Photographic Environmental Efforts

This summer I was flipping through a Patagonia catalog, and I stopped on a spread that drew my attention. Below the beautiful photo of a waterfall was a paragraph about a group of photographers - the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) - who shed light on biodiversity through their photographs in an effort to implement better conservation in places where biodiversity is endangered.

Here is what iLCP says:

As a project-driven organization, our mission is to translate conservation science into compelling visual messages targeted to specific audiences. We work with leading scientists, policy makers, government leaders and conservation groups to produce the highest-quality documentary images of both the beauty and wonder of the natural world and the challenges facing it.

In their recent RAVE (rapid assessment visual expedition) to the Great Bare Rainforest in British Columbia, photographers and videographers captured stunning images in order to shed light on this pristine landscape in danger of becoming a thoroughfare for crude oil.

Here are a few of the images they brought back:

All photos copyright iLCP. To donate, visit their website.

This is what I have a passion for... protecting our natural habitat, the only earth we're going to get and which we must share to continue to survive!

An artist's perspective on creativity

Fleeing Creativity by ~berthjan on deviantART

As an artist, I think about creativity a lot. Like many others, I often wonder whether my creations are worth the time they take.

This past Saturday, an artist I truly respect, Mindy Smith, did a presentation to a group of fellow artists about creativity. There were so many things she said that I thought were worth exploring further, and she spoke about them so beautifully that I often thought it was a shame we weren't recording her talk. Because they are her ideas and not mine, I will not attempt to outline them to you - they are hers to share. However, there are a few things that I thought so glorious, and have continued to think about since her presentation that I too must explore them and share them.

First, I'll turn my attention to what it means to be a creative person. The dictionary defines the intransitive verb "creative" as in "the creative arts" as "having the quality of something created rather than imitated". In other words, creating is not the same as reproducing. Or, as Mindy put it: "creative is being willing to go beyond what you know now." Being a creative is part of me. I can't be separated from it, but unlike Mindy, I have not yet learned to separate myself from my creative work. I wish that I felt like my creations, once created, did not belong to me - that they were meant for someone else. I think that my separation from them would be less painful, that negative opinions of them would be less painful. However, would I miss out on something truly special if I were completely separated from my creations? Just as God does not wish to be separated from us - His creations - should I wish to be so with my creations? I think for my own sanity, I need to learn to let them go and become what they are to become under the lights of others. It is too disheartening to be defined by one's work. Rather, I think taking a perspective similar to Mindy's, by understanding that the work may come from me, but does not belong to me. For me, this is a hard thing to do.

Second is the change of perspective to seeing what is good about a piece and continuing to work on that rather than constantly critiquing what is wrong with it. I have often wondered... when I hear parents ask their upset child, "what's wrong?" should they instead be asking "what's right?" Mindy's suggestion here takes the idea of focusing on strengths rather than dwelling on weaknesses and applies it to creating art. It seems to me that if we could apply this fundamental idea to all areas of life, including art creation, then it could improve our whole lives. But it could also help with the previous problem I have with feeling too close to my work... It was suggested that we let the work become what it wants to become.

And I'll leave you with this quote from Mindy: "Art is so determined to exist that it will exist in spite of you."

A New Invention as a 3D Animation

In April, the University of Missouri Biodesign and Innovation team asked if I could create an animation for their new invention. The final animation was shown as part of their presentations to potential investors and end-users.

They modeled the device, which I then texturized, animated, and modeled other elements in the scene to bring it to "life" in this 3D animation:


The Innovaject team are: Mr. Michael Barnett, M.D., Ms. Miranda Shaw, Ph.D., and Ms. Xandra Sifuetes, MBA

Butterflies and Caterpillars and Bees...Oh My!

Since I planted flowers in my garden this summer, I've witness a number of bugs enjoying them. The first I saw were bees, and there have been a LOT of bees - incidentally I'm ok with this as bee habitats have been diminishing as well as butterfly habitats - they seem to really like the bee balm and blanket flowers.

