Well, not exactly in the flesh - he's been dead over a 100 years - but appropriately, in a film about his life. From the National Museum of American History:
"Expatriate Englishman Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), a brilliant and eccentric photographer, gained worldwide fame photographing animal and human movement imperceptible to the human eye. Hired by railroad baron Leland Stanford in 1872, Muybridge used photography to prove that there was a moment in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground at once. He spent much of his later career at the University of Pennsylvania, producing thousands of images that capture progressive movements within fractions of a second."
The film itself begins at 8pm, but it will be proceeded by the opening gala of the Anchorage International Film Festival.
The film is Canadian and simply titled Eadweard. Kyle Rideout, the director will be there for questions afterward.
Looks like a good start for the festival.
With the Gala and all, it's a little pricey, but includes some food, and a chance to meet some of the filmmakers in town for the festival. And, of course, ask the filmmaker about the film right after you watch it.
A discount version (regular festival prices) will Wednesday night at the Museum.
I''d add an additional note. This is a feature film, but it is not in competition. Most films are submitted to the festival by the filmmakers. Some of these are recruited by the festival programmers who hear about good films or see them at other festivals. Some are invited, for various reasons, to show, but not be part of the competition. I'm assuming that that is the case here.
This is a good thing, because in the past, there were several years in a row where the opening night film ended up as the award winning feature. That didn't seem like a great idea to a number of us who regularly attend the festival.
And here's the trailer:
He was a bit of a character, but perhaps that says more about the rest of society and how it imposes rules on all of us, than it says about him.
The door to the battery and sound card on my Canon Powershot is, well, shot. First the part of the door that you latch closed so the camera will work, got cracked. I managed to tape it so it stayed together. But a short time ago, when I opened the door, it came off completely. To be clear, there's an inside part of the latch too that's still attached.
So I bit the bullet and took it to the Camera Repair Service shop.
I don't usually write plugs for businesses, but this is a place where I've been able to go over the years and get straight advice and help with my camera. It's a true "small business" that provides a service that the national franchise places just can't quite give. And it's easy to pass the little mall it's in on 15th, just east of C Street, and miss it completely.
(And I'm sure there's an interesting story behind the 'Norway Alaska' name of this building.)
So I asked Michael, the owner, if he wanted to say a few words about the shop. There's a neat array of used cameras, including a Hasselblad for sale that you can see in the video.
And here's his partner at the shop.
I'm keeping the camera until the part comes in. I still manage to make it close enough that I can turn on the camera.
Any of the following IDs may be used, even if expired:
Tennessee drivers license with your photo
United States Passport
Photo ID issued by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
Photo ID issued by the federal or any state government
United States Military photo ID
State-issued handgun carry permit with your photo
And what id is NOT acceptable?
College student IDs and photo IDs not issued by the federal or a state government are NOT acceptable.
And who is exempt from the photo id requirement?
Voters who vote absentee by mail (view requirements here)
Voters who are residents of a licensed nursing home or assisted living center and who vote at the facility
Voters who are hospitalized
Voters with a religious objection to being photographed*
Voters who are indigent and unable to obtain a photo ID without paying a fee
You might want to go through that list and ask yourself which of the id's that are acceptable are more likely to vote conservative or liberal (say, people with military id's or student id's; older folks - nursing homes, hospitalized - or younger folks?)
And consider how someone might prove they are indigent. Or even how an indigent person might.
By the way, the two PSA announcements - first and second - don't tell you much more than you need a photo id. There's nothing about the exceptions. Or that student ids aren't acceptable.
Bradblog has a story about a former US Marine who is challenging the law by showing his Tennessee voter registration card, but refusing to show a photo id. I'm assuming this is an action intended to lead to a court challenge of the law. I think the challenge is important, but I'm not too impressed with this particular person's video taped protest in his polling place.
I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm wondering why the media have been making such a big deal out of the primaries and giving them so much coverage without pointing out the pitifully low voter turnout and questioning people's claims about the importance of democracy.
*I'm not doing well looking on Google for religions that ban photography. I found a story about an Amish Canadian claiming his religion forbids personal photos and an Islamic woman claiming her religion forbids a photo (for a drivers license) without her veil.
