The challenge: Gigapixel imaging can reveal a surprising range of animal and plant species in the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary settings in which we live, learn, and work. Your challenge is to capture panoramas of Nearby Nature and share them with your peers at gigapan.org for further exploration. We hope that shared panoramas and snapshotting will help the GigaPan community more deeply explore, document, and celebrate the diversity of life forms in their local habitats.
Gigablitz timing: The event will take place over a 7-day period – a gigablitz – that aligns with the June solstice. Please capture and upload your images to the gigapan.org website between 6am, June 20 and 11pm, June 26 (your local time).
Juried selections: Panoramas that meet the criteria below are eligible for inclusion in the science.gigapan.org Nearby Nature collection. The best panoramas will be selected by a jury for publication in an issue of GigaPan Magazine dedicated to the Nearby Nature collection. Selection criteria are as follows:
- Biodiversity: the image is species rich.
- Uniqueness: the image contains particularly interesting or unique species, or the image captures a sense of the resilience of life-forms in human-dominated settings.
- Nearby Nature context: image habitat is part of, or very near, the everyday places that people inhabit.
- Image quality: the image is of high quality and is visually captivating.
Subjects and locations: The gigablitz subject may be any “nearby” location in which you have a personal interest: schoolyard garden, backyard habitat, balcony planter, village grove, nearby remnant woods, vacant lot meadow next door and others. Panoramas with high species richness (the range of different species in a given area) that are part of everyday places are especially encouraged. It is the process of making and sharing gigapans that will transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Here are 3 things to keep in mind when choosing a place:
- The panorama should focus on organisms in a habitat near your home, school or place of work.
- Any life-forms are acceptable, such as plants, insects, and other animals.
- Rich, sharp detail will encourage snapshotters to help identify organisms in your panorama. Thus, your gigapan unit should be positioned close to the subject habitat – within 100 feet (30 meters) away, and preferably much closer. Up close mini-habitats in the near-macro range are welcome.
Submission information: You may submit as many panoramas as you wish. Each panorama should be accompanied by the following:
- A title that includes the location where the image was captured.
- 3 required tags:
- “nearbynature” = tag #1 (a single word)
- “June” = tag #2
- “2012” = tag #3
- A brief statement (less than 100 words) on your thoughts about the image. Please include your name. Your affiliation is optional. For example:
- Why did you choose this subject?
- What is its context?
- Did you discover anything interesting while you made the image or examined it in detail?
- Google Earth geolocation is encouraged but not required.
Snapshot titles and description: Once you upload your submission, we encourage you to snapshot all the organisms that you can. Clear snapshot titles will help the jury to consider your submission. For example, if you find a frog in your panorama, the following words should be shown in the snapshop title: “nearbynature” (a single word) and “frog”. If you wish to include more information, please do so in the snapshot description box. Don’t worry about getting too specific – visiting snapshotters will help you identify the diversity of life in your panorama. Your ability to correctly identify organisms is not a criteria for jury selection.
to learn more visit: http://science.gigapan.org/