Archive | May 2013

Cheapskate Tuesday 18: Flickr: a tera-bad idea, or a good backup option?

The first image I uploaded to flickr: June 16 2005, a crop of a shot of a yellow rat snake I had taken the day before with my trusty HP Photosmart 735. I found it behind the Florida Medical Entomology Lab, where I did my Masters.

Last week, on the 20th of May, flickr announced and rolled out extensive changes to their layout and business model. These have caused a massive uproar in the flickr community; at least among those who have been long-term paying members, of which I am one. I came of photographic age on flickr, and I feel that the new model is hostile to the community that fostered my photographic education.

It appears that the new business model is set to sacrifice their dedicated core photo enthusiast user community (which includes such notable efforts as sourcing images for Encyclopedia of Life and the Neotropical Birds website, among others) to focus on drawing in everyone with everything related to digital storage of media. The aim seems to be shifting from a user-pays service model for their core finance, and into ad-supported massive online hosting of media. How this will play out in terms of obtrusiveness of ads and crappiness of product placement I cannot say. I am personally not a fan of their new layout and formula for making money, and even my decent little laptop has major issues trying to load their massively over-filled and endlessly-scrolling pages.

The new layout could be described as overwhelming…

All that grumbling aside, there is a positive spin that we might make use of for Cheapskate Tuesday! As part of their plan, flickr now offers any member, paying or not, 1 terabyte of FREE storage. The implications of this for remote backup and access are obvious, as 1 TB of jpegs is a hell of a lot of pics. I already use flickr as a backup of sorts, and in fact in my early days, I had very poor data management skills, so my only copies of some shots are on flickr. With 1 TB of storage, I could upload my entire collection of jpegs, and in fact I may do so some time.

If you are uncomfortable with ads, and want to beat Yahoo at their own game, you could backup your entire collection and set the default viewing to private, so that they won’t be out slanging Creation Museum tours or butt hair remover on your hard work. The new model will probably attract a ton of crap photos from casual phone snappers; let them do the dirty work for Yahoo while you take advantage of your free terabyte!

Anyway, this is only a good plan as far as Yahoo sticks to its end of the bargain, and with the massive changes sprung without warning last week, I am not so sure that is a safe bet.

The most recent image I have uploaded to flickr: a Cellar Spider brooding eggs (yes, that one! We are so excited!)

Weekend Expedition 19: Black Widow collecting at Island View Beach

May27

This Weekend Expedition was an important working trip, to collect wild stock for Catherine’s western black widow colony. Catherine studies the sexual communication of these beautiful spiders, and requires wild stock to work on. The purpose of this trip was to collect adult females, as well as egg sacs to give the annual boost that her colony requires. We set out Sunday morning to Island View Beach on the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island to turn over logs and search for a hidden treasure of Latrodectus hesperus.

On the ferry ride over, Catherine begrudgingly shared her breakfast with some gulls.

And became a big star!

Providing some close up views of gulls flying over water!

Island View Beach

Catherine explains the double pocket technique: load one pocket with empty vials, and transfer to the other as you collect the spiders.

Jeff and Chloe search a log

Devin traversed the dunes.

A rare overwintered male black widow. It is darker than ones reared in the lab.

A not-yet-adult female black widow.

Black widows were not the only spiders we found of course. Here is a female hobo spider with her egg sac.

A crab spider waits out the rain under a log

We also saw many Dysdera crocata, the Woodlouse Hunter

which are well-endowed with huge fangs, an adaptation to defeat their well-armoured prey.

A grub of what I presume is Polyphylla decemlineta, the 10-lined June beetle

an Enormous Banana Slug!

Termites, walking in a line. These are likely Reticulotermes hesperus, the western drywood termite. Pay attention Entomology 317 students! Driftwood filled beaches!

More social insect action!

A beautiful Carabid

Lunch on the beach in the rain

A very short collection trip comes to an end.

Posing with the booty!

Weekend Expedition Plans: Island View Beach spider collection!

May24

Black widow with egg sac under a log.

