ever wondered what it looks like to rise from the ground through and above the rainforest? the video below provides a 360 degree view along a ride in the canopy crane at the daintree rainforest observatory at cape tribulation in far north queensland, australia.
the compilation includes the ascent from the ground through the canopy, a ride above the rainforest, the sampling of a branch, and the final descent back to the ground.
vivid is a 3-week winter festival of outdoor lighting in sydney, where landmark buildings and popular places throughout the city are brought to life at night.
here are some impressions from vivid 2016:
during two recent trips to tasmania, i had the opportunity to discover the beauty of the island and its amazing wildlife. while the australian and tasmanian fauna generally receives much attention, the plant life here is not less extraordinary.
with this post, i’m using the opportunity to briefly introduce some trees and other woody plant species i encountered on the island. while some of these species also occur in a wider range in australia, some others represent the species’ last/only occurrence in the world, and a few of them date back to the supercontinent gondwana and a time before even the age of dinosaurs. tragically, most of these old species are very vulnerable to bushfires, and a large area was struck by widespread bushfires in january 2016.
on a recent beach stroll on the northern new south wales coast, i came across small weird-looking blue-and-white creatures with lots of appendages. having washed ashore, they looked more like unshapely blobs, but as soon as they got into a bit of water, they unfolded into a beautiful combination of shape and colour.
common names of this creature (glaucus atlanticus) are blue dragon, sea swallow or blue angel. [more...]
a few weeks ago, this outbacky-looking red dirt road led us to one of our research sites at calperum station near renmark, south australia. the namesake “21 hills” – one of these hills is ahead of us in the photo – are actually sand dunes covered lightly with mallee woodland.
here are two customized picasa buttons to automate things that i’ve done manually for far too long. i’m publishing these mostly so i’ll find them in the future myself, but they may also help others looking for a way to do something similar.
sortfiletypes moves all raw files (.arw) and video files (.avi, .mp4, .thm) of the current directory into their own subdirectories, respectively, and deletes .lrv low-res video preview files.
syncraw compares the .jpg and .arw files in the current directory and moves raw files where the corresponding jpg file has been removed to a new subdirectory “deleteraw”, so you can easily delete or move them. [more...]
here’s of time-lapse of thunderstorm clouds rolling in over the calperum mallee, south australia. at less than 250 mm mean annual rainfall, every drop of rain counts. this short rainfall burst brought 7 mm of rain.
recorded with a brinno tlc200 pro at 20 s interval.
