Rut is on
Mountain goats are courting, and it gets kinda rough Since starting the Goatlandia project in 2020, we haven’t seen snow…
I’m a late-adopter of most technologies. Nearly 40 years old before my first camera; last among my friends to give in to email and cell phone. No different in the world of moving pictures. In education, I remember Clay Good’s dictum to his phone-wired highschoolers: stills, but no movies. In his experience, video viewing and making sucked kids into a subjective vortex. When instead, they backed into the ‘old-fashioned’ technology of still photos, a more observant mindset emerged.
That was at least a decade ago. Today (2018), the triumph of selfies has warped our teens’ relationship to stills. In the seesaw-&-wratchet of technology, anything we do too much of is dulling. The trick is to stay fresh—to keep searching for each tool’s noblest use—and to desist from pounding screws with hammers.
I was lured into video by drones—one technology I jumped into rather early. I just knew that watching forests and streams pass below from Raven-strafing level would be mesmerizing. Hard to imagine one could tire of that.
And then there’s motioncams. What a revelation—to learn what critters do when we’re not there! For me, video is currently a spice. Not the main course, but a tasty complement to more and more of my documentary efforts. Some of the older vimeo-posts linked below are composed strictly of still images, assembled into narrated slideshows, but using pan and zoom for some of the features we associate with “moving pictures.”
Oh yeah, and speaking of the rapidity of technological change, it’s already pretty amusing—that ‘poster’ for my 2015 video below called New technologies for old naturalists. The drone in that photo already looks about as “new” as a Model-T Ford.
In this section
Ancient yellow-cedars on Dan Moller Trail
A mysteriously rare and declining species X̱áay (yellow-cedar) is dying in much of its maritime, more southerly range, such as…
2025 | Richard Carstensen | 1 minute slideshow & 10 page journal
Flying flood fringes
How did the flood behave away from our river corridor? During the August 13th outburst flood a TFR (temporary flight…
2025 | Sean Neilson & Richard Carstensen | 2-minute slideshow
Our glacier’s accumulation area
What we can’t see from Visitor Center I’m told by interpretive staff that visitors are often surprised to learn from…
2025 | Richard Carstensen | 90 second slideshow
Icemargin lake virtual flyover
Glacial topography on 2023 LiDAR terrain model We recently received a new LiDAR dataset commissioned by USGS, that just barely…
2025 | Richard Carstensen | 1 minute slideshow
LiDAR for The Notch
Terminal moraine at Glacier Bay In July, 2024, Koren Bosworth brought 4 of us to her home on the outwash…
2025 | Richard Carstensen | 90-second video
Ice caves, goats & white-tailed ptarmigan
When the lake freezes 20170205 Remarkable diversity of photo- and video-opportunities on this February walk to the terminus. Ice caves…
2017 | Richard Carstensen | 2 minute slideshow
Discovery off-trail
Tracking & navigation workshop, upper Áak’w Táak (M-word Valley) Discovery Southeast has a strong relationship with the Forest Service’s Glacier…
2024 (& 2017) | Richard Carstensen | 4- & 2-minute slideshows, 17MB journal
Goats at 500 feet
Anglehorn’s band On January 2nd, 2024, we still had very little snow. The series of record-breaking-but-quickly-melted blizzards everyone now (March)…
2024 | Richard Carstensen | 70-second video
Drones for habitat mapping
Flying Taashuyee-Chookan.aani For their 2024 February Watershed Workshop, SAWC (Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition) asked me for some thoughts on drones…
2024 | Richard Carstensen | 16 minute narrated slideshow
Winter-billy range (and a calendar)
Where do mature males go when rut has ended? Soon after we began near-daily observations of mountain goats in autumn,…
2024 | Richard Carstensen | 12 minute slideshow
Porcupine nip-twigging
Discovery’s favorite animal-tracking puzzler Since our first years leading kids into the winter-woods in the mid 1980s, Xalakʼáchʼ, porcupine, has…
2024 | Richard Carstensen | 2 minute video
Mudslide path-7
We live in kind-of a bowling alley . . . . . . so one might hope we’ve become more…
2023 | Richard Carstensen | 50-second video; pdf downloads
Goatlandia: early winter 2023
Motioncam at 600 feet In mid-December, 2022, 9 of us Discovery naturalists bushwhacked up into mountain goat winter range to…
2023 | Richard Carstensen | 3 minute slideshow
Dipper hunting caddisflies
Hinyiklʼeix̱i, dancer in the water November 18, 2022 I love dippers but have had little luck filming them in their…
2022 | Richard Carstensen | 3 minute video
Natural & cultural history of Asx̱’ée
Exhuming an early slideshow Back in 2011, preparing for a Charter School/Goldbelt Heritage overnight expedition to Methodist Camp,’out-the-road,’ I created…
2010: uploaded 2022 | Richard Carstensen | 16 minute slideshow
Second SEALT-Discovery walk
Traversing the 2014 wetlands conservation parcel On July 16th, about 25 bushwackers assembled in the parking area at end of…
2022 | Richard Carstensen | 11 minute slideshow
Toads are out!
April-28th toading with Discovery staff Last spring, 2021, Discovery Southeast naturalists attended an evening symphony of calling toads on May…
2022 | Richard Carstensen | video 2 minutes
Rockslide snagswamp
Unraveling the origins of a fascinating pond Til’héeni, dog salmon stream (Salmon Creek) is a new addition to featured Áak’w…
2019 | Richard Carstensen | 4-minute slideshow
Spring avalanches
Snowslides and critters Last year around this time I posted video and thoughts about the relationship of critters to avalanches—both…