Leigh Beadon over at Techdirt has an unconventional response to the LA Times ant story involving an artist who sketched one of my photographs:

There can be little doubt that the illustration is directly copied from the photo. But the question is, what creative contribution did Wild make himself?

…Wild’s work could never have existed without the ant itself, and it seems like the primary purpose of the image is simply to document the appearance of the species. Facts aren’t covered by copyright, and that’s not just a legal nuance, it’s a reflection of common sense: just because we observe and collect factual information about the world—even if we are the first to do so—doesn’t mean we deserve any control over that information.

Rephrased, photographs of natural scenes are basic knowledge, and no one should own that.

Let’s extend this argument one step further. Because photographs of the natural world are facts, and because facts serve a public good, camera manufacturers like Canon should provide free gear to anyone who takes nature photographs. Web hosts should provide wildlife photographers with free server space. And restaurants- especially the Black Dog Smoke & Ale House, for example- should give us all free lunch.

It’s for the public good, after all.

What ant sex reminds us is that spring can be kind of scary, or at least sobering, particularly for non-humans. Millions of ants, millions of robin eggs, millions of flower seeds, most destined to die before they are even fully grown, and almost all unlikely to reproduce.

Zuk shares a poignant reflection on natural history, and nowadays such things are a rarity in our big news outlets. Read it.

But that’s not why I’m blogging.  Accompanying the piece is a sketch penned by the very talented (and also very deceased) Dugald Stermer:

Giant Carpenter Ant, by Dugald Stermer

The ant looked familiar. It was traced, you see, from one of my original photographs:

Camponotus laevigatus, by Alex Wild

All things considered, I’d prefer to decorate my wall with Mr. Stermer’s version rather than my original field-guidey shot. It’s nice. The script adds a certain NeoVictorian flare.

However, I am not happy.

The sketch could never have existed without my original image nor without my taxonomic expertise in identifying the species. I received no acknowledgement for my part. Somebody else got paid for my efforts, and I got… an excuse to write a blog post, I suppose.  What I mean is, I feel like a chump.

Artists and photographers are, deep down, 90% unoriginal. We borrow each others’ ideas. We forget where they came from. We copy, transpose, modify, build on, and find inspiration from diverse other people. Much of our unoriginality is acceptably divergent, and this is a good thing. Art could not exist at all were all forms of copying verboten.

Yet, some approximations are so close that what could be seen as flattery transposes into parasitism. Stermer’s ant is a direct trace of my work, and as such I find it crosses the ill-defined demarcation between the acceptably inspired and the infringing deviance. It’s a murky boundary, though, and one made all the more frustrating since artists and photographers are in the same economic boat. We should aspire to help each other out, rather than rip each other off.

I should note that this sort of copying happens to me all the time, and I’m never quite sure what to make of it. How much latitude should artists have when copying photographs?

What do you think?

***update

A number of people have questioned how I know it is my own photograph, and that I might just be hallucinating this in order to… what, I’m not sure.

First, and most obviously, I know my photographs. They are my little pixel children, seared into my memory. I recognize them when I see them.

But for you doubters out there, I’ve overlayed the contours of Stermer’s sketch on a 180º mirror of my original:

top: Stermer's sketch; middle: Stermer's sketch contour; bottom: the overlay

See it now?

1. Ask the artist

Want to use this image on your site? Just ask and I'll let you know. (credit: Alex Wild)

Artists own their copyrights, but that doesn’t mean many aren’t happy to share! Often, permission for non-commercial or personal blog use costs a mere link back to the artist’s website. While taking 30 seconds to compose a brief email may seem like extra work, consider that symbioses between writers and artists often benefit both (exhibit A: Primate Diaries blog and Nathaniel Gold). Don’t be shy!

2. NASA

STS-1 Pre-Launch (image: NASA)

Government agencies place most of their images in the public domain. As they should- the public paid for them! NASA maintains a wondrous database of space-related imagery usable for most purposes so long as you do not imply government endorsement of a commercial product.

NASA image portal

3. USGS

Aftermath of the 1976 Guatemala Earthquake (credit: A.F. Espinosa/USGS)

The U.S. Geological Survey curates a sizeable collection of public domain photographs covering not just rocks, volcanos, national parks, and earthquakes, but fascinating early images of native cultures, political figures, historical events, and more. Like NASA’s archive, USGS photographs are free to use without prior permission.

