Polishing My Photographs

Another of my New Year’s Resolutions is to improve the quality of my photographs.  I’ve taken 2,422 photographs since December 16, 2008.  That’s the date I started shooting pictures.  Some of them have been included in Lingua Franca and the rest—most of them—were thrown to the  trash can.  This pragmatic exercise helped me understand the basic skills needed to take decent photographs.  Now the time is ripe to start studying the art in a more systematic manner.

This is why I recently purchased online a photography book through Amazon.com. The title of the book is “Langford’s Starting Photography:  The guide to creating great images – 6th Edition” written by Michael Langford & Philip Andrews.  This photography introductory  book was recommended to me by Michael Moore, who is a professional photographer in Dallas, Texas.

The Table of Contents of the book is:

• Part 1:  Picture Making
• Part 2:  Camera, Sensors and Film
• Part 3:  Creative Use of Camera Controls
• Part 4:  Tackling Different Photographic Subjects
• Part 5:  Controlling Light
• Part 6:  Photographic Workflow
• Part 7:  Digital Processing and Printing
• Part 8:  Experimental and Constructed Images
• Part 9:  Presenting and Assessing Your Work
• Part 10:  Trouble Shooting
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Index

I paid $17.79 for the book and $3.99 for shipping charges within the U.S. and $13.44 from the U.S. to Panama City, Panama.  The total cost of the book was $35.22.  It’s a lot cheaper than taking a photography course which costs about $450.00 in this part of the world.

I took a couple of pictures of unpacking the book for my records and for this specific post.  This is what I saw through the lens of my Birthday camera.  I received the book from Mail Boxes Etc. on January 29, 2010 at 8:31 a.m.  Here we go.

This is the cardboard package prepared by Amazon.com at Lexington, KY. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of the book inside the box with a soft bubble cushion in to back to protect it. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Picture of the photography book recently purchased from Amazon.com. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

A closer view of Michael Langford's photography book with a lovely child reaching for the sky. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Please be patient with me.  Don’t expect spectacular pictures immediately.  Photograph is an art that takes time to develop.  How much time?  I wish I knew.  Good Day.

Book’s Photograph:  Cover photo courtesy of Stockphoto, asiseeit, image #5995651

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Back Then When Music Was Wrapped in Vinyl

During my lifetime—63 years—music has changed its wrappings many times as technology got more and more sophisticated.  During the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, most people listened to their music through record players and radios.  Music was codified in plastic discs which rotated at 33 1/3 RPMs (revolutions per minute).

Sound was produced by placing an electrified needle through the grooves of the discs called records.  The quality of the sound was gorgeous.  You had the options to listen to monophonic, stereophonic and quadraphonic sounds.  Quite cool.  All was analog information.  Then came the digital revolution and the analog world went haywire.  The zeros and the ones took their place and they’re still here, and will be here for a long time I guess.

After the vinyl records, the music industry wrapped their music in a magnetic tape inside a plastic box.  It was called a music cassette or cartridge.  Even cars came equipped with cassettes and cartridges players.  You could buy recorded cassettes or you could record them yourself.  It was a very popular music medium during its time.

More knowledge was applied to music wrappings and the cassettes were replaced with compact disks commonly knows as CDs.  It was an instantaneous hit all over the world.  Shortly after, men with white robes inside electronic labs, came up with the digital video display, also known as DVDs and the music wrapping was changed once more.  Even as we speak, DVDs are widely used, even though there is a transition going on to another wrapping known as Blu-ray or BD.

Blu-ray (not Blue-ray) also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson).

The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

After BDs what will come next?  I have no idea, but I do know that knowledge is presently being applied to change the music wrappings once more.  Perhaps the new music and/or video formats are already in the pipeline.  It’s very possible that Steve Jobs could be listening to an Apple prototype product right now at Cupertino, CA while he plans his next strategic launch.  Will it be the iSound gadget?

I had a large collection of long play records, also called LPs for short.  Most of them were given away or trashed; however I still have thirty-seven of those oldies in my closet.  Last week, my wife removed some of the dusted accumulated on top of the carton jackets and asked what should we do with them?  After thinking for a while, I decided to keep them.  It could very well be that technology will return to vinyl records in a back-to-the-future scheme.

