Figures this would be in the Castro.

On July 17, 2024, I received from Netherland an additional camera film magazine for my Zenza Bronica S2A. The back came with the original dark slide holder branded Zenza Bronica Industries, Japan.

The back is in a very good condition, and after some mechanical exercices, it succeeded my blank tests using a 120 roll containing only the protection paper. A a test with a real 120 film was necessary to valid the correct film advance and view spacing.

The camera back was loaded with a Fomapan 100 roll. The 120-format version of Fomapan 100 differs from the 35mm version using a PET (Polyester Tera Phthalate )0.1mm base instead of the regular cellulose tri-acétate. The 12à-film is also treated with a dyed back coating to prevent halation. This anti-halation coating is dissolved in the developer solution. The Foma data sheets do not indicate necessary pre-washing however. Strangely the film is labelled on the side "ULTRA 100".

The Nikkor normal lens 1:2.8 f=75mm was equipped with a Hoya Yellow (K2) 67mm screwed filter and the dedicated Zenza Bronica metal hood.

The film was exposed for 50 ISO (to compensate the filter absorption with a coef. x2) using an Autometer III Minolta lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective measurements privileging the shadow areas.

View Nr 3 : 1/125s f/9 focus @ 30m

Place Chardonnet, July 27, 2024

69001 Lyon

France

After the view #12 exposed, the film was fully rolled to the taking spool and was developed in a Paterson tank with a spiral adapted to the 70mm large film. 500 mL of Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developer were prepared at the dilution 1+50 and the film processed for 9min at 20°C.

The film showed very nicely exposed views, correctly spaced without any overlap nor light leaks, validating the correct function of this second camera film back.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) held on a Minolta vertical macro stative device and adapted to a Minolta MD Macro lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The light source was a LED panel (approx. 4x5') CineStill Cine-lite fitted with film holder "Lobster" to maintain flat the 70mm films.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printed files with frame or the full size JPEG.

All views of the film are presented in the dedicated album either in the printed framed versions and unframed full-size jpeg accompanied by some documentary smartphone Vivo Y76 color pictures.

About the camera and the lens :

The Zenza Bronica’s S (ゼンザブロニカ) were often referred to the « Japanese Hasselblad ». Conceived in the year 50’s (Bronica D, 1959) was manufactured in ToKy,o Itabashi-ku, Minami-Tokiwadai with the Japan engineering spirit of that time : « we wlll do as … in better! »; The Bronica (ETR, SQ series) camera’s were progressively discontinued twenty years ago between 2002 and 20O4 and the brand was bought by Tampon company and disappeared from the market.

The Zenza Bronica S2A was produced by Bronica Insdutries founded by Yoshino Zenzaburo, between 1972 and 1977 and was the ultimate model of fully mechanical medium format modular SLR o th e S series. The camera in made in stainless steel 18-8 quality for the outer elements. The S2A is still a focal-plane shutter camera with automatic diaphragm and automatic film back coupled to the shutter cocking through a re-arming crank. Bronica were equipped either with Nikon Nikkor lenses, Zenzanon of Komura optics.

I got this exemplary from a French eBay auction for a quite reasonable price, equipped with a Nikkor-P normal lens 1:2.8 f=75mm, a generic 67mm lens cap, and a neck/shoulder Bronica strap. I found at my monthly trade -exchange photo meeting new-old stock 67mm filters (Hoya HMC anti-UV, Yellow K2, and a Zenzza Bronica Skylight 1A) and two shade shade hoods (one generic foldable and a rigid metal Zenza Bronica Japan). I also found a nice storage box 15x20x20cm to store the machine with silica-gel protectant.

The camera fit in my ThinkTank Retrospective 5 usual bag as easily as my TLR Semflex. The weight is however higher by about 1;8 kg (0.8 kg for my Semflex TLR).

dense packing squares and a carpet remnant I've been using in the corner for some purpose. ugh.

For testing on film my newly arrived exceptional French 35mm camera FOCA Universel RC (see below for details about this rare and fascinating camera), I went for photowalk in my district, Lyon, France. The weather was very sunny and the outside temperature warm (32°C).

Testing a new collection camera is always is great moment. We know the camera only from its blank manipulations but the real judge is the test film on the field, the camera exposed to outside elements in real photography operations. Some possible problems as light leaks or slight unpairing of the shutter curtains, will be only detected on film.

I used the camera with its ever-ready bag and I removed the front part for operation. In particular, I previously checked very carefully the exact condition of the thin leather neck strap. Old leather may crack and it would a shame and a nightmare to drop such camera. The OPLAR standard lens 1/:2.8 f=5cm was equipped with a yellow filter FOCA x2.5. The OPLAR lens fro the FOCA’s only accept push-on filter (42.5mm in this specific case). A vintage Genaco cylindric stainless-steel shade hood conceived for a 5cm focal length was also used all along the session.

The test film was a 36-exposure Fomapan 100. Expositions were determined for 50 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was achieved using a Minolta Autometer III lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective metering privileging the shadow areas.

View Nr 39: 1/100s f/8 focusing @ 10 m - Yellow filter

Rue Victor Fort, July 5, 2025

69004 Lyon

France

After completion at view #39, the film was rewound normally and processed using 350 mL of Adox Adonal developer (identical to the original Agfa Rodinal in its formula of 1891) prepared at the dilution 1+50 for 9 min at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.4) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.

As a result, the test film shows that this FOCA Universel RC is in perfect conditions and could be used normally with confidence.

About the camera and its history :

Among the French 35mm camera produced by « Optique & Précision de Levallois S.A. » from 1945 to the middle of the 60’s, the FOCA Universel « RC » is likely the most captivating ever produced in France at that time.

The camera was the last development of the FOCA, sometime called the « French Leica » because the optical and mechanical precision matched and even surpassed the original thread-mount Leica. Far before the first Leica M (the M3 in 1954) O.P.L. developed a bayonet-mount FOCA in 1948 called the FOCA « Universel ». Seeing the incredible viewer and range finder of the Leica M that is likely the most sophisticated system even engineered, O.P.L. released lately a great improvement of the FOCA with a novel collimated, parallax auto-corrected, of a fully original and different design of the Leitz system.

The FOCA Universel RC It is a rare camera that only appears for time to time on the collector market, being only produced to a bit more than 2000 overall units in the years 1962 and 1963, just before O.P.L. decided to quit the camera production and returned to other instrumental optical production. O.P.L. soon merged with SOM Berthiot and today can be found still in the industrial filiation of SAFRAN group, the French leader company for designing and producing system for aerospace appliances. The plant where the FOCA's were produced still exists in an almost original form in Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loir, France.

I got my first FOCA URC unit two years ago (Sept. 2023, flic.kr/s/aHBqjAV6Dg) that is a standing and emotional piece of my small camera collection.

I got this one from an apparently ignored auction on the French eBay. We were only two biders in the last 5s and I won the auction not far away to the initial price. The camera was fully revised, with new shutter curtains, a new delayed shutter release mechanism. The serial number indicated a year-1962 production starting with 1.000.000, closed to my first FOCA URC. The camera works in every functions like on its Day-1! The camera came with a late version 1962 of the OPLAR 1:2.8 f=5cm standard collapsible lens of excellent quality, the FOCA UCR dedicated ever-ready leather bag with the original leather neck strap in good condition.

The original O.P.L. camera warranty and a registration postal card fortunately followed the life of the camera, indicating that this beautiful FOCA Universel RC was sold to its first owner on August 9, 1963 by the official FOCA dealer « ROYAL-PHOTO, Photo-Ciné-Magnétohone », 42, rue Vignon, Paris 9ème arrondissement, France, today a Weill fashion shop at the same address. The address of the owner also still exists with the original Parisian building in place, Boulevard Poniatwski, next to the Métro station « Porte de Charenton », Paris 12ème arrondissement.

The shown original FOCAL Universel RC user manual is the one that came with my other FOCA URC camera.

These information pushed me to question what were the news in France on this Friday, August 9, 1963… France was mainly on vacation, by an exceptional wet and fresh weather that wasted many French citizens holidays. The whole national radio information bulletin is still available online here :

www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/audio/phd94020557/inter-actua...

