Squash is one of the easiest things to grow, but I'm still proud of myself when I grow something that I can actually eat. I like the question-mark shape of this yellow squash.
bee approach
Playing with my camera on a sunny day in the garden. I was using a Nikon D7000 with a 105 mm macro lens. I couldn't get the shutter speed to be faster than 250 so the bee's wings aren't "frozen." I should spend more time reading the manual.
The camera was on a tripod and manually focused on this particular flower. I waited, in the sun, until a bee arrived. I used a cable release to avoid shaking the camera and a ring flash on the lens.
Monte
reading montaigne
Spent the day reading a book on how to read Montaigne. I think it's helping.
imagine a world on two wheels
National Public Radio recently had a story on the enthusiasm for using bicycles for transportation in Copenhagen. What I found interesting about the story was the broad agreement among citizens and politicians in Copenhagen on the benefits of riding bicycles over driving cars. The journalist reported that politicians on both the right and the left of the political spectrum ride bikes to work and support the idea of building more bike routes.
In Copenhagen they are expanding existing bike lanes and building bike super highways that will connect urban and suburban neighborhoods. People can, and do, commute long distances by bicycle. City officials in Copenhagen expect the expansion of existing bike routes to have a positive impact on the environment and to reduce health care costs by as much as $60 million per year.
It makes sense to ride bikes instead of driving cars whenever possible, but people need to be able to ride safely, hence the need for designated bike paths and bike highways.
Could we do this on a large scale in America? I like the idea. See my video on saving the world with bicycles
Monte
References:
paying attention
I am a reluctant gardener. Even that is terribly overstating the time I spend in my garden. This week, for no particular reason, I took my camera to the garden and began snapping pictures and shooting some video. There's a lot going on out there at a level that is just out of sight for the casual observer.
It's just like me to stumble upon something this marvelous when it is almost over. The few flowers left in the garden are getting thin and it won't be long before the New England winter turns everything brown and dormant. But I'll be ready next year with my camera and a plan to plant as many bee and butterfly friendly plants as I can squeeze in.
This photo was taken using a Nikon 105 mm macro lens. The photo was manipulated in photoshop with the oil paint filter. I like that filter, even though "real" photographers will scoff at me for using it. But since I'm clearly not a real photographer I get to have fun with the filter and create an image that not only looks like what I was seeing, but feels like I was feeling.
Monte
running, stories, and people
This is a picture of a small house by the road I walk on to get to my local bike path. It’s about a quarter mile walk from where I live to the bike path. In the summer the path is so crowded with tourists riding bicycles, pushing baby buggies or jogging that I usually avoid it and get my exercise indoors on my spinning bicycle. However, today I felt like walking, or maybe even running.
I haven’t run in more than two years on account of chronic ankle pain. During that time my aerobic exercise has been limited to daily 45-minute workouts on my indoor spinning bike.
I began with the idea that I would alternate between running and walking short distances. The bike path has markers every tenth of a mile so doing intervals of running and walking is easy. But once I started running I didn’t feel like stopping and I wound up running the entire 4.6 miles that I usually walk when I’m walking on the bike path.
The cool part of this story is that after not running for over two years, and being just a couple of weeks shy of turning 53 years old, I ran the 4.6 miles in 32 minutes and 46 seconds, which is an average of 7 minutes and 7 seconds per mile! I ran the third mile of the run at 6 minutes and 50 seconds because two people on roller blades passed me and I wanted to see how long I could keep up with them.
I’m pretty proud of this small accomplishment, that’s why I wrote about it. As we get older we like to feel like we still have some of the spark from our earlier years.
And that brings me back to the picture of the little house with the crooked window. It’s an abandoned, dilapidated old house by a marsh. When I walk past it I wonder about who used to live in it. They must have walked the same route to the beach that I walk. What did they talk about inside the room with the crooked window? I am like the old house, and so are you. As time goes by people won’t know who I used to be or that I used to be a good runner, and they won’t care. Like the house, we will grow old and crooked and other people that see us will never know what secrets we have. But wouldn’t the world be just a little bit kinder if people wondered? To wonder about the history of strangers is to see them as fellow human beings and recognize that we all have a story.
Monte Ladner
fly
I've been playing around with the oil paint tool in Photoshop CS6. This was a remarkably docile fly that remained motionless for several macro shots before leaving.
Beef: There are Consequences
This is a nicely done video on the costs and consequences of our lust for beef.
Spider
No spiders were harmed while making this picture. This guy was crawling across my gym floor while I was working out. I scooped him into a box and got my camera set up for a macro shot. He remained a cooperative model for about five minutes while I took several shots, but then he tried to jump onto my camera and it was clear that he was done taking photos. I got him back into the box and released him into the backyard.
