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My postings have been spotty over the last couple of weeks due to medical problems. I appreciate your understanding while I am recovering.

I will be posting less detailed articles except for especially important events. For the next few months, I have started a oral history project. Parts of that history will be posted here.

Thank you for your understanding.

Gerald Boerner

    
Commentary:

I first read Anne Frank’s diary while taking second year German in college. This was the German version! I believe that this made the impact of this reading even more meaningful. As the German phrases, with their precision of meaning, yielded their richness of meaning. When this is coupled with the fact that the diary was written by a 15 year old girl hiding from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam..

One can only wonder what she was going through each day. But wait! we do know what she was thinking because she recorded it in here diary; that diary was retrieved and revealed to the world by her father returned from Auschwitz after the war. He then shared this intimate account of little Anne’s experience in that small set of attic rooms… GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 1676 Words ]
    

Anne Frank. — AP Photo/HO
    

Born on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. She and her family, along with four others, spent 25 months during World War II in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

After being betrayed to the Nazis, Anne, her family, and the others living with them were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps. In March of 1945, nine months after she was arrested, Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. She was fifteen years old.

Her diary, saved during the war by one of the family’s helpers, Miep Gies, was first published in 1947. Today, her diary has been translated into 67 languages and is one of the most widely read books in the world.  (Anne Frank Web Site)

Quotations Related to Anne Frank:

[ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/anne_frank.html ]
    

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
— Anne Frank

“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”
— Anne Frank

“Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.”
— Anne Frank

“Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.”
— Anne Frank

“How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”
— Anne Frank

“And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.”
— Anne Frank

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
— Anne Frank

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.”
— Anne Frank

Anne Frank: One of Most Discussed Jewish Victims of the Holocaust…

Frank aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:

“I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write …, but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent …

And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! …

I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!

When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?” — Anne Frank

She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.

The following is an excerpt of a New York Times article on the occasion of a reading by “Buddy Elias, Anne Frank’s closest living relative, reminisced about his cousin…”

“The occasion for Mr. Elias’s visit was a reading in downtown Manhattan from “Treasures From the Attic: The Extraordinary Story of Anne Frank’s Family,” by Mirjam Pressler, at the Anne Frank Center USA.

The book is based on a cache of 6,000 family letters, photographs and postcards unearthed in 2001 after the death of Helene Elias, Anne’s aunt and Buddy’s mother. Written in German, “Treasures From the Attic” was published in English translation this year.

Several of the letters in the book — found in the attic of Mrs. Elias’s house in Basel, Switzerland — are from Anne herself in the years before her family went into hiding in the “secret annex” of a narrow Dutch office building; others are from her father, Otto Frank, after he survived Auschwitz and tried to learn what befell the rest of his family.

These letters were unknown until the past decade, and some of them give the most vivid account of Anne’s time in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in March 1945…”

The Franks were liberal Jews, did not observe all of the customs and traditions of Judaism, and lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.

On 13 March 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party won. Anti-Semitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately, and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later that year, Edith and the children went to Aachen, where they stayed with Edith’s mother, Rosa Holländer. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to arrange accommodations for his family. The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.

The apartment block on the Merwedeplein where
the Frank family lived from 1934 until 1942
    

Otto Frank began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold fruit extract pectin, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in Amsterdam. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the two girls were enrolled in school—Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading and writing. Her friend Hanneli Goslar later recalled that from early childhood, Frank frequently wrote, although she shielded her work with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing. The Frank sisters had highly distinct personalities, Margot being well-mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.

In 1938 Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück in Germany with his family. In 1939 Edith’s mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.

In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. The Frank sisters were excelling in their studies and had many friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum. Anne became a friend of Jacqueline van Maarsen in the Lyceum. In April 1941 Otto Frank took action to prevent Pectacon from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. He transferred his shares in Pectacon to Johannes Kleiman and resigned as director. The company was liquidated and all assets transferred to Gies and Company, headed by Jan Gies. In December 1941 Frank followed a similar process to save Opekta. The businesses continued with little obvious change and their survival allowed Frank to earn a minimal income, but sufficient to provide for his family.

… [MORE]

Anne Frank Speaks and Holocaust Background…

Please take time to further explore more about Anne Frank, The
Diary of a Young Girl, Betrayal of Anne Frank, Bergen-Belsen
Concentration Camp, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank Tree by
accessing the Wikipedia articles referenced below. In most cases,
the text in the body of this post has been selectively excerpted from
the articles; footnotes and hyperlinks have been removed for readability…

References

Background information is from Wikipedia and other articles:

Wikipedia: Anne Frank…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank

New York Times: A Dear Cousin Recalls His Childhood Playmate, Anne Frank…
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/a-dear-cousin-recalls-his-childhood-playmate-anne-frank/?ref=annefrank

New York Times: Revisiting Adolescence in the Secret Annex…
http://tv.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/arts/television/10anne.html?ref=annefrank

Anne Frank Web Site: Who is Anne Frank?…
http://www.annefrank.com/who-is-anne-frank/

Brainy Quote: Anne Frank Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/anne_frank.html

Other Posts on related Topics:

Prof. Boerner’s Explorations: Diary of Anne Frank: First Published in English…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=18492

Prof. Boerner’s Explorations:Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Dying for his Christian Duty…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=22780

Prof. Boerner’s Explorations: Auschwitz Liberated: International Holocaust Remembrance Day…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=16674

    
Commentary:

Good Morning, My FB Family…

Well, I’m back to my regular wake up time — about 4:30 am! I love getting up early enough to get my thoughts straight, watch the morning news to catch the breaking events of the day, and start posting my different pieces. I had always thought of myself as a night person; but now I really thrive on the early morning hours. While I was taking my photography classes, this would be the time that I would get ready to leave on my morning trek to my favorite photo spots to catch the predawn and period right around sunrise. I got some of my best photos at this time. It was also a time that I could catch the Metrolink train to go into downtown LA or down to the beach area of San Juan Capistrano.

I’m partially back, in that I am now able to get up and start functioning at this early hour. Perhaps when I get a lift for my new power chair on my Sequoia, I’ll be able to get to the Metrolink station to begin my daily treks again. I certainly hope so. (Too bad the Dial-a-Ride shuttle doesn’t start moving before 8 am! I could use a ride to the Metrolink station at about 5 am. Oh well…) What’s great about retirement is that I can get up early and start my day while letting my wonderful Gracie sleep in to awake on her own schedule.

So, this morning I was greeted by a relatively warm temp of 48; that’s about what was predicted. The high today is predicted to be in the low 80s. And this is the 3rd of April? I guess Mother Nature is going through her schizophrenic phase where she can’t decide whether to be winter or summer. The solution seems to be bouncing back and forth between the two seasons. But, well, this is SoCal after all. What we consider cold is a very desirable temp for others in my FB and genetic family. Isn’t life a fun journey through the days of the year.

I guess, we all need to be thankful that we do wake up each morning. That is a sign the good Lord has given us another day in which to show our appreciation. So I am happy for each day that I’m given. It is indeed a gift and I want to make the most of it. My postings and writings are part of my celebration of this gift. I want to share my memories and thoughts while I am still breathing the air on this good earth.  GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 2043 Words ]
    

Quotations Related to Maya Angelou:

[ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maya_angelou.html ]

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”
— Maya Angelou

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou

“For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.”
— Maya Angelou

“I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.”
— Maya Angelou

My Musings of the Day: April 3rd…

Thinking about Life…

We see a lot about how to live healthy in adds by Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. These ads emphasize the relationship of living well and thriving; they have emphasized the theme: "Live Well and THRIVE…" While these ads are intended to bring in more business for the health care giant (and I have been a client of Kaiser for nearly forty years now!), they send everyone an excellent message. There is a relationship between good health and thriving in life.
Today’s poster was shared by one of my FB family, Lynn; it features some important elements of thriving in this life. I would like to explore some of these ramifications of this in the present posting.

