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Black Swan

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For Black Swan, director Darren Aronofsky turned to Look Effects to help bring his dark New York ballerina story to life. Look's visual effects supervisor Dan Schrecker oversaw 220 shots for the film, from full CG swan wings to prosthetic augmentation, face replacements and other enhancements.

Having worked with Aronofsky on all of the director's previous films, including Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, Schrecker continued his co-operation with the director this time as a vendor at Look, and the visual effects continued to remain just part of the storytelling process. "The film, which is about this complicated relationship between Nina (Natalie Portman) and her new ballet rival Lily (Mila Kunis), is shot in a vérité style and Darren wanted to have a lot of hand-held stuff throughout," explained Schrecker. "So the visual effects had to basically be seamless and invisible. Even at the end where the dancer grows wings, it was really important to work that seamlessly into the look of the film. There's nothing fantastical about it. It's all very raw and visceral."
Making wings grow
That scene, in which Nina performs one of the most difficult dances and ends up sprouting black swan wings, was realised as a combination of live action, motion capture and computer graphics. "We spent a lot of time in pre-production on the design of the wings and what the final character would look like," said Schrecker. "Darren wanted the anatomy of the human to transition into the anatomy of a swan. So he actually ended up buying us a swan skeleton which we digitised and created a 3D mesh of to morph into a human skeleton. It was great to study and do research into how the structure of a wing and a human arm can morph into each other."

Artists toyed with the idea of giving the character many swan attributes, not only for the wings. "Originally Darren wanted to have a long neck shape but it was always just a little bit goofy-looking," said Schrecker. "It's a beautiful moment in the film and in Nina's head and the wings were such a beautiful vision, and Natalie Portman is really so beautiful, that it didn't really need much more than that. So we ended up with a wing growth and feathers creeping up her neck only just a little bit."

New York-based Curious Pictures erected a motion capture set-up on the college location, using 24 Vicon cameras to film a professional dancer carrying out the moves. "It was a little bit of a jerry rig to get a sound stage set up with a motion control rig onto a location," said Schrecker. "That meant we did have to augment our motion capture data with some hand-tracking, but it was important to start with that basis as far as the actual ballet dance."

For the wing's feathers, Look crafted simple models in Maya made up of curved planes for the barbs and cylindrical geometry from extruded curves for the rachises, or shafts. "Each feather has a deformer rig to add bend in two directions and also to allow growth from the rachis outward," said Look 3D artist Shawn Lipowski. "The body feathers were simplified and usually didn't contain rigs or separate rachis geometry."

Scans of actual Tundra swan, or white swan, feathers provided by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Feather Atlas project were used to create feather silhouettes and form a cutout map. The scans were darkened in Photoshop to create a black swan feather. "Normal maps were generated through ShaderMap to add barb roughness," added Lipowski. "There were ten primaries, eight secondaries, and five generic body feathers in total. Each set was mirrored producing 46 feather textures. The look of the feathers comes from an anisotropic shader, which gives the smooth geometry the sort of directional sheen you'd expect from a real feather composed of thousands of individual barbs. The shader was slightly translucent to allow light through when the wings crossed in front of stage lights. Special care was given to reflection falloff as there is essentially no diffuse lighting on the feathers due to the dark plate and the dark texture maps being multiplied against the diffuse lighting values."

Look built a rig for the dancer and then matched the wing rig with the same number of joints and similar constraints to follow arm movements and twists. "The joints of the wing rig were skinned to a NURBS foil shape which was more bird-like in proportion than arm-like," said Lipowski. "The larger feathers, the primaries and secondaries, were hand positioned on this NURBS surface. The smaller feathers which fill in the wings were placed by mel scripts, which I wrote to instance based on texture maps."

"Additional mel scripts constrained the feathers to the NURBS geometry using Maya's follicle nodes," continued Lipowski. "The body feathers were also entirely positioned and scaled based on texture maps and the mel instancing scripts. The total feather count was around 11,000 and I wrote around 1500 lines of mel code for rigging and scene management. Once the wing rig had been completed and attached to the dancer rig, the reference to the dancer in the master file could be swapped with the updated wing rig."

To grow the rings, Lipowski animated black and white maps in After Effects and generated low-res images sequences. They could then be imported as an expression in Maya to drive things like feather scale and rotation for feather ruffling. "Each feather had extra data associated with it," said Lipowski, "like UV position, which had been stored previously when rigged by the instancing mel scripts. It was a crude but effective feather system."

Animating the feathers relied mostly on keyframing, as Lipowski describes: "The primary and secondary feathers were grown by hand by keyframing scale attributes and keyframing the wire deformers of the individual feather rigs which allow growth outwards - the barbs pop out of the rachises. Additionally keyframes were set by hand every couple of frames to keep the wing from twisting, often around the elbows, and to minimize interpenetration. As the shot progressed, the matchmove often had to be tightened up with additional keyframes."

The scenes were lit with Maya area and spot lights to accommodate the dramatic nature of the shot. "We had enough images to generate HDRIs," noted Lipowski, "but the lighting changes and large camera movement made it impossible for one or two HDRIs to cover the wild shifts in luminance. Lights were built based on the camera track and plate with numerous stage lights above and to the sides of Natalie, six large chandeliers were approximated, several bright footlights near the orchestra were added and three very bright spot lights casting rim light were critical. Even with all these lights, the black levels in the plate change dramatically due to the smoke in the theater, a volumetric effect lights alone could not approximate."

"The shot was rendered in mental ray using the Rasterizer because of the huge amount of motion blur," said Lipowski. "Most of the wing is captured in one big beauty pass with an additional shadow pass and numerous mattes for the compositor." The final shot also included a head replacement of Natalie Portman and crowd insertion for the auditorium.
Faces, prosthetics, tutus and tattoos
In addition to the key black swan wing shot, Look also contributed some key effects throughout the rest of the film. The opening sequence features Nina dreaming of dancing in Swan Lake, playing out in a black void with no scenery. However, as shot the floor appeared to be significantly scuffed and scratched. "It was made up of really long takes throughout," said Dan Schrecker, "so we couldn't really do a full CG replacement of the floor for time and budgetary reasons.

