Nudibranchs ~ i've been obsessed with these gorgeous creatures since my first dives as a kid in south east asia. David Doubilet ~ i grew up on his breath taking photography. Combine them ~ and video ~ and National Geographic... and i've been swooning over this Nudibranch feature on the National Geographic website for days now. So looking beyond the subject matter for a moment, from a photographic/design perspective... what really struck me about this series of photos, was the process! Seldom do you see these beautiful (tiny) little slug like creatures pop off so vibrantly on a perfectly white background... they look more like supermodels in a photo studio... so watching the video blew my mind to see that David Doubilet and his team actually went diving with a portable studio that they brought TO the nudibranches, shooting them where they found them, and only moving them when they weren't doing any complicated nudibranch activities (mating, feeding, etc). See the full gallery here, and see some of my favorites as well as the set up they used on the next page!

TO PAGE 2 of "David Doubilet's Nudibranchs"! ----->

Tags: animals - nature - ocean - photography - underwater - video

Inspiration comes not only in all shapes and sizes, but from literally anywhere... and all of us at NOTCOT have a particular fascination with the inspiration from nature (ok some more than others, since Justine picks nature over design with her phd studies!)... So when we heard about the new deep sea species found in Antarctica, and then found these high res images and video of them, we swooned. And realized we HAD to post them. Here's what we found out from the Australian Antarctic Division: "The return of the last of three Antarctic marine science research vessels marks the culmination of one of Australia's most ambitious International Polar Year projects, a census of life in the icy Southern Ocean known as the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census (CEAMARC). Australia's Aurora Australis and collaborating vessels L'Astrolabe (France) and Umitaka Maru (Japan) have returned from the Southern Ocean, their decks overflowing with a vast array of ocean life including a number of previously unknown species collected from the cold waters near the East Antarctic land mass." Some of the shapes and curves of these are just incredible... don't those tunicates look like glassy hearts? Lots of imagery after the jump!

TO PAGE 2 of "Aurora Australis' New Species in Antarctica"! ----->

Tags: animals - antarctica - nature - ocean - photography - sea - underwater