I am headed back to the smog-filled urban sprawl that is Vancouver… But just for 1 night. I come back to the Island Sunday for a quick day trip to collect Black Widows at Island View Beach on Sunday. Here is a shot of last year’s collection trip.

An overly-cooperative model?

May24

I found this beautiful gravid female Phidippus johnsoni hanging motionless, upside-down from a grass stem this morning. She had all the hallmarks of envenomation by a spider wasp (Pompilidae). She was unresponsive, had extremely limited movement upon prodding, and was basically dead to the world. Being such a large animal, it is possible the wasp was unable to drag the spider to her burrow, or perhaps I interrupted while the female wasp was scouting the terrain ahead. Anyway, I took some photos with this suddenly very easy to work with subject, and then returned her to her stem of grass. Perhaps the wasp will retrieve it, and if not it will make a good meal for someone!

You can see in this shot, there is something not quite right about how she is holding her legs…

This shows how big the jumper was!

First Robber Flies of the season!

May23

This morning, on another dog walk at Mt. Tolmie, I came upon my first Robber Fly of the year. It was perched on a closed Camas bloom, which wasn’t very pleasing, so I nudged it onto some other substrates. Because it was a cool and wet day, the robber obliged and did not flee. I do not know what species it is, but it looks to be a small male Laphria, which are known as the “Bee-like Robber Flies”. The Robber Flies )Family Asilidae) are some of my favourites, as they are often showy, have spectacular predation behaviour and can turn their heads to track flying prey!

After shooting the fly on several different backgrounds, I put him on an oak twig, figuring it would be a good place to catch the sun and warm up. To my surprise, a second male robber was perched on the very next twig! Please enjoy the following pictures responsibly, and if you have a fly-gasm, try to muffle yourself if you are in public.

Of course the robbers were not the only flies out there:

relatives of the Asilidae are the Empidae, or Dance Flies.

a wet Calliphorid

A Tipulid in the grass

On the subject of Tipulids, check out this spectacular male Tiger Crane Fly I found yesterday!

Wednesday morning walk in a Garry Oak Meadow

May22

Snakefly

This morning I again took Maggie (the dog) to Mt. Tolmie, a great Garry Oak meadow ecosystem. Of course, I brought along my camera. I was not disappointed with the subjects!

Snakeflies seem to be especially abundant in this park

A Philodromid (Running Crab Spider). Genus Tibellus?

A beautiful Northern Alligator Lizard

Northern Alligator Lizard

another beautiful Selatosomus edwardsi

This is a moth of the genus Adela, but I am unsure what species it is. .

Cheapskate Tuesday 17: Micro Aquaria!

May21

MODDED (20 of 23)-2

A couple weeks ago, I explained my desire to shoot some aquatic invertebrates in small aquaria, using a store-bought betta tank. This larger enclosure will serve well for the larger animals I might encounter, but is not ideal for many smaller creatures. Because of this I decided to make a few really small aquaria using microscope slides and cover slips. I am sure I picked this idea up somewhere, but I cannot recall where. The advantage of this design is that it is suitably small to contain the movements of the animals close to the glass, and is of good optical quality, as the slides are designed for microscopy.

Materials needed: standard microscope slides, cover slips, and silicone sealant suitable for aquarium use. This uses glacial acetic acid as a thinner, so it dries non-toxic.

With this design, I have made three sizes, to accommodate a variety of animals. The smallest is great for things like mosquito larvae and pupae, and one day I hope to get a full pupation sequence…Anyway, the structure of these is simple enough to grasp from these photos.

Things to watch out for while using these :

1) Formation of air bubbles on the inside of the glass when full. This can be remedied with gentle teasing with a small paintbrush and cloning out in post.

2) Especially when working in saltwater, any water splashing on the outside of the glass will form an ugly rime that will mar photos. Make sure the front face is clean!

3) in this small volume of water, heat can build up quickly, so be sure to work in a shaded area, or on a cool day to avoid killing your subjects.

4) release subjects where you found them!

