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So I’ve turned into a time lapse junkie and KJ seems to think it’s pretty cool, too, so here we go again. Just what we need: another project.

I’ve always loved t/l, especially of plants growing, but until recently it’s been expensive to produce decent footage. I mean, you have to leave a camera in a field or the woods for some period of time, taking it out of production and risking it being stolen. Recently, though, I was lucky enough to meet Roger P. Hangarter, a botanist at Indiana University, and an expert and artist of the time-lapse medium. He’s a scientist… and an artist!

He told me to give PlantCam a try. It’s cheap and produces an HD-ish image. It’s early days yet and I’m still learning how to best deploy the cameras, but here is an early effort that isn’t too dumb. This is about 5 days worth of images compressed into 50 seconds. Warts and all.

Devon Michelle Photography did a fantastic job of creating beautiful, memorable images for my friends Josh and Jill’s wedding. In addition to some great photos of the bride and her krewe, Devon Michelle took a couple cool ones of the band I was in for the occasion.

The Gile Wedding Best Band -- from right: Ted, Eric, the drummer from Richland, Ken, me

KJ and I are on the return leg of a week exploring the wilds of Washington and British Columbia. On the first day out, driving west along the back roads of eastern Washington, we stumbled upon this field. The truck here really is bogged down in dried mud. I’ve no idea what the story is, but the image was irresistible.

Don't get bogged down with meth. Photo by Brian Charles Clark somewhere in eastern Washington, summer 2009

Burbia (living life on the edge… of the patio) has a cool image gallery going. I really like the yard sign with the Valentine’s hear that says, “I know you slept with Frank. Keep the flowers. I’ll keep the house.” But this yard whale is irrepressible.

The Rochester Institute of Technology School of Photographic Arts and Sciences has published the Web version of a photo exhibition that showed at RIT in October. The images are amazing.

This image, by Chris J. Barry of the Lions Eye Institute in Perth, Australia, uses a photo-slit lamp camera equipped with adjustable external electronic flash lighting:

This ophthalmic photograph reveals a rare, congenital, and incomplete iris formation that was present at birth. This condition is likely to lead to the development of glaucoma later in life as a direct consequence of the malformations of the iris and related structures. In this region of the eye there are a number of muscles and connective tissues that all work synchronously. The stroma found in the iris connects sphincter muscles which contracts the pupil, and a set of dilator muscles that allow the iris to open. The back surface of the iris is covered by a pigmented epithelial layer, and the front of the iris has no epithelium. The high pigment content blocks light from passing through the iris. The iris influences the effects on intraocular pressure and indirectly on vision. The ability to see the physiology of this condition is greatly aided by using the photo-slit lamp camera. The very small and highly directional light produced by this instrument allows visualization of structural details often invisible using other more common illumination techniques.

Check out Images from Science 2.

A gable on Tim Fowler's home in Seattle. Photo by Brian Charles Clark

Out walking with my friend Nisi Shawl recently in Seattle, she took me by the home of Tim Fowler somewhere on East Howell Street. I was immediately gob-smacked by what I saw: a building that was more work of art than conventional dwelling.

“I saw Tim’s work well before I met him,” Nisi told me later. “I moved to this neighborhood the same year I moved to Seattle, 1996 or so. The Central District is one of the city’s ‘historically black’ areas. People had warned me against moving here, and yes there were crack hovels and mattresses on the lawn but also BBQ restaurants and beauty parlors and other signs–for me–of home.”

Tim was home, we saw, and Nisi called out, “Hi, Tim! Is it all right if my friend takes some pictures?” Read the rest of this entry »

I knew Kirk was a talented guy, so when Dr. Sullivan wrote to say, Check out this guy’s flickr stream, I was pretty sure I was in for a treat. But I didn’t think my mind would be blown by the man’s irrepressible use of color.

Old Plymouth

Of this old Plymouth, Kirk says:

I visited a junkyard near home yesterday and took these shots. It seems this yard was abandoned in the late 50′s since all the cars seem to be that old. Read the rest of this entry »

From Cannon Beach we slithered down the coast a few miles to Arch Cape. We spent some time on Arcadia beach.

Arcadia Beach on the north coast of Oregon.

“The Oregon coast, adjacent to a coastal mountain range, is part of a relatively narrow continental margin where three tectonic plates converge: the Juan de Fuca plate, the smaller Gorda plate, and the North American Plate. The continental margin consists of the continental shelf, continental slope, and submarine canyons along the coast. Much of this area was above sea level during the last glacial period when coastal rivers cut into the land and delivered sediments to the deep ocean,” says the Oregon Coastal Atlas. Read the rest of this entry »