About

The stated goal of this site has been largely unchanged since my first post in 2009: to share photographs and thoughts to friends and family. However, reflecting on the most memorable posts or series I’ve made, it’s evident to me that my motivation to create and post has broadly been to learn—to learn about plant identification, tadpole biology, dog behavior, photography, or statistics of CrossFit—and this site is about sharing some of this understanding with my future self and others.

There’s not a coherent and unbending theme I could point to and say “this site is about learning photography or the biology of the tropics”; rather, this is a site that follows some generally un-attention grabbing interests of mine, which explains why I never (and will never) attain immortal Internet-fame and make copious amounts of Internet dollars (see: South Park’s Meet the Internet Stars).

Photography

Most photographs post here are my own, although I occasionally post an interesting photograph belonging to a friend or colleague. My photographs have been taken using a handful of digital devices, including:

  • An Olympus E-420 is featured from 2009 to around 2017. It’s still in service, but irregularly.
  • An Olympus TG-4 is featured from 2017 through present, particularly for macro, point-and-shoot quick shots, and underwater.
  • The latest addition, a Canon EOS M6 mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses hit Montegraphia early 2019.

Subjects vary from animals and plants, to landscapes, people and pets. There are biases imposed by my interests (e.g., I don’t particularly like shooting people), equipment and what is catching my eye at any given moment. I’ve largely avoided action shots or getting into bird photography because standards for that work seem to be exceptionally high, I lack proper equipment, and charismatic subjects are plain boring to me most of the time (i.e., everyone likes birds, but who likes grazing trichopteran larva?). My schedule and place strongly impact what’s being posted—if there are too many dog photographs, it’s probably because I’m hanging out with my dog a lot… just wait a while and I’ll be on a new adventure with more unique photography.

I’m a self-taught, amateaur photographer and appreciate feedback about my photography and presentation. A number of photographs have been used and published elsewhere, and a higher resolution image of most work can be obtained by contacting me. I reserve all rights associated with the site and photographs.

Site construction

Although I’ve designed a few websites by editing raw HTML, my coding skills are not nearly well developed enough to have designed this site. Thus, I’d like to note that this website is running on WordPress with freely available themes (presently the Two-thousand Fourteen theme from WordPress), which has been developed by countless individuals of fantastic talent. Thank you for sharing.

The Author

My real name is Justin Montemarano—you can find me on twitter (I may not respond), facebook, ResearchGate, and probably some other social media, but I don’t have a strong social media presence, so if you wish to make contact, email me with the contact form.

I’m an Aquatic Ecologist and earned my Ph.D. from Kent State University in 2013 with Dr. Mark Kershner after earning a bachelors in biology from Nazareth College of Rochester. My research interests lie primarily in community ecology of stream and wetland ecosystems in both temperate and neotropical regions. I have examined crayfish roles in decomposition, tropical wetland plant competition, and macrophyte decomposition in a seasonally dry, tropical wetland.

I served as a Lecturer at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong Campus, and I’m presently an Instructor at Colorado Mesa University. Most of my time is spent teaching undergraduate biology—I greatly enjoy sharing my passion for biology with university students and have found the creation of coursework and some Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to be intellectually fruitful. I have also spent many summers volunteering as a research mentor with the Organization for Tropical Studies, where I mentor students in research on crab and fish ecology and behavior. Many of the more recent posts on this site come from my trips to Costa Rica mentoring student research.

Outside of academia, I am deeply passionate about ska music, my pets, traveling, hiking, biking, and losing step challenges in Garmin Connect.

Contact

You can directly email me my Gmail.com address, jjmontem, or you can use this contact form:

    Nonsense.