How much would our lives be enhanced if we looked at the mission of our lives is not to merely survive, but to THRIVE. I think that the Kaiser ad campaign draws much of its effectiveness by its exploration of this concept. We would do well to do so with our own lives. Let us examine what our mission, or purpose, is in this life. It should be more than to just exist from day to day. That would mean that we are living at a bare survival, subsistence level.

An acclaimed psychologist, Abraham Maslow, put forth a theory in the early 1940 in which he attempted to explain human motivation. This theory of developmental psychology looks at life’s motivations being based on a hierarchy of needs. It start out by looking at basic existence being at the Physiological Level, while safety of our family, loved ones, and ourselves is at the next level: Safety. From there it progresses from Love/Belonging, Self-Esteem, and capped with the Self-Actualization level. I think the Ad Men for Kaiser knew this theory well and built upon it to encourage us to move from a survival to higher and higher levels on this hierarchy.

Maya Angelou’s poetry and speaking addresses many of these same issues. This poster speaks of living with Passion, Compassion, Humor, and Style. You might think about these concepts and how they play out in your own life. This is a personal thing; it cannot be done vicariously by someone else for us! We see in these statements elements of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of the "Passionate State of Mind." This allowed him to transcend the interment in the Nazi death camps during World War II and think himself above his physical limitations. It is the thing that gives us hope. It gives us a reason to live. It allows us to THRIVE!

I have had to fight the demons of being sorry for my loss of mobility and my poor health to move on to the higher levels. I have given careful consideration to the issue, in my own life, of the quality of life. After avoiding the abyss of depression over my current state and seeking only to survive, I have had to reach within myself to grab ahold of the strength within me. I have had to look at my past experiences and try to weave them into a tapestry of existence that led me to blogging and sharing my story with my FB family and friends. I approach each day with a renewed passion for life, a thankfulness for each new day that I am given.

Last Year, on my Birthday I took a fall that required us to call out the
Riverside Fire Department Paramedics to get me up off the floor.
It took four of them! This was a turning point.

Yes, I still deal with limitations, but I’m trying to attack those limitations straight on. Contrary to what some of my health care providers have felt, I will strive to THRIVE, to make the most of my situations. I am starting into my photography again, I am motivated to write about my life experiences for the benefit of my FB family, and to leave a legacy by which my grandkids can know me when I pass. This has also renewed my interest in topics of equity, equality, and fight discrimination. How do I deal with some of my limitations? Humor; I need to laugh at them and surmount them. I have found in my writing and photography my own style, that which makes me distinctively ME. I will THRIVE.

I hope that this little exploration of the psychological and my experience will encourage you each to think about your own lives. Be thankful for each day, each challenge, each issue and mount our horse, grab our lance and tilt at the windmills like Don Quixote. Look inward and see how you can develop a new passion for life so that you, too, can THRIVE…

Musing for Today…

Do I believe in fate? Not necessarily. But I think we encounters two types of challenges in our daily activities. We also, as we have been discussing in recent days, found out that our genetics, environment, and previous life experiences become translated into "filters" that are used to interpret the meaning of different behaviors (actions or words) and treats in people and situations into which we are thrust during the day.

Some people consider this fate and yield themselves to the inevitable consequences. It’s almost as if they have applied, in the extreme, the theological concept of "predestination" to their daily life. We need to remember that the theologians who developed this concept, especially John Calvin and John Knox, were interpreting how they saw God affecting the lives of men; this is not undisputable, factual evidence at all. The quick lesson here is: don’t jump to conclusions just because you think something is happening because of that unforgiving fate.

Our poster of the day starts out with some very good advice. Never expect (something to happen). Never assume (something will happen regardless of what we do). In this circumstance, I am interpreting "expect" and "assume" are giving ourselves over to the fates over which we have no control. That is not always true!

Here is a good time to remember the words of the Serenity Prayer. It goes: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." There are, indeed, some things in life that we cannot change; we need to avoid wasting our energy and building frustration in doing so. But there are other things that we can change and it is our right and obligation to make every effort to make a difference. By directing our attention, energy, and resources at those things under our control will simplify our lives and give us much happiness.

The latter part of this poster is a bit convoluted, but I interpret it as saying that if something was meant to be it will be and if it is one of those areas over which we can change AND WE TAKE ACTIONS TO DO SO, things will end up being to our liking. The most important part of this whole conversation is this: exercise your mind and wisdom to take on those challenges on which we can make a difference. This will not only be more productive, but will lower our frustration level which will make us even more productive — productivity times two, if you will!

Think how this could help you in your daily battles. Be smart. Be wise. Be HAPPY! Think about it…

    
Photo of the Day:

For our photo of the day, I want to share a photo I took last weekend on our trek to downtown Riverside. We had intended to visit the Farmer’s Market on the downtown walking mall, visit the Mission Inn, and go to the downtown library. This was to be a combined photo expedition and exploration of these downtown landmarks.

When we arrived, we discovered some real treasures. On the mall, the city had installed several monuments to individuals making significant contributions to mankind. I share with you one of the photos I shot of the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi known for his advocacy of non-violent resistance as a tactic for organizational change. There is a lot of detail about the base, but that will need to await another day. Given our discussions above, I think Gandhi personified one who has put several of the suggestions into practice. Enjoy and be edified…

Tribute to Gandhi. (Photo Credit: ©2012 Gerald L. Boerner)

Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

References

Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Abraham Maslow: Theory of Motivation — Hierarchy of Needs…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

Prof. Boerner’s Explorations: In Memoriam — Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Dying for his Christian Duty…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=27780

    
Commentary:

Welcome, My FB Family…

Warmer night! It was supposed to be in the upper 40s last night and was already 50 degrees when I went to bed at midnight; I woke up this morning to an outside temp of 52, so I don’t know if it got down as low as the weatherman’s crystal ball, I mean, projection model had predicted. I hope that the same does not apply to the high predicted today; an 81 is predicted and I am not ready for higher temps yet!!! Summer will just have to wait as far as I’m concerned.

Mission Inn: Redroof  (Photo Credit: ©Don O’Neill)

This weekend the temps are supposed to to drop down to the 60s again and a possibility of rain Saturday night. I hope the rain does stay away until the evening, because Grace and I are going to the Downtown Farmer’s Market again, Lord willing and the shuttle comes as requested. It will be interesting to see what they have and an overcast day will be great for photos. We are going to check out a store across from the Mission Inn that handles Don O’Neill’s watercolor prints (postcard size). I love some of the samples that I’ve seen on his web site; O’Neill was a resident of Riverside until he passed in 2008. Many of his paintings are set in and about River City here. Then on to the Mission Inn and especially to the Downtown Public Library. We haven’t been there for many, many years. Again, photo op of Grace in and about the Gazebo from our sister city, Sendai. Looking forward to a great outing…  GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 2263 Words ]
    

Quotations Related to Alaska:

[ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/alaska.html ]

“America is looking for answers. She’s looking for a new direction; the world is looking for a light. That light can come from America’s great North Star; it can come from Alaska.”
— Sarah Palin

“In one line of his poem he said good fences make good neighbors. I’d like to think that Alaska and British Columbia working together can prove that we can be pretty darned good neighbors without fences.”
— Dan Miller

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”
— Sarah Palin

“But again, you know, the views that we’ve expressed are transferring power back from the federal government to the states, giving Alaska an incredible opportunity to expand its economy, especially at a time when our federal government is coming close to bankruptcy.So that is a broad-based appeal. It’s not an extreme view.”
— Joe Miller

My Musings of the Day: March 30th…

Successful Visit to Goeske Center…

Well, yesterday morning we actually got to the Goeske Center, one of Riverside’s Senior Centers. Shuttle bus was a little late, but it came and we got to the Goeske Center. Grace had called the day before and they told us to go to the main desk and someone on duty would give us a tour of the facility. So we followed those instructions; they gave us a brochure of the facility and activities before going on the tour, which was very interesting. The facility is quite large, has a couple of exercise rooms, a couple of large lobby areas for small groups to assemble, and a number of smaller meeting rooms where classes and other groups can meet. There is even a small computer center with six computers hooked up to the Internet.

