View allAll Photos Tagged reciprocity

Could you think of a more boring thing than doing the wash? Me neither, thats why I brought the camera for some extreme low light photography. (Nowadays my son helps me with the wash so its a bit more fun...) The only light was from my iPhone which I used to "paint" the washing cart. Due to the fact I miscalculated the films reciprocity failure the photo was underexposed by at least four stops. Pushed it whilst scanning instead which resulted in the visible grain.

 

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Leica M3

Voigthländer 35 Ultron 1.7

Tmax 400

Picture taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

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The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Snow and more snow. Pulled out the Nicca 5L early and a roll of probably inadequate speed Arista Ultra. I do like the f2 Nikkor, but in the dimness of light there is alot of reciprocity failure, notwithstanding asking a EI100 speed film for low light, even with a tripod. Good experience seeing the limits of the film. Stay same, inspirational flickeranians.

From my first roll of Kentmere 200. The negatives came from the lab quite thin but still seem to hold detail. A roll of PAN F in similar conditions was fine. These are all long exposures so that can have an influence, although the quoted reciprocity is the same as FP4. I am so tempted to have a play with developing this myself. Another thing is the thicker base. I was careful but still got a slightly fat roll. This happens sometimes with PAN F but never with thin and curly Rollei RPX25 / IR400.

This is a photo of an ant hill taken on September 29, 2020 in Westmont, IL. Although it is difficult to tell which species of ants live in this ant hill, I do know that this ant colony is eusocial. Eusocial species are “truly social” and are characterized by three main traits: strict division of reproductive labor, cooperative care of young, and overlapping generations. There is usually a reproductive queen, nonreproductive female worker ants, and fertile males called drones. Eusocial groups like ants are extremely cooperative; each ant carries out its specific role to help the colony survive. Organisms may exhibit cooperation because of reciprocity, direct benefits, or kin selection. Because ants live closely together, they can all benefit from helping each other and cooperating. Benefits for the colony in turn create benefits for the individual ant in terms of food, protection, survival, and sometimes reproduction. Ants are also haplodiploid. This means that females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid while males arise from unfertilized eggs and are haploid. This means that the female worker ants are more closely related to each other than to each other than to other members of the colony. This provides an explanation for the possibility of kin selection in ants, as related worker ants would be motivated to cooperate to increase the fitness of their closest relatives. As a child, I enjoyed watching ants march towards a food source and walk away with pieces of food in a straight line, so it was interesting to learn about the behavior of ants from an ecological perspective.

Gundlach Korona 8x10

Turner Reich Triple Convertible at 12"

Ilford HP5+

Exposed 95 seconds at f/45

Developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 11 minutes

 

A rainy day while camping means taking a few exposures indoors so as to keep the eye focused and the brain learning. This exposure was a bit of a guess, since the light kept changing as the lens was open. Reciprocity failure was my friend on this one.

Mamiya 7ii, Mamiya 43mm f/4.5L, Provia 400x

 

A return to an old project in time for it to draw to a close. The Somerset Levels are a man-made landscape, disguised as countryside with few roads and few public rights of way. Agricultural factory-land.

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

Taken : 18:15 04-Sep-2020

Bronica SQ-Ai + 80mm f2.8

Ilford FP+ ISO 125

 

Mid Tone : 8

Highlight : 10

Shadows : 7

 

Filters : Orange 1

 

Final LV : 7

 

Exposure, Reciprocity

4 sec requires 6 sec, nearest on camera is 8 sec @ f22

 

Developed : 5 min @20C in Hydrofen

Picture taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

__________________________________________

 

The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Do you want the true story? I was sitting in a bar with my friend, Tasha, when suddenly this strange guy with this silly hat approached me and told me that he'd seen my video on youtube and he wanted to have a picture with me. I couldn't say no, he seemed a nice lad but, in exchange, I said I wanted to take a picture of him as well, you know, reciprocity.

 

It's annoying that fans recognize me even in London, but I guess, it's the price of being super-famous.

 

09/08/04

White worked as a reporter for the Toronto Evening Telegram in 1890, and subsequently worked for Toronto's Assessment Department. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 1895, and a law degree from Osgoode Law School in 1899. White did not practice law after his graduation, but instead worked as a Managing Director for the National Trust Company, Ltd., becoming its Vice-President in 1911. National Trust was incorporated in 1898 by Senator George Albertus Cox and Edward Rogers Wood. National Trust Company, Ltd. became part of Bank of Nova Scotia as Scotia Trust in 1997.

