the popular appeal of the selfie

The "Selfie". Is it narcissism, loneliness, or simply the desire to take a picture with people in it coupled with the abhorrence of begging one's friends and family to pose for a picture and the inevitable groaning and complaining that ensues? It's actually a lot easier to take pictures of oneself than it is to take pictures of other people. Selfies are a big fad these days. There is even an upcoming workshop in self-portraiture at the New England School of Photography - maybe I should sign up for it?

Monte

first mobile phone

I finally decided to end my bid for being the only person without a mobile phone.  It wasn't because I suddenly felt the need to make phone calls while shopping for groceries or driving my car.  The current phones offer all sorts of benefits for photography and video work.

I took this picture with my new iPhone 6 plus using an app called camera plus.

Monte

shooting the moon

Up early again this morning before sunrise hoping to photograph the moon setting over the frozen Buzzard’s Bay.  I remembered to bring my headlamp, but not the batteries for it.  I was literally shooting in the dark; and it was pretty cold (around 24 degrees Fahrenheit).

The clouds are blurry because of the long exposure times of 20 - 30 seconds.  Notice the stars in the sky.  The bright flare on the left side is the moon.

I just finished reading a book about Astrobiology, so I couldn’t help wondering about life elsewhere in our universe while I was taking these pictures of the pre-dawn sky.  There’s probably lots of simple life, like single-celled microbes, on other worlds.  There's probably less life in the form of small multicellular creatures or plants.  And I lean toward the view of the Rare Earth crowd in thinking that complex, multicellular life intelligent enough to make digital cameras must be quite unusual.

Monte

chapoquoit beach sunset

This is a picture of  Buzzards Bay filled with ice as seen just after sunset from Chapoquoit beach on March 8, 2015.  I don't know the people or the dog.

The temperature got up above freezing for several hours this afternoon.  Snow and ice were sliding off our roof and crashing to the ground with loud cracking sounds that I pretended were  the first drum beats of spring.

It's been a tough winter with a lot of snow and I have cursed it many times, but now that there are signs it will end soon I have this weird feeling I will miss it - how is that possible?  I've been going back and forth to the beach taking pictures of the frozen bay before it melts.

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three phases of water

 

I took this photograph at a beach a few minutes from my home.  It isn’t a great picture, but it’s interesting because it reveals some important characteristics of water and our planet that were essential for the origination and evolution of life on Earth.

Earth, as demonstrated in this picture, has just the right combination of surface temperature and atmospheric pressure to allow water to exist in all three physical phases: liquid (the ocean water), solid (the ice), and gas (the clouds).  Clouds are not strictly just gases because they actually consist of water in all three phases including water vapor, which is a gas, and tiny water droplets that form when the water vapor condenses around airborne particles of dust and ice crystals.

The picture highlights another important physical characteristic of water - ice floats.  If ice sank the oceans would’ve frozen solid long ago, and the complex, multicellular organisms with the emergent property of consciousness called people probably wouldn’t exist.

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morning after a blizzard

The snow looks pretty - as long as you're looking at it through a window from inside a warm house while drinking coffee.

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seasons

Dreaming of warmer weather.

coffee and cookies

 

Why not?

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a better view of our world

This is a wonderful, and inspiring, TED talk by a brilliant young man and the work he and his colleagues at Planet.com have done to make miniature satellites that will provide daily imaging of the entire Earth. This will be an unprecedented wealth of information about planet Earth. Changes in urban landscapes, war zones, forests, oceans, ice caps, etc. will be available every day in nearly real time - amazing!

Most impressively, Will Marshall and his youthful partners have followed their idealism by making their data open and free to anybody who wants it in the hope that it will lead to solutions for many of the problems and challenges we face today and in the future.

Imagine a world in which every citizen really understands our natural world and what is happening in it. Would we cast away our ancient superstitions? Would we recognize real problems being caused by human activity and be moved to do something about them, even if it had unfavorable short-term economic implications? In short, if we were better informed would we be better citizens, or would we remain passive and indifferent?