As we were talking to the ladies at the front desk, we found out that the center had lost there computer teacher several months ago. So, what do you suppose that Grace did? Volunteer to teach some classes? NO! She volunteered yours truly! Well, I was handed the form for volunteering and I filled it out. You would have thought that Moses had just walked through the door — LOL! Before we left, I talked with the director of the center about it and looks like a may have yet another thing to do — in my spare time! Between researching material for these FB postings for my dear FB family and writing my blog articles, most of my day is occupied. But, I think that I will be able to work in a morning once a week; it probably will not start until June. I’ll keep you informed on this new activity as it becomes clearer.

We got back home OK and had lunch and I took my Lasix. After eating, took a nap; I had been up since about 3:30 that morning! Hope that you liked my musings yesterday and I’ll try to tackle a harder topic today (see below)…

Thought for Today…

In this day of high technology, some fear that the technology will not only put people out of work. Ala the Luddites of the initial Industrial Revolution in the UK during the early 19th century, people fear that they will lose their livelihoods and dignity with change. But change is inevitable. New technologies are emerging every year. For fifteen years, I taught a graduate course entitled "Advanced Technologies" in a Computer Science MS program. We see new technologies pop up all around us. But we don’t need to fear them; they will find their rightful place in our lives, in most cases.

When I started my journey into technology, we lived in a very different world. Computers were those room-sized machines that only engineers worked with. Telephones and the Telco’s were the big technology innovators. Believe it or not, we are still saddled by some of those "innovations." The telephone voice transmission schema that is still the dominant technology in communications!

But let me segue into the specific topic addressed in the poster below with a great quote by Maya Angelou. Despite the technology advances around us that may affect our jobs, working conditions, and leisure-time activities, we still base our interactions with the people around us. We quickly learn that Angelou’s truisms really apply!

When we interact with others, people WILL forget what we say. They WILL also forget what we did. But the thing that people WILL NOT forget is the feelings loosed when our lives touch! This applies to our family — spouses, significant others, and children — especially. But it also applies to our colleagues at work, those that we encounter socially, those that we exercise or play sports with. Or, for that matter, those we casually encounter in the living of our lives.

I remember hearing Catherine Ryan Hyde speak at a conference a few years ago. She is the author of the book, Pay It Forward, which was made into the movie staring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt. The idea behind this book and movie was that when you receive a good deed, you are obligated, in return, to do the same thing for three other people. Thus, good deeds, and by extension, good feelings, will spread throughout society at a geometric rate. I think that embodies the essence of what Maya Angelou was trying to say.

To bring it back to our thoughts on discussion above, we only need to think about the slogan used by AT&T during their heyday in the 1960s. What was that slogan? "Reach out and touch someone!" That is the height of our lives touching those around us; THAT IS WHAT WE WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR IN THE FUTURE. Think about it…

Musings About Justice…

I have been researching, writing, and posting articles in my blog for the last three years on the events in the history of the civil rights movement, not just for African Americans, but for Mexican Americans, Women, and those with different sexual orientations. In the last few years of teaching, I had began addressing some of these issues in workshops, conference sessions, and invited addresses. After graduate school, I went to work for the Research & Evaluation Group in the Riverside Unified School District. I worked there for ten years, many of them involved with evaluating special programs to address the needs of desegregated schools and working with the analysis of student achievement data. Even in the 1970s, the achievement of the economically-disadvantaged, Black & Hispanic students was not equal to that of their Caucasian peers.

From these experiences, I thought back to my experiences with minority groups, especially the African Americans. I grew up in a town that practiced "de jure" discrimination against Blacks; the realtors in the city agreed NOT to show or sell housing or rentals to Blacks! While going to school, I was not aware of this, but I knew that the Blacks (then called "Negros") lived in Compton, not in our town. I guess those were the "good old days," but I don’t know for whom.

As I have studied our post-Civil War history, I have become aware of the rise of the KKK in the south and their tactics. This group and their campaign of terror was intended to keep the African Americans who gained their freedom after the Civil War from exercising their new rights: literacy tests, intimidation, selective violence (including lynching) and the share-cropper system. One would have thought that we were beyond that by the middle of the 20th century.

President Truman had desegregated the military. No longer would African Americans be assigned to their own segregated units and relegated to digging latrines and performing mortuary duties. In the early 1950s, we saw the Supreme Court issuing decisions against segregated buses and school segregation. But, while there were changes seen in the northern states and out west, the South still was a hostile environment for the African American through the passing and enforcement of the Jim Crow laws.

And the vigilante actions against African Americans was still alive and well. In 1955, a young African American from Chicago, Emmett Till, visited relatives in Mississippi. His interactions (which the whites considered flirting) of Till with the wife of the local store owner resulted in the youth being kidnapped, beaten, and killed. The men accused of carrying out this horrible act were white and a jury of their peers, e.g., white men, would find them not guilty in just a few hours of deliberation! This was a horrible injustice against minorities was just the tip of the iceberg.

So, the recent actions of police or neighborhood watch personnel against young black men on which they used lethal force is all the more disturbing. It is nearly fifty years after the 1965 Watts Riots in south-central Los Angeles. I would have hopped that we would have a more equitable system of justice by now. I remember working just a few blocks away from Alameda Avenue, the dividing line between the Blacks in Watts and the whites in South Gate, during those days in August of 1965. We would see patrols of white men armed with shotguns, hunting rifles (30-06, etc.), and handguns go trough the drive-thru of the dairy at which I worked. They were just hoping to see a stray black person (they really didn’t care if it were man, woman, or child) walking down the street; they would have shot them dead!

Well, this topic is too big to complete it in one posting, so I will continue it tomorrow and Sunday. But think about it. We are the land of the free. We supposedly have a legal system that should protect the rights of all of our citizens. But something is wrong. We still live in a prejudiced society. Our police departments, despite efforts to effect reform, still seem to be biased when the suspect has black or brown skin. Whites have learned to use trigger words like "Black young man" and "He has a gun" to trigger faster response from 911 and the police department. Where is justice? Where is equality? Where is equity?

We will continue to grapple with that question tomorrow. I’ll leave you with the images of the Sanford, Florida, shooting victim (Black) and neighborhood watch leader (white) to ponder these problems. Ponder these issues, but have a great day…

    
Photo of the Day:

In 1867, just after the Civil War, Secretary of State Seward negotiated our purchase of Alaska from the Russians for about two cents per acre. It was a purchase with a lot of similarities to the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson almost seventy years previous; both purchases increased the size of the United States with a quantum leap. Both purchases introduced new lands to this country rich in natural resources and natural wonders.

I leave you today with the following photo of Mount McKinley in what is now Denali National Park. This is a vast land of open spaces, abundant wildlife, and a feast for our eyes. It is a place where our souls can soar with the eagles that are abundant. It is a place where we can marvel at the power of the Grizzly and revel in the beauty of the changing seasons. I have always wanted to travel to this great land, but will have to settle for pictures like this for the time being.

Join me in the celebration of nature’s beauty. Let your souls soar on the wings of eagles. Seward’s Folly has turned out to be a uplifting experience in the Lord’s natural Cathedral. Enjoy the feast…

Mount McKinley in Denali National Park. Photo Credit: Unknown Photographer.

Copyright©2011 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

    
Introductory Comments:

Welcome to a new feature of my blog universe. For quite a while now, I have been posting a set of “Photographer’s Tips of the Day” on my Prof. Boerner’s Exploration page on Facebook. I wanted to try to share these tips with the followers of my blog and this is the first cut. I would appreciate any feedback that you might want to forward to me via the Comments section; if you are a Facebook user, you may use your Facebook credentials to smooth the process of accessing the comment area of this blog.

