This video is a story about photographing people and their dogs at my local beach, which is my version of street photography.Please subscribe to my YouTube channel - Monte Ladner - if you want to keep up with my latest videos.
Monte
scout
At Chapoquoit beach today to photograph the dogs. A woman was throwing a tennis ball to her talented labrador, Scout, and I asked if I could take some pictures. I was able to catch a few cool shots.
Monte
taking leave of our senses
Reading the news is stressful. This short video describes how I try to deal with keeping up with what's going on without getting too demoralized.
Monte
rally for science
I went to Boston this past Sunday to participate in the rally for science. The speakers were very good and the crowd was bigger than I expected, although I'm not sure what the official count was on the number of people there.
Scientists are more subdued than "normal" protesters. Their enthusiasm for chanting protest slogans was noticeably (to me) muted. These are people who think deeply about issues and work hard to maintain a cool head - exactly the sort of people we need running our government!
Monte
on marching
I was in Washington, D.C. for the Women's March on Washington January 21, 2017. I took lots of photographs and put them into this video.
Monte
peaceful protest
This is a video about local activists in my town preparing for the Women's March on Washington.
Monte
nuclear winter
For a long time I’ve been interested in reading about the origin of the universe and the origin of life on Earth. My reading about the origin questions led me to read about the evolution of life on Earth and to think about the possibility of life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and the universe at large. The scientific story of us is a fabulously interesting subject.
It seems to me that relatively simple single-cell life forms might be all over the universe, but complex multicellular life like we have on Earth may be harder to find. Intelligent creatures capable of building nuclear bombs may be even more uncommon. But the universe is a big place and there must be at least some other habitable planets, including some with intelligent creatures something like us humans. What happened to them? Are they still around? Would creatures achieving human-like technology elsewhere in the universe inevitably face the risk of self-destruction unless they instituted a substantial reshaping of their culture and society to save themselves from themselves?
A lot of smart people here on Earth are talking about exactly this sort of thing confronting human beings right now. We’ve created several pathways to our self-destruction, like climate change and the possibility of nuclear war.
So-called “Existential Riskography” is a gloomy subject, but it is eerily fascinating. We are intelligent enough to create the technology with which to build a thriving civilization. The same technology can also destroy us. Are we smart enough not to do it?
I want to explore this topic in more depth over this next year.
There are two articles I found today that are worth reading:
Monte
happy new year
My first photograph of the new year, 2017. Two doves in winter on an empty flower pot under a gray sky. The image of doves and their symbolic representation of peace and love seemed like a timely message.
These are scary times and humanity is faced with big challenges. Here in America we have a new president who rode a wave of populist hate, fear and stunning ignorance into power. This could be cause for despair, but these doves huddled against the cold reminded me not to lose hope. There are still plenty of good people who aspire to create a better world for their children. If we stay true to our values and strong in our convictions we can, and will, prevail over the hate and division that has temporarily gripped us.
Happy New Year. Let’s be the reason it’s a good one.
Monte
strapless ben
The Amazing Ben Stadelmaier kite surfing without a surfboard. He's unstoppable!
Actually, he had a board, but the board had no straps. I'd asked him to get some air so I could take some pictures and he obliged. The board stayed in the water.
The thermometer in my car said it was 39-degrees F, but the wind was blowing pretty hard making it feel a lot colder. I don't know how these guys can get out in the water when it is so cold. They're either really tough or really nuts.
Monte
after the first snowfall
A couple of days ago we had our first snowfall. It was only about three inches of snow, but it was enough to signal that winter is here. Bevo, my 8-pound poodle, doesn’t like the snow or the winter and throughout our morning walk he kept turning around to go back home.
I’m a lot like Bevo. We’re both nervous most of the time and we prefer summer days when we can watch the hummingbirds buzzing our flowers and feel as if the rest of the world is a long way off. We sit together in the doorway watching the animals – squirrels, chipmunks, bees and all sorts of birds visiting our garden and entertaining us. The days are longer; the sky is bluer, and the warmth of our favorite sunny spot puts us at ease.
