Doug Nomura in action on the Bay Trail.

Something about San José photographer Doug Nomura’s pictures of birds in flight, or attempting to get off the ground to fly, grabs you.  I think it’s the sheer energy and effort that the photos convey.

It’s especially timely to be broadcasting our profile of Nomura as the Your Photos on QUEST (please link to our YPOQ8 segment) 2-minute segment on our Oct. 13 television episode, since the Bay Area is inundated with migratory birds starting in October.  The Bay Area is on the Pacific Flyway, a major north-south route of travel for migratory birds in the Americas, extending from Alaska to Patagonia.  As a result, close to 700,000 ducks are usually counted in the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta during October, said John Takekawa, research wildlife biologist with the US Geological Service. Raptors like hawks and falcons also stop over in the Bay Area in fall and winter.

Doug Nomura looks forward to the beginning of the migration in October because it multiplies his opportunities to photograph birds in flight.  He stalks his subjects along the Bay Trail, a shoreline trail that will eventually hug the entire circumference of the San Francisco Bay.  When the Bay Trail is complete, it will be 500 miles long.  Currently, the public can enjoy almost 300 miles of paths.  Nomura, whose day job is as a computer network security specialist, is an avid fan.  “This allows me to turn the cell phone off and go out there for a couple of hours,” he said.  “It’s some of the best therapy one can give oneself and it doesn’t cost anything.  I’d like my photographs to inspire people to visit the Bay Trail to look at the wildlife and appreciate what we have in our backyard.”

Oregano Leaves, © Harold Davis Congratulations to Harold Davis!

Harold Davis (no relation to previous winner Randy Davis :-> ) will be collaborating with KQED staff on our next 2-minute YPOQ segment for broadcast and web distribution. It will air and premiere online on Tuesday July 21st, 2009.

His winning set, Miracle Worlds of Nature , did a wonderful job of expressing a sense of scope and color, with a passion for nature, via a process that captures something unexpected and essential.

More in his own own words:

"The miracles of nature happen in our world at large and in small worlds no bigger than a water drop. The subjects for these photos are in my garden. I look for magnificent worlds of nature that may be, in fact, tiny. With many of these images I have also used studio photography, scanning, and alternative digital image processing to enhance my creative sense of entering an alternative and miraculous world of nature."

We will be doing yet more YPOQ calls in 2009, as well as blogging about great submissions on the Quest web site.

Would you your photography like to be considered for a future YPOQ episode on QUEST? Sign up for our email newsletter to get an announcement for the next submission call, or head on over to our Flickr photo group for KQED QUEST and read the Rules for Submission.

For inspiration, please see our previous YPOQ winner videos:

• Russ Morris
• Erin Malone
• Cris Benton
• John Albers-Mead
• Laura Watt
• Randy Davis

Cycling and photography are two passions of mine that I ardently pursue in my free time, so it was only natural that I felt an immediate kinship with Your Photo on QUEST's featured photographer Randy Davis. Randy explores remote locales in the Bay Area on his mountain bike, which allows him to access places that are tougher to reach by car or on foot. He's often accompanied by his dog Lucky, a Saluki mix whom he rescued from the streets; this requires some skillful maneuvering at times as he has to manage Lucky's leash and his heavy camera gear. We conducted our interview and took photos in the Castle Rock Recreation Area of Mt. Diablo State Park, with the help of fellow cycling enthusiast and sound person Bill Stefanacci. We wished that all of our work days could be outdoors in the sunshine and on the bike!

Randy has donated prints to Save Mount Diablo, an organization dedicated to preserving the land. They're also partners with the Mountain Diablo Interpretive Association, a "non-profit volunteer organization which assists the California Department of Parks and Recreation in maintaining and interpreting Mt. Diablo State Park for its 700,000 visitors each year."

Randy's currently working on a new series focusing on the bald eagles in the Bay Area. You can also see more of his work on his website.

Photo: Laura WattThe Flickr set submitted by photographer, sailor & environmental scientist Laura Watt for Your Photos on QUEST (YPOQ) is all about Water. She's a prolific presence on Flickr, sharing thousands of images with the site's community of photographers. But it only takes a quick stroll through her 360+ pages of photo sets to see that she has a special talent for capturing the infinite moods and textures of the water that defines the lives of everyone who lives in the Bay Area.

The mark of a good photographer is their ability not only to capture a moment in time but to first explore, discover and see the world around us. Laura Watt shares that entire process with her viewer. We follow her along the path of becoming interested in a subject then obsessively exploring its essence through the act of photographing it. The results are poetic, personal, intimate and beautiful.

Laura's professional background also adds dimension to her work. She's a teacher of Environmental Studies at Sonoma State University and her own research explores the interface between the natural world and the cultural history of a place. Specifically, she's working on a book with about what has happened to both the natural and cultural landscape of Point Reyes since the National Park Service began managing it as a park in the 1960’s and how becoming a park affected that area's cultural legacy. That book will also include her photos.