Each day I scan a number of photo related pages on Facebook as well as Twitter (my Twitter ID is @glbphoto). I hope that these tips and the “Photographer’s Quote of the Day” will help you in your pursuit of improving your photographic eye and skills. I also try to include one reference to a Museum Blog or Exhibit to help you develop your photographer’s eye. GLB

    

Copyright©2012 • Gerald L. Boerner • Commercial Rights Reserved

    

[ 1946 Words ]
    

    
Artist’s Quote of the Day…

Artist: Charles Baudelaire

Quote:
“From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism took hold of these new sun-worshippers.”

Short Bio Statement: Charles Baudelaire, a nineteenth-century French poet, critic, and translator; Baudelaire’s name has become a byword for literary and artistic decadence…

For more information, see: http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=7335

    
Photographer’s Backgrounder:

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) was a nineteenth-century French poet, critic, and translator. A controversial figure in his lifetime, Baudelaire’s name has become a byword for literary and artistic decadence. At the same time his works, in particular his book of poetry Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), have been acknowledged as classics of French literature.
 
Baudelaire was educated in Lyon, where he was forced to board away from his mother (even during holidays) and accept his stepfather’s rigid methods, which included depriving him of visits home when his grades slipped. He wrote when recalling those times: “A shudder at the grim years of claustration [...] the unease of wretched and abandoned childhood, the hatred of tyrannical schoolfellows, and the solitude of the heart.” Baudelaire at fourteen was described by a classmate: “He was much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils [...] we are bound to one another[...] by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature”. Later, he attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to “idleness.”
 
At eighteen, Baudelaire was described as “an exalted character, sometimes full of mysticism, and sometimes full of immorality and cynicism (which were excessive but only verbal).” Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he was undecided about his future. He told his brother “I don’t feel I have a vocation for anything.” His stepfather had in mind a career in law or diplomacy, but instead Baudelaire decided to embark upon a literary career, and for the next two years led an irregular life, socializing with other bohemian artists and writers.
 
Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He went to a pharmacist known for venereal disease treatments, on recommendation of his older brother Alphonse, a magistrate. For a while, he took on a prostitute named Sara as his mistress and lived with his brother when his funds were low. His stepfather kept him on a tight allowance which he spent as quickly as he received it. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. His stepfather demanded an accounting and wrote to Alphonse: “The moment has come when something must be done to save your brother from absolute perdition.” In the hope of reforming him and making a man of him, his stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India in 1841, under the care of a former naval captain. Baudelaire’s mother was distressed both by his poor behavior and by the proposed solution.  (Wikipedia)

Museum Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @NYTimes

Title: Hilton Kramer, Critic Who Championed Modernism, Dies at 84…

Comment:
"Hilton Kramer, whose clear, incisive style and combative temperament made him one of the most influential critics of his era, both at The New York Times, where he was the chief art critic for nine years, and at The New Criterion, which he edited from its founding in 1982, died early Tuesday in Harpswell, Me. He was 84.

His wife, Esta Kramer, said the cause was heart failure. He had developed a rare blood disease and had moved to an assisted living facility in Harpswell, she said. They lived nearby in southern Maine, in Damariscotta."

Link to Article: www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/arts/design/hilton-kramer-critic-who-championed-modernism-dies-at-84.html

Gadget Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @Cameratown

Title: Nikon D800 Image Quality Even Surpasses High-End Medium Format Camera…

Comment:
"DxOMark, the reference web site for camera image quality testing, has released its in-depth analysis of the new Nikon D800, as of now the best camera ever tested by DxOMark in terms of image quality.

Incredibly, the Nikon D800 even surpasses the best medium-format cameras, which are priced more than 10 times higher! The Nikon D800 comes out almost 1/3 of a stop higher than the best medium-format camera scored on DxOMark, the Phase One IQ180, which features a double-surface sensor and more than twice the pixel count (36 vs. 80 Mpix).

‘The new sensor featured in the D800 achieves the best dynamic range and the highest color sensitivity ever measured, taking the lead on the DxOMark scale with 95 points,” explained Dr. Frédéric Guichard, DxO Labs’ Chief Scientific Officer. “This camera illustrates the consistent improvement that digital camera manufacturers have been able to achieve in the last few years, mimicking Moore’s law that has ruled the silicon industry for decades now.’"

Link to Article: http://www.cameratown.com/news/news.cfm?id=10602

Photographer’s Tip #1…

Twitter Name: @KillerPhotoTipsKillerPhotoTips

Title: Mastering Lightroom: How To Use the Basic Panel…

Comment:
"Lightroom has many features that can easily confuse those who are new to it. While the program offers plenty of different editing opportunities, in order to achieve the best results and user experience, it is important to understand the very basics of Lightroom. In the series of upcoming short articles, I will try to explain each of the most important Panels in Lightroom, so that in the end, you will find it to be a simple, quick and easy to use software for your post-processing needs. Lets start with the Basic Panel."

Link to Article: http://mansurovs.com/mastering-lightroom-how-to-use-the-basic-panel

Photographer’s Tip #2…

Twitter Name: @TutsPlus

Title: How to Prepare for an International Photo Trip…

Comment:
"Traveling internationally can be one of the most exciting and nerve wracking events for any photographer. On one hand, there will be the opportunity to photograph new and often exotic locales and sights. On the other hand, trucking around all (or most) of your camera gear can be a bit intimidating.

This simple trick could, possibly, reunite you with your gear. If you put luggage tags on the outside of your checked bags, then consider taking a photo of your contact information on each of your memory cards. It only takes 10 minutes, if that, before a trip to perform this step and it has the potential to turn an accident (leaving your bag behind) or an incident (theft of your gear) into a happy ending.

The idea is if your gear is found, the information on the first photo will help good natured citizens find you.

I believe the world contains more people that do the right thing than the bad thing, and the odds are in favor of one of those people finding your gear. Be sure to include a local contact point (a friend’s phone number or the number of a hotel) and to take the photo in JPEG mode so it will be easily readable by any computer."

Link to Article: http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/shooting-articles/how-to-prepare-for-an-international-photo-trip/

Photographer’s Tip #3…

Twitter Name: @PhotoTuts+

Title: An In Depth Look at Megapixels and Resolution…

Comment:
"If you’ve bought a digital camera at a big box retail store, you’ve probably been sold on the features of the digital cameras they’re trying to move. Perhaps no feature is more oversold than megapixels, a count of the resolution of the camera’s image files. In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at the ever growing race to pack more pixels onto camera sensors and learn why it’s not all about the megapixels.

When a digital camera makes a photo, it outputs a file. Most often, the resulting file is either a JPEG or RAW format image. Raw is a special type of proprietary image format, meaning that one camera’s version of RAW is different from the next.

Regardless of format, the image has pixel dimensions. For instance, the image files output by my Canon 5D Mark II are 5616 pixels on the long side and 3744 pixels on the short side. If you’re not familiar with pixels, they are the tiny dots that make up digital images; whether on our computer screen or our camera sensors, pixels are very much the building block of the digital world.

Although high quality cameras often are loaded with high megapixel sensors, the megapixel count is not the determining factor for image quality. You might have a cell phone with an 8 megapixel camera, but I doubt the image quality of it can match even a 6 megapixel digital SLR sensor like the Nikon D40.

The next time you’re being sold on the quality of a camera based on the megapixel count, take a good step back and remember that sensor size is an even more important factor in the image quality equation. Right now, a high megapixel cell phone sensor still can’t touch a low megapixel, larger sized sensor."

Link to Article: http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/hardware/an-in-depth-look-at-megapixels-and-resolution/

Other Events of the Day:

I came across the following Project announcement this afternoon and wanted to make everyone aware of it…

Twitter Name: @kickstarter

Title: Black in Appalachia = Affrilachia!…

Comment:
"Nine times out of ten, when I introduce someone to the word ‘Affrilachia’, they laugh or a quizzical smile crawls across their face.

