my brother, the absent photographer

my brother (the world's best mechanical engineer) has always had a knack for building, constructing and tinkering. when we were kids, you could dump lego's on the floor and he'd just lump them into a jumbled pile and stare at them for several minutes. then, in an unbelievable flurry of activity, slap them together as fast as he possibly could into something absurd like an exact scale model rocket ship, a car that you could get in a drive, or a fully functional television. he would never build the same things twice. more than once we used this as a mild form of entertainment for the neighbors (and i believe the refrigerator my mom uses to this very day was made in this fashion).

he has since built a motion sensitive camera, melding a regular camera with a motion detector (of course, isn't that what you'd do?) and has been setting it out to auto-snap pics in areas that are almost impenetrable to humans. over time he's accumulated a serious number of truly stunning shots, including the obvious standards like deer, antelope and skunks; but also some more far-out animals like bob cats, wild turkeys and coyotes eating wild pigs.

my two favorite shots of his are both a little "wrong" technically, but still truly spectacular.

unbelievably, this cougar photo was taken about 50 miles from the dead-center heart of the silicon valley in henry coe state park.

(if you need help, look in the lower right-hand corner at the thing that, at first glance, looks like a tree branch.) this photo was taken in the high sierras within the last month. although it may look suspiciously like a sock puppet on a stick, this is either a pine martin or a pacific fisher (it's hard to tell which from this angle), either one of which would be an animal that is exceedingly rare in this region.

[both photos (c) 2005 j.s. harlan]