Soapbox Science is a public engagement event designed to get scientists out into the public and into public spaces, talking about their work. It’s supposed to demystify science (a bit) but also to change people’s perceptions of what scientists look like; one of the ways it does this is by making all of the scientists on the soapbox women. When I heard about it, I thought… Public engagement? Women in Science? Sounds a bit mad? Guess I’d better apply then! The event I applied for was my nearest one, this year, and that was Cardiff, and it was yesterday. As you can probably guess fromRead More →

A Lightstage is a system which lets you completely control illumination in a particular space, and capture images from multiple views. They’re used for high resolution graphics capture and computer vision, and they’re fairly rare. I don’t think there are many non-commercial ones in the UK, and they’re research kit (which means you can’t really just go out and buy one, you’ve got to actually build it). Usually, Lightstages are used for facial feature capture, but I’m kinda interested to use them with plants. With the support of the National Plant Phenomics Centre, here in Aberystwyth, and and Aberystwyth University Research Fund grant (URF) I’veRead More →

These shadows caught my eye in the David Garner show, currently on in Aberystwyth Arts centre. I recommend popping to see it if you’re in town, there’s much more to it than just shadows. Although the shadows are lovely.

I’ve decided to start a new blog series – one of my research interests is shadows, and so I have been accruing a collection of strange and interesting shadow images. Here is #1. I don’t know where the image comes from but will happily add an attribution if anyone can find out…