USGS Photographic Library

4. NIH Images from the History of Medicine

Fight the Peril! (credit: United States Government Printing Office)

The National Institute of Health’s historical archives contain 70,000 images, including photographs, cartoons, paintings, public health posters, and other miscellanea.

Images from the History of Medicine

5. Public Health Image Library

A Giardia muris protozoan adhering to the microvillous border of an intestinal epithelial cell. (credit: CDC/ Dr. Stan Erlandsen)

The Centers for Disease Control hosts PHIL, the Public Health Image Library. Most of the content is an unusual combination of being both modern and in the public domain, but check the details before use, as a few of PHIL’s treasures are copyrighted.

Public Health Image Library

6. Wikimedia Commons

Crystal structure of parallel quadruplexes from human telomeric DNA (credit: Tim Vickers via Wikimedia)

The Wikimedia Commons is a giant repository covering quite literally millions of items of varying copyright status, including public domain and an assortment of Creative Commons-licensed copyrighted work. Creative Commons material may or may not be safe to copy depending on the particulars of your intended use and the rights-holders’ interpretation of “non-commercial”, so I recommend sticking to the public domain.

Wikimedia Commons

Ash Sawfly, Tethida barda

How important is light to photography?

Light is almost everything! This observation should not be surprising, as what is photography other than the capture and recording of photons? Likewise, experimentation with light is perhaps the most important practice for aspiring photographers in any field.

I developed the following experimental series for the BugShot insect photography workshop to demonstrate how light source, intensity, and direction impact the character of the resulting image. In my own photography, I do a great deal of 3 and 6, and am starting to do more 4.

1. The sawfly in ambient light: no flash, no lamps. The color is a complex mixed blue/green/white because ambient environments contain varied light sources. The insect's antennae are blurred as they moved during the relatively long exposure. While this photo is close to what our eye sees in life, ambient light doesn't always record well in photographs.

2. We can eliminate motion blur by using flash mounted on the camera. The strobe freezes the action and overwhelms ambient light using an artificial source with a consistent color.

3. The harsh flash in the previous photo (2) can be softened by placing a large diffusion sheet between the strobe and the subject. The point light sources then become soft white sheets, mimicking the effect of a cloudy day. The settings here are otherwise identical to the preceding shot. Diffusion strongly changes the character of the image.

4. Pointing the flash at the background instead of the subject results in a dramatic silhouette. In my opinion, silhouettes are underused in insect photography.

5. Aiming the background flash forward, at the subject instead of the backdrop, adds a kick to the silhouette.

6. This final photo combines the lighting from 3 & 5. One flash provides a diffuse foreground fill, bringing out details on the near side of the insect, while a second flash behind the subject provides backlighting.

Dedicated insect photographers normally employ specialized macro lenses to focus on their tiny subjects. These can be pricey. My high powered MP-E lens costs $1,000, for example, and my 100mm f/2.8 is $500.

But macro does not have to be expensive. Consider the effect of a single extension tube mated to a simple 35mm prime lens:

The Canon EF 35mm f/2 lens can focus this close to a spider hiding on a tree trunk, but no further.

The same lens on a 12mm extension tube allows for a macro shot approaching 1:1.5.

What is an extension tube?

Canon's EF12 II extension tube

It’s a simple ring that mounts between the lens and the camera, holding the lens farther out from the sensor than usual. There’s not much to it: no glass, no moving parts. The tube pictured here is a Canon model, but some enterprising photographers make their own from whatever is lying around. Say, a toilet-paper tube. Or an old pringles can.

The 35mm lens with a 12mm extension tube added (top), or absent (bottom).

Extension tubes work by shifting the minimum focus distance towards the camera. With the lens able to form images closer in, the subject is effectively magnified. Since the tubes don’t have any glass- they just add some extra space- their use does not degrade image quality.

Extension tubes can be used with any lens. Short lenses do well with short tubes, but longer lenses require longer tubes for a similar effect. For instance, the 35mm lens is a good match to a 12mm tube, but a 50mm lens will require 25mm tube for similar magnification. With the right length tube any lens can be converted for macro duty.

The 35mm lens + 12mm extension tube is an ideal combination for catching bees in flight. The lens is fast and lightweight, while the tube adds just enough magnification to focus in closely.

There is a catch, of course. With a tube in place, lenses no longer focus farther than a few inches away. No more distant mountains- it’s macro or nothing. But that is a small price to pay for inexpensive macro.

