Bird on a Wire (Open Thread)
As long-time readers know, I enjoy bird watching, although I’m a rank amateur at it. I’ve attempted to share photos I’ve taken of birds here. But since I took the pictures with my iPhone and am a graduate of the Cole U School of Photography (not grifty like Trump U but the coursework is of similar quality), the images have been uniformly crappy.
If you’ve seen a good photo published by me on this site, it was almost certainly taken by someone else, forwarded to me, and published with attribution. The crappy, blurry photos? All mine.
One of you hilariously and accurately described a photo I published of an osprey as looking like something commissioned by Mrs. Osprey to a private detective. It’s funny because it’s true; since I was attempting to sneak up on the birds, they were giving me the stink-eye. Read more
Awesome picture photoshop open thread
Woah!! Photograph of the year 2016 by Bob Burton – Chief photographer of National Geographic / @NatGeo pic.twitter.com/ks5lqJwrde
— Paul Sewell (@paul_w2s) December 4, 2016
Open Thread
Reader photos – Dec 3, 2016
A couple landscape shots for Saturday.
Lake Evans, Victoria, Australia, by Peter Russell:
Castlerigg stone circle, Keswick, UK, by Nancy Koprowski:
If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com. There was a good discussion about sharing photos anonymously in another photo thread.
Reader photos – November 22, 2016
Here are some more great photos taken by readers of the blog. This one took a while because my blogging time is really curtailed right now, but I hope to do two or three of these a week. I thought this time we would go with a couple of critters. Photographers, feel welcome to talk about gear or technique in the comments.
Hoary marmot (William Qually)
A rainy and froggy day (Auntie Beak)
If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com. There was a good discussion about sharing photos anonymously in our last photo thread.
***Update***
Looks like I got today’s date wrong. That’s what I get for writing this at 6 am to steal some time before the 3 year old wakes up. If this keeps up I might have to reactivate the old coffee habit…
Re-inaugurating our reader photo series
Here are a couple great pics sent in by readers in response to my request a week ago.
A view of Kicker Rock through Darwin’s Window, on San Cristobal Island, Galapagos, by valued commenter Albatrossity.
From the North America series, by Steve Jenks.
If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.
Morning let’s get our sh*t together thread
Have the east coasters had their coffee? Good, here are a couple action items to keep us busy while we wait for the shitshow to start.
* I know that a lot of you will not like this, but subscribe to some papers. Choose the Washington Post or the NY Times, and then add a local daily if you have one you can tolerate. The Times especially disgraced itself this year but we need it alive more than dead, and the Post frankly did an excellent job keeping up with Trump. The framers of the Constitution could not have been clearer when they said that our Democracy will survive only as long as we have a free press. Trump already loathes the press, he is a vindictive prick with no moral limits, and he will have the levers of the state in his hands. Do your part to help them survive.
* People have already started with the abuse and xenophobia, and it will get immeasurably worse. Terrible people will try to divide us and make us live individually in fear. Fuck that. Find a vulnerable group and find a way to support them. If you have a gay relative, go with them to their next event if they do that sort of thing. See what the local Muslim or Jewish groups are doing that you might help out with. Volunteer at a women’s shelter or hook up with BLM if they have an event in your area. If you see a case of harassment in the local media, try to find the victim and offer a little support. The 21st century is pretty nice. Let’s stand up for it.
* Finally, this seems like a great time to bring back our old photography series. Email me a link to a few of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.
Here’s one that I took a while ago while walking on a foggy day.
