Interview with Ph.D and photographer Neil Losin

Joining us today is Neil Losin, a Ph.D in evolution biology working at the University of California’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and two-time winner of the Microsoft Future Pro Photographer competition. Neil started his interest in birdwatching and photography at an early age and now has the opporunity to complement his field of expertise with his two passions. His photography garnered recognition when he earned the Microsoft Merit Award in the 2006 Microsoft Future Pro Photographer competition, the Grand Prize winner of the Birder’s World Photo Contest 2007, Featured Photographer at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and recently the Grand Prize winner of the 2010 Microsoft Future Pro Photographer competition.

So let’s start by telling us about the story behind your winning photo.

Twilight flight © Neil Losin

I lived in Davis, California from 2005 to 2006. Soon after moving to Davis, I learned that a local golf course, Wildhorse Golf Course, had a Burrowing Owl conservation program. They set up artificial burrows for the owls and maintained a buffer of natural grassland habitat around the course. As a result, these little owls (about 9” high) made the golf course their home, and I became very familiar with the Wildhorse owls and their behavior patterns.I noticed just after sunset, the owls would often search for prey by hovering in one spot and scanning the grass below. I knew there was a unique image to be made, so I devoted many evenings to capturing this behavior. After a number of failed attempts, I got lucky one night in July of 2006 – a young owl hovered right above me as I was walking to my car, and I had just enough time to raise my camera, focus, and take a single shot. Amazingly, all of my planning worked out perfectly, and the shot was exactly what I’d envisioned.

It seems that this isn’t the first time you’ve won an award in this Microsoft competition, can you tell us about that?

Blackbird © Neil Losin

Yes, that’s right. One of my photographs, depicting a male red-winged blackbird singing at sunrise with his breath condensing in the cold morning air, earned a Merit Award in the 2006 Microsoft Future Pro Photographers Competition. I was very happy with the recognition, though obviously not as happy as I would have been winning one of the cash prizes!

You were already interested in bird and wildlife since childhood. What has driven you towards that?

I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t already want to be a biologist. My parents gave me lots of exposure to nature, beginning when I was very young. They always encouraged me to be curious about the world around me, so my love of nature (and my passion for learning about the organisms I observed) came naturally.

How easy is it to juggle between your Ph.D. work and photography?

Not easy! I don’t get to do nearly as much photography as I’d like these days, and I have precious little time to market my images. But pursuing science and photography simultaneously gives me a unique perspective. I love telling stories with my images, especially stories about animal behavior and natural history; working as a biologist, I’m in a great position to do that.

Birds seem to come and go and can appear out of nowhere. How do you know that you’re in the right place and at the right time for them?

You never know exactly what a bird is going to do, of course, but birds and other animals can have remarkably regular activity patterns. The key is spending time “in the field,” getting to know the daily routines of your subjects. There’s also a lot of information out there on bird behavior, diet, distribution, and migratory patterns, so bird photographers have it relatively easy. For lesser-known groups or animals, especially invertebrates, a photographer’s own past experience is probably his or her best guide.

I suppose photographing birds yourself in their natural habitat has given you an advantage in your field of work?

Perhaps. Wildlife photography certainly requires that I interact with my subjects in a different ways than my research does. When I’m photographing a bird, for example, I might spend hours with a single individual, just waiting for the right light, or for an interesting behavior. Through extended interactions like this, I learn a lot about the animals I photograph, but it’s a different kind of knowledge than what’s gained from systematic observations of many individuals.

Are there any kinds of birds or animals that you haven’t photographed but wish to?

Sure! The world is a big place, and with ten thousand bird species and millions of other organisms, I don’t think we photographers will run out of subjects any time soon. There are whole continents that I haven’t visited yet. But as much as I love capturing images of new species for my collection, I’m equally excited when I can create a really unique image of a species I’ve photographed many times before.

How has the award prize helped you in your photographic pursuits?

The recognition is great. And of course the prize money doesn’t hurt either — I really needed a new computer when I won the contest, so the prize came at a very convenient time.

What tips would you give to other bird and wildlife photographers?

Know your subjects. The first time I photograph an animal, I rarely get any great images. But once I’ve worked with the same species at the same location for days or weeks, I begin to learn where and when the important moments happen. Only then do I know where I need to be, and when I need to be there, to capture a memorable image.Keep your images real. Nature is complex, it’s not always tidy, and believe it or not, sometimes birds have twigs in front of them! I’m not saying that photographers can’t strive for “clean” images, but don’t force it. Photoshop doesn’t make nature better – leave that to natural selection.

And finally, can you share an interesting experience that has happened during wildlife/bird photography?

Every day spent photographing nature is a fascinating experience! If you’re not amazed by nature every time you go out, then you’re not watching closely enough!

