Balboa Park Beat

Balboa Park launches Top Dog contest

Remember that time you paid a hefty room cleaning fee so your four-legged pal could join you on vacation? It's time for your pooch to return the favor.

Balboa Park Central has just launched its "Top Dog" photo contest. The contest is designed to give park visitors an opportunity to demonstrate how much more photogenic their pooch is when photographed in one of the most picturesque settings in San Diego.

The grand prize is a Loews Coronado Bay Resort’s Su’ruff Camp package*, which includes:

• One-night stay in deluxe accommodations at Loews Coronado Bay Resort 
• Surfing lessons for one dog
• Doggie board shorts (smaller dogs) or a surfer bandana (larger dogs)
• Surf ‘n’ Turf pet room service meal, which features a mixture of beef tenderloin and salmon
• Loews Loves Pets amenities, including dog bowls, dog treats, and Loews Hotels name tag 

*Includes tax & gratuity. Based on availability. Excludes holidays and some blackout dates apply. Value is non-transferable. Winner must provide own transportation to and from hotel.  

The Grand Prize winner will also receive a family four-pack of Balboa Park Passports, good for two adults and two children. One first runner up will receive a $50 gift certificate to Fetch! Pet Care of San Diego Metro. One second runner up will receive a $25 gift certificate to Terra Restaurant.

To enter, email your favorite photo of your dog posing or frolicking in Balboa Park to balboaparktopdog@gmail.com by August 20, 2010, at 12pm. Photos must be in JPG format and can be no larger than 1 MB in size. Be sure to read the complete Contest Rules.

Include in your email:

• Full name
• Phone number
• Email address

Your email must include all of this information to be eligible. All entries will be judged by a committee from Balboa Park, who will choose the winning entries. The top five photos will be posted on www.BalboaPark.org. Beginning August 24, 2010, visitors to the website will have one week to vote on their selection of the Top Dog in Balboa Park. The winner of the contest will be the person whose photo received the greatest number of valid votes from the public and who satisfies all of the Contest Rules. The Judges will tabulate the votes and announce the winner on September 1, 2010. All decisions of the Judges are final and binding.

Call for visitor photos: Contribute to the new balboapark.org

For some, July is a time for relaxing in Maui, Bora Bora, or across the bridge in Coronado. Not for us. We’re busy redesigning Balboa Park’s online portal. The new site will include rich cultural content including feature articles about the park, blogs, photo galleries, social media feeds, and interactive educational tools for teachers and students.

The thing is, we need photos. We have the largest institutions covered, but we’d like to have quality photos of everything that our park has to offer.

According to this map, Balboa Park is one of the most photographed places in San Diego. Do you have photos of the park that you’d be willing to share with us for the new site? If so, please email them to mdougherty@bpoc.org or provide the Flickr link in the comments section below. Please include your full name so we can include your name in the photo credit section of the site.

By sending your image(s) to Balboa Park you irrevocably agree that we may use your image(s) in all manner and media of Balboa Park and balboapark.org and that you have all necessary rights (including copyright, trademark and other proprietary rights) to make the image available to us for all such uses.

Most Wanted Images (but feel free to send us others)
Gardens: Alcazar Garden, Australian Garden, Botanical Building, California Native Plant Garden, Casa del Rey Moro Garden, Desert Garden, Florida Canyon Native Plant Preserve, Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden, Japanese Friendship Garden, Marston House Garden, San Diego Floral Association, San Diego Zoo Botanical Collection, Trees for Health Garden, Veterans Memorial Garden, WorldBeat Center's Children's Ethnobotany Garden

Recreation: Balboa Park Activity Center, Balboa Park Golf Complex, Balboa Park Senior Lounge, Balboa Tennis Club, Lawn Bowling, Morley Field Sports Complex, Municipal Gymnasium, play areas, hiking trails

Food: Albert's Restaurant, Balboa Park Food and Wine School, Café in the Park, Daniel's Coffee Cart, Dinosaur Café, Galileo Café, Home Plate Cafe at the Hall of Champions, Lady Carolyn's Pub, SDMA Sculpture Court Café by Giuseppe, Snack carts, The Prado, The Tea Pavilion, Village Grill

San Diego Air & Space Museum Launches 64K Archival Photos on Flickr.com with BPOC

Balboa Park, San Diego––The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) is proud to announce that the San Diego Air and Space Museu has published over 64 thousand images from their vast archives on FlickR.com, making the SDASM the owner of one of the largest online collections of aviation images in the world.

