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Download filePrimate caught by a camera trap
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posted on 2011-04-13, 00:00 authored by Steven SullivanI spent three months in Limpopo Province, South Africa, studying the habitat preferences of Greater Bushbabies. Research was conducted mostly at night using bait stations and camera traps. This resulted in hundreds of pictures of foraging bushbabies and other wildlife, as well as this picture of me, taken by a camera that I forgot to turn off when I moved it to a new site.
To me, this picture symbolizes a research season in Africa: a place filled with artful scenes that we are trying to understand empirically. The painterly strokes created by the motion of the camera gives an impression of the dense and inscrutable forest I was working in, as well as showing the frenetic pace of research. Despite the abstract scene of the photo, it is also a data point, time-stamped by the dispassionate eye of the camera trap.