We don’t have a stereo system anymore, so we can’t listen to our vinyl records.  We can only look at them and remember the Good Ole Days as they say.  Yesterday I took several pictures of them to share with you today.  Maybe it’ll strike a chord or two of your memory brain cells.  Here we go.

Picture of an album of The 5th Dimension dubbed, "Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes." It was recorded by Bell Records, a division of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of a Neil Diamond's album called, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." This was the original motion picture sound track for The Hall Bartlett Film. The words and music were created by Neil Diamond and the Musical Director was Tom Catalano. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of a hot Neil Diamond's album dubbed, "Hot August Night" recorded in concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, CA. This event took place during a hot, sultry summer night in California on Thursday, August 24, 1972. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Image of an orchestral music album dubbed, "The World of Your Hundred Best Tunes Vol. 10". You can't even begin to imagine how much I love this album. It was a gift given to me by a dear friend in Barbados, WI. The hundred best tunes were chosen by listeners for a radio program in London. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

This is another album of the collection of "The World of Your Hundred Best Tunes Vol. 8." Gorgeous pieces of classical music suitable for everyone. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of the music album "Overture 1812" conducted by Leopold Stokowsky as a host conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This music composed by Tchaikovsky commemorates the withdrawal of Napoleon's troops from Russia in 1812. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the album "Mozart's Greatest Hits." This unique LP includes classical orchestra conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy and George Szell. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of a classical album of Simon & Garfunkel, dubbed, "Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits." Their songs "The Sound of Silence" and "Mrs. Robinson" are icons in American pop music. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the popular singer Andy Williams which invaded American homes during the Sixties and Seventies. Ronald Reagan described Andy's voice as "a national treasure". (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the album, "The Best of Peter, Paul and Mary - (Ten) Years Together." The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. The Sixties and Seventies music makers were in keeping with the period - revolutionaries and conservatives, weird, wild and wonderful. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of "Fiesta Ballenata" which is folkloric music from Colombia. I could dance all night with this type of Latin accordion music. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

A view of my old collection of 37 albums of vinyl LPs. I plan to migrate this music into CDs when my pocket feels healthy again. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Oh, I forgot to say that another trend in the wrapping of music history, is the downloading of music from the Internet to your hard disk, iPod, iPhone, iTouch, MP3s, iPad and what have you.  The latest fashion is to have music with no wrappings at all.

Music downloaded through iTunes is digital music wrapped in binary units called bits and bytes.  Knowledge has carried us to a new dimension where reality is no longer visible.   Welcome to the future where physical objects are disappearing into the Twilight Zone of digital codes.  The ones and zeros have taken over our physical world.  Good Day.

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Apple’s Guru Does it Again

Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, proudly shows a brand new iPad in San Francisco on January 27, 2010. (Credit: ©Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Wednesday, February 27th was scheduled to be a special day for gadget geeks and politicians.  Before both events took place, there was a tremendous amount of overexposure and bloated expectations in the media.  On this day, President Barack Obama was going to deliver his first speech on the State of the Union in Washington D.C. and far away on the West Coast, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was preparing to address his fans at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

This story is about Apple Inc. and its charismatic technology Guru, Stephen Jobs.

At exactly 1:00 p.m. New York’s time, Apple’s legendary leader Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to disrupt the tech industry once again.    He looked disturbingly thin, much as he did when he took the same stage in September to introduce new iPods. But there was a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his face as he got a big standing ovation from the crowd.

You probably know by now, that Apple Inc.  is no longer a computer company.  Its spokesmen have been trumpeting for several months  that Apple Inc. is now  a “mobile device company.” “Apple makes protable media-centric devices. ” Apple is considered the number one mobile devices company in the world.

Apple zealots were expecting an electronic tablet  last Wednesday which would fit in a new product category squeezed in between a notebook and a smartphone.  They got what they expected and a lot more.