Instead, we came up with an effect that we put over the whole scene that gave a really dreamy look and managed to gloss over the dirt. It also added a layer of caustics, almost, that fed over the Swan Lake idea." Look Effects enhanced other environments to, such as the multi-mirrored ballet rehearsal spaces that reflected the crew. "It was not very sexy VFX work, but at the same time it let Darren get any camera angle he wanted."

The director also remained unconstrained by the dance sequences in Black Swan, relying on Look to do some face replacements when complicated moves required professional dancers. "We did 3D scans of Natalie Portman's and Mila Kunis' face but we ended up not needing them," recalled Schrecker. "We had a formula down where we would shoot the dance double how ever Darren wanted to shoot it. Then we would bring Natalie in and have her go through the exact same motion, same lighting, same camera move and shoot it at 48 frames per second to reduce the motion blur. Then it was a matter of doing matchmoving and replacing the head."

Look also augmented a number of prosthetic effects, creating stylised contact lens looks and animating skin rashes that start appearing on Nina to hint at her eventual transformation. "Renaissance Effects did a great job on all the prosthetic builds and appliances," noted Schrecker. "We just had to add in animation and tweak the look of them for the horror of the film. Also, by basing a number of these effects off of prosthetics, it let Darren get a lot of things in-camera that he wouldn't be able to later on in the game."

In one shot, Nina notices a back rash and picks at her skin as it starts bubbling. "We found that in an early camera test that the prosthetics can serve as their own camera trackers," said Schrecker, "which is great because you have a piece of skin covered in a bubbly rash that needed to be augmented in 3D. That was a pretty big sequence in getting the skin to bubble and have the feathers poking through - which was a big 3D build."

A scene in which Nina has blood on her torso also required digital augmentation when production wasn't able to dress the actor with the stage variety. "At the time Darren wasn't sure how much blood he wanted to show and how much he could get away with," said Schrecker. "They also had these very fancy tutus created by well-known designer Rodarte and they only had one at their disposal. So we dressed in a little bit of blood and placed some red tracking markers around the tutu and the corset. Then in post we used some stills to work out the amount of blood, and then animated that to match what Darren was after."

In a sex scene, a tattoo on Lily's back appears to a drug-induced Nina to come alive as it morphs from a flower into a set of wings. "We shot the scene with a clean back covered in some tracking markers," explained Schrecker. "The art department created the initial tattoo of the lily and we hired an illustrator to mimic that style and create the full wings and five or six in-between frames. Then we morphed between those frames to create the animation of the wings growing. The hard part was matching to Mila Kunis' back and shoulder blades and all that twisting and bending and undulating she was doing."

As Nina's life begins to fall apart, she comes across a room of paintings by her mother that are revealed to be childish and disturbing renditions of her. "The original idea," noted Schrecker, "was that Nina would walk into the room and these paintings would start talking to her. We created a whole series of mouth shapes and eyes that we could slot into these paintings so when we animated them they would start talking." During the editorial process, Look was called upon to further enhance the paintings, with faces melting and wings sprouting out of dancers, created by re-animating the original artwork.

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For Black Swan, director Darren Aronofsky turned to Look Effects to help bring his dark New York ballerina story to life. Look's visual effects supervisor Dan Schrecker oversaw 220 shots for the film, from full CG swan wings to prosthetic augmentation, face replacements and other enhancements.

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Back in 2012 we featured a brief video about a small automaton that could almost perfectly mimic the song of a bird. Using mechanics similar to a clock, the fully automated wind-up device sucks air into a small bellows and forces it through a tiny whistle that sounds exactly like a singing bird. What my non-automata-knowledge-having-self didn't realize at the time was that the century-old gadget was just one part of a much more intricate miniature automaton called a singing bird box.

The invention of singing bird boxes is attributed to Swiss-born watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz who also played a significant role in the creation of The Writer, a programmable automaton of a writing boy that recently inspired the movie Hugo. The basic device includes the bellows mechanism mentioned above along with a fully articulated bird with a moving beak, rotating head, and flapping wings. Several 18th and 19th century watchmakers including Jacob Frisard, Frères Rochat, and Charles Bruguier, were inspired by Jaquet-Droz's to create their own opulent variations of singing bird boxes which are highly prized by collectors today. Variations include cigar holders, singing bird guns, and jewelry/makeup boxes.

One fantastic source of many antique bird boxes is London-based Douglas Fisher Antique Automata who carefully films almost all of their devices and makes them available on their YouTube channel. Included here are a few of my favorites, and you can also watch a number of fantastic technical videos about singing bird boxes filmed by Troy Duncan. (via The Presurfer)

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An Amazing Collection of Mechanical Singing Bird Automata Filmed by Douglas Fisher

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Back in 2012 we featured a brief video about a small automaton that could almost perfectly mimic the song of a bird. Using mechanics similar to a clock, the fully automated wind-up device sucks air into a small bellows and forces it through a tiny whistle that sounds exactly like a singing bird.

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| La maison Deyrolle

46, rue du Bac - 75007 Paris
+33 (0)1 42 22 30 07

Contact communication, partenariats et presse :
adele@deyrolle.fr

Contact Boutique :
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Le port du masque dans la boutique est obligatoire pour toutes les personnes de plus de 11 ans.

| Comment venir chez Deyrolle

Métro ligne 12 : Rue du Bac
Bus : 84, 63, 69, 68, 94 et 83

1. De gauche à droite: Francine Campa (PDG de Deyrolle), Louis Albert de Broglie (Propriétaire de Deyrolle), Isabelle Lawson (Directrice de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts et du Salon des Beaux Arts), Émilie Biens (Artiste).

