using differentiation calculations, says Cytera. "In simple terms we do it by transforming the pictures into what's called the gradient space. What we're doing is we're differentiating every pixel with respect to every other pixel and color in multiple dimensions. And what that does is it preserves every single gradient — all the gradients and edges in the picture are perfectly preserved.

"Whereas other techniques try to blend pictures and you end up with blurred effects as a result — you lose edge definition. We don't do that because we differentiate all these pixels."

The technique can also have the side-effect of airbrushing/beautifying photos of people, because the infrared filter is able to reduce the appearance of blemishes on human skin. So not only sharper landscapes but slicker selfies too — or at least that's the promise.

The technique can also apparently enhance low light imagery — a perennial holy grail of smartphone makers, given the inevitable light capture constraints on small sensors.

Spectral Edge, which holds patents on the tech, was founded at the University of East Anglia in early 2011, before being spun out in March 2014. It's announcing a new tranche of funding today — £1.5 million, following its $300,000 seed back in 2014 — with the aim of commercializing the tech. Investors in the latest round are IQ Capital and Parkwalk Advisors, along with angels from Cambridge Angels and the Cambridge Capital Group.

Spectral Edge's business model is to license its IP to device makers. So the funding will be used develop the IP product so it's ready for licensing, along with further development and testing work of the core tech.

Cytera reckons the first commercial deployments could arrive within 18 to 24 months, likely in on high end professional cameras initially but trickling down thereafter to smartphone hardware as the required sensors become cheaper to produce in volumes.

He confirms the startup is talking to some smartphone makers now but won't name any names at this stage.

An infrared sensor would be needed on a mobile device for the technique to function but Cytera notes that some smartphones already have the necessary hardware — such as Google's Tango device, which uses an infrared sensor for gestures. Future mobile phone camera sensors could also incorporate infrared into their sensor mix so that a device with a single lens could grab the necessary image data, without a handset needing to have two camera lens, he adds.

"In the long run we think this could be in every single phone with no real cost penalty except a bit of software," he says. "Maybe [in] five years. Which is what happened with HDR."

Although, at this stage, there's plenty more work to do to pave the way for infrared enhanced shots as standard, with Cytera noting the tech does not yet function in real-time on a mobile device but is rather being post-processed on a laptop. So they're not there yet.

An earlier route to market than even pro cameras could be security cameras, in Cytera's view. He notes the technique works in enhancing video too so could be used to improve detail on CCTV videos for security purposes.

Source: Spectral Edge wants to drive its infrared photo-enhancing tech into every smartphone

How to find a flying squirrel: Citizen scientists are enlisted to help scientists.

By John M. Blodgett March 21 at 10:54 AM

Since 2008, San Diego mammalogist Scott Tremor has been looking for the elusive San Bernardino flying squirrel, which can glide more than 300 feet between trees. He has conducted surveys in its historical range east of Los Angeles, but he found nothing. Now, with some reported sightings in the area, he is determined to find the mammal — "the right way" this time, as he put it — by enlisting ordinary people to look in their back yards for the nocturnal animal, which may be labeled an endangered species this spring.

Such citizen scientists — volunteers who perform research alone or alongside professionals — have contributed to science since the 1800s. They discovered Comet Hale-Bopp, improved navigation charts for sailors, set their computers to search for extraterrestrial life and, in the case of Erin Brockovich, figured out what was polluting a community's water. The term "citizen scientist" was coined in a 1979 issue of New Scientist, according to Muki Haklay, a University College London professor and the director of its Extreme Citizen Science group,

[How Hale and Bopp found their comet]

What's new is that professionals such as Tremor, who works at the San Diego Natural History Museum, find citizen scientists to be an important adjunct to their classic approach to investigation. With technology so easily available, more ordinary people than ever are participating in scientific research.

According to Jennifer Shirk of the Citizen Science Association, a group founded in 2013, mobile and Internet technologies have fueled a huge growth in participation focused not only on local issues such as the San Bernardino squirrel but also on larger ones such as climate change.

The association and others like it in Europe, Australia and elsewhere have formed in recent years to promote citizen science, assist in its practice and build a community around it, Shirk said.

The U.S. government is also getting involved. In September, the White House held an online forum to highlight contributions that citizen scientists have made to agriculture, health and other fields, and launched a website that federal agencies can turn to for help in organizing projects.

