An Interview with Thomas Rosburg: Part 2

What advice would you give to younger nature photographers? What are the particular challenges of being a botanical photographer?
I teach nature photography at Drake and Lakeside Lab, so there is a lot I could say. In short, I stress 3 components that make an image aesthetic – 1) understand your equipment and how it works, what to use when, correct exposure is critical; 2) understand the role of content in an image, especially elements of design and light quality; and 3) understand the key features of composition, for example, depth of field, perspective, and viewpoint.

Plants are very accessible, but photographing them can be challenging due to bad light and wind. There are several ways of dealing with these problems with the use of accessory equipment. Or quite often, getting out in the field early in the day can make the difference. There is a lot of truth to the saying “the early photographer gets the image.”

What are your favorite natural areas in Iowa and the Midwest? What areas do you return to constantly, and what’s your favorite newly visited area?
The state preserves are generally my favorite areas because they offer the best examples of our native ecosystems. These are the places that provide the best opportunities for plants and landscapes. On a larger scale, both the Loess Hills and Paleozoic Plateau landforms offer exceptional opportunities for nature photography.

Areas close to home are the places I return to repeatedly – Ledges State Park and Doolittle Prairie State Preserve are good examples. A newly visited area that has a lot of promise is Whiterock Conservancy in Guthrie County.

Thomas Rosburg, photographer, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie

Dickcissel - Art by Claudia McGehee

Dickcissel, Spiza americana

This colorful bird, which looks like a miniature meadowlark, sings a song that sounds like its name, “Dick-dick-cissel."

Come see Claudia next week at the Iowa Author Fair in Coralville, Iowa!
Date: Wednesday, October 13
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Location: Meeting rooms of the Coralville Public Library

Claudia McGehee, A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet

Plant of the Week

June grass

Koeleria cristata (L.) Pers.

scientific name, 2008: Koeleria macrantha (Ledeb.)  Schult.

other common names: prairie June grass, crested hair grass, Koeler’s grass

Koeleria: in honor of George Ludwig Koeler, a late 18th-century German professor at Mainz and a student of grasses

Cristata: from Latin, meaning “crested”

Grass family: Poaceae (Gramineae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with Thomas Rosburg: Part 1

How long have you been photographing plants?
I obtained my first 35 mm SLR camera in 1977 as a graduation gift and started doing casual nature photography. In 1986, I switched to Nikon equipment and added several lenses to my gear. That’s when I started pursuing nature photography more seriously and began developing plant photography skills.

Why have plants kept your photographic attention for so long? What other subjects do you focus on?
About the same time, in 1986, I began the graduate work that eventually lead to my becoming a botanist. So plants have occupied my interest ever since I began serious photography. There are over 2000 species of plants in Iowa, so there is a huge list of potential plant subjects to photograph. I’d like to have a photographic record of every one of them. I shoot all nature subjects – landscapes, wildlife, macro subjects as well as plants. Because plants are always available, I tend to gravitate towards them when I am out doing photography and time is limited.

What has changed in the outdoor world since your first days of photographing these areas? What’s better, what’s worse?
One thing is that there are more public areas to go to and look for nature subjects. And at least some of them are still pretty good examples of Iowa’s native landscape. In part this is due to the increased emphasis on restoration work. So access to areas is surely better. On the down side – I see increasing problems with non-native, troublesome plant species that threaten the integrity of natural areas. Unfortunately, in some cases this problem is exacerbated by poorly designed and/or executed restoration work. 

Thomas Rosburg, photographer, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie

Plant of the Week

Bunchflower

Melanthium virginicum L.

other common names: Virginia bunchflower

Melanthium: from the Greek melas, meaning “black,” and anthos, meaning “flower”

Virginicum: meaning “Virginian” or “of Virginia”

Lily family: Liliaceae

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

This Week in Iowa Nature

The Harvest Moon, familiar in song and story, is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

An Interview with Greg Houseal

What was the catalyst—the magic moment—that brought you to appreciate prairies in the first place? How long have you been working to protect and reconstruct them?
I have always had an affinity for wide-open spaces, so I looked for opportunities to live and work in the West, not realizing that we had native prairie here in Iowa. I was fortunate to live and work briefly on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota in the 1980s, where I learned to appreciate the diversity of grasslands and their value for livestock and wildlife. Later, I returned to graduate school at Montana State University in range science, and it was there that I encountered the burgeoning field of restoration ecology. I decided I wanted to work with restoration and fire ecology to restore tallgrass prairie in the Midwest. After a brief diversion working as a research technician in Georgia in longleaf pine savannas (also a fire-adapted grassland community), I returned to Iowa in 1996 to work at UNI for the Iowa Ecotype Project.

Tell us about your specific role at UNI’s Tallgrass Prairie Center.
As program manager for the Natural Selections program (Iowa Ecotype Project’s trade name), I collect and accession remnant seed; manage horticultural propagation of greenhouse plugs; and oversee the increase, harvesting, and cleaning of native seed. I’ve published articles on the program and have consulted on other seed increase efforts around the nation. I read voraciously to stay current on literature related to native seed increase, and I serve as editor for the TPC e-newsletter. I have developed native plant workshops over the past 10 years, and I do a wide variety of workshops, training, and land management activities. I supervise 3 to 5 students; working with students is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job.

Beyond the tallgrass species, what other plants and animals are you especially interested in?
I’m familiar with a lot of the more western Great Plains flora, having worked in the mixed grass of South Dakota and the shortgrass and intermountain bunchgrass of Montana. I love vegetable gardening and casual birding/herpetology, and I am a reluctant fisherperson. I grew up on a farm and have a soft spot for cattle, horses, dogs, and chickens…and ok, cats, maybe, if they’re mostly outside.

What has changed in the outdoor world since your first days of trying to learn about it and protect it? What’s better, what’s worse?
It keeps getting more and more messed up. Nobody really cares about the environment until something so overwhelmingly destructive happens that we have to pay attention. Then we stand around acting surprised and pointing fingers at everybody but our own selves. That’s why we have wounded the earth so deeply that it is now bleeding billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf at this very moment. If we recover from this devastation environmentally and economically, perhaps it will usher in a new day for the environment and the planet. 



What advice would you give to beginning conservationists?
Do what you love, and love what you do, and try to do it well. Don’t expect to get rich or even to make a living at conservation unless you’re willing to sacrifice. Perhaps one day society will value environment enough to pay people a living wage to steward our world. Right now, we’re graduating biology/natural resource managers who can only find part-time internships or low-paying seasonal jobs in their field.

What are the particular challenges of being a conservationist in the Midwest?
Specific to prairies…they’re too small and isolated…we’re not going to have any prairies left in another few decades, unless we can begin to restore on a landscape scale, complete with fire and grazing (especially browsing by elk). The small, isolated fragments that we have are under relentless assault by invasive species, herbicide drift, sedimentation from adjoining farming activities, brush encroachment, genetic isolation, and outright destruction by plowing, roads, and housing developments. Prairie is a landscape, more than plants, and we have virtually none of it left on that scale. Plus, corporate row crop agriculture dominates this state. We’re not feeding the world, we’re overfeeding our own people on corn sweeteners and soy. Corn is King, but it’s unsustainable.

Greg Houseal, The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Prairie Restoration in the Upper Midwest