 Though I haven't seen many butterflies, the caterpillars really loved the dill - it took one day for a single caterpillar to devour the whole plant - and then they moved on to the parsley. I found five on the plant at one time (Black Swallowtails, Papilio polyxenes) :

I should note that, though it appears that there are two different kinds of caterpillars on this plant, they are actually all black swallowtails. The black ones with yellow spots are younger. They shed their skin to make more room for feeding. The green with black spots are the fully grown caterpillars that turn into a chrysalis. The next day, the three remaining caterpillars were quite fat and my parsley was reduced to nubs (I was hoping they'd make their cocoons nearby, but I didn't find them):

 A few days later I found two of these monarch caterpillars on the milkweed:

 Finally a butterfly - a Common Buckeye, or Junonia coenia

 And just a few days ago, a little further away, on one of my irises that failed to bloom this spring, is a cocoon! It's taking everything in me to keep from bringing it inside to see what kind of butterfly emerges - possibly a monarch? Since you can see a bit of the wings through the chrysalis, I'm guessing it won't be long now.

I've thought about next summer keeping some parsley in a pot and then constructing some sort of cage that I could bring inside, so if I end up with more swallowtail caterpillars, I can bring them inside to watch the whole process. I've found a few sites that talk about using an old fish tank or something, but I was hoping for something less heavy honestly. If you know of anything - plans or already constructed sanctuaries - I'd love to hear from you! Or if you've done this and had success, I'd love to hear about that too!!

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Gardening for Butterflies - a novice attempt

Did you know that most butterflies have a life-span of about two weeks? Did you know that natural butterfly habitats are on the decline? Thankfully there are gardeners who are also avid butterfly watchers, willing to cultivate plants for butterflies and caterpillars. Fortunately, the plants butterflies prefer are also some of the prettiest-blooming plants, with sweet nectar and large gorgeous blooms, so even if the butterflies aren't swarming, there's plenty to see.

In June, after my glorious time with the butterflies in Colorado, I finally began working on a space in my yard butterfly-friendly plants. Of course, I'm not so great at planning when it comes to gardening, so I bought my plants before figuring out where to put them, then I dug up a space next to our driveway - one of the few partial to full sun areas in our yard - and planted my new flowers:

 Just after planting

 All the plants labelled

A few weeks later I moved the Hibiscus over since I looked at the tag and realized it needed a lot more space than I gave it originally, and one of the Bella Blue plants has died, but otherwise all have faired relatively well, considering my lack of green thumb.

 Phlox

 Bee Balm

 Dwarf Butterfly Bush

Daylily

Hibiscus

I didn't get any good pictures of the milkweed blooming as I am having troubles with scale bugs taking over and sucking all the juices from it - actually, they nearly killed the butterfly bush before they took over the milkweed. A daily hosedown of the plants has really helped keep that under control, and today I found a ladybeetle on the plant, hopefully gobbling up all those icky orange buggers.

Do you have a butterfly garden? What plants have you had success with?

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Next post: critters in my garden!

To be in the Studio or on the computer?

Originally I began blogging last year as a way to get myself to continually look for inspiration and I created it as a place to put that inspiration for my own self-reference. Furthermore, often when I come across things that I find inspiring I can't wait to share them with people. Voila: blog. Lately this blog has also taken on another purpose: it's a place for me to share the personal creative work I've been doing. It also happens to be inspirational to me, so I see it as a WIN-WIN.

Though I have been working on personal projects, they've mostly been digital, which means my studio time has diminished to almost nothing. This makes me sad. The other day I was shopping at the fabric store, getting some muslin to begin dyeing new curtains... again (my first attempt with the snow dyes was less than fantastic and my second attempt was less than spectacular as well), and I found the perfect fabric for a skirt I've been wanting to make. I decided not to let myself get the fabric because I already have at least half a dozen garment projects at home waiting for my attention. I told myself if I made one of those then I could go out and buy the fabric. So on a Friday afternoon, I stopped by the library to get some audio books on my way home, and spent the weekend sewing a shirt together.