An extension tube transforms a 17-40mm wide-angle lens to a wide-angle macro. Here's a tropical bullet ant.

Source: Meyer-Rochow, V. B., Jozsef Gal. Pressures produced when penguins pooh – calculations on avian defaecation. Polar Biology. 31 October 2003.

Apparently some of you read Monday’s post on using a droplet of water as a macro lens, because I’ve been receiving lovely cell-phone macros all week.  Here are a few:

Laptop LCD pixels, by Aaron Halpern

Mobile Macro, by Scott Marshall

Salt, by Matt Oss

Mexican money, by Carlos Ernesto Muñoz

This image, by Stephanie Davidson, used hand sanitizer instead of water. Wow- crisp! I might have to try that.

A droplet of water suspended on an iPhone camera acts as a magnifying lens.

I’ve engineered a fair number of inexpensive DIY camera hacks. This one is by far the cheapest: it’s free! Simply place a drop of water on the phone’s lens, carefully turn the device over, and the suspended droplet serves as a liquid lens. Behold:

Crocus flower as seen by an iPhone 4s through a water droplet.

Droplet images are dreamy, blurred at the periphery, and just a little bit…wet. But the tiny subjects underneath are magnified with sufficient resolution for an impromptu microscope. Indeed, I started playing around with the technique after reading that the U.C. Davis iPhone microscope team experimented with water before moving to a solid lens.

After spending a few hours this weekend with a slightly moist iPhone, I am pleased to report the following:

• It works!
• Larger, rounder droplets lead to higher magnification, and as the droplet evaporates and shrinks magnification decreases.
• The liquid lens is jiggly and sensitive to vibrations. The phone should be placed on a stable platform for maximum clarity. For these photos, I coopted a pair of short drinking glasses as a stand.
• Image quality is not as sharp as that provided by solid, commercially available clip-on lenses like Olloclip. But hey. You get what you pay for!
• Water is not generally good for cell phone electronics, so be careful when applying the droplet.

Below are my attempts at iPhone water-graphs.

Odorous house ant, backlit with an LED array under the leaf.

Give me liberty, or give me 10 cents

The water lens has sufficient power to resolve a honey bee's hairs!

A printed image from a book, up close

Fingerprint

Tipping the phone slightly distorts the droplet lens into yielding a tilt-shift/lensbaby effect.

If you try the technique, I’d love to see your results! Drop a link in the comments, or send me an email.

Preserved toad specimens from the teaching collection at the University of Illinois

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Eye of Newt? Wing of Bat? Jar of Toads?

Whichever you wish to photograph, the image can be made more dramatic with backlighting. For this shot I placed a simple desk lamp behind the specimen jar, lined up my iPhone on the other side, and snapped away.

Aerial view of eruption of Mount St. Helens. Skamania County, Washington. May 18, 1980.

I just spent an hour surfing about in the United States Geological Survey photographic library. What a trove of treasures! The archive isn’t all just old images of rocks, volcanos, national parks, and earthquakes, either. The library also holds early photographs of native cultures, political figures, historical events, and more. Here is a sample:

Guatemala Earthquake 1976. Motagua fault trace crossing a soccer field at Gualan.

Native Americans at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California. 1901.

Arches National Park, Utah. An example of rock art. "Moab panel" on a cliff of Wingate Sandstone above U.S. Highway 163 between Courthouse Wash and the Colorado River is believed to be the work of "Barrier Canyon" style people. September 1973.

Yosemite National Park, California. Three Brothers and the forest at their feet. 1892.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. 1969-1971 Mauna Ulu eruption of Kilauea Volcano. Lava fountains and lava cascading in Aloi Crater. October 20, 1969.

Leptopilina boulardi (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) female

A couple weeks ago the science media was positively tipsy with news that common fruit flies fight parasites by… wait for it… ingesting enough ethanol to kill their inner tormentors. Fruit flies boast a higher tolerance for ethanol than most other insects, including the wasps whose larvae grow by consuming young fruit flies from the inside. Flies can drink their attackers under the table, so to speak.

This sort of study is the science commentariat’s perfect story: solid research on an animal familiar to most readers, easily anthropomorphized, and headlineable with any number of drinking puns. Most coverage centered on the flies, but I was curious about the parasites, figitid wasps of the species Leptopilina boulardi. I was especially interested after discovering how rarely the parasites had been photographed. So I contacted one of the study’s author, Todd Schlenke, who kindly hooked me up with some of his charismatic study subjects. Below are a few photos I took of Todd’s wasps this weekend.

