Action on the water

Just before the stone hits the water...........

Taken in a shady area - but give the water a nice dark coulor

Photos: G. Beetge

Peruvian Andes/Machu Picchu

In 1912 Yale University professor and explorer Hiram Bingham was searching in the Peruvian Andes for the ancient Inca capital of Vilcabamba when he and his guide stumbled onto one of the greatest archaeological finds in history. Thanks to his photographs of the lost city of Machu Picchu, Bingham and National Geographic helped bring archaeology out of the field and into people’s homes.
Photograph by Hiram Bingham

North pole?

In April 1909, Admiral Robert Peary and his team (pictured here), including Inuits Ooqeah, Ooatah, Egingwah, and Seeglo and fellow American Matthew Henson, became the first explorers to reach what they believed to be the North Pole. Later studies found that Peary was actually 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) short of the Pole.
Photograph by Admiral Robert E. Peary

Flashlight photograph

This flashlight photograph of a white-tailed doe with her fawns was among the world’s first nighttime photographs of animals, shot by photographer and wildlife enthusiast George Shiras. A pioneer in flashlight and trip-wire photography, Shiras captured this shot in Whitefish River, Michigan, around 1906 using a remote-control flashlight camera triggered when an animal stepped on the trip wire.

Aerial photography

Some of the world’s first aerial photographs were taken not by humans but by birds. In 1903, German engineer Julius Neubronner combined an analog camera and timer, which he attached to a pigeon’s neck. The German military took notice of Neubronner’s innovative approach to aerial photography, and by World War II pigeons were collecting secret aerial photography for both Allied and Axis forces.

Horse

The settling of a debate—whether, during its trot, all four of a horse’s hooves are off the ground at the same time—led English photographer Eadweard Muybridge to develop the first photographs to capture the sequence of movement. In 1878, Muybridge arranged 24 trip-wire cameras along a racetrack. The resulting photos, The Horse in Motion, proved all four hooves leave the ground during a trot and set the stage for the first motion pictures.

The world’s first photograph

Centuries of advances in chemistry and optics, including the invention of the camera obscura, set the stage for the world’s first photograph. In 1826, French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, took that photograph, titled View from the Window at Le Gras at his family’s country home. Niépce produced his photo—a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window—by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill.

Circle around the moon

Due to ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, light is scattered at about 22 degrees and a circle can be seen around the moon due to the reflected light.


Photo: G. Beetge

Speedboat