The Natural History Museum is showing the exhibit "Aquatic Images of the Grasslands: Animals of the Flint Hills Streams." The display of photographs started Jan. 17 and ends April 6.
By Brad Kemp
The Natural History Museum is showing the exhibit "Aquatic Images of the Grasslands: Animals of the Flint Hills Streams." The display of photographs started Jan. 17 and ends April 6.
The exhibit shows crayfish taking a nocturnal swim in search of food, young channel catfish schooling under a large rock slab in a stream, a spotted bass struggling in the current during the late spring, and a female soft-shelled turtle, sheltered in the gravel at the bottom of a stream, exposing only her head.
The exhibit features the work of Garold Sneegas, an area photographer who developed many of the techniques and instruments necessary to capture these remarkable images.
"I hope to share images of a world many people are often only inches away from yet have never seen," Sneegas said.
The exhibit includes images of the many species that live in the streams of the Flint Hills.
Sneegas, a graduate of Pittsburg State University, took his first underwater photograph in 1970.
His work has been featured in many magazines and two books.
Sneegas works to make his photos suitable for scientific publications while at the same time capturing the natural colors, form, and texture of the subject in an artful composition.
Sneegas' images revel an unexpected variety of life and habitat in Kansas streams.