That event, Shirk said, was "a major vote of confidence" in the value of volunteers.

Citizen science can yield information that is otherwise difficult or impossible to come by, said Alison Cawood, coordinator for citizen science at the Smithsonian's Environmental Research Center in Edgewood, Md. "There is no way that one lab can have enough people to answer questions that require lots of data collection over a short period of time or over a large geographic scale. No lab can afford or reasonably manage the efforts of that many people, nor can they put effort into hiring people they may only need for a day or a week per year," she said. "Only volunteers make sense for projects like that."

Cawood does recruiting on SciStarter.com, a citizen scientist website, and volunteer websites including Idealist.com. She also emails new opportunities to past volunteers and to those who have expressed an interest in participating.

Using these methods, she found about 100 volunteers for a study last summer of a parasite affecting mud crabs in Chesapeake Bay. Most of the participants collected crabs in the field, while a handful worked alongside paid staff to measure each one and count how many contained the parasite. Cawood said a postdoctoral fellow is using the data to study how the parasite evolves and to better understand invasive parasites and diseases in coastal marine ecosystems.

A project named eBird is a vivid example of the scale of work that can happen when citizen scientists get involved. The online study was launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. Since then, said the lab's Christopher Wood, more than 250,000 people from every country in the world have submitted 300 million records of bird sightings for inclusion in a database.

"When you put that much data in the hands of researchers and scientists," Wood said, "you can answer a huge variety of questions . . . [that] you wouldn't be able to answer with smaller-scale studies."

In January, for example, Wood's team announced that eBird data had helped researchers model the migration of 118 species, spanning the Western Hemisphere, for an entire year. Such a project was previously impossible. "Species ranges are no longer polygons on a map" based on expert opinion of where a species might be found, said Wood's colleague Brian Sullivan. Now, he said, those ranges can be based on field observations "that give us an idea of how many of each species we can expect to find on a particular day in a particular place."

Wood said such data can help improve conservation efforts. For example, he said, the Nature Conservancy, in collaboration with farmers in California, uses eBird data to time the flooding of rice fields for precisely when migrating shorebirds need such habitat for feeding and resting.

In addition to providing sheer numbers and geographic range, citizen scientists can perform tasks that hardware or software can't.

"The detection and identification of birds is a highly nuanced process that machines aren't capable of yet," Sullivan said. Only humans can discern birds by what they look like and sound like and then classify them according to species, for example. "Without humans, eBird would not exist," he said.

Citizen scientists can also cause problems for researchers. For example, Cawood said, volunteers can create biases in data when they make observations only on weekends or during nice weather, distortions that professional scientists generally don't cause

"Volunteers do what fits with their schedules, which is perfectly reasonable," she said. "There are ways to deal with this" — through statistics or the design of experiments, for example — "but it can present a complication. You just aren't always sure what you are going to get with volunteers in the way that you are with staff you have hired specifically to do a job."

Citizen science can have a positive impact in labs as well.

Professional scientists are using tools from Public Lab, a nonprofit that got its start by designing do-it-yourself scientific instruments — including kites equipped with digital cameras — so volunteers could survey damage caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of Public Lab, ecologist Chris Fastie of Middlebury College in Vermont said, he can modify a camera to take infrared photos, which are used to analyze plant health, for less than $100.

"I can do it without using grant money, and students can use the cameras for undergraduate projects or graduate research," he said. "Commercially available equivalents cost thousands of dollars, so most students never get their hands on one. [Public Lab] changes the equation for who can participate in making this type of scientific observation."

For Luisa Serrano of Yucaipa, Calif., who has seen the San Bernardino flying squirrel at her cabin near Big Bear Lake, being a citizen scientist is a civic duty. A lifelong birdwatcher and eBird contributor who let Tremor set up remote cameras, seed feeders and hair-collecting tubes at her cabin, she said volunteering for science gives a greater purpose to her enjoyment of watching wildlife.

"If you think of [the environment] as our life-support system, then we have a huge obligation to take the best care of it that we possibly can," she said. "You may not live to see the final good results of your participation, but at least you're contributing, and I think that's important."

Source: How to find a flying squirrel: Citizen scientists are enlisted to help scientists.

