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History Photography Science

Artist Rachel Sussman Photographs the Oldest Living Things in the World before They Vanish

Since 2004, Brooklyn-based contemporary artist Rachel Sussman has researched, collaborated with biologists, and braved some of the world’s harshest climates from Antarctica to the Mojave Desert in order to photograph the oldest continuously living organisms on Earth. This includes plants like Pando, the “Trembling Giant,” a colony of aspens in Utah with a massive underground root system estimated to be around 80,000 years old. Or the dense Llareta plants in South America that grow 1.5 centimeters annually and live over 3,000 years. This is the realm of life where time is measured in millennia, and where despite such astonishing longevity, ecosystems are now threatened due to climate change and human encroachment.

Sussman’s photographs have now been gathered together for the first time in The Oldest Living Things in the World, a new book published by the University of Chicago Press. Sitting at the intersection of art, science, and travelogue, the book details her adventures in tracking down each subject and relays the valuable scientific work done by scientists to understand them. It includes 124 photographs, 30 essays, infographics and forewords by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Carl Zimmer.

You can learn more about Sussman’s project in her 2010 TED Talk. (via Hyperallergic)

Update: Rachel Sussman was just named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow.

Photography

Smithsonian Magazine Announces 11th Annual Photo Contest Finalists

Smithsonian Magazine just announced the finalists of their 11th Annual Photo Contest. This year’s competition saw a whopping 50,000 submissions, from which 60 finalists were selected in 6 categories including: Natural, Travel, People, Americana, Altered, and Mobile. The contest is now open for a Readers’ Choice vote which runs from today through May 6, 2014. Vote here. All photos courtesy Smithsonian Magazine and the respective photographers.

Science

Slow Life: A Macro Timelapse of Coral, Sponges and Other Aquatic Organisms Created from 150,000 Photographs

Created by University of Queensland PhD student Daniel Stoupin, this remarkable macro video of coral reefs, sponges and other underwater wildlife, brings a fragile and rarely-seen world into vivid focus. Stoupin shot some 150,000 photographs which he edited down to create the final clip. He shares about the endeavor:

Time lapse cinematography reveals a whole different world full of hypnotic motion and my idea was to make coral reef life more spectacular and thus closer to our awareness. I had a bigger picture in my mind for my clip. But after many months of processing hundreds of thousands of photos and trying to capture various elements of coral and sponge behavior I realized that I have to take it one step at a time. For now, the clip just focuses on beauty of microscopic reef “landscapes.” The close-up patterns and colors of this type of fauna hardly resemble anything from the terrestrial environments. Corals become even less familiar if you consider their daily “activities.”

Stoupin discusses Slow Life as well as the threats to the Great Barrier Reef that inspired him to make the video in a detailed entry over on his blog. (via Kottke)

Photography

Time-lapse Scenes of Swarming Fireflies by Vincent Brady

This is a fantastic feat of photography and editing by Vincent Brady who shot this montage of firefly timelapses in 2013 at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri and around his home in Grand Ledge, Michigan. To make the timelapse Brady had to master several different cameras, learn about photo stacking, 360° panoramas, and even how to pilot a pontoon boat to get all the requisite shots. While we’ve seen several articles here on Colossal featuring long-exposure fireflies it’s still fascinating to see them in motion like this. You can read about Brady’s adventures on his website, and learn more about the science of fireflies on It’s Okay To Be Smart. (via It’s Okay To Be Smart)

Photography

Gorgeous Macro Photographs of Butterfly and Moth Wings by Linden Gledhill

A biochemist by training, photographer Linden Gledhill is fascinated by the beauty of infinitesimally small aspects of nature and science, from capturing the flight of insects to exploring the beauty of magnetic ferrofluid. Among his most jaw-dropping images are macro photographs of butterfly wings that reveal complex patterns that look like perfectly organized flower petals. These tiny protrusions are actually scales, similar to what you would find on reptile, though extremely small and fragile. Gledhill’s photography recently inspired an episode of Smarter Every Day where Destin Sandlin learns how to shoot similar photos. (via awkwardsituationist.tumblr.com)

Photography

Creatures from Your Dreams and Nightmares: Unbelievable Marine Worms Photographed by Alexander Semenov

Our favorite photographer of everything creepy and crawly under the sea, Alexander Semenov, recently released a number of incredible new photographs of worms, several of which may be completely unknown to science. Half of the photos were taken at the Lizard Island Research Station near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia during a 2-week conference on marine worms called polychaetes. Semenov photographed 222 different worm species which are now in the process of being studied and documented by scientists.

The other half of the photos were taken during Semenov’s normal course of work at the White Sea Biological Station in northern Russia where he’s head of the scientific divers team. We’ve previously featured the intrepid photographer’s work with jellyfish (part 2, part 3), and starfish.