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Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
Located within the park Seldensate remains the foundations and some rising wall work of the last castle. Those foundations are reached via the driveway and the restored gatehouse with pigeon tower. This gatehouse consists of two one-story angled wings, of which the actual gate has a gabled roof. The smaller wing has a stepped gable, but no roof. At the corner formed by the two wings, the pigeon tower is attached. This is an irregular, hexagonal tower with ditto slate spire. The house itself is a ruin. Dove tower and gatehouse have been restored. Of the castle, only the foundations remain. Whether these are actually the foundations of the castle that stood here before 1631 is not known to me.
Construction history:
The castle probably built between 1440 and 1468; that is when there is mention of a farmstead and a stone playhouse. In 1596 it was a walled stone building. Shortly afterwards, the dovecote tower was built. After the Peace of Munster, the building fell into disrepair. Restoration began in 1893. The house was largely demolished and rebuilt. Furthermore, the house and gatehouse were expanded and modernized. In 1920, Seldensate was abandoned and decay set in again. This process was accelerated by normalization of the Aa, which caused large differences in groundwater. World War II also left its mark. Demolition followed in 1961. In 1973 the ruin was purchased by the municipality. Between 1976 and 1980, the gatehouse and pigeon tower were restored. Furthermore, there are plans to rebuild the house.
Property history:
In 1304 there is mention of a farmstead, property of jonker Geerlingh van den Bossche. The Rycoutss family sold the property in 1440 to Goossen Toelinc, priest in 's-Hertogenbosch. He built the castle and left it to his niece Mechteld in 1481. Through inheritance through the female line it came into the hands of the Prouninck family of Deventer. After the death of the last descendant, Seldensate was sold in 1596. Those who bought the house resold it to Count Adolph van den Bergh in 1608. It then passed into the hands of the counts of East Friesland, lords of Heeswijk. Joost van Hedickhuijsen, drossaard of Berlicum and Middelrode settled on Seldensate, and in 1631 it became his property. His daughter had to sell the house 1679 due to financial problems. The next series of owners were seldom on the property and left it neglected, until in 1833 Johannes Cornelis Bosch inherited the property and took up residence there himself. His son Valerius Andringa Bosch restored the castle. Daughter Constantia, married to squire Christiaan Laman Trip inherited the estate. After their divorce in 1920, he and their daughter Valerie continued to live at Seldensate. In 1973, Valerie Russell-Laman Trip sold the dilapidated estate to the municipality of Berlicum, which had it largely demolished.
The north America and the Pelican nebula.
The bight star is Deneb in Cygnus.
17 frames, 30 sec, Canon 1200D, f=300mm
Images were stacked using an algorithm of mine:
sum for each of the RGB channels,
contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization using 8x8 image tiles, normalized threshold: 0.04)
final gamma correction with an exponent of 0.62
"the war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." "the disease is not meant to be cured, it is meant to be continuous." - George Orwell
During a storm last night I took a chance that the rain would stop, and headed for the shore with my camera. My car was drenched while driving, but when I arrived at Näset, the rain stopped :)
This is one RAW shot, exported to 3 jpg:s for HDR in Qtpfsgui. And then some (rather much) processing in GIMP.
The operators in Qtpfsgui: Mantiuk and Fattal
Main filters in GIMP: Various G'MIC. (If you haven't tried Local Normalization or Edge Preserving flow, do so!)
Calantha did an excellent job of convincing faculty of the benefits of Blogs for teaching, learning & authentic assessment.
NGC 891 is an egde-on Galaxy in Andromeda. It looks as the Milky Way would look like when viewed edge-on and 30 million light-years away.
Object: NGC 891
Optics: Celestron 9.25 F6.3
Mount: Celestron CGEM
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MMC @-20°C, Gain=75, Offset=15
Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, ZWO 36mm Filters
Exposure: total ~2.7h, R 6x240sec, G 6x240sec, B 6x240sec, L 23x240sec, L (derived from RGB), 200 Bias, 40 Darks, 40 Flats per channel
Date: 2017-10-01
Location: Schwaig
Capture: Sequence Generator Pro
Guiding: Off-Axis, ASI120MM, PHD2
Image Acquisition: Stephan Schurig
Image Processing: Stephan Schurig
AstroPixelProcessor 1.062: Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Integration, Channel Combination, Remove Light Pollution, Background Calibration, Star Colors Correction, Auto Digital Development
Photoshop 19.1.6: Smart Sharpen w. Denoise and Motion Blur, Levels, Curves, Masked Nik Dfine 2 Denoise, Masked Dynamic (Dynamic, Saturation), Star Shrink, Masked Unsharp Masking, Curves, Background Subtraction, Shadows/Highlights, Color Balance
I took my vintage Kodak Retina IIa camera for my first test drive yesterday. Although I've been collecting vintage medium-format cameras, this early 35mm folding camera really caught my eye.
For testing, I shot quite a few, 24 to be exact, seemingly mundane photos just to learn the camera. Turns out, it's very forgiving. I used a light meter, and shot a couple stops on either side of "ideal".
Unfortunately, I used some cheap Fuji 400ASA film and the grain is very apparent. I took the film to the one-hour service at Walgreens. When I saw the results, I was pretty discouraged. They were flat and the colors didn't pop at all. Plus, I didn't see much difference at the various exposure settings.
When I got home and scanned the negatives at 2400 dpi, I was much happier. It dawned on me that the Walgreens photo printer tries to "normalize" the photos to a set standard. What a difference my scans made!
History
The church with the dowend tower
History of joy and suffering of an old christian time witness of Vienna
The Minoritenkirche in Vienna is one of the oldest and most valuable artistic churches of the city. It is therefore not surprising that it also experienced a very eventful history. In all probability, the Franciscans were - how the Friars Minor (Thomas of Celano: "Ordo Friars Minor" ) also called on account of its founders personality, called by the Babenberg Duke Leopold VI the Glorious, in 1230 into the country. Here he gave them a lot, probably with a church (probably dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria), before the walls of the city, between the Scots Monastery (Schottenstift) and the ducal residence. It was not until 1237, and in 1271 the entire area was included in the extended boundary wall. The Minorite Barnabas Strasser says in his chronicle from 1766 that Leopold had asked on his return from the Holy Land in 1219 Francis in Assisi to the relocation of some brothers to Vienna, which was then carried out 1224. The Franciscans, however, are detectable only in 1234 by a bull of Gregory IX . to Frederick the Warlike, the last reigning Babenberg, by the year 1239 there was already the Austrian province. The above-mentioned chapel near the present Minoritenkirche the brothers have now expanded and dedicated it to the Holy Cross ("Santa Croce"). In 1251 the dedication was by the Bishop Berthold of Passau. In addition, the friars began to build a monastery, the 1234 is mentioned in a document (the monastery comprised finally the Ballhausplatz, Minoritenplatz and parts of the Hofburg and the Public Garden) . Of the original Romanesque building stock nothing has been preserved. Especially the great fire of 1276 has cremated large parts of the Convention.
However, the strong growth of the Friars Minor now living in Vienna made a new building of the church and monastery necessary. Already laid by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1276 the foundation stone for the new building of that temple which was now already on the present site of the church, the monarch also promised tax exemption for all who had contributed to the building of the church.
First stage of construction (beginning in the third third of the 13th century.): So he decided to build new church and convent, but by the death in battle of Ottokar in 1278 at the March Field (Jedlespeigen close Dürnkrut) delayed the construction, thus only after the turn of the century it couldbe completed. The embalmed body of Ottokar remained 30 weeks in the chapter house of the monastery until it was transferred to Znojmo and finally to Prague. The king's heart is buried in the original Chapel of St. Catherine, which was now newly assigned this name because the appropriation should be reserved to the Holy Cross of Christ, the new church and the convent . This newly built house of God was given the shape of a two-aisled nave with zweijochigem (two-bay) long choir (chancel), which closed with the five sides of a decagon. This long choir, the one 1785/86 and changed into a five-storey residential building, was canceled in 1903. In connection with the subway construction (1984-86), although archaeological excavations took place, it also laid the foundations of the former free long-choir, but most of the foundations of the old presbytery were destroyed at the same time. - The first church had a rood screen, even at the turn of the 15th/16th Century the still resulting image of the Saint Francis was attached by an unknown artist. Just from this first phase, we know by the Baroque Minoritenchronik (chronicle) first mentioned the name of a builder, namely brother Hans Schimpffenpfeil .
Second stage of construction (after 1317-1328 ) Blanche (Blanche) of Valois, the wife of Duke Rudolf III . ( 1307) and daughter of Philip the Fair, in 1304 decreed in his will to build a chapel in honor of her grandfather, the Holy King Louis IX. of France (canonized in 1297) and introduced for this purpose in 1000 available books. However, the project was realized only under Isabella (Elizabeth ) of Aragon, wife of King Frederick the Fair (1330 ). The chapel dedicated to their relatives canonized in 1317, St . Louis of Anjou, son of Charles II of Naples, great-nephew of Louis IX . of France and Franciscan archbishop of Toulouse (1297 ); it was first a self- cultivation in the NE (north-east) of the two-aisled nave Minoritenkirche, until the third construction phase it was integrated into the nave (now the north aisle with Anthony's Chapel). In 1328 the chapel was apparently completed because in 1330 the founder - was buried in the chapel of Louis - in terms of her testamentary disposition. The tomb of Queen Isabella stood in the middle of the Kapellenjochs (chapel bay) in front of the apse. The tracery show similarity with those of the Albertine choir of St. Stephen (built by Duke Albrecht II [ 1358] ) as well as with that of the Sanctuary Strassengel near the Cistercian monastery Rein near Graz (around the middle of the 14th century.). Probably belonged to the tympanum with the donor portraits of Frederick the Fair and Isabella at the feet of the Mother of God, which was inserted in the third construction phase of the church in the secondary north portal, the original entrance to the Ludwig chapel. It must be mentioned that even the Duchess Blanche (1305 ) built around 1330 a high early gothic marble grave, which unfortunately disappeared in the course of the renovation of the church in the years 1784-86 by the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg. It would be in Vienna today the only work of art of this kind
Third stage of construction (from 1339 -1400): Construction of a three-aisled hall (originally nave chapel Ludwig). The north wall of the chapel was extended to the west and in the north portal installed a second yoke. In addition, it was built a new west facade, with especially the central portal - including was designed - with jamb - pompous like the French late Gothic - perhaps under South German mediation. In the obituary of the Friars Minor brother Jacob of Paris is called ( around 1340), the confessor Albrecht II as the creator of this work of art. The duke and his wife Johanna von Außenmauer MinoritenkirchePfirt have obviously significantly contributed to the emergence of Vienna undoubtedly unique late Gothic cathedrals three portal group, there is also a representation of Albrecht and his wife in the middle portal next to the cross of Christ. Together with the two for a rich Mendikantenkirche (Mendicity church) this equipment is also of French models (see Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris [after 1285] ) constructed in 1350-1370 with splendid rose windows (with "bright" and "rotating" tracery) to the south wall - unusually without a doubt. The workshop, which built the Ludwig chapel was also busy with the west facade ("Minoritenwerkstatt" (workshop)). 1350-60 or later today, finally, the bell tower was only partially built (as a builder is a lay brother Nicholas, 1385 or 1386 called ). The tower consists mainly of two parts, a lower part made of stone blocks to the height of the nave, and an upper, octagonal section of mixed masonry. Its crown had because of damage - especially been renewed several times and was eventually removed - during the Turkish wars . The consecration of the enlarged Minoritenkirche must have taken place about the year 1390. So that the church had received its valid look for the next time.
In 1529, during the first siege of the monastery and the church even more extensive damage suffering (launch of the spire). Since the monastery of the Observant (Franciscans) had been destroyed by the Turks, these sought to supplant the Franciscans in their convent, where John Capistrano, the founder of the "brown Franciscan" (Observant) in Vienna, lived some time in the Franciscan monastery and in the Church had preached, but eventually instructed the Emperor Ferdinand I the now homeless Observant buildings on Singerschen Platz. In fact, the number of Wiener Friars Minor has then shrunk to seven, so that they felt compelled to call Fathers from Italy. But that but could not prevent that the church from 1569-1620 war a Protestant church. Interestingly, originate numerous coats of arms on the balcony of this period. At that time the Conventual were only in the possession of Louis Chapel and the Chapel of St. Catherine. Also during the second Turkish siege in 1683 the tower served as an observation tower and the Minoritenkirche was accordingly fired by the Turks and severely damaged. In 1733 the tower is adorned with a copper dome, but because of the danger of collapse eventually had to be removed. It brought the church to that low pointed tiled roof, which still exists today .
More and more, the bands developed in the Minoritenkirche, especially Ludwig chapel and cemetery, grave sites of the nobility. Besides Blanche of Valois and Isabella of Aragon and Margaret, the last country Duchess of Tyrol, was named Maultasch ( 1369 ), is buried here, as well as members of Lichtsteiner, Ditrichsteins, Puchaimer, Hojo, Stauffenberger, Greifensteiner; Piccolomini, Medici, Cavalcanti, Montaldi, Valperga, etc. (many of them are listed in the "Libro d'Oro of the "Congregation Italiana"). It should also be mentioned that the Franciscans since the end of the 14th Century took lively interest in teaching at the University of Vienna, especially of course in the subjects of theology, but also the jurisprudence. At the beginning of the 18th Century lived in the Vienna alsoin the Viennese Convention the Venetian cosmographer Br Vincenzo Coronelli, which the Emperor Charles VI. appointed to head the regulation of the Danube and its famous globes are now in the globe collection of the National Library in Vienna.