2. De gauche à droite: Marine de Lacoste (représentante de Vincent Munier) et Émilie Biens (Artiste).

©Lo Kee

Le Prix Deyrolle : l'association de deux institutions historiques dans le domaine des Arts
Temple de l'observation de la Nature, Deyrolle est devenu partenaire de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts dans le cadre du Salon des Beaux Arts 2019, premier salon artistique à dédier une section à la Nature.

À travers le prix Deyrolle, ces deux institutions de près de 200 ans d'histoire deviennent partenaires pour récompenser des artistes engagés travaillant autour de la nature. Le jury composé de Chantal Colleu-Dumond, Francine Campa et Louis Albert de Broglie, a décerné le Prix Deyrolle de manière unanime lors du Salon des Beaux Arts 2019 qui se tenait au Carrousel du Louvre en décembre dernier.
Les deux lauréats du Prix Deyrolle 2019 sont :
- Vincent Munier, photographe engagé dans la conservation de la nature depuis le début des années 1990, remporte le 1er Prix Deyrolle avec son œuvre " Apparition ", saisissante, délicate et émouvante. Lauréat du premier prix, Vincent Munier pourra exposer temporairement ses œuvres chez Deyrolle, temple de l'observation du vivant.

- Emilie Biens est la lauréate du 2nd Prix Deyrolle avec son œuvre " At spes non Fracta " (Mais tout espoir n'est pas perdu), ode graphique à la contemplation et transmission. La talentueuse artiste exposera quant à elle une œuvre chez Deyrolle pour une durée de deux mois.

(Accrochage, éd. Flammarion)
NOUVEAUTE !
La maison Deyrolle vous fait (re)découvrir ses plus belles planches pédagogiques et historiques issues de ses archives. Au fil des planches, des bourgeons, des fruits, des fleurs, des graines, des arbres, C'est toute la biologie et l'histoire d'une nature nourricière que nous découvrons ou réapprenons. L'aventure des éditions de planches murales colorées, publiées sous le nom " Musée scolaire Deyrolle " commencée vers 1871 par Émile Deyrolle, reprend vie sous forme de livre aux pages détachables.

Avec une introduction du prince jardinier, Louis Albert de Broglie.
À retrouver par ici.

Deyrolle pratique

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Comment venir chez Deyrolle
Métro ligne 12 : Rue du Bac
Bus : 84, 63, 69, 68, 94 et 83

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Deyrolle - Taxidermie, entomologie, curiosités naturelles - Deyrolle

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La maison Deyrolle 46, rue du Bac - 75007 Paris+33 (0)1 42 22 30 07 Contact communication, partenariats et presse :adele@deyrolle.fr Contact Boutique :contact@deyrolle.fr | Horaires d'ouverture #COVID-19 #GestesBarrières Tous les mardis, mercredis, jeudis et vendredis après-midi de 13h30 à 18h30 et tous les samedis de 10h30 à 12h30 puis de 13h30 à 18h30.

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Birdman, movie

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Birdman Official US Release Trailer (2014) - Michael Keaton, Emma Stone Fantasy HD

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Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt Birdman Official US Release Trailer (2014) - Michael Keaton, Emma Stone Fantasy HD A washed-up actor who once played an iconic superhero must overcome his ego and family trouble as he mounts a Broadway play in a bid to reclaim his past glory.

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Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson.[1] The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

Starting in the late 1950s, prior to the book's publication, Carson had focused her attention on environmental conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result of her research was Silent Spring, which brought environmental concerns to the American public. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but, owing to public opinion, it brought about numerous changes. It spurred a reversal in the United States' national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses,[2] and helped to inspire an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[3][4]

In 1996, a follow-up book, Beyond Silent Spring, co-written by H.F. van Emden and David Peakall, was published.[5][6] In 2006, Silent Spring was named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover magazine.[7]

In the mid-1940s, Carson became concerned about the use of synthetic pesticides, many of which had been developed through the military funding of science after World War II. The United States Department of Agriculture's 1957 fire ant eradication program, which involved aerial spraying of DDT and other pesticides mixed with fuel oil and included the spraying of private land, prompted Carson to devote her research, and her next book, to pesticides and environmental poisons.[8][9] Landowners in Long Island filed a suit to have the spraying stopped, and many in affected regions followed the case closely.[3] Though the suit was lost, the Supreme Court granted petitioners the right to gain injunctions against potential environmental damage in the future, laying the basis for later environmental actions.[3][10][11]

The impetus for Silent Spring was a letter written in January 1958 by Carson's friend, Olga Owens Huckins, to The Boston Herald, describing the death of birds around her property resulting from the aerial spraying of DDT to kill mosquitoes, a copy of which Huckins sent to Carson.[12][13][13] Carson later wrote that this letter prompted her to study the environmental problems caused by chemical pesticides.[14][15]

The Audubon Naturalist Society actively opposed chemical spraying programs and recruited Carson to help publicize the U.S. government's spraying practices and related research.[16] Carson began the four-year project of Silent Spring by gathering examples of environmental damage attributed to DDT. She tried to enlist essayist E. B. White and a number of journalists and scientists to her cause. By 1958, Carson had arranged a book deal, with plans to co-write with Newsweek science journalist Edwin Diamond. However, when The New Yorker commissioned a long and well-paid article on the topic from Carson, she began considering writing more than the introduction and conclusion as planned; soon it became a solo project. Diamond would later write one of the harshest critiques of Silent Spring.[17]

As her research progressed, Carson found a sizable community of scientists who were documenting the physiological and environmental effects of pesticides.[3] She took advantage of her personal connections with many government scientists, who supplied her with confidential information on the subject. From reading the scientific literature and interviewing scientists, Carson found two scientific camps: those who dismissed the possible danger of pesticide spraying barring conclusive proof, and those who were open to the possibility of harm and, willing to consider alternative methods, such as biological pest control.[18]

