Categories
Photography

What doesn’t make a good photo

One last set of photos from the Gardens, and then I’m off to travel a bit, walk a lot, take care of some business and maybe even more photos.

The weather has been in the 80s and wet. Spring didn’t happen, it exploded. Normally the flowers occur in stages, with crocus, daffodil, and magnolia in stage one; followed by the flowering fruit trees and tulips in stage two. This year, everything was up at once. Walking through the park was like walking into Nordstrom, between the two ladies with the perfume.

Before going to the park yesterday, I was browsing about when I discovered a weblog post where the author asked the question, What makes a great photo?. Several people had responded and the responses were published in the post. After reading it, as I was walking about taking pictures and later, as I was processing photos from my trip, I wondered why no one ever celebrates their less than perfect photo picture taking quirks. After all, if we all took photos like the experts recommend there would be no individuality. Prettier, more profound pictures, perhaps–but no individuality.

For instance, take the following picture. It’s of new leaves. Normally in the Spring, you take pictures of flowers, not leaves. But look at this picture: what are those things surrounding the leaves? That’s the first thing I thought when looking at the tree, what are those things around the leaves? I don’t remember seeing weird little things like that before. Have they always been there, and I hadn’t noticed them? Unique to this tree? Some kind of unhealthy, tuberous growth, which makes itself look green and innocent so it isn’t sprayed?

Quirk one: Nature works really hard, don’t waste the effort by focusing only on tulips.

tree leaves

This next violates probably a dozen rules of photography. There’s conflicting patterns all over, way too much detail and screams ‘busy’. Look at that tree? It doesn’t even have the decency to lose its last few leaves from fall. No, they’ll probably hang around until they’re pushed off by the new leaves.

And the trunk of the tree looks like it has an eye.

Quirk two: Go ahead and take a messy picture. Tell people to look for the fractal patterns. Sit back and snicker.

tree

Daffodils. I got your daffodils here.

Not a bad grouping, but I didn’t have the focus straight on, and so the flowers aren’t sharp. That’s violating the most cardinal rule: sharp photos. However, I liked the grouping–it’s like the flowers were having a chat.

Quirk: It’s a weblog, you can post fuzzy pictures. People will think they’re just tired from reading 342 feeds.

In this one, now, the fuzziness was intentional. It’s called bokeh.

Quirk Four: As long as your mistake has a Japanese name, it’s intentional.

Now this is a split corona daffodil. It’s it an absolutely beautiful flower. With flowers such as these, doesn’t matter what you do with the camera, it will look good. You could take pictures of the flower behind you by bending over and pointing the camera between your legs and the photo will look good.

Quirk five: Bend over, take pictures behind you by pointing the camera between your legs. Suggest you save this for wilderness pictures.

The next two photos are of the same type of flower. Now, typically you won’t publish more than one photo of the same subject. You’d pick your favorite, which shows a fine sense of discrimination by picking only the best rather than put up many.

Why am I repeating the flowers? I liked the first photo better, but I liked the pollen dribble on the second.

Quirk six: Flower drool.

The next photo is sharp enough, positioned correctly, and the light seems to be good. But it just sits there, limp. Why this picture then?

I liked the background. That’s my deep, dark secret for most of my plant and flower pictures: I find a background I like, and then I go look for something to plunk into the foreground to justify the shot.

Quirk seven: Backgrounds. Find a background, hope a deer walks in front of the lens.

This next picture, my god what was I thinking? It looks like Van Gogh decided to paint over a picture by Monet.

Quirk eight: create a photograph that looks like a combination of the work of Van Gogh and Monet.

Hey! We’ve seen this flowering tree before!

Have you ever noticed with flower photos how the photographer will place the flower in the last or first vertical third, and leave primarily blank space in the rest of the frame? This technique gives the photo sensitivity and mood?

This is a crass American photo: if one flower is good, two is better! If one SUV is good, two is better! If one 50 inch TV is good, two is better! If one…

Quirk nine: Nature abhors a vacuum.