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM du 9 août 1963

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM - 09.08.1963 - 29:58 - audio

Ina.fr (English translated)

- Headlines - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: The Marseille and Bordeaux sailors' strike ended this morning, but nothing has been resolved in Le Havre. Many heads of state and government sent messages of condolence to President Kennedy for the death of his third child shortly after birth. Other headlines in the newspaper (2'20"). - André Brière: It does not appear for the moment that work will resume in Le Havre. Mr. Pisani would agree to the distillation of 2 million hectoliters of wine, which is clogging up the market, but a subsidy would be required. Discontent is growing among winegrowers in the south, whom the population accuses of various acts of sabotage in the Narbonne region. Complaints from winegrowers in the southwest. Farmers scattered 5 tons of potatoes yesterday in the streets of Douai (3'30"). - Jacques Behingue: Secretary of State Dean Rusk will return to Washington from Moscow on Monday. He will give a presentation to senators on the Moscow Treaty. This morning, Dean Rusk was received by Mr. Khrushchev on the shores of the Black Sea in Cagra. This evening, Mr. Dean Rusk will host a dinner in Moscow at the US Embassy. Tomorrow, he will be in Bonn, received by Mr. Adenauer. The Moscow Treaty was signed by 11 new countries, with Japan set to sign next Wednesday. North Vietnam has refused to sign. Mr. MAC MILLAN declared that underground tests, which are not prohibited, are not of great importance because nuclear weapons can only be modified following atmospheric tests (4'40"). - Gérard TAVERA: Two years after Bizerte, France and Tunisia signed an agreement this morning that includes two chapters: the first concerns the 30,000 Tunisian workers living in France, the second concerns economic cooperation. This agreement resolves the economic problems concerning Bizerte. After an African trip, Mr. BEN BELLA returns to Algiers. In Accra, Mr. BEN BELLA declared that the next session of the UN would be an African session. Yesterday, AIT AHMED violently criticized the FLN party and the constitutional project. All French newspapers reproducing Mr. AIT AHMED's Declaration were seized this morning upon their arrival in Algiers. Since July 16, in Morocco, leaders of the UNFP are detained in rather precarious conditions following the "plot" against the monarchy (2'25"). - André Brière: before the State Security Court, opening of the trial of the station commander, among those who are bringing a civil action is Mr. Jean OUDINOT, former director of RTF in Algiers (1'05"). - Victor VRAMANT: the body of Doctor WARD was cremated this morning, only members of Doctor WARD's family attended the funeral ceremony. The weather in France and Europe. It is raining everywhere in France except on the Côte d'Azur. Road accidents (2'). - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: Gaston GELIS, former director of "Paris-journal" died in a road accident in Seine et Marne (1'). - Victor VRAMANT: a major drug trafficker was arrested at Orly. In Italy, following the arrest of a repeat offender, a 22-year-old American woman was arrested for drug trafficking (1'30"). - Jacques CHABOT: Charles TRENET has not yet been released; he would be released tomorrow morning after payment of bail (25%).

WEATHER:

SOURCE: www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1963

June 14, 1963: a particularly cool day - it was no more than 12°C in Rouen, 13°C in Paris, St. Quentin, Lille, Le Havre, and Caen.

August 1963 was autumnal because it was very cool and very wet. On August 3, 1963, torrential rains caused catastrophic flooding and the death of eight people in the Lyon region. On August 4, 1963, 400 houses were also flooded between St. Jean de Luz and Le Boucau (Pyrénées Atlantiques). On August 17 and 18, 1963, it was no more than 10°C. and 15°C in the northern half - many summer visitors leave early - it's snowing in the mountains and the harvest is very difficult.

Historical landmarks of the year 1963

August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King leads the march on Washington. October 11, 1963: Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf die within hours of each other. November 22, 1963: President J.F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. The yé-yé movement is in vogue - the debut of Françoise Hardy and the politically engaged singer, Jean Ferrat.

Adox Scala 50 film in négative processing:

After testing the high-resolution and ultra-fine gain film Adox HR-50 processed with the fine-grain developer Adox Atomal 49, I would like to compare with the Adox Scala 50 that likely the same formula but commercially intended to be processed with a reversal chemistry. I tried this chemistry past year but, unfortunately the bleaching bath was degraded and I obtained incompletely bleached positives that I reported here: flic.kr/s/aHBqjBCCha. The Scala 50 could be however processed as a normal negative using the same processing times and developer as recommended by Adox for HR-50.

For testing Scala 50 as a negative, I picked up for a second time my newly arrived exceptional French 35mm camera FOCA Universel RC (see below for details about this rare and fascinating camera), I went for photowalk at Port Rambaud, along.the Saône river bank, Lyon, France. The weather was very fair with gentle clouds in a nice blue Skye with a mild outdoor temperature (28°C).

I mounted on my FOCA the OPLAREX lens 1:1.9 f=5cm equipped with a yellow filter FOCA x2.5. The OPLAR /OPLAREX lenses for the FOCA’s only accept push-on filter (42.5mm in this specific case). A vintage Genaco cylindric stainless-steel shade hood conceived for a 5cm focal length was also used all along the session.

Expositions were determined for 32 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter (not the x2.5 coefficient due to the enhanced sensitivity of the film in the yellow). Metering was achieved using a Minolta Autometer III lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective metering privileging the shadow areas, but too much to avoid high-lights saturation, or also in the incident-light mode with the integrating opal dome of the Autometer.

Most of the views were taken at 1/50s to 1/200s and f/5.6 to f/9 apertures.

Port Rambaud - La Confluence***, July 31, 2025

69002 Lyon

France

_____________________

*** Port Rambaud is a former river port in Lyon, on the Saône, located in the Confluence district at the end of the peninsula between the Saône and Rhône rivers up to the Pont de la Mulatière. The construction of the port was decided in 1909 but work was frozen during the First World War and only completed in 1926. Initially 500 m long, it was first extended in 1929 to the Pont de la Mulatière, reaching 1,000 m in 1953, allowing 16,000 m3 of hydrocarbons to be stored. From 1985, the activities of the Rambaud port were transferred to the new Édouard-Herriot port on the Rhône and the Rambaut port was closed in 1991. The old port became a concerted development zone to create the new "La Confluence" district where post-modernist architectural projects.

In 2014 was opened the Musée des Confluences (French pronunciation: [myze de kɔ̃flyɑ̃s]) a science centre and anthropology museum l ocated at the southern tip of the Presqu'île at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, adjacent to the A7 highway Paris-Marseille. The museum was designed in the deconstructivist architectural style, said to resemble a floating crystal cloud of stainless steel and glass, and was created by the Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au.

______________________

After completion at view Nr. 38, the film was rewound normally and processed using 400 mL of stock solution of Adox Atomal 49 developer for 8min30 at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.4) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.

About the camera and its history :

Among the French 35mm camera produced by « Optique & Précision de Levallois S.A. » from 1945 to the middle of the 60’s, the FOCA Universel « RC » is likely the most captivating ever produced in France at that time.

The camera was the last development of the FOCA, sometime called the « French Leica » because the optical and mechanical precision matched and even surpassed the original thread-mount Leica. Far before the first Leica M (the M3 in 1954) O.P.L. developed a bayonet-mount FOCA in 1948 called the FOCA « Universel ». Seeing the incredible viewer and range finder of the Leica M that is likely the most sophisticated system even engineered, O.P.L. released lately a great improvement of the FOCA with a novel collimated, parallax auto-corrected, of a fully original and different design of the Leitz system.

The FOCA Universel RC It is a rare camera that only appears for time to time on the collector market, being only produced to a bit more than 2000 overall units in the years 1962 and 1963, just before O.P.L. decided to quit the camera production and returned to other instrumental optical production. O.P.L. soon merged with SOM Berthiot and today can be found still in the industrial filiation of SAFRAN group, the French leader company for designing and producing system for aerospace appliances. The plant where the FOCA's were produced still exists in an almost original form in Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loir, France.

I got my first FOCA URC unit two years ago (Sept. 2023, flic.kr/s/aHBqjAV6Dg) that is a standing and emotional piece of my small camera collection.

I got this one from an apparently ignored auction on the French eBay. We were only two biders in the last 5s and I won the auction not far away to the initial price. The camera was fully revised, with new shutter curtains, a new delayed shutter release mechanism. The serial number indicated a year-1962 production starting with 1.000.000, closed to my first FOCA URC. The camera works in every functions like on its Day-1! The camera came with a late version 1962 of the OPLAR 1:2.8 f=5cm standard collapsible lens of excellent quality, the FOCA UCR dedicated ever-ready leather bag with the original leather neck strap in good condition.

The original O.P.L. camera warranty and a registration postal card fortunately followed the life of the camera, indicating that this beautiful FOCA Universel RC was sold to its first owner on August 9, 1963 by the official FOCA dealer « ROYAL-PHOTO, Photo-Ciné-Magnétohone », 42, rue Vignon, Paris 9ème arrondissement, France, today a Weill fashion shop at the same address. The address of the owner also still exists with the original Parisian building in place, Boulevard Poniatwski, next to the Métro station « Porte de Charenton », Paris 12ème arrondissement.

The shown original FOCAL Universel RC user manual is the one that came with my other FOCA URC camera.

These information pushed me to question what were the news in France on this Friday, August 9, 1963… France was mainly on vacation, by an exceptional wet and fresh weather that wasted many French citizens holidays. The whole national radio information bulletin is still available online here :

www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/audio/phd94020557/inter-actua...