 

White was initially a Liberal party member, but his views diverged from the party's policies on some key matters. He was a supporter of British imperialism, and joined Clifford Sifton and other Liberals in signing an anti - reciprocity manifesto in 1911.

 

Although he had few allies in the Conservative Party, White was respected by party leader Robert Borden, who recognized that White's presence would bring some disaffected Liberals to the party. After winning the general election of 1911, Borden appointed White as his Minister of Finance. White did not hold a seat in the Canadian House of Commons at the time, and in fact had never campaigned for public office before. Nevertheless, he was elected by acclamation in a by-election in the eastern Ontario riding of Leeds, after another Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) was convinced to resign.

 

White was responsible for managing Canada's finances during World War I. His approach was conservative, and he was reluctant to interfere with private enterprise or even to raise taxes in the early period of the war. Although he eventually made some interventions (including fixed profit margins and regulated food supplies), he continued to reject fundamental changes in the nation's finances. One exception was the introduction in 1917 of an income tax of 4% on all income of single men over $2,000; for Canadians with annual incomes of more than $6,000, the tax rate ranged from 2 to 25 per cent. Though it was intended as a temporary war measure and despite White's recommendation that "a year or two after the war is over, the measure should be reviewed by the minister of finance of the day, with a view of judging whether it is suitable to the conditions which then prevail," income tax became a permanent feature of Canadian life.

 

In 1919, he approved the use of naval warships to suppress post-war labour radicalism in British Columbia.

 

White served as Finance Minister until August 1, 1919. From November 1918 to May 1919, he also served as Acting Prime Minister while Borden was in Europe. Several members of Borden's Unionist government (a wartime coalition of the Conservative Party and some Liberals) called on White to replace Borden as Prime Minister in 1920, but he declined.

 

In the 1920 New Year Honours, as a reward for his service as Acting Prime Minister, White was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council,[1] allowing him to use the honorific "The Right Honourable". He remained a Member of Parliament until the 1921 election when he retired from politics. Later in the year, he published a pamphlet entitled The Story of Canada's War Finances, defending his management of the wartime economy.

 

White did not consider himself as a "career politician". His tenure as Finance Minister was very stressful, and he seems to have welcomed the opportunity to leave political life after the war's end. There is no indication that he entertained a return to politics in later years.

 

In 1933 he served as a member of the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency.[2] opposing the creation of Bank of Canada.

Prototype 4x5" pinhole camera made from a shoebox.

 

Focal length 120mm, pinhole 0.3mm, f/400. Fortepan 200 film, exposure 80 seconds (not quite enough apparently, but I couldn't find any reliable reciprocity failure data for this film).

"And throughout all Eternity,

I forgive you, you forgive me;

As our dear Redeemer said:

This the Wine, and this the Bread.”

-William Blake.

"A broken promisse hurts just as much as lie... You don't just make them believe, you also make them hope".

-Life Learn Feelings quote.

"Promisses you made

Throghout the years

A new one made

An old one fades

Stories you fed

My ears craved

Aways believing

You would follow through

Stupid me, I knew,

Promisses you made

Would never come true".

-Jaime L Miller.

"Nothing hurts more than being disappointed by the person you thought would never hurt you".

-Life quotes.

"The transaction that it was

A Life for a Life —

Reciprocity, if true,

A sweet Affair.”

-Emily Dickson.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvJ5JJYDZ6U

------------------//--------------------

Background: The Bearded Guy, Broken Memories. maps.secondlife.com/sec.../Fort%20Santiago/130/97/23

Hairbase: Karmazz, Jamel. maps.secondlife.com/.../Tropical%20Haven/46/126/2002

Okay folks, it's almost the full moon. Unfortunately for us here in RI the weather is going to be rain all day Saturday and Friday night is a bust. So we packed up our gear and went out this (Thursday Jan, 12) evening. Got back a little while ago, should be interesting b/c I broke form my usual Kodak Ektachrome 160T and shot Fuji 64T RTPII.

 

My times were drastically different, 360" rather than my comfortable 120" at f5.6. I shot the same frame for calculated time 360" and reciprocity failure time of 240". I still need to shoot 12 frames so we'll have to wait and see. We couldn't get inside the gates at night, locked up. So we went to the alternate location on the walkway after some bushwacking.