High School Student Works On Drone That Assists Farmers

How's this for an entrepreneurial spirit and a sharp mind? Evan Palmer, a sophomore over at Amherst High School, is currently developing a fixed-wing drone that will be able to survey crops in Amherst when it is completed. This particular drone will be paired to an infrared camera and 3D mapping software so that it makes life easier for farmers to identify crop issues.

This particular project kicked off after Palmer applied for a $1,000 grant from the Nebraska Farm Bureau, which was duly rewarded to him. Apart from that, Palmer also managed to gain the attention of other sponsors who have since done their bit to assist in the construction of the drone via donations. Palmer also gleaned wisdom from online forums to figure out the drone's building process as well as required parts, and from there, he shared, "I started to get a basic idea of what I needed for the drone. From there, I started building a components list."

Palmer further explained that he picked the fixed wing because it will be able to cover a larger area in less time, which is always a good thing where efficiency is concerned. A normalized difference vegetation index imaging system was picked to use infrared photos of crops as an indicator of their health status. This allows farmers on the ground to check out crop health from above without having to walk through their plantation all day long, and will also allow them to make decisions on the spot concerning crop health.

Filed in Robots. Read more about drone. Source: kansas

Source: High School Student Works On Drone That Assists Farmers

Sigma sd Quattro H Hands-On Preview

Sigma sd Quattro H Hands-On Preview - We go hands-on with the new Sigma sd Quattro H and Quattro mirrorless cameras with Foveon sensor technology.

Posted : 20 Mar 2016 12:53PM by Joshua Waller 

 Add Comment

The new Sigma SD Quattro comes as the Quattro with APS-C sensor, and as the Quattro H with larger, higher resolution APS-H sensor. Both cameras use the same 2.36m dot electronic viewfinder (EVF) as the Sony Alpha 7 series, and both cameras body and design are the same, with the difference being the resolution and size of the sensor. 

The SD Quattros feature a removable infra-red filter at the front, which can be removed for infrared photography. The filter also acts as dust protection for the sensor, moving dust away from the sensor should also mean that if there is dust, it's less likely to show up as dots on the image. The SD Quattros have a unique two screen display on the back:

 

Sigma sd Quattro Features

Dual TRUE III image processor

New Super Fine Detail exposure mode

Combination of Phase detection AF and contrast detection AF

Focus peaking function

2.36m dot electronic viewfinder (EVF)

3.0inch 1.62m dot screen

Magnesium alloy body

Dust and splashproof design

Quick set menu

14-bit RAW data

In-camera RAW processing

Higher precision white balance (new algorithm)

Colour modes, Monochrome options

Custom bracketing display

Electronic level

USB3 port

Sigma sd Quattro H

45 megapixel total pixels (25.5 megapixel top layer)

51 megapixel max image size

APS-H Foveon sensor (26.6x17.9mm)

1.3x crop

3.8fps up to 10 images

5.1fps with Low image size (20 images)

Sigma sd Quattro

33 megapixel total pixels (19.6 megapixel top layer)

39 megapixel max image size

APS-C Foveon sensor (23.5x15.5mm)

1.5x crop

3.6fps - up to 14 continuous shots 

5.1fps with Low image size (28 images)

The Sigma SD Quattros replace the Sigma SD1 Merrill Digital SLR, and use the same Sigma SA lens mount - Here we've compared the SD Quattro to the Sigma SD1 Merrill:

Sigma SD Quattro H Vs Sigma SD1 Merrill 

Sigma SD Quattro H Vs Sigma SD1 Merrill Top

Sigma sd Quattro H Hands-On Photos of Equipment Sigma sd Quattro Photos of Equipment
Source: Sigma sd Quattro H Hands-On Preview

Tewksbury resident's artwork to appear in Griffin Museum exhibit

TEWKSBURY — The Photography Atelier 23 will present an exhibit of student and faculty artwork March 10-29 at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Road, Winchester.

Tewksbury artist Bonnie McCormick will feature work titled "Too Much Rum," pinhole multiple exposure images of the Caribbean.

