wwp@yahoogroups.com:
International Polar Year event?
matt_nolan_uaf 2007-Jul-02 17:38:00
Hi. I'm brand new to this list, but an increasingly big fan of
panoramic photography. From some discussions on the PanotoolsNG
forum, I had an idea for a possible new WWP event.
In March of this year began the 4th International Polar Year (IPY).
These events happen every 50 years, and this time over 60 nations and
over 10,000 scientists are involved. And given the recent changes in
the polar regions, this event is a big deal. You can learn more
about it here www.ipy.org. I am a glaciologist, working mostly in
Alaska, and trying to take lots of panoramas. I was thinking that a
WWP might be a great outreach tool for IPY. However, given that most
photographers cant easily reach the polar region, the idea was
suggested in the panotools forum to expand the contribution-base to
temperate latitudes via pole-mounted panoramas (aka "polar
panoramas"). We can refine this further perhaps by making it "bi-
polar" -- photos taken from the top of poles to gain height and from
the bottom of poles to get below something. Further, these "polar
panoramas" should in some way relate what's going on in the
geographic polar regions to the composition of the panorama. In this
way, we let photographers explore the linkages between the polar
regions and their backyards on their own, and then educate the rest
of the world about this. IPY technically lasts 2 years (until March
2009) to give both poles two complete field seasons, so I'm not sure
what is the best way to turn this into a photographic event of
shorter duration. Perhaps two soltices?
I think this would be well-received by the scientific community, and
as someone heavily involved with outreach for this event, I also
created an IPY layer for Google Earth, which Google will soon be
ingesting into the Featured Content folder (a beta version is here:
http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/ipy_in_google_earth/ I
could very easily add a panorama layer to this, reaching potentially
200 million users, perhaps helping with WWP visibility as well.
Please let me know what you think of this idea and feel free to make
further suggestions/comments/feedback. As I said, I only just
learned about WWP and I'm not familiar with how new ideas are
proposed or initiated, etc.
Thanks,
Matt