Book Review – Serengeti – The Eternal Beginning

Book Review – Serengeti – The Eternal Beginning

I was excited to get the opportunity to review a photography book that wasn't technical in nature. It gave me a chance to read for once and not have to think about the technical merits about the subject material being discussed.

At first I thought it might just be a pure photography book, nothing but pictures and little text. When it arrived I realized that there was a fair amount of story that surrounded the photos. The story about the Serengeti was very interesting and unique and an important part of the book.


Book Title: Serengeti – The Eternal Beginning
Author: Boyd Norton
ISBN: 978-1-55591-593-3
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Hard cover - 265 pages

The Review
One of the first things that struck me about the book was the experience and depth that the author 'Boyd Norton' had with this area of Africa. While its not exactly clear, it appears that he has spent more than 25 years visiting and getting to know this area intimately about the life and its nuances in the Serengeti.

The book is not only about Serengeti as its title suggests but also includes the Maswa Game Reserve, Ngorongoro conservation area, Loliondo Game controlled area and the Masai Mara National Reserve. As with most geographical features, country boundaries do not define its scope.

This geographical area defines the coverage, for the most part of the 'Great Migration' that we are all familiar with. Where thousands upon thousand of larger African animals such as wildebeests are seen to run for thousands of miles in search of food as the weather patterns change. While the predators lie in wait for the dinner train to run by.

The author discusses the parks earliest beginnings when there wasn't a park but only early explorers and big game hunters. The early problems all countries seem to have when they want to control activities within an area with competing demands from indigenous groups, expanding farming base and other users of the resources.

This is not only a book about the big and small animals that are found here but about the life of the people who have lived here for aeons. It's interesting to read how the locals, weather patterns and what was a perfect balance of nature all worked together to create a faultless ecosystem. Especially when you think of this place as the dawn of human kind some 3-4 million year ago.

The author's writings give a life to photos that are not apparent directly from the photos. As an example, he discusses how certain rock outcrops called Gol Kopjes seems to have extra gravity that applies only to the big cats. In that whenever they arrive on these outcrops the local rock gravity immediately pulls them flat on the rock and holds them for hours.

The book covers the Great Migration when it seems most of the life in the Serengeti is on the move and about the carnivores who patiently wait for their turn at the Great Feast or migration as we call it.

The next chapter is about the lions which is a fascinating subculture all unto itself. Who gets to lead, who eats and who gets to live with the group.

The 4th chapter is about Ngorongoro which is the remains of a huge volcano called a caldera, like a giant cauldron. In this crater life is different due to its unique ecosystem.

The next chapter deals with creatures both large and small and how like any balanced system they each depend on each other for survival. From control of foliage to providing food for the predators. If your visit is to only see the big game animals then you are missing so much more about the life in the Serengeti.

The next chapters deal each with the other more famous of the big African animals such as the Rhino, Leopard, Cheetah and Elephant and how they live and communicate. There are personal stories around each encounter with the wilds of Africa and this is what makes this book more exciting than just a lot of photos.

There is Anna who can talk Rhino talk and the perception that they are stupid is really outdated. There are also the Acadia trees who can communicate when the giraffes arrive for dinner.


Recommended Audience

This book doesn't tell you how to use your camera or take better photographs, which I'm glad as sometimes we just need stories that surround images we are seeing. Inspiration rarely comes from a technical how-to-manual.

I now know that if I were to go on an African photo safari I would not expect or want a 1 or 2 day quick tour and photo-op around the park. The book has conveyed to me that there is just so much more to see and experience that it can only be fully appreciated if you take the time to watch and wait. When there, live in the flow of the Serengeti's life.

If not for yourself then this would make a great gift for any friend who has been talking about going on an excursion to see those big game animals of Africa. A time before man, at least modern man, has had an impact on the natural world.

Link to:
Boyd Norton`s Wilderness Photography website with info on supporting the Serengeti.


