Notes on My Work, Subjects, and Photostream

I'm not really interested in view counts, putting pics in Groups (except Guide to California Wildflowers), etc. I'm just intent on letting interested parties see my wildlife photos. I do appreciate additional tag suggestions, ID information/corrections, and photography tips (and, of course, complements).

Herp (= amphibian and non-avian reptile) photos with the latin phrase "in situ" in the description were taken with the animal in its original position, undisturbed by me. Otherwise the subject was captured and posed and/or had moved from its original position in obvious reaction to my presence. All photos are taken at the point of discovery, regardless of conditions. Additionally, I do not employ techniques such as "cooling" or "running" to make herps easier to photograph. Nothing against people who do; it's just not my bag.

Photos aren't necessarily uploaded in chronological order; like Billy Pilgrim, I'm unstuck in time.

My pictures are intended to be viewed "large." Go for it; I insist.

I am trying to phase out my hand from the photographs I post on Flickr. While my hand has made many 2004-2005 appearances, it has only surfaced 4 times in 2006 and not once since.

I |Administer| several |groups|: one (1) I created and several I came to administer through the curious contingency wherein, through the attrition of members, I became the most senior member. Indeed, some of these groups boast ill-conceived and/or ambiguous, vaguely creepy titles. Please place appropriate photographs into the "salamanders posed on moss." group; feel free to ignore the rest.

I select "favorites" for a number of reasons. Many are selected because of their awesomeness, however others are selected because of interesting discussion in the "comments," others because of the interestingness of the subject, and still others because I want to be able to monitor them/refer back to them.

California photos are tagged with Jepson Manual "Regions"; photos from other US states are tagged with EPA level III Ecoregion membership (pdf) and await public interest in those states' flora sufficient for publishers to invest in a Jepson-esque treatment. If you think you've found an identification mistake on my part or if you have any pertinent taxonomic information, please let me know. You may earn a point!

Nomenclatural notes: I use the abbreviation "cf." in the paleontological sense to confer (pun intended) determination uncertainty. Also, while botanists have named both varieties and (less frequently) subspecies, I have opted to treat all subspecific plant taxa as varieties (abbreviated as "var."). Finally, I am in the process of including tags with the prefix "formerly" applied for all synonyms (particularly familial synonyms). This is particularly important for botanical families, as the APGIII has resulted in many plants being assigned to new families. Therefore, for example, Brodiaea orcuttii gets the tags formerlyAmaryllidaceae, formerlyLiliaceae, and formerlyThemidaceae, as well as the tag Asparagaceae.

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Use of My Works

If you'd like to use my photos in a not-for-profit slideshow, feel free; no permission needed.

If you'd like to use my photos in a more permanent but still not-for-profit manner such as a permanent educational display or website, please acknowledge me and I'd also like to be notified in advance.

If you'd like to use my work in a for-profit venture, I likely would be interested; however I will also likely require a modest compensation (e.g., if work is to be included in a book, a free copy).

If your desired use of my work doesn't fit neatly into one of these categories, feel free to contact me for clarification.

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In Summary

Get outside, find wildlife, photograph it, leave it there alive and unharmed, then go home and post on flickr. Seriously; poaching and/or killing herps is lame. Don't be lame. On that topic, if you don't like snakes, instead of moving to a place that has snakes and then killing all the snakes, just don't move to where there are snakes. I don't like the profligate; instead of moving into a gated community and kicking in the windshields of all the "Hummers," I choose to not move there in the first place. It doesn't take a GED to figure this out, people!! Oh, yeah: watch out for Poodle-dog Bush; [expletive deleted] external hard-drives.

I have photos on flickr taken in the following states:



Great links for wildlife identification:
bugguide
californiaherps
plants.usda.gov/
butterfliesandmoths

Curious how I divide stuff up? Here are maps of San Diego County and Minnesota.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.