Today I renewed ‘Biodiversity Images’, my business name, for three more years. While not as vital to my project as the domain name, it is still a valuable asset.
Steve and I started compiling Stills 24 with the latest 167 video frame captures, on 9 April. I have already sent several email requests for species IDs and received answers to all but one. To date I have added 19 images to the Night Life Album, two to Fungi and four to Rainforest Flora.
I met John St Clair the projectionist, at the venue this morning. On 14 March I picked up an external hard drive from Steve, with compressed and uncompressed versions of ‘The Rainforest at Night’. The previous week John was unable to transfer the videos from a USB stick Steve had given me. This time the transfer of the uncompressed videos to the folder he had created on the venue’s lap top last week, was completed in a trice. We checked sound and vision. All was well. John also copied the running order for the projectionist who will be in charge on the day.
The presentation I shall be giving on April 27 is titled ‘The Rainforest at Night’. Steve and I assembled the 14 videos this evening. We programmed a 3 second gap between each one, which will allow the projectionist to pause when I wish to introduce a given video. Apart from setting the scene, I plan to introduce 10 of the videos.
After many hours over many days, I completed the Excels of my species videos update for the National Film & Sound Archive. In all we are submitting 124 videos, comprising a few from 2016 through to nine from 2019, once Steve has assembled the data files. One video needs to be added to the list and I need Steve to clarify the references on four files.
I have just completed listing all the images with locations, plus species identification for most of them, generated in 2018 for my Image Library at the Queensland Museum. There are 443 video frames and 291 photos, a total of 834 images. Once I download all the images and lists onto a USB and deliver it to the Museum, the library will contain 7,135 images.
I met Hilary Furlong over coffee today. She organises a monthly programme of afternoon events at the Zamia Theatre on behalf of the Tamborine Mountain Progress Association. She had asked me to show some of my videos when I attended one of last year’s events and we wanted to fix a date for my presentation. We settled on Saturday April 27.
Exactly twenty years ago, I wrote the first entry in my Film Diary. It was about filming the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean. The project’s duration didn’t figure in my thoughts at the time. One thing I could not have predicted was that the 20th anniversary coincided with a scheduled night walk. Before we set out, we – Hugh, Jaap, Mark, Robyn, Lumart, Karen and me – raised a glass of Veuve Clicquot to the health of the project, which I want to keep going as long as I can, and exchanged heartfelt words and thoughts.
At Lumart’s suggestion, after a long absence and two weather delays, we were at Witches Falls National Park. Paradoxically, recent walks have been both shorter and longer than ever. Shorter in distance covered, longer in time filming. This may have been the shortest yet. The track into the park comprises a level path which extends more than a kilometre before the descent to the shelf land which is its core. It was 10 o’clock when we turned back towards the car park and we were a fair distance from the first steps downhill. Even then, we found two frogs I had never… Read Complete Text
I have just uploaded the first gallery page since April this year. Jess has up-sized the enlargements for new and newly created images, which makes a tremendous difference. Steve and I did a number of fresh frame captures from old footage, some of which I have uploaded, and the enlargements all benefit from the up-sizing.