Why? … not just because it’s a creative take on a word, but also because myths abound about the region of Appalachia—an expanse of 200,000 square miles including parts of 13 states. In spite of common misconceptions, the region includes more than one ethnicity and a series of isolated enclaves. Recent efforts celebrating the history of Appalachia reveal the fact that its inhabitants are as diverse as its terrain—which ranges from high mountain peaks to gentle hillsides, and from rural agricultural communities to bustling metropolitan areas.

The Affrilachian Artist Project was inspired by a writers’ group called the  Affrilachian Poets and the resurgence of old time music championed by string bands like the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The project started with a modest goal, to create a digital Affrilachian Visual Artist Showcase featuring the work of living artists. I distributed a call for artists, pestered my colleagues and conducted late night Internet searches. As the names accumulated, a conscious effort was made to select artists who defiantly embraced the complex facets of their experience. The common denominator among the artists is their depth of community engagement. An amazing series of events led to an actual exhibition, called  Common Ground: Affrilachia! Where I’m From on display at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh, PA. This represents the first phase of the project, with the promise of more shows to come."

Link to Article: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marietcochran/black-in-appalachia-affrilachia?ref=live

    
Introductory Comments:

Welcome to a new feature of my blog universe. For quite a while now, I have been posting a set of “Photographer’s Tips of the Day” on my Prof. Boerner’s Exploration page on Facebook. I wanted to try to share these tips with the followers of my blog and this is the first cut. I would appreciate any feedback that you might want to forward to me via the Comments section; if you are a Facebook user, you may use your Facebook credentials to smooth the process of accessing the comment area of this blog.

Each day I scan a number of photo related pages on Facebook as well as Twitter (my Twitter ID is @glbphoto). I hope that these tips and the “Photographer’s Quote of the Day” will help you in your pursuit of improving your photographic eye and skills. I also try to include one reference to a Museum Blog or Exhibit to help you develop your photographer’s eye. GLB

    

Copyright©2012 • Gerald L. Boerner • Commercial Rights Reserved

    

[ 1291 Words ]

    
Photographer’s Quote of the Day…

Photographer: David Bailey

Quote:
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.”

Short Bio Statement: David Bailey, an English photographer who helped create the ‘Swinging London’ of the 1960s…

For more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bailey_(photographer)

    
Photographer’s Backgrounder:

David Royston Bailey CBE (born 2 January 1938) is an English photographer. Bailey developed a love of natural history, and this led him into photography. Suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he experienced problems at school. He attended a private school, Clark’s College in Ilford, where he says they taught him less than the more basic council school. As well as dyslexia he also has the motor skill disorder dyspraxia.

In 1959 he became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in May 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole’s Studio Five before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year. He also undertook a large amount of freelance work.
 
Along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, he captured and helped create the ‘Swinging London’ of the 1960s: a culture of high fashion and celebrity chic. The three photographers socialized with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers, named by Norman Parkinson as "the Black Trinity".
 
The film Blowup (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, concerns the work and sexual habits of a London fashion photographer played by David Hemmings and is largely based on Bailey.
 
The "Swinging London" scene was aptly reflected in his Box of Pin-Ups (1964): a box of poster-prints of 1960s celebrities and socialites including Terence Stamp, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Jean Shrimpton, PJ Proby, Cecil Beaton, Rudolf Nureyev, Andy Warhol and notorious East End gangsters the Kray twins.
 
The box was an unusual and unique commercial release, and it reflected the changing status of the photographer that one could sell a collection of prints in this way. (The strong objection to the presence of the Krays on the part of fellow photographer Lord Snowdon was the major reason no American edition of the "Box" ever appeared, nor a British second edition issued.) The record sale for a copy of ‘Box of Pin-Ups’ is reported as "north of £20,000".
 
Bailey’s ascent at Vogue was meteoric. Within months he was shooting covers and at the height of his productivity he shot 800 pages of Vogue editorial in one year. Penelope Tree, a former girlfriend, described him as "the king lion on the Savannah: incredibly attractive, with a dangerous vibe. He was the electricity, the brightest, most powerful, most talented, most energetic force at the magazine".
 
American Vogue’s creative director Grace Coddington, then a model herself said "It was the Sixties, it was a raving time, and Bailey was unbelievably good-looking. He was everything that you wanted him to be – like the Beatles but accessible – and when he went on the market everyone went in. We were all killing ourselves to be his model, although he hooked up with Jean Shrimpton pretty quickly".  (Wikipedia)

Museum Blog of the Day…

Twitter Name: @LACMA

Title: Ellsworth Kelly: The Purist…

Comment:
"One would think that Ellsworth Kelly’s abstract art was easy, being so casually blissful. And bliss is a quality one could readily associate with the beautifully curated exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings, which is on view in BCAM through April 22. There is this sort of simple clarity, which by its very nature is a kind of misdirection. And for those in the know, it might be there on the face of the work, but for me, I had one of those ‘doors of perception moments’ that made looking at the work feel as if I were seeing it for the first time. And suddenly, and amazingly, it was quite thrilling."

Link to Article: http://lacma.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/ellsworth-kelly-the-purist/

Gadget Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @Appolicious

Title: New iPad gets hot, but still comparable to other tablets…

Comment:
"It seems at least a few owners of Apple’s newly released iPad, which went on sale just under two weeks ago, have complained that the device gets uncomfortably hot when they’re using it. Some have complained of burns, others have said they can’t use the device because it’s uncomfortable to hold, and still others have said the iPad gets so warm that it locks itself down until temperatures have leveled off.

But as PC World reports, while the iPad does get warm – they were able to push the device to generate a temperature of about 100 degrees on its back panel – it’s not alone in doing so. The fact of the matter is, tablets are computers and computers get hot when they’re working, and no tablet is really designed to disperse heat well."

Link to Article: http://www.appolicious.com/tech/articles/11489-new-ipad-gets-hot-but-still-comparable-to-other-tablets

Photographer’s Slideshow #1…

Twitter Name: @ScottKelby

Title: Photos from Photoshop World Washington DC…

Comment:
"As Photoshop World winds down, we begin the look back at three amazing days of learning and fun.

Hey everyone, Brad here with a quick update from Photoshop World Washington DC! Just wanted to share a few shots from the event so far. More to come later!"

Link to Article: http://scottkelby.com/2012/photos-from-photoshop-world-washington-dc/

Photographer’s Tip #2…

Twitter Name: @Lightroom

Title: Soft Proofing in Lightroom 4…

Comment:
"Learn about Lightroom’s top-requested feature, soft proofing, in this video with Julieanne Kost: http://bit.ly/zZQhO7. Soft proofing lets you control the way your colors are converted for a specific output device, such as sRGB or a specific printer. What do you think of this feature?"

Link to Article:

Photographer’s Tip #3…

Twitter Name: @DanBaileyPhoto

Title: I’ll Say it Again: Photography is Not About The Gear…

Comment:
"Yesterday I read a short  post by travel photographer Phil Hill that was posted over at Light Stalking, called Why Good Photography Isn’t About The Gear.

In his article, Phil went out and shot landscapes with his girlfriend’s entry level DSLR and f/5.6 kit lens. His intent was to prove that learning how to effectively expose for your scene with Manual and Aperture Priority modes is far more important than just buying more Megapixels.

And you know what? He’s right. He got some perfectly nice photographs, even with a nearly ten year old camera that only has a 10 Megapixel sensor. Compared with the latest offerings from Nikon and Canon, 10 Megapixel seems so… oh, I don’t know… so…"

Link to Article: http://danbaileyphoto.com/blog/ill-say-it-again-photography-is-not-about-the-gear/

    
Other Events:

No additional events scheduled for today.

    
Introductory Comments:

Welcome to a new feature of my blog universe. For quite a while now, I have been posting a set of “Photographer’s Tips of the Day” on my Prof. Boerner’s Exploration page on Facebook. I wanted to try to share these tips with the followers of my blog and this is the first cut. I would appreciate any feedback that you might want to forward to me via the Comments section; if you are a Facebook user, you may use your Facebook credentials to smooth the process of accessing the comment area of this blog.