 

Get out there and have some fun! Oh I just remembered, we forgot to howl at the moon, it's the Full "Wolf" Moon afterall =)

 

Shot with New (used) F100 with Nikon 70-210mm.

Lt. Governor Rutherford Signs MOU Granting Reciprocity for Drivers Licenses between Japan and Maryland by Joe Andrucyk at Governor’s Reception Room, State House, 100 State Circle, Annapolis, MD 21401

This bridge is on private property, however, the only "no trespassing" sign I encountered was on the east end of the bridge, after I had crossed it. The bridge is in excellent condition, but with the current growth of vegetation, I don't know how much longer it will stay that way. The owner is using it as a dam for a small pond. Given the high visibility of this bridge and relatively little work needed, it seems to have exteremely high potential for preservation under public ownership.

White worked as a reporter for the Toronto Evening Telegram in 1890, and subsequently worked for Toronto's Assessment Department. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 1895, and a law degree from Osgoode Law School in 1899. White did not practice law after his graduation, but instead worked as a Managing Director for the National Trust Company, Ltd., becoming its Vice-President in 1911. National Trust was incorporated in 1898 by Senator George Albertus Cox and Edward Rogers Wood. National Trust Company, Ltd. became part of Bank of Nova Scotia as Scotia Trust in 1997.

 

White was initially a Liberal party member, but his views diverged from the party's policies on some key matters. He was a supporter of British imperialism, and joined Clifford Sifton and other Liberals in signing an anti - reciprocity manifesto in 1911.

 

Although he had few allies in the Conservative Party, White was respected by party leader Robert Borden, who recognized that White's presence would bring some disaffected Liberals to the party. After winning the general election of 1911, Borden appointed White as his Minister of Finance. White did not hold a seat in the Canadian House of Commons at the time, and in fact had never campaigned for public office before. Nevertheless, he was elected by acclamation in a by-election in the eastern Ontario riding of Leeds, after another Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) was convinced to resign.

 

White was responsible for managing Canada's finances during World War I. His approach was conservative, and he was reluctant to interfere with private enterprise or even to raise taxes in the early period of the war. Although he eventually made some interventions (including fixed profit margins and regulated food supplies), he continued to reject fundamental changes in the nation's finances. One exception was the introduction in 1917 of an income tax of 4% on all income of single men over $2,000; for Canadians with annual incomes of more than $6,000, the tax rate ranged from 2 to 25 per cent. Though it was intended as a temporary war measure and despite White's recommendation that "a year or two after the war is over, the measure should be reviewed by the minister of finance of the day, with a view of judging whether it is suitable to the conditions which then prevail," income tax became a permanent feature of Canadian life.

 

In 1919, he approved the use of naval warships to suppress post-war labour radicalism in British Columbia.

 

White served as Finance Minister until August 1, 1919. From November 1918 to May 1919, he also served as Acting Prime Minister while Borden was in Europe. Several members of Borden's Unionist government (a wartime coalition of the Conservative Party and some Liberals) called on White to replace Borden as Prime Minister in 1920, but he declined.

 

In the 1920 New Year Honours, as a reward for his service as Acting Prime Minister, White was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council,[1] allowing him to use the honorific "The Right Honourable". He remained a Member of Parliament until the 1921 election when he retired from politics. Later in the year, he published a pamphlet entitled The Story of Canada's War Finances, defending his management of the wartime economy.

 

White did not consider himself as a "career politician". His tenure as Finance Minister was very stressful, and he seems to have welcomed the opportunity to leave political life after the war's end. There is no indication that he entertained a return to politics in later years.

 

In 1933 he served as a member of the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency.[2] opposing the creation of Bank of Canada.

White worked as a reporter for the Toronto Evening Telegram in 1890, and subsequently worked for Toronto's Assessment Department. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 1895, and a law degree from Osgoode Law School in 1899. White did not practice law after his graduation, but instead worked as a Managing Director for the National Trust Company, Ltd., becoming its Vice-President in 1911. National Trust was incorporated in 1898 by Senator George Albertus Cox and Edward Rogers Wood. National Trust Company, Ltd. became part of Bank of Nova Scotia as Scotia Trust in 1997.