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM du 9 août 1963

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM - 09.08.1963 - 29:58 - audio

Ina.fr (English translated)

- Headlines - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: The Marseille and Bordeaux sailors' strike ended this morning, but nothing has been resolved in Le Havre. Many heads of state and government sent messages of condolence to President Kennedy for the death of his third child shortly after birth. Other headlines in the newspaper (2'20"). - André Brière: It does not appear for the moment that work will resume in Le Havre. Mr. Pisani would agree to the distillation of 2 million hectoliters of wine, which is clogging up the market, but a subsidy would be required. Discontent is growing among winegrowers in the south, whom the population accuses of various acts of sabotage in the Narbonne region. Complaints from winegrowers in the southwest. Farmers scattered 5 tons of potatoes yesterday in the streets of Douai (3'30"). - Jacques Behingue: Secretary of State Dean Rusk will return to Washington from Moscow on Monday. He will give a presentation to senators on the Moscow Treaty. This morning, Dean Rusk was received by Mr. Khrushchev on the shores of the Black Sea in Cagra. This evening, Mr. Dean Rusk will host a dinner in Moscow at the US Embassy. Tomorrow, he will be in Bonn, received by Mr. Adenauer. The Moscow Treaty was signed by 11 new countries, with Japan set to sign next Wednesday. North Vietnam has refused to sign. Mr. MAC MILLAN declared that underground tests, which are not prohibited, are not of great importance because nuclear weapons can only be modified following atmospheric tests (4'40"). - Gérard TAVERA: Two years after Bizerte, France and Tunisia signed an agreement this morning that includes two chapters: the first concerns the 30,000 Tunisian workers living in France, the second concerns economic cooperation. This agreement resolves the economic problems concerning Bizerte. After an African trip, Mr. BEN BELLA returns to Algiers. In Accra, Mr. BEN BELLA declared that the next session of the UN would be an African session. Yesterday, AIT AHMED violently criticized the FLN party and the constitutional project. All French newspapers reproducing Mr. AIT AHMED's Declaration were seized this morning upon their arrival in Algiers. Since July 16, in Morocco, leaders of the UNFP are detained in rather precarious conditions following the "plot" against the monarchy (2'25"). - André Brière: before the State Security Court, opening of the trial of the station commander, among those who are bringing a civil action is Mr. Jean OUDINOT, former director of RTF in Algiers (1'05"). - Victor VRAMANT: the body of Doctor WARD was cremated this morning, only members of Doctor WARD's family attended the funeral ceremony. The weather in France and Europe. It is raining everywhere in France except on the Côte d'Azur. Road accidents (2'). - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: Gaston GELIS, former director of "Paris-journal" died in a road accident in Seine et Marne (1'). - Victor VRAMANT: a major drug trafficker was arrested at Orly. In Italy, following the arrest of a repeat offender, a 22-year-old American woman was arrested for drug trafficking (1'30"). - Jacques CHABOT: Charles TRENET has not yet been released; he would be released tomorrow morning after payment of bail (25%).

WEATHER:

SOURCE: www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1963

June 14, 1963: a particularly cool day - it was no more than 12°C in Rouen, 13°C in Paris, St. Quentin, Lille, Le Havre, and Caen.

August 1963 was autumnal because it was very cool and very wet. On August 3, 1963, torrential rains caused catastrophic flooding and the death of eight people in the Lyon region. On August 4, 1963, 400 houses were also flooded between St. Jean de Luz and Le Boucau (Pyrénées Atlantiques). On August 17 and 18, 1963, it was no more than 10°C. and 15°C in the northern half - many summer visitors leave early - it's snowing in the mountains and the harvest is very difficult.

Historical landmarks of the year 1963

August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King leads the march on Washington. October 11, 1963: Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf die within hours of each other. November 22, 1963: President J.F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. The yé-yé movement is in vogue - the debut of Françoise Hardy and the politically engaged singer, Jean Ferrat.

meditation, trance, ecstasy, absorption

Samgwangsa Temple, Busan, South Korea (2012)

For six days in April, 40 Israeli Seeds ran a camp for children of Ethiopian immigrants.

I found this Kodak Retina IIa camera from my local photography store on August 5, 2023, Lyon, France.

Kodak Retina IIa camera's were manufactured in Stuttgart, Germany, in the years 1951 to 1954. The IIa is equipped with a Scheinder-Kreuznach lens 1:2 f=50mm and at Synchro-Compur shutter operating from 1s to 1/500s. The IIA version of Retina camera's has also a range finder coupled to the focusing helicoid.

The principle of Retina camera's are the folding lens with a bellow to give a very compact body when folded. The Kodak Retina IIa is a beautiful piece of manufacture, typical of best photographic German industry.

After detailing and blank mechanical tests, I did a test film with a Fomapan 200 at Parc de la Tête d'Or. I used a 36mm ush-on Foca DYMA filter, adapter to the 32mm lens of the Retina. I exposed the film for 64 Iso to compensate the DYMA filter absorption. Snce the range finder was not correctly calibrated, I focused the lens trusting the distance scale and used a LASER meter to evaluate the object distance.

The expositions were flawless on the field but I had a blockage during the film rewind that I could not manage by pushing again the rewind small button of the bottom of the camera. The best solution would have been to open the camera in the dark to recover the film, but I tried to re-advance the film and the film broke. I just succeeded to save the 15 first views of the test. Some are presented here in the dedicated album.

If the exposures were OK, I noticed a problem in the focusing with a clear out-of-plane off-centering likely due to a dirty helicoid of old dried grease in the ramp. I hope to find a good technician to re-calibrate the range-finder and clean the focusing ramp.

Wetlands are biodiversity rich sensitive ecosystems that harbor hundreds of plants, insects, birds and other animals uniquely adapted to their wetland mode of life.They are crucial to maintain the regional water balance through ground water recharge and absorption of flood waters and also serve as the rice bowl of developing countries. Nevertheless, wetlands play immense role in the socio-economic and livelihood aspects of local communities living around the wetland. In India, rural communities depend wetland for livelihood through farming, mat making etc; for food through fishing and hunting; for roof thatching by collection of reeds and palm leaf ; for firewood; for fodder etc. However, these wetlands are now under a threat of conversion for big industrial and real estate projects, change in lifestyle of local community, over extraction of resources by increased population, pollution,waste dumping, eutrophication and pesticide farming. There are three important wetlands in the Puducherry region namely Oussudu, Bahour and Kaliveli that provide important resources for local communities and also are a home to tens of thousands of migratory birds that visit the Puducherry region in winter. These wetlands have been acknowledged as Important Bird Areas(IBAs) by IBCN, since many of these birds are represented in more than 1% of their global population.

The recent threat on wetlands of Puducherry is more due to the change in life style of local community living around these wetlands. The younger generation is not much dependent on wetland resources, The younger and modern generation has lost the compassion and bonding to the wetland which their forefathers maintained through sustainable livelihood practices. This has resulted in a change in attitude and perception of the community towards unsustainable farming and resource extraction, game hunting, intensive fishing and reclamation, ultimately resulting in shrinking of wetland area and loss of biodiversity at an alarming pace. Local community is leaving the traditional farming practices for more fertilizer and pesticide based farming; fish stock is depleted using invasive Gill nets. Since Puducherry is fast developing region with rapidly growing commercial tourism and industrial establishments, these wetlands are under the threat of reclamation for resort construction and other commercial establishments. Poaching for a sport as well as open selling of birds including the threatened species is common. School drop-out are noticed to get attracted to such practices to make easy money as well as hunting for a sport with peers. With time, they may grow into expert hunters who will depend on poaching as the main source of income for the family. There are many wetland awareness programs organized by Forest Department as well as NGOs targeting school kids and educated community through workshops. School drop-outs are often not specially targeted by any of such programs and often not brought under the ambit of such programs. This gap needs to be addressed for local conservation efforts to be fully effective. We have chosen birds as the umbrella species whose conservation will in turn protect the lake and biodiversity as a whole. Birds are attractive and beautiful; ,which may easily get compassion from drop-out kids if guided appropriately. With proper efforts, the poachers can be turned to protectors and expert tour guides to facilitate ecotourism.

Main Street, Gloucester - 1917

John Sloan (American, 1871 - 1951)

Sloan spent each summer from 1914 to 1918 in the small Cape Ann, Massachusetts, town of Gloucester. This work, executed during the fourth summer, reveals an aesthetic sophistication stimulated by the artist's absorption of the 1913 Armory Show's provocative presentation of avant-garde and modernist art. That landmark exhibition, coupled with those he helped to organize for The Eight in 1908 and the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, inspired Sloan to explore a constellation of new ideas and methods. The body of work he created during the Gloucester years speaks of a renewed rigor as well as an intrepid and vigorous spirit of experimentation that would endure throughout his career.(1)

Initially, “Main Street, Gloucester” captivates as one of Sloan's distinctive "city-life" pictures, for which he garnered an enormous reputation. In the decade and a half preceding this painting's creation, his keen powers of observation, selection, and rendering were honed through his work as an illustrator, etcher, and painter of the urban scene. Yet his production during the Gloucester period represented a fundamental shift in his methods of conception and execution.

I had been dependent on waiting for the inspiration to paint a picture because I had so little leisure time to work for myself. So I decided to save up enough money to take off for a few months, go to the country and work from nature to get fresh ideas about plastic design and color rhythms.(2)

Thus issues of pure painting, rather than subject, motivated his work at this time.