I have provided an amazon link for the book, below.


Niels Henriksen


Disclaimer:
Other than receiving a book to review, which will be given away, I did not or will not receive any remunerations, gifts or any considerations for this review from the publisher, author or anyone affiliated with this book.



Update:
Thanks to a comment from Mike I realized that I hadn't fully reviewed the book by also commenting on the photographs within the book.

I found every photo crisp and clear and representative of the its natural environment.

The photos are taken as found and therefore the lighting is natural and not staged. Nor are the images manipulated to give extra punch as I am prone to do. All are color prints with no B&W.

Since most of the animals by nature's design want to blend in with their surrounding there is not always a lot of high contrast, but they all stand out in the photos. The photos are all of the caliber that you would find in the National Geographic magazine.

The front cover image is representative of the quality of images whether they are up close or distant landscapes contained within the book.



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Word beasts: a parliament of two

Word beasts: a parliament of two

You might remember a moment when in you were choosing what you were going to do with your life in which it all came together or you may not. This may be the mythology of me that I've built myself but one of my markers was reading about the Jeffress' model in Eric Kandel's book, 'Principles of Neuroscience'. I remember thinking, that's cool, if I could do stuff like that I would love it. Somewhere there is the beginning of my love affair with modelling biological systems.

The Jeffress' model is a model of a neural circuit built to detect the direction that a sound is coming from. It's a beautiful and elegant model that has been found to be used by the brains of many different species, including humans. One of the most elegant bodies of work in neuro-ethology showed that this model holds for barn owls and explore many of the nuances of the behaviour.

The work of many people mainly Knudsen and Konishi and Catherine Carr showed that not only is the Jeffress model used to compute the azimuth but it also is used at several frequencies after a sound has been decomposed into different frequency components. This solves the problem of degenerate solutions that you could get from a pure tone sound. Apart from this, in perhaps one of the most 'awww' experiments ever, they showed that the auditory map is tuned to the visual map and this can be tuned and retuned but only when owls are young. It's beautiful work and this piece is in based on it. Imagine trying to sneak up on these owls as they were hunting and imagine that they found you instantly as you rustled through the teasels. They would find you with an accuracy of a single degree!

Edit 1

Copyright © Natasha Mhatre If you're reading this without attribution to me anywhere other than at my blog Talking Pictures, its probably being plagiarized.

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Reviewing your photographs from Older Archives

Reviewing your photographs from Older Archives


Sometimes its just plain fun to go through your archive of older photos. Now with a distant memory of the scenes and events your photographs may appear better than previous scans. This is in part due to that at the time there are too many good photos and those not with the highest rating but still with merit tend to get drowned out.


This image was taken at one of the great Buddhas in Kamakura Japan. The hawk like bird may seem small but this Buddha is very large.  Without the bird it would be hard to understand the scale of this image. It could be in anyone's home garden. Besides scale the bird helps to give height to statue as there is the appearance that the head is up high where birds soar.


The next image with people in it does convey the scale of the Buddha. In theses type of metal statues the green colors are soft and muted and it is easy for green foliage to overpower the scene. That is why I have mute the greens in the background to give the Buddha statue more visual punch.

The Great Buddha of Kamakura (Kamakura Daibutsu) is a bronze statue of Amida Buddha, which stands on the grounds of Kotokuin Temple.  It's the second tallest bronze Buddha statue in Japan, at a height of 13.35 meters, surpassed only by the statue in Nara's Todaiji Temple.
The statue was originally built in 1252 and located inside a large temple hall. The temple buildings were destroyed many times by typhoons and a tidal wave in the 14th and 15th centuries. So, since 1495, the Buddha has been standing in the open ground. 

Do take the time to review your collection as there may be hidden gold or at least fond memories of places you've been.


Niels Henriksen.

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As many as tell the tale

As many as tell the tale

The Indian right does it again. They dropped A K Ramanujan's essay in their quest for a perfect world with one sangha line way of looking at it.  So I thought I'd link to it. And revive this tale that's apropos.