 

White was initially a Liberal party member, but his views diverged from the party's policies on some key matters. He was a supporter of British imperialism, and joined Clifford Sifton and other Liberals in signing an anti - reciprocity manifesto in 1911.

 

Although he had few allies in the Conservative Party, White was respected by party leader Robert Borden, who recognized that White's presence would bring some disaffected Liberals to the party. After winning the general election of 1911, Borden appointed White as his Minister of Finance. White did not hold a seat in the Canadian House of Commons at the time, and in fact had never campaigned for public office before. Nevertheless, he was elected by acclamation in a by-election in the eastern Ontario riding of Leeds, after another Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) was convinced to resign.

 

White was responsible for managing Canada's finances during World War I. His approach was conservative, and he was reluctant to interfere with private enterprise or even to raise taxes in the early period of the war. Although he eventually made some interventions (including fixed profit margins and regulated food supplies), he continued to reject fundamental changes in the nation's finances. One exception was the introduction in 1917 of an income tax of 4% on all income of single men over $2,000; for Canadians with annual incomes of more than $6,000, the tax rate ranged from 2 to 25 per cent. Though it was intended as a temporary war measure and despite White's recommendation that "a year or two after the war is over, the measure should be reviewed by the minister of finance of the day, with a view of judging whether it is suitable to the conditions which then prevail," income tax became a permanent feature of Canadian life.

 

In 1919, he approved the use of naval warships to suppress post-war labour radicalism in British Columbia.

 

White served as Finance Minister until August 1, 1919. From November 1918 to May 1919, he also served as Acting Prime Minister while Borden was in Europe. Several members of Borden's Unionist government (a wartime coalition of the Conservative Party and some Liberals) called on White to replace Borden as Prime Minister in 1920, but he declined.

 

In the 1920 New Year Honours, as a reward for his service as Acting Prime Minister, White was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council,[1] allowing him to use the honorific "The Right Honourable". He remained a Member of Parliament until the 1921 election when he retired from politics. Later in the year, he published a pamphlet entitled The Story of Canada's War Finances, defending his management of the wartime economy.

 

White did not consider himself as a "career politician". His tenure as Finance Minister was very stressful, and he seems to have welcomed the opportunity to leave political life after the war's end. There is no indication that he entertained a return to politics in later years.

 

In 1933 he served as a member of the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency.[2] opposing the creation of Bank of Canada.

Holga | Fomapan 100 | Rodinal 1+25 (3,5min)

 

www.leatherheart.net

facebook

Part of Reciprocity Exhibition

Mexicali Blues is an eclectic store in Portland, Maine, which I've visited a number of times, though this visit was just a walking photo excursion of Old Port. On my previous attempt at photographing this store-front at night, I shot 35mm hand-held on color slide film, but I wasn't satisfied with the results. This time I went better prepared - with a tripod - and a medium format camera loaded with a B&W film that has the best reciprocity characteristics.

 

(Pentax 645, SMC Pentax-A 75/2.8, Fuji Acros 100)

Playing around with the big camera and some Ektascan. This is a violinmaker's plane that my wife gave me some years ago. I've always loved it, despite never getting around to making a violin (who knows? Maybe someday). But given the sculptural lines of the plane, thought it would make a good subject for studies. More will come.

 

Also wanted to practice with the Ektascan (essentially ortho film) and nail down exposure and processing -- this was an exercise in understanding its reciprocity behavior. In this all too brief test it seems to have characteristics slightly better than, say, Arista.EDU Ultra 100. This was at f/32, meter suggested 15 seconds or so given the LED light I was using. My reciprocity app took that up to 3 minutes or so for Arista.EDU; I bracketed a couple shots, and feel I could have got away with considerably less; more testing is needed, but probably 2:30 is closer to right. Both sheets developed simultaneously in D76 1:1 for 10 minutes in a Beseler color drum on a Unicolor Uniroller, about 500ml of total solution. Must keep testing.

 

Also, would have liked to get closer, but this was all the bellows draw I had with the Symmar-S 360/5.6...

Picture taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

__________________________________________

 

The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

The ring tower is a striking high-rise building in a prominent location in Vienna, where is located the headquarters of the Vienna Insurance Group. It was built in 1953-1955 after designs of Erich Boltenstern at Schottenring inside the Viennese Ringstrasse and is located at the stop Schottenring of the Wiener Linien (Vienna Public Transport). The 73 meter (93 meter height including the weather light column) high ring tower was deemed as innovative project for the reconstruction of the city.

