Nature and Travel Stories You May Have Missed, Part 3

This is my third edition of Nature and Travel Stories You May Have Missed, highlighting some strange and beautiful moments that have come across my news feeds in recent months from the worlds of nature, travel and photography.  See past stories I’ve shared in Part 1 and Part 2.

See What’s Right In the World

Former National Geographic photographer DeWitt Jones asks us to see what’s right in the world in this excellent 18 minute talk and slideshow.

Humpback Whale Protects Human from a Shark

There have been recorded instances where whales and porpoises have protected other species from sharks.  It happened last year in the Cook Islands, when biologist Nan Hauser was “rescued” by a humpback.  She recorded some of the remarkable behavior on video.

National Geographic Looks Back at the Megatransect

In 1999 conservationist Mike Fay and National Geographic photographer “Nick” Nichols walked 3700 kilometers through continuous jungle in west-central Africa.  It’s a trek that changed conservation, and spawned over a dozen new national parks.  If you have time to sit through it, watch this video (the one at the bottom of the page) featuring Fay and Nichols telling stories of this amazing trek, and discuss some of the current conservation efforts going on in western Africa.  The good stuff starts at the 44 minute mark.

Xavi Bou’s Ornitographies

Photographer Xavi Bou has undertaken a project to capture birds in flight in an unorthodox manner.  He captures flying birds on high definition video, and then superimposes the stills on top of each other to show the pattern created in the flight path.  Some interesting and beautiful shapes and textures emerge.  These photos were featured in a recent edition of National Geographic.

Check out Xavi’s website.

60 Minutes Interviews Tom Mangelsen

It’s a rare thing to see my peers get air time in major media publications (for something other than cheating at photo contests), so it was nice to see Tom Mangelsen on 60 Minutes recently.  Tom was one of the early leaders in the nature photography marketplace, and is still going strong in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and abroad.  Though I didn’t find this interview particularly insightful or groundbreaking, it’s a nice way to expose a wider audience to both Tom’s work and the life of a nature photographer.

See the piece here.

Aerial Footage of Kilauea’s Lava Flow

The Weather Channel shares some dramatic footage of the lava flowing from Hawai’i’s Mount Kilauea.

See past stories I’ve shared in Part 1 and Part 2.