This redirection toward plasticity, design, and color resulted from Sloan's thoughtful analysis of the work of what he called the "ultra-moderns" at the Armory Show. Sloan recalled the impact of that landmark exhibition: "It was exciting, it pointed many ways to freedom of expression, color, texture, most of all “graphics”. It pointed the way back to mental rather than visual thinking."(3) He credited the works of Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh, among others, as powerful antidotes for the disease of "clever eyesight painting," the scourge of art production and consumption since the advent of photography.(4) He wrote: "Many intelligent people have accepted the false idea that accuracy in representing visual facts is a sign of progress in art. Such imitation of superficial effects has nothing to do with art, which is and always has been the making of mental concepts."(5)

Sloan's summers in Gloucester precipitated the auspicious convergence of several paths of inquiry in his own work. Using color as a constructive, expressive element in painting had been one of his preoccupations since 1909, when Robert Henri introduced him to Hardesty Maratta's experimental color system. Through it, Sloan had moved away from a dark tonal palette by increasing the presence of bright vivid colors. Maratta's system was predicated on the analogous relationship of the twelve colors in the chromatic wheel to notes in an octave of music.(6) The careful, precise orchestration of notes, chords, and harmonies was facilitated through the use of a set palette of premixed colors. With this palette, Sloan was confident that he could maintain the continuity of a painting's colors as he worked on it over time:

These Maratta colors opened up the palette for me. I had been analyzing the color of the city streets and the few things I painted from the model, in terms of color changes away from a basic raw umber note. With the Maratta colors I had six, twelve color-hues to work with, and from there could think of branching up into notes of higher intensity.(7)

His use of the Maratta system was given fresh impetus when he coupled it with plein-air techniques. The genre of landscape provided a comfortable arena in which to experiment with color that was often somewhat antinaturalistic. "After selecting the subject I would take half an hour to set my palette. Then I would pick up those set tones and draw with paint. Instead of imitating the colors in nature, I decided on some quality of color that interested me and set a limited palette."(8) His deep sympathy for humanity prevented his taking too many liberties with human subjects. "There is no better subject [than landscape] to free one of color habits. The variety in nature offers new color combinations, new ideas. You also feel more free to take liberties with color in nature than when painting from the figure."(9)

In “Main Street, Gloucester” Sloan effectively merged plein-air techniques with his exploration of color rhythms and plastic design. Through the skilled massing and organization of form, volume, and color, he devised a composition that is at once stable and balanced yet highly animated. By the artist's criteria for a successful composition, “Main Street, Gloucester” is a successful work. "A good design has stability. It is at rest with itself. Sense the opposition of horizontal and vertical rhythms to the dynamic movement of diagonal curves. Feel the weight of tones and colors, balance and counterbalance them against line and mass."

Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, John Sloan was the first child and only surviving son of Henrietta Ireland, a former school teacher, and James Dixon Sloan, who repaired bicycles and worked as a photographer after the decline of his family's cabinetry business. Sloan's childhood was spent reading, sketching, and pouring over illustrated books. He attended Philadelphia's prestigious collegiate Central High School with fellow students William Glackens and Albert Barnes. In 1888 Sloan left school just six months shy of graduation, to become the family's primary breadwinner.

Sloan took a job as a cashier at Porter and Coates' bookstore and continued his education by reading and studying prints. He taught himself to etch using Philip Hamerton's “Etcher's Handbook” (1881), a popular "how-to" manual, and supplemented his income by selling prints at the bookshop. When A. Edward Newton, one of his co-workers, left to open his own store, he hired Sloan to etch giftbooks and pamphlets. At this time, Sloan made his first oil painting, “Self-Portrait” (1890; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), using another "how-to" book, John Collier's “Manual of Oil Painting” (1886), and painting on a piece of window shade his father gave him.

During the 1890s Sloan worked as an illustrator for the “Philadelphia Inquirer” and the “Philadelphia Press”, honing his skills as an astute "spectator of life." Fellow illustrators Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn introduced him to a circle of artists, including Robert Henri, who soon became his close friend and mentor. Their shared aspirations to infuse American art with vitality and release it from the tyranny of the conservative academic system of juried exhibitions and prizes led them to form the group known as The Eight. Their landmark exhibition of 1908 established Sloan's career as an artist, exhibition organizer, and forward-thinking modernist.

Sloan's earliest paintings, many executed in a limited palette, are indebted to the figurative traditions of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas P. Anshutz. Sloan moved to New York in 1904 and took up the city-life subjects that distinguished his ensuing career. His spirit of artistic exploration, fed by the 1913 Armory Show and summer sojourns to the art colonies of Gloucester (1914-18) and Santa Fe (1919-50), led him to experiment with color, glazing, and a graphic painting technique that he called "linework."

From 1900 until his death, Sloan's paintings, etchings, and drawings were exhibited in nearly nine hundred exhibitions, including those at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Studio Club and C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries. “The Gist of Art” (1939), written with his student Helen Farr (later, Mrs. John Sloan), stands as a thoughtful and eminently readable compendium of his ideas and practices. Happily, Sloan's numerous contributions to the arts and to art education were recognized and celebrated in the decade before his death.

_________________________________

"Acknowledged as the first museum in the world dedicated solely to collecting American art, the NBMAA is renowned for its preeminent collection spanning three centuries of American history. The award-winning Chase Family Building, which opened in 2006 to critical and public acclaim, features 15 spacious galleries which showcase the permanent collection and upwards of 25 special exhibitions a year featuring American masters, emerging artists and private collections. Education and community outreach programs for all ages include docent-led school and adult tours, teacher services, studio classes and vacation programs, Art Happy Hour gallery talks, lectures, symposia, concerts, film, monthly First Friday jazz evenings, quarterly Museum After Dark parties for young professionals, and the annual Juneteenth celebration. Enjoy Café on the Park for a light lunch prepared by “Best Caterer in Connecticut” Jordan Caterers. Visit the Museum Shop for unique gifts. Drop by the “ArtLab” learning gallery with your little ones. Gems not to be missed include Thomas Hart Benton’s murals “The Arts of Life in America,” “The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001” by Graydon Parrish,” and Dale Chihuly’s “Blue and Beyond Blue” spectacular chandelier. Called “a destination for art lovers everywhere,” “first-class,” “a full-size, transparent temple of art, mixing New York ambience with Yankee ingenuity and all-American beauty,” the NBMAA is not to be missed."

www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33847-d106105-Revi...

www.nbmaa.org/permanent-collection

The NBMAA collection represents the major artists and movements of American art. Today it numbers about 8,274 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs, including the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, which features important works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.

Among collection highlights are colonial and federal portraits, with examples by John Smibert, John Trumbull, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and the Peale family. The Hudson River School features landscapes by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Still life painters range from Raphaelle Peale, Severin Roesen, William Harnett, John Peto, John Haberle, and John La Farge. American genre painting is represented by John Quidor, William Sidney Mount, and Lilly Martin Spencer. Post-Civil War examples include works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, George de Forest Brush, and William Paxton, and 19 plasters and bronzes by Solon Borglum. American Impressionists include Mary Cassatt, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam, the last represented by eleven oils. Later Impressionist paintings include those by Ernest Lawson, Frederck Frieseke, Louis Ritman, Robert Miller, and Maurice Prendergast.

Other strengths of the twentieth-century collection include: sixty works by members of the Ash Can School; significant representation by early modernists such as Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber; important examples by the Precisionists Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, and Ralston Crawford; a broad spectrum of work by the Social Realists Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Levine; and ambitious examples of Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, notably the latter’s celebrated five-panel mural, The Arts of Life in America (1932).

Works by the American Abstract Artist group (Stuart Davis, Ilya Bolotowsky, Esphyr Slobodkina, Balcomb Greene, and Milton Avery) give twentieth-century abstraction its place in the collection, as do later examples of Surrealism by artists Kay Sage and George Tooker; Abstract Expressionism (Lee Krasner, Giorgio Cavallon, Morris Graves, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Cleve Gray), Pop and Op art (Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine), Conceptual (Christo, Sol LeWitt), and Photo-Realism (Robert Cottingham). Examples of twentieth-century sculpture include Harriet Frishmuth, Paul Manship, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, and Stephen DeStaebler. We continue to acquire contemporary works by notable artists, in order to best represent the dynamic and evolving narrative of American art.

via Siliwristbands.com siliwristbands.com/daupin-for-galaxy-s20-circumstance-cle...

Main Street, Gloucester - 1917

John Sloan (American, 1871 - 1951)

Sloan spent each summer from 1914 to 1918 in the small Cape Ann, Massachusetts, town of Gloucester. This work, executed during the fourth summer, reveals an aesthetic sophistication stimulated by the artist's absorption of the 1913 Armory Show's provocative presentation of avant-garde and modernist art. That landmark exhibition, coupled with those he helped to organize for The Eight in 1908 and the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, inspired Sloan to explore a constellation of new ideas and methods. The body of work he created during the Gloucester years speaks of a renewed rigor as well as an intrepid and vigorous spirit of experimentation that would endure throughout his career.(1)

Initially, “Main Street, Gloucester” captivates as one of Sloan's distinctive "city-life" pictures, for which he garnered an enormous reputation. In the decade and a half preceding this painting's creation, his keen powers of observation, selection, and rendering were honed through his work as an illustrator, etcher, and painter of the urban scene. Yet his production during the Gloucester period represented a fundamental shift in his methods of conception and execution.