It is worthnoting, finally, the fact that around 1543 on the Ballhausplatz near the Imperial Palace from parts of the monastery a small hospital was donated and that the Franciscans for 13 years did all the counseling in this new Hofspital, at this time was the newly restored Chapel of St. Catherine Hospital Church. Another wing of the former minority monastery was home to the Imperial Court Library, 1558-1613.
To Minoritenkirche the second half of the 18th Century brought drastic changes. This development was initiated by the fact that the naturalized Italians in Vienna founded an Italian congregation in 1625/26 under the guidance of the Jesuit priest and professor at the University of Vienna Wilhelm Lamormaini. By the year 1773, when the Jesuit Order was temporarily released their Italian trade fairs celebrated this "Congregation Italiana" in a chapel of the Jesuits at Bognergasse, near the old Jesuit church "Am Hof". But in 1773 that little church was by the imperial government requisited. Then the Italians found in St. Catherine Chapel at Ballhausplatz, which popularly still is referred as the Italian church - ie not only the Minoritenkirche - a new home. After a thorough restoration of the chapel was consecrated on 1 February 1775 ceremony in memory of the "Santa Maria Maggiore" to Rome in the name of "Madonna della Neve" (Mary Snow church'). The Holy Mass conducted Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), who was in 1774 chamber composer and conductor of the Italian opera in Vienna, from 1788-90 to 1824 Kapellmeister and Director of the Court Chapel. Pope Pius VI . visited during his stay in Vienna on Good Friday of 1782 the church "Maria Schnee" on the Ballhausplatz. But this state of the law was short-lived: in 1783 Emperor Joseph II shifted the Friars Minor in the former Trinitarian on Alserstrasse, and the Minoritenkirche was on the grounds that the chapel "p Maria della Neve" for about 7,000 Italians living in Vienna was too small, the Congregation italiana transferred to the condition that the Community had now to restore the Great Church (imperial decree of June 3, 1784). The richly decorated chapel "Madonna della Neve" went on an imperial property and was finally in the late 18th Century canceled. Also, the Franciscan monastery passed into state ownership: one is used for imperial and feudal law firms. The cemetery near the church was abandoned. With the greatest financial burdens now led the congregation from the imperial mission of the church renovation, the thorough repair of the church was entrusted to the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg (1784-1789). In order to cover the construction costs somewhat, were the old long choir (chancel) and the beginning of the 14th Century. (Consecrated in 1317 ) at the western end of the south side of the nave grown (and now defunct) St. John's Chapel (Chapel Puchaimische Kapelle ) converted into residences. The solemn consecration of the church under the name of "Madonna della Neve" took place on 16 April 1786, on Easter Sunday.
But soon was moving closer to the church the next hardship: In the years of the Napoleonic wars, the church should serve as a warehouse for straw, hay and for different equipment, so in 1809 also the forced evacuation of the building took place. Shortly after engaging the French eventually turned this into a provisions store. Two-thirds of the floor was smashed by the rolling of drums and by the retraction of cars. In the middle of the church a wide, tunnel-like cavity had been excavated and other parts of the floor destroyed a in God's house capped oven. Until 18 April 1810, the then Prefect of the Minoritenkirche received back the church keys. In 1825 died one of the most famous Kongregaten (congregats) of this century, namely, the composer Antonio Salieri, and on 22 June this year resounded in the Italian national church with the participation of the court chapel and the first Hofchores (court choir) the Verdi Requiem.
As the situation after the Napoleonic war turmoil in the mid-19th Century had normalized, Emperor Ferdinand the Good in 1845 donated to the "Congregation italiana" the according to the model of Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco (1495-97) designed mosaic of the Last Supper, which the Roman Giacomo Raffaelli of 12 panels with a total weight of 20 tons by Napoleon's orders had made in the years 1806-1814, and was eventually bought by Emperor Franz for the Belvedere Palace. To that gave Emperor Ferdinand a considerable amount (8000 guilders) to allow the mounting of the work of art in the Minoritenkirche. The inauguration of the altar took place on 26nd in March 1847. In 1852 Emperor Franz Joseph came and soon the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in the "Congregation ". The former paid each year mostly coming from out of town fast preachers for the Church, in return he regularly received at the Festival of Lights (2 February) as well as on Palm Sunday the sacred candle or the olive branch.
The last major change in the church took place in the years 1892-1905 at the restructuring of the Minoritenplatz. Now two new courses, namely the Ballhausplatz and Minoritenplatz emerged, the houses adjacent to the church (former Long John's Chapel Choir and) were demolished. The former Franciscan monastery had to give way to the House, Court and State Archives. Even the church was given a new face, although the plans of the architect Viktor Luntz due to financial reasons only could be realized partially, there were clearly visible changes: Most noticeable to the viewer is undoubtedly the Gothic passage on the south side of the walled grave stones originated partly from the bands, and part of the adjacent once cemetery, as well as the above installed "Minoritenhaus". 1907 were placed in the tower four new bells cast in Trento, which is, however - with the exception of one, St. Anthony ordained, Bell - 1914 confiscated. The solemn consecration of the church took place on 4 Held in May 1909 in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph. Due to the highly cooperative attitude of the Congregation towards the transformation plans of the City of Vienna Lueger, the mayor promised that the court should never be installed directly behind the church.
More important restoration work was carried out 1960-1962 (church affairs), in the last decade, as the outer walls have been restored.
About Minoritenplatz finally should be mentioned that the pastoral care of Italians after 1786 by each rectors appointed by the Archbishop was, from 1808 to 1813 was also here Clemens Maria Hofbauer who died 1820 and later was canonized working as a church rector. Therefore, there is also his monument on the north side of the church. Since the year 1953, and officially by the order of the archbishop Ordinariate of 1 December 1957 is the Friars Minor transmitted the pastoral care of the Italian community again, firstly the Fathers belonging to the Order of Padua Province while they are under the Austrian province today. In the year 2003, ie 50 years after the adoption of the pastoral care of Italians in the Minoritenkirche by the Conventual, that Francis statue was made, nowadays, it is located on the north side of the church, next to the Baroque cultivation.
(Text by Dr. Manfred Zips , Ital. Congregation )
.
YOU ARE NEVER, NEVER, never… going to see a TV series like this, again. Ever.
HAWKEYE and CHINGACHGOOK turn a young, reckless, self-destructive man, away from his self-hate, with that disarming easy manner of theirs.
First with that, and then, by giving him a second chance.
"Young brave, not have right, to throw away life."
"Life belong to tribe."
Contrast these wise words of Chingachgook, with today's fickle, trendy, suicide encouragement cheerleaders across the globe.
You know what I'm talkin' about.
Think Belgium where the elderly and the mentally ill, can be forcibly euthanized for organ harvesting and/or to save healthcare dollars. Euthanasia is being 'normalized' there and in other western countries by a very subtle form of grand social engineering (secular human utilitarianism) whereby unelected elites who aren't concerned about your granny, can, and will make very direct decisions about her ongoing longevity in the near future, here in Canada the good.
Recently, an alcoholic in Europe, chose doctor-assisted suicide because, well, he was an alcoholic! A very treatable condition.
He shouldn't even have that option available.
This people-are-disposable mentality flies in the face of thousands of years of Western culture, Jewish and Christian religiosity, and certainly Hawkeye and Chingachgook's worldview. A worldview that continues on into eternity by the way. Higher intelligence, it seems, can always find ways to rationalize the most abhorrent practices in contemporary society. Eggheads are better suited to dehumanization than are red-blooded frontiersmen, and are thus able to separate emotions from actions. Elitists are able to do the mostly ghastly things, wipe their mouths, and ask shocked onlookers, "What's wrong?"
'nuff said.
This Pickering winter scene was filmed in an ACTUAL CANADIAN WINTER (which was brutal on the oil used in those large, ancient, movie cameras, back in the day — which would really freeze up)… because that's the way real men did things back then.
Real winter filming was harsh. Outside it was whip-snap cold.
They liked it. They loved it!
Today people use the walking trails alongside the West Duffins Creek (in Pickering) WITHOUT REALIZING they are on, and walking through, the former site of this FAMOUS 50s CLASSIC TV series.
No idea, not a clue…
Yet, Canada's HOLLYWOOD NORTH industry began right here.
Ground Zero or, rather, SET ZERO.
REMEMBER, THIS TRIP BACK IN TIME was helped along because of the great research efforts of others, and the 'Hawkeye' fanship of others.
I learned that "Hawkeye", one of my fav boyhood TV shows, was actually filmed in CANADA through one of the links below.
So I had to check things out (go there), MYSELF, because of that.
So, do check out these "Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans" links below!
Clayton Self: johnhart.tripod.com/pickeringhawkeye.html
Steve Jensen: www.members.tripod.com/~JohnHart/hawkloca.html
Ian and Kyle Macpherson: www.members.tripod.com/~JohnHart/starhawk.htm
… also check out Clayton Self's additional investigative work, his The Forest Rangers TV Show Fan Site. Hey, remember that show?!: forestrangers.bravehost.com
History
The church with the downed tower
History of joy and suffering of an old christian time witness of Vienna
The Minoritenkirche in Vienna is one of the oldest and most valuable artistic churches of the city. It is therefore not surprising that it also experienced a very eventful history. In all probability, the Franciscans were - how the Friars Minor (Thomas of Celano: "Ordo Friars Minor" ) also called on account of its founders personality, called by the Babenberg Duke Leopold VI the Glorious, in 1230 into the country. Here he gave them a lot, probably with a church (probably dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria), before the walls of the city, between the Scots Monastery (Schottenstift) and the ducal residence. It was not until 1237, and in 1271 the entire area was included in the extended boundary wall. The Minorite Barnabas Strasser says in his chronicle from 1766 that Leopold had asked on his return from the Holy Land in 1219 Francis in Assisi to the relocation of some brothers to Vienna, which was then carried out 1224. The Franciscans, however, are detectable only in 1234 by a bull of Gregory IX . to Frederick the Warlike, the last reigning Babenberg, by the year 1239 there was already the Austrian province. The above-mentioned chapel near the present Minoritenkirche the brothers have now expanded and dedicated it to the Holy Cross ("Santa Croce"). In 1251 the dedication was by the Bishop Berthold of Passau. In addition, the friars began to build a monastery, the 1234 is mentioned in a document (the monastery comprised finally the Ballhausplatz, Minoritenplatz and parts of the Hofburg and the Public Garden) . Of the original Romanesque building stock nothing has been preserved. Especially the great fire of 1276 has cremated large parts of the Convention.
However, the strong growth of the Friars Minor now living in Vienna made a new building of the church and monastery necessary. Already laid by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1276 the foundation stone for the new building of that temple which was now already on the present site of the church, the monarch also promised tax exemption for all who had contributed to the building of the church.
First stage of construction (beginning in the third third of the 13th century.): So he decided to build new church and convent, but by the death in battle of Ottokar in 1278 at the March Field (Jedlespeigen close Dürnkrut) delayed the construction, thus only after the turn of the century it couldbe completed. The embalmed body of Ottokar remained 30 weeks in the chapter house of the monastery until it was transferred to Znojmo and finally to Prague. The king's heart is buried in the original Chapel of St. Catherine, which was now newly assigned this name because the appropriation should be reserved to the Holy Cross of Christ, the new church and the convent . This newly built house of God was given the shape of a two-aisled nave with zweijochigem (two-bay) long choir (chancel), which closed with the five sides of a decagon. This long choir, the one 1785/86 and changed into a five-storey residential building, was canceled in 1903. In connection with the subway construction (1984-86), although archaeological excavations took place, it also laid the foundations of the former free long-choir, but most of the foundations of the old presbytery were destroyed at the same time. - The first church had a rood screen, even at the turn of the 15th/16th Century the still resulting image of the Saint Francis was attached by an unknown artist. Just from this first phase, we know by the Baroque Minoritenchronik (chronicle) first mentioned the name of a builder, namely brother Hans Schimpffenpfeil .
