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.”

Harold Davis as he prepares to shoot a variety of plants in his beautiful garden.

You might think that TV producers look down their noses at still photography, but that's far from the truth! Photography is a big passion for many of us here at QUEST; the production stills from some of our field shoots show some amazing talent.

Looking back on previous winners and submissions, I really wanted to find someone for this YPOQ whose work was really different than what we’ve done in the past. It was much harder than I anticipated! So when I came across Harold Davis’ photos on Flickr, I knew he was the one, and I instantly contacted him. (And at every possible email address I could find!)

The hardest thing about pulling this segment together was determining which of Harold’s photographs to use! Browsing through his thousands of photos on Flickr, and his professional website, you can see the breadth of his subjects. In the end, the ones that spoke to me, the ones that really pulled me in, came from his flower garden at his home. How fabulous, to have your “models” right outside your door!

The other thing that really made an impression on me was the way Harold is able to show you things in a way you wouldn’t normally see. His water drop images and night photography really showcase his ability to create what his mind can see, but the naked eye cannot. This is my favorite approach to art: playing with expectations; inviting your audience to experience things in different a way than in your day-to-day life.

If you enjoyed this segment, I highly encourage you to check out more of his work at his website, and his digital photography blog. Once there, you will discover that he holds Night Photography workshops and has several books published.

Watch the YPOQ television story online.

Oregano Leaves, © 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

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 Watt

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-Mead

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.

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

Windy Grass – by Erin MaloneErin will be collaborating with KQED staff on our 2 minute Your Photos on QUEST segment for broadcast and web distribution.

Her stunning set of Alviso Slough pinhole images wowed our KQED QUEST editorial staff. Her 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 her own words:

"…My process is primarily to make long exposures with pinhole and zoneplate rather than a glass lens. These long exposures made on Polaroid material force me to slow down and to appreciate the beauty around me. I make beautiful, impressionistic images in a place that many see as ugly. My hope is that these images change their mind about the hidden beauty here."

This was a very difficult decision to make for us – we hope to do another YPOQ call in the near 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.

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for KQED QUEST.