Introducing Geotripper Images: Finding Geology-Themed Digital Images on the Internet

It is just three weeks to the fifth anniversary of Geotripper (that's upper Paleozoic in Internet time). As I noted in my first blog entry, I've taken a lot of digital images and I wanted to use the blog as a way of using the pictures to educate interested people in the earth sciences. I can't believe I've written 1,100 posts, but it has been a heck of a lot of fun, and I've come to know some great people in the blog community as a result. 

As the blogs accumulated in number, I realized that although people might find the pictures useful (for school reports or research illustrations and the like), there was no good way to track them down in an organized fashion. So I got the idea of doing a separate website where my best geology pictures could be organized by subject matter or location. So, in 2010 or so I bought a domain name (geotripperimages.com; somehow geotripper.com was already taken), and immediately realized I was overmatched. I can follow a template like blogger, but faced with html and utter cluelessness about web publishing, things languished. Finally, I cobbled something together and produced an earth-science based digital image site. It is still incomplete (especially in the rivers, deserts and karst areas), but there are something over 1,000 images posted so far, and the hopefully the navigation of the site is simple enough to follow.
So I welcome you to take a look at Geotripperimages.com. So far, I have extensive sections on Volcanism, Tectonic Processes, Erosional Processes, Earth Materials, and Living Things (because every picture site should have furry or scaley animals).  The site is meant for free use by students, teachers and non-profits (see the Image Use Guidelines here). If there are authors or publishers who wish to use images in texts or other for-profit publications, we are happy to make them available at a very modest fee, royalty free. You can click on any of the pictures for a fuller view, and most are available at much higher resolution (contact us for more information).

Since the pictures are the work of myself and Mrs. Geotripper, there are plenty of the places in the world we haven't visited yet, so you might not always find what you are looking for. With that in mind, I've added a new sidebar to Geotripper called Geology and Earth Science Images. I've found seven really handy sites for collecting geology photos. I would be really happy to add some more, if you happen to host a site for such things (I'm mostly interested in sites that are mainly educational in nature). Here the sites (I can add others if you let me know if their existence):

• Allen Glazner's Geology Image Gallery (University of North Carolina)
Allan is co-author of some great "Geology Underfoot..." guides.

• Andrew Alden's About.com Landform Picture Index
Andrew Alden has been blogging about geology for longer than just about everybody, and is still going strong at http://geology.about.com//. He has put together a fine gallery of images.
• British Geological Survey Geoscenic National Archive of Geological Photographs
• Earth Science World Image Bank-AGI
Many geologists have contributed photographs to this excellent image bank (6,000+ photos).
• Geology Photos: Marli Bryant Miller
Marli co-wrote an excellent field guide to the geology of Death Valley, and has some excellent imagery at this site, including some spectacular aerial photography.
• Imaging Earth's Surface - University of Vermont
A site devoted to geomorphology images (including around 50 of Geotripper's pictures).
• NOAA Natural Hazards Image Database
• U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library
A good place to find some of the most classic geology photos ever taken.

Happy searching!

The Power of a Photograph...

Photography is such a powerful medium. I ran across this article on 30 Photos That Changed The World. All of the pictures are emotionally powerful, especially the 1863 Mathew Brady shot of Civil War dead at Gettysburg. Most of the photos feature people, as well they should, but three stood out for their geological content: the view of the Earth rising over the moon, the shot of Buzz Aldrin walking (dancing?) on the Moon, and Ansel Adam's panorama of the Grand Tetons.

So many things happened in the late 1960's and early 1970's when I was leaving childhood. It was a scary time in many ways, and exhilarating. We worried about life being obliterated by mushroom clouds, but were coming to the realization that we could clean up some of the mess we had made of things. There was a war that was claiming the lives of friends and family, but we were learning that equality of all people was a possibility (even though we still single out groups in our society; it's a long road...). Seeing the Earth for the first time from space, though, had a huge impact on my personal life.

Another event of those years was the 1969 oil spill at Santa Barbara. The disaster was one of the catalysts for the first Earth Day, and led to a moratorium on new oil drilling off the coast of California that has continued for four decades. There are many issues, and it is unfortunate that opponents to the moratorium can say little more than "drill, baby, drill" as if sucking out every last bit of our remaining petroleum would make us somehow more energy independent (the reserves in the U.S. would last us not even a decade if we stopped importing oil today).

Of course, one of the arguments in support of offshore drilling is that with forty years of experience, the process is perfectly safe. It makes the events of the last few weeks all the more heartbreaking. There is an arrogance that accompanies a dependence on a particular technology. We see it with nuclear power as well. When they go wrong, what happens next? We made a choice in the 1980's to pretend that oil would last forever, and the U.S. made no serious efforts for two decades to increase mileage standards or build alternate forms of transportation. So we are forced to import even more oil, or drill for oil in ever more dangerous and unstable environments.

What is the power of a picture?

I really wonder if the "drill, baby, drill" crowd has any sense of introspection at all. Did any of them stop for a minute and wonder if this really the best way forward, before calling for increased drilling? Does an image like this carry the power to overcome apathy and willful ignorance about our vulnerability to energy disruptions? We are running out of time and choices.

Update: Devilstower has some similar sentiments...

Update #2: Famed Oceanographer and Marine Fisheries expert Rush Limbaugh checks in about the oil slick threatening the southern states: ""The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is." He also is pretty sure environmentalists blew up the oil rig.

Update #3: On the other hand, here is what a real petroleum geologist has to say, Rachel at 4 1/2 billion years of wonder (thanks to Jules and Rachel for their comments!).

The Joy of a Good Zoom Lens...

My previous post concerned three volcanoes visible in a single shot, taken by my wife on our recent field studies journey to the southern Cascades. Lockwood asked in the comments about the location of the shot, so I have indicated the placement above. Most of you will immediately recognize the iconic view of Crater Lake and Wizard Island taken from the rim of the caldera near the resort complex on the southwest flank of the lake. The picture in question was a 24x zoom (half optical, half digital). It was amazing to me how much the shot took a familiar scene into unfamiliar territory.