The building, which previously stood on this plot, was the only one of the entire Scots ring which was destroyed in the Second World War. The ring tower with its 23 floors and its 20-meter high weather lighthouse is the second highest building inside Vienna's Ringstrasse. Higher is only the Gothic-style St. Stephen's Cathedral. In addition to the central office of the Vienna Insurance Group are now also offices of Wiener Stadtwerke (public utility company) in the ring tower. In the office building a total of 12,000 square meters of effective surface is available. The facade and parts of the ring tower were renovated in 1996.

Name

In a contest, a name was sought for the then very modern office skyscraper. Among 6,502 entries the name "ring tower" was chosen. There were, among other proposals, such as City House, Gutwill-house (goodwill-house), house of reciprocity, high-corner, new tower, Sonnblick-house, insurance high-rise, Vindobona-house or vision-house (farsightedness-house) of the creative population after the war. One of the submitters of the name "ring tower" was rewarded with an honorarium of 2,000 shillings.

Weather lighthouse

Weather lighthouse, seen from the ring road

On the roof there is the 20-meter high weather lighthouse with 117 lights in differently colored light signals the weather for the next day displaying (each 39 white, red and green lights as well as 2 additional air traffic control lights).

This light column is directly connected to the ZAMG (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics) on the Hohenwarte in Vienna.

Meaning of the signals:

red ascending = temperature rising

red descending = temperature falling

green ascending = weather conditions will be better

green descending = weather will be worse

Flashing red = warning lightning or storms

Flashing white = snow or ice

Ringturm 2013

Ringturm disguising

Since 2006, the ring tower is changed every year into an "art tower " by covering the building with printed webs. The covering consists of 30 printed network paths with about 3 meters wide and 63 or 36 meters in length , and the resulting area is approximately 4,000 square meters.

The previous art projects:

2006 "Don Giovianni" by Christian Ludwig Attersee (on the occasion of the Mozart Year)

2007 "Tower of Life" by Robert Hammerstiel

2008 "Tower in Bloom" by Hubert Schmalix (Blumenstillleben)

2011 "Sense of family" Xenia Hausner

2012 "Society" by Hungarian artist László Fehér

2013 "Connectedness" of the Slovak artist Dorota Sadovská

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringturm

Red Wine, Red Grapes, Red Candles

 

Camera:

Burke and James Orbit 4x5 Monorail

f/32 @ 30 sec w/ red filter

(Reciprocity adjustment from 8 sec meter reading)

10 degrees down lens tilt.

 

Film:

Arista Ultra EDU iso 100 Sheet Film.

 

Developing:

Diafine 3.5/3.5

 

Negative photographed off lightpad and inverted. Test shot for an idea. Need a bigger mirror and a little adjustment to position, plus I need to pick up a polarizing filter. Also will try a faster shutter speed on the 2nd shot of a double exposure with the candles lit.

 

I was a bit surprised at how little of an effect the red filter had on the wine, especially when compared to what it did to the candles.

Canadians, Australians, and Americans all have to pay a "reciprocity fee" equivalent to a visa fee imposed on Argentineans entering their countries. Thanks, Government of Canada!

"Banda del hospicio de Madrid" 2009 series

Night time: the dusk is still visibile being July!

 

Camera: Canon AE-1

Lens: Canon 50/1.8

Film: Fuji Velvia 50

 

Around 1min exposure, on tripod. Still, the shot is not perfectly sharp.

Scanned on Minolta 5400. I also made a darker version, where I compensated less for the reciprocity failure which looks better when projected, but is almost unscannable.

Film photography experience.

 

All shut with:

 

Canon 500n

Canon 50mm 1.8 new

Kodak Portra 400 new

Scanner HP4010

 

Thanks for watching! :) Add to a contacts! Reciprocity guaranteed!

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

Okay so I was not 100% pleased with my results for week three. The trouble using a film that I don't know what sort of reciprocity failure it has and trekking out into the cold Toronto night to do some long exposure and hop from bar to bar in the process. But actually there are a few here that I'm good with. One film to rule them all.