The Atelier is a course for intermediate and advanced photographers offered by the Griffin Museum of Photography. On March 10, the public is invited to attend the artists' reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

Work by Atelier 23 members includes: Vicki Diez-Canseco: "Shape Shift: A Part of the Whole"; Estelle Disch: "Phototransformations"; David Feigenbaum: "The Shadow Knows"; Nancy Fulton: "Woodland Light"; Trelawney Goodell: "A Celebration of Norway"; Law Hamilton: "Atlantic Waves: Grace and Movement"; James Hunt: "Spirituality and a Sense of Place: The Quabbin Wilderness"; Vicki Judith Monteferrante: "Glass: Realism to Abstraction"; Skip Montello: "Reflections of a Quarry Wall"; Andrea Rosenthal: "Fleeting Glimpses"; Tiziana Rozzo: "The Childhood of a Family"; Maria Verrier: A True Self; Ellen Slotnick, "Quondam"; and Christy Stadelmaier: "Arches".

Guests will also be able to view several others works by the following artists:

Emily Belz: "Memory Lines" includes photographic sequences connecting space, time and memory.

Richard Cohen: "Ambiguity of Cityspace" contains restructured images of urban windows shot in downtown Boston.

Jennifer Coplon: "Discovering Blackstone Square" contains views of a Boston South End park.

Lee Kilpatrick: "A Case of You" is a portrait of his sister's last years before her death.

Amy Rindskopf: "Edible Geometry" is a celebration of the growing season.

Joe Staska: "Unsleeping" contains images from sleepless nights and 36-hour days.

Carol Van Loon: "Barns" is a journey back to the landscape of her youth after the death of her mother.

Nadine Wallack: "Shadows and Silhouettes: Nothing Is Explained."

Catherine Wilcox-Titus: "Returned to Life" is a series of still-life photographs.

Dianne Schaefer: "The Light You Cannot See" includes explorations in infrared photography.

Elliot Schildkrout: "Lost Memories" contains the abandoned Lincoln Amusement Park of Dartmouth.

McKenna: "A Sheaf of Stories" is a selection of portraits from Italy.

Photography Atelier, in its 19th year, is a portfolio-making course for emerging to advanced photographers. In addition to guidance and support in the creation of a body of work, the class prepares artists to market, exhibit and present their work to industry professionals. Each participant in the Atelier presents a final project in the form of a print portfolio, a photographic book or album, a slide show or a mixed media presentation. In every Atelier, students hang a gallery exhibition and produce work for their own pages on the Atelier website. To see the photography of present and past Atelier students and teachers: photographyatelier.org.

Page 2 of 2 - Photographs are available upon request.

The Griffin Museum of Photography is open Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays. General admission is $7 for adults and $3 for seniors. Members and children younger 12 are admitted free. Admission is free to all every Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. For information: 781-729-1158; griffinmuseum.org.

Source: Tewksbury resident's artwork to appear in Griffin Museum exhibit

WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest

WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest

Posted by admin on 3/04/16 • Categorized as March 2016 •

By Rebecca Schmitz

(L-R) Western students Jacob Chang-Rascle, Laura Grice, and Mary Hilker were recognized for their accomplishments in the visual and literary arts.

Three Western Albemarle students have been recognized for their artistic talents, earning regional honors in the national Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards competition. Junior Laura Grice was awarded the Gold Key award for her work in ceramics and a Silver Key award for drawing. She also earned an honorable mention in printmaking. Sophomore Jacob Chang-Rascle won two Gold Key awards and an honorable mention in photography. Mary Hilker, a junior, impressed judges with her writing, earning a Silver Key in Flash Fiction (stories with fewer than 350 words) and an honorable mention for her poetry. Gold Key winners will be judged at the national level next.

As one looks over these award-winning pieces, it's hard to believe they aren't the work of professionals. All three students say they plan to pursue careers related to the arts.

Laura Grice's Gold Key-winning piece is a sleek ceramic cup, with indentations to create interest and rich greenish-purple tint. She also produced a stark, haunting drawing of a winter scene, featuring a person dwarfed by soaring, snow-covered mountains. Her printmaking piece, which won an honorable mention, is a highly-detailed aerial scene of buildings in New York City. She created it using a photo lightbox for tracing, and etching tools.

