nature

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Art Photography

Site-Specific Pinhole Cameras Constructed From Nature Capture the Pacific Northwest

In a meta, Mother Nature-inspired project, artists David Janesko and Adam Donnelly use objects from the earth to photograph the environment from which they are found, often utilizing leaves, logs, dirt, and scattered wood to produce hazy images of the world around them. To date, the pair has made approximately 28 cameras, each with a preexisting lens. Janesko and Donnelly do not create an aperture for the natural cameras by hand, but rather use ones already available in the form of a chewed hole in a leaf or a piece of bark that already has a crack.

The body of the camera is much larger, and like the lens, is only constructed from the material around them, much like a small fort. One of the two will stand outside the camera as a shutter, while the other remains inside with the photographic paper, sometimes for as long as 45 minutes. “We build and photograph with the camera in a single day, we leave the camera as we made it, to fall apart and disappear back into the environment,” Janesko told The Creators Project.

Janesko and Donnelly attempt to capture the physical experience of their cameras in each photograph—producing a muffled and patient image of the lands which they enter. Previously the two had documented the San Francisco Bay Area, but are now heading to the Rio Grande River where their new land cameras will be recorded for an upcoming documentary. You can learn more about the film on their IndieGoGo. (via The Creators Project)

Amazing Science

New Species of Unusual Jellyfish Discovered 2.3 Miles Below the Ocean’s Surface

In what looks more like a scene out of a James Cameron movie, researchers on a NOAA expedition aboard the Okeanos Explorer were filming with the help of an ROV in the Marianas Trench last week when an improbable creature suddenly popped into the frame. With just a few wiry tentacles and a cluster of 8 brightly reflective orbs inside its body, this new jellyfish looks like something from the realm of Photoshop than science. But incredibly, it’s real, living happily at 2.3 miles (~3,700 meters) underwater. From Scientific American:

Scientists believe this animal belongs to the genus Crossota, a group of jellies that does not have a sessile polyp stage; all phases of their lives are ocean drifters. They also believe this animal is an ambush predator – note the posture it had assumed in the first half of the video: its bell motionless with its tentacles outstretched like the struts of a spider’s web, waiting for something to bumble into them. The red canals, they suggest, appear to connect the bright yellow objects, which may be gonads.

You can get more photo and video updates from the Okeanos Explorer here. (via Neatorama, Scientific American)

Update: An earlier version of this article mentioned the jellyfish may be ‘bioluminescent’. While that may be true in some regard, several people with much more impressive scientific credentials than mine have written to suggest the “lights” seen inside the jellyfish in this video are merely reflective. The most likely scenario is that the gonads of this particular species exhibit some form of fluorescence but do not illuminate independently. Thanks, Steven.

Art Photography

Dramatic Aerial Landscape Photos of Our Impact on Nature Captured by Daniel Beltrá

During his past two decades as a photographer, Daniel Beltrá has photographed landscapes in all seven continents, exploring equally the beauty and tragedy found in nature across the globe. Beltrá works mostly in the air, providing the viewer with the expansive scale of what he encounters while perched inside an airplane or helicopter such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which he captured over the span of two months.

Other locations the Spanish photographer has traveled to included the Brazilian Amazon, the Arctic, the Southern Oceans, and the Patagonian ice fields. Beltrá was drawn to each of these locations due to the complexity of nature found at each. He explains in his artist statement that the “fragility of our ecosystems is a continuous thread throughout my work. My photographs show the vast scale of transformation our world is under from human-made stresses.”

Beltrá hopes that his unique aerial perspective and subject matter instill an understanding of how we are directly affecting the environment around us and at the edges of the globe. Many of his images from locations in Iceland and Greenland were recently included in his solo exhibition “Ice/Green Lands” at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago that closed on March 5, 2016. The photographer also recently published a collection of his images from the 2010 BP oil spill in his book SPILL. You can see more of his expansive landscape photography on his Instagram and Facebook. (via Ignant)

Art

Suspended Tree Sculptures Connect an Artist to His Cuban Roots

Jorge Mayet's tree sculptures produced from paper, wire, fabric, and acrylic showcase the ways in which a tree’s roots often mimic the branches that sprout above ground. In these suspended works the underground systems are far more expansive than what appears above the earth, showing the viewer that what typically appears before us is only half of the real picture. Hanging from invisible wires, Mayet works are a conceptual connection to his own memories and roots growing up in Cuba, a visual metaphor for being uprooted from his home country.

The Cuban expatriate currently lives and works in Mallorca, Spain where he focuses his practice on allegorical landscapes like the ones seen here. You can see more of Mayet’s sculptures on his Facebook. (via Cross Connect Magazine)

Art

Tiny Mixed Media Worlds and Creatures Inside Antique Boxes by Allison May Kiphuth

Artist Allison May Kiphuth captures scenes inspired by her surroundings in Maine and along the New Hampshire seacoast by squeezing them into small wooden boxes scarcely a few inches wide. Her mixed media dioramas are constructed from layered ink and watercolor illustrations assembled with pins and string inside antique boxes. The content of each artwork varies from piece to piece from underwater scenes of sea life to magical tiny worlds populated by forest creatures.

Kiphuth recently had a solo show titled Interior at Paxton Gate Curiosities for Kids and will have work on view next month at the What Goes Around show at Nahcotta Gallery in New Hampshire. You can see more of her work at Enormous Tiny Art and on Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)

 

Photography Science

Macro Photographs of Nature’s Tiniest Architects by Nicky Bay

Nicky Bay (previously here and here) is the master of capturing the exceptionally small, photographing insects typically passed over without acknowledgement or recognition. The Singapore-based photographer stays acutely aware of these tiny creatures, using macro photography to highlight each minuscule detail. While taking a closer look at the micro world found deep in the rainforest, Bay began to notice tiny structures built by his favorite subject. The bug buildings appear manmade—tiny log cabins, gates, tents, and fortresses blocking each insect from the world just beyond their carefully placed twigs and segments of silk.

My favorite microscopic discovery of Bay’s was the Bagworm moth larva’s twisting stack of twigs it builds to protect itself as it grows inside. These stacked structures are almost perfect in their symmetry, each side built with twigs that are equal in length and width. Another favorite is the Arctiinae moth pupa’s cage produced from caterpillar hair and silk, a semi-protective fortress that appears almost like chicken wire.

Ray has collected several other examples of these tiny architects, including a web tower and silk-covered tent which you can see over on his macro photography blog. You can also follow his day-to-day macro photography on Facebook.