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new york city marathon, 2014 - chasing lindsay

Here it is again.  My first attempt at uploading this video didn't work. The audio got screwed up in the upload process. I think this version is good.

This is my four-minute video about my daughter, Lindsay, and the New York City marathon.

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marathon lindsay

This is my daughter, Lindsay, just after she finished the New York City marathon on Sunday, November 2, 2014.  I'm working on the marathon video - hope to finish in a few days.

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little island beach

I was out at a beach called Little Island  yesterday trying to make a time-lapse video of the sunset.  The only other person there was this local artist, a painter who I occasionally encounter when I'm out taking pictures.  We speak briefly and politely to each other when we meet making the usual observations about the weather and the scenery.  But I can sense how  we  share a love for the effort of trying to capture a moment in a beautiful setting so that we will always remember it - him with a painting and me with a photograph.

I've lived in this small Cape Cod town for eleven years without fully recognizing how lucky I am to be here.   It is unfortunately true that life is what happens while we're making other plans. The camera is turning out to be good therapy for my scattered, anxiety-ridden brain.  Perhaps the painter feels the same way about his canvas.  The act of making a painting or taking a picture requires one's attention.  The camera makes me focus.

Monte

fall colors

Out in my town taking pictures and shooting video today.  I found a street where many of the trees were wearing stockings.  Fall is here and I was hoping to get pictures of leaves changing color, but that won't be for a little while yet.  The stockings were a nice surprise.

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astrobiology and the future of earth

This is a wonderful TED talk by David Grinspoon discussing Astrobiology and what has been learned about Earth by scientists studying what other planets would need to have in order to support life.

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focus

It's a metaphor (maybe a weak one). I was trying to work on a project today and I couldn't organize my thoughts. I couldn't focus on the right things. That's when the idea for this photograph occurred to me, which is an excellent example of how easily I'm distracted. The photograph has nothing to do with my project, but I spent a big chunk of time making it instead of doing what I really needed to do!

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made in the stars

Reading an interesting book called Magic Furnace, which is a history of how scientists discovered where the elements come from (they're made in stars). Here is an amazing piece of data: Hydrogen accounts for about 90% of all the atoms in the entire universe, even though it is rare on earth. Helium is about 8% of all the atoms in the universe. The other 90 naturally occurring elements make up a paltry 2% of all the atoms in the universe! For every 10,000 atoms of hydrogen in the universe there are 975 atoms of helium, 6 atoms of oxygen, and only 1 atom of carbon!

But what really impresses me is that human beings have been able to figure this out.

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birds fly past boat

This is an exported image from a video I shot several years ago on a Canon HV-40 camcorder.  I was walking home at dusk after spending the afternoon shooting video at the beach.  This lonely-looking sailboat in the harbor caught my attention and I worked as quickly as I could to set up my tripod while the last of the evening light faded.   The birds, flying low over the water, came past the boat  just after I turned on the camera.  The audio track reveals the sound of me gasping with delight at their unexpected appearance.  Lucky shot.

The image is converted to a drawing using the Topaz Impressions software plugin.

Monte

new software

Playing around with the Topaz Impressions software.  It's fun, sometimes, to convert photographs to images that appear as paintings or drawings.  This image is a frame taken from a video clip I made of a harbor near my home.

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private

I found this gate with the sign indicating it was a private beach while walking around on an overcast afternoon. Private beaches are common here on Cape Cod.

The image has a lot of metaphoric possibilities.  What does it symbolize for you?

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witch ball

This witch ball hangs in a window of our home.  It was a gift to my wife from one of her friends. I'd never heard of a witch ball, but it's an interesting story and a commentary on how humans think.  Witch balls are supposed to capture evil spirits before they can enter your home.  The evil spirit gets tangled up in the strands of glass inside the ball and becomes trapped forever.  At least this is what I've read.

The witch ball has got me interested in reading about the history of witchcraft and magic. Maybe a future video?

What looks like a small-meshed grid in the background of the photo is the exterior screen on the window.

Monte