By 1959, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service responded to the criticism by Carson and others with a public service film, Fire Ants on Trial; Carson called it "flagrant propaganda" that ignored the dangers that spraying pesticides posed to humans and wildlife. That spring, Carson wrote a letter, published in The Washington Post, that attributed the recent decline in bird populations-in her words, the "silencing of birds"-to pesticide overuse.[19] The same year, the 1957, 1958, and 1959 crops of U.S. cranberries were found to contain high levels of the herbicide aminotriazole and the sale of all cranberry products was halted. Carson attended the ensuing FDA hearings on revising pesticide regulations; she was discouraged by the aggressive tactics of the chemical industry representatives, which included expert testimony that was firmly contradicted by the bulk of the scientific literature she had been studying. She also wondered about the possible "financial inducements behind certain pesticide programs".[20]

Research at the Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health brought Carson into contact with medical researchers investigating the gamut of cancer-causing chemicals. Of particular significance was the work of National Cancer Institute researcher and founding director of the environmental cancer section Wilhelm Hueper, who classified many pesticides as carcinogens. Carson and her research assistant Jeanne Davis, with the help of NIH librarian Dorothy Algire, found evidence to support the pesticide-cancer connection; to Carson the evidence for the toxicity of a wide array of synthetic pesticides was clear-cut, though such conclusions were very controversial beyond the small community of scientists studying pesticide carcinogenesis.[21]

By 1960, Carson had sufficient research material and the writing was progressing rapidly. She had investigated hundreds of individual incidents of pesticide exposure and the resulting human sickness and ecological damage. In January 1960, she suffered an illness which kept her bedridden for weeks, delaying the book. As she was nearing full recovery in March, she discovered cysts in her left breast, requiring a mastectomy. By December that year, Carson discovered that she had breast cancer, which had metastasized.[22] Her research was also delayed by revision work for a new edition of The Sea Around Us, and by a collaborative photo essay with Erich Hartmann.[23] Most of the research and writing was done by the fall of 1960, except for a discussion of recent research on biological controls and investigations of some new pesticides. However, further health troubles delayed the final revisions in 1961 and early 1962.[24]

Its title was inspired by a poem by John Keats, " La Belle Dame sans Merci", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."[25] "Silent Spring" was initially suggested as a title for the chapter on birds. By August 1961, Carson agreed to the suggestion of her literary agent Marie Rodell: Silent Spring would be a metaphorical title for the entire book-suggesting a bleak future for the whole natural world-rather than a literal chapter title about the absence of birdsong.[26] With Carson's approval, editor Paul Brooks at Houghton Mifflin arranged for illustrations by Louis and Lois Darling, who also designed the cover. The final writing was the first chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow", which was intended to provide a gentle introduction to a serious topic. By mid-1962, Brooks and Carson had largely finished the editing and were planning to promote the book by sending the manuscript to select individuals for final suggestions.[27] In Silent Spring, Carson relied on evidence from two New York state organic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary Richards, and that of biodynamic farming advocate Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in developing her case against DDT.[3]

The overarching theme of Silent Spring is the powerful-and often negative-effect humans have on the natural world.[28] Carson's main argument is that pesticides have detrimental effects on the environment; she says these are more properly termed " biocides" because their effects are rarely limited to the target pests. DDT is a prime example, but other synthetic pesticides-many of which are subject to bioaccumulation-are scrutinized. Carson accuses the chemical industry of intentionally spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically. Most of the book is devoted to pesticides' effects on natural ecosystems, but four chapters detail cases of human pesticide poisoning, cancer, and other illnesses attributed to pesticides.[29] About DDT and cancer, Carson says only:

In laboratory tests on animal subjects, DDT has produced suspicious liver tumors. Scientists of the Food and Drug Administration who reported the discovery of these tumors were uncertain how to classify them, but felt there was some "justification for considering them low grade hepatic cell carcinomas." Dr. Hueper [author of Occupational Tumors and Allied Diseases] now gives DDT the definite rating of a "chemical carcinogen."[30]

Carson predicts increased consequences in the future, especially since targeted pests may develop resistance to pesticides and weakened ecosystems fall prey to unanticipated invasive species. The book closes with a call for a biotic approach to pest control as an alternative to chemical pesticides.[31]

Carson never called for an outright ban on DDT. She said in Silent Spring that even if DDT and other insecticides had no environmental side effects, their indiscriminate overuse was counterproductive because it would create insect resistance to pesticides, making them useless in eliminating the target insect populations:

No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story-the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.[32]

Carson also said that "Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes",[33] and quoted the advice given by the director of Holland's Plant Protection Service: "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity'. Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."[34]

Carson and the others involved with publication of Silent Spring expected fierce criticism and were concerned about the possibility of being sued for libel. Carson was undergoing radiation therapy for her cancer and expected to have little energy to defend her work and respond to critics. In preparation for the anticipated attacks, Carson and her agent attempted to amass prominent supporters before the book's release.[35]

Most of the book's scientific chapters were reviewed by scientists with relevant expertise, among whom Carson found strong support. Carson attended the White House Conference on Conservation in May 1962; Houghton Mifflin distributed proof copies of Silent Spring to many of the delegates and promoted the upcoming serialization in The New Yorker. Carson also sent a proof copy to Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, a long-time environmental advocate who had argued against the court's rejection of the Long Island pesticide spraying case and had provided Carson with some of the material included in her chapter on herbicides.[36]

Though Silent Spring had generated a fairly high level of interest based on pre-publication promotion, this became more intense with its serialization, which began in the June 16, 1962, issue.[37] This brought the book to the attention of the chemical industry and its lobbyists, as well as the American public. Around that time, Carson learned that Silent Spring had been selected as the Book-of-the-Month for October; she said this would "carry it to farms and hamlets all over that country that don't know what a bookstore looks like-much less The New Yorker."[38] Other publicity included a positive editorial in The New York Times and excerpts of the serialized version were published in Audubon Magazine. There was another round of publicity in July and August as chemical companies responded. The story of the birth defect-causing drug thalidomide had broken just before the book's publication, inviting comparisons between Carson and Frances Oldham Kelsey, the Food and Drug Administration reviewer who had blocked the drug's sale in the United States.[39]