Monte
Orchid
Once a week we go to Whole Foods for groceries. I'm always tempted to buy an orchid and today I did. Mostly, I wanted to take pictures of it. Flowers are a common photography subject for beginners like me. They make great models because they never complain about endless retakes and repositioning lights and camera angles.
Nikon 105 mm macro lens, f14, 0.5 seconds, iso 100 and two 26 watt 6500 K fluorescent lights.
Monte
Pile of Peppers
I can't get anybody in my family to eat peppers, but these peppers looked so delicious at the store that I felt compelled (or is the correct word impelled?) to buy them.
Nikon 105 mm macro lens, f-stop 36, shutter speed 1/15 sec, iso 100, with tungsten lights.
Christmas Flowers
Close-up photography is a lot harder than I thought it would be. This was the best I could do with this flower after multiple attempts. Clearly, I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to macro shots.
The color seems excessively saturated, but I did not enhance the saturation in Photoshop. In fact, I decreased the magenta saturation by 10%.
Monte
New Camera
My new Nikon D7000 arrived today. There are some differences from my D90. Luckily, there is a brand new video tutorial on the D7000 by Ben Long available at Lynda.com.
The camera also has an HD video feature and it allows for the connection of an external microphone. So far, I have to say I like it.
Monte
Occupy Falmouth Protest Photo Gallery
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I'm trying to learn how to use the NextGen photo gallery plugin. These are images from the Occupy Falmouth protests in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Rhododendron
Playing around with light and backgrounds. I like this sort of "studio work" because it's done alone and unhurried. It's easy to get lost in a project and just have fun.
50 mm prime lens, f-16, 1/60, iso 100, off-camera flash placed below subject.
Monte
Healthcare not Warfare
[audio:https://www.monteladner.com/wp-content/audio/michael.mp3]
Michael identified himself to me as a veteran of the U.S. Army from the Vietnam era. Click the button beneath his picture to hear him explain why he is protesting with the Occupy Together movement in my town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (the sound clip is only a few seconds long). Michael, like many Americans, believes we should be spending less money invading other countries and use the money instead to take care of our own citizens.
I think he makes a good point.
Monte
Mob?
[audio:https://www.monteladner.com/wp-content/audio/brooke.mp3]
Congressman Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, and other right-wing extremists have characterized the participants in the Occupy Together movement as "mobs." This is a picture of Brooke. I interviewed her at a protest in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Click the play button beneath her picture to hear her one-minute explanation for why she is standing with the Occupy Together protesters. Does she seem like the sort of person who would join an angry mob?
Americans like Brooke want their government to work for the people - all of the people, not just the really rich people. How is that radical?
Monte
Harbor Boats
Harbor in Woods Hole, Massachusetts at dawn September 30, 2011. Yes, I used the very cool and fun software from Nik Software to manipulate the image color and texture.
Monte
Big History
Nobody is afraid that not believing in the big bang or evolution will result in an eternity spent burning in hell. Science doesn’t make threats about the consequences of skepticism; in fact, science encourages debate and alternative explanations for a particular set of data. Flip-flopping in response to new information is a good thing in the objective world of science, while clinging to old ideas when new observations clearly demonstrate they are wrong is a dead end. Science offers a route to seeking truth that is not faith-based and is not clouded by fear or hatred of others with different ideas.
I don’t know the answers to questions about the meaning of life or how we got here. This uncertainty about our origins doesn’t scare me, and it doesn’t make me inclined to behave immorally or in a criminal manner. It does, however, motivate me to read about the amazing things scientists are learning regarding the beginning of the universe and the evolution of life. The slowly unfolding scientific story of our origins is complex and exciting and way better than any ancient creation myth written by people who didn’t know that the Earth is a planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy in a universe with a hundred billion other galaxies, or that a molecule called DNA stores the code for life.
Many thinkers have observed that no matter what God a person believes in, the overwhelming majority of the rest of the people on Earth believe in a different God thereby making everybody an atheist and a heretic. This seems like a good reason to stop fighting about who has a monopoly on truth and to start thinking and communicating about big ideas in an objective, data-driven fashion.
I’ve decided to learn what I can about the universe in which we live. I began with a lecture series from the Teaching Company called Big History, which traces our origins from the big bang all the way through early human civilization. The series contains 48 lectures by Professor David Christian (yes, it is an irony that his name is Christian). It’s terrific. Next on my list is a book by the astrophysicist Eric Chaisson called Epic of Evolution. I’ve only just started, but the book seems to be well written, by which I mean I can understand it. However, to enhance my comprehension of the material I am simultaneously watching additional Teaching Company lectures on Einstein’s theory of relativity, particle physics, quantum physics, dark matter and dark energy, biology and evolution, the brain and behavior and a few others. The process is going to take some time.
