Tag Archives: photography

Through The Lens Of A Biologist: A Wildlife Photographer Shares His Story

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Over the last two years, I had the chance to spend over 100 days at sea on board the German research vessel Sonne, transversing the Atlantic and examining all sorts of fascinating deep-sea animals. On these trips, the scientists were joined by someone whose goal it is to bring the science to the people: Solvin Zankl, who has been a professional wildlife photographer for over 20 years.

When the deep-sea nets reach the surface, the biologists start stressing, frantically ensuring the catch is properly documented and preserved. This is when Solvin’s smorgasbord starts, as he calmly looks through the catch and picks out the more interesting specimens, some of which he knows and some of which he has never seen before. Then he slowly maneuvers his small canisters of cold water into the cold room to spend the next hours meticulously portraying each animal.

Since I believe his job is an absolute dream job for many biologists, I asked him a few questions on how he got into this profession and what some of the challenges are.

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Data in Colour: Bringing Photos Into Our Spreadsheets

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Image Credit: Shiv’s fotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped

When I think of the ecological data I typically work with, it usually tells me where plants or animals are, how many of them there are, and how those quantities might change. Most often, these organisms boil down to a few spreadsheet cells. But what if the questions you’re asking are less “where is the organism”, and more “what does it look like”? 

Photographic data is not a new phenomenon for scientists, but thanks to huge leaps in technology (hello, camera phones) it is a booming data source.  Community science – whereby members of the general public submit photos of species they’ve happened across – has seen a huge rise in popularity, thanks to apps and community platforms like iNaturalist. As a result, photo data is constantly growing in abundance, and many studies are quickly adapting to take advantage of this data source.

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Inspiring Optimism: Notes from the Conservation Optimism Summit

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We can’t all be as happy as this little guy when thinking of the planet, but as Ben Cretois writes, the Conservation Optimism Summit is a good place to start (Image Credit: Sachin Sandhu, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

Guest post by Benjamin Cretois

At the beginning of last month, I attended the 2nd edition of the Conservation Optimism Summit. In times where bad news for biodiversity seem to come from everywhere, it was somehow refreshing. We need initiatives such as Conservation Optimism to help us not only keep a positive outlook on conservation in general, but also to open our eyes to new ecological solutions that are being found.

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