 

Hasselblad 500c - Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm 1:2.8 - Rollei RPX 100 @ ASA-100

Rollei RPX-D (1+15) 6:30 @ 20C

Meter: Pentax Spotmeter V

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2015)

RESEARCH FOR EXTENDING RECIPROCITY

Shannon Cooney

Extending Reciprocity, a new production by Shannon Cooney, will examine empathetic responses when one spectator witnesses another, in close contact with the performer, who will rock, embrace or sway them in the rhythm of the craniosacral system (a vital system in the body with a slow rhythmical impulse and low resonance).

For Neukölln’s window, this will be documented both by video and in hand-out surveys given to the passer-by public to fill out and leave for the installation.

 

This is an early stage of the work, and will serve both as an interesting interactive performance as well as gathering material and documentation for the future production in November 2013. In line with Shannon Cooney’s teaching and dance making practices where she weaves somatic work with performance. One can read more on her website at www.shannoncooney.org to follow the creation details.

I take you, you take me

Store fronts at night in Buchanan, Michigan.

 

I used a Sekonic L-758DR to spot meter the brightes part of the image then set the exposure 2 stops slower. I used a 90mm lens on a Horseman VH-R field camera. This was a multiminute exposure on account reciprocity of Efke 25 film. the metered exposure +2EV was 15 s, this requires 1 min. 30 sec. with this film.

Taken : Well after sunset 04-Sep-2020

Bronica SQ-Ai + 50mm f3.5

Ilford FP+ ISO 125

 

Hardly any light reading as it was fairly dark so 2 mins

 

Filters : none

 

Exposure, Reciprocity

2 minutes @ f11

 

Developed : 5 min @20C in Hydrofen

Delta 3200 @1250 in Diafine, 4+4, Canon 1N RS. I'll have to have a look at the reciprocity failure charts for Delta 3200 - the frames where flash was used were very thin and hard to scan. Flash was pretty low power, so effective exposure time would have been extremely short.

 

The frames without flash were sufficiently dense to make scanning easy.

Shooting the f/167 P6*6 3D printed pinhole camera in the netherlands; 3Dprint yer own:

www.thingiverse.com/thing:157844

Freely downloadable!

 

Most of these photos made with Ilford FP4, the first time I have shot this film. Reciprocity Failure data found on internet. Seems like good exposures, but very contrasty.

 

Location notes as individual comments.

 

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

The aesthetics of failure.

 

Reciprocity failure rears its ugly head here, but leaves us with a beautiful result.

Fuji Neopan Acros 100, Mamiya RZ 67, 110 2.8. 2 min. exposure, no reciprocity correction. Rodina 1+50, 13:30.

Golden Gate Park, (Scene 1, Efke with RG-715 FIlter)

 

2nd exposure of the first scene of my own private IR shoot out. Botanical Gardens, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The first thing I noticed about the RG-715 is that it measured the same EV as the R72 but seemed slightly "brighter" which is interesting because it filters out just a hair bit more visible light. The negatives were almost indistinguishable between RG-715 and the R72 for this film.

 

Efke AURA INFRARED 820c - D76

SEKONIC L-778 DUAL SPOT F METER

Heliopan 67mm INFRARED RG-715 FILTER

(Shot at 50ASA, Metered through the filter)

EV5 (+reciprocity compensation): 8sec @ f11

Hasselblad 500 C/M w/80mm CF Zeiss Planar T*

Epson PERFECTION V750-M PRO SCANNER

(20110116_EFKE_IR820_AURA_47614_002)

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

This is part of a set of photos experimenting with a new YONGNUO YN 50mm F1.8 lens.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/albums/72157694661082464

 

The much larger aperture available - compared to the kit zoom lens I normally use - enabled a faster shutter, a lower (less "noisy") ISO, and also a shallower depth of field.

 

The lighting colour was often a terrible mix of direct sunshine, blue sky and the very orange colour reflected from wooden table tops. The "colour balance" adjustment tool in a photo editor editor - selectively adjusting highlight, mid-tone and shadow colours was useful in reducing the effects of the sometimes very blue shadows. (Traditionally this type of tool is used to "fix" issues relating to colour film, where the colour of light and dark areas could vary. This is for lots of reasons for relating to the processing and chemistry of film; and also to the physics of photons exposing film grains - for example reciprocity failure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography) where darker areas for each of the colours present in the shadows may not be recorded proportionately. Presenting the same images in Black and White is another way of "dealing with" [avoiding!] the issue.

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