Wed. 01.01.20 – Welcome to the first day of 2020 and the first late sunset / deep twilight photo of 2020 with the additional delight of the planet Venus shining bright in the evening sky.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.
Tues. 11.12.19 – Happy November Full Moon for those of you who can see it. Late yesterday evening, I took the Nikon out to the Embankment bridge to photograph the Full Moon rising over The Shard and the Thames. Due to large clouds hugging the first 10-15 degrees up from the horizon, I was out of luck.
While I persevered out in the cold and damp for nearly an hour before I gave up, I was able to take a number of good shots of the storm clouds and the London skyline. The above is one of my two favorites from that hour.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens on Mon. 11.11.19 while standing on the Embankment bridge waiting for the moon.
Mon. 11.11.19 – One of the best parts about the dark time of the year, particularly in November, is the blue quality of light in late dusk. I turned from taking photos of the London Skyline, as seen from the Embankment bridge over the Thames, to see this Southeastern train departing from Charing Cross station and I was entranced by the yellow light of the inside of the train contrasting with the violet light of the bridge trusses behind the train on top of the blue light of the dusk. The man reading or looking at his phone sitting on the train was a nice extra.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.
Sat. 10.26.19 – Sweet Pea and I are in Arizona visiting / dog sitting the lovely, but very elderly, Miss Belle le Cane while her people are out and about. Our good old friend Miss Belle is now 14 1/2 years old – or somewhere in her 90-somethings. Belle is feeling her age.
Belle arrived to Family Hanen as a rescue puppy in October of 2005 while I was away at grad school. There were a lot of good years in between 2005 and 2019: dog beach, dog parades, dog sitting, walks, playing fetch – and a whole lot of photos.
Belle is still trucking on with heart pills and CBD oil. There is very little running but she perks up about an hour or so after the food/pills/hempoil.
In other news, Arizona is Arizona. It is dry and warm to hot.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens. For the curious, Sweet Pea is a rescue as of last year August and is estimated to be between 6-8 years old, most likely closer to 8.
Fri. 01.11.19 – Here are a few articles to start your weekend out right. Happy Friday!
* Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and geologists don’t know why
* Memo to conservatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands taxes better than you do
“The real story of machine learning is not how it promotes home bomb-making, but that it’s being deployed at scale with minimal ethical oversight, in the service of a business model that relies entirely on psychological manipulation and mass surveillance. The capacity to manipulate people at scale is being sold to the highest bidder, and has infected every aspect of civic life, including democratic elections and journalism.”
“Frankly, as long as we continue to view the planet as an endless “resource,” as long as we uphold the rights of individuals and corporations to amass infinite wealth while others go hungry, as long as we continue to believe that governments do not have the responsibility to feed, clothe, house, and educate everyone—all our talk is mere posturing. Why do these simple things scare people so much? It is just common decency. Let’s face it: the free market is not free, and it doesn’t give a shit about justice or equality.”
* Arundhati Roy on How to Think about Empire
“And now we have the era of Trump, in which we learn that intelligence and nuance are relative terms. And that W, when compared to Trump, was a serious intellectual. Now U.S. foreign policy is tweeted to the world on an hourly basis. You can’t get more transparent than that. The Absurd Apocalypse. Who would have imagined that could be possible? But it is possible—more than possible—and it will be quicker in the coming if Trump makes the dreadful mistake of attacking Iran.”
* Why Rashida Tlaib’s “We’re gonna impeach that motherf*cker approach” is good for Congress
“One of those leading that charge is Rashida Tlaib, the new representative from Michigan’s 13th district and one of the two first Muslim women to serve in the House of Representatives – and she is wasting no time in making her voice heard. “We’re gonna go in there,” she said, speaking to the progressive organising group MoveOn just hours after she was sworn in, “and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
This caused the predictable backlash of pearl-clutching from Republican circles, whose faux-outrage at the swear-word would, perhaps, have had more moral weight if they had not spent the previous three years justifying their support for a president who boasted of “grabbing” women “by the pussy,” and attacking Democrats for their “political correctness”.”
Photo of the Snowy Convict Lake Reflections taken by Ms. Jen on 01.08.19 with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens in Mono County, California.
Thurs. 11.01.18 – To a person who is not yet on East Coast Daylight time, but instead still three hours behind in Pacific Daylight time, waking up at 6:40am in Rhode Island to be out at Mackerel Cove beach to photograph the sunrise and dogs running free at low tide was a bit of a difficult thing to do – though it was well worth it.
The air was cold, 30-something degrees fahrenheit – hat, gloves, and a jacket were needed. The sun rose slowly, with the first pink light reflections on the wet low tide line at 6:50am. For the next twenty or so minutes, Sparky the black lab ran happily after her ball while Kenji the island dog poked along the high tide kelp piles for edibles, as the clouds lying low in packed cotton ball formation in the eastern sky turned from gray to pink to neon pink-orange-yellow to the sun rising over the trees and houses on the east side of the cove. From 6:50am to 7:18am, it was magical.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.
Wed. 10.17.18 – The beautiful golden leaved aspens at the delta where the Convict Creek meets Convict Lake. The light through the autumnal leaves was amazing in this space.
Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 with a 50mm lens.
Tues. 09.11.18 – The beauty of Venus and the new Moon setting behind Wheeler Ridge, Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California.
Photo by Ms. Jen from the Sherwin grade view point on the northbound Hwy. 395 with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.