What now? How about real citizenship?

I've been watching Facebook this morning with equal parts of pride and sadness.  Comments from both ends of the political spectrum are sprinkled throughout my news feed.  Chicken Little says the sky is falling, America is toast, voters are stupid, we are saved and all of our problems are now solved.  Some who voted for the loser are pragmatic and ready to move on.   Well, here's my challenge  regardless of which way you voted. 

Stop whining or gloating (depending on how you voted), this is not citizenship; in fact it is just the opposite!

Instead, start by resolving to take Governor Romney's and President Obama's messages from their speeches last night and turn them into action. (Links to both speeches are included below.)

Here's a plan.  Watch and listen to every elected official’s words and deeds to make sure they are working as hard as they can to forge compromise and build real solutions to our problems.  Start with your city council and go right up the ladder to the State House, the U.S. Congress and the Oval Office. Make sure each one is  focusing their work on the country and not their party or special interest group.  Look for and call them out when they build walls instead of bridges, tell them to stop it when hate speech, scare tactics, name calling or demonization are used instead of negotiation and working together.

Don't depend on a single source of news for your information; search out multiple sources; don't allow some highly paid commentator's opinion or some blowhard's ideas (like me?) to become yours. Make up your own mind, listen to people you don't agree with and try to understand their views and the reasons for them. 

What happens now is not up to those who were elected; it is up to each of us to make sure our country moves forward and our elected leaders put country, not party or the next election first.  If they fail, that's what elections are for.

I've selected just a few paragraphs from last night's speeches that begin to set the tone we should all seek.

From Governor Romney's speech:

"The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this we can't risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work, and we citizens also have to rise to occasion. We look to our teachers and professors. We count on you not just to teach, but to inspire our children with a passion for learning and discovery. We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: Honesty, charity, integrity, and family. We look to our parents. From the final analysis, everything depends on the success of our homes. We look to job-creators of all kinds. We're counting on you to invest, to hire, to step forward, and we look to Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels to put the people before the politics."

From President Obama's speech:

"I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. ... Whether you pounded the pavement or picked up the phone, whether you held an Obama sign or a Romney sign, you made your voice heard and you made a difference.

 ...we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It's not always a straight line. It's not always a smooth path. By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won't end all the gridlock or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward. But that common bond is where we must begin.

... You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. ... We've got more work to do."

President Obama's Election Night Speech:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/06/us/politics/06-obama-election-night-speech.html

Governor Mitt Romney's Concession Speech:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/06/us/politics/06romney-election-night-speech.html

I hope you read the speeches, keep them around and follow what happens next.

Sequoia High Sierra Camp Night Sky Photography

Gearhart View II
September 11, 2012

Here's a photo of the night sky looking up through the trees taken from the Sequoia High Sierra Camp (SHSC), California just inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument at an elevation of 8,650 ft. shot at 11:30 p.m. PDT.  The point where I set up my tripod, if you are familiar with the SHSC, was in a small clearing in front of the "Gearhart" tent (#25) which is about 200 feet north of the bath house.

I shot this with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera and a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 16 mm. The camera was set to ISO 3200, f/2.8 with a 30 second exposure.  Focus is a challenge so switching to manual focus using live view, I attempted to focus on a very bright star near the center of the frame.  The single image was processed in Lightroom 4.2. The trees were illuminated by a combination of a few solar powered lamps on the ground, a gas lantern in our tent and my head lamp used to "paint" the trees.

Today's digital cameras make this type of photography easier but it still requires understanding some basic rules of the art and science of shooting the night sky.  It's a process of continuous learning and experimentation.

Many thanks to professional photographer, Jennifer Wu who tried to teach a class room full of Canon Live Learning EOS Destination Workshop attendees how to photograph the night sky one rainy weekend in Yosemite a couple of years ago.  What she taught, at least in theory, got me seriously interested in this type of photography.  Throw in hours of Google searches and YouTube tutorials and there is no shortage of ideas and inspiration.

The teacher in me likes to share what I'm learning on this journey but I have a very long way to go before I achieve the results of some of the pros who inspire me.

