About gravitywave / Joshua  

I am a botanist and recent graduate from the Plant Biology Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin, soon to be a post-doc at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. My work in recent years has allowed/required me to travel quite a bit around the U.S. and in Europe, South America, and South Africa, to collect plants and to attend botanical meetings. And then there are the vacations with my travel-holic husband ...Posted here on flickr are just a few of the pictures I have taken in some of these places:






I'm mainly interested in obtaining "documentary" images of plants, places, and other experiences. When not of obscure plants, my photos tend to be total clichès and unremarkable snapshots. Actually, even when they are of obscure plants, they are probably total clichès and unremarkable snapshots. I prefer cameras that fit in my pocket, but nonetheless look for inspiration and tips for obtaining more informative or technically and artistically better images. Thanks for looking, and please accept my apologies for getting all pedantic on your plant photo or discussion thread (which is probably what led you to read my profile).

Hey, check it out: I'm totally "gay married" in the state of California.



Finally, here is what I consider to be an inspiring quote, which pretty much sums up the meaning of life, for me:

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species . . . From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off, and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state . . . As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." -- Charles Darwin, 1859

And:

"I would rather be descended from an ape than from a cultivated man who used his gifts of culture and eloquence in the service of prejudice and falsehood."

-T.H. Huxley.

And also:

"WHAAAT?!!! We're not going on any god-damned cruise!" - Kathy Griffin

And finally:

"I cried when I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. And then I laughed... REALLY hard." -- Jerri Blank

And then:

"Don't be a dick." -- Wil Wheaton