Second stage of construction (after 1317-1328 ) Blanche (Blanche) of Valois, the wife of Duke Rudolf III . ( 1307) and daughter of Philip the Fair, in 1304 decreed in his will to build a chapel in honor of her grandfather, the Holy King Louis IX. of France (canonized in 1297) and introduced for this purpose in 1000 available books. However, the project was realized only under Isabella (Elizabeth ) of Aragon, wife of King Frederick the Fair (1330 ). The chapel dedicated to their relatives canonized in 1317, St . Louis of Anjou, son of Charles II of Naples, great-nephew of Louis IX . of France and Franciscan archbishop of Toulouse (1297 ); it was first a self- cultivation in the NE (north-east) of the two-aisled nave Minoritenkirche, until the third construction phase it was integrated into the nave (now the north aisle with Anthony's Chapel). In 1328 the chapel was apparently completed because in 1330 the founder - was buried in the chapel of Louis - in terms of her testamentary disposition. The tomb of Queen Isabella stood in the middle of the Kapellenjochs (chapel bay) in front of the apse. The tracery show similarity with those of the Albertine choir of St. Stephen (built by Duke Albrecht II [ 1358] ) as well as with that of the Sanctuary Strassengel near the Cistercian monastery Rein near Graz (around the middle of the 14th century.). Probably belonged to the tympanum with the donor portraits of Frederick the Fair and Isabella at the feet of the Mother of God, which was inserted in the third construction phase of the church in the secondary north portal, the original entrance to the Ludwig chapel. It must be mentioned that even the Duchess Blanche (1305 ) built around 1330 a high early gothic marble grave, which unfortunately disappeared in the course of the renovation of the church in the years 1784-86 by the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg. It would be in Vienna today the only work of art of this kind
Third stage of construction (from 1339 -1400): Construction of a three-aisled hall (originally nave chapel Ludwig). The north wall of the chapel was extended to the west and in the north portal installed a second yoke. In addition, it was built a new west facade, with especially the central portal - including was designed - with jamb - pompous like the French late Gothic - perhaps under South German mediation. In the obituary of the Friars Minor brother Jacob of Paris is called ( around 1340), the confessor Albrecht II as the creator of this work of art. The duke and his wife Johanna von Außenmauer MinoritenkirchePfirt have obviously significantly contributed to the emergence of Vienna undoubtedly unique late Gothic cathedrals three portal group, there is also a representation of Albrecht and his wife in the middle portal next to the cross of Christ. Together with the two for a rich Mendikantenkirche (Mendicity church) this equipment is also of French models (see Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris [after 1285] ) constructed in 1350-1370 with splendid rose windows (with "bright" and "rotating" tracery) to the south wall - unusually without a doubt. The workshop, which built the Ludwig chapel was also busy with the west facade ("Minoritenwerkstatt" (workshop)). 1350-60 or later today, finally, the bell tower was only partially built (as a builder is a lay brother Nicholas, 1385 or 1386 called ). The tower consists mainly of two parts, a lower part made of stone blocks to the height of the nave, and an upper, octagonal section of mixed masonry. Its crown had because of damage - especially been renewed several times and was eventually removed - during the Turkish wars . The consecration of the enlarged Minoritenkirche must have taken place about the year 1390. So that the church had received its valid look for the next time.
In 1529, during the first siege of the monastery and the church even more extensive damage suffering (launch of the spire). Since the monastery of the Observant (Franciscans) had been destroyed by the Turks, these sought to supplant the Franciscans in their convent, where John Capistrano, the founder of the "brown Franciscan" (Observant) in Vienna, lived some time in the Franciscan monastery and in the Church had preached, but eventually instructed the Emperor Ferdinand I the now homeless Observant buildings on Singerschen Platz. In fact, the number of Wiener Friars Minor has then shrunk to seven, so that they felt compelled to call Fathers from Italy. But that but could not prevent that the church from 1569-1620 war a Protestant church. Interestingly, originate numerous coats of arms on the balcony of this period. At that time the Conventual were only in the possession of Louis Chapel and the Chapel of St. Catherine. Also during the second Turkish siege in 1683 the tower served as an observation tower and the Minoritenkirche was accordingly fired by the Turks and severely damaged. In 1733 the tower is adorned with a copper dome, but because of the danger of collapse eventually had to be removed. It brought the church to that low pointed tiled roof, which still exists today .
More and more, the bands developed in the Minoritenkirche, especially Ludwig chapel and cemetery, grave sites of the nobility. Besides Blanche of Valois and Isabella of Aragon and Margaret, the last country Duchess of Tyrol, was named Maultasch ( 1369 ), is buried here, as well as members of Lichtsteiner, Ditrichsteins, Puchaimer, Hojo, Stauffenberger, Greifensteiner; Piccolomini, Medici, Cavalcanti, Montaldi, Valperga, etc. (many of them are listed in the "Libro d'Oro of the "Congregation Italiana"). It should also be mentioned that the Franciscans since the end of the 14th Century took lively interest in teaching at the University of Vienna, especially of course in the subjects of theology, but also the jurisprudence. At the beginning of the 18th Century lived in the Vienna alsoin the Viennese Convention the Venetian cosmographer Br Vincenzo Coronelli, which the Emperor Charles VI. appointed to head the regulation of the Danube and its famous globes are now in the globe collection of the National Library in Vienna.
It is worthnoting, finally, the fact that around 1543 on the Ballhausplatz near the Imperial Palace from parts of the monastery a small hospital was donated and that the Franciscans for 13 years did all the counseling in this new Hofspital, at this time was the newly restored Chapel of St. Catherine Hospital Church. Another wing of the former minority monastery was home to the Imperial Court Library, 1558-1613.
To Minoritenkirche the second half of the 18th Century brought drastic changes. This development was initiated by the fact that the naturalized Italians in Vienna founded an Italian congregation in 1625/26 under the guidance of the Jesuit priest and professor at the University of Vienna Wilhelm Lamormaini. By the year 1773, when the Jesuit Order was temporarily released their Italian trade fairs celebrated this "Congregation Italiana" in a chapel of the Jesuits at Bognergasse, near the old Jesuit church "Am Hof". But in 1773 that little church was by the imperial government requisited. Then the Italians found in St. Catherine Chapel at Ballhausplatz, which popularly still is referred as the Italian church - ie not only the Minoritenkirche - a new home. After a thorough restoration of the chapel was consecrated on 1 February 1775 ceremony in memory of the "Santa Maria Maggiore" to Rome in the name of "Madonna della Neve" (Mary Snow church'). The Holy Mass conducted Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), who was in 1774 chamber composer and conductor of the Italian opera in Vienna, from 1788-90 to 1824 Kapellmeister and Director of the Court Chapel. Pope Pius VI . visited during his stay in Vienna on Good Friday of 1782 the church "Maria Schnee" on the Ballhausplatz. But this state of the law was short-lived: in 1783 Emperor Joseph II shifted the Friars Minor in the former Trinitarian on Alserstrasse, and the Minoritenkirche was on the grounds that the chapel "p Maria della Neve" for about 7,000 Italians living in Vienna was too small, the Congregation italiana transferred to the condition that the Community had now to restore the Great Church (imperial decree of June 3, 1784). The richly decorated chapel "Madonna della Neve" went on an imperial property and was finally in the late 18th Century canceled. Also, the Franciscan monastery passed into state ownership: one is used for imperial and feudal law firms. The cemetery near the church was abandoned. With the greatest financial burdens now led the congregation from the imperial mission of the church renovation, the thorough repair of the church was entrusted to the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg (1784-1789). In order to cover the construction costs somewhat, were the old long choir (chancel) and the beginning of the 14th Century. (Consecrated in 1317 ) at the western end of the south side of the nave grown (and now defunct) St. John's Chapel (Chapel Puchaimische Kapelle ) converted into residences. The solemn consecration of the church under the name of "Madonna della Neve" took place on 16 April 1786, on Easter Sunday.
But soon was moving closer to the church the next hardship: In the years of the Napoleonic wars, the church should serve as a warehouse for straw, hay and for different equipment, so in 1809 also the forced evacuation of the building took place. Shortly after engaging the French eventually turned this into a provisions store. Two-thirds of the floor was smashed by the rolling of drums and by the retraction of cars. In the middle of the church a wide, tunnel-like cavity had been excavated and other parts of the floor destroyed a in God's house capped oven. Until 18 April 1810, the then Prefect of the Minoritenkirche received back the church keys. In 1825 died one of the most famous Kongregaten (congregats) of this century, namely, the composer Antonio Salieri, and on 22 June this year resounded in the Italian national church with the participation of the court chapel and the first Hofchores (court choir) the Verdi Requiem.
As the situation after the Napoleonic war turmoil in the mid-19th Century had normalized, Emperor Ferdinand the Good in 1845 donated to the "Congregation italiana" the according to the model of Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco (1495-97) designed mosaic of the Last Supper, which the Roman Giacomo Raffaelli of 12 panels with a total weight of 20 tons by Napoleon's orders had made in the years 1806-1814, and was eventually bought by Emperor Franz for the Belvedere Palace. To that gave Emperor Ferdinand a considerable amount (8000 guilders) to allow the mounting of the work of art in the Minoritenkirche. The inauguration of the altar took place on 26nd in March 1847. In 1852 Emperor Franz Joseph came and soon the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in the "Congregation ". The former paid each year mostly coming from out of town fast preachers for the Church, in return he regularly received at the Festival of Lights (2 February) as well as on Palm Sunday the sacred candle or the olive branch.
The last major change in the church took place in the years 1892-1905 at the restructuring of the Minoritenplatz. Now two new courses, namely the Ballhausplatz and Minoritenplatz emerged, the houses adjacent to the church (former Long John's Chapel Choir and) were demolished. The former Franciscan monastery had to give way to the House, Court and State Archives. Even the church was given a new face, although the plans of the architect Viktor Luntz due to financial reasons only could be realized partially, there were clearly visible changes: Most noticeable to the viewer is undoubtedly the Gothic passage on the south side of the walled grave stones originated partly from the bands, and part of the adjacent once cemetery, as well as the above installed "Minoritenhaus". 1907 were placed in the tower four new bells cast in Trento, which is, however - with the exception of one, St. Anthony ordained, Bell - 1914 confiscated. The solemn consecration of the church took place on 4 Held in May 1909 in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph. Due to the highly cooperative attitude of the Congregation towards the transformation plans of the City of Vienna Lueger, the mayor promised that the court should never be installed directly behind the church.
More important restoration work was carried out 1960-1962 (church affairs), in the last decade, as the outer walls have been restored.
About Minoritenplatz finally should be mentioned that the pastoral care of Italians after 1786 by each rectors appointed by the Archbishop was, from 1808 to 1813 was also here Clemens Maria Hofbauer who died 1820 and later was canonized working as a church rector. Therefore, there is also his monument on the north side of the church. Since the year 1953, and officially by the order of the archbishop Ordinariate of 1 December 1957 is the Friars Minor transmitted the pastoral care of the Italian community again, firstly the Fathers belonging to the Order of Padua Province while they are under the Austrian province today. In the year 2003, ie 50 years after the adoption of the pastoral care of Italians in the Minoritenkirche by the Conventual, that Francis statue was made, nowadays, it is located on the north side of the church, next to the Baroque cultivation.
(Text by Dr. Manfred Zips , Ital. Congregation )
3264
2448
pixel
592149887
314
2
0.654
0.244
normalized
0.631
0.325
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592149887
281
3
0.452
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normalized
0.401
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Face
View On Black Common kidneyvetch (Anthyllis vulneraria)!
Anthyllis is little known today but was traditionally used to relieve spasms, detoxify, reduce swelling, and promote wound healing.
Elisabeth Sigmund rediscovered anthyllis, finding it normalized both oily and dry conditions as well as severely irritated skin. Anthyllis has a generally stimulating and normalizing effect on the skin.
The Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) is an H II region located approximately 12,400 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga. The nebula is more than 100 light-years across. It is part of a larger star-forming region that is also home to the nearby Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405).
First of few images that have literally taken months to gather enough data. The clouds have been brutal this Winter in NE Ohio.
The framing is not what I was after as I was figuring out how to setup my rotator properly. One night was off by about 45 degrees. But couldn't afford to lose the data. This is a SHO with Narrowband Normalization.
Total Integration: 21.5 hours
Stowe Community Church, Stowe, VT.
Our first day of travel in the New England area was going according to our plans. It was a beautiful summer day and our road trip through the picturesque VT100, known for its celebrated Fall foliage, was taking us through a number of small towns with white-steeple churches. As photographers, we plan to arrive at photogenic locations during the best light. That day was no different. Our plan was to take a picture of the most popular white steeple in VT, the Stowe Community Church, during sunset before continuing on to Burlington, VT. As we were setting up our shots, a young white male, maybe in his early twenties, slowed down as he was passing on his bike and yelled “Go home” as he was staring right at us.
My wife and I were there completely alone. We felt vulnerable, angry, and terrified, all at the same time. As an Indian American, I have been a victim of hate crimes and hate speech before. When I was a college student at a small Midwestern college campus, I was punched in the face rather hard as the perpetrator yelled, ‘you f***ing Iranian.’ As I recovered from the punch with my nose bleeding, everyone around me was just ignoring me as if nothing had happened! Over the years, I have had other incidents happen as well. In each of these incidents, either there was no one around or no one came to help. I did not, however, formally report them either.
The reason why I am writing about this now is to simply draw attention to the times in which we live. Hate crimes against Muslims in this country have increased by 67% last year. Since the election, it seems like reported incidents of such crimes have increased alarmingly and it almost feels like they are becoming the norm and to be expected. What used to be fringe nationalistic groups are now becoming mainstream and they are being normalized every day. Social tensions, it seems, are ripping apart the fragile fabric of our nation. Meanwhile, immigrants, ethnic, religious and other minorities are living in fear, and are anxious as we look toward an uncertain future.
We need to move past this and move the nation towards being a kinder and tolerant one again. Mariah Teli, an Atlanta area high school teacher who was a victim of a recent hate crime, said “the world is a better place when we all do our part to understand, empathize, and care for one another.” I want to believe that people will take action by recognizing that the need of the hour is empathy and tolerance. It is time to move our society to be on the right side of morality. We need to start to make baby steps again to move us all towards that utopia – the ever so waning ‘post-racial America.’
www.arqueologiadelperu.com/colombia-venezuela-crisis-dela...
The Colombian government's border crisis with Venezuela delayed the start of formal peace talks between Bogota and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, guerrilla group, a source close to the process said Thursday.
Leon Valencia, the head of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a former ELN guerrilla and an expert on Colombia's armed conflict, told EFE Thursday that the crisis had caused a postponement of "a few days," but he expressed confidence that the talks would kick off in the coming weeks.
ELN and Colombian government representatives "had agreed on an agenda, on a methodology for the negotiations, and in the last meeting, I understand, they had established that once (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro and Santos met they would sit down to agree on a date for (the start of formal) negotiations" between the two sides, he said.