I had been dependent on waiting for the inspiration to paint a picture because I had so little leisure time to work for myself. So I decided to save up enough money to take off for a few months, go to the country and work from nature to get fresh ideas about plastic design and color rhythms.(2)

Thus issues of pure painting, rather than subject, motivated his work at this time.

This redirection toward plasticity, design, and color resulted from Sloan's thoughtful analysis of the work of what he called the "ultra-moderns" at the Armory Show. Sloan recalled the impact of that landmark exhibition: "It was exciting, it pointed many ways to freedom of expression, color, texture, most of all “graphics”. It pointed the way back to mental rather than visual thinking."(3) He credited the works of Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh, among others, as powerful antidotes for the disease of "clever eyesight painting," the scourge of art production and consumption since the advent of photography.(4) He wrote: "Many intelligent people have accepted the false idea that accuracy in representing visual facts is a sign of progress in art. Such imitation of superficial effects has nothing to do with art, which is and always has been the making of mental concepts."(5)

Sloan's summers in Gloucester precipitated the auspicious convergence of several paths of inquiry in his own work. Using color as a constructive, expressive element in painting had been one of his preoccupations since 1909, when Robert Henri introduced him to Hardesty Maratta's experimental color system. Through it, Sloan had moved away from a dark tonal palette by increasing the presence of bright vivid colors. Maratta's system was predicated on the analogous relationship of the twelve colors in the chromatic wheel to notes in an octave of music.(6) The careful, precise orchestration of notes, chords, and harmonies was facilitated through the use of a set palette of premixed colors. With this palette, Sloan was confident that he could maintain the continuity of a painting's colors as he worked on it over time:

These Maratta colors opened up the palette for me. I had been analyzing the color of the city streets and the few things I painted from the model, in terms of color changes away from a basic raw umber note. With the Maratta colors I had six, twelve color-hues to work with, and from there could think of branching up into notes of higher intensity.(7)

His use of the Maratta system was given fresh impetus when he coupled it with plein-air techniques. The genre of landscape provided a comfortable arena in which to experiment with color that was often somewhat antinaturalistic. "After selecting the subject I would take half an hour to set my palette. Then I would pick up those set tones and draw with paint. Instead of imitating the colors in nature, I decided on some quality of color that interested me and set a limited palette."(8) His deep sympathy for humanity prevented his taking too many liberties with human subjects. "There is no better subject [than landscape] to free one of color habits. The variety in nature offers new color combinations, new ideas. You also feel more free to take liberties with color in nature than when painting from the figure."(9)

In “Main Street, Gloucester” Sloan effectively merged plein-air techniques with his exploration of color rhythms and plastic design. Through the skilled massing and organization of form, volume, and color, he devised a composition that is at once stable and balanced yet highly animated. By the artist's criteria for a successful composition, “Main Street, Gloucester” is a successful work. "A good design has stability. It is at rest with itself. Sense the opposition of horizontal and vertical rhythms to the dynamic movement of diagonal curves. Feel the weight of tones and colors, balance and counterbalance them against line and mass."

Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, John Sloan was the first child and only surviving son of Henrietta Ireland, a former school teacher, and James Dixon Sloan, who repaired bicycles and worked as a photographer after the decline of his family's cabinetry business. Sloan's childhood was spent reading, sketching, and pouring over illustrated books. He attended Philadelphia's prestigious collegiate Central High School with fellow students William Glackens and Albert Barnes. In 1888 Sloan left school just six months shy of graduation, to become the family's primary breadwinner.

Sloan took a job as a cashier at Porter and Coates' bookstore and continued his education by reading and studying prints. He taught himself to etch using Philip Hamerton's “Etcher's Handbook” (1881), a popular "how-to" manual, and supplemented his income by selling prints at the bookshop. When A. Edward Newton, one of his co-workers, left to open his own store, he hired Sloan to etch giftbooks and pamphlets. At this time, Sloan made his first oil painting, “Self-Portrait” (1890; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), using another "how-to" book, John Collier's “Manual of Oil Painting” (1886), and painting on a piece of window shade his father gave him.

During the 1890s Sloan worked as an illustrator for the “Philadelphia Inquirer” and the “Philadelphia Press”, honing his skills as an astute "spectator of life." Fellow illustrators Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn introduced him to a circle of artists, including Robert Henri, who soon became his close friend and mentor. Their shared aspirations to infuse American art with vitality and release it from the tyranny of the conservative academic system of juried exhibitions and prizes led them to form the group known as The Eight. Their landmark exhibition of 1908 established Sloan's career as an artist, exhibition organizer, and forward-thinking modernist.

Sloan's earliest paintings, many executed in a limited palette, are indebted to the figurative traditions of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas P. Anshutz. Sloan moved to New York in 1904 and took up the city-life subjects that distinguished his ensuing career. His spirit of artistic exploration, fed by the 1913 Armory Show and summer sojourns to the art colonies of Gloucester (1914-18) and Santa Fe (1919-50), led him to experiment with color, glazing, and a graphic painting technique that he called "linework."

From 1900 until his death, Sloan's paintings, etchings, and drawings were exhibited in nearly nine hundred exhibitions, including those at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Studio Club and C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries. “The Gist of Art” (1939), written with his student Helen Farr (later, Mrs. John Sloan), stands as a thoughtful and eminently readable compendium of his ideas and practices. Happily, Sloan's numerous contributions to the arts and to art education were recognized and celebrated in the decade before his death.

_________________________________

"Acknowledged as the first museum in the world dedicated solely to collecting American art, the NBMAA is renowned for its preeminent collection spanning three centuries of American history. The award-winning Chase Family Building, which opened in 2006 to critical and public acclaim, features 15 spacious galleries which showcase the permanent collection and upwards of 25 special exhibitions a year featuring American masters, emerging artists and private collections. Education and community outreach programs for all ages include docent-led school and adult tours, teacher services, studio classes and vacation programs, Art Happy Hour gallery talks, lectures, symposia, concerts, film, monthly First Friday jazz evenings, quarterly Museum After Dark parties for young professionals, and the annual Juneteenth celebration. Enjoy Café on the Park for a light lunch prepared by “Best Caterer in Connecticut” Jordan Caterers. Visit the Museum Shop for unique gifts. Drop by the “ArtLab” learning gallery with your little ones. Gems not to be missed include Thomas Hart Benton’s murals “The Arts of Life in America,” “The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001” by Graydon Parrish,” and Dale Chihuly’s “Blue and Beyond Blue” spectacular chandelier. Called “a destination for art lovers everywhere,” “first-class,” “a full-size, transparent temple of art, mixing New York ambience with Yankee ingenuity and all-American beauty,” the NBMAA is not to be missed."

www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33847-d106105-Revi...

www.nbmaa.org/permanent-collection

The NBMAA collection represents the major artists and movements of American art. Today it numbers about 8,274 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs, including the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, which features important works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.

Among collection highlights are colonial and federal portraits, with examples by John Smibert, John Trumbull, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and the Peale family. The Hudson River School features landscapes by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Still life painters range from Raphaelle Peale, Severin Roesen, William Harnett, John Peto, John Haberle, and John La Farge. American genre painting is represented by John Quidor, William Sidney Mount, and Lilly Martin Spencer. Post-Civil War examples include works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, George de Forest Brush, and William Paxton, and 19 plasters and bronzes by Solon Borglum. American Impressionists include Mary Cassatt, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam, the last represented by eleven oils. Later Impressionist paintings include those by Ernest Lawson, Frederck Frieseke, Louis Ritman, Robert Miller, and Maurice Prendergast.

Other strengths of the twentieth-century collection include: sixty works by members of the Ash Can School; significant representation by early modernists such as Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber; important examples by the Precisionists Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, and Ralston Crawford; a broad spectrum of work by the Social Realists Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Levine; and ambitious examples of Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, notably the latter’s celebrated five-panel mural, The Arts of Life in America (1932).

Works by the American Abstract Artist group (Stuart Davis, Ilya Bolotowsky, Esphyr Slobodkina, Balcomb Greene, and Milton Avery) give twentieth-century abstraction its place in the collection, as do later examples of Surrealism by artists Kay Sage and George Tooker; Abstract Expressionism (Lee Krasner, Giorgio Cavallon, Morris Graves, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Cleve Gray), Pop and Op art (Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine), Conceptual (Christo, Sol LeWitt), and Photo-Realism (Robert Cottingham). Examples of twentieth-century sculpture include Harriet Frishmuth, Paul Manship, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, and Stephen DeStaebler. We continue to acquire contemporary works by notable artists, in order to best represent the dynamic and evolving narrative of American art.

www.fature.net/release.php?id=7

It's been a little while in the making but all good things come to those who wait - just like a nice cold pint of Guinness.

This is the first release compiled solely by label founder Fature and includes an exhibition of genres to once again show the diversity and talent of the Faturenet collective.

Starting up-beat and in-your-face slowly developing into experimental, downtempo, melodic and chillout moods, there should hopefully be something for everyone in this desirable experience.