Each day I scan a number of photo related pages on Facebook as well as Twitter (my Twitter ID is @glbphoto). I hope that these tips and the “Photographer’s Quote of the Day” will help you in your pursuit of improving your photographic eye and skills. I also try to include one reference to a Museum Blog or Exhibit to help you develop your photographer’s eye. GLB

    

Copyright©2012 • Gerald L. Boerner • Commercial Rights Reserved

    

[ 1094 Words ]
    

    
Photographer’s Quote of the Day…

Photographer: Paul Strand

Quote:
“Honesty no less than intensity of vision is the prerequisite of a living expression. This means a real respect for the thing in front of… the photographer… this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation through the use of straight photographic methods…”

Short Bio Statement: Paul Strand, an American photographer and filmmaker who helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century…

For more information, see: http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=2329

    
Photographer’s Backgrounder:

Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa.
 
Born in New York City to Bohemian parents, in his late teens Strand was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It was while on a fieldtrip in this class that Strand first visited the 291 art gallery – operated by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen – where exhibitions of work by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously. Stieglitz would later promote Strand’s work in the 291 gallery itself, in his photography publication Camera Work, and in his artwork in the Hieninglatzing studio.

Some of this early work, like the well-known "Wall Street," experimented with formal abstractions (influencing, among others, Edward Hopper and his idiosyncratic urban vision). Other of Strand’s works reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.  (Wikipedia)

Strand subsequently traveled to Mexico, where he photographed the landscape, architecture, folk art, and people and in 1934 produced a film about fishermen for the Mexican government. Thirteen years earlier he had collaborated with Charles Sheeler on a film, Manhatta, a study of the urban high-rise environment. Having returned to New York late in 1934, Strand devoted his energies to theater and filmmaking cooperatives.

In 1943 Strand resumed his still photography, focusing on the people and surroundings of New England. In the early 1950s he moved to Europe, spending six weeks in the northern Italian agrarian community of Luzzara and later traveling to the Outer Hebrides, islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. He traveled and photographed in North and West Africa in the 1960s.  (Getty Museum)

Museum Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @culturemonster

Title: Van Gogh painting identified in the Netherlands…

Comment:
"A museum in the Netherlands has identified a painting to be the creation of Vincent Van Gogh, after having said for several years that it is the work of an unknown artist. The painting resides at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands.

Officials said this week that "Still Life With Meadow Flowers and Roses" is the work of the Dutch master and that he likely created it while living with his brother, Theo, in Paris in the 1880s. Experts said they used X-ray technology to look beneath the painting, where they found a depiction of two wrestlers."

Link to Article: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/03/van-gogh-painting-identified-netherlands.html

Gadget Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @PopPhoto

Title: A Look at The State of Camera Lenses In 2012…

Comment:
"Talk about a golden age of lenses! Fast, long, superwide, fisheye, macro, you name it—camera manufacturers and independents continue to add to their optical arsenals. So, whether you plan to acquire new lenses, or just get the most out of your present optics, we offer this guided tour of today’s hottest glass.

Looking over our lab and field tests of lenses from the past year, several trends clearly emerged—some expected (lots more wide-range zooms) and some unexpected (manual focus!). The lens choices available today are near-dizzying in their variety, so we thought we’d divide the menu into digestible chunks, tell you the pros and cons of the various classes of lenses, and provide some side dishes of technical info."

Link to Article: https://www.popphoto.com/gear/2012/03/latest-lenses

Photographer’s Tip #1…

Twitter Name: @DigitalPS

Title: 27 Black and White Landscape Images…

Comment:
"At first I was a little hesitant – when I think of landscapes I have to admit lots of colour comes to mind – but the more I thought about it – the more I realized that it would make a great collection. So here are a few black and white landscapes to get your creative juices flowing!"

Link to Article: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/27-black-and-white-landscape-images

Photographer’s Tip #2…

Twitter Name: @Mashable

Title: Top 5 Instagram Alternatives for Android…

Comment:
"The moment smartphone owners have been waiting for is nearly here – Instagram is coming to Android. But while we’re all having filter fun on the photo app, developers have been busy creating Instagram-like apps that have the same tools and, dare we say, even offer a few missing features.

There are dozens of Instagram alternatives to choose from, but here are our five favorites."

Link to Article: http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/instagram-alternatives/

Photographer’s Tip #3…

Twitter Name: @Adobe

Title: Adobe @ Photoshop World Keynote DC 2012…

Comment:
"Watch the replay of the Photoshop World 2012 Keynote presentation from Adobe Photoshop. Adobe takes the Photoshop World Keynote stage to demo the new Photoshop Touch, Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 beta."

Link to Article:

Special Events:

No additional events today.

    
Introductory Comments:

Welcome to a new feature of my blog universe. For quite a while now, I have been posting a set of “Photographer’s Tips of the Day” on my Prof. Boerner’s Exploration page on Facebook. I wanted to try to share these tips with the followers of my blog and this is the first cut. I would appreciate any feedback that you might want to forward to me via the Comments section; if you are a Facebook user, you may use your Facebook credentials to smooth the process of accessing the comment area of this blog.

Each day I scan a number of photo related pages on Facebook as well as Twitter (my Twitter ID is @glbphoto). I hope that these tips and the “Photographer’s Quote of the Day” will help you in your pursuit of improving your photographic eye and skills. I also try to include one reference to a Museum Blog or Exhibit to help you develop your photographer’s eye. GLB

Copyright©2012 • Gerald L. Boerner • Commercial Rights Reserved

[ 1293 Words ]

    
Photographer’s Quote of the Day…

Photographer: Sebastião Salgado

Quote:
“Most of the information we now get is through television and is mutilated. Photography offers the opportunity to spend much more time on a topic. It’s relatively cheaper medium, and can allow a photographer really to live in another place, show another reality, get closer to the truth.”

Short Bio Statement: Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist…

For more information, see: http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=3474

Photographer’s Backgrounder:

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. It’s not just that this celebrated Brazilian photojournalist has been sniffling since he arrived in the city, explaining: “I was born in a tropical ecosystem. I’m not used to these plants.” It’s also that he peppers his description of the city with words like strange and crazy, noting that he was mesmerized by the sight of the endless stream of automobile traffic as his plane made its descent.

After a somewhat itinerant childhood, Salgado initially trained as an economist, earning a master’s degree in economics from the University of São Paulo in Brazil. He began work as an economist for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa on missions for the World Bank, when he first started seriously taking photographs. He travelled often to Africa on missions affiliated with the World Bank. It was then that he first began taking his first photographs. On his return to London these images began to preoccupy him, and he abandoned his career as an economist. At the beginning of 1973 he and his wife returned to Paris so that he could begin his life as a photographer.

Salgado initially worked with the Paris based agency Gamma, but in 1979 he joined the international cooperative of photographers Magnum Photos. He left Magnum in 1994 and formed his own agency, Amazonas Images, in Paris to represent his work. He is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations. Longtime gallery director Hal Gould considers Salgado to be the most important photographer of the early century, and gave him his first show in the United States.

Salgado works on long term, self-assigned projects many of which have been published as books: The Other Americas, Sahel, Workers, and Migrations. The latter two are mammoth collections with hundreds of images each from all around the world. His most famous pictures are of a gold mine in Brazil called Serra Pelada. He is presently working on a project called Genesis, photographing the landscape, flora and fauna of places on earth that have not been taken over by man.

In September and October 2007, Salgado displayed his photographs of coffee workers from India, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Brazil at the Brazilian Embassy in London. The aim of the project was to raise public awareness of the origins of the popular drink. (Wikipedia)

Museum Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @ArtFinder

Title: Lucian Freud Portraits…

Comment:
"Freud was a prolific portraitist, grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and prominent member of the 1950s London art scene that included Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon. Drawing sitters solely from a close pool of associates – family, friends, fellow painters, lovers – his artwork is significant in its intensification of the artist-model relationship."

