We’re growing, thanks to you!
Earth-Touch has been going from strength to strength, with more and more users from around the world logging on to our main portal (www.earth-touch.com) and the supporting Earth-Touch blog (http://blog.earth-touch.com).
Earth-Touch is a company and a concept – we hope even to inspire a consciousness. We aim to film quality wildlife footage in High Definition from the most spectacular locations around the world, and to bring it to you within days (or sooner). Our footage can be accessed on the Web through our main site and our blog, and can be seen on TV, through our global partnerships with broadcasters. We want to show people the truth and beauty of nature, and inspire them to look after the precious yet dwindling natural resources of our planet.
This month, we have launched a new-look Earth-Touch which we hope makes our content and video easier than ever to download. Our address remains the same, www.earth-touch.com
, but for those of you who liked the functionality and funkiness of the Flash-based website we launched with, you can now access it at www.earth-touch.com/pro.
So far in 2008, we’ve brought our users footage of a wide range of species, from great white sharks off the coast of South Africa to a
Bengal monitor lizard in Thailand, and hyena pups in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, among hundreds of other living creatures.
Coming up
The next location on the Earth-Touch agenda is the Moremi Game Reserve, located in the heart of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Southern Africa.
The Okavango Delta is a vast freshwater wetland ecosystem and is fed by the Okavango River system, which spans three countries: Angola (catchment region), Namibia (mature river) and Botswana (delta). The Okavango River and delta cover a region of almost 200 000km2 (124 000mi2) in extent, and approximately 9.5km3 (6mi3) of water flows from the Okavango River into the delta every year.
The
Okavango river delta extends 2000km (1240mi) north to south and 1000km (620mi) east to west, where it meets with the sands of the Kalahari Desert. The sand of the Kalahari contains very little clay or minerals, and nutrients are filtered out by plants along the river banks, which leaves the river water pure and crystal clear.
The annual flooding of the Okavango River is an important ecological event which is closely linked to the successful breeding of fish species in the delta.
An estimated 200 000 large mammals live in the delta environs, providing a drawcard to tourists, especially in the drier months when animals congregate near dwindling water sources.
The most common large mammal found in the delta is the lechwe, a red-yellow buck species which feeds on grass and lives close to water. If pursued by predators, lechwe always move towards the water, where they escape by running and jumping through it with ease.
The Okavango is home to numerous hippo. Amphibious by nature, these large animals hide in deep swamps during the day and feed on the islands under cover of darkness. Hippo play a vital role in the Okavango Delta by keeping trails open through dense vegetation, which enables water to permeate to all parts of the delta.
The great abundance of antelope in the delta region attracts predators like lions, jackals, spotted hyenas, cheetah, leopards and wild dogs.
The Earth-Touch team setting up camp in this part of the delta should soon be sending through footage of a wide variety of creatures.
Wild-Touch launches on South African TV
Life on earth is magnificent and worth celebrating. With this premise in mind, the creators of Earth-Touch are thrilled to offer South African viewers a new TV show, Wild-Touch
In the words of Richard van Wyk, MD of Earth-Touch, ‘The way you engage with your environment reflects the state of your internal environment. By projecting positive imagery and beauty, we hope to restore a positive internal sense of well-being. Wild-Touch is the global premiere of a movement towards positive reinforcement within the media.’
Unlike traditional wildlife documentaries – which are filmed over extended periods of time – Wild-Touch gives South Africans the opportunity to observe the activities of fauna worldwide within hours of the events unfolding. This marriage of beautiful imagery and natural sound is created by some of the most experienced wildlife filmmakers in the world.
Diary date: Wild-Touch will be broadcast Monday to Friday at 10am on SABC2. The programme airs for the first time on Monday 7 April at 10am.
Footage focus: Great white sharks!
The great white shark is aggressive and is the largest of the meat-eating sharks, but rarely attacks humans as the movies have made out. It has been swimming around our oceans for about 350 million years. These big fish are independent from birth and even their mothers may sometimes see them as prey.
In the past, this month’s featured cameraman, Graeme Duane, has brought us exciting film clips such as: Eyeball to eyeball with a great white shark (http://www.earth-touch.com/Eyeball-to-eyeball-with-a-great-white-shark). More recently, another Earth-Touch film crew, headed by Barry Skinstad, has been diving the cold waters of False Bay and Struisbaai in the Western Cape, to bring us more great white footage, including:
Sharks abound at Skip Skop
In the water with great white sharks
Great white sharks keep watch
To see and learn more interesting facts about these magnificent marine predators, go to www.earth-touch.com, or read the ‘Did you know’ on our blog on these sharks
.
