The Sacramento Bee has suspended award-winning staff photographer Bryan Patrick after it was discovered that he had Photoshopped two photographs of an egret eating a frog into a single photo. The newspaper, which is the 5th largest in California and the 25th largest in the US, says that the manipulation was done to make the frog more visible while still showing a second bird lunging for it. NPPA president Sean Elliot labeled the case a “betrayal”:
If this photographer in Sacramento can diddle around with a photograph of an egret, how can I know that any photograph I look at is trustworthy? It feels like a betrayal. [...] It violates a feeling of trust I think we have with all of our members.
In a paper published in Science this week, Japanese researchers reported on a discovery that jumping spiders use a method for gauging distance called “image defocus”, which no other living organism is known to use. Rather than use focusing and stereoscopic vision like humans or head-wobbling motion parallax like birds, the spiders have two green-detecting layers in their eyes — one in focus and one not. By comparing the two, the spiders can determine the distance from objects. Scientists discovered that bathing spiders in pure red light “breaks” their distance measuring ability. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s an amazing clip from the BBC series Frozen Planet. The film crew used time-lapse photography to capture “brinicle” forming under sea ice. As the beautiful icicle forms, it also becomes deadly — once it touches down, the resulting web of ice kills the slow-moving life on the sea floor. You can read more about the phenomenon here.
Photographer Daniel Fox captured this beautiful (and spooky) photograph of dozens of pairs of caiman eyes staring back at him in the darkness.
Depending on the angle between the reptile and the camera flash, a different colour is produced. Caiman eyes have a layer called tapetum behind their retina, containing crystals that reflect light and make night vision possible. [#]
The photograph was made at a Yacare Pora farm in Ituzaingo, Argentina.
Image credit: Photograph by Daniel Fox and used with permission
Sophie Windsor Clive was canoeing on the River Shannon in Ireland when she came across one of nature’s most beautiful phenomenon: a murmuration of starlings. This is when vast numbers of starlings fly together in giant, cloud-like formations. Luckily for Sophie, she had her camera handy. Read the rest of this entry »
After seeing his close-up photographs of human eyes become enormously popular last year, photographer Suren Manvelyan turned to a more difficult subject: animals. He somehow managed to create a series of photographs showing the stunning eyes of animals ranging from crocodiles to horses. Read the rest of this entry »
A huge photo scandal erupted over in Sweden this past weekend after a well-known and award-winning wildlife photographer admitted to faking some of his photographs. Terje Helleso — a nature photographer who was named Nature Photographer of the Year by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 — was discovered to have published multiple images in which stock photographs of hard-to-find animals were Photoshopped into nature scenes. Read the rest of this entry »