Link to Article: http://www.artfinder.com/listing/uk/london/lucian-freud-portraits/

Gadget Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @DigitalPS

Title: Readers: Lens Filters: To Use or Not To Use? Your 2 cents, if you please!…

Comment:
"For those of you who are newer to the wild, wild world of photography, there are many different kinds of lens filters, and thus they are used for varied reasons. The two most commonly used filters would be 1) Polarizing filters which are used to reduce glare and improve overall image saturation and 2) UV filters which essentially exist to provide extra protection (from scratches, cracks, etc.) to the front of your lens. These filters run anywhere from a few dollars (for a piece of shizizzle) all the way up to the $900 range (I’ve heard rumors that this variety is plated in gold. . . though I’ve never seen one with my own eyes, so I can’t definitively say)."

Link to Article: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/readers-lens-filters-to-use-or-not-to-use-your-2-cents-if-you-please

Photographer’s Tip #1…

Twitter Name: @NYTimesPhoto

Title: Redeeming a Life in Photography…

Comment:
"Through blacklists, dashed friendships and averted gazes, Miriam Grossman Cohen waited half her life for redemption. Instead, she would have to endure the old slights, which hurt as much as ever, against her husband, Sid Grossman: That he was the Communist in the Photo League. That he cared more about politics than art. That his life was summed up more by what others said than by what he did.

‘I’m 85,’ she said last week. ‘I’ve waited since 1955, when Sid died, for some kind of redemption, and it never came.’"

Link to Article: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/redeeming-a-life-in-photography/#

Photographer’s Tip #2…

Twitter Name: @TIMEbox

Title: Another Side of Afghanistan by Larry Towell…

Comment:
"Back in 2008, photographer Larry Towell’s agency, Magnum Photos, had contacted him about a project in Afghanistan that would require him to embed with the British military. Towell, having just completed work in Palestine, decided that he didn’t want to see Afghanistan for the first time with an embed, and instead set forth to see the country on his own. “It was important for me to learn more about the history of Afghanistan to get some perspective about what’s going on today and see if I even had anything to say,” says Towell, who was later awarded a Magnum Emergency Fund to aid his work. From 2008 to 2011, Towell traveled to Afghanistan five times, documenting in both photographs and videos the various social issues that plague its citizens, from drug addiction and poverty to the prevalence of landmines, many of which still remain from the Soviet occupation of the country during the 1980s."

Link to Article: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/03/23/larry-towell/

Photographer’s Tip #3…

Twitter Name: @Photoflex

Title: John Beckett: Shooting Action with the TritonFlash…

Comment:
"Under most conditions, using electronic flash means you will only be able to shoot one frame of a fast action sequence. You either have to pre-focus on the spot where you want to catch the action, use follow-focusing or use a continuous focus until you are ready to shoot a single frame. Because of the angle needed for our moving bike, the pre-focus method worked best with Nikon’s "Continuous-High" firing mode and focused on the bike’s takeoff point. Once the focus point was set, I didn’t move until the entire sequence was completed from pre-focus to our model going back to his original starting point — through the takeoff and landing."

Link to Article: http://www.photoflexliteblog.com/2012/03/john-beckett-shooting-action-with.html

Other Comments:

No additional comments today.

    
Introductory Comments:

Welcome to a new feature of my blog universe. For quite a while now, I have been posting a set of “Photographer’s Tips of the Day” on my Prof. Boerner’s Exploration page on Facebook. I wanted to try to share these tips with the followers of my blog and this is the first cut. I would appreciate any feedback that you might want to forward to me via the Comments section; if you are a Facebook user, you may use your Facebook credentials to smooth the process of accessing the comment area of this blog.

Each day I scan a number of photo related pages on Facebook as well as Twitter (my Twitter ID is @glbphoto). I hope that these tips and the “Photographer’s Quote of the Day” will help you in your pursuit of improving your photographic eye and skills. I also try to include one reference to a Museum Blog or Exhibit to help you develop your photographer’s eye. GLB

    

Copyright©2012 • Gerald L. Boerner • Commercial Rights Reserved

    

[ 1159 Words ]
    

    
Photographer’s Quote of the Day…

Photographer: Harry Callahan

Quote:     
“I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.”

Short Bio Statement: Harry Callahan, an American photographer who is considered one of the great innovators of modern American photography…

For more information, see: http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=5445

    
Photographer’s Backgrounder:

Harry Morey Callahan (1912 – 1999) was an American photographer who is considered one of the great innovators of modern American photography. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and started photographing in 1938 as an autodidact. By 1946, he was appointed by László Moholy-Nagy to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Callahan retired in 1977, at which time he was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design.
 
Callahan left almost no written records–no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day’s best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.
 
He photographed his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara, and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He also worked with multiple exposures. Callahan’s work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He was well known to encourage his students to turn their cameras on their lives, and he led by example. Callahan photographed his wife over a period of fifteen years, as his prime subject. Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere – at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close. He tried several technical experiments — double and triple exposure, blurs, large and small format film.
 
Sarah Greenough in her analysis of Harry Callahan, talk of his early life photographing his wife Eleanor…

“Yet it was with his series of photographs of Eleanor, more than with any other subject, that Callahan most fully learned what it meant to see photographically. Although he had photographed her intermittently before, beginning in 1947 he photographed Eleanor extensively for more than a decade and during that time she was central not only to his emotional, physical, and spiritual life, but also to his artistic development. He recorded her, as he recalls, "In an endless number of ways": nude and clothed; in parks, streets, and city squares; on the beach, in the water, in tents, and in the woods; in the privacy of their home – their ballroom studio or their bedroom – and the homes of relatives; in this country and in Europe; with their daughter Barbara or alone…"  (Wikipedia)

Museum Tip of the Day…

    

Twitter Name: @LACMA

Title: In The Mirror Of Maya Deren Trailer…

Comment:
"This Friday evening, LACMA is presenting the exhibition film series, Dancer in the Dark: Maya Deren on Film. Some of Deren’s films are featured in our In Wonderland exhibition. In Friday’s program we will screen all of Deren’s completed shorts—from the hallucinatory trance film Meshes of the Afternoon to The Very Eye of Night, a stunning ballet kaleidoscope—as well as her unfinished collaboration with Marcel Duchamp."

Link to Article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuaG1L-d-kI

p>Gadget Tip of the Day…

Twitter Name: @BHPhotoVideo

Title: Print It with Canon…

Comment:     
"Canon product trainer Jamie Waller demos the brand new PIXMA Pro-1 printer to teach you the steps involved in producing your best prints. Jamie also covers the importance of color management, creating a printing workflow, and proper paper choices when printing your work."

Link to Article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT6ksk8gxXU&feature=youtu.be

Photographer’s Tip #1…

Twitter Name: @Techland

Title: Adobe’s Photoshop CS6 Beta: Even a Little More Magical…

Comment:     
"Sometime in the first half of 2012, Adobe plans to release Photoshop CS6, the new version of the image-editing software that’s synonymous with image editing. It’s been providing sneak peeks at selected new features — such as this and this — for awhile now. Now the company’s releasing something way better than a sneak peek: a free downloadable beta version of the new software. It’s part of Adobe Labs and is available here.

Photoshop’s user interface hasn’t changed much over the years — except to get more convoluted and inconsistent as Adobe has packed in more and more features. With CS6, it’s getting a meaningful makeover. It’s not an utter reinvention, and learning how to take advantage of the software’s nearly infinite bag of tricks still takes time. But it’s certainly a step forward."

Link to Article: http://techland.time.com/2012/03/22/adobes-photoshop-cs6-beta-even-a-little-more-magical

Photographer’s Tip #2…

Twitter Name: @BHPhotoVideo

Title: Light It & Shoot It (2:23:49)…

Comment:     
"Joey Quintero starts with a special lighting seminar, using Impact Lighting equipment to show you how to achieve your best beauty light. He then premieres the new Impact Beauty Dish, which is essential for getting your best shot. Joey then leads a live model shoot, demonstrating how to capture that high fashion moment."

