Arquivos de periódicos de setembro 2016

12 de setembro de 2016

Identifications

Anyone else finding that submissions that once would have sat for months get identified within a few hours? Not sure if this is just an increase in the number of users, or a sign that the new identification tool is quite effective.

In any case, thank you to everyone who keeps me honest.

@silversea_starsong @psyllidhipster @borisb @treegrow @nathantaylor7583 @bbunny @cedric_lee @maractwin @c_michael_hogan @lisa_bennett @john8 @keirmorse @pliffgrieff @paloma @coreyjlange @invertzoo @gcsnelling @winny88 @pgugger @gregpauly @charlie @villu @alice_abela @cosmiccat @rjadams55 @tigerbb @kevinhintsa @kimssight @kschnei @biohexx1 @sea-kangaroo @lynnwatson @grnleaf

Posted on 12 de setembro de 2016, 02:04 AM by glmory glmory | 8 observações | 25 comentários | Deixar um comentário

25 de setembro de 2016

Parks North of Pittsburgh

Managed to get some time to explore parks north of Pittsburgh. This area seemed to be only lightly explored by iNaturalist users so I got a bit carried away and ended up with 332 iNaturalist observations. While I haven't added it up, when all is said and done it should work out to at least fifty species I had never seen.

Right before the trip, I found a good deal for a Sony Macro Twin Flash. This made a big difference for taking photos of insects, although for plants the results were more mixed. The diffuser it comes with will need to be replaced since it still leaves lots of bright spots on reflective insects but other than that it seems to greatly improve images over the Sigma Ring Flash I was using before.













The lady beetle in the web particularly surprised me. Apparently that is not a lady beetle, but a handsome fungus beetle which tries to look like a lady beetle as a way to make predators believe it is poisonous.

Posted on 25 de setembro de 2016, 02:55 PM by glmory glmory | 33 observações | 1 comentário | Deixar um comentário

26 de setembro de 2016

First iNaturalist injury

I always figured that all that walking around strange forests at night, chasing tarantula hawks, and diving into rough water would catch up to me sooner or later. Tonight it finally did.

Was taking photos of bugs around my porch lights. After a hot day like today, there were quite a few interesting ones around, Saw a brown widow spider. They are the only insect I kill in my backyard. So I stepped on it, pretty sure I got it. Continued taking photos.

Maybe five minutes later I felt a bug in my shirt. Who cares? There is a cool beetle on the light! Continued taking photos. Felt it again. OK, I better get it. Shook out my shirt.

About two minutes later, my back started to hurt. Then my arm. Pretty quickly it hurt too much to photograph so I came in. Two hours later, I have a red mark on my back and it still hurts like heck. Didn't see it, but it had to have been a brown widow.

Posted on 26 de setembro de 2016, 06:25 AM by glmory glmory | 6 comentários | Deixar um comentário

27 de setembro de 2016

My Workflow - How to Make Your Wife Question Your Spending Habits

Gear:

When I first started uploading to Calflora it was nice to finally have a cheap hobby. Just an iPhone and cost of gas to a trail is all it takes. That is no longer my opinion of iNaturalist as a hobby. As an engineer, I perhaps got carried away with getting expensive gear when something a tenth of the cost would produce the same scientific value.

The primary setup I have produces spectacular results for macro photography at the costs of mediocre photos of anything farther than about a meter way. It consists of a Sony a6300 camera , Sony FE 90mm macro lens, and a Sony Twin Flash. I also have a GoPro Hero 4 Black which I use underwater (a mistake, an Olympus TG 4 would have been much better) and a Sony HX400V which I don't use much anymore but occasionally bring when I want photos of birds.

Lastly, I have a Browning Strike Force Elite Sub Micro Trail Camera. I have not had much luck figuring out where to put this, but it is at a very promising location in the San Bernardino National Forest at the moment so hopefully it is now producing good observations.

On-Site:

The first thing I do when I get to the location I want to search through is turn on the Trails app for the iPhone. This records my location while I walk. Some of the older iPhones will need cell phone service for this to work, but the last couple iPhones have had in-built GPS which does a good job of getting location.

Then I proceed to find as many different species as I can and photograph them. Since I typically have two toddlers along for the hike I rarely make it more than a mile or two and am almost always on established trails.

At Home:

I download all the photos to my computer then put them on Lightroom. I email myself the GPX file from the Trails app then use Lightroom to geotag all my photos. In lightroom I adjust brightness of photos as well as white balance to try to fix the camera settings.

Once done, I drag and drop all the photos for the day into the new submission tool. I have learned that I need to let it sit and wait until all metadata is loaded before touching anything which with 300+ photos can take a while. Once metadata is loaded, I drag and drop photos until each submission is one organism, add names, then hit submit. If any observations include multiple species I then go back and use the copy/paste commands to make the last few observations.

Once species are loaded, I try and go back to add entries for "Second Associated Species" "Eating" or a few other related species associations. This data seems much harder to get than species location data so it seems good to add. 

Posted on 27 de setembro de 2016, 07:09 PM by glmory glmory | 9 comentários | Deixar um comentário