07/5/10

FROGS ARE GREEN 2010 Photo Contest!

We’re excited to announce the 2nd Annual FROGS ARE GREEN Photo contest!

Here are the rules:

This year we will be accepting submissions in two categories: Frogs in the Wild and Backyard Frogs. Backyard Frog photos would include such photos as a frog perched on your picnic table or other unusual place. Last year, for example, we received a photo of a frog sitting on a pool hose. Frogs in the Wild photos, on the other hand, should feature frogs, toads, or other amphibians in their natural habitat: frog ponds, marshes, in the woods, and so on.

PLEASE—no photo manipulation and no photos of pet frogs. Please do not move the frog to get a better photo. Photos of amphibians of all kinds, including salamanders, will be accepted. E-mail all photos to us at Frogs Are Green. All photos should be in jpeg format and no larger than 3 MB. Please name your photo a short but distinctive name, (with no spaces, such as, “susan-frog-NJ.jpg”) and include a caption detailing your name, email and the location of the photo. All entries must be received by September 15, 2010. Winners will be announced October 4, 2010.

PRIZES

Winner:

The winner will receive a Frogs Are Green t-shirt or poster of his/her choice or we can design a special t-shirt and/or poster with your winning photo. The photo will be featured in a separate post and the photo will also appear on the front page of the blog all year.

Honorable mentions:

Honorable mention photos will appear in a gallery on our blog and the photographers will receive our small Red-Eyed Tree Frog poster.

SOME TIPS FOR PHOTOGRAPHING AMPHIBIANS

For those of you who have never photographed an amphibian, here are some tips from the book Frogs: A Chorus of Colors by John and Deborah Behler, which has a chapter on photographing these elusive and well-camouflaged creatures:

• Try to learn about the animal first. What is its habitat? When are they active?
• Walk slowly and stop frequently (it helps to have someone with you who is less than 3 feet tall and has sharp eyes). Frogs and toads blend in so well that they are hard to find. Be alert for subtle movements.
• In summer, you might find the sit-and-wait frog predators hanging out on the edges of ponds and lakes.
• Be aware of the position of the sun. Avoid taking pictures at midday on bright sunny days. In the morning, face east and it will keep sunlight from coming into your lens and washing out your photos.
• Don’t necessarily put the subject in the middle of the photo. Keep the whole animal in the photo, but compose the picture so the background tells a story.
• Bracket your photos, i.e., take the same shot with different settings. Also, try taking a flash photo. Without a flash, animals in photos may look lifeless and poorly lighted.
• Try to be on the same level as your subject.
• State parks, bird sanctuaries, and wildlife refuges are good places to find amphibians.

You don’t need fancy equipment. I took this photo of a bullfrog in low light with a Kodak EasyShare camera on the Flower Setting (close up).

Bullfrog, photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

On your travels this summer, keep your eye peeled for our froggy friends and send in your photos!

04/22/10

Happy Earth Day!

We are happy to announce the winner of our first FROGS ARE GREEN Earth Day contest, in which we asked people to send in ideas about how to help the environment, using the following words as inspiration: renew, rebuild, reconnect, or rethink. We received lots of great ideas and it was tough picking a winner, but without further ado, the winner is:

Dee Dee DisBennett

Her winning entry is a way to reuse dump truck tires as raised beds to grow tomatoes:

I was stressing over a pile of dump truck tires and a pile of broken up concrete, rock, and brick that had been in the yard for years. Hauling this stuff to the landfill really wasn’t the problem. What it was going to cost me to dump it was my concern. Well, in my household, I’ve convinced my family that it is against the law to not recycle (hee hee). My 13 year old was trying to think of ideas for these tires – tire swing, shred for playground, boat bumpers at lake, etc. Unfortunately, these tires have steel in them, so their re-use is limited. Placing this on the back burner and moving on to the creation of our 1st garden, the idea hit us like a ton of bricks to use the tires in the garden. We drilled a hole, then jig sawed the sidewalls out of the tires, placed them against the hill, filled them with potting soil and carolina clay and planted tomatos in them. We placed the broken concrete and rocks on the hill behind the tires.

We liked this idea because tire disposal is a huge environmental problem. Landfills won’t accept them and so using one as a raised bed seemed like a great idea to us!