“We have already seen impressive engagement from the public interacting with the images on Flickr, and it’s really just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the fact that the San Diego Air & Space Museum counts over two million images in its library collection,” said BPOC Director Rich Cherry. “ I applaud the museum for being proactive in this arena and jumping on board with us for such an ambitious project.”

Granting public access to the collection online with Flickr.com allows anyone from researchers and school students to aviation enthusiasts, veterans and the general public to view, tag and comment on the images, thereby adding valuable content and context to the collection. SDASM plans to have over 100,000 images digitized and posted online by the end of the year, including foreign and domestic military and civilian aircraft, the Flying Tigers, the Ryan Aeronautical Archive and the entire Pacific Southwest Airline (PSA) archive.

“We are very excited about getting this special collection online. This has been a goal of ours for a long time, and it is fulfilling to finally see it come to fruition,” said Jim Kidrick, President and CEO of the San Diego Air & Space Museum. “Sharing this incredibly unique image archive with the world is really what the mission of the museum is all about!”

After working for ten years to digitize archival images one by one, the SDASM archival team of Alan Renga and Katrina Pescador were able to step up those efforts with a new highly specialized rapid capture station, purchased by BPOC as part of its greater mission to implement new technology, training and web development programs throughout Balboa Park. The rapid capture imaging station is built around a high end DSLR Canon 5D camera rather than a flat bed scanner, which most museums have used for digitization work in the past. In the new, fully portable setup, the camera is attached to a copy stand, which stabilizes the camera and eliminates the need to adjust the exposure. An attached laptop then automatically processes the images. Since the camera is locked in place, archivists can quickly change out images, digitizing upwards of 700 images per day in some case.

The SDASM is one of several cultural institutions within Balboa Park currently working with BPOC to digitize archival images, video, audio and publish their collection data online. The Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Hall of Champions and the San Diego History Center (formerly the San Diego Historical Society) all plan to launch similar online collections in the coming months.

Behind the Scenes: Art Alive 2010 at San Diego Museum of Art

We're loving the behind-the-scenes coverage of the florals arriving at the Art Alive installation at the San Diego Museum of Art. Check out SDMA's Facebook page for more pictures.

Balboa Park Goes Hollywood, Gets Airtime from KTLA

Check out this fab feature on our lovely Balboa Park by the KTLA roving reporter Gayle Anderson:

 

Balboa Park Shakes in the 7.2 Baja Quake

Reality Stars Plunge into Polar Bear Exhibit at San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park

 

Thanks to celebrities (and their reality show film crews) like Tori Spelling, Candice Cameron and Denise Richards, the opening of the San Diego Zoo's new Polar Bear Plunge exhibit was about as wild as it gets, nevermind the earth's largest land predators romping around.

The VIP event for celebrities, donors, media and other special guests last week was held to highlight the new eco-friendly enhancements to the Polar Bear Plunge. There was an eco-chic green carpet where celebs like Tori Spelling her two kids posed for photos (with at least a 5-10 person entourage from her show Home Sweet Hollywood in tow), hands-on demonstrations of melting polar ice caps, hors d'oeuvres served on recycled plates and even gift bags with sustainable coffee and biodegradable stuffed polar bears.

 Oh yea, there were real polar bears there, too. They romped out into the enclosure, lolled on the rocks, pawed at carrots and ice blocks, and even wandered over to the window where one trainer was waiting with some yummy treat to hand out after the bear stood tall and waved his huge paw toward the crowds. Check out the rest of the scene in our photo gallery.