I listened to one of these books twice, and have since listened to it again. It's right up there with the Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk that I go back to often, which I have previously blogged about. The book is called Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod. You can download the earlier version of his book for free and keep up with him on his blog.

Anyway, what I want to talk about here is the connection I made to one of the things Hugh MacLeod talks/writes about: Putting the hours in. This is where he mentions not being worried that someone might rip-off his idea of drawing on business cards because he does it for his own satisfaction and he's done so many of them that no-one could really overtake him in the sheer numbers produced AND it would be less satisfying for them because of whatever crazy reasoning they put behind it. I am relating to this in my process of creating puzzle photos as well as my more recent little planet creations (though sometimes I think of them as marbles because that's what they look like to me: a moment of time and space trapped in a glass sphere). Was I the first to come up with either of these ideas? No. And I probably won't be the last. My process has become my own and with each one I do, that process changes just a little bit. I create them for my own satisfaction.

I've been doing these puzzle photos for six years now, so I have quite a collection of them, and I'm always trying to figure out how to make them better. Sometimes I just don't get why one didn't work. Typically I can't really tell when I'm taking the photos how the final composition will look, so I've taken to increasing the number of photos and angles I take, which means that I end up producing even more of these final puzzles.

Well I've finally put all my puzzles and little planets from 2011 in one place: in my behance portfolio and I'm working on including all the puzzles I created from 2005-2010.

Pirates 4 - a movie review

While on vacation in Colorado, we decided to see the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Mike had already seen it and was not exactly raving about it, but being a big fan of the previous movies (my favorite will probably forever be the first one), I had a strong desire to see this one too. And in the end, I would sum up my opinion as mixed. I liked the movie, but I did not love it. Note: I saw it in 2D. So, I'm not going to comment on anything 3D.

So, with due respect to the filmmakers - the cast and crew of this film - I'll start with the things I liked:

1. Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush will forever be high in my esteem...two actors who, if I ever make it into the filmmaking world that they are a part of, I would love to work with. Making a character one has played before seem fresh and new without losing what endeared the audiences to them in the first place is not an easy task. Penelope Cruz did nothing for me, so I was happy that the focus was not totally on her.

2. Ditto to the music. I've loved all the soundtracks to these movies, and bringing Rodrigo Y Gabriela on board was one of the smartest decisions they made. I love interesting guitar music (it brings back memories of going to sleep listening to my dad practice guitar when I was younger), and I'm very interested to hear more from this pair.

3. Locations, locations, and beautiful cinematography. Yes, the world is a gorgeous place, and it should be featured more in huge cinematic movies. Even watching the trailer reminds me of that. Capturing vibrancy, beauty and the spectacular which we humans did not create is not an easy task, but makes seeing a movie in the theater worth it!

4. Concept. This can be really tough, particularly in the Hollywood blockbuster world that is our entertainment industry now. I trusted Rossio and Elliott to deliver and on some level they did. The hook here was Blackbeard and his quest for the fountain of youth. Concept: good, execution: less than impressive.

And now for the things needing improvement:

1. They totally went wrong with Blackbeard. He was not at all scary. In the stories told to Jack about Blackbeard, he appears weak because he listens to his daughter and chooses not to kill the preacher-boy. What? A cold-hearted villain, I think not! The characters kept telling us that he is the most feared pirate and all that, but we just didn't see it. Sure, he torched the other guy, but that hardly seemed retribution for mutiny... it just didn't work. I'm going to come back to how I think they could've done that, but for now, I'll move on.

2. The opener did not grab me. Quite frankly, I can't even remember it. Sorry guys, if I'm not hooked at the beginning, it takes a lot of work for me to stay interested. Oh wait, now I think I remember...