Happy shooting!

Bumblebee Hawkmoth

My wife spotted this critter working the flowers in her mom's backyard this afternoon.  I happened to have a camera so we watched and photographed him for several minutes . Here are two shots of the Bumblebee Hawkmoth.  This large moth was new to us but a friend helped us identify him.

Bumblebee Hawkmoth

My Dad and His Values

My Dad was an interesting and complex guy.  We were business partners for nearly four decades but not best buds.  He was my boss for the first 20 years and as his health declined he became a valued advisor.  He was there when I needed him but we didn’t do a lot of father - son stuff together.  As part of the Greatest Generation, he worked to take care of his family and to take care of his business.  He worked because that was who he was.

He deeply cared for people - his family and his friends.  He was independent and he really loved my mother, some might say to a fault, but maybe that’s a definition of love.  While his kids didn’t see it often, he had a fun side; he loved a good time, had a sense of humor and loved kidding people.

He cared about young people – he was a Key Club Sponsor in his earlier days and later in life he served on the board of City Youth.  He also loved Jonesboro and cared deeply about the opportunities the community made for others.  His service on various boards and commissions was one of the things that kept him going, long after his health began to fail.

One of the last major initiatives that he unfortunately missed come to fruition before he passed away was the Jonesboro Economical Transportation System (JETS) public transit system.  He clearly understood that public transportation would open new doors of opportunity to our citizens, especially those with the greatest needs.

He believed in fairness, he wanted to give people a chance.  If someone let him down, he’d give them another chance and then another.  He was not greedy; he was generous with his time and his money.  He understood the idea of service to others, not because of what he received in return but simply because it was important to give back, a sort of social payment for the opportunities he’d been given.

As I think about my Dad and the current political debates, especially the core debates about who we are as a people and the role of government in our society, I know he would be disturbed.  Dad was a lifelong Democrat and truly believed in the principles of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Kennedy’s and Johnson’s vision of the American dream for all and Clinton’s understanding that we are our brother’s keeper and protecting the most vulnerable in our society is part of government’s role.  Dad was a patriot who fought for our country in World War II and believed in all that America stands for.

He would be concerned about policies that favor the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and middle class.  He would support those who fight for fairness and accountability.  These are the same values he practiced in his life and in our business.  He treated employees and customers like family. He’d lay awake at night worrying about them and taking action to make things better and right when he could.

I feel certain that if he can, Dad is sending messages to his friends who’ve not joined him yet and he’s encouraging them to do what's right and best for our nation and her values in which he believed, lived and went to war to protect.

Happy Father’s Day Dad and thanks!

Cookies and Cream

A few foods stand between me and a relatively healthy diet.  Two of these are vanilla cream cookies (aka Golden Oreo) and Breyers Oreo Cookies and Cream Ice Cream or to be accurate, “sweet cream flavored frozen dairy dessert”.

Today, while grocery shopping, we discovered the exceptionally intelligent marketing geniuses at Breyers have merged two of my favorites into Breyer’s Golden Oreo Cookies and Cream. Life just got a little sweeter!

But wait, there’s more!   Breyers is a Unilever brand and they own and operate a hair care products plant here in Jonesboro.  So follow me on this, I am considering a campaign to get them to add Breyer’s Golden Oreo Cookies and Cream to their product line made here so we can shop in their outlet store.  That way, when they mess up a batch and put in too many Golden Oreo Cookies, instead of scrapping the lot as a quality control failure, they can just sell it in the outlet store. I’m hoping they have an outlet store, it not, that may need to be part of my campaign too.

If you'd like to join me in this campaign, just let me know.

Fine Art Photography and Digital Painting

Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8 II lens
1/25 sec f/4.0, ISO 100, 21 mm

For a week at the end of April and early May I attended the 2012 Texas School of Professional Photography enrolled in Tina and Michael Timmons' class entitled, "Beyond Image Capture".  The class included professional and amateur photographers with an array of backgrounds and skills.  We spent a week learning Photoshop, digital painting tools and techniques, shooting photos from new perspectives and processing our work to create fine art.