Repost


As many as tell the tale

There was always the attention, the eyes that turned towards us throughout the entire journey and the steady stream of questions. We had tired of telling our stories, spending so much of our life like small change on insistent little children who came running up to us, asking, unbridled yet by convention. Our story was now becoming mere words. Every time I told it, reality seemed to erode a bit. It became my construction and not something that had really happened. It was to end soon; it was our last bus ride home.

I sat facing the window; my body sunk into his shoulder, with his arm around me. As I hunkered down for the long dusty ride, I realized that I had wondered whether we would even make it this far, but we had. He had gamely borne the sun, the scrutiny and enjoyed himself nonetheless. As the bus pulled out of the station and into the stone cobbled lanes of an ancient kingdom I said, "Tell me a story." He nuzzled my hair and asked, "What kind?" "Old stories, tell me really old stories, they seem appropriate somehow. Tell me what the world is made of, tell me how it was made."

It never took him long to come up with stories. We had lived worlds apart and our stories were different, we could rely on our old familiars being new to the other. "You remember that beautiful tree in the courtyard?" "Umm hmm, the Frangipani tree." "It made me think of the Yggdrassil." "What is that?", I asked. He mocked something I'd said oftentimes before "You haven't heard of it?" "I have", I said smiling and then in my worst pedagogic voice, "but you have to tell me all about it. That's how you tell stories."

"Alright, my little Besserwisser", he said indulgently. "So I'll tell you how the world is made according to the Icelanders. There are these old, old Norse poems from about the 13th century I think, in these old books called the Eddas. Pretty much all of Norse mythology comes from them. They say that at the centre of the universe, standing in nothingness, there is a massive ash tree, which is the tree of the world, the Yggdrassil. It shelters and links all the nine worlds together. It is the source of all living souls in all the worlds. One of its roots is in the upper world of Asgard, where the gods live, another in Jotunheim in the Midgard, the middle worlds and the last in Niflheim in the Helheim, the nether-worlds, the realms of death. Under the Asgard roots, the Gods assemble everyday to decide on the affairs of the world, the Midgard root dips into Mimir's well of wisdom and in Niflheim the tree is constantly chewed on by a snake called Niddhog, the eater of corpses, who continuously tries to destroy the Yggdrassil. Life and death and learning are all organised around this tree. But when Ragnarok comes, everything will be destroyed. Niddhog will be destroyed and so will the mighty gods and all the middle worlds and their puny inhabitants, only the Yggdrasil will remain. And from the tree, life will begin again."

I pouted and teased him, "There they go, your stories, killing my snakes, making villains of them! Eating the tree of life! That's even worse than the biblical story, which only makes them responsible for the fall of mankind. Only the mere and meager tempters of essentially flawed and weak humans. This is grander evil. Poor buggers, no one loves them at all."

"Oh yes, little one, pick on that tiny bit of the story!" But then, smoothing down my mock ruffled feathers, he said, "To be honest though, there are positive snakes in all mythologies. For instance, the Ouroboros, the snake grabbing its tail is the gnostic symbol of eternal return, renewal, of the very soul of the world. Plato even called the Ouroboros the perfectly constructed animal because it had no need for anything other than itself and had nothing that was superfluous."

"Hmm, ok, so maybe they don't all make them bad. The renewal and return are quite positive and it also makes me think of Sheshnag. So, Sheshnag is the massive snake upon whose coils Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindu trinity rests. He is Vishnu's constant companion, born with him on the earth in every one of Vishnu's ten incarnations, the dash avatars, which by the way is where the word comes from." Realising I made constant unnecessary diversions, I impatiently added, "Anyway, more to the point, the word 'Shesha' means what remains. And like the Yggdrassil, when the Universe is destroyed, all that will remain will be the serpent. He is the only truly eternal being, which is where his other name Ananta or the eternal comes from. In the Norse myth, the snake eats the eternal and in the Hindu one, it is the eternal and the Ouroboros is a symbol of eternity. Funny that snakes are so often linked to the forever."