Apple on Wednesday finally unveiled its tablet computer, called the iPad, at an invite-only event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco. The device, which looks like a larger version of Apple’s iPod Touch will be available in two to three months, and starts at $499.  The name is controversial.  Many women associate the word pad with feminine hygiene, if you know what I mean.  But I’m sure as the dust settles,  Apple will keep the name intact and the women of this world will calm their nerves and accept the gadget and its gorgeous features.

The iPad comes in models ranging from 16GB to 64GB. All versions will have Wi-Fi, but there will be options with 3G as well. Pricing for the Wi-Fi-only models is $499, $599, and $699 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB, respectively. 3G versions will be $130 more.

Experts feel the iPad is going to change the way we think about mobile technology beyond the smartphone.  Some fanatics are even saying the iPad will save the publishing industry from certain death.  They are screaming  at the top of their lungs that this is a gadget capable of introducing a disruptive technology in the publishing domain.  I’m sure Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com disagrees as well as Sony and Barnes and Noble who also manufacture e-book readers.

In advance of today’s announcements, there was rampant speculation that the iPad would be a Kindle-killer. The iBook app and iBook Store present a challenge for Amazon, as does the multi-touch color screen of the iPad. Jobs gave kudos to Kindle and said Apple planned to “stand on Amazon’s shoulders and go a little further.” Initially, Apple has made deals with the five largest publishers in the world to make books available on the iPad. Extending the iTunes and App Store models, the iBook Store allows consumers to purchase books directly from the iPad and enjoy them immediately.  The iPad is  just infinitely better-looking and more responsive than the Kindle, not to mention it has color and doesn’t require external illumination.

Are Apple zealots exaggerating?  Not quite.  Not only has Apple sold tens of millions of iPhones, it has pulled off a stunningly successful exercise in design democracy whereby thousands of D.I.Y. designers have developed applications, or programs, for them. Some 140,000 apps have been programmed, and more than two billion downloaded from Apple’s App Store. What’s almost more impressive is that Apple has achieved this despite its own history—and instincts—as the consummate corporate control freak.

Can you buy the iPad now?  Hold your horses; the baby has not reached the store shelves yet.  Jobs explained the Wi-Fi models will start shipping in February, and the 3G models are set to come out a month after that.

Apple is selling a number of first-party accessories, including a dock with a full-sized keyboard with a price tag of $69, a camera connection kit that lets users import images from their SD cards, and a case that doubles as a stand. Apple has not announced pricing for any of these items.

The iPad measures 7.47 inches wide by 9.56 inches tall by 0.5 inch thick, and weighs 1.5 pounds. Held in your hands, the dimensions and heft have a natural, magazine-like feel.

Unlike the polished chrome of the iPod or glossy plastic of the iPhone, the back of the iPad seems less likely to show fingerprints and wear. Like any Apple product, though, expect to see a boatload of cases and screen protectors for the iPad by the time it launches in April. With no mouse and no physical keys to feel, writing and editing will be more effort than on a laptop.

The iPad isn’t all play, and no work. Apple will have a special iWork package for the tablet. The pack is priced at $99.  The iPad marks the first time Apple has released mobile versions of its iWork suite of productivity applications, including Numbers, Keynote, and Pages. Each app sells separately at $10 each, and will be compatible with the desktop version of the Mac application suite (sold separately for $79).

Basically Apple’s new gadget provides excellent photo management, casual Web browsing, e-books, calendar, and e-mail.    The iPad isn’t a pocket device, and holding it for extended periods becomes tiresome.  Some experts are saying it’s more like a living room computer.  It’s important to highlight that a camera is notably absent, and Flash, the ubiquitous software that handles video and animation on the Web, does not work on the device.

Will the iPad be a hit like the iPod, iMac or the iPhone.? I don’t know.  It’s hard to  say no when you have the magic name of Apple behind a product.  As far as I’m concerned, the price is not an attraction.  For $500 I can get more bang from a decent notebook with a comparable screen and a web cam included to communicate with my friends via Skype or Yahoo Messenger.  Let’s wait and see.  I’m sure the iPad will be a subject of interest for many months to come.  Good Day.