When I posted July 11 about a short walk in Powerline Pass, I learned that wildlife photographers around the world, apparently, know that Powerline Pass is a great place to shoot moose pictures. It's easy to get to and the moose are right there. Especially in the fall rutting season.
Today is Monday. It's October 10 - long past tourist season. But the parking lot was 3/4 full. (It is also Columbus Day so a number of folks had the day off.) And it was a spectacular day. Foraker (left) and Denali* dominated the northern horizon - 120 air miles away.
The Powerline Pass was dressed in its muted fall colors.
Just at the point where the trail from the parking lot gets to the PP trail, there was still sun. But soon we were in the nippy shade. Fortunately there was not even a noticeable breeze.
But there were broken panes of ice in the the puddles. And there were moose. Here and there, near and far, scattered around the pass. Many near the trail.
And people packing big cameras were there too.
At this spot there were five moose that I saw enjoying the easy food supply before the snow makes everything much harder for them, though it does put the bears away.
The sharp divide between sunny and shady landscape added a significant challenge (of course, opportunities too for those with a better eye than mine) to my much smaller pocket powershot.
So, do camouflage pattern designers just fly over places like this and take pictures? [Of course, when I ponder such questions I have to go look for the answer. The answer seems to be no. There's a lot out there about hunting camo and military camo. Digital camo designs seem to be the way to go these days. See this Atlantic Article for a brief history and look at camo today.]
Some things were a little easier to photograph.
This is one of the more remote bike racks I've ever seen. We're probably about 2 miles from the parking lot. But the brown sign in the bushes, to the left of the trail, says no bikes.
Another iced over puddle.
On our way back we briefly talked to Lori and Richard who make great use of that huge lens. They've got amazing pictures up at ImagingNature.
*I sometimes forget that some people only know the highest peak in North America as Mt. McKinley. Alaskans tend to call it Denali, its original Native name. (Or so we think. Maybe we've been fooled too.) It's 20,320 feet (6,193.5 meters).
The cliche "hard as herding cats" is frequently used here to describe getting legislators together on anything - particularly Democrats. Well, on Friday the herd was rounded up for a picture. House Majority Press Secretary Will Vandergriff said it took a month to arrange - what with everyone's schedules, getting the Juneau City Government's people available to block off the street, and to get the Weather Service to provide sunshine.
But they took advantage of Friday's joint session for approving nominations when they had everyone together.
Above we have everybody - all the senators and all the representatives and lots of the staff and other people who work in the building.
Below, we have just the House Minority with their staff.
The video below is the House Minority - just the legislators - trying to get their picture taken.
I got a good blog related email this week and one not so good. The good one was from a Juneau Douglas High School student who asked if he could use one of my photos for his science project. Part of their rules requires that they get permission to use photos and give credit for photos they use on their posters. He didn't know I was in Juneau and I surprised him when I showed up to see his project.
Here he is explaining his project where he tested crushed cow parsnip in water as a way to naturally kill mosquito larvae. I'll do a longer post on the science fair later.
The other communication wasn't nearly as pleasant. It was a letter from a San Diego attorney alleging that I had libeled his client and that he was giving me a week to remove the offending post. While I didn't think there was anything wrong with the post - you regulars know that I'm pretty careful about what I say - I have engaged an attorney. I can say that the letter caused me to poke around a bit and things get more and more interesting. I'll put up more soon. The offending post is this one.
The film camera used to be good for capturing images - landscapes, faces - to document where we'd been, what we'd done, and people we'd met, things we'd seen. When I was a student in Germany in the mid 60s, my 12 print rolls of color pictures were relatively expensive to print and it would take a while for me to finish a roll and then - I don't even remember how long it took from when I dropped it off at the shop til I could get the pictures. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand a few years later, with my brand new Pentax, I could get black and white pictures developed in town in a day or two. But there were either 24 or 36 pictures on a roll and it could take days to weeks before I finished a roll. My color slides had to be sent to Hong Kong or Australia to be developed and that took at least two weeks before I could get my pictures back.
Digital cameras change all that. Now you can see your picture immediately. It's not on film, so you can take all the pictures you want without thinking about using up film. You can just delete the bad ones. The pictures are digital so you can upload them to your computer, email them, send them on your cell phone. You can enlarge them, crop them, even fiddle with the colors and exposure.
