Ok, I went out there around full moon last week, thought there would be an army of photographers filming (but I was alone!), naturally the moon was behind me (and out of the view), so I did this goofball shot of me and my LED light instead. If you look carefully you can see a couple of tiny lights (rock climbers) flickering on El Capitan.
Alex Schomburg, Science Fiction artist
I recently came across this image by chance. It graced the inside covers of the “Winston Science Fiction” series of books which were published for juvenile readers in the 1950s. The picture pretty much epitomizes (in my mind) 1950s Science Fiction, most notably the giant robot with the destructive beam coming out of its cyclopean eye, something I envisioned Gort capable of achieving in The Day The Earth Stood Still. My older brother had a number of these books, and I subsequently read some of them. One was “Danger Dinosaurs!” wherein an expedition travels back to the Jurassic, supposedly to take pictures of dinosaurs, and naturally shit happens, leading to the death of the brother of the main character. When he returns to the present, he finds that his brother never existed in the first place, which is what happens if you die before you are born. Even his memories of his brother fade away. Heavy stuff for a 10 year old mind.
Slow Life by Daniel Stoupin
Here is a unique and fantastic bit of time-lapse photography by Daniel Stoupin depicting tiny marine animals under very high magnification. I learned a great new term: “Focus Stacking”, wherein multiple exposures with different focus planes are merged together in order to counteract shallow depth of field inherent in macro photography. Bravo.
Cheetahs filmed in slow motion
No, this was not done in the wild, but with elaborate camera set-ups using a Phantom HD High-Speed digital camera shooting at 1200 frames per second in a controlled environment. The results are glorious. If you watch it to the end, they show how it was all done.
Cute Squirrel video
In the interest of keeping up with the fashion of posting cute animal videos, I offer this view of a Squirrel sharing my lunch on top of the Sentinel Dome, Yosemite National Park.
NASA photographs (random slideshow)
Did you see the incredible pictures of Saturn taken from the Cassini Spacecraft? Images from the Hubble Space Telescope? NASA has thousands of incredible photographs of, well, the heavens… all available online. Click on the photograph below to start a random slideshow of just a few of these stunning vistas. Check back from time to time, I will update the show.
Billy Jack aka Tom Laughlin R.I.P.
Back in the day, we used to go to drive-in movie theaters and watch asinine movies like this one: so bad they were good. Born Losers introduced the character Billy Jack, portrayed by Tom Laughlin. Laughlin also wrote and directed the film, and would go on to make at least 3 more films featuring the half-breed Viet Nam vet and martial arts master Billy Jack (this was a few years before Bruce Lee kicked and punched his way to stardom). Anyhow, Tom Laughlin died last week at the age of 82, so may we raise our glasses and salute Billy Jack, may he rest in peace.
Seasonal Greetings 2013
Thanksgiving 1946
Here’s how my family spent Thanksgiving in 1946. Picture includes my Mom & Dad, my Grandparents, my Great-Grandmother, Aunts & Uncles and various others. I had to wait another 4 years to be born.
J. Sebastian Bach played on piano
Piano vs Harpsichord ? I am definitely one who prefers hearing Bach on a modern piano. Here, the great Argentinian Pianist Martha Argerich performs the final dance (“Capriccio”) from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C minor:
Here is the same work performed on Harpsichord:
Lapsed Time Images 