Chang-Rascle's Gold Key-winning piece is a vibrant close-up of a water droplet captured at the moment it forms. His second Gold Key photo, created with infrared photography, is a scene of a majestic tree overlooking a snowy cemetery, with mountains rearing up in the background. He received an honorable mention for Impending Storm, an infrared photo capturing a lone person in a grassy, snow-dotted field clutching a red umbrella. Chang-Rascle was also awarded the Grand Prize in the 2016 Virginia Film Festival's ACTION! High School Director Competition for his film Incubus, and was a runner-up for his film Time Flies. Incubus, about a boy and his father on an archeological assignment that turns into something more sinister, is also a finalist in the 2016 DC Independent Film Festival and in the Texas Independent Film Festival at Texas A & M University.

It's clear Mary Hilker has a knack for putting feelings into words. She adopts a melancholy tone in her Silver Key-winning flash fiction piece as she elegantly describes a dream that she is said is "kind of about accepting things as they happen in life."

The Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, founded in 1923, are held each year for students nationwide in grades 7 through 12. A panel of judges at the regional level evaluates each student's work for its originality, technical skill, and emergence of a personal vision or voice. (Western students are part of the southeast region, which stretches to Georgia.) Works that advance to the national level are judged by a panel of renowned talents, many of whom are alumni of the awards. Past jurors include Langston Hughes and Andy Warhol, and more recently Lena Dunham, David Sedaris, and writer Nikki Giovanni.

Laura Grice was selected as a Rising Star for the Piedmont Council for the Arts and has had her work featured in Somerset Studios, a magazine featuring outstanding handcrafted works of art. Her handmade journals are displayed at the Crozet Artisan Depot.

Tagged as: arts, literature, Rebecca Schmitz, WAHS Cancel Reply

Name ( required )

Email ( required )

Website

To encourage constructive conversation, The Crozet Gazette requests all commenters to use their first and last names. Email addresses will not be published and are requested so that the Gazette may be able to contact you about your comment only. You will not be subscribed to any email lists. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment.

Source: WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest

Tewksbury resident's artwork to appear in Griffin Museum exhibit

TEWKSBURY — The Photography Atelier 23 will present an exhibit of student and faculty artwork March 10-29 at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Road, Winchester.

Tewksbury artist Bonnie McCormick will feature work titled "Too Much Rum," pinhole multiple exposure images of the Caribbean.

The Atelier is a course for intermediate and advanced photographers offered by the Griffin Museum of Photography. On March 10, the public is invited to attend the artists' reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

Work by Atelier 23 members includes: Vicki Diez-Canseco: "Shape Shift: A Part of the Whole"; Estelle Disch: "Phototransformations"; David Feigenbaum: "The Shadow Knows"; Nancy Fulton: "Woodland Light"; Trelawney Goodell: "A Celebration of Norway"; Law Hamilton: "Atlantic Waves: Grace and Movement"; James Hunt: "Spirituality and a Sense of Place: The Quabbin Wilderness"; Vicki Judith Monteferrante: "Glass: Realism to Abstraction"; Skip Montello: "Reflections of a Quarry Wall"; Andrea Rosenthal: "Fleeting Glimpses"; Tiziana Rozzo: "The Childhood of a Family"; Maria Verrier: A True Self; Ellen Slotnick, "Quondam"; and Christy Stadelmaier: "Arches".

Guests will also be able to view several others works by the following artists:

Emily Belz: "Memory Lines" includes photographic sequences connecting space, time and memory.

Richard Cohen: "Ambiguity of Cityspace" contains restructured images of urban windows shot in downtown Boston.

Jennifer Coplon: "Discovering Blackstone Square" contains views of a Boston South End park.

Lee Kilpatrick: "A Case of You" is a portrait of his sister's last years before her death.

Amy Rindskopf: "Edible Geometry" is a celebration of the growing season.

Joe Staska: "Unsleeping" contains images from sleepless nights and 36-hour days.

Carol Van Loon: "Barns" is a journey back to the landscape of her youth after the death of her mother.

Nadine Wallack: "Shadows and Silhouettes: Nothing Is Explained."

Catherine Wilcox-Titus: "Returned to Life" is a series of still-life photographs.

Dianne Schaefer: "The Light You Cannot See" includes explorations in infrared photography.

Elliot Schildkrout: "Lost Memories" contains the abandoned Lincoln Amusement Park of Dartmouth.

McKenna: "A Sheaf of Stories" is a selection of portraits from Italy.