Doubt still niggling away at me, I added "But there's loads of different Ouroboros aren't there? I mean mythic snakes that eat their own tails? And also the Christians don't take such a kindly view of the symbol, they don't see it as a eternity symbol, but one of being trapped in a limited material world."

"Well, the Christians always hated what they saw as pagan beliefs, they just found a way of twisting them into something ugly so people wouldn't use them anymore. They were also just a bit more scared of fertility symbols, I think. But, off course, there are others, I think Quetzlcoatl is sometimes depicted as an Ouroboros; then there's Jorgmungandr, Loki's son, the world serpent who catches his tail while encircling the world. I can even think a non-mythological one and I bet you can't guess it", he said his eyes twinkling.

I squeezed my eyes tight against the distracting confusion of images that was tumbling through the TV screen of my window and tried to dig other images up. I gave up eventually and said "I'm going to kick myself for not trying harder, amn't I? Alright I'll bite, tell me."

"Aren't you clever?" He quipped while his fingers traced the contours of my ears as he half whispered, "Kekule's benzene rings!" and waited for my protests.

I laughed rather than protest and said slyly, "And that's a real story, isn't it, unlike Newton's apple apocrypha? Kekule talked about it himself."

"Umm hmm, Yes he did. But I think some people think he might have confabulated. So it might not be a true story after all."

"Such a pretty way of saying he lied! But yes, there were loads of different stories that floated around; different stories that he told different people. So it's thought he might have made all of them up. I wonder though, if a story is a true story as long as it is good, veracity be damned. Well, it certainly gets repeated more, and doesn't what is called enough get called into existence?

Anyway, snakes of sciency legends, huh? Well, the staff of Asclepius has a snake wound around it, doesn't it? That's sciency, the symbol for medicine; it sometimes gets botched a bit, has two snakes instead of one, sometimes it's done right too. The Greeks used to try and cure people of different ills by letting snakes crawl all over them in some of their temples. That's believed to be the origin of the snakes on the caduceus. I wonder what kind of magic that is, cause it wouldn't be Frazer's idea of sympathetic magic, would it? Seeing how snakes are associated with venom and all that."

"Like I keep saying, it depends how you see it. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh at the end of his long and arduous travels, gets this plant from the bottom of the ocean. The plant was supposed to grant him eternal life but a snake eats it while he is sleeping and it becomes immortal instead of Gilgamesh. And that's why snakes moult, as a symbol of being reborn again and again. So maybe it is sympathetic magic after all, the patients want a bit of that eternal life to rub off on them. I guess that's another bit of the forever that sticks to snakes.

And, the caduceus, there's also another story for it. Asclepius is supposed to have learnt the secret of immortality while he lay dying, by seeing one snake heal another using a plant. He used the same plant and revived himself. It might be this snake on Asclepius' staff. Asclepius, by the way, was killed by Zeus for having acquired the secret knowledge of immortality. Zeus feared that all humans might become immortal if Asclepius told them about the plant and so he killed him. Some more snakes with forbidden knowledge. But not evil in this case, I guess, not temptors."

We must have gone quiet for a while at this point, because I remember looking up from the window and noticing the expectant faces around us. A half-lit, insulated tube, full of human faces, hurtling through a fading day in the Indian summer. I imagined for a moment that they were listening to our stories. But perhaps they were merely waiting for us to do something unusual. Or even were just surprised with our freeness with each other. They watched and I was amused and the bus carried on, on its dusty, windy way.