The Venezuelan and Colombian leaders sat down face-to-face on Monday in Quito for a meeting backed by the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
In the talks, they agreed on the immediate return of the countries' respective ambassadors, who had earlier been recalled amid the border spat.
The two presidents also arranged for ministerial meetings to be held to normalize the situation on the 2,219-kilometer (1,379-mile) frontier, much of which has been gradually closed over the past several weeks by order of Maduro, who has defended the measure as part of the fight against paramilitary activity and smuggling.
Hundreds of Colombian citizens living in Venezuela were deported as part of the crackdown and thousands more left voluntarily.
Colombia's government and the ELN have been engaged since January 2014 in "exploratory conversations" about starting a peace process similar to the one Bogota has been pursuing with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for nearly three years in Cuba.
The contacts between Santos' administration and the ELN, however, have taken place in neighboring Ecuador.
The ELN's top leader, Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista, alias "Gabino," said on Sept. 9 that only "3 percent" of the agenda for the talks remains to be agreed upon before formal peace talks can begin.
Valencia, for his part, said the major breakthrough this week by the Colombian government and the FARC on transitional justice for conflict-related crimes - regarded by many analysts as the thorniest issue of the peace talks - would "pave the way for agreements with the ELN."
Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, a.k.a. "Timochenko," shook hands on Wednesday in Havana in a ceremony attended by Cuban President Raul Castro and set a six-month deadline for inking a final peace deal.
Valencia said the justice accord, which includes the creation of special courts to hear alleged crimes committed by FARC rebels and government forces, as well as reparations for victims, was also significant for the ELN guerrillas.
He said they could adhere to that part of the talks as well and consider one of the aspects of their future peace negotiations to be resolved, thus expediting the process. EFE
I picked out this breaded vegan chicken product while at Orii, and the owner offered me a sauce packet that she recommended, saying they pair very well together. So nice and helpful! I did try them together and they were indeed delicious!
The packaging on this product I thought was very interesting. The anthropomorphic veggies in the corner are adorable (though I certainly wouldn't want to eat sentient veggies!). The chicken would be adorable too, but the fact that her feathers have all been ripped out is definitely less adorable! A real bird would NOT be happy after their feathers are ripped out! But the imagery of a "plucked chicken" has been normalized in a lot of human society. Human society is very odd indeed!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why veganism:
Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
I occupy about one third of the height of this narrow canyon.
I am wearing my normalized desert hiking clothing, white cotton pants available from EastEssence (PTM8, order one size up) and a Badger Sportswear Men's B-Dry Long Sleeve Tee, White, Medium. For a more radical desert hiking outfit, check out Desert Clothing. Want to see this photo devoid of some schmuck standing in the photo - vanish?
The Slot is a narrow siltstone canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
PAZ_2689
A Palestinian child plays with a toy car on Israel's separation wall in the West Bank. (Aisha Mershani)
A couple of blocks from the Vasa Museum, on the walk to the ferry, one passes a massive 4 sided mirror along the marina dock, which makes a fabulous tool for a self-portrait, inserting the harbor in the background. With the aid or post-processing, the mirror effect is reversed, and all text is normalized.
Compares the relative storage densities as they relate to price for all current Apple iPod's. Inspiried by today's release of the ultra-tiny Nano, general curiosity, and a lot of boredom.
The density figures show the storage density as gigabytes per ounces (gb / oz) or gigabytes per cubic inches (gb / in^3), all normalized by dividing price into the density. So for the in^3 data, we're looking at the price per amount of bits in a given volume, or price per "bit density," if you will. For the ounces data, it's instead the price per "bits per mass" or "specific capacity," if you're really willing to use some physics jargon (Gabe's fault, not mine).
The real motivation here was to compare the sizes (in both volume and mass) of all the iPods with respect to something we can all understand, money!
Major thanks to Gabe Rockefeller for helping out quite a bit with this work!
The raw data -- columns are size (in GB, figure the model out yourself), price/GB, price/(GB/oz), and price/(GB/in^3):
.512 || 193.35 || 150.81 || 206.35
1 || 129.00 || 100.62 || 137.67
2 || 99.50 || 149.25 || 150.44
4 || 62.25 || 93.38 || 94.12
20 || 14.95 || 88.21 || 92.68
60 || 6.65 || 42.56 || 49.08
Slowly coming back to feelings normalization.
Exper - www.hobosedizioni.it
Design: Apophysis - Rendering: Flam3
this is now my fave item at all dim sums. please excuse the slight blurriness to this picture, as i took it with totally dilated pupils.... so i could not see worth poo poo. haha. i wanted to take a shot before eating.. now that they are gone, and my eyes are almost normalized, i can not retake the shot..
This is a delicious "bao" that has a filling made of yolk and milk and with a nicely sweetened vanilla-ey taste. in hong kong, they make them crystallized.. as you can see here
www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr...
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Nikon D5600 -3 eV'i NEF işleme sonucu
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6000x4000 pixel view from here : c2.staticflickr.com/2/1877/44847510511_fbd48b692d_o.jpg
Taken 16-17 Mar 12
ES 127ED
CGEM
Mini Borg 50
QSI 583wsg
L: 9x900sec Binned 1x1
R,G,B: 6x300sec each, Binned 2x2
Acquisition with Nebulosity/PHD
Cal, registered, normalized, data reject, stacking with CCDStack 2
Color combined, final processing with CS5
TRIGGER WARNING...buahahaha!!!
A social anthropologist named J.D. Unwin studied 86 different societies. He found that when a society practiced strict heterosexual monogamy the family unit flourished and so did the society. When strict heterosexual monogamy waned, however, so did the family unit along with the society. When sexual freedom was practiced it created a weak family unit and a weak society, eventually leading to collapse.
“Sexually permissive societies always fall.” - J.D. Unwin
From feminism to the sexual revolution, to the sexual grooming of children: how will the effects of feminism and the sexual revolution end?
Sexual promiscuity and loose sexual restraints always precedes a collapse of a civilization. The more an empire becomes sexually promiscuous the less rational, creative, and productive it becomes. The more a society becomes sexually promiscuous, the more it loses its work ethic. The people become so engrossed in fulfilling their sexual fantasies of fornication and homosexuality that their birthrates drop and their society declines. Such a society becomes selfish and lazy, and it eventually collapses. This collapse of society can come in many forms: anarchy, civil war, totalitarianism, or conquest. These things have already started to happen in America: rioting, division, big government, mass migration.
The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less productive it becomes.
The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less creative it becomes.
The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less innovative it becomes.
The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less prosperous it becomes.
The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less it thrives.
An empire in decline lives in excess, especially in sexual excess. The most successful civilizations practice strict heterosexual monogamy: marriage between one man and one woman for life. They practice chastity. They have no premarital sex, and they have no extramarital sex. The men in this kind of civilization channel their sexual responsibilities (energy) towards providing for their families, they channel their aggression (testosterone) towards protecting their families.
Sexual promiscuity eats away at the fabric of the family unit. When the structure of the family unit falls apart, so does the structure of society. The more sexual morality declines, the more perverted and sexualized a civilization becomes. They indulge in multiple sexual partners during their lifetime, becoming less and less faithful. Divorce skyrockets, splitting up families. Some remarry, and two families are mixed together. Others are raised in single parent homes, thus many children grow up in fatherless homes. These things change normal family dynamics. If you want to see how this works, then look at the ghettos in America. Black men, instead of channeling their sexual energy towards raising a family, channel their testosterone towards killing one another. Their gang is their family. But neo-Marxism (political correctness) has made these things taboo to talk about. You know the woke mindset: censor all opposition. First they censor their opposition; then in time, they kill their opposition. Since we all know history, we know how these things end.
From the 45 goals of communism (The Naked Communist):
Goal 25: Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
Goal 26: Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”
Goal 40: Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
The industrial revolution caused great upheaval, which put a lot of strain on the family. It greatly affected the family structure, including the extended family structure (both play an important roll in raising children). First-wave feminism had some good aspects to it, like: the fight for better working conditions. The working conditions in factories were horrendous. My problem with first-wave feminism is that it rebelled against certain Biblical and traditional gender and roles. This rebellion against gender roles has continued through every wave of feminism, all the way to its fight for transgenderism. “Equality for women won’t happen until ‘all traditional gender roles’ in ‘all domains’ are equal.” Feminism is now replacing women with transwomen, and it will one day replace humans with transhumans. The second, third and fourth waves of feminism are straight up Cultural Marxism. The oppressed vs the oppressor! Equality for all: men in women’s washrooms; men in women’s change rooms; men in women’s beauty pageants; men in women’s sports; men in women’s prisons. As you can see, our culture is decaying. We are losing our morals and our sanity.
Feminism and the sexual revolution normalized sexual promiscuity among adults, then they normalized it among teenagers, and now they are normalizing it among children. They are causing children to be confused about their genders, thanks to Gender Theory (Gender-Marxism). They are causing teenagers to become disconnected from reality, which is causing them to lose their gender identities. Theses young people are being put on puberty blockers, and they are having sex changes (it’s a billion dollar industry). The more sexually promiscuous a society becomes, the less rational it becomes. The less rational a society becomes, the more the “unnormal becomes normal.” The less rational a society becomes, the more the “unnatural becomes natural.” When this happens, society thinks it’s virtuous to expose children to debauchery. In so doing, they normalize perversion, and it becomes part of the culture. Sexual grooming leads to sex. Sexual grooming is a form of sexual abuse that leads to even more sexual abuse. So if you are grooming children, what does that mean for the future? When the morality of a society collapses, so does the society. These things weren’t normal a few years ago, but society has morally declined a lot in the last few years. This is because the speed of decline increases over time. Things decline faster and faster. Once in decline, you cannot stop its momentum. Therefore, things will go from bad to worse: from normalizing transgenders to normalizing pedophiles, and onward until society collapses.
Once premarital sex becomes normal in a culture, it’s already heading down the curve of decline. A hypersexual society is a society in decline. This decline takes several generations. A sexually immoral culture spends its leisure time on fruitless endeavours such as watching porn and sleeping around. A promiscuous culture becomes less and less productive, until all people want to do is chase their sexual appetites.
Woke-Marxism has penetrated/perverted every aspect of our society. Marxism in any of its dialectical forms is just a form of Antichristism, and it will end with a global authoritarian system and an Antichrist. Where do you think the world is headed with the implementation of CBDCs, digital IDs, Social Credit Score systems, and Universal Basic Income? Do you think this will all end in democracy and freedom? As a culture becomes more and more promiscuous, it loses more and more of its commonsense. When a society loses its commonsense, it becomes weak. When a society loses its commonsense, it is easily manipulated and controlled. A healthy society needs a balance between gender roles and freedom. If you throw out traditional gender roles, you throw out freedom. They go hand in hand, because freedom needs a solid foundation. “The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and his house came tumbling down.” Freedom needs a solid foundation that is held together by solid cohesion. Therefore, if you throw out the most basic elements of your foundation (traditional gender roles) your house (society) will come tumbling down. What would happen if you made a foundation but forget one of its ingredients: cement, sand, aggregate, water? Now what would happen if you built a house on that foundation? Would it last? A weak foundation means a weak house. Such a society will gain pleasure at the expense of its freedom.
This is the fruit of feminism and the sexual revolution: large numbers of marital break ups; large numbers of common law relationships (these relationships are more apt to break up than marriages); large numbers of abortions (birth control and abortion mean declining birth rates); large numbers of babies born out of wedlock; large numbers of fatherless children; large numbers of people identifying as homosexuals and transgenders (this means even lower birthrates); large numbers of STDs, loneliness and depression—a broken society. All these things hammer away at the family structure. What are the cultural costs of fatherlessness? “Across America, 2022 data indicates there are approximately 18.3 million children who live without a father in the home, comprising about 1 in 4 US children.” “About 80% of single-parent homes are led by single mothers.” “Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.” What are the economic costs of fatherlessness? “In fiscal year 2010, federal and state governments spent over $400 billion on means-tested welfare for low-income families with children. Roughly three-quarters of this welfare assistance, or $300 billion, went to single-parent families. Most non-marital births are currently paid for by the taxpayers through the Medicaid system, and a wide variety of welfare assistance will continue to be given to the mother and child for nearly two decades after the child is born.” The ramifications of feminism and the sexual revolution have been devastation across the board, and they continue to cause greater and greater damage to our society.
With contraception came sexual promiscuity, and lower birth rates resulted. (Like sodomy, abortion and birth control were once illegal in Canada because they were considered immoral). Why buy the cow when the milk is free? Why would a man want to settle down with a wife, if he can have casual sex with multiple women? If men throw off their responsibilities, what hope does society have? How will such men fully mature? The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the less mature it becomes. That’s why woke people are called “snowflakes.” They are grown adults, yet they have meltdowns like two year old children. The more promiscuous a culture, the more it neglects its responsibilities. When the family breaks down, so does proper parenting. The more promiscuous a culture, the more it neglects its parenting responsibilities. The more promiscuous a culture, the less it disciplines its children. The more promiscuous a culture, the more it lacks discipline. “Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them.” Teachers, do your students respect you? Children must be taught to respect their elders, even if that teaching includes discipline. A society in moral decline does not respect its elders. The more a society falls into moral decay, the less it respects human life. The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the more rebellious it becomes. Notice how we are decriminalizing things like prostitution and street drugs? Notice how we are abolishing things like school test scores? Therefore, the decline continues.