Photography Atelier, in its 19th year, is a portfolio-making course for emerging to advanced photographers. In addition to guidance and support in the creation of a body of work, the class prepares artists to market, exhibit and present their work to industry professionals. Each participant in the Atelier presents a final project in the form of a print portfolio, a photographic book or album, a slide show or a mixed media presentation. In every Atelier, students hang a gallery exhibition and produce work for their own pages on the Atelier website. To see the photography of present and past Atelier students and teachers: photographyatelier.org.

Page 2 of 2 - Photographs are available upon request.

The Griffin Museum of Photography is open Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays. General admission is $7 for adults and $3 for seniors. Members and children younger 12 are admitted free. Admission is free to all every Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. For information: 781-729-1158; griffinmuseum.org.

Source: Tewksbury resident's artwork to appear in Griffin Museum exhibit

WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest

WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest

Posted by admin on 3/04/16 • Categorized as March 2016 •

By Rebecca Schmitz

(L-R) Western students Jacob Chang-Rascle, Laura Grice, and Mary Hilker were recognized for their accomplishments in the visual and literary arts.

Three Western Albemarle students have been recognized for their artistic talents, earning regional honors in the national Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards competition. Junior Laura Grice was awarded the Gold Key award for her work in ceramics and a Silver Key award for drawing. She also earned an honorable mention in printmaking. Sophomore Jacob Chang-Rascle won two Gold Key awards and an honorable mention in photography. Mary Hilker, a junior, impressed judges with her writing, earning a Silver Key in Flash Fiction (stories with fewer than 350 words) and an honorable mention for her poetry. Gold Key winners will be judged at the national level next.

As one looks over these award-winning pieces, it's hard to believe they aren't the work of professionals. All three students say they plan to pursue careers related to the arts.

Laura Grice's Gold Key-winning piece is a sleek ceramic cup, with indentations to create interest and rich greenish-purple tint. She also produced a stark, haunting drawing of a winter scene, featuring a person dwarfed by soaring, snow-covered mountains. Her printmaking piece, which won an honorable mention, is a highly-detailed aerial scene of buildings in New York City. She created it using a photo lightbox for tracing, and etching tools.

Chang-Rascle's Gold Key-winning piece is a vibrant close-up of a water droplet captured at the moment it forms. His second Gold Key photo, created with infrared photography, is a scene of a majestic tree overlooking a snowy cemetery, with mountains rearing up in the background. He received an honorable mention for Impending Storm, an infrared photo capturing a lone person in a grassy, snow-dotted field clutching a red umbrella. Chang-Rascle was also awarded the Grand Prize in the 2016 Virginia Film Festival's ACTION! High School Director Competition for his film Incubus, and was a runner-up for his film Time Flies. Incubus, about a boy and his father on an archeological assignment that turns into something more sinister, is also a finalist in the 2016 DC Independent Film Festival and in the Texas Independent Film Festival at Texas A & M University.

It's clear Mary Hilker has a knack for putting feelings into words. She adopts a melancholy tone in her Silver Key-winning flash fiction piece as she elegantly describes a dream that she is said is "kind of about accepting things as they happen in life."

The Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, founded in 1923, are held each year for students nationwide in grades 7 through 12. A panel of judges at the regional level evaluates each student's work for its originality, technical skill, and emergence of a personal vision or voice. (Western students are part of the southeast region, which stretches to Georgia.) Works that advance to the national level are judged by a panel of renowned talents, many of whom are alumni of the awards. Past jurors include Langston Hughes and Andy Warhol, and more recently Lena Dunham, David Sedaris, and writer Nikki Giovanni.

Laura Grice was selected as a Rising Star for the Piedmont Council for the Arts and has had her work featured in Somerset Studios, a magazine featuring outstanding handcrafted works of art. Her handmade journals are displayed at the Crozet Artisan Depot.

Tagged as: arts, literature, Rebecca Schmitz, WAHS Cancel Reply

Name ( required )

Email ( required )

Website

To encourage constructive conversation, The Crozet Gazette requests all commenters to use their first and last names. Email addresses will not be published and are requested so that the Gazette may be able to contact you about your comment only. You will not be subscribed to any email lists. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment.

Source: WAHS Students Take Top Honors in Arts and Writing Contest