Now it’s winter and the days are shorter; the skies are grayer; the flowers are gone, and the house is colder. But I can drink hot coffee with Bevo at my feet and scroll through photographs I took last summer and remember the excitement of a hummingbird popping into view and dancing across red and yellow petals. And I can dream about what I will plant in the spring so that Bevo and I can sit together in the sun and watch the drama in the tiny world that is our garden.
Monte
kite surfer at sunset
My friend, Peter, was out at Chapoquoit on a cold day near sunset. The boat on the horizon was a bonus.
Monte
dancing with waves
The beach is great for people watching. This girl was there with her mother. She was running back and forth with the waves, just like we all do when we go to the beach no matter how old we are. The back-and-forth rhythm is irresistible to people and even to the dogs I watch playing at the water's edge. We automatically fall in with it. Why?
Something about the way our brains work that recognizes patterns and rhythms and we just go with them. There must be an evolutionary advantage to this, but I can't imagine what it would be in the case of our love for dancing with waves. It must be a beneficial behavioral trait to be able to find joy in playfulness and just being silly.
Our existence is so puzzling, so simultaneously tragic and just plain funny. Can we ever really know ourselves?
Monte
the warmth of fading light
The problem with Chapoquoit beach, my favorite place to photograph people on a beach, is that the sunset is directly backlighting my subjects, which gives me mostly silhouetted images. In this picture, Peter was off to the side of the setting sun and the warm light at the end of the day is illuminating the spray from his board.
Monte
philadelphia marathon
My daughter, Lindsay, ran the Philadelphia Marathon on November 20, 2016. Jenny and I went with her to the race and I used the photographs and video clips from the trip to make a short video of our weekend.
Monte
philadelphia marathon
This is my daughter, Lindsay, just past the 26-mile point with less than 0.2 miles to go in the Philadelphia Marathon this past weekend. In this photograph she has just found her mother in the crowd of people cheering the runners and she is veering off course to exchange a "high-five" with mom.
It was cold and windy, which made being outside pretty uncomfortable, but Jenny was not about to miss watching Lindsay run, and I was doing my best to take pictures of the two of them.
I like this one because it's such a perfect representation of who she is - happy, optimistic and determined.
Go Lindsay!
Monte
when polarization is good
Went to Chapoquoit beach today and found a bunch of surfers. This is Tim, who was really putting on a great show. Unfortunately, I was not really "on-my-game" today, starting with forgetting to bring my polarizing filter on a cloudless sunny day with blinding glare coming off the water. Most of my pictures are silhouttes against a blown-out white sky. This one was not quite that bad because of the angle away from the sun. Still, it was fun to be out there.
Monte
catch a wave
This woman was surfing with a boogie board at Chapoquoit beach a few weeks ago when I took her picture. She looks about my age, which means she probably grew up, like me, listening to the feel-good music of the Beach Boys.
As the years go by I try to actively cultivate a youthful mindset by staying interested in the process of living. Mostly, I want to avoid the debilitating condition of chronic anger that seems epidemic in our culture. Don’t misunderstand me, I recognize there are plenty of problems that need fixing and we should be finding ways to fix them, but with a positive and cooperative attitude – not just by ranting.
I’m clinging to the happiness and hopefulness of my youth, like the woman in this photograph. I try to stay fit. I try to keep my mind active by reading books, and I photograph people who appear to be loving life. I am, unashamedly, feeding on their positive energy. I want to catch my own wave and ride it as long as I can because the Beach Boys told me if I do that … I’ll be sittin’ on top of the world.
Monte
no straps
This is my friend, Ben. He was out in what felt like pretty rough conditions to me (I had to hang on to my tripod to keep it from blowing over) and he was kite surfing with a board that doesn't have foot straps!
Photograph taken at Chapoquoit beach (Cape Cod) on October 16, 2016
Monte
light and spray
The kicked-up spray being backlit by the setting sun gives, in my opinion, a cool contrast with the silhouette of the surfer.
Monte
whining
Yesterday I posted a photo of a surfer at Chapoquoit beach and I whined a bit about how windy it was. And it was windy. But apart from getting peppered by blowing sand and salt-water it was actually a lovely evening, as this picture shows.
The good stuff is never free
Monte