Compiled by Fature, artwork by Drew Costigan

01.Television Overdose - Tephra

02.Dario - Early Summer Extended Mix

03.CJ Blacklime - Close Your Eyes 2009

04.Dave Zky - Zulu

05.Absorption - Foolproof

06.Babungus - Deep Load

07.Drew Costigan - Soylent Brown

08.Waverine - Whale

09.Owl Challenger - Exit My Vegetable

10.Awaycaboose - tHe uNdErToW

11.Sevish - Umbriel

12.Moments Before Collapse - Tarpit Ritual

13.Fafnirrockson - Night After Night Radio Edit

14.Delcraft - Walk of Lu

Released: 15th Feb 2010

Suspended time and absorption are central in our performative work. We perform „engrossed in an activity as if in denial of an audience“. We keep still. We move according to a choreographed path. We keep close to each other, we touch each other, we lie on the floor. From one tableau to the next. Holding the image for few minutes. One of us lies on a wooden plank. The whole leg, buttocks and lower back rest on the plank. Only shoulders and head touch the floor. The second figure is already doing a shoulderstand, bending the left knee and simultaneously stretching and leaning the right leg slightly over the head. The stretched leg remains leaning… The piece is inspired by the long scene in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from the film „Shadows“ by John Casavettes; Stills from Bob Fosse’s „All that Jazz“; photos of works by Yvonne Rainer and Rudolph von Laban and Kinesiology, physical therapy exercises.

For testing on film my newly arrived exceptional French 35mm camera FOCA Universel RC (see below for details about this rare and fascinating camera), I went for photowalk in my district, Lyon, France. The weather was very sunny and the outside temperature warm (32°C).

Testing a new collection camera is always is great moment. We know the camera only from its blank manipulations but the real judge is the test film on the field, the camera exposed to outside elements in real photography operations. Some possible problems as light leaks or slight unpairing of the shutter curtains, will be only detected on film.

I used the camera with its ever-ready bag and I removed the front part for operation. In particular, I previously checked very carefully the exact condition of the thin leather neck strap. Old leather may crack and it would a shame and a nightmare to drop such camera. The OPLAR standard lens 1/:2.8 f=5cm was equipped with a yellow filter FOCA x2.5. The OPLAR lens fro the FOCA’s only accept push-on filter (42.5mm in this specific case). A vintage Genaco cylindric stainless-steel shade hood conceived for a 5cm focal length was also used all along the session.

The test film was a 36-exposure Fomapan 100. Expositions were determined for 50 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was achieved using a Minolta Autometer III lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective metering privileging the shadow areas.

View Nr 36: 1/100s f/8 focusing @ 10 m - Yellow filter

Brocante à la Croix Rousse, July 5, 2025

Place des Tapis

69004 Lyon

France

After completion at view #39, the film was rewound normally and processed using 350 mL of Adox Adonal developer (identical to the original Agfa Rodinal in its formula of 1891) prepared at the dilution 1+50 for 9 min at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.4) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.

As a result, the test film shows that this FOCA Universel RC is in perfect conditions and could be used normally with confidence.

About the camera and its history :

Among the French 35mm camera produced by « Optique & Précision de Levallois S.A. » from 1945 to the middle of the 60’s, the FOCA Universel « RC » is likely the most captivating ever produced in France at that time.

The camera was the last development of the FOCA, sometime called the « French Leica » because the optical and mechanical precision matched and even surpassed the original thread-mount Leica. Far before the first Leica M (the M3 in 1954) O.P.L. developed a bayonet-mount FOCA in 1948 called the FOCA « Universel ». Seeing the incredible viewer and range finder of the Leica M that is likely the most sophisticated system even engineered, O.P.L. released lately a great improvement of the FOCA with a novel collimated, parallax auto-corrected, of a fully original and different design of the Leitz system.

The FOCA Universel RC It is a rare camera that only appears for time to time on the collector market, being only produced to a bit more than 2000 overall units in the years 1962 and 1963, just before O.P.L. decided to quit the camera production and returned to other instrumental optical production. O.P.L. soon merged with SOM Berthiot and today can be found still in the industrial filiation of SAFRAN group, the French leader company for designing and producing system for aerospace appliances. The plant where the FOCA's were produced still exists in an almost original form in Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loir, France.

I got my first FOCA URC unit two years ago (Sept. 2023, flic.kr/s/aHBqjAV6Dg) that is a standing and emotional piece of my small camera collection.

I got this one from an apparently ignored auction on the French eBay. We were only two biders in the last 5s and I won the auction not far away to the initial price. The camera was fully revised, with new shutter curtains, a new delayed shutter release mechanism. The serial number indicated a year-1962 production starting with 1.000.000, closed to my first FOCA URC. The camera works in every functions like on its Day-1! The camera came with a late version 1962 of the OPLAR 1:2.8 f=5cm standard collapsible lens of excellent quality, the FOCA UCR dedicated ever-ready leather bag with the original leather neck strap in good condition.

The original O.P.L. camera warranty and a registration postal card fortunately followed the life of the camera, indicating that this beautiful FOCA Universel RC was sold to its first owner on August 9, 1963 by the official FOCA dealer « ROYAL-PHOTO, Photo-Ciné-Magnétohone », 42, rue Vignon, Paris 9ème arrondissement, France, today a Weill fashion shop at the same address. The address of the owner also still exists with the original Parisian building in place, Boulevard Poniatwski, next to the Métro station « Porte de Charenton », Paris 12ème arrondissement.

The shown original FOCAL Universel RC user manual is the one that came with my other FOCA URC camera.

These information pushed me to question what were the news in France on this Friday, August 9, 1963… France was mainly on vacation, by an exceptional wet and fresh weather that wasted many French citizens holidays. The whole national radio information bulletin is still available online here :

www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/audio/phd94020557/inter-actua...

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM du 9 août 1963

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM - 09.08.1963 - 29:58 - audio

Ina.fr (English translated)

- Headlines - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: The Marseille and Bordeaux sailors' strike ended this morning, but nothing has been resolved in Le Havre. Many heads of state and government sent messages of condolence to President Kennedy for the death of his third child shortly after birth. Other headlines in the newspaper (2'20"). - André Brière: It does not appear for the moment that work will resume in Le Havre. Mr. Pisani would agree to the distillation of 2 million hectoliters of wine, which is clogging up the market, but a subsidy would be required. Discontent is growing among winegrowers in the south, whom the population accuses of various acts of sabotage in the Narbonne region. Complaints from winegrowers in the southwest. Farmers scattered 5 tons of potatoes yesterday in the streets of Douai (3'30"). - Jacques Behingue: Secretary of State Dean Rusk will return to Washington from Moscow on Monday. He will give a presentation to senators on the Moscow Treaty. This morning, Dean Rusk was received by Mr. Khrushchev on the shores of the Black Sea in Cagra. This evening, Mr. Dean Rusk will host a dinner in Moscow at the US Embassy. Tomorrow, he will be in Bonn, received by Mr. Adenauer. The Moscow Treaty was signed by 11 new countries, with Japan set to sign next Wednesday. North Vietnam has refused to sign. Mr. MAC MILLAN declared that underground tests, which are not prohibited, are not of great importance because nuclear weapons can only be modified following atmospheric tests (4'40"). - Gérard TAVERA: Two years after Bizerte, France and Tunisia signed an agreement this morning that includes two chapters: the first concerns the 30,000 Tunisian workers living in France, the second concerns economic cooperation. This agreement resolves the economic problems concerning Bizerte. After an African trip, Mr. BEN BELLA returns to Algiers. In Accra, Mr. BEN BELLA declared that the next session of the UN would be an African session. Yesterday, AIT AHMED violently criticized the FLN party and the constitutional project. All French newspapers reproducing Mr. AIT AHMED's Declaration were seized this morning upon their arrival in Algiers. Since July 16, in Morocco, leaders of the UNFP are detained in rather precarious conditions following the "plot" against the monarchy (2'25"). - André Brière: before the State Security Court, opening of the trial of the station commander, among those who are bringing a civil action is Mr. Jean OUDINOT, former director of RTF in Algiers (1'05"). - Victor VRAMANT: the body of Doctor WARD was cremated this morning, only members of Doctor WARD's family attended the funeral ceremony. The weather in France and Europe. It is raining everywhere in France except on the Côte d'Azur. Road accidents (2'). - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: Gaston GELIS, former director of "Paris-journal" died in a road accident in Seine et Marne (1'). - Victor VRAMANT: a major drug trafficker was arrested at Orly. In Italy, following the arrest of a repeat offender, a 22-year-old American woman was arrested for drug trafficking (1'30"). - Jacques CHABOT: Charles TRENET has not yet been released; he would be released tomorrow morning after payment of bail (25%).

WEATHER:

SOURCE: www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1963

June 14, 1963: a particularly cool day - it was no more than 12°C in Rouen, 13°C in Paris, St. Quentin, Lille, Le Havre, and Caen.

August 1963 was autumnal because it was very cool and very wet. On August 3, 1963, torrential rains caused catastrophic flooding and the death of eight people in the Lyon region. On August 4, 1963, 400 houses were also flooded between St. Jean de Luz and Le Boucau (Pyrénées Atlantiques). On August 17 and 18, 1963, it was no more than 10°C. and 15°C in the northern half - many summer visitors leave early - it's snowing in the mountains and the harvest is very difficult.