Again, same tree. I love this tree. It’s one of my favorite trees.

Quirk ten: one can never have too many pictures of something we love. Next week: pictures of Peeps.

I’ll end with just ten quirks and the last few photos from the set. I not only captured my first butterfly of the year, but captured my first bee–throwing in a cardinal for good measure because you can get away with anything when you add a cardinal.

My leaf!

Categories
Connecting Weblogging

Disappointed

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Update

I think AKMA did a better job of taking a closer, calmer, more reasoned look at the situation than I did.

I also wanted to point out Baldur’s post, which leads one to careful thought.

Ronnie Bennett also has an excellent post on the subject.

Earlier

Kathy Sierra just just posted a note about getting death threats and canceling out of ETech. In the post, she specifically mentioned Jeneane Sessum, Alan Herrel, Frank Paytner, and Chris Locke. I know everyone involved–I’ve known Jeneane, Frank, Chris, and Alan for close to six years, and Kathy for a good couple of years.

I’ve not seen the Meankids blog or the other one mentioned, but I also don’t follow most of the emails and stuff associated with the old Cluetrain group. Not because I think the old gang is ‘bad’; just not somewhere I’m at now. I don’t talk much with Jeneane or Chris, but I do chat with Frank and Alan. Any time I’m down, Alan always sends me links to squid stuff or other things I’d like. Alan has also been one of the strongest proponents for increasing the number of women at conferences and calling out on sexist behavior. What I’m hearing and what I know, conflict.

I know these folks and I’m concerned about the implications of what Kathy’s post can mean to each of them. Would they do a death threat? No. Not a bit of it. Absolutely, completely, not possible. The one email that Kathy mentions in her post was from Spain from the IP address given, and is completely unassociated with the people she’s named, or the weblogs she specified. But did the noose post constitute a death threat? You know, the sites are down (ed. Did find a cached version of post) and without having an idea of context, we don’t exactly know what the implications are. At a minimum, it was abysmally stupid. Was it criminal? As my roommate said, if you had done that with Bush, the Secret Service would probably visit.

Kathy has said she’s contacted the police. She didn’t say if it was local or federal.

I have been critical of Kathy in the past, and most likely will be again. We’re two very different people. Same as I have been and will be critical of others that Kathy mentions, such as Tara Hunt and Hugh MacLeod. I might even use satire in my criticism, though I tend to be pretty direct when it comes to people.

At the same time, Kathy and I have made peace from past angers; she even reviewed the first chapter of my last book–had good advice, too. I think she knows that most of my criticism has been based on acts, not the person as a whole. I hope that’s the type of criticism I do, though I know I fail sometimes.

The only time I’ll use any biting humor or sarcasm is when I know the person can take it and dish it back. Kathy doesn’t deal well with this type of humor–yes, mean, nasty, snarky humor–but at the same time, she’s not very good at ignoring it, either. She and her partner Bert do respond in comments, and sometimes this can exacerbate an already volatile situation, and can increase the level of meanness. Does that excuse the meanness and hate? No, but it may provide some balancing context. Or it may not–but we don’t have other people’s stories, and we can’t know the ‘truth’, whatever that is, until we have all the facts. Continuing to focus their shots at Kathy was foolish, thoughtless, and served no useful purpose.

Do I think the photoshopping and the meankids.org is a ‘cool’ thing? No. Such encourages aggression and leads people to do and say things they wouldn’t normally do and say. But I’m not overfond of hiding ‘meanness’ in sweet words and ‘clever’ drawings, either. The cruder might be more obvious, but the subtle is, by far, the more harmful.

Do I think Kathy’s life is in danger? From what she wrote? No. But it’s not up to me to decide, I’m not her and I deal with things differently than she does. Doesn’t mean I’m better or she’s better–just different. As for fully interpreting this as a criminal act, it’s up to the police since she’s called them. But by calling the police, and writing her post, she’s raised some very high stakes, which could end up causing a great deal of harm to some folks. She’s created a posse, and from what I can see, not a lot of people have asked for context. Or care.