In the weeks before the September 27, 1962, publication, there was strong opposition to Silent Spring from the chemical industry. DuPont, a major manufacturer of DDT and 2,4-D, and Velsicol Chemical Company, the only manufacturer of chlordane and heptachlor, were among the first to respond. DuPont compiled an extensive report on the book's press coverage and estimated impact on public opinion. Velsicol threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin, and The New Yorker and Audubon Magazine unless their planned Silent Spring features were canceled. Chemical industry representatives and lobbyists lodged a range of non-specific complaints, some anonymously. Chemical companies and associated organizations produced brochures and articles promoting and defending pesticide use. However, Carson's and the publishers' lawyers were confident in the vetting process Silent Spring had undergone. The magazine and book publications proceeded as planned, as did the large Book-of-the-Month printing, which included a pamphlet by William O. Douglas endorsing the book.[41]

American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes were among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson's analysis of DDT.[42] According to White-Stevens, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth".[1] Others attacked Carson's personal character and scientific credentials, her training being in marine biology rather than biochemistry. White-Stevens called her "a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature",[43] while former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson in a letter to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly said that because she was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was "probably a Communist".[44]

Monsanto published 5,000 copies of a parody called "The Desolate Year" (1962) which projected a world of famine and disease caused by banning pesticides.[45]

Many critics repeatedly said Carson was calling for the elimination of all pesticides, but she had made it clear she was not advocating this but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on ecosystems.[46] She concludes her section on DDT in Silent Spring with advice for spraying as little as possible to limit the development of resistance.[47] Mark Hamilton Lytle writes, Carson "quite self-consciously decided to write a book calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture".[28]

The academic community-including prominent defenders such as H. J. Muller, Loren Eiseley, Clarence Cottam and Frank Egler-mostly backed the book's scientific claims and public opinion backed Carson's text. The chemical industry campaign was counterproductive because the controversy increased public awareness of the potential dangers of pesticides, an early example of the Streisand Effect . Pesticide use became a major public issue after a CBS Reports television special, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, which was broadcast on April 3, 1963. The program included segments of Carson reading from Silent Spring and interviews with other experts, mostly critics including White-Stevens. According to biographer Linda Lear, "in juxtaposition to the wild-eyed, loud-voiced Dr. Robert White-Stevens in white lab coat, Carson appeared anything but the hysterical alarmist that her critics contended".[48] Reactions from the estimated audience of ten to fifteen million were overwhelmingly positive and the program spurred a congressional review of pesticide hazards and the public release of a pesticide report by the President's Science Advisory Committee.[49] Within a year of publication, attacks on the book and on Carson had lost momentum.[50][51]

In one of her last public appearances, Carson testified before President John F. Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee, which issued its report on May 15, 1963, largely backing Carson's scientific claims.[52] Following the report's release, Carson also testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee to make policy recommendations. Though Carson received hundreds of other speaking invitations, she was unable to accept most of them because her health was steadily declining, with only brief periods of remission. She spoke as much as she could, and appeared on The Today Show and gave speeches at several dinners held in her honor. In late 1963, she received a flurry of awards and honors: the Audubon Medal from the National Audubon Society, the Cullum Geographical Medal from the American Geographical Society, and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[53] Of Carson, Maria Popova wrote, "Her lyrical writing rendered her not a mere translator of the natural world, but an alchemist transmuting the steel of science into the gold of wonder."[54]

The book was translated into German (under the title: Der stumme Frühling), with the first German edition appearing in 1963, followed by a number of later editions.[55]

It was translated into French (as Printemps silencieux), with the first French edition also appearing in 1963.[56]

In 1964 the book was translated into Dutch (as "Dode lente"), according to Worldcat.org the second edition was published in 1962.[57]

In 1965 Silent Spring was published in USSR in Russian (under the title Безмолвная весна ).[58]

The book's Italian title is Primavera silenziosa.;[59] and the Spanish title is Primavera silenciosa.[60]

Grassroots environmentalism and the EPA Edit

Carson's work had a powerful impact on the environmental movement. Silent Spring became a rallying point for the new social movement in the 1960s. According to environmental engineer and Carson scholar H. Patricia Hynes, " Silent Spring altered the balance of power in the world. No one since would be able to sell pollution as the necessary underside of progress so easily or uncritically."[61] Carson's work and the activism it inspired are partly responsible for the deep ecology movement and the strength of the grassroots environmental movement since the 1960s. It was also influential on the rise of ecofeminism and on many feminist scientists.[62] Carson's most direct legacy in the environmental movement was the campaign to ban the use of DDT in the United States, and related efforts to ban or limit its use throughout the world. The 1967 formation of the Environmental Defense Fund was the first major milestone in the campaign against DDT. The organization brought lawsuits against the government to "establish a citizen's right to a clean environment", and the arguments against DDT largely mirrored Carson's. By 1972, the Environmental Defense Fund and other activist groups had succeeded in securing a phase-out of DDT use in the United States, except in emergency cases.[63]

The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by the Nixon Administration in 1970 addressed another concern that Carson had written about. Until then, the USDA was responsible both for regulating pesticides and promoting the concerns of the agriculture industry; Carson saw this as a conflict of interest, since the agency was not responsible for effects on wildlife or other environmental concerns beyond farm policy. Fifteen years after its creation, one journalist described the EPA as "the extended shadow of Silent Spring". Much of the agency's early work, such as enforcement of the 1972 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, was directly related to Carson's work.[64] Contrary to the position of the pesticide industry, the DDT phase-out action taken by the EPA (led by William Ruckelshaus) implied that there was no way to adequately regulate DDT use. Ruckelshaus' conclusion was that DDT could not be used safely.[65] History professor Gary Kroll wrote, "Rachel Carson's Silent Spring played a large role in articulating ecology as a 'subversive subject'-as a perspective that cuts against the grain of materialism, scientism, and the technologically engineered control of nature."[66]