As the traditional family has declined, critical thinking has declined. Welcome to post-truth, where feelings trump truth! If you don’t validate their fantasies they get angry. If you use facts to prove them wrong they get offended. Sexual freedom has been slowly destroying the family structure, which has resulted in the loss of its traditional gender roles along with its family identity. This has led to increased mental health problems, mass shootings, and social upheaval. These are all symptoms of a society that is spiraling into collapse.
It wasn’t hard for me to find radicals when looking into some of the prominent writers of first-wave feminism. First-wave feminism definitely paved the way for the other three waves of feminism. Thanks to fourth wave feminism our children are being brainwashed into transgenderism. Thanks to fourth wave feminism our children can read pornographic school books, which depict adults and children committing sex acts together. Thanks to fourth wave feminism transvestites are allowed to read library books to our children. Thanks to fourth wave feminism transvestites are allowed to dance erotically in front of our children. The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the more deviant it becomes. The more promiscuous a culture becomes, the more depraved it becomes.
First-wave feminism is like the devil coming to your door with a box of candy. The handsome devil says, “I’ll give you some candy if you’ll let me into your house.” You reply, “Wow, that candy sure looks good! Please come into my house.” Then, ever so slowly, the devil destroys your house and you end up homeless. You took the candy (bait), but you will lose your society as a consequence. Have you not told your children: do not take candy from strangers? Then why have you given your children to the very child predators you told them to stay way from? As the Bible says: you are deceived and deceiving others. You took the bait and then gave these devils your children. First-wave feminism was the devil’s Trojan horse.
Islamic culture, with its polygamy, has not thrived like Western culture. Its cultural achievements can’t remotely be compared to the achievements of the West. As we watch Europe’s decline, we see weaponized mass migration. The social demographics in Europe are changing. Another culture is changing the social demographics. This culture is the Muslim culture. Many times I‘ve heard Muslim’s say: we’ll give birth to more children than you, and we’ll eventually out number you and take over your country from within. Yet this is only partly true. The crime stats in Europe concerning Muslim men are terrible. They commit high numbers of rape and gang rape. In the UK Muslim grooming gangs have been allowed to groom under aged girls for years. This means that the Muslim culture in Europe will also decline because of their ever-increasing sexual deviancy. They won’t succeed in replacing the culture of Europe, but they will forever change the demographics of Europe. These changes will not be reversed. A similar thing is happening in the United States. The social demographics have greatly changed, and they will continue to change until the American empire collapses.
“Socialists thought gender divisions were byproducts of capitalism: once capitalism was eliminated, gender inequality would supposedly vanish.”
The goal: destroy capitalism and implement global authoritarianism.
This stuff isn’t anything new. It happened in ancient times with pagan worship. Ishtar, also known as the Queen of Heaven, had the ability to change a person’s gender. “To destroy, to create, to tear out, to establish are yours, Inanna (Ishtar). To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna.” Her priests were surgically altered men; they dressed up as women and had female names.
The Bible lays out a spiritual war between God and satan. “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” When talking about all this sexual immorality, I can see charismatic Christians say: this is of the spirit of Leviathan. According to the Bible, fire came from Leviathan’s mouth and smoke from his nostrils. Doesn’t that sound like a dragon? How about the Dragon in the Book of Revelation? Isaiah 27:1 says: “In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword—his fierce, great and powerful sword—Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.” Leviathan is called a serpent and a sea monster. Who was the serpent in the Garden of Eden? Who is this Leviathan mentioned in the beginning and end of the Bible? Revelation 13:1 “The Dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a Beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” Like father like son! The Dragon (father) is the one behind the Beast (son) and the Beast (Antichrist) system. Revelation 13:18 “This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.” 1 John 4:2-3 “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
“When sexual promiscuity is restrained in a society, it channels its energy towards more productive endeavors. When sexual promiscuity is unrestrained in a society, it channels its energy towards more unproductive endeavors.”
Proverbs 5:8-10 “Keep far away from her (the adulteress), and don't go near the entrance to her house, so that you don't give your honor to others, and waste your best years, so that strangers don't enrich themselves at your expense, and your work won't end up the possession of foreigners.”
Women’s liberation: get women into the work force, so that we can get twice the taxes, and then we can get their children into school at an early age, so that we can indoctrinate them and break up the family.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGpJJTCz40s
Revelation 9:21 “And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries (drugs, intoxications) nor of their [sexual] immorality nor of their thefts.”
Ok, this history work is a strange hobby. If there’s anything unethical or dumb, please comment below so it can be corrected. In the 1840s, it was a common practice to name areas for the ethnic groups who occupied them. For example, places along a creek might be named “Italian Bar” or “Chinese Bar.” Some of these names persist on maps today. This is a database I cooked up to enter data. The user interface is terrible.
My idea was to create a map that would show travels of a group of people during California’s Gold Rush. I planned to donate the finished product to a university that had done some work with the miners. The end product would be a set of PDF maps, each plotting their travels during a two-week period — unless they were stationary. This data would overlay a present-day USGS data layer with terrain and roads. I had some books with historic text describing where they traveled. I was partly inspired by someone who had done historic maps of communities in Scotland going back to about the 13th century, I think.
The original process started with a passage from text. It would say something like, “Thursday afternoon: went to Schmidt General Store and exchanged [amount] ounces of gold dust for a pick and shovel.” Easy, right? So I figure you just establish a latitude and longitude for Schmidt General Store and type that, a date, and the place name label into ArcMap. Typing data into a spreadsheet-like table: I can handle that.
Pretty quickly I figure out it’s not so easy to find the location of a store in 1850. Maybe the store was initially a tent and then it moved when they built a permanent structure. I’m digging around in old USGS maps.
I had to start referring to 19th-century newspapers to figure out things like variant names. Say, for example, the general store was located in Placerville, California. During one visit they call it, “Schmidt General Store.” They also misspell location names, for example, “Smit’s Store.” Other texts, or other entries in the same text, they call it “Placerville,” “P-ville,” or “Hangtown.” So now I need a “simple” database with two tables, one table showing all variant names which describe the same coordinates. I need a homemade gazetteer. I wind up looking at all of this stuff about gazetteers on the UC Santa Barbara web site.
Now, I read a passage “Proceeded west along Dingweed Creek until we reached Negro Bar.” The first time this name occurs, I wind up digging through all sorts of data trying to determine the exact latitude and longitude of Negro Bar. Of course, I discover there are two dozen Negro Bars. Thankfully, they’ve told me it’s somewhere along Dingweed Creek. A month later they return and camp overnight at Negro Bar. All I need to do is enter the date and click the radio button for that location. I’ve realized it will be years before this is finished.
Speaking of bars, apologies if reading this triggers an impulse to visit your local bar.
Some of the above place names are examples for illustration purposes and not from any historic text.
There are several screens. For example, I don’t need to see latitude and longitude on this screen. I just need to get the correct place name from the list. It’s a mess but I can find my way around because I wrote the mess.
“…We’re here on Earth to fart around.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
I combined 300 images tagged "graffiti" and normalized the contrast to produce this imaqe. The images were chosen from a larger pool of 20,000 images.
Given any large group of uncorrelated images, you can produce just about any image you like, if you choose a subset carefully, using similar techniques as those used to produce a photo mosaic.
Software written in Processing.
La chiesa dei Frati Minori Conventuali, la iglesia de los Franciscanos conventuales, l'église des frères mineurs conventuels, church of Friars Minor Conventual
History
The church with the dowend tower
History of joy and suffering of an old christian time witness of Vienna
The Minoritenkirche in Vienna is one of the oldest and most valuable artistic churches of the city. It is therefore not surprising that it also experienced a very eventful history. In all probability, the Franciscans were - how the Friars Minor (Thomas of Celano: "Ordo Friars Minor" ) also called on account of its founders personality, called by the Babenberg Duke Leopold VI the Glorious, in 1230 into the country. Here he gave them a lot, probably with a church (probably dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria), before the walls of the city, between the Scots Monastery (Schottenstift) and the ducal residence. It was not until 1237, and in 1271 the entire area was included in the extended boundary wall. The Minorite Barnabas Strasser says in his chronicle from 1766 that Leopold had asked on his return from the Holy Land in 1219 Francis in Assisi to the relocation of some brothers to Vienna, which was then carried out 1224. The Franciscans, however, are detectable only in 1234 by a bull of Gregory IX . to Frederick the Warlike, the last reigning Babenberg, by the year 1239 there was already the Austrian province. The above-mentioned chapel near the present Minoritenkirche the brothers have now expanded and dedicated it to the Holy Cross ("Santa Croce"). In 1251 the dedication was by the Bishop Berthold of Passau. In addition, the friars began to build a monastery, the 1234 is mentioned in a document (the monastery comprised finally the Ballhausplatz, Minoritenplatz and parts of the Hofburg and the Public Garden) . Of the original Romanesque building stock nothing has been preserved. Especially the great fire of 1276 has cremated large parts of the Convention.
However, the strong growth of the Friars Minor now living in Vienna made a new building of the church and monastery necessary. Already laid by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1276 the foundation stone for the new building of that temple which was now already on the present site of the church, the monarch also promised tax exemption for all who had contributed to the building of the church.
First stage of construction (beginning in the third third of the 13th century.): So he decided to build new church and convent, but by the death in battle of Ottokar in 1278 at the March Field (Jedlespeigen close Dürnkrut) delayed the construction, thus only after the turn of the century it couldbe completed. The embalmed body of Ottokar remained 30 weeks in the chapter house of the monastery until it was transferred to Znojmo and finally to Prague. The king's heart is buried in the original Chapel of St. Catherine, which was now newly assigned this name because the appropriation should be reserved to the Holy Cross of Christ, the new church and the convent . This newly built house of God was given the shape of a two-aisled nave with zweijochigem (two-bay) long choir (chancel), which closed with the five sides of a decagon. This long choir, the one 1785/86 and changed into a five-storey residential building, was canceled in 1903. In connection with the subway construction (1984-86), although archaeological excavations took place, it also laid the foundations of the former free long-choir, but most of the foundations of the old presbytery were destroyed at the same time. - The first church had a rood screen, even at the turn of the 15th/16th Century the still resulting image of the Saint Francis was attached by an unknown artist. Just from this first phase, we know by the Baroque Minoritenchronik (chronicle) first mentioned the name of a builder, namely brother Hans Schimpffenpfeil .
Second stage of construction (after 1317-1328 ) Blanche (Blanche) of Valois, the wife of Duke Rudolf III . (+ 1307) and daughter of Philip the Fair, in 1304 decreed in his will to build a chapel in honor of her grandfather, the Holy King Louis IX. of France (canonized in 1297) and introduced for this purpose in 1000 available books. However, the project was realized only under Isabella (Elizabeth ) of Aragon, wife of King Frederick the Fair (1330 +). The chapel dedicated to their relatives canonized in 1317, St . Louis of Anjou, son of Charles II of Naples, great-nephew of Louis IX . of France and Franciscan archbishop of Toulouse (1297 + ); it was first a self- cultivation in the NE (north-east) of the two-aisled nave Minoritenkirche, until the third construction phase it was integrated into the nave (now the north aisle with Anthony's Chapel). In 1328 the chapel was apparently completed because in 1330 the founder - was buried in the chapel of Louis - in terms of her testamentary disposition. The tomb of Queen Isabella stood in the middle of the Kapellenjochs (chapel bay) in front of the apse. The tracery show similarity with those of the Albertine choir of St. Stephen (built by Duke Albrecht II [+ 1358] ) as well as with that of the Sanctuary Strassengel near the Cistercian monastery Rein near Graz (around the middle of the 14th century.). Probably belonged to the tympanum with the donor portraits of Frederick the Fair and Isabella at the feet of the Mother of God, which was inserted in the third construction phase of the church in the secondary north portal, the original entrance to the Ludwig chapel. It must be mentioned that even the Duchess Blanche (1305 +) built around 1330 a high early gothic marble grave, which unfortunately disappeared in the course of the renovation of the church in the years 1784-86 by the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg. It would be in Vienna today the only work of art of this kind
Third stage of construction (from 1339 -1400): Construction of a three-aisled hall (originally nave chapel + Ludwig). The north wall of the chapel was extended to the west and in the north portal installed a second yoke. In addition, it was built a new west facade, with especially the central portal - including was designed - with jamb - pompous like the French late Gothic - perhaps under South German mediation. In the obituary of the Friars Minor brother Jacob of Paris is called (+ around 1340), the confessor Albrecht II as the creator of this work of art. The duke and his wife Johanna von Außenmauer MinoritenkirchePfirt have obviously significantly contributed to the emergence of Vienna undoubtedly unique late Gothic cathedrals three portal group, there is also a representation of Albrecht and his wife in the middle portal next to the cross of Christ. Together with the two for a rich Mendikantenkirche (Mendicity church) this equipment is also of French models (see Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris [after 1285] ) constructed in 1350-1370 with splendid rose windows (with "bright" and "rotating" tracery) to the south wall - unusually without a doubt. The workshop, which built the Ludwig chapel was also busy with the west facade ("Minoritenwerkstatt" (workshop)). 1350-60 or later today, finally, the bell tower was only partially built (as a builder is a lay brother Nicholas, + 1385 or 1386 called ). The tower consists mainly of two parts, a lower part made of stone blocks to the height of the nave, and an upper, octagonal section of mixed masonry. Its crown had because of damage - especially been renewed several times and was eventually removed - during the Turkish wars . The consecration of the enlarged Minoritenkirche must have taken place about the year 1390. So that the church had received its valid look for the next time.