A female wasp- less than two millimeters long- probes a rotting banana with her ovipositor.

Mmmm.... rotting bananas!

Male Leptopilina have long antennae for sniffing out mates. This one spreads his wings a millisecond before launching himself into the air.

Fruit flies are attacked by several wasps, not just the lovely Leptopilina. Here’s a diapriid, Trichopria drosophilae, that attacks fly pupae rather than larvae:

Trichopria drosophilae. Those are some serious antennae!

And a braconid, Asobara citri:

Asobara citri

I hope you enjoy seeing these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

source: Milan NF, Kacsoh BZ, Schlenke TA. Alcohol Consumption as Self-Medication against Blood-Borne Parasites in the Fruit Fly. Current Biology Feb 16, 2012.

Now imagine that the predatory spiders incessantly stalking you are, like most spiders, solitary creatures. Spiders, you see, are usually happy to avoid their own kind. They find each other to be rather good eating, after all, so the hermit life tends to be the long life.

What to do?

Well, you can always use an arachnid’s rather ironic arachnophobia against itself. That is precisely the defensive strategy of some Rhagoletis fruit flies¹. Have a look:

Rhagoletis walnut fly

Having trouble seeing the spider? Try the same photograph in black & white:

Now compare with an actual jumping spider:

A jumping spider.

The visual acuity of spiders is such that their prey can use an optical illusion against them.

That’s pretty cool.

1- further reading:
Eisner, T. (1985). A Fly That Mimics Jumping Spiders. Psyche 92: 103-104.
Mather MH, Roitberg DB (1987) A sheep in wolf’s clothing: tephritid flies mimic spider predators. Science 236: 308–310.

Results of a search for "Scientist" at iStockphoto.com

What is singularly disturbing about this result is that iStockphoto’s top search results aren’t determined by the company. Like any good search engine, iStockphoto’s ranking algorithm is a dynamic, organic process driven by statistics drawn from past interest in the content. The Scientist-as-Mad-Scientist,  and the lab-coat-and-blue-liquid cliché, are driven by image buyers.

Thus, these are images that conform to preconceptions of how society wants scientists to look. Stock agencies are selling society back its own stereotype, and the merry-go-round spins ever onward.

Now go do yourself a favor and have a look at real scientists.

image by Maxim Piessen

[HP color laser jet 2840 = $350]

Today’s image comes to us from aspiring macro photographer Maxim Piessen, who explains:

A friend and I need to make a paper for school because we are in the last year of high school. Our subject: ‘how is an insect built?’

We cut the grasshopper in to parts. I scanned the following parts separately: legs, thorax, head, wings, abdomen.

Then, I put all the parts together in photoshop, selected them, and lined them up.

To get the nice symmetry, I used the mirror technique, reflecting all the parts across a midline.

I whitened the background and added a little more contrast to the final result.

Scanners offer an accessible way to make unusual, and unusually illustrative, images. The disassembled grasshopper was created with regular office equipment and could be used in any entomology textbook.

John Mueller's $6,612 image

In January, landscape photographer John Mueller sparked a lengthy debate about the economics of art with a simple observation:

It cost me $6,612 to take this photo.

$12 in gas to go from work to this spot and then home. The camera I took this with cost $2500. The lens was another $1600. The Singh Ray Reverse Neutral Density filter was $210. The Lee Wide-Angle Adapter and Foundation kit was another $200. The Slik Tripod was another $130. The shutter-release was another $60. When I got home, I uploaded it to a computer that cost me $1200, and then I used Lightroom 3 which I got for $200. I then exported it and tinkered with it in Photoshop which costs about $500.

12+2500+1600+210+200+130+60+1200+200+500= $6,612

So if you’re a magazine, website, corporation, sports team, or advertiser who wishes to use this photo, please don’t come and ask to use it for free.

Mueller’s essay hit two overly sensitive nerves. One was that of photographers weary of endless freebie requests, too frequently coming from considerably wealthier parties than themselves. The second nerve was that of people offended by overly simplistic economics. Obviously Mr. Mueller could sell more than the single photo from the same set of gear, so why is he griping?

Debate spilled from flickr across multiple sites. PetaPixel front-paged the piece, accumulated over 1200 comments, and a month later is still going.

