Diane Cook and Len Jenshel are two of America's foremost landscape photographers, interpreting culture and environment for over 25 years.
They met in 1979, were married in 1983, and began collaborating in 1991. Their first joint project, an exhibition and book about volcanic landscape, Hot Spots (Bulfinch Press, 1996), won Golden Light Award for best landscape photography book of 1996 and was among American Photo Magazine's "Best Photo Books of the Year." Their most recent book, Aquarium (Aperture, 2003), explores the spectacle and the packaging of nature in public aquariums.
Currently they are collaborating with their unique style of pairing black and white prints by Cook with color images by Jenshel on several new projects. On Ice is a sumptuous look at Greenland's glaciers and icebergs, and deals with the issues of beauty and impermanence in the age of global warming. The Edge of New York: Waterfront Photographs is an exploration of the 500-plus miles (800-plus kilometers) of waterfront in the five boroughs of New York City, a project sponsored by grants from The Design Trust for Public Space and NYSCA. Gardens By Night is a meditation on what night reveals in the environment of a created paradise.
Diane Cook has been photographing the complexity of landscape since her graduation from Rutgers University in 1976. She has been a recipient of two New York State Council on the Arts grants in 1987 and 2003, and a Photo Urbanism grant from the Design Trust for Public Space in 2002. She has had one-person shows at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Klotz-Sirmon Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery, both in New York City, Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, Kathleen Ewing Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Scheinbaum & Russek in Santa Fe. Her work is in numerous collections, including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and the L.A. County Museum in Los Angeles, to name a few.
Len Jenshel is one of the pioneers of "The New Color," photographing landscape and culture since 1974. His books include Travels in the American West (Smithsonian, 1992), Charmed Places (Abrams, 1988), and Charleston and the Low Country (Spacemaker Press, 1997). His photographs have been exhibited internationally in one-person shows at the Yokohama Museum in Tokyo, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the International Center of Photography in New York City. His work is represented in over a hundred collections worldwide. He has received numerous grants including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts, two from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and the Design Trust for Public Space.
In addition to their personal projects, Cook and Jenshel also work on assignments for major domestic and international magazines, including National Geographic, Condé Nast Traveler, House & Garden, The New Yorker, National Geographic Traveler, Washington Post Magazine, Fortune, Men's Journal, Audubon, Departures, Civilization, Travel & Leisure, GEO, Life, T&L Golf, Organic Style, Budget Travel, Nest, Outside, Town & Country, and many others.
They are both represented by Kathleen Ewing Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Scheinbaum & Russek in Santa Fe. They travel extensively for personal projects, assignments, lectures, and workshops. When they are not on the road, they make their home in New York City.
Many people are fond of ladybugs because of their colorful, spotted appearance. But farmers love them for their appetite. Most ladybugs voraciously consume plant-eating insects, such as aphids, and in doing so they help to protect crops. Ladybugs lay hundreds of eggs in the colonies of aphids and other plant-eating pests. When they hatch, the ladybug larvae immediately begin to feed.
Ladybugs are also called lady beetles or, in Europe, ladybird beetles. There are about 5,000 different species of these insects, and not all of them have the same appetites. A few ladybugs prey not on plant-eaters but on plants. The Mexican bean beetle and the squash beetle are destructive pests that prey upon the crops mentioned in their names.
Ladybugs appear as half-spheres, tiny, spotted, round or oval-shaped domes. They have short legs and antennae.
Their distinctive spots and attractive colors are meant to make them unappealing to predators. Ladybugs can secrete a fluid from joints in their legs which gives them a foul taste. Their coloring is likely a reminder to any animals that have tried to eat their kind before: "I taste awful." A threatened ladybug may both play dead and secrete the unappetizing substance to protect itself.
Tree kangaroos are found only in the rain forests of Australia, West Papua, and Papua New Guinea. Six of ten species are found in Papua New Guinea, in some of the last undisturbed rain forest habitat in the world.
The Matschie's tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei) is endemic to the Huon Peninsula on the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea. It is classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2004 Red List as endangered.