For setting these up, Catherine and I placed the aquaria with a folded sheet of cardstock as a backdrop on a park bench. Diffusers to the side softened the light and lit the background. Flashes were fired with YongNuo radio triggers, and I shot with a 100 mm macro lens, in some cases with 33 mm of extension. I kept th lens hood on to minimize flare from the lights. In the future, I will try a black base below the aquarium to eliminate reflections.

MODDED (9 of 23)-2

Below is a gallery of shots we took at Cattle Point in Oak Bay yesterday, which also includes some previous mosquito shots from Vancouver. Many of the intertidal shots needed extensive post work to eliminate bubbles, which would have been easier had I remembered my paintbrush!

: A small sculpin. Note strange water artifact from drop on outside…

: Shore Crab

: Anemone

: Hermit crabs are abundant and entertaining subjects.

: Some lowered contrast at the bottom indicates unwelcome reflections…It would be better to have a black base.

: Amphipod

: Other Amphipod!

: The smallest sized aquarium makes a good fit for narrow creatures such as mosquito pupae.

Weekend Expedition 18: Around Victoria, East Sooke and Saanich

May21

A river otter chows into a large sculpin at East Sooke Park.

This weekend was the Victoria Day Holiday in Canada, so what better way to spend it than out searching for cool things in and around Victoria? Over the course of the past four days, I traveled on the Saanich Peninsula, out to East Sooke, and around the city to various localities to take pictures of natural things. I also spent some time by the seaside in Oak Bay, shooting intertidal creatures for the Cheapskate Tuesday post to follow. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as Catherine and I enjoyed taking them!

: The Bald Eagles nest at Oak Bay Firehall every year, and are great in the evening light!

: Juxtaposition of a rainbow and a robin.

: Three bird species in this shot!

: My shots of a Camponotus ant colony…Myrmecos here I come!

: This was my favourite of the bunch, with the water droplets adding to the interest.

: This hydro right-of-way near Prospect Lake is great edge habitat where I like to go to find lizaards and snakes

: Full of invasive Scitch Broom of course, but that one is never going away….

: Gulls near Ogden Point.

: Ah, East Sooke Park! The access trail is full of slugs, and used to be full of Red-legged frogs as well, but these are getting very rare indeed.

: Western Red-backed Salamander.

: Trees, light and rocks.

: Maggie was our faithful, slightly insanne companion for the hike.

: Amphipods mating in a tide pool! Check out those claws!

: Epiphytic growth on a fir.

: Stonecrop is common in the drier rocky areas.

: Catherien examines a spider?

: Unidentified elasmobranch. ID suggestions? The jaws were 16 cm across.

: teeth of aforementioned elasmobranch.

: Soldier Beetle.

: Sculpin above calcareous red alga.

: Lots of pink!

: I like this, sea and sky and rock, together with crab.

: A River Otter feeding.

: Looking south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Washington State and a US Coast Guard ship.

: Isopods abounded too!

: Catherine takes a break in the spring sun.

: Canadian Forces CF18, Note the false canopy, drop tanks and live Sidewinders. My brother tells me it was a coastal patrol flight.

: Maggie’s mission is to retrieve stuff, even kelp. It is in her nature!

: A Northern Alligator Lizard at Mt. Tolmie.

: Many species of birds were feeding on very abundant caterpillars on the Garry Oaks.

: Frugivore turns insectivore!

: Granivore becomes insectivore!

: A Lycaenid.

: Dysdera crocata, the woodlouse hunter! We found a male and female beneath a log.

: Check out those woodlouse-killing jaws!

Weekend not over!

May20

This weekend is a long weekend in Canada, so the Weekend Expedition is not over. Check in tomorrow for both the Weekend Expedition and Cheapskate Tuesday….and the fascinating intersection of the two!

In Victoria!

May17

I am back in my real hometown: Victoria, BC, looking after my mom’s dog Maggie while my mom makes a trip to the Rockies. Because I am getting out twice a day with the dog, and sometimes can be persuaded to go out shooting with my brother, there is a good chance I will get some decent photo opportunities. Here is some of what I got yesterday.

Aedes togoi, an introduced mosquito from Japan, was first discovered in Victoria by my entomology professor Richard Ring. This one was hanging out at Cattle Point adjacent to the rock pools where it breeds.