In a 2013 interview, Ruckelshaus briefly recounted his decision to ban DDT except for emergency uses, noting that Carson's book featured DDT and for that reason the issue drew considerable public attention.[67]

Former Vice President of the United States and environmentalist Al Gore wrote an introduction to the 1992 edition of Silent Spring. He wrote: " Silent Spring had a profound impact ... Indeed, Rachel Carson was one of the reasons that I became so conscious of the environment and so involved with environmental issues ... [she] has had as much or more effect on me than any, and perhaps than all of them together."[1]

Debate over environmentalism and DDT restrictions Edit

Carson has been targeted by some organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute; these sources oppose restrictions on DDT, attribute large numbers of deaths to such restrictions, and argue that Carson was responsible for them.[68][69][70][71] These arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former WHO scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible."[72] Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize this notion as a "myth" promoted principally by Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM).[73][74]

In the 1990s and 2000s, campaigns against the book intensified, in part due to efforts by the tobacco industry to cast larger doubt on science-driven policy as a way of contesting bans on smoking.[75][68] In 2009, the heavily corporate-funded[76][77][78] libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute set up a website falsely blaming Carson for deaths to malaria. This triggered a point-by-point rebuttal by biographer William Souder, who reviewed the distortions used by campaigners against Silent Spring.[68][69]

A 2012 review article in Nature by Rob Dunn[79] commemorating the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring and summarizing the progressive environmental-policy changes made since then, prompted a response in a letter written by Anthony Trewavas and co-signed by 10 others, including Christopher Leaver, Bruce Ames, Richard Tren and Peter Lachmann, who quote estimates of 60 to 80 million deaths "as a result of misguided fears based on poorly understood evidence".[80]

Biographer Hamilton Lytle believes these estimates are unrealistic, even if Carson can be "blamed" for worldwide DDT policies.[81] John Quiggin and Tim Lambert wrote, "the most striking feature of the claim against Carson is the ease with which it can be refuted". DDT was never banned for anti-malarial use, and its ban for agricultural use in the United States in 1972 did not apply outside the U.S. nor to anti-malaria spraying.[82][83] The international treaty that banned most uses of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides-the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (which became effective in 2004)-included an exemption for the use of DDT for malaria control until affordable substitutes could be found.[75] Mass outdoor spraying of DDT was abandoned in poor countries subject to malaria, such as Sri Lanka, in the 1970s and 1980s; this was not because of government prohibitions but because the DDT had lost its ability to kill the mosquitoes.[75] Because of insects' very short breeding cycle and large number of offspring, the most resistant insects survive and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring, which replace the pesticide-slain insects relatively rapidly. Agricultural spraying of pesticides produces pesticide resistance in seven to ten years.[84]

Some experts have said that restrictions placed on the agricultural use of DDT have increased its effectiveness for malaria control. According to pro-DDT advocate Amir Attaran, the result of the (activated in 2004) Stockholm Convention banning DDT's use in agriculture "is arguably better than the status quo ... For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before."[85]

Silent Spring has been featured in many lists of the best nonfiction books of the twentieth century. It was fifth in the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Nonfiction and number 78 in the National Review's 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century.[86] In 2006, Silent Spring was named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover Magazine.[7] In 2012, the American Chemical Society designated the legacy of Silent Spring a National Historic Chemical Landmark at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.[87]

In 1996, a follow-up book, Beyond Silent Spring, co-written by H.F. van Emden and David Peakall, was published.[5][6]

In 2011, the American composer Steven Stucky wrote the eponymously titled symphonic poem Silent Spring to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication. The piece was given its world premiere in Pittsburgh on February 17, 2012, with the conductor Manfred Honeck leading the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.[88][89][90]

Naturalist David Attenborough has stated that Silent Spring was probably the book that had changed the scientific world the most, after the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.[91]

1. ^ McLaughlin, Dorothy. "Fooling with Nature: Silent Spring Revisited". Frontline. PBS. Archived from the original on March 10, 2010.

2. ^ "DDT". United States Environmental Protection Agency. Archived from the original on October 22, 2007.

3. ^ Paull, John (2013) "The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring" Archived 2013-11-03 at the Wayback Machine, Sage Open, 3 (July):1-12.

4. Josie Glausiusz. (2007), "Better Planet: Can A Maligned Pesticide Save Lives?" ^ Discover Magazine. p. 34.

5. Peakall, David B.; Van Emden, Helmut Fritz, eds. (1996). Beyond silent spring: integrated pest management and chemical safety. London: Chapman & Hall. ISBN 978-0-412-72810-5.

6. Richards H (September 1999). "Beyond Silent Spring: Integrated Pest Management and Chemical Safety. Edited by H.F. van Emden and D.B. Peakall". Integrated Pest Management Reviews. 4 (3): 269-270. doi:10.1023/A:1009686508200.

7. ^ "Obituary of Marjorie Spock". Ellsworthmaine.com. January 30, 2008.[dead link ]

8. ^ Greene, Jennifer (February 2008). "Obituary for Marjorie Spock" (PDF). Newsletter of the Portland Branch of Anthroposophical Society in Portland, Oregon. 4 (2): 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2015.

9. ^ Matthiessen, Peter (2007). Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson. Mariner Books. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-618-87276-3.

10. Himaras, Eleni (May 26, 2007). "Rachel's Legacy - Rachel Carson's groundbreaking 'Silent Spring'". The Patriot Ledger. Quincy, MA.

