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.

This field photo of a California Newt (Taricha torosa)
egg cluster and more are free for educational use
What does the metamorphosis of a butterfly look like? What kinds of creatures live in a tidal pool? And just how big is a shark’s tooth? When questions like these come up in science classrooms, some educators are now using digital images to help students frame responses and connect their classrooms with the real world. And, with advances in digital technologies that enable effortless access to digital images, integrating digital pictures into the curriculum has never been easier.

These are some of the reasons Bay Area science educators like Aaron Vanderwerff are using photo-sharing websites such as Flickr to develop innovative image-based activities for their classrooms. Vanderwerff, a teacher and Science Department Chair at San Lorenzo High School, uploaded sets of pictures to Flickr and asked groups of students to select an image and comment on it. Students’ comments focused on observations about the photos as well as inferences they made about the situation. And more and more educators are using digital photos to change the way their students see science. Other examples of Flickr-based educational activities include encouraging students to create collaborative photo sets, facilitating discussions by writing notes and comments, teaching categories and classifications using tags, and geotagging images to connect them with physical locations on a map.

Flickr also houses an extensive collection of community-contributed digital images, including a large number of photos made available by QUEST through the QUEST Collections and the QUEST Pool. The QUEST Collections contain photos related to QUEST stories and the photos in the QUEST Pool are contributed by people who sign up to join the QUEST Flickr Photo Group. All photos in the QUEST Collections are available for use in educational projects and can be downloaded and modified for free under Creative Commons licensing.

'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.

Do 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 our 3rd call for submissions for our new series of TV shorts, "YPOQ: Your Photos on QUEST." These are broadcast alongside our feature stories.

Previous and upcoming winners:

• Russ Morris
• Erin Malone
• Cris Benton (coming soon)

Could you be next?

We're looking for more than stunning nature photography. We seek to collaborate with a local photographer from our QUEST flickr groups 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 for YPOQ #3

Submissions due: August 21st, 2008
Selection annoucenment: August 26th, 2008
TV Broadcast : November 11, 2008

Although we can only broadcast one photographer's work on the air on November 11, we also plan to feature selected submissions on the KQED QUEST Community Science Blog.

Requirements

* You must be an individual over 18 (no minors or group submissions)
* You must be a current Flickr user in good standing
* You're a resident of Northern California – loosely defined as spanning the region from Mendocino to Monterey counties (N to S) and Sacramento to Santa Clara counties (E – W). This is the coverage area of our show.
* Be able to make available 20-50 images as source material (2 minutes moves fast!)
* If selected, you'll need to sign a release for materials use specifically for the QUEST TV show, web presence, blog and the promotion thereof (see fine print below)
* Available for an in-person audio interview and photo review/selection with a QUEST TV producer & audio engineer, either at the KQED studios in San Francisco, or other agreed-upon location, during business hours between August27th and September 12th.

How to Submit

* 1 entry per person
* Original photographic work only
* 1920 x 1080 minimum resolution (higher is better)
* Create a set that best represents your submission, and tag them with: YPOQ
* Add a 100-word description to your set telling us about your creative and technical process, and why you'd like us to consider your work
* Join the KQED QUEST flickr group and add all 10 photos to the pool
* Add your YPOQ set URL and a brief introduction to the YPOQ 3 Submissions discussion topic.
* If you submitted for YPOQ before, your entry is automatically eligible for consideration in YPOQ #3. You may also submit a new or updated set to the topic above.

We'd also like you to make KQED QUEST a contact, though it's not required.

Fine Print

* You will retain the rights to your original work.
* Rights clearances: in order to make the TV piece and promote it, KQED will need you to grant rights to recordings and derivative works for use in connection with QUEST. We won't do anything else without asking you first.
* This not a paid commission, but a collaboration. As a result KQED is unable to cover costs (e.g. travel & time, prints / processing, royalties)
* The choice of photographer is solely at the discretion of KQED.
* The producer's & editor's decisions are final regarding all aspects of the finished video work.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing your submissions!

KQED QUEST Team

Image Source: luxomediaSan Francisco's got lofty plans to improve safety and convenience for cyclists. And with gas prices rising, parking a headache, and a desire to reduce their carbon footprint, more and more San Franciscans are cycling in the city to work and to do errands. Cycling rose 15% between 2006 and 2007, and injuries from bicycle collisions are down over a 10-year period, according to municipal studies. But the city's been spinning its wheels to increase bike lanes because a 2006 injunction has barred their installation. And it's still an uphill climb, even here where environmental consciousness is high, to convince people to cut their car use.

Quest follows a recent convert as they negotiate the treacherous streets of S.F., guided by a member of the city's bicycle coalition. We add up the gas and carbon emissions they are saving and find out what has prevented would-be riders from commuting on bike. lastly, we talk with city traffic managers and find out what the most bike-friendly cities are doing. Marjorie Sun reports.

You may listen to the "Bike to Work" Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources. And please share your San Francisco Bike Commute photos with us in our Bike to Work Day Flickr Pool.

Andrea Kissack is Senior Editor for QUEST at KQED Public Radio.