Historical landmarks of the year 1963

August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King leads the march on Washington. October 11, 1963: Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf die within hours of each other. November 22, 1963: President J.F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. The yé-yé movement is in vogue - the debut of Françoise Hardy and the politically engaged singer, Jean Ferrat.

Sonata Class A rated Acoustic panels are used within a wide variety of buildings to reduce reverberation and give a suitable acoustic environment.

Timberland 6” Premium Waterproof Boots, Men’s Size 11, Black, Nubuck, 10073, TB010073 Premium waterproof Nubuck leather upper, Seam-sealed waterproof construction, Direct-attach construction for durability, Leather lining for comfort and durability, Rustproof hardware, Classic nylon boot laces, 200 grams of PrimaLoft® insulation, Padded collar for a comfortable fit around the ankle, Anti-fatigue midsole and removable footbed for all-day comfort, lightweight cushioning and shock absorption, Rubber lug outsole is made with 10% plant-based materials, padded collar,

Main Street, Gloucester - 1917

John Sloan (American, 1871 - 1951)

Sloan spent each summer from 1914 to 1918 in the small Cape Ann, Massachusetts, town of Gloucester. This work, executed during the fourth summer, reveals an aesthetic sophistication stimulated by the artist's absorption of the 1913 Armory Show's provocative presentation of avant-garde and modernist art. That landmark exhibition, coupled with those he helped to organize for The Eight in 1908 and the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, inspired Sloan to explore a constellation of new ideas and methods. The body of work he created during the Gloucester years speaks of a renewed rigor as well as an intrepid and vigorous spirit of experimentation that would endure throughout his career.(1)

Initially, “Main Street, Gloucester” captivates as one of Sloan's distinctive "city-life" pictures, for which he garnered an enormous reputation. In the decade and a half preceding this painting's creation, his keen powers of observation, selection, and rendering were honed through his work as an illustrator, etcher, and painter of the urban scene. Yet his production during the Gloucester period represented a fundamental shift in his methods of conception and execution.

I had been dependent on waiting for the inspiration to paint a picture because I had so little leisure time to work for myself. So I decided to save up enough money to take off for a few months, go to the country and work from nature to get fresh ideas about plastic design and color rhythms.(2)

Thus issues of pure painting, rather than subject, motivated his work at this time.

This redirection toward plasticity, design, and color resulted from Sloan's thoughtful analysis of the work of what he called the "ultra-moderns" at the Armory Show. Sloan recalled the impact of that landmark exhibition: "It was exciting, it pointed many ways to freedom of expression, color, texture, most of all “graphics”. It pointed the way back to mental rather than visual thinking."(3) He credited the works of Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh, among others, as powerful antidotes for the disease of "clever eyesight painting," the scourge of art production and consumption since the advent of photography.(4) He wrote: "Many intelligent people have accepted the false idea that accuracy in representing visual facts is a sign of progress in art. Such imitation of superficial effects has nothing to do with art, which is and always has been the making of mental concepts."(5)

Sloan's summers in Gloucester precipitated the auspicious convergence of several paths of inquiry in his own work. Using color as a constructive, expressive element in painting had been one of his preoccupations since 1909, when Robert Henri introduced him to Hardesty Maratta's experimental color system. Through it, Sloan had moved away from a dark tonal palette by increasing the presence of bright vivid colors. Maratta's system was predicated on the analogous relationship of the twelve colors in the chromatic wheel to notes in an octave of music.(6) The careful, precise orchestration of notes, chords, and harmonies was facilitated through the use of a set palette of premixed colors. With this palette, Sloan was confident that he could maintain the continuity of a painting's colors as he worked on it over time:

These Maratta colors opened up the palette for me. I had been analyzing the color of the city streets and the few things I painted from the model, in terms of color changes away from a basic raw umber note. With the Maratta colors I had six, twelve color-hues to work with, and from there could think of branching up into notes of higher intensity.(7)

His use of the Maratta system was given fresh impetus when he coupled it with plein-air techniques. The genre of landscape provided a comfortable arena in which to experiment with color that was often somewhat antinaturalistic. "After selecting the subject I would take half an hour to set my palette. Then I would pick up those set tones and draw with paint. Instead of imitating the colors in nature, I decided on some quality of color that interested me and set a limited palette."(8) His deep sympathy for humanity prevented his taking too many liberties with human subjects. "There is no better subject [than landscape] to free one of color habits. The variety in nature offers new color combinations, new ideas. You also feel more free to take liberties with color in nature than when painting from the figure."(9)

In “Main Street, Gloucester” Sloan effectively merged plein-air techniques with his exploration of color rhythms and plastic design. Through the skilled massing and organization of form, volume, and color, he devised a composition that is at once stable and balanced yet highly animated. By the artist's criteria for a successful composition, “Main Street, Gloucester” is a successful work. "A good design has stability. It is at rest with itself. Sense the opposition of horizontal and vertical rhythms to the dynamic movement of diagonal curves. Feel the weight of tones and colors, balance and counterbalance them against line and mass."

Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, John Sloan was the first child and only surviving son of Henrietta Ireland, a former school teacher, and James Dixon Sloan, who repaired bicycles and worked as a photographer after the decline of his family's cabinetry business. Sloan's childhood was spent reading, sketching, and pouring over illustrated books. He attended Philadelphia's prestigious collegiate Central High School with fellow students William Glackens and Albert Barnes. In 1888 Sloan left school just six months shy of graduation, to become the family's primary breadwinner.

Sloan took a job as a cashier at Porter and Coates' bookstore and continued his education by reading and studying prints. He taught himself to etch using Philip Hamerton's “Etcher's Handbook” (1881), a popular "how-to" manual, and supplemented his income by selling prints at the bookshop. When A. Edward Newton, one of his co-workers, left to open his own store, he hired Sloan to etch giftbooks and pamphlets. At this time, Sloan made his first oil painting, “Self-Portrait” (1890; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), using another "how-to" book, John Collier's “Manual of Oil Painting” (1886), and painting on a piece of window shade his father gave him.

During the 1890s Sloan worked as an illustrator for the “Philadelphia Inquirer” and the “Philadelphia Press”, honing his skills as an astute "spectator of life." Fellow illustrators Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn introduced him to a circle of artists, including Robert Henri, who soon became his close friend and mentor. Their shared aspirations to infuse American art with vitality and release it from the tyranny of the conservative academic system of juried exhibitions and prizes led them to form the group known as The Eight. Their landmark exhibition of 1908 established Sloan's career as an artist, exhibition organizer, and forward-thinking modernist.

Sloan's earliest paintings, many executed in a limited palette, are indebted to the figurative traditions of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas P. Anshutz. Sloan moved to New York in 1904 and took up the city-life subjects that distinguished his ensuing career. His spirit of artistic exploration, fed by the 1913 Armory Show and summer sojourns to the art colonies of Gloucester (1914-18) and Santa Fe (1919-50), led him to experiment with color, glazing, and a graphic painting technique that he called "linework."

From 1900 until his death, Sloan's paintings, etchings, and drawings were exhibited in nearly nine hundred exhibitions, including those at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Studio Club and C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries. “The Gist of Art” (1939), written with his student Helen Farr (later, Mrs. John Sloan), stands as a thoughtful and eminently readable compendium of his ideas and practices. Happily, Sloan's numerous contributions to the arts and to art education were recognized and celebrated in the decade before his death.

_________________________________

"Acknowledged as the first museum in the world dedicated solely to collecting American art, the NBMAA is renowned for its preeminent collection spanning three centuries of American history. The award-winning Chase Family Building, which opened in 2006 to critical and public acclaim, features 15 spacious galleries which showcase the permanent collection and upwards of 25 special exhibitions a year featuring American masters, emerging artists and private collections. Education and community outreach programs for all ages include docent-led school and adult tours, teacher services, studio classes and vacation programs, Art Happy Hour gallery talks, lectures, symposia, concerts, film, monthly First Friday jazz evenings, quarterly Museum After Dark parties for young professionals, and the annual Juneteenth celebration. Enjoy Café on the Park for a light lunch prepared by “Best Caterer in Connecticut” Jordan Caterers. Visit the Museum Shop for unique gifts. Drop by the “ArtLab” learning gallery with your little ones. Gems not to be missed include Thomas Hart Benton’s murals “The Arts of Life in America,” “The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, September 11, 2001” by Graydon Parrish,” and Dale Chihuly’s “Blue and Beyond Blue” spectacular chandelier. Called “a destination for art lovers everywhere,” “first-class,” “a full-size, transparent temple of art, mixing New York ambience with Yankee ingenuity and all-American beauty,” the NBMAA is not to be missed."

www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33847-d106105-Revi...

www.nbmaa.org/permanent-collection

The NBMAA collection represents the major artists and movements of American art. Today it numbers about 8,274 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs, including the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, which features important works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.

