LOVE THE PLANET WITH A FREE PHONE APP

Louie Schwartzberg, an internationally recognized time-lapse photographer of nature, doesn’t like the fact that the average age of visitors to national parks is 57. No wonder, since Schwartzberg’s mission is nothing less than “the future of the planet.” And if it’s to be protected, he needs young people to do it. Louie’s plan of attack is to meet the next generations where they live. On their cell phones.

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So Schwartzberg has created a free phone app called “Moving Art” loaded with his spelling-binding photography—time lapses that become video. Bees pollinating flowers. Bats eating cactus flowers. Monarchs gathering in Mexico. All free with a click on the app. Scwartzberg told a full-house crowd at the March Wege Lecture in Meijer Gardens, “We protect what we love.” And the stunning visuals his cameras have captured on film are intended “to make you fall in love” with Mother Nature. His “Moving Art” app is how he hopes young people will “fall in love” with the planet they need to take care of.

For 35 years this Wege speaker has kept his cameras running 24/7 year around. And out of all those gazillion photographs, he has twelve hours of films. The films he featured at Meijer Gardens were about “The Hidden Beauty of Pollination.” As his audience sat mesmerized by the images of bees scattering pollen dust, Schwartzberg told them that “pollination is the source of life…we wouldn’t be here without flowers…one-third of the food we eat depends on them.”

Louie Schwartzberg’s inspiring presentation is exactly why the late Peter Wege set up these talks at his friend Fred Meijer’s botanical gardens. The Wege Foundation’s original logo asks the question, “Is the Planet Worth Saving?” Louie Schwartzberg is devoting his professional life to helping the world, especially young people, answer with a collective, “Yes!”