Biography:
I’m an engineer and physicist whose training and career, both in business and academia, were always in the hard sciences, but whose first love has always been natural history. I apply the term “naturalist” to myself because I accept only real explanations for scientific phenomena. I make a strong case against wishful thinking and mythological nonsense in science.
All my subjects are live and natural. I never capture, restrain, or disturb them. I try to insert myself as inconspicuously as possible into an environment, then wait quietly for as long as it takes for its denizens to acclimate to my presence and allow me to record their lives.
I started with birds in Thailand 40 years ago. I specialized for some time in odonates; now I spend equal time on plants, birds, herps, fungi and arthropods. I’m not doing grasses yet -- difficult to photograph, plus they’re our most obnoxious invaders. I’m particularly interested in areas where the amateur can make a useful contribution to the knowledge base: predation, parasitism, pollination and behavior are a few such topics.
I use Photoshop, but not in a way that would violate the scientific integrity of a shot. I almost never use flash. In the field I carry only a digital camera with a macro lens, a chest pod, a DVR, and a pocket magnifier. Sometimes I carry a Garmin GPS unit, but the one I have has such a poor user interface that it’s rarely worth the aggravation.
To add accurate measurements to my macro shots I now carry a small ruler marked in millimeters. This works as follows: after making a shot of a small subject take a shot of the ruler without changing the camera’s focus. The short depth of field at macro range means that if the ruler is in focus it will perforce be at the exact distance as the subject was, so long as the focus hasn’t been changed. Later, in Photoshop, you can convert the ruler shot into B&W and paste it into the bug shot, thus providing the latter with an accurate scale.
I love nature and the micro world, except for chiggers, which I hate. Some people say we don’t have chiggers here -- they haven’t been to the right places. I pick up a lot of ticks but I don't hate them. I note whether they’re Wood or Deer Ticks and put them in a specimen jar. I usually get them before they get me, but not always.
One of my favorite things is to come home with a camera full of shots, cable up to a big HDMI flat-screen, kick back with a cold beer and go through the day's take. Always something surprising: a lurking wolf spider that I hadn’t even seen, or a new detail on a familiar species, something interesting, maybe an ectoparasite; and always a disappointment or two -- a bad exposure, too much wind motion -- all part of the fun.
More of my stuff* at www.pbase.com/iNaturalist, which is badly organized and labeled, sorry. My excuse: between field work, Photoshop editing, and researching of my subjects, I have no time left to fool with HTML and web sites. I have plans for a better presentation, but trying to position stuff with CSS causes brain damage (didn’t you know?) -- I’m looking for an intern for that. This site is best for odonates and plants. You’ll find a decent gallery of Bay Area Lepidoptera there, too.