Matschie's tree kangaroos live in mountainous cloud forests at elevations of up to 11,000 feet (3,350 meters). They spend most of their time in trees. Tree kangaroos primarily eat tree leaves. They also consume flowers, grass shoots, ferns, moss, and bark.
Female tree kangaroos give birth to one offspring after a gestation period of approximately 44 days. After birth, the fetus-like young, called a joey, crawls to a teat located inside the mother's pouch, where it attaches itself to nurse. The majority of the infant's development occurs during this lactation phase.
The joey remains in the pouch for about ten months. The mother will clean her pouch and groom the infant often during this phase. After the infant initially leaves the pouch at eight months, it will continue to return to the pouch to nurse. This "in and out" phase lasts for one or two months. During the final phase, the young still nurses but never climbs completely into the pouch.
Young tree kangaroos are weaned when they are approximately 13 months old. They stay with their mothers until they are about 18 months old, when they disperse and establish a home range.
Little is known about the social behavior of wild tree kangaroos. Researchers believe that Matschie's tree kangaroos are fairly solitary animals. Females and males have non-overlapping home ranges, but a male's range will overlap several females' range. Researchers also believe that Matschie's tree kangaroos are polygamous and that males interact with several females. Males, however, appear not to establish harems, and females remain independent. The only strong social bond these animals form is between mother and offspring.
In captivity, if females are isolated from all other animals after becoming pregnant, offspring almost always survive. These observations show that Matschie's tree kangaroos are mostly solitary animals.
Leopards are graceful and powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars. They live in sub-Saharan Africa, northeast Africa, Central Asia, India, and China. However, many of their populations are endangered, especially outside of Africa.
The leopard is so strong and comfortable in trees that it often hauls its kills into the branches. By dragging the bodies of large animals aloft it hopes to keep them safe from scavengers such as hyenas. Leopards can also hunt from trees, where their spotted coats allow them to blend with the leaves until they spring with a deadly pounce. These nocturnal predators also stalk antelope, deer, and pigs by stealthy movements in the tall grass. When human settlements are present, leopards often attack dogs and, occasionally, people.
Leopards are strong swimmers and very much at home in the water, where they sometimes eat fish or crabs.
Female leopards can give birth at any time of the year. They usually have two grayish cubs with barely visible spots. The mother hides her cubs and moves them from one safe location to the next until they are old enough to begin playing and learning to hunt. Cubs live with their mothers for about two years—otherwise, leopards are solitary animals.
Most leopards are light colored with distinctive dark spots that are called rosettes, because they resemble the shape of a rose. Black leopards, which appear to be almost solid in color because their spots are hard to distinguish, are commonly called black panthers.
Asia's leaf monkeys take their name from the lush jungle foliage that makes up the bulk of their diets. All are equipped with a large, chambered stomach, like that of a cow, which allows them to break down and digest their fibrous fare.
Endemic to the jungles of Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo, red leaf monkeys are named for their shaggy auburn coat. They are also known as maroon langurs and maroon leaf monkeys.
These charismatic Old World primates live in bands of 2 to 13 individuals, led by a dominant male, and spend nearly all their time in the trees. They have broad, dark-colored faces with wide, expressive eyes. They average between 13 and 14 pounds (6.2 to 6.3 kilograms).
Beyond leaves, red leaf monkeys also consume large amounts of seeds and flowers. They also eat fruit but avoid sweet, ripe fruit because the sugars disrupt the delicate balance of their complex stomachs.
Red leaf monkeys are highly territorial and will challenge any intruders within their home range. Males emit a loud call to demarcate their territory and warn rivals away.
This species is under some pressure from hunting and habitat loss, but is quite common throughout its range. Nevertheless, they are protected by law throughout Malaysian Borneo.
These well known seabirds do not migrate, but live year-round in tropical and subtropical regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Familiar to boaters, they often follow (and sometimes land on) marine craft. Red-footed boobies feed at sea, but nest on land, perching in coastal trees and shrubs.
