Science Photos from 2009
2009's most incredible science photos, illustrations, and installations, published by National Geographic.
Dilemma at Rocky Mountain National Park
To shoot photos, or not to shoot photos; that is the question raised by Erika Price's most recent post.
During yesterday's long trip through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, I often stayed away from my camera to stay in the moment, but I often just had to try to capture yet another photo, because I wanted to remember it, and my memory doesn't provide images in brilliant color. But I didn't want it all to be about capturing yet another image. It was quite a conundrum. Experience it versus photograph it. There were other conundrums too. Look at these incredible scenes wordlessly, or think about them in words while you look at it.
What an incredible experience, to be able to walk through this incredible park, even though it was about 20 degrees and even though the wind was often howling. Down on the trails of Bear Lake, I had my first chance to walk on snow shoes. The perfect tool for the job, when you are sometimes walking on two or three feet of snow. Note: Click on any of these images for a much larger version.
My camera (a Canon SD1100IS is a consumer grade camera with photo stitch feature--most consumer cameras have this feature. I ended up taking about 10 panoramas, because a single photo just doesn't quite preserve that immense feeling of space.
I was in Denver for a conference last week, and my trip to Rocky Mountain National Park was only for a day. Alas, I dreamed of someday staying there for a week, hiking during the day and writing at night.
Then, when I thought I had seen the most magnificent sights, today I was greeted with a brilliant sky on the way to the airport.
Miscellaneous
It's been a wonderful weekend. No theme to it. Just a steady stream of good experiences.
The technological surprise was the Picasa's new face-matching feature. This will blow your mind, it is so good. The newest release of Picasa (I've extolled the virtues of Picasa before) produces thumbnails of most every face in your photo collection. For me, this meant that Picasa came up with more than 6,000 faces. They needn't be portraits, either. Picasa will find most any face in your collection, even group shots, and give you one or more cropped portraits from that photo.
Then comes more magic. You give Picasa a name for one of those instant portraits and Picasa will go gather all the other photos you have of that person in your collection. 
I labeled a few photos each of my daughters JuJu and Charlotte, and Picasa went to work, gathering almost 2,000 photos of each, getting it 99% correct. Quite often Picasa will place a "?" on the photos it gathers, meaning it is not certain it is the same person, but it was almost always correct. It picked out photos of JuJu from age 2 to 11. It picked her out even if she was standing in the shade, even if she had a unusual haircut or a hat, even if her eyes were closed, and even if her head was turned or she was looking down. The face-matching feature even did well in distinguishing between two 11-year old identical twins, who I sometimes struggle to keep straight. I'm using Picasa version 3.6.0 for Windows (a free program, BTW). It seems like magic. Maybe it's one of those military technologies trickling down. Whatever it is, I'm in awe. If you have a big collection and you don't want to take the time to label photos of your friends or family, this is something you should consider.
What else happened this weekend? Here's something. There's a new exhibit on Race at the Missouri History Museum: Race: Are We So Different? The answer, of course, is no.
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Snow falling at midnight
Snow is falling in St. Louis at midnight. This is one of my favorite times. Everything becomes exceedingly quiet and beautiful in a new way. It's almost like you are on a movie set, because it seems a little too perfect. I ran outside with my camera on a tripod and took this shot looking west from the median in front of my house.
Window art
My 11-year old daughter JuJu allowed me to post this photo she took this morning in sunny but frigid St. Louis. She woke up to find this pattern of ice on her bedroom window:
She had actually taken a series of photos, all of the ice formations on her window. Here's another (click for higher resolution):