In 1529, during the first siege of the monastery and the church even more extensive damage suffering (launch of the spire). Since the monastery of the Observant (Franciscans) had been destroyed by the Turks, these sought to supplant the Franciscans in their convent, where John Capistrano, the founder of the "brown Franciscan" (Observant) in Vienna, lived some time in the Franciscan monastery and in the Church had preached, but eventually instructed the Emperor Ferdinand I the now homeless Observant buildings on Singerschen Platz. In fact, the number of Wiener Friars Minor has then shrunk to seven, so that they felt compelled to call Fathers from Italy. But that but could not prevent that the church from 1569-1620 war a Protestant church. Interestingly, originate numerous coats of arms on the balcony of this period. At that time the Conventual were only in the possession of Louis Chapel and the Chapel of St. Catherine. Also during the second Turkish siege in 1683 the tower served as an observation tower and the Minoritenkirche was accordingly fired by the Turks and severely damaged. In 1733 the tower is adorned with a copper dome, but because of the danger of collapse eventually had to be removed. It brought the church to that low pointed tiled roof, which still exists today .
More and more, the bands developed in the Minoritenkirche, especially Ludwig chapel and cemetery, grave sites of the nobility. Besides Blanche of Valois and Isabella of Aragon and Margaret, the last country Duchess of Tyrol, was named Maultasch (+ 1369 ), is buried here, as well as members of Lichtsteiner, Ditrichsteins, Puchaimer, Hojo, Stauffenberger, Greifensteiner; Piccolomini, Medici, Cavalcanti, Montaldi, Valperga, etc. (many of them are listed in the "Libro d'Oro of the "Congregation Italiana"). It should also be mentioned that the Franciscans since the end of the 14th Century took lively interest in teaching at the University of Vienna, especially of course in the subjects of theology, but also the jurisprudence. At the beginning of the 18th Century lived in the Vienna alsoin the Viennese Convention the Venetian cosmographer Br Vincenzo Coronelli, which the Emperor Charles VI. appointed to head the regulation of the Danube and its famous globes are now in the globe collection of the National Library in Vienna.
It is worthnoting, finally, the fact that around 1543 on the Ballhausplatz near the Imperial Palace from parts of the monastery a small hospital was donated and that the Franciscans for 13 years did all the counseling in this new Hofspital, at this time was the newly restored Chapel of St. Catherine Hospital Church. Another wing of the former minority monastery was home to the Imperial Court Library, 1558-1613.
To Minoritenkirche the second half of the 18th Century brought drastic changes. This development was initiated by the fact that the naturalized Italians in Vienna founded an Italian congregation in 1625/26 under the guidance of the Jesuit priest and professor at the University of Vienna Wilhelm Lamormaini. By the year 1773, when the Jesuit Order was temporarily released their Italian trade fairs celebrated this "Congregation Italiana" in a chapel of the Jesuits at Bognergasse, near the old Jesuit church "Am Hof". But in 1773 that little church was by the imperial government requisited. Then the Italians found in St. Catherine Chapel at Ballhausplatz, which popularly still is referred as the Italian church - ie not only the Minoritenkirche - a new home. After a thorough restoration of the chapel was consecrated on 1 February 1775 ceremony in memory of the "Santa Maria Maggiore" to Rome in the name of "Madonna della Neve" (Mary Snow church'). The Holy Mass conducted Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), who was in 1774 chamber composer and conductor of the Italian opera in Vienna, from 1788-90 to 1824 Kapellmeister and Director of the Court Chapel. Pope Pius VI . visited during his stay in Vienna on Good Friday of 1782 the church "Maria Schnee" on the Ballhausplatz. But this state of the law was short-lived: in 1783 Emperor Joseph II shifted the Friars Minor in the former Trinitarian on Alserstrasse, and the Minoritenkirche was on the grounds that the chapel "p Maria della Neve" for about 7,000 Italians living in Vienna was too small, the Congregation italiana transferred to the condition that the Community had now to restore the Great Church (imperial decree of June 3, 1784). The richly decorated chapel "Madonna della Neve" went on an imperial property and was finally in the late 18th Century canceled. Also, the Franciscan monastery passed into state ownership: one is used for imperial and feudal law firms. The cemetery near the church was abandoned. With the greatest financial burdens now led the congregation from the imperial mission of the church renovation, the thorough repair of the church was entrusted to the court architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf of Hohenberg (1784-1789). In order to cover the construction costs somewhat, were the old long choir (chancel) and the beginning of the 14th Century. (Consecrated in 1317 ) at the western end of the south side of the nave grown (and now defunct) St. John's Chapel (Chapel Puchaimische Kapelle ) converted into residences. The solemn consecration of the church under the name of "Madonna della Neve" took place on 16 April 1786, on Easter Sunday.
But soon was moving closer to the church the next hardship: In the years of the Napoleonic wars, the church should serve as a warehouse for straw, hay and for different equipment, so in 1809 also the forced evacuation of the building took place. Shortly after engaging the French eventually turned this into a provisions store. Two-thirds of the floor was smashed by the rolling of drums and by the retraction of cars. In the middle of the church a wide, tunnel-like cavity had been excavated and other parts of the floor destroyed a in God's house capped oven. Until 18 April 1810, the then Prefect of the Minoritenkirche received back the church keys. In 1825 died one of the most famous Kongregaten (congregats) of this century, namely, the composer Antonio Salieri, and on 22 June this year resounded in the Italian national church with the participation of the court chapel and the first Hofchores (court choir) the Verdi Requiem.
As the situation after the Napoleonic war turmoil in the mid-19th Century had normalized, Emperor Ferdinand the Good in 1845 donated to the "Congregation italiana" the according to the model of Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco (1495-97) designed mosaic of the Last Supper, which the Roman Giacomo Raffaelli of 12 panels with a total weight of 20 tons by Napoleon's orders had made in the years 1806-1814, and was eventually bought by Emperor Franz for the Belvedere Palace. To that gave Emperor Ferdinand a considerable amount (8000 guilders) to allow the mounting of the work of art in the Minoritenkirche. The inauguration of the altar took place on 26nd in March 1847. In 1852 Emperor Franz Joseph came and soon the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in the "Congregation ". The former paid each year mostly coming from out of town fast preachers for the Church, in return he regularly received at the Festival of Lights (2 February) as well as on Palm Sunday the sacred candle or the olive branch.
The last major change in the church took place in the years 1892-1905 at the restructuring of the Minoritenplatz. Now two new courses, namely the Ballhausplatz and Minoritenplatz emerged, the houses adjacent to the church (former Long John's Chapel Choir and) were demolished. The former Franciscan monastery had to give way to the House, Court and State Archives. Even the church was given a new face, although the plans of the architect Viktor Luntz due to financial reasons only could be realized partially, there were clearly visible changes: Most noticeable to the viewer is undoubtedly the Gothic passage on the south side of the walled grave stones originated partly from the bands, and part of the adjacent once cemetery, as well as the above installed "Minoritenhaus". 1907 were placed in the tower four new bells cast in Trento, which is, however - with the exception of one, St. Anthony ordained, Bell - 1914 confiscated. The solemn consecration of the church took place on 4 Held in May 1909 in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph. Due to the highly cooperative attitude of the Congregation towards the transformation plans of the City of Vienna Lueger, the mayor promised that the court should never be installed directly behind the church.
More important restoration work was carried out 1960-1962 (church affairs), in the last decade, as the outer walls have been restored.
About Minoritenplatz finally should be mentioned that the pastoral care of Italians after 1786 by each rectors appointed by the Archbishop was, from 1808 to 1813 was also here Clemens Maria Hofbauer who died 1820 and later was canonized working as a church rector. Therefore, there is also his monument on the north side of the church. Since the year 1953, and officially by the order of the archbishop Ordinariate of 1 December 1957 is the Friars Minor transmitted the pastoral care of the Italian community again, firstly the Fathers belonging to the Order of Padua Province while they are under the Austrian province today. In the year 2003, ie 50 years after the adoption of the pastoral care of Italians in the Minoritenkirche by the Conventual, that Francis statue was made, nowadays, it is located on the north side of the church, next to the Baroque cultivation.
(Text by Dr. Manfred Zips , Ital. Congregation )
Artist: Victor Gabriel Gilbert, French
b. 1847, Paris, France; d. 1933 Paris, France
Medium: Oil on canvas
On loan from the Chrysler Museum of Art
In this painting, Victor Gabriel Gilbert revels in the bounty of France’s seas but also highlights an idealized view of social cohesion. Beneath the orderly architecture of Les Halles, Paris’s central market, a well-dressed woman in a fur-trimmed jacket, a female fish seller, a domestic worker, and a blue-bloused laborer interact harmoniously, normalizing the relations between social classes and genders. Gilbert encapsulates the entire market economy in a single scene.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Farm to Table Impressionism Exhibit
DSCF9361
Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
The Traction was available in "Commerciale" version as from 1938, and exclusively in black, as such the beginning of a normalization of colours that would ever more "blacken" the range. The rear opens in two parts, in fact a "break" before its time.
1.911 cc
4 in-line
56 HP @ 3.800 rpm
Vmax : 115 km/h
Exposition : Citroën 100 Years
27/06/2019 - 03/09/2019
Autoworld
Brussels - Belgium
August 2019
Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
see www.flickr.com/photos/nebarnix/198303490/ for this image stacked with another 88 minutes of light!
Final version! Can't believe this was during the full moon as well. (be sure to view full size)
Andromeda and its companion galaxies
Camera: Pentax *IST DL
Lens: 135mm F2.8 at 2.8 (apeture ring froze on me!)
Exposure: 80 minutes (!)
Total normalized exposure (min at iso 100): 304min@iso100
Total normalized light (min at iso 100/f-ratio^2): 39min@iso100@f1
6x240 seconds@iso 200
24x120 seconds@iso 400
2x240 seconds@iso 800
ISO: 200, 400, 800
Hand Guided (no RA drive at all) with a 500mm F4.5 reflector on an EQ mount
President Donald J. Trump, joined by White House senior staff members, delivers a statement announcing the agreement of full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
A mean amalgamation of the music video, "Elastic Heart" by Sia
(Here is my previous mean blend of Sia, Chandelier: flic.kr/p/q2UUz1)
Besides the increase in the number of people attending Pride Week in Minneapolis, it seems that there are an corresponding increase in the number of transgender persons this year.
I attribute it to the political issues that that arose during the past year into this year, and the corresponding election of transgender persons to public office. Transgenderism is becoming normalized and more integrated into mainstream society. It is significant, I think, that this is happening in traditional areas like the Upper Midwest right here in Minnesota.
Transgender persons are moving out of the more isolative enclaves that kept trangenderism contained in those enclaves.
For me this is another peice of evidence that we are evolving as a species not only physically, but in moving from tolerance to acceptance.
We have a long way to go, but we are moving to the Center of our better selves.
I saw this young woman sitting by herself in Loring Park, and not wanting to interrupt the tranquil enjoyment she seemed to be enjoying by the joy and color around her, I chose to use a 55-250mm lens. I've found that at events such as these that 2 camera bodies and 2 lenses an 18-135mm (accounting for about 85% if the pix) and a 55-250mm for the remainder.
In such a festive milieu, the vast majority of folks do not mind their photos taken. For off-festival events and straight people street scenes I use my fave unobtrusive gear . . . a Canon SL-2 and 40mm 2.8 pancake lens.
A short history of Wenceslas Square
In 1348, Bohemian King Charles IV founded the New Town of Prague. The plan included several open areas for markets, of which the second largest was the Koňský trh, or Horse Market (the largest was the Charles Square[2]). At the southeastern end of the market was the Horse Gate, one of the gates in the walls of the New Town. During the Czech national revival movement in the 19th century, a more noble name for the street was requested. At this time the statue was built, and the square was renamed.
On 28 October 1918, Alois Jirásek read the proclamation of independence of Czechoslovakia in front of the Saint Wenceslas statue.The Nazis used the street for mass demonstrations. During the Prague Uprising in 1945, a few buildings near the National Museum were destroyed. They were later replaced by department stores.
On 16 January 1969, student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968.
On 28 March 1969, the Czechoslovakian national ice hockey team defeated the USSR team for the second time in that year's Ice Hockey World Championships. As the country was still under Soviet occupation, the victory induced great celebrations. Perhaps 150,000 people gathered on Wenceslas Square, and skirmishes with police developed. A group of agents provocateurs provoked an attack on the Prague office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, located on the street. The vandalism served as a pretext for reprisals and the period of so-called normalization. In 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, large demonstrations (with hundreds of thousands of people or more) were held here.
Wenceslas Square is lined by hotels, offices, retail stores, currency exchange booths and fast-food joints. To the dismay of locals and city officials, the street is also a popular location for prostitutes to ply their trade late at night. Many strip clubs exist on and around Wenceslas Square, making Prague a popular location for stag parties.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenceslas_Square
Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, is bisected by the Vltava River. Nicknamed “the City of a Hundred Spires,” it's known for its Old Town Square, the heart of its historic core, with colorful baroque buildings, Gothic churches and the medieval Astronomical Clock, with a popular show. Completed in 1402, pedestrian Charles Bridge is lined with 30 statues of saints.
Keep your hands off of my stack.
-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds
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I had this idea on my mind for a while. It's one of those times where the final product is as good (or better) than it was on my head. It has a lot of detail tho, so it's best seen large...
Thanks to my girl for helping me out with this ;)
This week came a bit late, but so did last one, so I'm trying to normalize the schedule, lol...
Either way, have a great week(end) everyone!
--
Strobist info: Yongnuo YN460 bare, camera left.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt7PvTwYF3E&feature=share&...