11. ^ Wishart, Adam (2007). One in Three: A Son's Journey Into the History and Science of Cancer. New York, NY: Grove Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-8021-1840-0.

12. ^ Hynes, H. Patricia (September 10, 1992). "PERSPECTIVE ON THE ENVIRONMENT Unfinished Business: 'Silent Spring' On the 30th anniversary of Rachel Carson's indictment of DDT, pesticides still threaten human life". Los Angeles Times. p. 7 (Metro Section).

13. ^ Coates, Peter A. (October 2005). "The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise". Environmental History. 10 (4): 636-665. doi:10.1093/envhis/10.4.636.

14. Lytle 2007, pp. 166-67

15. ^ Lear 1997, pp. 375, 377, 400-7. Douglas's dissenting opinion on the rejection of the case, Robert Cushman Murphy et al., v. Butler et al., from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, is from March 28, 1960.

16. ^ The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson (CBS Reports, with Erik Sevareid, aired on Apr 3, 1963, published to YouTube on Jan 28, 2017)

17. ^ Krupke, C.H.; Prasad, R.P.; Anelli, C.M. (2007). "Professional entomology and the 44 noisy years since Silent Spring. Part 2: Response to Silent Spring" (PDF). American Entomologist. 53 (1): 16-25. doi:10.1093/ae/53.1.16. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 13, 2018.

18. Carson, ^ Silent Spring, p. 275

19. ^ The Time 100: Scientists and Thinkers Archived 2009-06-13 at the Wayback Machine, accessed September 23, 2007

20. ^ "2003 National Women's History Month Honorees: Rachel Carson". Archived from the original on December 8, 2005.. Retrieved September 23, 2007.

21. ^ Popova, Maria (January 27, 2017). "The Writing of "Silent Spring": Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power". Brain Pickings.

22. 1963: Bertelsmann Verlagsgruppe, with an afterword written by ^ Theo Löbsack. 2nd ed. in 1964: Biederstein Verlag ; 3rd ed. 1965: Büchergilde Gutenberg. 1968: first paperback edition (dtv).

23. ^ Plon ed.

24. ^ Карсон, Рахиль (1965). Безмолвная весна : пер. с англ [Silent Spring] (in Russian). Москва: Прогресс.

25. ^ Feltrinelli, 2 edizione, YYYY

26. Editorial Crítica, 2010, ^ ISBN 978-8498920918

27. George M. Woodwell, Broken Eggshells, ^ Science 84, November.

28. Gary Kroll, ^ "Rachel Carson-Silent Spring Archived 2007-07-15 at the Wayback Machine: A Brief History of Ecology as a Subversive Subject". Onlineethics.org: National Academy of Engineering. Retrieved November 4, 2007.

29. EPA Alumni Association: EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus and some of his closest aides recall the DDT ban decision, ^ Video Archived 2016-10-11 at the Wayback Machine, Transcript Archived 2016-10-11 at the Wayback Machine (see pages 13, 14).

30. ^ Oreskes & Conway 2010, p. 217

31. ^ Baum, Rudy M. (June 4, 2007). "Rachel Carson". Chemical and Engineering News. 85 (23): 5.

32. ^

33. ^ Sarvana, Adam (May 28, 2009). "Bate and Switch: How a free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental science". Natural Resources New Service. Archived from the original on May 24, 2010.

34. ^ Gutstein, Donald (November 24, 2009). Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy. Key Porter Books. ISBN 978-1-55470-191-9.. Relevant excerpt at

35. ^

36. ^ Eilperin, Juliet (June 20, 2013). "Anatomy of a Washington dinner: Who funds the Competitive Enterprise Institute?". The Washington Post.

37. ^ Goldenberg, Suzanne; Bengtsson, Helena (June 9, 2015). "Secretive donors gave US climate denial groups $125m over three years". The Guardian.

38. ^ "The Tempest". Washingtonpost.com. May 23, 2006.

39. ^ Dunn R (2012). "In retrospect: Silent Spring". Nature. 485 (7400): 578-79. Bibcode:2012Natur.485..578D. doi:10.1038/485578a.

40. ^ Trewavas, T., Leaver, C., Ames, B., Lachmann, P., Tren, R., Meiners, R., Miller, H.I.; et al. (2012). "Environment: Carson no 'beacon of reason' on DDT". Nature. 486 (7404): 473. Bibcode:2012Natur.486..473T. doi:10.1038/486473a.

41. ^ "Malaria Prevention and Control". East African Community Health. Archived from the original on January 8, 2015.

42. ^ Malaria Foundation International Archived 2010-11-26 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 15, 2006.

43. ^ "The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century" Archived 2016-01-27 at the Wayback Machine. National Review. Retrieved January 19, 2016.

44. ^

45. ^ Druckenbrod, Andrew (February 18, 2012). "PSO takes hard look at turmoil, both environmental and human". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015.

46. ^ Kanny, Mark (February 18, 2012). "Offerings of 'Silent Spring,' venerated material excel". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015.

47. ^ Kozinn, Allan (February 27, 2012). "Capping Off Prokofiev With 'New York, New York'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 19, 2015.

48. ^

Berry-Cabán, Cristóbal S. "DDT and silent spring: fifty years after." Journal of Military and Veterans' Health 19 (2011): 19-24. online

Carson, Rachel (1962). Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Silent Spring & Other Writings (Library of America, 2018)

Carson, Rachel (2002) [1st. Pub. Houghton Mifflin, 1962]. Silent Spring. Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0-618-24906-0. Silent Spring initially appeared serialized in three parts in the June 16, June 23, and June 30, 1962 issues of The New Yorker magazine

Dunlap, Thomas, ed. DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism (University of Washington Press, 2008),

Murphy, Priscilla Coit (2005). What A Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-55849-476-3.

Litmans, Brian; Miller, Jeff (2004). Silent Spring Revisited: Pesticide Use And Endangered Species. Diane Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-7567-4439-7.