"With both her hands she labors at the knots." He broke my reverie, and asked me, "What were you thinking of little one?" I sighed a little at having been woken up. It was starting to turn dark outside, the sky turning that beautiful inky blue, against which the tungsten lamp-lit streets and faces are so vivid and beautiful. "I was thinking of the sin of making everything human and how it is impossible to tell a story that at its core does not deal with our concerns. They are all stories of rebirth so we may live forever, fertility so we may be productive, so on and on." "Well, that is true, I guess till snakes tell stories of themselves, there will be no truly snake stories. There will only be reflections of humans in snake skin. But there must be something, a story out there somewhere that is at least told in the voice of a snake. There's just too many stories for there not to be one."

Even the last light was now gone, I turned around and faced him, leaning against the window now. Happy to watch his face, exhausted as it was, but unhappy at not being attached to his hip as I had been for so many days now. We were drifting apart just then, exhausted by the traveling and the intensity of it all. The connection had to be reformed; that narrative had to be found again somehow.

"Well I suppose there is one, there is at least one story told by a snake. Krishna, one of Vishnu's human avatars, performed many miracles when he still just a child, things that amazed even his parents who knew of his divinity, demonstrating he was no mere god. One of them was the taming of Kaliya, a terrible snake that lived in a lake near Krishna's home. Kaliya was the bane of Krishna's people. He made a precious resource completely unusable. He spewed his venom into the water of the lake and made it undrinkable and no one could swim or bathe in the lake for fear of dying by his bite or the bite of his many wives and children." "Evil, evil snake…" "That's the general idea. But Krishna was not afraid of Kaliya and went to the lake and splashed around in it and sure enough Kaliya came along and attacked the little boy. Krishna was not going to be initimidated by some mere reptile and he jumped on top of Kaliya's many hooded head while evading all his attacks and danced and danced on it. He danced on it till the snake was exhausted and completely subdued. And then he danced some more, he danced and danced until the snake vomited blood and was near death, he danced till Kaliya's wives begged him for their husband's life. And then he stopped."

"So where's the snake's story?" "Patience, it isn't done yet. When Krishna decided to spare Kaliya's life, Kaliya was very grateful and thanked him profusely and offered Krishna his best hospitality. Krishna was pleased and told him he could continue living in the lake with his family if he pleased, as long as he harmed no one and did not pollute the waters. Then he went to Kaliya's home with him at the bottom of the lake and lived with his family for a while, enjoying their hospitality, sporting with their maidens as he had done with those in his village. Krishna was a massive flirt, eventually married some ridiculously large number of women, some sixteen thousand of them. Anyway, one of Kaliya's daughters told him the story of how they came to be at the bottom of that lake and how they became snakes.

She said that her father was a rich merchant who had lived on the banks of the Yamuna, a long long time ago. He had been very prosperous and had made a great deal of money. They had everything they could ask for and never needed to work to increase their riches. The whole family had grown accustomed to a life of profligacy and sloth. They would eat and drink and lie about and do not a thing for days on end. Their servants would carry them everywhere, to their baths and beds each day and even feed them like infants.

One day, they were all lying about in their front room after a huge lunch when a rishi, a sage with great powers, came to their door asking for alms. The servants had only just retired to their meal and no one in the family even stirred at his presence. He had to wait a long time to even be asked into the house. And when he came they did not think to ask his forgiveness, in their indolence they would not even offer him food or a drink of water. No one rose to wash his feet as is customary to do. Enraged at their sloth, he cursed them, he said these arms and legs you no longer use will fall off and you will crawl on your bellies everywhere. You will become ugly to the eye. You will be reviled by everyone around you, as you shun your duties to me, so shall everyone shun you. He cursed them that they would poison everything they touched and people will hate and fear them greatly. And before their very eyes, they all lost their arms and legs and became scaly and slippery and had to crawl on their bellies to get anywhere; in short they became the first ever snakes. The servants around them seemed terrified at the very sight of them and threw things at them attempting to kill them.