Full Feature in 9 Parts
American International Pictures lived up to its name on this project. Terrore nello spazio was a Spanish/Italian/American effort. The American release title, Planet of the Vampires (PoV) suggests a campier film than it is. There actually aren't any vampires in the usual sense. Yet, it is still a horror/sci-fi hybrid. Director Mario Bava (famous for horror pictures) gives the dark screenplay by Ib Melchior a good presentation, despite a low budget.
Synopsis
Mysterious signals received from a distant planet named Aura suggest some intelligent life, perhaps a distress call. Two interplanetary space ships are sent to investigate. The Galliot goes in first, but seems to crash. The crew of the Argos go lower to check on them. A sudden increase of gravity pins everyone to the floors and the Argos seems to be doomed to crash. At the last minute, the gravity normalizes and Captain Mark Markary is able to land the Argos. When various members of the crew awaken, they go viciously homicidal temporarily. Captain Mark is able to restore order. The Galliot is found near by, perfectly intact. When a team of the Argos investigate, they find the entire crew of the Galliot dead. They killed each other. The Galliot's "Meteor Rejector" device is smashed, making the ship unspaceworthy. The Argos team return later to find no bodies. (They are rising from the dead, but the Argos crew don't know this yet.) A team from the Argos find a derelict alien ship with a huge alien skeleton out front. Mark and Sanya check it out and almost become trapped inside. Various crewmen, usually given lone sentry jobs, disappear one by one. Two Galliot crewmen appear with a story of being unconscious after the landing. They are taken aboard the Argos, but it was a trick. They were zombies who came to steal the Argos's "Meteor Rejector" device. One zombie explains that Aura is inhabited by a race of energy beings. The Auran sun is dying but they cannot construct spaceships. So, they lured other race's ships to Aura to hijack their bodies and flee. The takeover can be done willingly too. Captain Mark says "Never". Mark, Sanya and Wess steal back the Meteor Rejector and plant bombs aboard the Galliot. They take off in the Argos. Wess discovers that Mark and Sanya are possessed by the Aurans. He smashes the Meteor Rejector, thinking he's stopping the Aurans. He dies in the process. Possessed Mark and Sanya decide to set down on an obscure little planet: Earth. The End.
PoV has the quirky charm typical of Italian sci-fi, but also some visual fun via Bava's sense of art.
The American title is a misnomer, but probably deemed better (by A.I.P.) for marketing. The dead bodies, re-animated by the Auran energy beings, were more the classic zombie than the classic vampire. There is no sucking of blood or needing of human blood, etc. The whole rising-from-the-grave scene is clearly in the zombie idiom. Mixed into the zombie trope is the familiar 50s theme of alien-takeover.
Like many B movies, the production budget for PoV was very tight. Modern viewers could easily scoff at the modest special effects and simple sets. Yet, fans of B sci-fi can appreciate how much mileage Bava got from his shoestring budget. He made an entire alien planet out of a few "rock" props left over from a prior sword-and-sandal film, making use of lots of dry ice fog to disguise how sparse things were. The ship models were quite small (and therefore cheaper), but he manages to make them look larger. To save on matte art and optical effects, Bava used mirrors to put actors and small models into the same shot. Of course, having the Argos and Galliot be identical ships meant handy double use. The giant alien skeleton was probably his biggest expense, but well worth it.
Bava also made ample use of strong color to make things look "alien." Pairs of red-green, or red-blue, or green-orange lights add a vivid other-worldliness. The lighting is reminiscent of that used in the soviet film: Mechte Navstrechu ('62) ("A Dream Come True"). American audiences wouldn't get to see the soviet footage until 1966 when A.I.P. created another of their mash-ups, this one entitled: Queen of Blood.
Some viewers see an inspiration for Ridley Scott's famous Alien (1979). Certainly the scene in which Mark and Sanya discover and explore the derelict alien ship bears a strong resemblance. Even though this scene in PoV is more of a sidetrack than pivotal, it is certainly possible that Scott drew upon it as a portion of his story.
Screenwriter Ib Melchior was fond of the notion that alien planets harbored mysterious danger. His dark vision was quite the opposite of the almost glib notion that alien beings would be pretty women in short skirts. Melchior's Angry Red Planet ('60) featured ominous unseen Martians who tell the earthlings to get lost and never ever come back. Journey to the Seventh Planet ('62) featured a malicious intellect being that messed with the earthlings' minds and was trying to get off its cold, dark moon, to a better planet -- like earth.
The ending of PoV is decidedly un-hollywood. Most of the crew die. Even the last uncompromised humans (Wess) dies trying to stop the Aurans. He fails, despite his heroic sacrifice. Auran-Mark and Auran-Sanya fly down to an unsuspecting earth. The danger of the mind-controlling energy being Aurans was about to be loosed on our simple civilization. On its own, such an ending does have nihilist overtones. It also smacks of a potential sequel along the Body Snatchers line.
Bottom line? PoV will not impress modern viewers who rate movies by how lavish the effects are. It is still a budget film. It also suffers some of the usual pitfalls of foreign films repackaged for American release. There are almost too many characters who are easy to mix up (everyone wore identical leather suits) Nonetheless, it one of the better B movies of the 60s.
NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy, is the brightest member of the 10 million light-years away Sculptor Galaxy Cluster, which is one of the neighbouring clusters of our own, the Local group. Though at a very low position from northern skies, NGC 253 is always an impressive target.
Object: NGC 253 (Sculptor Galaxy)
Optics: Lacerta Newton 12" F4 + 3" Wynne-Corrector
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8
Camera: ZWO ASI 183MM Pro @-20°C, Gain=53, Offset=10
Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, ZWO 36mm Filters
Exposure: total ~1.6h, R 16x120sec, G 16x120sec, B 17x120sec, L (derived from RGB), 200 Bias, 40 Darks, 40 Flats per channel
Date: 2018-07-15, 2018-07-16, 2018-07-17
Location: ATHOS Centro Astronómico S.L., La Palma
Capture: Sequence Generator Pro
Guiding: Off-Axis, ASI120MM, PHD2
Image Acquisition: Stephan Schurig
Image Processing: Stephan Schurig
AstroPixelProcessor 1.062: Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Integration, Channel Combination, Background Calibration, Star Colors Correction, Auto Digital Development
Photoshop 19.1.5: Curves, Exposure (Exposure, Offset), Masked Nik Dfine 2 Denoise, Masked Dynamic (Dynamic, Saturation), Star Shrink, Masked Nik Output Sharpener
This is the super-detailed graph of the top 100 bands listened to in 2013. This is a "very zoomy" graph!
Basically, the Top 100 bands I listened to in 2013 are graphed at 2 week intervals, and normalized so the shape is approximately rectangular. I then hand-edited the labels to make them easier to read, though most of them are so tiny one would have to zoom in anyway.
www.last.fm/user/ClintJCL, bands, chart, music graph.
music: D.O.A. music: Death Piggy. music: Dr. Dirty. music: Friendship Is Witchcraft. music: Gwar. music: KMFDM. music: Kreator. music: My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. music: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. music: NOFX. music: Pixies. music: Rob Zombie. music: Sepultura. music: Slayer. music: The Dave Brockie Experience. music: The Misfits. music: They Might Be Giants. music: Voltaire. music: White Zombie. music: X-Cops.
top 100.
December 31, 2013.
... Read my blog at ClintJCL at wordpress.com
... View KMFDM's official website at kmfdm.net/
Kamera: Nikon FM
Linse: Nikkor-N Auto 24mm f2.8 (1970)
Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed
Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)
Thursday 29 February 2024: Today, at the Nabulsi roundabout just south of Gaza City, Israel committed a horrible massacre shooting into a large crowd of civilians desperate for food who was gathering around humanitarian aid trucks. Israel killed more than 100 people and seriously injured 700 - this is a TOTAL WAR CRIME.
Al Jazeera: Cold-blooded massacre (publ. 29 Feb. 2024) [Requires log-in to see]
Israelis have confirmed that IDF soldiers shot against a ‘violent crowd’ who moved towards them ‘menacingly’. Israel claim they are ‘investigating’ the event. In the American Fox News, these news are reported as a ‘deadly stampede’ and a ‘deadly aid incident’.
Fox News: Deadly stampede over aid in Gaza (publ. 29 Feb. 2024) [Fox changed the title 3 hours later]
There have been so many shocking events happening in the last few days - Aaron Bushnell self-immolating, and today this massacre - that I feel we also need to remind ourselves to keep our eyes seriously steady and hyper-focused on what is happening in the background.
First of all, the ICJ hearing on the legality of Israel´s occupation of Palestine concluded on monday, and it concluded with some of the best presentations held in all the hearings. I would like to highlight the supreme presentation delivered by the Arab League, and also the presentations of Spain and the Maldives. All nations heard presented similar views, with the exception of USA, the UK, Zambia and Fiji. USA, the UK, Zambia and Fiji’s presentations were more focused on the importance of entering private ‘negotiations’ between the parties rather than the court should decide on anything pertaining to the actual legality of Israel’s occupation. USA, UK, Zambia and Fiji wants this matter to be settled outside the court.
In my view, the Palestinians should NEVER EVER enter ANY negotiations on Israel’s occupation led by America and be tricked into settling a ‘deal’ with Israel. There is NOTHING legal about Israel’s occupation of their land. The whole world knows it.
Secondly, as the ICJ hearings were being concluded, prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh (b. 1958) suddenly announced that the Palestinian government resigns. This smells America a looong way. First of all, the PA government hasn’t really resigned. The corrupt interloper Mahmoud Abbas (b. 1935) is still in reign as their President, and the old government still continues - only now in an administrative role and not in a political role. To me, it sounds very much like the USA is trying to lay the ground for a new government that they - will choose. I say; let the Palestinians themselves choose their own government in free and open elections.
Thirdly, suddenly the geriatric American president Joe Biden (b. 1942) starts talking about his ‘hope’ for a possible hostage deal and a ceasefire within next monday; March 4th. Well dream on, Joe, that ‘deal’ will not be happening because Israel refuses to meet the demands of Hamas of a permanent ceasefire, and the USA does not want to include the resistance movement in Gaza in their future plans for a new Palestinian government.
So that is where we stand today. What atrocities will Israel commit tomorrow? We shall see. In the meanwhile, I will present to you the most excellent presentation in the ICJ held by the League of Arab States, represented by Abdel Hakim El Rifai and Ralph Wilde. If there is ONE presentation you need to see, hear or read - it is this one:
International Court of Justice: Day 6 hearing on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories (publ. 26 February 2024) [Video]
International Court of Justice: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem [Transcripts and Documents]
The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of Zambia for its presentation. I invite the next participating delegation, the League of Arab States, to address the Court and I call Mr Abdel Hakim El Rifai to the podium.
Mr EL RIFAI: [ARAB LEAGUE] (26 Feb. 2024)
1. Thank you, Mr President, honourable Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you today, on behalf of the League of Arab States.
2. I would like to read a statement by His Excellency Mr Ahmed Aboul Gheit (b. 1942), Secretary- General of the League of Arab States.
3. The League of Arab States attaches high importance to the present proceedings, hoping that they contribute to safeguarding the principles of international law, to uphold the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and end the last oppressive, expansionist, apartheid, settler-colonial occupation, still standing in the twenty-first century.
4. The persistence of this occupation, acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, displacement of populations, imprisonment of Palestinians behind illegal segregation walls, expansion of illegal settlements, creating new political realities on the ground aiming at complicating the dismantling of the occupation ⎯ all ⎯ will never discourage Palestinians from claiming their legitimate inalienable rights.
5. The insistence on placing Israel above the law, through the politicization of accountability and adopting double standards in the application of justice is a direct threat to international peace and stability.
6. Ending Israel’s total impunity, and subjecting it ⎯ like any other State ⎯ to the universal rules of international law, will help annul its pretexts to systematically reject peace initiatives, the most serious of which is the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which offered full normalization of relations with all Arab States, in exchange of Israel only respecting its already established obligations, under the bodies of international law, human rights law, and the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.
7. This prolonged occupation is an affront to international justice. The failure to bring it to an end has led to the current horrors perpetrated against the Palestinian people, amounting to genocide. There can be no moral or juridical justification for occupying lands, killing, terrorizing and displacing their populations.
8. The League of Arab States trusts the esteemed Court will confirm the illegality of this occupation and unambiguously rule on the legal consequences for all parties, especially those who turn a blind eye, facilitate, assist or participate in any way in perpetuating this illegal situation.
9. Only the rule of law ⎯ not the prevailing “law of the jungle” ⎯ will pave the way to peace in the whole region. Ending the occupation is the gateway to peaceful coexistence.
10. Thank you very much for your kind attention. I now respectfully request, Mr President, that you call on Dr Ralph Wilde, Senior Counsel and Advocate, to address the legal questions before the Court.
The PRESIDENT: I thank Mr El Rifai. I now give the floor to Mr Ralph Wilde. You have the floor, Sir.
Mr WILDE: [ARAB LEAGUE] (26 Feb. 2024)
1. Mr President, distinguished Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you, and to represent the League of Arab States.
1. MORE THAN CENTURY-LONG DENIAL OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF, AND WAR AGAINST, THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, ON THE BASIS OF RACISM
2. The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine.
3. When this began after the First World War, the Jewish population of that land was 11 per cent. Forcibly implementing Zionism in this demographic context has necessarily involved the extermination, or forced displacement of, some of the non-Jewish Palestinian population; the exercise of domination over, and subjugation, dispossession and immiseration of, remaining non-Jewish Palestinians; the emigration to that land of Jewish people, regardless of any direct personal link; and the denial of Palestinian refugees the right to return. All operating through a racist distinction privileging Jewish people over non-Jewish Palestinian people.