The email that Kathy received is separate from the posts. It was unfortunate that she combined these into a post. I’m concerned now that a lot of people are going to react and some folks, including Kathy, are going to get hurt–and no, I don’t mean physically.

Frankly, calmer heads are needed when responding to this event. Webloggers are not very good at maintaining perspective. I know, I’ve been one for too long.

As for the comments derogatory to women, they do disappoint me, profoundly–more so if they’re from people I have called friend. Frankly, this whole incident has taken the heart out of me.

For all the people calling for the police and demanding jail time, I would counsel calm, because we don’t know the full story. The web sites have been taken down, we don’t know the posts that have gone before or the ones after. I’m not disparaging Kathy’s emotions or reactions, but these are serious matters, and I think we need to be very careful in how we respond.

update

Frank Paynter has responded. I’ve been talking with Jeneane, and she’s not long out of the hospital. I recommended that she not overstress herself right now, but if Kathy would like, or needs a response from Jeneane, I’m sure she will provide one.

Alan Herrell, the Head Lemur, has evidentally quit his weblog. He’s been weblogging for 7, 8 years or so. Long as I can remember. He wrote:

character assassination by image and psedonym
believe what you will
get some help
goodbye

What is the true measure of meanness? Words or deeds? When the weblogging world figures this out, you all let me know. OK?

In the meantime, from discussions here and about, I gather that the police called on the threats were federal, which would probably be the FBI. I would keep unenlightened conjecture and inflated discussion to a minimum before more harm is done.

update

Chris Locke has responded.

Lisa Stone at Blogher provided a response related to Jeneane that should be sufficient for those demanding response.

Categories
Photography Places Plants

Shaw Nature Center: daffodils

For the first time, I managed to make it to Shaw’s Nature Center when the daffodils are at their peak. The Center’s daffodils have grown wild, and as such they blanket the grounds.

In the past, I’ve typically taken photos of daffodils up close, brightly lit by the sun and shining with vivid color–a harlot among the more delicately hued spring flowers, all tarted up in their brassy yellows and bright greens.

I noticed yesterday, though, that the daffodil is really a very shy flower whose color is much more muted and subtle when you view the flower as part of the landscape. By itself and very close, it is a lovely flower and can cheer even the most determined grump. However, when the daffodils form part of a scene, just barely there at the edge of one’s consciousness, they draw the eye across the fields to to a distant edge you can’t quite see. A reminder of Spring, yes; but also a reminder that the seeming infinity of Spring is merely an illusion.

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils

>Daffodils

Categories
JavaScript

Baseline library

I’ve only downloaded it and started playing, but I like the idea of a JavaScript library based purely on implementing standards. Small and lightweight, Dean Edwards’ base2.DOM provides a good baseline for development without worrying about interesting proprietary extensions and recalcitrant browsers.

Not that I’m naming names.

Edwards’ library does provide support for the older 5.x versions of IE. Those are browsers I won’t support anymore. I realize there are people using version 9 of the Mac OS or other equipment still loaded with the 5.x versions, and that not supporting old browsers limits their access to applications. However, as long as any JavaScript-enabled application has a non-script enabled alternative that provides the same functionality, I’d rather just turn off any script effects for such instead of adding enormous amounts of code to deal with the idiosyncrasies. Thank goodness for the concept of progressive enhancement…and nice, small footprint JS libraries.

As for the Edwards’ self-deprecating reference to base2.DOM not being a documented library, JavaScript libraries don’t have to be documented when they’re small, use meaningful naming standards, and are easy to read. Note to Dojo: this doesn’t mean you.

