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

Finishing the winter-range story

Mid-May, 2021 Mountain goats are leaving the forested cliffs where they took refuge through much of the winter, and moving…

Final month on goat winter range

Follow-up to the 108-days show Back in April, 2021, Steve Merli and I posted a 12-minute slideshow called 108 days…

2021 | Richard Carstensen & Steve Merli | 9-minute slideshow

Wetlands Month features Mendenhall Wetlands

Frontyard wetlands in StoryMaps Every May is American Wetlands Month, and this year, it’s especially interesting for residents of Áak’w…

American Wetlands Month features Taashuyee

Our frontyard wetlands in StoryMaps For several years I’ve been wanting to dive into ArcGIS StoryMaps, cartography for one and…

2021 | USFWS | ArcGIS StoryMap

Northbound through Áak’w Aaní

Zonotrichia passage through the Highlands May 3rd, 2022. Golden-&-white-crowned sparrows are flooding through our neighborhood’s garden rows and brush borders.…

2021&22 | Richard Carstensen | short captioned videos

108 days on mountain goat winter range

Motion-detector camera at 1,200 feet On December 12th, 2020, Steve Merli and I placed a game-cam in mountain goat winter…

2021 | Richard Carstensen | 12-minute slideshow

Dzisk’w liu kaadi: little owl snowslide

Avalanches in Goatlandia Yesterday (20210304), avalanches were triggered above the Thane Road runout on Snowslide Creek. Several folks posted impressive…

2021 | Richard Carstensen | 80-second slideshow

Goats on Eyecliff

Cliff-base foraging February 7th  When fresh, chest-high snow lies deep on Nettleslide, Jánwu mostly forages under conifer forest, unobservable. But…

2021 | Richard Carstensen | 1-minute video

Heron roost

Yardbirds Over the 44 years I’ve lived in Southeast Alaska, behavior of two once-wary species has changed remarkably—probably due to…

2021 | Richard Carstensen | 60 second video

New years Jánwu party at Centergrove

More the merrier Our coastal goats—since October anyway—have been hanging out in pretty small, compatible groups, dispersed all over Goatlandia…

2021 | Richard Carstensen | 4 minute slideshow

Discovery at Nugget Falls

Goat-watch at Áak’w Kwáan Sít’i (Áak’w people’s glacier) 20201203: Every other Friday, Discovery staff get together for a ‘distanced’ outing.…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 2 page journal

Mountain goat rut

More general description of the mountain goat can be found on the category page: nature>critters>mammals>hooved>mountain-goat Few people have observed the…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 30-second video

Special trees in Nettle Slide

New angles on Tʼóokʼ dleit ḵaadí, nettle snowslide (Behrends Slide) Late September, 2020  It’s probably time we stopped calling this…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 90 second slideshow

Digital Fish Creek

Hydrology in the point cloud. Maybe it’s all those years stippling scenes and species portraits, point by point with double-ought…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 2-minute slideshow

History and future of the Refuge

Rebound, succession, fish&wildlife, and aviation on our frontyard wetlands In 2011, Jeff Sauer at Juneau Audubon asked for a presentation…

2011 | Richard Carstensen | 36-minute slideshow

Outer Point Raven’s-eye

Kaalahéenak’u, inside a person’s mouth (Peterson Creek) For Clan Conference in autumn, 2015, I prepared a 7-minute animation exploring the…

2015 | Richard Carstensen | 7-minute slideshow

Decomposition on motion-cams: phases 3&4

Deer cemeteries on Sayéik, spirit helper (Douglas Island) Back in mid-May, I reported on a motion-camera study Steve Merli and…

July, 2020 | Richard Carstensen | 9 minute slideshow

Meadow fire at Eagle Beach

Burn succession, Asx‘ée, twisted tree On May 9th, 2020, some camper-kids with lighters ignited a pretty dramatic grassfire at Crow…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 14-page journal, 6-minute slideshow

Staney Creek

Stream work documentation on Tàan, sea lion (Prince of Wales Island) The Nature Conservancy, US Forest Service, and dozens of…

2020 | Richard Carstensen | 19 minute slideshow

Decomposition on motion-cams: phases 1&2

How a deer dissolves Steve Merli and I have slightly refocused our motion-cam deer study from behavior of live deer…

2020, May | Richard Carstensen | 6 minute slideshow