3. There were Spaniards in this movie, right? I barely remember them. What was the point? Have I mentioned that I like stories that are driven by character not plot? Well, it's true. You want to hook me into a story, give it a great character - "good" or "bad" - and a compelling reason for this journey they are about to go on. Then shape the plot around that character's journey, not the other way around. Jack didn't really have a great reason for going on this journey. For most of the story, Barbossa didn't either. And I didn't buy into the "Great Blackbeard" thing, so I didn't care about his or his daughter's reason. Remind me again, what was the deal with the Spaniards that we saw infrequently and without purpose except to further the plot? Oh and while we're on the subject, if their whole intent was to destroy the fountain of youth, or at least it's powers, why didn't they destroy the chalices when they initially had them? Supposedly they knew where the fountain was, they could have destroyed that later.

4. We've established that I like Geoffrey Rush. I was intrigued by Barbossa's choice at the beginning of the movie, but for most of the movie thought that his loyalty to the crown was simply a ploy to plot him and Jack Sparrow against each other. But then, there was this really compelling point in the movie when Jack and Barbossa are tied to palm trees and Barbossa tells us his story. For me, that's when the movie has a purpose and I finally get interested in the story - at least two-thirds to the end! But then, they do this really freaky nonsensical jumping from palmtree to palmtree and using it as a catapult that no longer toes the edge of reality/non-reality, but leaps to the side of disbelief. It did not work for me on so many levels.

Ok, so I can't just rip apart a movie that frankly I kind-of liked, I have to see what I think would make it better. I wanted to see it for it's possibilities. And here's how I think they could've solved a bunch of these problems: Open the movie with a depiction of what happened to the Pearl (Barbossa's story from the palm tree scene): eerie, middle-of-the-night ship goes down, perhaps in a way that we only see flashes of faces - Blackbeard's and Barbossa's among others. Then write the rest of the story in such a way that Jack ties Barbossa's story to Blackbeard's more strongly, as they start to do at the end. Take some of the focus off Blackbeard, but show him as this ruthless beast of a pirate that we're told he is. In order to do that, start with something ruthless - what he did to Barbossa and the Pearl! Then, why not go so far as to make it so Jack gets on Blackbeard's boat because he knows Blackbeard has the Pearl...it's a far more compelling reason than Jack's "stirrings" for Angelica.

Well that's my two cents - or most of it anyway.

In a world of Butterflies

In my last post, I talked about my visit to the Butterfly Pavilion in Colorado, and while I was there, I took over 200 pictures, and I couldn't realistically put them all in one post. So, here are more beauties that came from several corners of the world.

From Central and South America:

The Common Tiger Glassywing (Tithorea harmonia)

The Common Red Postman (Heliconius erato)

 Tawny Owl (Caligo memnon)

From Costa Rica:

Metallic Blue Wave (Myscelia cyaniris)

From Florida to South America:

Malachite (Siproeta stenlenes)

From Texas to Central America:

Pink-spotted Swallowtail (Heraclides anchisiades)

From Africa:

The Dardanus or Mocker Swallowtail (Papilio dardanus)

The Narrow-banded Green Swallowtail (Papilio nireus)

White Barred Charaxes (Charaxes brutus)

-yes, it is enjoying a rotten banana with Blue Morphos in the background

 

From Madagascar, South and Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan and New Zealand:

A female Greater Eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina) 

- see my previous post for an image of the male eggfly that landed on John's head
 

From Asia:

Paper Kite or Rice Paper Butterfly (Idea leuconoe)

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Do you have any favorite butterflies or butterfly pictures?

Butterflies Everywhere!! (at the Butterfly Pavilion)

I'm not necessarily a big fan of bugs. I can't stand to crush them under my feet, and when they are big and cockroach-y I scream at their sudden appearance in my office. However there are large insects that I love to see... butterflies! I've never wanted to catch them and pin them on a cork-board, but I love seeing them in nature, and I like to replicate them in my artwork.

Anyway, on our way to Boulder, at the end of our summer vacation, I saw a sign for the Butterfly Pavilion. So, my musings over what I was going to do as my husband spent the next two days writing by his favorite creek came to an end. I knew what I would do.