For me as TV storyteller, I think I was most excited when I discovered that along with Laura Watt's sumptuous images comes a compelling family narrative. Both parents are biologists and photographers and she and her sister spent most of their summers at a field research station in Colorado's Rocky Mountains where her Dad studies high altitude butterflies. Her parents took beautiful photographs of the family, many of which Laura scans and shares on her Flickr pages. Her personal notes and descriptions of many of her photos are especially touching, like this one that accompanied a gorgeous photo of Laura’s "grandmahelen" as a young woman.

Today in my yoga class, our wonderful teacher Peggy told us a story during a particularly intense hip stretch (probably to take our minds off it!) — her grandmother passed away last Thursday, at the age of 105 — and she and her sisters were able to go be with her in the hospital & say goodbye — and her grandmother was speaking in a somewhat sing-song voice, and in the mix said that she was riding her bike to god — they all looked at each other and asked her, what did you say? and she clarified that she was riding her bike WITH god — a particularly wonderful image, because in all her 105 years, she'd never learned to ride a bike — but there she was, on one now!

Despite my own religious agnosticism/disbelief, I absolutely love this idea — the image has stuck with me all afternoon. my own grandmothers both lived long, rich lives — grandmahelen died in 2002, a month shy of her 92nd birthday, and my paternal grandmother grammie passed last summer at the age of 94 — and i love to think of them both riding bikes up in the sky somewhere…

We interviewed Laura on her boat, where she lives with her cats Sophie and Louise. We talked for an hour for two minutes of TV and she showed us a sample of her 15 cameras which she uses to differing effect in her photographs. It's interesting to look at her photo sets on Flickr as they are grouped by the types of cameras she uses. One can really begin to understand that each camera is like a different instrument playing the same note but sounding completely distinct and having different tones.

For a more selective sample of Laura Watt's photography, visit her shutterpixie pages.

Watch the Your Photos On Quest: Laura Watt television story online.

For those of you who are interested in entering your photos for consideration in future YPOQ episodes, sign up for our email newsletter to get an announcement for the next submission call, or head on over to our Flickr photo group for KQED QUEST.

Photo: John Albers-MeadWe put out a call for submissions for this Your Photos on Quest segment a little late. As a result, we only got a handful of submissions. Thankfully, John Albers-Mead was one of them. Everyone who looked at his photos inevitably ended up calling a nearby colleague over to their computer screen saying, "Wow, you've GOT to take a look at this photo!" We were amazed by the details, the light, the colors, the textures and the compositions of his images. And we were especially blown away when we learned that he does not do any underwater photography! Looking at his photos, you would swear that his camera is in an underwater housing. In fact, we really didn't believe it and I ended up asking him about it three times just to make sure.

If you've ever tried to photograph something beneath the water's surface, you know how challenging it is to make sure there's enough light on the object to reveal its details but at the same time, to be careful not to get reflections on the water, thereby obstructing the view. It takes patience. And time. Albers-Mead says he composes the whole photograph based on the light. At one point in the interview, he told me (with the giddiness of a child at Christmas) that one time, he lay at the lip of a single tide pool for 2 hours waiting for the right light. He was perfectly happy just observing the tide pool drama unfolding, in which a couple of nudibranchs munched on each other. He is the quintessential "amateur," meaning he makes these trips to the tide pools a couple of times a month for the LOVE of it.

He shares his photos on Flickr and has quite a following. But he is also a docent at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach. If folks have an interest in tide pools, this is the place to go. Of course, this area is also prime real estate and it wasn't so long ago that this area was slated for development. Now, with rising sea levels and temperatures, as well as the acidification of ocean water, these tide pools may not be around forever. But while they are, I would recommend looking at John Albers-Mead's Flickr set BEFORE you go see them in person. I guarantee that you will have a deeper appreciation for the tide pools when you first see them through his loving eyes.

Watch the Your Photos On Quest: John Albers-Mead television story online.

For those of you who are interested in entering your photos for consideration in future YPOQ episodes, sign up for our email newsletter to get an announcement for the next submission call, or head on over to our Flickr photo group for KQED QUEST.

Congratulations to jalbersmead!

Flickr photo community member jalbersmead (John Albers-Mead) will be collaborating with KQED staff on our next 2-minute YPOQ segment for broadcast and web distribution. It will air on November 18, 2008.

His wonderful set of tidepool images from Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach wowed our KQED QUEST editorial staff. His winning submission did a wonderful job of expressing a sense of locale, with a passion for nature, via a process that captures something unexpected and essential.

In his own words:

"Going to tide pools is like a treasure hunt that changes by the minute. The colors, textures, smells, movement, and general feeling of life makes this one of the places where I feel connected with the world."

This was a very difficult decision to make for us – we hope to do more YPOQ calls in the future. If you wish, you may leave your submissions open and we will consider them again in the next round. Sincere thanks to all who participated.