United States Environmental Protection Agency "What is DDT?". Retrieved April 26, 2006

"'DDT Chemical Backgrounder', National Safety Council". Archived from the original on December 26, 2005.. Retrieved May 30, 2005

Report on Carcinogens, 12th Edition; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Toxicology Program (June 10, 2011)

Oreskes, Naomi; Conway, Erik M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4.

American Chemical Society (1986). Silent Spring Revisited. ISBN 0-317-59798-1.

Silent Spring at Faded Page (Canada)

Silent Spring (work by Carson) at the Encyclopædia Britannica

The New York Times July 22, 1962 report of chemical industry's campaign against the 16, 23, 30 June 1962 serial in The New Yorker

New York Times book review September 23, 1962

Graham, Frank Jr.; Since Silent Spring: rebuttal to the attack by chemical-agribusiness companies; Audubon Magazine

Doyle, Jack "Power in the Pen": Silent Spring: 1962 (Publishing, Politics, Ecology) pophistorydig.com

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): The Story of Silent Spring - NRDC

Photos of the first edition of Silent Spring

Silent Spring, A Visual History curated by the Michigan State University Museum

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring Turns 50 - Elizabeth Grossman - The Atlantic

Griswold, Eliza; How Silent Spring Ignited the Environmental Movement The New York Times September 21, 2012

The Rachel Carson Council

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson.[1] The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

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On a rural road I came across a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus, "Red-shafted Flicker") that had recently been run over by a car (not mine!).

They have some beautiful feathers (that I intend to photograph) so I grabbed a few and put them into a seal-able plastic bag. As I anticipated, it was not hard to find some avian mites on the feathers.

What intrigues me the most was the sophisticated "foot"... proper name ambulacrum (thanks NU). Obviously, living on the feathers of an adult bird, these mites need to really "hang on".

The first three shots are mainly to provide some perspective. The first shot shows the mites as I found them... tucked in and attached to the "ribs" of the feather. The next two shots show a detached mite. The last shot was the one I was really after... a pretty good view of the pad (ambulacrum) at the end of each of the eight legs. I'm not sure what the actual attachment mechanism is (NU?, Betty?), but it is clearly specialized to allow these parasitic arthropods to hang on to their host.

edited to provide proper nomenclature for feature illustrated

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
bird mite, ambulacra - www.photomacrography.net

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On a rural road I came across a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus, "Red-shafted Flicker") that had recently been run over by a car (not mine!). They have some beautiful feathers (that I intend to photograph) so I grabbed a few and put them into a seal-able plastic bag.

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A view From the Bridge

3Q: Todd Forsgren
Many ornithologists use mist nets to capture birds briefly to collect key data or ring them before release. Photographer and birdwatcher Todd Forsgren has spent years working with researchers to freeze-frame those moments, now collected in Do you think mist netting is ethical? Ornithological Photographs How do you take these avian 'portraits', and which is your favourite? (Daylight Books). He talks about the ethics of mist netting, the challenge of photographing hummingbirds, and upcoming projects such as photographing the lengths we go to to rescue critically endangered species. What else are you working on?
I do. The moment birds spend in the net seems strange and perilous, but is an important contribution to the gathering of data that is incredibly valuable for conservation. Some people don't like it as a practice, as there is a low incidence of mortality. In my view it is justified, especially since recent research suggests that incidents of injury are quite low due to rigorous oversight and training of ringers. Exponentially more damage is done per year by outdoor cats or office buildings with their lights left on overnight during migration, and climate change too. (For example, data from the North American Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship ( MAPS) programme suggests that bird populations overall are declining, on average, by 1.77% per year.) I'm very proud to say that every bird I photographed was released by the ornithologists with status code 300 - meaning it flew off without any apparent harm. By contrast, John James Audubon and other early ornithological painters would shoot birds out of the sky to make their paintings.
Interview by Daniel Cressey, a reporter for Nature in London. He tweets at @DPCressey. For Nature's full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com/news/booksandarts.
Basically, I very quickly create a photo studio around the bird. I have a white cloth as a background, which an assistant holds behind the bird, and a flash with a soft box on it, to create the right sort of lighting effect and to 'freeze' the bird's motion. All the birds I've photographed have been caught in the course of scientific research, and I always defer to the scientist's judgement: if a species is too sensitive or has been in the net for a while we don't photograph it. As for a favourite, I think the keel-billed toucan is the most ostentatious of the images - it's just so colourful and charismatic. I took the photo on a second trip to Costa Rica, on my second-to-last day there; we never managed to catch one on the first trip. The first worm-eating warbler I saw as a young birder was so vivid, that's always been a special species for me. The hummingbirds are very frustrating to photograph because my depth of field is only an inch or so and they're often fluttering around quite a bit. You've got to work really fast. So the three hummingbirds I photographed are also very special.

I'm hoping to ramp up another project centring on wildlife, photographing the great lengths that humanity has gone to in order to alter or restore landscapes to keep critically endangered species alive. I've also been photographing US Geological Survey experimental forests in the American West, looking at the infrastructure and traces of scientists working in the landscape. I find that the alterations and evidence of scientific research can be very interesting in and of itself. For example, at H.J. Andrews and Cascade Head Experimental Forests, both in Oregon, researchers have set up long-term log decomposition studies that I'm following. But I also just had my first child, so I imagine I won't be working on much other than that over the next few months.

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A view From the Bridge Many ornithologists use mist nets to capture birds briefly to collect key data or ring them before release. Photographer and birdwatcher Todd Forsgren has spent years working with researchers to freeze-frame those moments, now collected in Do you think mist netting is ethical?

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Abstract Feather Angel Or Bird Wings Icons Set Stock Vector - Illustration of emblem, icon: 43414282

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Illustration about Abstract feather angel or bird wings icons set isolated vector illustration. Illustration of emblem, icon, angel - 43414282

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http://www.ravishingbeasts.com