Posts Tagged: photo

Tidbits for a Weekend’s Reading

Posted by & filed under art + photography, tidbits.

Snowy Convict Lake Reflections

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

* A Moral Panic

“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.

Sunday Tidbits with a Photo of Melting Snow in the Sagebrush

Posted by & filed under photos + text from the road.

Snow melt in the sagebrush

Sun. 01.29.17 – Today is the last Sunday of January and life is interesting. Here are some links for your reading pleasure:

Terri Windling’s link/quote round up with beautiful illustrations on Fairy tales and fantasy, when the need is greatest

Cipher War: After a century of failing to crack an ancient script, linguists turn to machines

A lovely story of a found photo album from the mid-20th century leads to Love and Black Lives, in Pictures Found on a Brooklyn Street

A quote from an NYT Opinion column from yesterday, One Country, Two Tribes:

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, calls it the clash between globalists and nationalists. The globalists, who tend to be urban and college educated, want a world like the one described in John Lennon’s song “Imagine” — no religion, walls or borders dividing people. The nationalists see that as a vision of hell. They want to defend their culture and emphasize the bonds of nationhood — flag, Constitution, patriotism. They also want to limit immigration, an instinct that globalists are often quick to condemn as racist.

It is one of the most profound fissures of the modern political era and has upended politics in Europe, too.

“Global elites feel they have more in common with their friends in Paris or New York than with their own countrymen,” said Lars Tragardh, a historian at Ersta Skondal University College in Stockholm. “In their view of the world, the centrality of citizenship gets lost, and that is very threatening to the nationalists.”

And last but not least,
This Granular Life: Is atomic theory the most important idea in human history?

Photo of the snow melting in the sagebrush above the Meadow Creek meadow overlooking the Owens Valley taken by Ms. Jen this afternoon while walking Canela with her Lumia 950.

Ocotillo and Jet Contrail : Film and Mobile

Posted by & filed under art + photography.

Ocotillo and a Contrail : Ilford HP5 Plus B&W film Ocotillo and a Contrail : Nokia 808 PureView Camera Phone

Fri. 11.04.16 – In 2015, I ventured into the One Camera : One Lens photo project with my Nikon FM3a film camera and a Nikon AIS 50mm f/1.8 manual lens. I tried to use a new film every month, alternating black & white film with color, to explore all the 35mm film that is currently available for sale – either at my local Samy’s or online. I still had quite a few rolls of film leftover from the 2015 project and continued to shoot into 2016, albeit a bit slower.

To help with a time stamp & GPS, I take a photo with my camera phone each time I take a film photo. The above two photos were taken on February 3, 2016 in Havasu Heights, Arizona, of my favorite ocotillo. The photo on the left was taken with Ilford HP5 Plus 400 black & white film and the photo on the right is with my trusty Nokia 808 PureView camera phone.

Click on the photos for the larger versions and enjoy.

The Attack of the Tiny Planets: Seal Beach Low Tide Edition

Posted by & filed under fun stuff, photos + text from the road.

The Original Photo of Low Tide as seen from the Seal Beach Pier The Low Tide photo run through the Tiny Planets App for the First Time The Second Pass of the Tiny Planets Low Tide Photo through the Tiny Planets App

On Monday, while waiting for my Mom to be finished at the dentist, I walked along the Seal Beach Pier and took the above left photo of the low tide line. Yesterday I ran the photo through the Tiny Planets app on my phone to good effect, middle photo. And then this morning, in a fit of experimentation, I ran the first tiny planet through the Tiny Planets app again to get a second almost trigometric/cosine effect, photo on the right. Thus, twice through the Tiny Planets makes for good fun.

Flickr and the abuse of the Creative Commons

Posted by & filed under art + photography, ideas + opinions.

With the following Tweet today, Jeffrey Zeldman started a very good twitter conversation about Flickr, commericial/retail photo usage, and copyright/licensing/creative commons:

Andy Budd then linked to Zeldman’s blog post, What’s Wrong With This Picture? Flickr is about to sell off your Creative Commons photos, and started another good conversation on the topic:

Jen Simmons further drills into the debate with two succinct tweets and a blog post:

Jen Simmons’ blog post on I Don’t Want “Creative Commons BY” To Mean You Can Rip Me Off

And then Ms. Simmon’s linked to this Wall Street Journal article: Fight Over Yahoo’s Use of Flickr Photos

The quote that sums up Flickr in this situation and my own opinion* comes from Zeldman’s blog post:

I’ve had a Flickr Pro account for about ten years. I love Flickr. Sometimes, for years, it has been like loving a friend who is in a coma. Now it’s like helplessly watching a cocaine-addicted friend snort up their kid’s college fund.

Come on, Yahoo.

* As for the larger scope of my own opinion on Flickr and other photo sharing sites is a blog post in the making, as I am still collecting some comparison data.

** Please note that I am pro-Creative Commons, but chose a few years go – due to abuse by others – to switch from a CC-NC license on my Flickr images and my blog images/posts to a Copyright – All Rights Reserved.