For those of you who are interested in entering the future, sign up for our email newsletter to get an announcement for the next submission call, or head on over to our Flickr photo group for KQED QUEST.

'Candy Tuft' by Hannah Polleck, Age 11I am always amazed at the pace of technology and curious how the next generation relates to the ever-increasing pace. I am a gadget girl – CNET is one of my favorite websites and I get a kick out of reading all the reviews and comparing before I settle on buying something. However, I can remember, albeit vaguely, life without internet or cell phones. This is giving away my age but in my 20's I lived in England and cell phones and texting broke there before coming to the states. I remember the plethora of people on cell phones being so foreign to me. It was if this was a new species, communicating in a technological way. That and I thought one out of five people were crazy because they were talking to themselves, or they seemed to be, while briskly walking towards Oxford Circus.

For the next generation, cell phones, computers, and digital cameras are something they have always known. While I had to get to know how to use the technology as it was developed, they have been introduced to it already molded and they are incredibly comfortable using it. This became readily clear to me coordinating the California in Your Backyard Youth Photo Contest. The creators of this contest and subsequent exhibit designers decided to only take digital entries. Thus only digital cameras were used and it was less of a deterrent that I surmised. We were even able to get a donation of digital cameras to a classroom of students in the area. Not only are permanent digital cameras readily accessible, now disposable cameras come with the option for digital images rather than film. For the class, we were able to get children-friendly digital cameras they could re-use.

The work of all those who entered the contest was impressive. The judges were blown away by the level of detail and sharpness of the pictures. Some entries rivaled the quality of professionals shooting with film. Half of the equation of this high quality was of course the digital medium but I believe the other part children's innate ability to immerse themselves in a state of wonder and curiosity. Images were up close and imaginative. There was a great sense of play in the 150 submissions that were received.

Only twenty-five of the images were chosen to be displayed in the Children's Gallery of California Academy of Sciences. Winners were announced on August 1^st, 2008 and they received cash prizes as an award. However, the judges were so impressed by the level of work, the decision was made that all the submissions should have a chance to be displayed. So through the grace of technology, an online gallery was created, housing all the work submitted in the contest. You can browse through the images at www.calacademy.org/gallery.

Working on this project has given me a new sense of wonder about technology. As the museum is being built, multi-media and technology is being incorporated into the space to better relate relevant material to the public. It is an ever-changing medium but one that can bring up to the minute data. I am very curious how the next generation will take this information and technology and run with it and what they will create for future generations.

The camera has long been an invaluable tool of field researchers. For example, the initial identification of a new mammal species was initiated by a camera trap set up by Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Sciences in the Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains. Both Francesco Rovero and Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences followed this photographic proof toward the discovery of a new species of Giant Elephant Shrew – the grey-faced Sengi. Photographs allow researchers to view their surroundings in a more intimate way and extrapolate meaningful data. It can even lead to incredible discoveries.

The California Academy of Sciences is asking youth to get behind the camera to find discoveries in their backyard. On April 15, 2008, the Academy launched a photo contest for youth between the ages of 8 & 12 – "Through the Lens: California in your backyard". Future photographers, researchers and scientists are right in our own backyard and the Academy is curious about what they are seeing in their surroundings. This contest will give youth a chance to have a researcher's eye – to "get up close" and document what they observe.

The photographers with the "best eye" will have their work hung in a museum. The work of winning photographers will be exhibited as part of the Children's Gallery at the Grand Re-opening of the California Academy of Sciences on September 27, 2008 and throughout the inaugural year. Winning photographers will also be awarded cash prizes.

It is up to the photographer how to convey the theme of this contest – "California in your backyard" and the Academy's mission – to explore, explain and protect the natural world. All photographers entering the contest are encouraged to have lots of fun and be as creative as possible.

The deadline to submit photographs is May 26, 2008. Contest rules and submission instructions can be found at www.calacademy.org/contest. Aspiring and curious youth photographers are encouraged to submit work. It might be the catalyst to another great discovery!

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.

View our original YPOQ pilot
featuring photographer Russ MorrisDo you love photographing Science, Environment and Nature in Northern California? Would you like to collaborate on a 2-minute QUEST TV short about your photography for an audience of over 100,000 viewers?

We're launching a call for submissions for our new series of TV shorts, "YPOQ: Your Photos on QUEST." These are broadcast alongside our feature stories. Our pilot YPOQ broadcast in Season 1 featured local photographer Russ Morris.

We're looking for more than stunning nature photography. We seek to collaborate with a local photographer who is inspired by science, environment and nature in Northern California, and uses innovative approaches to express their unique vision of our region.

Key Dates

Submissions due: February 27th, 2008
Selection announcenment: March 3rd, 2008.
TV Broadcast : May 20, 2008.

Although we can only broadcast one photographer's work on the air on May 20, we also plan to feature selected submissions here on the KQED QUEST Community Science Blog.

We are running this call through Flickr, a website for sharing photos and much more. It's free to join and participate. See our discussion topic on Flickr for details!

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for QUEST.