Sample tire planters

We got lots of other great ideas. Honorable mention goes to the following people:

Katie Matz suggests that teachers use both sides of the paper before recycling so that the paper filling up recycling bins would be used completely. She also suggested that teachers send assignments and receive homework via email to save paper. As she says, “Less paper equals more trees, more trees equals more wild life living in rainforests, including those cute and slimy frogs.” We agree!

Lisa Crain-Butler: Lisa suggested ideas for celebrating her daughter’s Earth Day birthday (happy birthday, Madalie!), including planting a tree, giving her a set of gardening tools, and creating a birthday garden. She also has great ideas for reusing cans and other materials.

Kristine Garcia: Kristine’s idea is to skip the mall and go to a park instead and make it fun by creating nature scavenger hunts. We all definitely need to spend less time in the mall and more time outside so this is a great idea!

Alka Mehta suggests creating an environmental club to build a pond for frogs, educate people about not using chemicals in their school, workplace, or home, and performing a play or making a video about environmental topics. (Maybe a FROGS ARE GREEN club!)

Trish Szymanski suggests forming neighborhood associations to remove those items that can’t be left curbside for recycling. This is a big problem in cities. I have a whole basement full of this type of material.

Linda Labowitz suggests saving lids from plastic bottles and using them for drainage at the bottom of flower containers. Mix compost and potting soil to put on the top of plastic lids. I’m going to try this with my garden plants.

Nancy Rielle suggest reducing paper waste by sending paperless e-cards. She points out that 7 billion paper cards are sold annually in the U.S. That’s a lot of paper!

Robin Rhodes suggests spending more time in the natural world. Say good morning to trees and plants, talk to the birds, pray with the wind. As she says, relationship is one way to increase your connection and commitment to nature.

Our ideas:

Mary Jo’s idea: I have an old-fashioned idea. Buy or make a bird bath and put it in your backyard. Our grandparents often had bird baths, yet so few people seem to have them now (at least around where I live). I love watching birds splash and drink in the bird baths in my backyards. Birds need water (and other creatures, like bees, do too). It’s such a simple way to reconnect with nature. Just be sure to pour fresh water in every day and clean out your bird bath every couple of weeks. Perhaps tires could be reused as bird baths!

Susan’s ideas:
1- How about reusing the sleeve from your coffee cup? Each time you go to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, take the sleeve off the cup before you trash it and reuse it on the next cup. Perhaps we can convince these coffee bars to start a recycle bin for the sleeves.

2- How about picking one item each month from your household products and replacing it with a “green” version? I have done this with my dishwashing liquid, surface spray cleaner, etc…

1- How about reusing the sleeve from your coffee cup? Each time you go to “Starbucks” or “Dunkin Donuts” take the sleeve off the cup before you trash it and reuse it on the next cup. Perhaps we can convince these coffee bars to start a recycle bin for the sleeves.

2- How about picking one item each month from your household products and replacing it with a “green” version? I have done this with my dishwashing liquid, surface spray cleaner, etc…

We would like to send to honorable mentions a few of our postcards of a red-eyed tree frog and a wristband. If you’re interested, please send your address to us.

Even if you didn’t enter the contest, we’d love to receive your ideas. Feel free to suggest some more ways to renew, reuse, reconnect, rethink, rebuild or recycle in the comments section.

And be sure to go outside today and enjoy nature—wherever you live!

03/11/10

FROGS ARE GREEN Earth Day Contest

I remember the first Earth Day forty years ago. I did a project with my friend Linda about endangered animals. Everyone in the entire school went outside on a gorgeous spring day to pick up garbage on the roads around the school. We were all so excited.

I think people forget that everyone was excited about Earth Day and about helping the environment then. The issue hadn’t become politicized. The country was united after the polluted Cuyahoga River went up in flames.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington supported and passed clear air and water regulations. These new tough laws were incredibly effective. When I was kid growing up on Long Island, you knew you were getting close to New York City because you could see and smell a layer of brown smog above the city. After these regulations were passed, the smog disappeared. Since the Reagan administration, however, tough regulations against corporations and businesses are taboo.

I wish we could recapture this bipartisan environmental effort. President Obama was elected partly because so many young people, motivated by environmental issues, voted for him. It didn’t matter if they were on the right or the left.

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we’d like you to ignore the politics and recapture this excitement about preserving the environment and about enjoying and reconnecting to nature.