 

(a female green birdwing resting on my arm)

I got to the pavilion in the late morning and figured I would stay until I'd had enough, which would give me about a 6-hour block of time to play in the sun with the little beauties.

These are African Blue-Banded Swallowtails:

 

After cruising through their less-than-inspiring bugs in cages collection, I headed into the butterfly habitat. I walked into heaven. It was quite hot and humid, so it took a while for my body temperature to adjust. And not long after I entered, I made a friend. One of the volunteers, John, started telling me all about these pretty creatures. He was a wealth of information. We talked of the animals, of how he became a naturalist, of the types of plants I could garden to encourage some pretty beauties to visit our home, and other assorted subjects. 

This was a male greater eggfly on John's head:

John showed me how the white spots on the eggfly can appear blue from an angle because the color is created by the iridescence of the tiny hairs on the butterfly wing.

 The Banded Orange:

One of the coolest things we saw, and it was too quick to get a photo, was a group of five white butterflies in a row, presumably in a chase! Among other things that was hard to catch was a photo of the elusive blue morpho. But I lasted long enough to finally find an open one...

A Blue Morpho:

Unlike the morpho, the clipper loved to show off. I found that I had taken more good photos of clippers than any other butterfly.

A mainland Clipper  (the brown/orange ones are from the Philippines):

 The largest butterfly the pavilion has is the birdwing. The common green birdwing is the largest butterfly in Australia, and they are really something else, both closed and open.

Birdwing:

 A male Common Green Birdwing (the females are larger and not as vibrant):

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Bryce Canyon, NP, Utah

After taking the Observation Point trail too quickly on our way back to camp the day before, hiking in Bryce Canyon was a challenge. But here's the thing: typically I like to hike up first and down on the way back, but when you're hiking into a canyon it just doesn't work that way. Yet, after such a hike, it was painful hiking into the Bryce amphitheater (it's not really a canyon), and coming out was much much easier!

We've finally learned our lesson about paying for more than one day at a campsite, and though we'd planned to spend two nights in Bryce, we paid only for one in case we changed our minds - which we did. Anyway, after we found the spot we wanted at the sunset campground, we walked up to catch the bus out to Bryce Point.

 Bryce Point, Elevation 8300 ft

The plan was to take the Peek-a-Boo trail to the Navajo trail and come out through wall street at the sunset point parking lot. The Peek-a-Boo trail took us down into the amphitheater, through arches and switchbacks.

As we descended, there were numerous panoramic moments.

Once we were at the bottom, most views were hindered by trees and "dead" hoodoos. However, wall street (two really tall fins that haven't yet eroded into arches or hoodoos) was pretty cool.

We were lucky I guess. Last year we hiked the Navajo to the Queen's Garden loop, and since the wall street side of Navajo was closed, we went down the thors hammer side. This year, the opposite was true: thors hammer was closed so we got to do the wall street side. Amazingly, I made it up the 20+ switchbacks out of wall street with only one short stop in the middle. I guess I was pacing myself and had gained some muscle endurance on all our other hikes this trip.

The next morning we got up early to see the sunrise from sunrise point. 

Though we should've been prepared, we didn't expect it to be as cold as it was. One hour of waiting and watching, then we packed up our campsite and drove to see the south end of the park before heading to Colorado.

Here marks the end of our national parks tour for this trip. We loved the beautiful sights we got to enjoy and I've really had fun making all the collaged photos and little planets. The last days of our trip were spent driving and a two-day stopover in Boulder, CO. There, we relaxed, went to a movie, and I spent some time in the Butterfly Pavilion, which was awesome! So, stay tuned...

Photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

This is a series on our 2011 trip. Here are the previous posts:

• Hiking to Observation Point, Zion NP
• Zion NP
• Grand Teton NP
• Sunrise at Yellowstone NP
• Day 4 in Yellowstone NP
• Day 3 in Yellowstone NP
• Day 2 in Yellowstone NP
• Day 1 in Yellowstone NP
• Devils Tower and Little Planets
• Hiking in the Black Hills AKA Custer State Park