September in Granite Basin
Vignettes from an evening visit to Granite Basin, just a couple hours above downtown Juneau. Thoughts on the connections between…
2017 | Richard Carstensen | 2.5 minutes
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
Sydney Laurence in Áak’w Aaní
Part of a 2012 slide show for Juneau-Douglas City Museum on Alaskan landscape painter Sydney Laurence. I co-presented with Mike…
2012 | Richard Carstensen | 17 minutes
Hank Lentfer motion camera
In February, 2018, Hank Lentfer, Bob Armstrong and I gave a talk for the Alaska Wildlife Alliance on what I’ve…
Evening grosbeaks
Bob Armstrong’s Guide to the birds of Alaska, 6th edition, lists evening grosbeak as ‘casual’ in SE, SC and Central…
2018 | Richard Carstensen | 1 page
Cemetery stem mapping: then and now
Remapping with Montessori For a teacher at any of the downtown schools (Harborview, Montessori, JD High) with only an hour’s…
2017 | Richard Carstensen | 13 minute slideshow
When we’re not there
Studying wildlife with trail cams Special emphasis on deer, using motion-sensor cameras for both story-telling and quantification. Presentation to the…
2018, updated 2025 | Richard Carstensen | 21 minute narrated slideshow
Shrew
Short video clip of a shrew—either Sorex cinereus or monticolus—sole Southeast genus in the order Soricomorpha. In July, 2012, hikers…
2012 | Richard Carstensen | 23 seconds
New tools for old naturalists
The 21st-century cartographer New tools for old naturalists In March, 2015, I gave a fireside presentation at the Mendenhall Visitor…
2015 | Richard Carstensen | 31 minutes
Focus and breadth: science and natural history in Southeast Alaska
In March, 2015, I gave a banquet presentation to the Alaska Chapter of the Wildlife Society. Afterwards, I archived it…
2015 | Richard Carstensen | 31 minutes
Teacher walk, Wigeon Ponds, West Refuge
Discovery naturalists Steve Merli, John Hudson and Richard Carstensen walked from end Mendenhall Peninsula Road to Industrial Boulevard with staff…
2018 | Richard Carstensen | 4:21 minutes
Historical aerials of Southeast communities
In 2011, Cathy Pohl and I received a drive with 22,000 scanned air photos taken by the Navy in 1948.…
2011 | Richard Carstensen | 35 minutes
Sesquicentennial slideshow
For the sesquicentennial year of the 1867 Alaska Purchase, Juneau-Douglas City Museum asked me to create 3 banners showing 150…
2017 | Richard Carstensen | 28 minutes
Juneau’s dairy history: Parts 1 & 2
As Kathy Hocker and I built up Discovery’s library of historical photographs, during our Repeat Photography Project in 2004-2005, we…
2012 | Richard Carstensen | 10 min; 25 min