To that end, we’re sponsoring an Earth Day contest (open to all ages). Please send us one simple practical idea by April 19th that we can all use to help the environment or reconnect with nature, guided by these words:

RENEW

REBUILD

RECONNECT

RETHINK

It doesn’t have to be a grand or complicated idea. For example, maybe someone can think of a way for people to remember to bring reusable grocery bags to the store. The winner, announced on Earth Day, will receive either the poster above or below (printed on FSC certified paper) or a 100% cotton t-shirt or onesie, made and printed in the U.S (their choice):

design copyright Susan Newman, photo by Dr. Kerry Kriger, Save the Frogs

09/15/09

Announcing the Winner of the FROGS ARE GREEN Photo Contest

First off, Susan and I would like to thank all the photographers who entered the FROGS ARE GREEN photo contest. We were thrilled to receive your entries and it was incredibly difficult to pick a winner. We received entries from all over the world.

This is how we chose our winner:

Because we had asked for a frog picture in a natural setting, we felt we had to stick to our own rules. That said, we got some wonderful photos of frogs in unusual places. Next year, we will have a category for this. We would like to do a separate post in the coming weeks highlighting these photos (with the photographers’ permission, of course).

Of the remaining photos, Susan and I each separately picked five favorites. From the photos we had chosen in common, we then picked one winner and one honorable mention.

So without further ado, the WINNER of our first photo contest is:

Joceyln Hyers

Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea), Pierce County, Georgia, USA. Photo by Jocelyn Hyers

Camera Info:

Fuji Finepix s700

Shutter: 1/64

Aperture: F/3.5

Focal Length: 13 mm

ISO: 100

Both Susan and I were struck by the unusual composition and peacefulness of the photo below of frogs resting on leaves so we are giving an Honorable Mention to June Dufour.

Frogs on leaves. Photo by June Dufour

To all the photographers: With your permission, we would love to insert your photos in future posts on FROGS ARE GREEN. We would, however, contact you before using the photo to get your permission. Your name and a link (if desired) would be included. We think your beautiful photos deserve to be seen!

Thanks again for participating in our contest!

07/17/09

Frogs of Summer: Wood Frog

Sometimes it seems that the charismatic frogs get all the attention (like our mascot, the red-eyed tree frog). But the more ordinary frogs with muted colors have a beauty all their own.

Recently, my husband John and younger son Tim took a trip to New Hampshire where it rained every day. But all this rain brought out—you guessed it—lots of frogs and toads. My husband took this picture of a Wood Frog near Lookout Ledge in Randolph, New Hampshire (in the White Mountains). Unfortunately because he’s my husband, he’s disqualified from entering the Frogs Are Green photo contest!

Wood Frog, photo copyright John Rounds

Despite the rainy vacation, I’m glad my husband was able to get this beautiful photo. He took the picture on a hike on the one slightly sunny afternoon they had, using an ordinary point-and-shoot digital camera and a flash.

Here’s information about Wood Frogs:

Wood Frogs live in Northeastern US and most of Canada. In the winter they hibernate in places where it goes well below freezing—the water in their bodies freezes solid. This ability allows the Wood Frog to live further north than any other reptile or amphibian in North America. It is easily recognized by the dark mask around its eyes and the prominent ridges along its back.

07/12/09

Announcing the FROGS ARE GREEN photo contest

We are happy to announce the FROGS ARE GREEN photo contest. The winner will receive a free “Prince of Amphibians” t-shirt and we’ll feature the photo in the gallery on our blog. See the information on the left side of the blog. (Note: your photo can be of any amphibian, including salamanders).

Try to learn about the animal first. What is its habitat? When are they active?
Walk slowly and stop frequently (it helps to have someone with you who is less than 3 feet tall and has sharp eyes). Frogs and toads blend in so well that they are hard to find. Be alert for subtle movements.
In summer, you might find the sit-and-wait frog predators hanging out on the edges of ponds and lakes.
Be aware of the position of the sun. Avoid taking pictures at midday on bright sunny days. In the morning, face east and it will keep sunlight from coming into your lens and washing out your photos.
Don’t necessarily put the subject in the middle of the photo. Keep the whole animal in the photo, but compose the picture so the background tells a story.
Bracket your photos, i.e., take the same shot with different settings. Also, try taking a flash photo. Without a flash, animals in photos may look lifeless and poorly lighted.
Try to be on the same level as your subject.

Have fun!

My husband John and son Jeremy looking at a toad

Frogs Are Green

Environmental Organization Helping to Bring Awareness About Frog Decline Around The World

Category Archives: Frogs Are Green contests