The artistic process can follow a variety of paths.  The path my classmates and I followed that week was great fun.  I learned more than my brain could hold and gained new skills that make my time shooting and processing photos a lot more fun.  Everyone in the class was there to learn from our instructors and each other.  My classmates were generous with their encouragement and unselfish sharing of expertise and advice.  The class has inspired me to not only get out and shoot more but I've been digging through my library of images applying what I learned to turn them into entirely new and interesting works.

In 2009 Marilyn and I spent some time in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge including the often photographed Multnomah Falls.  Today I revisited one of my photographs of this iconic waterfall, applied some of the skills and techniques learned during the class and produced the image included with this post.  You can click on the image to view a larger version.

Learning is a life-long adventure!  It keeps the brain and soul nourished as well as open to new ideas and adventures.  I wonder what's next?

f16iso100

Why is the address of my blog "f16iso100"?

Grand Canyon ISO 100, f/16, 0.5 sec

F/16 at ISO 100 - this is one of my favorite camera settings that's great for many subjects, especially tack sharp landscape photography. 

F-Stop - Relative Aperture most commonly referred to as "F-Stop" refers to the size of the opening in relationship to the focal length of the camera lens through which light travels on its way to the sensor or film.  f/16 represents a smaller relative opening (the larger the number the smaller the opening - f/2.8 is a much larger opening than f/22). In most lenses, this results in a large depth of field (DOF) so both foreground and background objects appear in focus (as with any rule, there are exceptions  - macro photography is one of these so a post on macro photography seems likely).  A comprehensive article about aperture can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_stop

ISO 100 - refers to film speed or for digital cameras, the sensor's sensitivity to light. The lower the number the less sensitive to light. Referred to as "slow" film, this low sensitivity to light setting in digital cameras or film speed can result in higher quality images due to less "grain" or noise in the final images.  This ISO setting / film speed is often used when there's ample light or it's possible to leave the shutter open longer to allow enough light  to reach the film or sensor for a proper exposure.

Higher and Higher ISO's - One interesting development of the past few years in digital camera evolution is the very high ISO settings possible that can create stunning low light photography.  The major digital camera manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Sony and others are constantly pushing the limits on this technology. Today, ISO settings in the four and five figures and beyond are pushing photographers to rethink available light photography. (I think this will be a good topic of a future post).

I am certainly no expert on ISO so here's a link to an article that will help you better understand film speed:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed

A passing thought about f/16 and ISO 100.  With a small aperture, objects, both near and far can be sharp and in focus and an ISO setting of 100 helps create a higher image quality.  Not a bad philosophy for work and life!  Keep things in focus, both the issues up close that have our attention today and those out there near the horizon that may be more important tomorrow while, at the same time, do things in a manner that creates the best chance for a high quality outcome. (No, I'm not writing a self help book, I just like the analogy.)

What's your favorite camera setting and why?  What are your thoughts on ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed or anything else for that matter.  Do you prefer full manual control or do you find full Auto or Program modes to be your cup of tea?  Use the comment area below to send me your thoughts.

Welcome

Welcome to - Through My Lens.  I have no idea where this will go, but I've been thinking about creating a blog for some time and today just seemed like the day to begin.  So, here goes!

Photo by Tim Rand

I decided on the name "Through My Lens" for obvious reasons.  If you know me, you know I often have a camera around my neck and enjoy photography's many aspects.  I'm a geek so anything that deals with technology is just down right fun for me.  Photography also gives me pleasure when I see someone relate to something I've done - either a beautiful photograph right out of the camera or an enhanced image from my digital darkroom.

I admire the work of some well known and not so well known photographers.  I get a great deal of inspiration from them so you will probably see me highlighting other photographers' work in my posts.

Topics other than photography may appear from time to time.  The "lens" metaphor will serve as a guide for choosing topics I find interesting. 

Finally, you may have noticed the URL of my blog begins with "f16iso100". Photographers will recognize this but may still wonder why I chose this for my blog.  More on that next...

Thanks for "looking in".