Mueller’s broader point, leaving aside the particulars of his calculations, is certainly correct. Being asked for free photo use is insulting if you make a living from photography.

Curious about how much I ought value my own images, I consulted my financial records. Here is what I consider a more realistic assessment of what an image might cost.

My direct photography costs average $6,000 a year. That sum includes travel to one international field site (at budget rates!), a couple big equipment purchases like lenses, and random small expenses like web hosting, gas, bank fees, batteries, and software.

My opportunity costs are higher: $45,000. What do I mean by opportunity costs? This year, for the first time, I am primarily self-employed as a photographer. I pay my mortgage, buy my groceries, and cover my bills from my photography income. 35k/year is what I made as a research postdoc at the university, and 10k/year is my previous annual photography income. The opportunity cost of transitioning to a full-time photographer is the amount I must make to recover my lost income. So, my total yearly expenses, as a full-time professional photographer, are $6,000 (direct costs) +$45,000 (wage) = $51,000.

This photograph would not exist if I wasn't able to pay my bills with photography. Not having a day job frees me to take more and better images. Also, this shot cost 10 cents more than most of my images.

Calculating my costs is the easy bit. Figuring out the dollar value of an image licence is considerably more nuanced.

I do not need to generate my entire photography income from image sales. In fact, I don’t. I teach photography workshops and classes, give public talks, and blog here at Scientific American. Together, these activities amount to $9,000/year. Thus, to maintain an income that’s somewhat lower than the U.S. median household, I need my image licensing agreements to pull in $42,000/year.

My insect image library currently holds 5,000 saleable photographs. I add 500-800 new images every year. To match my basic costs, I need each image to generate $8.40/year ($42,000/5,000 photos). That doesn’t seem like much per image, but alas. The vast majority never sell. Most just wallflower away their time in the galleries. In practice I move perhaps 400 image licenses per year. A more reasonable approximation, then, of the worth of image use permission is $42,000/400 = $105.

$105 for permission to use one of my images is the average amount that keeps me clothed, fed, and housed enough to continue producing more images. $105 per photo is a bargain, too, considering that I have a Ph.D., a string of scientific publications, and my demographic peers are generally earning double what I do. I’m not complaining, mind you. I chose this because I love it, and I’m actually rather pleased that in the present economy I keep pace with my target.

Of course, at a more fundamental level images are worth the same as everything else: the price a buyer is willing to pay and the creator is willing to accept. I merely offer this post as an explanation for why the price I am willing to accept might not be “free”.

A vial filled with oil (top) and water demonstrates optical properties of each. The oil bends light more strongly than water, resulting in a more compressed image.

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Light bends as it passes through liquids, and the amount it bends depends on the molecular properties of the medium. I wanted to demonstrate this effect in a single image by contrasting the refractive qualities of oil and water at the same time using a vial half-filled with each.

I set up a mini-studio as below, capturing the image above on an iPhone 4S.

Poster board, a desk lamp, and some hot sauce. We here at Compound Eye Studios use only the latest technologies.

…consider this:

You might think, on reading this story, that myrmecologists had made a significant new discovery. But you’d be wrong.

That’s because this isn’t a news story. There is no breaking research paper, or even a press release. Rather, this is a YouTube clip extracted from an 8-year old nature documentary called Ants: Nature’s Secret Power (watch on Hulu). It’s been on the internet for years. The only story here is that Julian Gavaghan, the Daily Mail writer, apparently noticed the video just now and mistook it for news. Gavaghan makes no effort to track down the source of the clip, crediting it simply- and incorrectly- as “© youtube.com”.

Then there is this:

After a month, scientists, led by professor Luis Forgi, began digging and revealed the incredible city described as the ‘ant equivalent of the Great Wall of China’.

Who is Luis Forgi? I’ve got no idea. Luiz C. Forti is the ant scientist you find if you actually look up the technical literature on leafcutter ants. But Luis Forgi is what you get if your background research consists entirely of mishearing a youtube clip.

Science journalism has a pecking order. At the high end, there are carefully researched pieces that report scientific discoveries in the context of the field. Think Carl Zimmer.  At the low end is “churnalism”- largely automated algorithms that re-broadcast press releases. Think PhysOrg. And then, lower than the reprinted press release and simply making shit up, is the Daily Mail.

(h/t Bug Girl)

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Working at the microscope yesterday I suddenly remembered Thrifty Thursday. I needed a photo! So I stuck my iPhone behind the carpenter ant I was examining and took this self-portrait.