So, this means that the digital camera is a tool with many uses that old film cameras never had. Below is a list of ways I've found mine to be useful - in general categories, and then with specific examples.
The main ways I use my camera are as a portable note pad and a copy machine.
Use Your Digital Camera as a Note Pad
1. What's in those boxes in the basement? Take pictures as you load them up.
2. There's a map on the sign, but will you remember the path when you leave the sign? Take the sign with you.
3. How do you describe the part you need at the computer store or to the plumber? Take it on your digital camera. Of course this goes for all sorts of things that you can't take with you.
4. How do you describe your suitcase to the lost luggage people at the airport? Show them the picture.
5. Keep track of the information on the for rent signs you pass and what the place looks like.
6. Where did I park the car?
7. Ordering food in foreign countries - take a picture of food you like to show the waiter, or of a menu with things you like marked.
8. Take a picture of your hotel or other destinations to show the taxi when you want to go back
9. Wonder what kind of flower it is? Take a picture then ask someone at a nursery.
10. How will I remember all these people I just met and their names? Sometimes you need to ask them to write it in English though too.
11. Damn, where did I put my to do list? Click.
12. I want a copy of this legal document, but they charge $1 a page to print - just take a picture of the computer screen. Also good for your airlines reservations or that I paid my bill on line.(You can do a screen saver too, but not if it's a public computer.)
13. I really like this camcorder, (jacket, necklace) but I need to check with my wife before buying it. Snap. (get the price tag too.)
14. That's a nice fence, (door, window.) Wonder if I could make/find one like that? Just so I don't forget what it looked like, snap.
15. Meeting notes on the white board. Just snap 'em.
16. Lecture going too fast? Take digital notes.
17. What's the license plate number of your rental car?
18. Document dings and scratches on rental cars before you drive off
19. Audio memos - Use the audio memo function to have some someone give directions in the local language and play it for a local when you need help.
Use Your Digital Camera as a Copier
20. Need to have a copy of a price quote, birth certificate, or passport (or any piece of paper)? Just take a picture.
21. This recipe looks great. Snap.
Video - some things are hard to explain in writing, so use the video feature on your camera 22. Want to leave instructions for a house sitter? Video tape where the garbage bags are and how much to water the plants, etc.
23. Video instructions for how to do something - here, how to say 'hello' in the Karen language
I went cross country skiing today after lunch. What a treat to go off into the woods and just glide along through the exquisite snowy wonderland. There were a few other skiers out, like these two with their dog. I even saw a guy on the smaller trail on his mountain bike. The trail was firm enough that he was just leaving a slight track, so that's ok.
But most of the time it was just me and trees and the snow and here, the water.
And everyone looked so healthy with bright rosy cheeks. At first my finger tips got cold, but eventually my hands were nice and warm.
And toward the end, I got onto the bridge near the parking lot and looked down at the mostly frozen Campbell Creek.
The bridge does seem like a bit of overkill just to allow skiers, hikers, and bikers to cross the creek.
This also seems like a good opportunity to show what kinds of manipulation someone can do with Photoshop. The Computer Art and Design class (Art 257) I took at UAA this past semester had us using Photoshop a lot. One form of manipulation is changing the content of the picture - cutting out people you don't want in, adding others in, cleaning up the junk, etc. Obama's First Day in the Oval Office that I posted early is an example of extreme doctoring, though I left the style of most of the added pictures as they were so it would be clear that different people from different times were added into one picture. Though I did colorize Frederick Douglass and Jackie Robinson, and played with the color of some of the others. Journalistically, this is - or was - a big no-no.
Original undoctored picture
But what about the kind of manipulation I do below? I'm just using the built in filters in Photoshop and applying them to the same image. Well, it isn't quite that simple because for most of the filters you can move levers that make the effects more or less distinct. Is it ethical to doctor pictures this way? Make the sky more blue? The contrast better? I suspect that war is already lost. I even do it here - but those tend to be more pictures that don't have a political impact rather than 'news' pictures, and the differences is usually so minor it doesn't seem worth it to add a disclosure. But everything is political in that it affects how we see reality and thus how we act on what we see. So if my pictures prettify my subjects that affects how viewers perceive those subjects. And some of these obviously are not natural photos. So, take a look. Here's the original big, and then the variations of the same picture using different Photoshop filters.