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs

Speaking of which

I had written about the proposed projects for the five million in fines FERC fined Ameren. I may be interested in what’s happening in the aftermath of the Taum Sauk dam break, but one thing I’m not is a ‘local’, with a local’s intimate knowledge of the politics and the organizations. Black River News points today to a letter that a local, James Hawley, sent as response to the recommended proposals, and it is a direct look at how political many of the recommendations are.

(The FERC correspondence system is based on scanned correspondence and uses Java to display such, so the system isn’t particularly friendly. Access the letter through FERC, clicking on the link labeled Project Correspondence in the right side of the page–Hawley’s letter is the first in the list. If you have pop-up blockers, you’ll have to allow the site to open new windows to use the FERC document viewer.)

Among some of the criticisms of approved projects:

3) Case end loader, boom axe mower and two dump trucks–First, has any qualified company or person outside of the area looked at the existing trucks and equipment Reynolds County owns? Second, a boom axe mower is not environmentally friendly. It rips, mutilates and kills trees and vegetation. The Reynolds County Commissioners requested $259,500.00 for these trucks and equipment. I as others can’t get our roads maintained. Why would we want this equipment when only the selected get their county roads maintained? This again is for political gain and definitely should not be approved.
…
14) Building construction, dog purchase, and operational expenses for establishing a training facility for search-and-rescue dogs–This is the wording from AmerenUE’s web site, which exposes the deceptive motives from this panel. This wording doesn’t reveal that this is for hiring a K-9 handler and training center for drug and bomb sniffing dogs. Again, this money should not go for salaries and we don’t need bomb sniffing dogs.
…
22)Marketing and advertising campaign for the Iron County Hospital–This is a local hospital and everyone in the community knows where it is. People will not drive from Farmington, Potosi or anywhere else when their cities already have hospitals. The local paper says it’s for doctor recruitment. Which is it? Marketing and advertisement or doctor’s recruitment. Either way $70,000.00 is a lot of money for either purpose. Did they detail where this money is to be spent? This would be a total waste of money.
…
24) Purchase of a CT Scanner for the Advanced Healthcare Medical Center — This Center has had major financial problems in the past. This is supported by the Panels stipulation of “If the center goes out of business clause”. It states that the equipment must stay in Reynolds County if the Center goes out of business. The hospital in Iron County went out of business and it was years before another one was built. What is Reynolds County going to do if the Center goes under? Where will this scanner be stored and for how long?

The letter brings up more than enough to force FERC to get involved with this process. It seems to me that Ameren has used this to ‘buy’ the goodwill of the power elite in the community, which is not compatible with FERC’s admittedly vague and somewhat indifferent guidelines.

What I thought was even more interesting was a comment Hawley’s comments about a couple of the board members and their view of the Johnson’s Shut-Ins. He wrote:

One voting panel member, Jim Chadbourne, and the county commissioner, Wayne Henson, who had an influence with some of the projects, do not even understand the economic value of the Johnson Shut-Ins State Park. They have both stated that the park doesn’t bring any revenue to Reynolds or Iron County. With this bias, it’s obvious that they would summit projects away from “at or near the affected area”. We own a family campground and lodge next to the State Park and 85% of our business comes from the overflow of the Park.

Before the dam broke and one time when I was out at the park during the winter, among the visitors were a young couple from Japan, and a family from Germany. This during the down time, in a cold January where ice formed along the Shut-Ins. This region has such potential for tourism. Managed carefully and promoted wisely, it could be a strongly sustaining source of income for residents, as well as taxes for the community. It could be a place for families in the summer, and a business retreat or educational opportunity in the winter. With the unfortunate Taum Sauk dam break, there is even more potential for bringing visitors into the community–though such effort does require some imagination on the part of community leaders.

I’m astonished how little some of the people in the area seem to value what they have. To them, the Taum Sauk dam break seems less a tragedy, and more an unexpected windfall, which is an atrocious way to treat this event. Add this to the silence regarding the ongoing effort with the cleanup and I can’t see how the people of Missouri are being well served b this panel, or Ameren’s, efforts.