The insect arrived at my desk via the citizen-science project School of Ants. Thousands of people country-wide are mailing in ants collected from their yards and gardens. The level of popular interest has taken nearly everyone by surprise, and I have signed on to help identify some of the midwestern samples- including this Camponotus pennsylvanicus.

This image would not have happened with my professional-grade SLR gear. For one, I don’t lug all that heavy equipment around with me unless I have reason. For another, the SLR simply doesn’t fit under the scope. It’s too bulky, and the working space is too confined. The iPhone, in pleasant contrast, slides right in.

I suppose you could accuse me of phoning it in this week. And you’d be exactly right.

Click for the full-resolution image

It’s a spectacular image. Click to view in full resolution!

But the projection is slightly…unusual. Can you pick why this isn’t what the earth would look like if you were viewing it from, say, the moon?

About face: the false ant on the rear of the ant-mimic crab spider Amyciaea albomaculata.

Imagine, for a moment, the horror if we humans were stalked by a common predator that hid itself in the open by looking…just like us. A humanoid patrolling the streets like a bloodthirsty mannequin, picking off pedestrians that venture too close. Fortunately for us, this sobering thought is only a grim fantasy.

Australian weaver ants, however, routinely face just such a nightmare predator. Several species, in fact. Weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) contend with a number of ant-like spiders that look similar enough to their favored food to avoid detection by the ant guards. They lurk around the ants’ trails, pretending to be ants and grabbing a meal when the opportunity arises.

During my recent travels in tropical Australia I spent a morning observing an ant-mimic crab spider Amyciaea albomaculata. The following photo essay shows the spider at work.

A weaver ant worker pauses to groom herself. Notice that her eyes are about the same size and distance apart as the eyespots on the rear of her predator.

Weaver ants make nests by binding leaves together with silk.

The spider grabs a hapless ant, injects a paralyzing venom, and drags her victim up a vine and away from the ants' busy trail.

The great getaway.

The spider finds a quiet spot away from the ants' trail to inject a slurry of digestive enzymes.

Does this spidey-face remind anyone else of a Studio Ghibli monster?

Once the venom has turned the ant's innards to soup, the spider sucks the mixture up as though it was a little ant slurpee. This photo shows an air bubble forming inside the ant's head as the spider drinks.

A male Amymyciaea I photographed near the female. During my morning's observation she appeared uninterested in his advances and chased him away. He is recognizable as a male by the bulbous sex organs near his mouth.

See also Aphantochilus rogeri, a New World crab spider that attacks turtle ants:
The Ant That Wasn’t

photo by Thomas Shahan

As the science media today is carrying news of how spiders use defocus to judge distance, I thought it an opportune moment to share the portfolio of a master of spider portraiture. Oklahoma artist Thomas Shahan may scarcely be out of college, but he is recognized worldwide for his startling portrayals of jumping spiders. If you’re not yet aware of Shahan’s portraits, drop what you are doing right now and have a look:

Thomas Shahan

You’re welcome.

For coverage of the new spider vision study:

• Scientific American
• Not Exactly Rocket Science
• Original paper in Science (subscription only)

A winged ant sits fossilized in 15 million year old Dominican amber.

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Is enlisting the new iPhone 4s for Thrifty Thursday cheating? I’m not sure. I try to stick below my self-induced $500 threshold. But, how to price a piece of equipment with a monthly data plan? The real cost of an iPhone is surely higher than list, buried behind details of the service contract. For this week, at least, I consider it fair game.

Amber looks beautiful in soft backlighting. Capturing this image was as easy as holding the piece in front of an LCD monitor set to full white and taking a quick snap with my new phone.

Image by Lennon Day-Reynolds, taken at the California Academy of Sciences for the Love Life 2012 photo competition (used under a CC-BY-NC 2.0 license)

One of my favorite institutions, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, is holding a photography competition:

The Love Life photo competition returns for a second year with two new categories and many more prizes! Submit your loveliest photos of the California Academy of Sciences and the natural world for judging by top photo experts. Then vote for your favorite photos online to be entered in the People’s Choice Award. All winners will be announced at the March 1st Nightlife.

Most categories require photographs captured at the museum itself. One- for photography that encourages awareness of, or action for, the natural world- accepts submissions from anywhere.

The contest allows photographers to retain copyright, and the deadline is February 1st.

Love Life 2012 Competition

image source