These are the smallest of more than half a dozen booby species. Red-footed boobies are strong flyers and can travel up to 93 miles (150 kilometers) in search of food. They often hunt in large groups, and are nimble enough to snare flying fish from the air. Boobies are well adapted for diving and feature long bills, lean and aerodynamic bodies, closeable nostrils, and long wings which they wrap around their bodies before entering the water. Red-footed boobies use these attributes to plunge-dive and capture fish that they spot from above with their sharp eyes. At night, they may dive for schooling squid that are visible because of their phosphorescence. Once in the water, the birds use their webbed feet to aid swimming.
Red-footed boobies appear in a variety of color morphs but, of course, all have feet of the distinctive red color which gives them their name.
These gregarious birds live in colonies and, during mating season, hundreds of animals may gather to pair up and mate. Females lay only one egg every 15 months, and both parents care for chicks. Young mature slowly, but the low reproduction rate is balanced by these birds' long lifespan—over 20 years.
The biggest threats to red-footed boobies are a fishing industry that thins their food source, and coastal development. The shoreline trees and shrubs these birds frequent are disappearing as human habitat consumes more of the world's coastlines.
The much-maligned marine iguanas of the Galápagos Islands are so famously homely, even Charles Darwin piled on, describing them as "hideous-looking" and "most disgusting, clumsy lizards."
It's true, they're not pretty, with their wide-set eyes, smashed-in faces, spiky dorsal scales, and knotty, salt-encrusted heads. But what these unusual creatures lack in looks they make up for with their amazing and unique ecological adaptations.
Scientists figure that land-dwelling iguanas from South America must have drifted out to sea millions of years ago on logs or other debris, eventually landing on the Galápagos. From that species emerged marine iguanas, which spread to nearly all the islands of the archipelago. Each island hosts marine iguanas of unique size, shape and color.
They look fierce, but are actually gentle herbivores, surviving exclusively on underwater algae and seaweed. Their short, blunt snouts and small, razor-sharp teeth help them scrape the algae off rocks, and their laterally flattened tails let them move crocodile-like through the water. Their claws are long and sharp for clinging to rocks on shore or underwater in heavy currents. They have dark gray coloring to better absorb sunlight after their forays into the frigid Galápagos waters. And they even have special glands that clean their blood of extra salt, which they ingest while feeding.
Their population is not well known, but estimates are in the hundreds of thousands. They are under constant pressure from non-native predators like rats, feral cats, and dogs, who feed on their eggs and young. They are protected throughout the archipelago and are considered vulnerable to extinction.
These rare, beautiful gray leopards live in the mountains of Central Asia. They are insulated by thick hair, and their wide, fur-covered feet act as natural snowshoes. Snow leopards have powerful legs and are tremendous leapers, able to jump as far as 50 feet (15 meters). They use their long tails for balance and as blankets to cover sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill.
Snow leopards prey upon the blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and the Himalaya, as well as the mountain ibex found over most of the rest of their range. Though these powerful predators can kill animals three times their weight, they also eat smaller fare, such as marmots, hares, and game birds.
One Indian snow leopard, protected and observed in a national park, is reported to have consumed five blue sheep, nine Tibetan woolly hares, twenty-five marmots, five domestic goats, one domestic sheep, and fifteen birds in a single year.
As these numbers indicate, snow leopards sometimes have a taste for domestic animals, which has led to killings of the big cats by herders.
These endangered cats appear to be in dramatic decline because of such killings, and due to poaching driven by illegal trades in pelts and in body parts used for traditional Chinese medicine. Vanishing habitat and the decline of the cats' large mammal prey are also contributing factors.
Cynthia Beall, co-author of two articles in National Geographic magazine, is an expert on the adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia of the indigenous populations of the Andean, Tibetan, and East African plateaus.
She is the S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Beall's research interests in physical anthropology are in the broad area of how people adapt to their environments, both physical and sociocultural, and the causes and consequences of worldwide variation in human biology. She has conducted over two dozen field research projects in Peru, Bolivia, Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, and Ethiopia with funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society Committee on Research and Exploration, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, IREX, and others.
Beall's professional service includes serving as chair of the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Biological Science, as member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on International Scientific Organizations, and as member of the editorial boards of Human Biology, Wilderness Medicine, and High Altitude Medicine and Biology.
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