Swiftly, for once, gliding between the blows from the servants the family asked for the forgiveness of the rishi. After much pleading and groveling the rishi finally relented. He told them that they must go and live in the lake they now lived in. They would be reviled and feared and no one would come near them. But one day in the future the lord of the universe would come to them as a child and would fight the merchant who had become the biggest ugliest and most fearsome snake of all, Kaliya. Kaliya must fight the lord with all his might and he will come near death in this fight and in this fight he will be purified by the touch of the feet of the lord. And then if his wives succeed in begging for his life, they would be able to live peacefully from then on. They would remain snakes as they were now, but at least they would not poison the world and would not be hated by all. The snake girl told Krishna that they waited for many many eons for his arrival and were much relieved by his blessings. There that is the snake's story."

Exhausted at the effort, I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. As I started to drift away, I realized he was restless. I don't know what tipped him off, whether it was the skeptical looks that I imagined our fellow passenger's faces wore or whether it was that I had told him of the primordial snake before. He said to me as he wound his comforting arm around me again, "That's a nice story, love, very evolutionary, but I think you might have taken a few liberties. Haven't you? That isn't a real version of that story." I smiled through sleepy eyes, as the bus conductor turned off the lights to let us all sleep for the night leg of the journey, I said "There are, my love, as many as tell the tale."
.................................................

PS. Do tell me if you like the stories. Or if you hate them and especially if you think they are so bad I should stop all together. Or best of all, if you know how I can make them better!
N

Orlando
In another skin

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Playful Indulgences with Adobe Pixel Blender for Photoshop

Playful Indulgences with Adobe Pixel Blender for Photoshop


Sometimes I just find I have a need to play. Not the sand lot type, even though that might be fun, but more along the lines of creativity with my artworks. With painting I can just slop the wonderful colors around and see what happens but clean-up is more effort. But with photography it's not always as easy.

I could throw my camera up in the air with a timed shutter and see what happens, but I am afraid of dropping it and then seeing a lot on money becoming dust on the ground with a broken camera.

Digital editing allows me that freedom and the only cost is my time. Definitely less risky.

I came across a video that shows the use of an Adobe Labs plug-in for Photoshop CS 4&5 called Pixel Bender. Being also a painter I was more interested in the oil painting effects as demonstrated with the image I 'bent' below. I may take this further as I will need to get rid of those bright white objects at the top of frame to make this image useful.


The above image was run once in pixel bender to give texture in the parrot, but I found that the remaining detail was all too much the same and still too fine in detail for the background. I masked out the parrot, used the blending too to see if this would help. Not much, so I ran pixel bender again on several iterations on just the background to get the final image above. I didn't realize until later that the smudging of texture actually added to the larger texture in pixel bender.


One again for above image I ran pixel bender to get the effect for the chairs and table and then playing around with iterations on just the background and with the smudging tool to get a less contrasty detail here.
In trying to use other images to see how they worked it became apparent that for it to work well there should be sufficient detail and contrast in image for it to produce better results. I also noticed that image size from 800 to 4,000 pixels each had different effects. The largest brush size was 15 pixels and with the large images the effects became smaller. 


The 2 photos of the fall scene are identical except for image resolution. The above was 1,000 pixels wide and below was 4,000+ wide


It's easy to see the difference in effects. For the smaller image I even had tor reduce the brush size so as not to over-dominate the bending effect.

From the experiments, or is it playing around, I noticed that when areas were smudged in linear or curved arches it increased the detail effects to make them larger as in the parrot's background and with the same fall scene but with smudging on the trees in image below.


These may not be exactly to your taste but if you are digitally creating painting-type images then by combining different effects for areas within the photograph, a more pleasing painting effect can be created. It is important for any effect type that there be variation in texture detail, size and contrast, like a real painting to create harmony and vision flow within the image.

The most important aspect is to create images that you like and not for others and that you have fun doing this. While I was playing around I completely lost track of time which for me is a sign that my creative juices are really flowing and I'm exploring new avenues.

Please send me some links if you have any digital creations that were just fun and you enjoyed the outcome.

Niels Henriksen

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