BOOM goes the Bloom: Spring Wildflowers Sprout in Balboa Park San Diego

Spring has sprung, and so have the wildflowers allover Balboa Park. Park expert and all-around good guy Ranger Kim Duclo gave me a guided tour of some of the hidden wildflower groves all over the park, including the secluded running trail that winds along the west side of highway 163 (looks like some Flickr photogs have also discovered it). Have a look at our Balboa Park Spring Wildflower Gallery, and feel free to add your own snapshots to the fan gallery on Facebook.

 

Dinosaurs Coming Alive This Week at San Diego Natural History Museum

Check out the photos below taken during the final days of setup for the new Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries opening at the San Diego Natural History Museum this weekend. It takes dozens of staff members, construction crews and security staff to get all the bones in place and raptors hung just right, and we got behind the scenes access last week while crews finishing setup. Check out the photos below, plus a Q&A with SDNHM Dinosaurs exhibition manager Tim Murray.

And don't forget to visit the exhibit opening this weekend, March 27th, 2010 at the San Diego Natural History Museum. 

 


Special thanks to the folks at SDNHM for getting us access to Dinosaurs exhibition manager Tim Murray. We asked Murray a few questions about what it's like to get an exhibition of this size up and running. Edited Excerpts follow:


Q. How long, start to finish, does setup of an exhibition of this size take? How many people are involved in the process?
A. Typically 15 – 20 days to set up. This time we only had 12 days to set up. Between loading and shipping the Darwin exhibit and receiving and setting up Dinosaurs, we loaded and unloaded 25 50-foot semi trailers of exhibits stuff. We have a crew of about 20 for this exhibition.

 Q.I saw a lot of crates with the word “fragile” on them. How are all the bones and exhibit pieces transported here?
A. Objects are shipped on a special truck equipped with “air ride” and climate control. They are shipped from the previous venue directly to us – no switching trucks, trailers or drivers.

Q. When an exhibit comes from the American Museum of Natural History, do they send a blueprint for how to set it up? Or do you have to adapt the exhibit to fit the San Diego Natural History Museum’s dimensions?
A. Typically, AMNH sends electronic files of the layout at their venue. We would then copy components from their floor plan to our floor plan and arrange/design the exhibit to best fit our gallery. We would send our floor plan back to the designers at AMNH to get feedback. (ex. - “That component usually goes against a wall because it does not have a attractive back to it.”)

Q. Can you give us an example of something “new” people will learn from this exhibit that we didn’t know before about Dinosaurs?
A. The diorama that depicts the environment where the dinosaurs existed looks very different from what was depicted before.

Q. What is the most notable part of the Dinosaurs exhibition, in your opinion?
A. The “walking” T rex. (pictured with Murray at right)

Q. How did you find yourself in this position? What exhibitions have you worked on in the past? What has been your favorite?
A. I have been here for the past 26 years. Many traveling and permanent exhibits, including Dead Sea Scrolls, Fossil Mysteries, and Backyard Monsters. A favorite of mine would be Jurassic Park because it was so popular and fun. Another favorite is Cats. The mounted cats were so well done and beautiful.

Q. What advice would you give someone who wants to become an exhibition manager at a museum?
A. Be very organized, see lots of exhibitions, have a diversity of personal interests, and get some experience doing the actual work of designing and installing exhibits.

Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries opens March 27th at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Far Out: Hubble Opens in IMAX at the RH Fleet Science Center, Balboa Park

Check out this behind-the-scenes look at the making of HUBBLE, the latest film to open on the IMAX Dome at the RH Fleet Science Center. Hubble follows an Atlantis STS-125 crew for an up-close view of the most challenging spacewalks ever performed, plus glimpses of the Hubble Telescope's awe-inspiring imagery from the heart of the Orion Nebula and our Milky Way to the edge of the observable universe. Far out, eh? And did we mention it is narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio? Two tickets please!

See the entire film (40 min. long) at the RH Fleet Science Center starting March 19, 2010

Tickets and showtimes on the IMAX Dome section of the RH Fleet website.