Bay Nature

Apr-Jun 2013 cover, Clark’s Grebes at Clear Lake, photo (c) Steve Zamek, FeatherLightPhoto.com

Every quarter, we post a call for stock images for the following issue of Bay Nature. You can also check out our submission guidelines to receive these documents via email.

July-September 2013 Image Needs

Submission Deadline:
May 6, 2013 for all but Bay Wetlands special
May 9 for Bay Wetlands special

No summer break for Bay Nature! We’ve got an especially rich lineup on deck for our July issue. With the America’s Cup and the Bay Bridge opening, we decided to make our own Year of the Bay in the magazine.

The issue is anchored by a special section about the amazing wetland restoration work that’s been happening around the Bay for a decade now. Then, dig up your favorite summer snapshots for our “Fun on the Bay” photo contest. We’re also showcasing the otherwordly realm of plankton in the Bay with microscope photos from David Liittschwager that make these tiny Bay denizens look like a cross between aliens and fine jewelry.

Beyond the Bay, we’re profiling the oft-heard but not-often-seen wrentit, following fog researchers into the redwoods, and visiting Butano State Park, Big Basin’s lesser-known sibling.

Special Section: Bay Wetlands

Image Needs Bulletin – Bay Nature Vol 13, No 3 – Bay Wetlands Special Section
[also included as an attachment and poste on our website]

Deadline: May 9

So, first of all, we’re looking for a range of photos that capture the subtle beauty of our wetlands, from San Pablo Bay south to Alviso. (We’re not extending to Suisun Marsh.) If there is some wildlife in the photo as well, so much the better, but we’re looking here not for specific wildlife, but to give a sense of the allure of a healthy marsh habitat. (For specific closeup shots of wildlife in bay wetlands, see below.) We would also like to see images of people enjoying recreation along the Bay Trail (or nearby), showing some aspect of Bay wetlands behind or alongside.

Beyond those general shots, we have a number of more specific photo needs for the piece, as follows:

•  Great blue heron spearing a goby (or some other fish)
•  Marsh song sparrow in marsh vegetation
•  Salt marsh harvest mouse in marsh vegetation
•  California clapper rail in marsh vegetation
•  Oracle (or some other America’s Cup-type) boat sailing on SF Bay
•  Aerial of Redwood Shores/Redwood City (where proposed Saltworks housing would be built)
•  Housing or commercial development butting up to the Bay shore
•  Aerial of development butting up against levee with marsh on other side
•  Cargill salt production plant, including huge salt mound
•  Sonoma Baylands overview (could be aerial)
•  Muzzi Marsh overview, in Corte Madera (could be aerial)
•  Salt ponds aerial (from before restoration)
•  Construction equipment working on restoration of a Bay wetland (North or South Bay)
•  Waves breaking against a Bay levee
•  King tides: shot of inundated area anywhere around Bay
•  Grindelia in bloom in a marsh habitat
•  The breaching a marsh levee for a restoration project
•  Restoration work being done by volunteers on Bair Island
•  Recreation at Bair Island (kayaking; walking; birdwatching)

The text for this bay wetlands section is still in development, so it is quite possible that we’ll have additional image needs, but this is what we know as of April 26.

East Bay Parks: Poison Oak

Frequent Bay Nature contributors Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are taking on the hazardous assignment of profiling one of the Bay Area’s most feared native plants: poison oak. We’ll be looking to show poison oak throughout the seasons, from glorious fall color climbing through the forest canopy, to subtle spring flower, summer fruit, and leafless in winter, maybe with some stark lighting to show off the plant’s complex architecture.

We’ll want some closeup shots showing the variety of the plant’s leaf shapes, especially if you have an image with many leaf shapes clearly coming from one plant. And we’ll want to show its various habits, from creeping ground cover to soaring vine.

Finally, we’d like to see the maligned plant getting some love from wildlife — birds eating berries, deer browsing, anything else you’ve seen and photographed showing the value of poison oak to wildlife. Oh, and OK, a shot of a poison oak rash on someone’s body — but not too graphic!

Any and all of these scenes could also be shown in illustrations, though we’re not looking to commission new work for this piece.

On the Trail: Butano State Park

In the shadow of iconic, popular and often crowded Big Basin, Butano State Park above Pescadero has its particular charms as one of the least visited redwood parks in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

We’ll be covering the range of habitats in the park, especially the redwood areas (old-growth and second- and third-growth), but also coastal grassland, alder woodland, and the vernal wetland.

We’ll pay special attention to work being done to protect the marbled murrelets and purple calypso orchids here. The murrelets are almost impossible to photograph, so if you have an illustration, we’d love to see that. And we’ll be looking for good shots of the orchids, along with migrating newts, old-growth trees (including the park’s Candelabra Tree), and any redwood-understory berries (thimbleberry, snowberry, etc.). As always, these photos should be from Butano or the immediately surrounding forests.