End of interview

Thank you Neil for sharing your experiences!

You can learn more about Neil’s photgraphy and his Ph.D work at his website.

Interview with team SoundStreamer s from the Imagine Cup

Yaroslav Tretyakov, Mikhail Yakovlev and Yuriy Zhayvoronokwhich were former competitors in the Imagine Cup 2009 part of the team SoundStreamer s represented Russia in the Embedded Development finals. Their team’s project ExoStream, uses the Windows Audio Session API to allow users to stream multiple sessions of music simultaneously via Wi-Fi to multiple speakers in the home. Each speaker is connected to a “Music Box” which receives wireless audio streams therefore converting wired speakers into wireless speakers, thereby removing the need to unplug and replug audio cables when switching between computers. The Music Box opens up several new possibilities for speakers such as sharing a speaker between two computers at the same time. ExoStream also has a neat feature of allowing music to “follow” you by automatically adjusting the volume on every speaker installed in the house based on the laptop’s Bluetooth signal strength so that music only plays loudest at where you are.

The team programmed the advanced audio functionality into Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 running on low-cost hardware, and achieved top 20s in the worldwide finals. Yaroslav discusses with me about the project.

Welcome here. First, let us know a little bit about your background.

Hello!

In brief, we’re just students, united by common enthusiasm. We did quite a lot of programming prior to IC09, but never had any unique experience in it. I guess we joined the competition like most of the teams: of pure interest and desire to do something big. Not that we actually hoped for something, really.

But then we found one thing that made us different from other competitors: it was the idea. Once we thought of the “wireless speakers” thing, we knew that should be our entry to the competition. The idea was unique indeed to Imagine Cup, it was almost cheating: not helping the humanity by our project allowed us to design a device that was too “shiny” to be trashed in first rounds. So, I guess not solving any millennium development goals was the main feature of our project.

ExoStream was really “out of the eBox”. It was very useful (we are still using it with pleasure), had a great business plan attached, and, of course, a sexy presentation with a killing demo. We fitted perfectly in all of judging criteria, except one – the main one.

I’d say ExoStream was our ticket to IC09 finals, a project we were destined to lose exactly there.

The “following sound” feature in ExoStream is pretty interesting. Was that an accidental discovery or did your team have that idea all the way from the start?

You named it perfectly – it was 100% accidental, a revolutionary feature we accidently bumped into while designing the automatic discovery subsystem. I remember me and Mike discussing the problem of a laptop and eBox not seeing each other because of the low Wi-Fi signal, and then one of us saying “Hey, we can MEASURE the signal and do nice things using that information”. The rest was purely technical, including the migration from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth.

But surprisingly the FS feature turned out to be not as great as it was shown in our presentation. The main reason for that is the instability and great noises in Bluetooth signal. The music can go up and down and even disappear for a time, while you just stand still with your mobile device. So we eventually disabled FS in the last version of the product (the one we ship to customers).

It seems like you’ve done some usability research for this project. Tell us about it.

Indeed, it was all about usability. We had to satisfy the customer, i.e. the listener. The usability research was not too complex – we simply based on a lot of feedback, including our own. I, personally, listened to music via ExoStream about 5 hours a day.

It is my strong belief that the best way to make a usable product is to use it personally.

What was unique about developing software for embedded operating systems for you?

Apart from the fact that it was our debut with embedded systems, the main difficulty was efficiency (not usability, no!). Playing music means handling millions of packets per second. In the environment of low-capacity embedded system that was a tough problem. The first working version played music pretty much like a jammed audio tape. We had to rewrite it carefully, and almost completely.

How do you see ExoStream changing users’ music listening behavior?

The idea is very simple: we show that audio playback devices and audio rendering devices basically have nothing in common and should not be associated with each other. That gives a lot of freedom.

What gadgets do you like and why?

Those, that make help save time and make life easier.

Do you think there will be a day where wired speakers will become a thing of the past?

Yes, it is 100% real, especially regarding the growth of wireless interface chips production. All that is needed is a nice standard for media transfer. Hopefully, standards are inevitable in massively developing industry sectors.

What do you think is the next big thing in digital media?

Forecasts in progress are almost always wrong, but in my opinion the next steps of media evolution will be the ability to stream any content wirelessly between any kinds of devices AND on-the fly smart media conversion (removing words from a song, adding images to video stream, etc…)

What plans do you have for the future?

Mostly those are business plans. Even though the ExoStream units are expensive (about $200) many people still want to listen to music from the speakers while lying on the sofa. We managed to sell a number of units and currently work on developing the nice new business.

End of Interview

Thanks Yaroslav for your time!

You can learn more about team SoundStreamer s’ project at the Imagine Cup website.