Figure 1 – Tasseled wobbegong shark, from the Wikimedia Commons, original image by Jon Hanson and reproduced under creative commons license.

Well, it’s early August.  The great white sharks are following the seals to Cape Cod, and a day barely goes by without a reported sighting.  The official Shark Week is a tradition started in 1987 by the Discovery Channel.  Other TV stations seem to follow suit with all the great viscerally terrifying movies like: “Jaws”, “Jaws 2,” “Jaws 3,” “Deep Blue Sea“ (my personal favorite shark movie), and “Open Water.”   Just stay out of the water people!

Anyway, and following up on yesterday’s blog about the Whale Shark, I’d like to deviate just a tad from the purely photographic and talk about the Wobbegong (Orectolobae) (see Figure 1).  I am inspired in this by a reader who posted Figure 1 on her Facebook page. Wobbegongs are bottom-dwelling sharks, mostly to be found in the pacific just cruising around and resting on the sea floor. Most wobbegongs have a maximum length of 1.25 metres (4.1 ft) or less.  However, the spotted wobbegong (see Figure 2), Orectolobus maculatus, can grow to lengths approaching ten feet.

The fellow shown in Figure 1 is a tassled wobbegong (Eucrossorhinus dasypogon).  It is a species of carpet shark and kind of does look like a carpet.  It can be found in shallow coral reefs off northern Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent islands and can grow to about six feet.  It’s fringed dermal flaps and coloration provide camouflage that enables it to trap and ensare small fishes that take it for a pile of seaweed.

While tasseled wobbegongs will bite the foot that steps on them, the fate of wobbegongs is similar that of many other shark species.  They are eaten by humans.  Their flesh is called flake and consumed by humans in Australia, and their skin is prized as a source of leather.

And you thought that this post was going to be about a fictional lake in Minnesota.

Figure 2 – The spotted wobbegong, image from the Wikimedia Commons, original image (c) 2005 Richard Ling and reproduced under creative commons license.

Figure 1 Male whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium, photo by Zac Wolf, from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain under creative commons license.

I was intrigued yesterday to come across this photoshoot project by Kristian Schmidt and Shawn Heinrichs showing fashion models swimming with whale sharks.  I am actually a bit ambiguous about these images.  So I thought that I would post it to see how readers feel.

So, first the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), it is the largest living non-mammalian vertebrate by a long shot.  Living about seventy years these a slow-moving filter feeders can reach lengths of ~13 meters or 42 feet and can weigh as much as 66,000 pounds. As filter feeders they dine mostly on plankton, but also will suck in schools of small fish.

The images in the photo-essay were shot off the village of Oslob, a remote corner of the Philippines. Fishermen there have developed a touching interspecies relationship with these giants by feeding them handfuls of shrimp.

Unfortunately, the whale shark is targeted by commercial fishermen in several locations, where they seasonally aggregate.  The species is considered to be vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although their population size is unknown. In the Philippines, itself, harvesting whale sharks was banned in 1998.

Arguably, these images fall to the criticism that we have discussed before, in respect to Sports Illustrated’s use of indigenous peoples as props for a fashion shoot.  Here the whale sharks become props, in as sense.  What’s more significant to me is that it just doesn’t quite work!  The whale sharks are just so awesome and beautiful that they utterly eclipse the bathing beauties, sorry ladies.  Who’s the prop here?  Or as the sharks would probably put it: who are these people and what are they doing here?

When we discussed dancers caught in midair, I commented how they seemed to be defying gravity and floating in midair.  Well the sharks and the models do seem to be floating.  But in fact they really are floating.  The bottom line is that whale sharks are truly magnificent, but I don’t really need the models.  These images just aren’t speaking to me.

Well I came upon this image today on the Huffington Post by Ohio photographer Debbie DiCarlo that shows a mother coyote teaching her pubs to howl. Can it get any better than this?  This image is right on theme, coyotes being kissin’ cousins of wolves, and well, 100% Hati and Skoll approved.  As is so often the case, it is well worth going beyond the Huffington Post’s page and visiting DiCarlo’s website, where she has a pretty extensive portfolio of photographs.

Nature photography takes a lot of patience, skill, and luck.  It’s not just about big lenses.  It has to begin with a real sensitivity to the subject!  When this photograph was posted last week, it went viral on the web, and also was highly criticized by many skeptics for being “set up” in a museum diorama.  Well, nothing of the sort.  The image was taken at a workshop in Hinckley, Minnesota, and DiCarlo takes the “too perfect” criticism as a compliment.

Figure 1 – Johann Heinrich Füssli, “Odysseus vor Scilla und Charybdis, 1794-6,” From the Wikimedia Commons, distributed by the Yorck Project and in the public domain under GNU license.

Well it’s August, folks, and frankly I can’t believe.  Summer is flown, and the doldrums of its indolent end will soon be upon us.  I have been doing my weekly ritual reading of the various Photos of the day, week, and month and found a couple of gems in MSN’s “Must See August 2013.”  Hmm, August!

The first of these takes me back to our discussion of a chance encounter with Mammatus clouds.  Strange fluffy cloud forms are one thing, imagine yourself in Roberto Giudici’s bare feet as you sail carefree off the Greek island of Orthoni in the Ionian Sea.  Then on July 23, this is what you see, or more accurately what he photographed – shades of Scylla and Carbydis for sure! Yes, Yes – the hero’s journey. Sorry!

Then there is this beautiful colored image of a deserted German diamond mine in the ghost town Namibian village of  Kolmanskop. Diamonds were discovered there in 1908.  There were stately homes, a hospital, a ballroom, a power station, a school, and even an ice factory.  All this pushed back the desert.  Now, the desert has reclaimed it all.

BBC news is featuring a portfolio of dance photographs of English Photographer Jim Markland entitled “Ballerinas in the wild.”  The term “in the wild” is meant to connote  outside of  their natural habitat and features ballerinas dancing and leaping in strange exotic places like on the tarmack of airports and in old pump houses.  My personal favorite is an image of ballerina Szilvia Zsigmond  on a Cheltenham Street: stretching, reading a book, and waiting for a bus.

You can also visit Markland’s website Rowbotham Dance Photography.  Dance photographs are his specialty, and you can see an extensive slide show of his work on Flickr.   Check out his tango images such as this one from the Pittsville Pump Room.  It captures all the intricacy of the tango perfectly: intense focus, prefect form, and a profound dose of the sensuous.

We have recently spoken about the great appeal of dance photography in connection with the work of E. E. McCollum.  There is, of course, an artistic tradition that goes back to Degas.  The diversity form and beauty certainly appeals to both Degas, as a painter, and to photographers.  But, I think, that there is a special appeal for photographers because of the way that the medium is capable of catching that brief instant in time, when gravity seems overcome, and the figures fly, seeming effortlessly, through the air.

For those of you fortunate enough to be visiting the English countryside this summer, there is a show of his work at the Gloucestershire Guild Hall for the month of August 2013 called “Jumpin.'”  The rest of us must be satisfied with these slideshows.