Link to Article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS_2fLkE8aw&feature=youtu.be

Photographer’s Tip #3…

Twitter Name: @DigitalPS

Title: Creating Quality Slideshows…

Comment:     
"Presenting a slideshow of your work can be a very rewarding event or an evening of frustration, depending on how well you prepare and plan. It was once told to me that for every 30 minutes of presentation, I should spend 40 hour preparing. This includes planning, choosing images, organizing, practice, rework, more practice, more rework and then some more practice. This rule of thumb is more true for a professional or highly important presentation than a backyard viewing during a BBQ, but the process is just as important."

Link to Article: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/creating-quality-slideshows

Other Comments:

No additional comments today.

    
Introductory Comments:

Another day has dawned. On this day, we witnessed a couple events surrounding World War I. Before the entry of U.S. troops into that conflict, we witnessed development of two support units for General Pershing’s expeditionary force seeking the Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa. Following World War I, this day, in the U.S. Senate, witnessed the second attempt to gain ratification of the Treaty of Versailles was defeated led by Republican forces under the leadership of Henry Cabot Lodge. This marked not only a defeat of the program of President Woodrow Wilson, but also a repudiation of the U.S. as a active participant in the international community of nations.

This day also witness the manufacture of the one millionth Jeep, that ubiquitous army vehicle, to the U.S. Army. More recently, this day witnessed the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the second Persian Gulf War. On the lighter side, this was a day of two major firsts for television: the first Academy Awards Ceremony, hosted by Bob Hope, televised live and later this day would witness the first televising of the day-to-day business of our Congress on C-SPAN. That was this day in history, the 19th of March…

    
A More Detailed Look at Today’s Event History:

The major events of the day took place just before and just after World War I. Prior to that world conflict, taking place mainly in western Europe, we were, in 1916, embroiled in a conflict along the southern borders of the U.S. between Texas and Arizona. Pancho Villa, leading an army of Mexican peasants, would raid towns across the U.S.–Mexico border. One of the most famous of these raids was on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico; during this raid the town was burned to the ground. General John "Black Jack" Pershing and his expeditionary force received orders to pursue and capture and/or kill Pancho Villa. Two new military groups participated in this campaign of the Mexican American War. These two new support units were the motorized cavalry under Lt. George Patton and the founding of the first U.S. air combat force, the First Aero Squadron, based in Columbus, New Mexico; this town was the site of one of Pancho Villa’s more famous border raids. The Aero Squadron served primarily scouting duties during this campaign. They would serve well over France in the conflict taking Place over France.

Following the end of the First World War in 1919, the United States, England and France would draft the formal treaty that the Germans were forced to sign. This document, the Treaty of Versailles, called for the formation of a League of Nations after the model set forth by Woodrow Wilson in his 14 Points. This treaty was designed to protect and expand the colonial empires of England and France under the guise of create "Protectorates" overseen by each of these powers. The U.S. also received some protectorates, especially in the Pacific, but we were not at that time a colonial power.

The problem, however, was this treaty required ratification by the U.S. Senate, which was in control of anti-Wilson Republicans led by men like Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. The latter was especially active, in 1920, when this treaty came up for ratification a second time. This Senate action marked not only a defeat of the program of President Woodrow Wilson, but also a repudiation of the U.S. as a active participant in the international community of nations. We would never formally join the League of Nations and we would suffer, along with the democratic countries of Europe, the pains of war again when Adolf Hitler came into power as German Chancellor in 1933.

Two additional military events celebrated milestones on this day as well. In 1952, during the Korean War, the one millionth Jeep was manufactured. The jeep was introduced as an all-purpose, all-terrain vehicle to provide our troops with mobility during World War II and the Korean War. This milestone in the manufacturing of the functional, no-frills vehicle was a celebration of the success of a concept — mobility on the battlefield.

More recently, we witnessed on this day in 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom by President George W. Bush. This operation was part of the second Persian Gulf War and part of the U.S. war on terrorism following the attacks of 9-11 in New York City, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Virginia. Unlike the first Persian Gulf War, this military action was basically an U.S. action with a loose coalition of western European allies, especially the United Kingdom. Also, unlike the first Persian Gulf War, there was no coalition or support by our friends in the Arab world. While successful in removing Saddam Hussein from power, it has not bring real brought democracy or real freedom to that troubled country.

We also witnessed a couple of firsts in the television arena. In 1953, we witnessed the first live showing of the annual Academy Awards show. This 25th edition of the awards ceremony was hosted for the first time by Bob Hope and was the occasion of Cecil B. DeMilles winning the Best Picture award for "The Greatest Show on Earth." The ceremony was broadcast by NBC Television. Also on this day, in 1979, the country witnessed the first live broadcast of the day-to-day activities of the U.S. House of Representatives; these broadcasts were carried by C-SPAN.

And that was this day in history. It was filled with several significant events that have shaped and molded this great country of ours!

We now will proceed to examine some of the events that are associated with day in history... GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 1574 Words ]
    

Quotations Related to Woodrow Wilson:

[ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/woodrow_wilson.html ]

“A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal – to discover and maintain liberty among men.”
— Woodrow Wilson

Notable Events of the Day: March 19th…

    
Noteworthy Events on this Day:

• In 1831…
  Edward Smith steals $245,000 from the City Bank in downtown New York, the first recorded bank robbery in American history.

• In 1916…
  The United States uses aircraft to support a military combat mission for the first time, employing eight Curtiss “Jenny” planes to support Brig. Gen. John Pershing’s 7,000 troops who had invaded Mexico in search of revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. Although Villa would never be captured, the First Aero Squadron earned invaluable flying experience during the 11-month mission, which would prove important when the United States entered World War I a year later.

• In 1920…
  The U.S. Senate votes 49-35 to reject the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, largely because of objections voiced by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge over the potential for the League of Nations to involve the United States in wars contrary to its own national interest.

• In 1952…
  The one millionth Jeep, originally produced as a “general purpose” vehicle for the U.S. Army, is manufactured.

• In 1953…
  Bob Hope hosts the first televised Academy Awards ceremony, as the 25th annual event is broadcast on NBC from the RKO Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Thirty-four million Americans tune in to see Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth win for best picture.

• In 1979…
  Rep. Al Gore, D-Tennessee, is the first U.S. congressman to speak live on C-SPAN, the new cable network instituted to broadcast the proceedings of Congress.

• In 2003…
  President George W. Bush announces in a televised speech that Operation Iraqi Freedom has begun, an American-led coalition launches a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with the bombing of Baghdad.

On the Trail of the First Aero Squadron…  (10:12)
The squadron was provisionally created as the 1st Aero Squadron of the U.S. Army Signal Corps on 5 March 1913… On 9 March 1916, Villista forces raided Columbus, New Mexico, attacking units of the U.S. 13th Cavalry. The 1st Aero Squadron, consisting of 11 officers, 84 enlisted men, and a civilian mechanic, moved to Columbus by rail. Its first reconnaissance sortie on 16 March. On 19 March 1916, assigned to the punitive expedition commanded by Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing, the squadron flew into Mexico, where it operated until February 1917.

References

Previously Posted Topics:

Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Mexican Revolution: Gen. Pershing Pursuit of Pancho Villa…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=17629

Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Woodrow Wilson: Navigating the U.S. into International Waters…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=15774

Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Henry Cabot Lodge: 2nd Rejection of Treaty of Versailles…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=17695

Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Veterans Day: Remembering the War against Terrorism — Iraq…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=20484

Wikipedia: 25th Academy Awards: First Televised Ceremony Hosted by Bob Hope…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25th_Academy_Awards

Wikipedia: Jeep, A “General Purpose” Vehicle for the U.S. Army…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep

Wikipedia: Beginning of the Air Force: 1st Aero Squadron 1913–1921…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Reconnaissance_Squadron