4. This has necessitated serious violations of all the fundamental, jus cogens and erga omnes norms of international law — the right of self-determination, the prohibitions on aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination, apartheid and torture ⎯ and the core protections of international humanitarian law.
5. Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the régime of racial domination — apartheid — perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967.
6. As a necessary prerequisite, I must begin with the special right granted to the Palestinian people in the League Covenant.
2. PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION UNDER ARTICLE 22 OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT
7. The legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people originates in the “sacred trust” obligations of Article 22 of the League Covenant, part of the Versailles Treaty. Palestine ⎯ an “A” class Mandate under British colonial rule ⎯ was, after the First World War, supposed to have its existence as an independent State “provisionally recognized”: a sui generis right of self-determination. The United Kingdom and other members of the League Council attempted to bypass this, incorporating the 1917 Balfour Declaration commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine into the instrument stipulating how the Mandate would operate. However, the Council had no legal power to bypass the Covenant in this way. It acted ultra vires, and the relevant provisions were, legally, void. There was and is no legal basis in that Mandate instrument for either a specifically Jewish State in Palestine, or the United Kingdom’s failure to discharge the “sacred trust” obligation to implement Palestinian self-determination.
3. SELF-DETERMINATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR —AN ADDITIONAL RIGHT
8. After the Second World War, a self-determination right applicable to colonial peoples generally crystallized in international law.
9. For the Palestinian people, this essentially corresponded to, and supplemented, the pre-existing Covenant right, regarding the same, single territory. The 1947 proposal to partition Palestine was contrary to this; the Arab rejection an affirmation of the legal status quo.
10. In 1948, then, Palestine was, legally, a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self-determination on a unitary basis.
4. NAKBA IN 1948 — VIOLATION OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND CREATION OF A RÉGIME INVOLVING AN ONGOING VIOLATION OF THIS RIGHT,
AS WELL AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND APARTHEID
AND A DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO RETURN
11. Despite this, a State of Israel, specifically for Jewish people, was proclaimed in 1948 by those controlling 78 per cent — more than three quarters — of Palestine, accompanied by the forced displacement of a significant number of the non-Jewish Palestinian population — the Nakba, catastrophe. This illegal secession was an egregious violation of Palestinian self-determination. Israel’s statehood was recognized, and Israel admitted as a United Nations Member, despite this illegality. Israel is not the legal continuation or successor of the Mandate.
12. This violation of Palestinian self-determination is ongoing, and unresolved. Two key elements are:
13. First, Palestinian people not displaced from the land proclaimed to be of Israel in 1948, and their descendants, have been forced to live as citizens— presently they constitute 17.2 per cent — of a State conceived to be of and for another racial group, under the domination of that group, necessarily treated as second class, because of their race.
14. Second, Palestinian people displaced from that land, and their descendants, cannot return.
15. These are serious breaches of the right of self-determination, the prohibitions of racial discrimination and apartheid, and the right of return. They must end, immediately.
5. 1967 ISRAELI CAPTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK (INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM)
16. As if this ongoing Nakba was not catastrophic enough, in 1967 Israel captured the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine — the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem — the Naksa. It has maintained that use of force to remain in control for the 57-year period since.
6. ILLEGAL RACIAL DOMINATION — APARTHEID — FROM THE JORDAN RIVER TO THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA
17. For more than half a century, then, a State defined to be of and for Jewish people exclusively has governed the entire land of historic Palestine and the Palestinian people there. And the régime of racial domination — apartheid — and denying return, has been extended throughout. In the case of Palestinians living in the occupied territory, this has involved the same serious violations of international law, supplemented by serious violations of norms applicable in occupied territory.
18. Indeed, these people are subject to an even more extreme form of racist domination, as they are not even citizens of the State exercising authority over them. Even in East Jerusalem, which Israel has purported to annex, the majority non-Jewish Palestinian residents do not have citizenship, whereas Jewish residents, including illegal settlers, are citizens.
19. Just as in territorial Israel, in occupied territory, these serious violations concerning how Israel exercises authority over the Palestinian people must end immediately.
20. However, here, a more fundamental matter must also be addressed. The illegality of the exercise of authority itself.
7. THE GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK AS PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, WITH THE CONSEQUENCE THAT ISRAEL’S PURPORTED ANNEXATION, AND ATTEMPTED COLONIZATION, ARE ILLEGAL
21. The enduring Palestinian right of self-determination means that the Palestinian people, and the State of Palestine, not Israel, are sovereign over the territory Israel captured in 1967. For Israel, the land is extraterritorial, and, given what I said about the Mandate, territory over which it has no legal sovereign entitlement.
22. Despite this, Israel has purported to annex East Jerusalem and taken various actions there and in the rest of the West Bank constituting de jure and de facto purported annexation, including implanting settlements. It is Israeli policy that Israel should be not only the exclusive authority over the entire land between the river and the sea, but also the exclusive sovereign authority there.
23. This constitutes a complete repudiation of Palestinian self-determination as a legal right, since it empties the right entirely of any territorial content.
24. Actualizing this through de facto and de jure purported annexation is, first, a serious violation of Palestinian self-determination and, second, because it is enabled through the use of force, a violation of the prohibition on the purported acquisition of territory through the use of force in the law on the use of force, and so an aggression. Serious violations of further areas of law regulating the conduct of the occupation are also being perpetrated, notably the prohibitions on implanting settlements and altering, unless absolutely prevented, the legal, political, social and religious status quo.
25. The occupation is, therefore, existentially illegal because of its use to actualize purported annexation. To end this serious illegality, it must be terminated: Israel must renounce all sovereignty claims and all settlements must be removed. Immediately.
26. However, this is not the only basis on which the occupation’s existential legality must be addressed.
27. We need to delve deeper into both the law of self-determination and the law on the use of force.
8. SELF-DETERMINATION AS A RIGHT TO BE SELF-GOVERNING, REQUIRING THE OCCUPATION TO END IMMEDIATELY
28. Beginning with self-determination: this right, when applied to the Palestinian people in the territory Israel captured in 1967, is a right to be entirely self-governing, free from Israeli domination.
29. Consequently, the Palestinian people have a legal right to the immediate end of the occupation. And Israel has a co-relative legal duty to immediately terminate the occupation.
30. This right exists and operates simply and exclusively because the Palestinian people are entitled to it. It does not depend on others agreeing to its realization. It is a right.
31. It is a repudiation of “trusteeship”, whereby colonial peoples were ostensibly to be granted freedom only if and when they were deemed “ready” because of their stage of “development” determined by the racist standard of civilization. The anti-colonial self-determination rule replaced this with a right based on the automatic, immediate entitlement of all people to freedom, without preconditions. In the words of General Assembly resolution 1514, “inadequacy of . . . preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence”.
32. Some suggest that the Palestinian people were offered, and rejected, deals that could have ended the occupation. And, therefore, Israel can maintain it pending a settlement. Even assuming, arguendo, the veracity of this account, the “deals” involved a further loss of the sovereign territory of the Palestinian people.
33. Israel cannot lawfully demand concessions on Palestinian rights as the price for ending its impediment to Palestinian freedom. This would mean Israel using force to coerce the Palestinian people to give up some of their peremptory legal rights: illegal in the law on the use of force and, necessarily, voiding the relevant terms of any agreement reached. The Palestinian people are legally entitled to reject a further loss of land over which they have an exclusive, legal, peremptory right. Any such rejection makes no difference to Israel’s immediate legal obligation to end the occupation.
9. THE OCCUPATION AS AN ILLEGAL USE OF FORCE IN THE JUS AD BELLUM AS A GENERAL MATTER (BEYOND THE LINK TO PURPORTED ANNEXATION)
34. Turning to the law on the use of force: Israel’s control over the Palestinian territory since 1967, as a military occupation, is an ongoing use of force. As such, its existential legality is determined by the law on the use of force, as a general matter, beyond the specific issue of annexation.
35. Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in the war it launched against them and Syria. It claimed to be acting in self-defence, anticipating a non-immediately imminent attack. The war was over after six days. Peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan were subsequently adopted.
36. Despite this, Israel maintained control of the territory — continuing the use of force enabling its capture.
37. Israel’s 1967 war was illegal in the jus ad bellum — even assuming, arguendo, its claim of a feared attack, States cannot lawfully use force in non-immediately imminent anticipatory self-defence.
38. Alternatively, assuming ⎯ again arguendo ⎯ that the war was lawful, the justification ended after six days. However, the jus ad bellum requirements continued to apply to the occupation as itself a continuing use of force. In 1967, with self-determination well established in international law, States could not lawfully use force to retain control over a self-determination unit captured in war, unless the legal test justifying the initial use of force also justified, on the same basis, the use of force in retaining control. Moreover, this justification would need to continue, not only in the immediate aftermath, but for more than half a century. Manifestly, this legal test has not been met.
39. Israel’s exercise of control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank through the use of force has been illegal in the jus ad bellum since the capture of the territory, or, at least, very soon afterwards.
40. The occupation is, therefore, again existentially illegal in the law on the use of force — an aggression — this time, as a general matter, beyond illegality specific to annexation. To terminate this serious violation, the occupation must, likewise, end immediately.
10. ILLEGAL FORCE DOES NOT BECOME LAWFUL IN RESPONSE TO RESISTANCE TO IT
41. What of Israel’s current military action in Gaza? This is not a war that began in October 2023. It is a drastic scaling-up of the force exercised there, and in the West Bank, on a continual basis, since 1967. A justification for a new phase in an ongoing illegal use of force cannot be constructed solely out of the consequences of violent resistance to that illegal use of force. Otherwise, an illegal use of force would be rendered lawful because those subject to it violently resisted — circular logic, with a perverse outcome.
11. ISRAEL CANNOT LAWFULLY USE FORCE TO CONTROL THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORY FOR SECURITY PURPOSES/PENDING A PEACE AGREEMENT
42. More generally, Israel cannot lawfully use force to control the Palestinian territory for security purposes pending an agreement providing security guarantees. States can only lawfully use force outside their borders in extremely narrow circumstances. Beyond that, they must address security concerns non-forcibly.
43. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Zambia suggested here that there is a sui generis applicable legal framework, an Israeli-Palestinian lex specialis. This somehow supersedes the rules of international law determining whether the occupation is existentially lawful. Instead, we have a new rule, justifying the occupation until there is a peace agreement meeting Israeli security needs. This is the law as these States would like it to be, not the law as it is. It has no basis in resolution 242, Oslo or any other resolutions or agreements. Actually, you are being invited to do away with the very operation of some of the fundamental, peremptory rules of international law itself. As a result, the matters these rules conceive as rights vested in the Palestinian people would be realized only if agreement is reached, and only on the basis of such agreement. At best, if there is an agreement, this means one that need not be compatible with Palestinian peremptory legal rights, determined only by the acute power imbalance in Israel’s favour. At worst, if there is no agreement, this means that the indefinite continuation of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, on the basis of racist supremacy and a claim to sovereignty, would be lawful. This is an affront to the international rule of law, to the United Nations Charter imperative to settle disputes in conformity with international law, and to your judicial function as guardians of the international legal system.
44. A final potential basis sometimes invoked to justify continuing the occupation should be addressed. Occupation and human rights law — applicable to illegal and lawful occupations alike — oblige Israel to address security threats in occupied territory. However, they only regulate the conduct of an occupation when it exists. They do not also provide a legal basis for that existence itself. Existential legality is determined by the law of self-determination and the jus ad bellum only. There is no “back door” legal basis for Israel to maintain the occupation through the imperatives of occupation and human rights law.
12. EXISTENTIAL ILLEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK, INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM
45. In sum: the occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is existentially illegal on two mutually reinforcing bases.
46. First, the law on the use of force. Here, the occupation is illegal both as a use of force without valid justification, and because it is enabling an illegal purported annexation. As such, it is an aggression.
47. Second, the law of self-determination. Here, it is illegal again because of the association with illegal purported annexation, and also, more generally, because it is, quite simply, an exercise of authority over the Palestinian people that, by its very nature, violates their right to freedom.
48. This multifaceted existential illegality — involving serious violations of peremptory norms — has two key consequences.
49. First: the occupation must end: Israel must renounce its claim to sovereignty over the Palestinian territory; all settlers must be removed. Immediately. This is required to end the illegality, to discharge the positive obligation to enable immediate Palestinian self-administration, and because Israel lacks any legal entitlement to exercise authority.
50. Second, in the absence of the occupation ending, necessarily, everything Israel does in the Palestinian territory lacks a valid international legal basis and is, therefore (subject to the Namibia exception), invalid, not only those things violating the law regulating the conduct of the occupation. Those norms entitle and require Israel to do certain things. But this does not alter the more fundamental position, from the law on the use of force and self-determination, that Israel lacks any valid authority to do anything, and whatever it does is illegal, even if compliant with or pursuant to the conduct-regulatory rules.
13. THE WORDS OF REFAAT ALAREER
51. I will close by quoting Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer (1979-2023), from his final poem posted 36 days before he was killed by Israel in Gaza on 6 December 2023:
If I must die, you must live to tell my story [...]
If I must die
let it bring hope, let it be a story.
Thank you for your attention.
The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of the League of Arab States for its presentation. Before I invite the next delegation to make its oral statement, the Court will observe a break for 10 minutes. The sitting is suspended.
The Court adjourned from 11.25 a.m.to 11.40 a.m.