I’ll update my progress in this blog.
The ability to learn and think abstractly is what makes us interesting as a species. It is also our best hope of avoiding self-destruction.
Monte
Fahrenheit 451 - Why Books Matter
In Ray Bradbury’s prophetic book Fahrenheit 451 Professor Faber remarks to the novel’s protagonist Guy Montag, “Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”
Written in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a story about a future America in which books and reading are illegal. Firemen in this world start fires instead of putting them out. Specifically, firemen respond to anonymous tips about people who may have hidden books in their home. The firemen answer the “alarms” by burning down the houses with books, and sometimes burning the people who read them.
Citizens in Ray Bradbury’s novel get all of their information from television and radio that is broadcast directly into their ears via ear buds called “seashells.”
The television in the world of Fahrenheit 451 is used to inspire patriotic support for endless wars, to sell products, and to keep people “happy and having fun.” People in the book consider the characters in their favorite television programs as their “family” and there is a tighter bond between individuals and their television friends than there is between real people. The television is, of course, the tool for state and corporate propaganda.
The similarities of the role of television in American society imagined by Mr. Bradbury in 1953 and television in the American society of 2011 are just creepy.
The scariest part of Fahrenheit 451 is that it was the citizens, not the government, who created their highly censored world by abandoning reading and spending increasing amounts of time mindlessly watching television. The government in the novel simply took advantage of the public’s willingness to be ignorant.
Does this sound familiar? Can you say “Fox News” or “Koch-brother funded Tea-Party propaganda?”
Edward Bernays is considered the father of the American public relations profession. He lived from 1891 to 1995. He was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and he used his knowledge of crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to create his own style of propaganda to shape public opinion on behalf of his clients. He had an extraordinarily successful career as a public relations guru.
In 1928 Bernays wrote a short book called Propaganda that described his thoughts on public relations. The opening paragraph is two sentences long, and should serve as a wake-up call to everybody who believes they are making up their own minds about important issues.
From Propaganda by Edward Bernays:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
In America today one of our two major political parties is ideologically opposed to thinking – and proud of it; I’m talking about Republicans. Consider Rick Perry’s recent address to a crowd of university students in which he openly bragged about what a poor student he was at Texas A&M. His message to students and the public is clear: Idiots make good presidents. That would be funny except that so many Americans agree with the argument that we need more stupid people in charge.
Reading, critical thinking and civil discussions about ideas that are unpolluted by “fair and balanced” disinformation is essential to the survival of a free society.
Our democracy is threatened more by our willingness to be uninformed than it is by terrorists or other perceived enemies of freedom. In America today people who read books and value education are labeled as “liberal elites” determined to turn the country into a socialist state. Anything that a “liberal elite” talks about is, according to radical right-wing pundits and their corporate sponsors, a conspiratorial hoax designed to undermine our society.
This labeling process makes the task of spinning corporate propaganda remarkably easy. If a liberal believes in something it must be bad, regardless of the facts. For example, the fossil fuel industry has worked very hard to label climate science as a product of the liberal elite establishment. Millions of Americans actually believe that there has been a decades-long conspiracy among thousands of scientists from all over the world to create a global warming hoax purely for the purpose of securing a few million dollars in research grant money. The people who believe this nonsense don’t seem to think that hundreds of billions of dollars in annual profits might be a motivating factor for a handful of oil industry executives to create their own hoax and distort the science behind anthropogenic climate change for their own gain.
In his biography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life), Walter Isaacson recounts a story reported by a man named James McHenry about a remark made by Benjamin Franklin to a woman who asked about the outcome of the Constitutional Convention. The legend has it that a woman approached Dr. Franklin and asked him: “What type of government have you delegates given us?” Benjamin Franklin, according to Mr. McHenry, replied: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
We are bombarded by propaganda from special interest groups and corporations coming to us through our televisions, radios, the internet and even our telephones. Our government is corrupted to its core by corporate money. But reliable information on important issues is still available, we just have to make the effort to find it.
What would America be if citizens took it upon themselves to read and be informed and to have meaningful debates inspired by verifiable facts about the big issues we face? What would America be if we insisted that our leaders be smart, educated, sincere public servants and not simply good-looking morons who graduated at the bottom of their class and are willing to say anything for money and fame? I think we’d be a free society of enlightened people living fulfilling lives, and that would be terrific – if we could keep it.
Monte Ladner