Nature Art -- Big and Small

I finally got the chance to interview (via email) local nature writer/illustrator Carol Coogan. Read "How to Get Your Kids Out Drawing Nature" on GeekDad.

And The Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms is a website featuring images of teeny tiny organisms. Here's their description:

For several centuries artists have depicted the human figure, still-lives, landscapes or non-figurative motifs. One subject has been widely neglected all those years: Micro-organisms!

The Micropolitan Museum finally exhibits these often overlooked works of art which are only visible with the aid of the microscope. Curator Wim van Egmond has collected the finest microscopic masterpieces nature has ever produced during eons of natural selection.

Where we've been...

All the action the last couple weeks has been over at the Flickr page, where we've been uploading photos taken for our 100 Species project. As of Thursday we were up to 82, I believe, and I will try to get the photos up in the next few days.

But I did want to share our easy way of identifying species once we've got a decent photo. I've been bringing up the photo on our Flickr page, then opening a new tab and doing a Google Image search using the written description of the organism in question. Then I go back and forth between the tabs comparing photos. This has worked very quickly in several cases so far.

Along with its appearance, it is often helpful to add where it was found to the search words. For instance, I just typed in "green frog brown spots" and then added "New York" when the first listings to come up were in Europe and California.

(Side note: I'm still working on getting the kids to take photos that are useful for identification and look nice. They need a shot of the whole plant, not just the flower or the fruit, and they need reminding about focus, watching out for shadows and ugly stuff in the background. It would help if our lawn wasn't so unkempt, of course.)

For the time being I am saving information I find about the species, including URLs, in the photo descriptions on Flickr. (John has uploaded some of the photos, which explains some of the silly captions.) Eventually we will put photos, descriptions, etc. together in a printed report, and if I can find a good way to do it online as well.

Take a look at our page, and if you have identifications for anything that still has a generic "pink flower" kind of title, feel free to put the name and any useful info in the comments. Thanks!