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A Quote to Remember

“Change is inevitalble—except from a vending machine.”

—Robert C. Gallagher

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Joke: The Mistake of Generalizing

One Chinese person walks into a bar in America late one night and he saw Steven Spielberg.

As he was a great fan of his movies, he rushes over to him, and asks for his autograph.

Instead, Spielberg gives him a slap and says “You Chinese people bombed our Pearl Harbor, get out of here.”

The astonished Chinese man replied “It was not the Chinese who bombed your Pearl Harbor, it was the Japanese”.

—“Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, you’re all the same,” replied Spielberg.

In return, the Chinese gives Spielberg a slap and says, “You sank the Titanic, my forefathers were on that ship.”

Shocked, Spielberg replies, “It was the iceberg that sank the ship, not me.”

The Chinese replies, “Iceberg, Spielberg, Carlsberg, you’re all the same.”

Source:  English Community Club

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Having Fun With the English Language

I know, it’s tough, arid, and sometimes irrational.  I mean studying the English language.  But taking a bad attitude will only make it more difficult.  Instead, relax, take a deep breath and try to have fun.  You might fall in love with the language.  I know I have, after all these years.

Maybe the following text will put a smile on your face.  It’s possible that you’ve seen it before, since it’s been around for a while.  Still I feel it puts a twist of humor into the study of the language.  Here we go.

“Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t grocer and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.  That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

P.S.    Why doesn’t Buick rhyme with quick?”   Good Day.

Thanks Don!

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The Steep Learning Curve of the English Language

If you’re in the process of learning English as a second language, you probably know by now that it takes a lot of patience and concentration to make it sink into your brain.  Sometimes the language can become extremely confusing.  Take a look at the following examples and scratch your head with confusion and perplexity.  Here we go.

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
   
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the row of oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. The seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

How about them green apples?  Good Day.

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The Slowly Rising Oceans

(Credit: ©The Washington Post)

The Global Language Monitor has recently  announced the Top Words of the Decade (2000-2009), as part of its annual global survey of the English language.   The Top Words were Global Warming, 9/11, and Obama followed by Bailout, Evacuee, and Derivative; Google, Surge, Chinglish, and Tsunami followed. Climate Change was the top phrase, while Heroes was the top name; bin-Laden was number two.

I was not surprised at all the words global warming and climate change are being searched and re-searched by many people around the globe—and the numbers are rising even as we speak.    A large number of them fully believe that global warming and climate change are real and here to stay, while many others feel it’s only a hoax made up by ultra liberals trying to pull the rug from under the huge manufacturing conglomerates responsible of emitting enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Who to believe?  It’s the same eroded story of the glass half full or half empty.

It’s no big secret that Greenland—the world’s largest island—has consistently losing its ice sheets during the last 30 years.  Reputed scientists have found that over this period, Greenland’s melt zone has expanded by 30 percent.  Its ice cap now loses 60 to 90 cubic miles of ice every year—more than all the ice in the Alps.  This ice is melting away into the oceans, slowly adding the sea level rise.

“The wolf is coming,” says the scientific community, but many are looking the other way.  Experts are studying the Earth’s polar regions and glaciers to see if warmer global temperatures will melt enough ice to raise sea levels, disrupting marine life and even change ocean and weather patterns.  Some of these factors have been experienced by the 4,200 inhabitants in the small town of Ilulissat in Greenland.  They are seeing first hand how global warming is changing their town and their ancestral lifestyle.  They know for a fact that growing waterfalls from melting ice on Greenland are undermining the ice sheets that once kept sea levels from rising.  Greenland is thawing.

Human activities are emitting an increasing amount of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere.  For example, the atmosphere carbon dioxide in 1976 was 330 ppm (parts per million).  In 2007 the number increased to 379 ppm.  That’s a hike of 24 percent in a little more than thirty years.  Where is this gas coming from?  Mainly from our coal power plants, from our automobiles and from our homes.