Also as always, we’ll want some shots of people in the park—hikers, equestrians,  mountain bikers, and campers.

Climate Change: Fog

This next installment of our climate change series looks at how changing atmospheric conditions are affecting the formation and composition of fog, an extremely important factor in shaping the natural systems of the Bay Area.

We’ll be looking first at the impact of fog in general, so we’ll want some evocative general shots of fog around the region, from wispy tendrils to fat blankets. (Preferably not heavily urban shots!) Then we’ll be on the ground with researchers investigating the impact of fog on redwood trees, including a visit to the Grove of Old Trees in Sonoma County, so it would be ideal to have a shot from that preserve, though we’ll also consider nice shots of fog in the redwoods elsewhere in the Bay Area (from Santa Cruz County up through Sonoma County).

We also look at fog drip and sword ferns, so we’ll want a good photo of sword ferns on the floor of a coast redwood forest in the Bay Area. The article also talks about alligator lizards (both southern and northern) and salmon runs in coastal streams, so photos of either of those animals in local habitats would be welcome. We’ll also check in on the fog research being done at Pepperwood Preserve near Santa Rosa, so if you have anything particular to that place and topic, great – send it along! And finally, we’d love to have a photo of a large old (the older the better) redwood stump clearly showing the growth rings.

Fun on the Bay Photo Contest

This one is all about photos, new and old, of people having fun on, in, or right next to the Bay. We’re working with YearoftheBay.org, a project to “crowdsource” the history of the Bay. We’ve created an entry form where you can upload your three favorites — and tell us what rights apply to the pics (so this is not a rights-grab photo contest, in case you’re concerned about that). Check out the submission form at baynature.org/bay-photo-contest/

Signs of the Season

Claire Peaslee brings us the lighter side of the ultimate natural homebody, the wrentit. We’ll be focusing especially on the bird’s remarkably small home range, so any shot of the birds looking, well, at home in its natural habitat (either chaparral or coastal scrub), is fair game. It would be great to have a shot of a wrentit on or next to its nest, but that’s a hard one, given its skill in hiding itself in the thick scrub.

Magazine Cover

All stories except Signs of the Season are candidates for cover treatments. As always, cover candidates need to have a portrait orientation, with room at the top of the image (about 1.5” to 2”) to put the “BAY NATURE”. The resolution has to be high enough to withstand blowing up to 8 1/2 x 11 inches (and remember, in blowing up a 35mm slide to 8.5 x 11, we have to lose image from the top and/or bottom to get the width to fill the frame). Of course, there should be good color and contrast and depth.

Deadlines, Formats, Shipping, etc.

We will be doing layout in May, so I would like to receive submissions by the end of the day on Monday, May 6. After that date, check to see if we are still accepting submissions. For the Bay Wetlands supplement, the deadline is end of day on May 9.

Format: All electronic submissions should be low-resolution JPEGs (1 MB or less per file), sent to me at dan@baynature.org.

Links to online image galleries are also perfectly fine; ideally online galleries should allow download of a low-res comp (640 by 480 pixels or larger). All slides and transparencies should be sent to: Attn: Dan Rademacher, Bay Nature, 1328 – 6th Street, #2, Berkeley, CA 94710. Please do not send slides or CDs via FedEx using our account number without first getting our permission to do so! If possible, label all slides with your name and a brief caption.

If your image is selected for publication, we will need to get either an original slide or a high resolution scan (300-350 dpi at full size). We’ll want to receive final high-res files or slides by the end of the day on Wednesday, May 29. (Issue publication date will be July 1, 2013.)

Payment: For those of you new to submitting to us, I like to say from the get-go that our art use rates are not high — from $50 for one-time inside use at a quarter page or less, up to $300 for the cover. The inside rates are negotiable for a photo that we really need with an article, but I always have to balance subject matter and image quality against cost. If that changes your feelings about submitting to us, I certainly understand. If not, I’ll be excited to see your work!

Shipment: A note on sending original artwork and transparencies: We do our utmost to secure all original artwork sent to us, and we are careful to send all such artwork by trackable FedEx or UPS. However, if such a trackable shipment should be lost or seriously damaged through no fault of ours — as has happened just once since we began publishing in 2001 — we cannot be held liable beyond any agreed-upon permission fee and the physical value of the media, or an additional amount agreed upon in advance. In certain cases, that may affect our ability to accept submissions.

Some photographers send us First Class postage-paid envelopes with submissions of original transparencies. We certainly appreciate the consideration and will use that postage if it is included. However, we don’t have the capacity to add insurance/trackability to stamped USPS mail. So such art will be returned via the supplied postage, without tracking. For all other submissions, we ship via trackable UPS Ground.

We know you put a lot of work into selecting images for the magazine and we really appreciate your willingness to do that; it is such an important part of the overall quality of Bay Nature. So thanks in advance for your submissions. I look forward to seeing them!

April 19, 2013