Blog categories – highlights
Did you know that clownfish can change their sex? Do you know the difference between
African and Asian elephants? Or how a giraffe’s heart and blood circulation system is specially adapted to cope with its long neck?
The Earth-Touch blog continues to grow in size and popularity. We’re producing and uploading new and interesting content every day across all categories.
One of the busiest sections is Did you know? – where we publish a range of facts about animals and plant species, including what makes them unique, well-adapted, or interesting.
Learn more here.
Another section crammed full of interesting reading is From the field. Here you can learn about the challenges and rewards of producing Earth-Touch wildlife videos, as told by our field crew members across the world.
Learn what it is really like to dive with great white sharks, sample local cuisine like piranha heads
, or survive 4x4 breakdowns in the Okavango Delta. Read more here.
The growing Earth-Touch Flickr group
Last month we introduced you to the newly created Earth-Touch Flickr group, created to unite wildlife fans and Earth-Touch readers. It has become a portal for sharing images of animals and nature, and for discussing photography tips and techniques.
Today the group has more than 250 members and a pool of almost 1500 photographs, all of which are shown in our gallery on the blog site.
If you’d like to share your images of wildlife with us and others, please join the group, we’d love to see you there.
We’d love to hear from you!
We welcome your feedback on Earth-Touch. Please contact us at info@earth-touch.com, or leave a message on one of our story packages on the website
or on a blog post.
We look forward to seeing you on-line!
Best regards,
The Earth-Touch team
|
Screensavers
Come back to your desk after a few minutes away, and see a beautiful image of a herd of zebras at sunset, or a landscape of the snowy Rocky Mountains.
In March we uploaded our first screensaver, available as a free download in formats suitable for both Mac and PC users.
Each month we will be uploading a new variety pack screensaver to the Downloads section of the Earth-Touch blog. These will feature a diverse and exciting selection of Earth-Touch images.
Our Screensaver section is proving to be very popular, already ranked in the top 25 of our viewed pages, and bound to climb in the coming months as more screensavers become available.
Did you know you can get Earth-Touch videos delivered to your computer automatically? You can have high-definition video waiting for you to watch at your leisure – on your PC, iPod or any media player.
Earth-Touch.com offers a number of different video subscription services which you can use at no charge. All the videos are available in two sizes – standard definition and high definition – and you can decide whether you want to download the videos with or without audio commentary.
OK – first you have to log in to the site to gain access to the podcast controls. Once logged in, roll your mouse over the top navigation bar, where there is a little yellow arrow with ‘more’ written above it. You should then see a drop-down menu containing a number of icons. The third icon from the left (it looks like a radar signal) is the podcast and RSS button. Click this button and you’ll see three choices – ‘weekly highlights’, ‘featured stories’ and ‘complete archive’. Click on any of the active buttons and you’ll then see a selection menu slide out to the right. Within this new menu you can select exactly which feed you want to subscribe to – choose between commentary on or off, and 480(SD) and 720(HD) sized videos. Once you’ve decided, click on ‘show me my feed’ and a new
window will slide out with the details of the videos that you want to subscribe to.
You can use any RSS reader application or subscription software to track and download videos. We use Apple iTunes in the Earth-Touch office as it is really easy – all you have to do is click on the ‘iTunes’ button in the window and it should automatically import the video feed into your iTunes software. The ‘Google’ button next to it takes you to a web interface where you can add the video feed to your Google homepage or into a Google reader tool.
You should now be receiving your Earth-Touch videos automatically. We hope you enjoy them – let us know if you get stuck.
Some of the most popular Earth-Touch stories in March 2008
Gentle whale shark swims swiftly
The world’s largest fish moves deceptively quickly. We follow an individual whale shark on a mission down the eastern coast of Southern Africa.
Black-tip shark gang investigates
In a column of warm blue water, these lithe and shiny creatures swim in formation.
Hornbill feeds figs to his mate
Sealed up inside a tree trunk, the nesting female and her chicks depend on the male to deliver food.
Ray sucks up food in sand flurry
The ray was working an area of scattered rock and sand, flapping its wings and stirring up silt, while creating a natural suction with its entire head. This action sucks up small crustaceans and worms that live in this sandy area.
Tiger sharks return to Aliwal
Two new individuals can be added to the Aliwal tiger shark identification database. These two were picked up just north of the Castle area of the reef.
Asian elephant feeds and scratches in the bush
In the wild, these large animals cover a lot of ground to meet their daily food requirements.
|