Visible effects of the rising temperatures are:

• Ferocious wildfires in California, Greece, and Australia.
• Record-breaking droughts in Africa, the Southern part of the United States and Australia.
• Disappearance of 80 percent of the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro.
• Receding glaciers of the Himalayas.
• Destructive hurricanes and floods in Bangladesh.
• Plummeting water levels  in the Colorado River.

It is estimated that 70 percent of the world’s population lives on coastal plains.  Eleven of the fifteen biggest cities stand on the coastline or river estuaries.  As the oceans rise, salt will invade the water table depriving inhabitants of drinking water.  It’s anticipated widespread migratory phenomena can occur in the future at unpredictable scales.

In Panama, huge waves destroyed the road leading to Punta Chame. Waves this size were never seen before.  Puerto Caimito in Chorrera was completely wiped out by similar waves.  It’s inhabitants are presently rebuilding their houses, even though they are well aware the ocean will be back and their dwellings will once again be destroyed.

Similar events happened last year at Costa Arriba and Costa Abajo in the Province of Colon.  Swelling oceans are destroying villages near the Panama coastlines.  For these people, global warming and climate change is not a hoax.  If I were you, I would be reluctant in buying a beach house or a vacation home near the ocean.  It could be submerged in less than a decade if the rising oceans trend continues.  Take heed at Nature’s warnings and Good Day.

Related Interactive Information – Vital Signs of a Warming World

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Photograph of the Day Has Been Discontinued

The segment Photograph of the Day had been one of my favorites for several reasons.    The main reason is that it gave me the opportunity to promote those photographs which in my opinion showed quality.  Whenever possible I gave credit to the photographer to spread the word of his or her creations.

The Web site that best served the photographers’ purpose was Pixdaus.com. Everyday this site included spectacular photographs, which in my opinion, should be shared with other persons who enjoy photography.  Pictures have a special way to influence your spirituality.  Some photographs often brought mist to my eyes; they are very powerful message carriers.

For this reason, my photographs of the day were selected from Pixdaus.com. I thought I was acting legally; that is, not breaking any copyright legislation.  Pixdaus.com even promoted the use of their photographs.  For example:

“Host and bookmark beautiful nature photography with Pixdaus! The more beautiful the image, the more exposure it’ll get, unless you’d like to make your favorites list private, which is cool too. Share your photos with other people who are passionate about nature and the environment by embedding photos in your blog, linking to them and sharing them with family and friends. Please don’t violate copyright laws. Give credits. Be nice. Let’s be conscious of the world we live in.”

That was until yesterday afternoon when I read something that brought a halt to my intentions about my favorite segment.  This is what I read at Pixdaus.com:

Important! Please do not upload copyrighted images. You run the risk of being banned permanently from Pixdaus and photographers taking legal action against you. If you wish to upload an image whose copyrights do not belong to you, it is vital you contact the photographer first. Should the photographer not grant you permission, you are forbidden to post the image(s) to the site.

In view of the above, I researched the subject of copyright material, just to make sure I made the right decision about posting photographs from Pixdaus.com. or not.    I found the following explanation about a copyright myth, which I feel is correct:

Myth:  “If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s not copyrighted.”

“This was true in the past, but today almost all major nations follow the Berne copyright convention.  For example, in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.  The default you should assume for other people’s works is that they are copyrighted and may not be copied unless you know otherwise.

There are some old works that lost protection without notice, but frankly you should not risk it unless you know for sure.”

The message was clear—crystal clear.  Stay away from Pixdaus.com photographs before you get in trouble.  It was never my intention of breaking the law posting other people’s creations.  I thought I was promoting their work and not benefiting or creating a profit by doing so.  Lingua Franca is not a profit-oriented blog.  There are no ads in my blog as you all know.

In view of the above, starting today, Photograph of the Day has been discontinued.  I’ll try to take better photographs in the future, and if I find them appropriate, I might identify them as Photograph of the Day. If not, then I’ll keep on practicing photography to develop my picture-taking skills.

Sorry about this folks, but the law is the law.  Good Day.

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Photograph of the Day: Walk in the Wilderness

(Credit: © Mark Schneider @ photo net)

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