Among collection highlights are colonial and federal portraits, with examples by John Smibert, John Trumbull, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and the Peale family. The Hudson River School features landscapes by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Still life painters range from Raphaelle Peale, Severin Roesen, William Harnett, John Peto, John Haberle, and John La Farge. American genre painting is represented by John Quidor, William Sidney Mount, and Lilly Martin Spencer. Post-Civil War examples include works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, George de Forest Brush, and William Paxton, and 19 plasters and bronzes by Solon Borglum. American Impressionists include Mary Cassatt, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam, the last represented by eleven oils. Later Impressionist paintings include those by Ernest Lawson, Frederck Frieseke, Louis Ritman, Robert Miller, and Maurice Prendergast.

Other strengths of the twentieth-century collection include: sixty works by members of the Ash Can School; significant representation by early modernists such as Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber; important examples by the Precisionists Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, and Ralston Crawford; a broad spectrum of work by the Social Realists Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Levine; and ambitious examples of Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, notably the latter’s celebrated five-panel mural, The Arts of Life in America (1932).

Works by the American Abstract Artist group (Stuart Davis, Ilya Bolotowsky, Esphyr Slobodkina, Balcomb Greene, and Milton Avery) give twentieth-century abstraction its place in the collection, as do later examples of Surrealism by artists Kay Sage and George Tooker; Abstract Expressionism (Lee Krasner, Giorgio Cavallon, Morris Graves, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Cleve Gray), Pop and Op art (Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine), Conceptual (Christo, Sol LeWitt), and Photo-Realism (Robert Cottingham). Examples of twentieth-century sculpture include Harriet Frishmuth, Paul Manship, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, and Stephen DeStaebler. We continue to acquire contemporary works by notable artists, in order to best represent the dynamic and evolving narrative of American art.

via WordPress dietarysupplement.review/vitamin-b12-liquid-drops-subling...

On September 7, 2024, at the annual photo fair of Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure, France, I found this Meyer-Optik Görlitz lens Oreston 1:1.8 f=50mm in M42 mount that I wanted to associate to my Praktica IV SLR camera body.

The lens was in acceptable condition for 20€ in the range range of price of my Praktica IV. Both were manufactured in Dresden, Germany in the year 1960’s. Oreston lens was marketed starting from 1965 in order to equip, in particular, the Praktica Nova that was anticipated to be produced massively by Pentacon for exportation (zeissikonveb.de/start/objektive/normalobjektive/oreston.html).

Oreston was a modern normal lens 6-lens double Gauss type, capable to compete with other foreign productions of that time, with a large aperture, automatic diaphragm mechanism, and optical performances that could not rival to Zeiss Jena productions (as the Flexon and Pancolar) but still very near at medium apertures.

For testing the lens, I loaded a 36-exposure black-and-white Fomapan 100.In the Praktica IV equipped with the Oreston lens. The lens was equipped a generic Yellow 49mm screw-on filter and a cylindrical modern shade hood for the views taken. The expositions were determined for 64 ISO instead of the nominal 100 ISO to compensate the filter light absorption, using an Autometer III Minolta light meter fitted with a 10° finder for selective measurements privileging the shadow areas or with the integrative dome for measurement of the incident light.

Rue Justin Godard, September 10, 2024

69004 Lyon

France

After complete exposure, the film was revealed using Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developper at dilution 1+50 at 20°C for 9 min. The film was then digitized using a Sony A7 body fitted to a Minolta Slide Duplicator installed on a Minolta Auto Bellows III with a lens Minolta Bellow Macro Rokkor 50mm f/3.5. The RAW files obtained were processed without intermediate files in LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures.

All views of the film are presented in the dedicated album either in the printed framed versions and unframed full-size jpeg plus some documentary smartphone color pictures.

About the Praktica IV camera :

I got the camera body Praktica IV and a set of related KDH Leipzig accessories from an eBay seller near Paris, France.. The whole arrived to me on January, 31, 2024, in Lyon, France.

The Praktica IV was designed by the prestigious KW (Kamera Werk Niedersedlitz) German company in Dresden on the basis of their previous Praktica FX SLR camera's. The camera was produced first under the KW name starting from June 1959 then within the Kombinat VEB Pentacon after the merge of the company in 1960.

166.800 Praktica IV and V (6 models) were produced until January 1966. Praktica IV essentially incorporates a condenser focusing screen plus a pentaprism. Due to the Praktica FX architecture the Pentaprism looks protruding from the camera body with an unusual style. It fits lenses with M42x1 mount and the mirror has no automatic return. The shutter is made of two horizontal curtains of rubberized fabric giving 1/500s to 1/2s plus B in two registers of slow speeds (1/2s to 1/10s) and high speeds (1/25s to 1/500s). The film is advanced coupled to the shutter cocking using either the right upper button or the rapid lever underneath the body.

The Praktica IV handles the "Auto" M42 lenses with the lever for automatic iris closing upon the release. Sequentially, when pressing the shutter release button, the diaphragm closes to the indicated value, the mirror is lift-off and finally the shutter is erased at the given value. If a non-auto (manual closing) M42 is used the pushing lever could be cancelled (declutched) moving a small red button to the right in the mirror chamber.

The camera camera came without lens but with a body cap and the original ever-ready leather bag with et "Ernermann tower" Pentacon logo. This model is likely the second Praktica IV essentially the same as the initial KW one with a different front plate. The camera was likely art of a collection and is completely preserved without use marks.

The KDH Leipzig (Kurt-Dieter Huffziger Foto- und Kinozubehör) accessories set included:

-A panoramic tripod head

-A set of three extension tubes M42x1)

- A big aluminum shade hood (screw-on 49mm) for wide-angle lens.

- A M42x1 metal body cap in its original box.

- An accessory shoe fitting the the Praktica IV eye piece.

-------------------------------------

Superior grade cleaning cloth clings to dust & grime for superior cleaning & absorption

Absorbing Panel Before Fabric Drape Install

Private access to my proprietary real estate charts www.homeispalosverdes.com/content/article.html/1396074/re...

Note how this chart predicted the real estate downturn about 18-24 months in advance. Is it now predicting a recovery?

Cyberblume mit UV-Absorption?

Our his 'n' hers cedar muskoka chairs are the perfect thing for lounging on the deck on a sunny afternoon. Beer or wine have been known to be a pleasant accompaniment.

For testing on film my newly arrived exceptional French 35mm camera FOCA Universel RC (see below for details about this rare and fascinating camera), I went for photowalk in my district, Lyon, France. The weather was very sunny and the outside temperature warm (32°C).

Testing a new collection camera is always is great moment. We know the camera only from its blank manipulations but the real judge is the test film on the field, the camera exposed to outside elements in real photography operations. Some possible problems as light leaks or slight unpairing of the shutter curtains, will be only detected on film.

I used the camera with its ever-ready bag and I removed the front part for operation. In particular, I previously checked very carefully the exact condition of the thin leather neck strap. Old leather may crack and it would a shame and a nightmare to drop such camera. The OPLAR standard lens 1/:2.8 f=5cm was equipped with a yellow filter FOCA x2.5. The OPLAR lens fro the FOCA’s only accept push-on filter (42.5mm in this specific case). A vintage Genaco cylindric stainless-steel shade hood conceived for a 5cm focal length was also used all along the session.

The test film was a 36-exposure Fomapan 100. Expositions were determined for 50 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was achieved using a Minolta Autometer III lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective metering privileging the shadow areas.

View Nr. 12: 1/100s f/8 focusing @ 15 m - Yellow filter

Rue des Chartreux, July 5, 2025

69001 Lyon

France

After completion at view #39, the film was rewound normally and processed using 350 mL of Adox Adonal developer (identical to the original Agfa Rodinal in its formula of 1891) prepared at the dilution 1+50 for 9 min at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.4) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.

As a result, the test film shows that this FOCA Universel RC is in perfect conditions and could be used normally with confidence.

About the camera and its history :

Among the French 35mm camera produced by « Optique & Précision de Levallois S.A. » from 1945 to the middle of the 60’s, the FOCA Universel « RC » is likely the most captivating ever produced in France at that time.

The camera was the last development of the FOCA, sometime called the « French Leica » because the optical and mechanical precision matched and even surpassed the original thread-mount Leica. Far before the first Leica M (the M3 in 1954) O.P.L. developed a bayonet-mount FOCA in 1948 called the FOCA « Universel ». Seeing the incredible viewer and range finder of the Leica M that is likely the most sophisticated system even engineered, O.P.L. released lately a great improvement of the FOCA with a novel collimated, parallax auto-corrected, of a fully original and different design of the Leitz system.

The FOCA Universel RC It is a rare camera that only appears for time to time on the collector market, being only produced to a bit more than 2000 overall units in the years 1962 and 1963, just before O.P.L. decided to quit the camera production and returned to other instrumental optical production. O.P.L. soon merged with SOM Berthiot and today can be found still in the industrial filiation of SAFRAN group, the French leader company for designing and producing system for aerospace appliances. The plant where the FOCA's were produced still exists in an almost original form in Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loir, France.

I got my first FOCA URC unit two years ago (Sept. 2023, flic.kr/s/aHBqjAV6Dg) that is a standing and emotional piece of my small camera collection.

I got this one from an apparently ignored auction on the French eBay. We were only two biders in the last 5s and I won the auction not far away to the initial price. The camera was fully revised, with new shutter curtains, a new delayed shutter release mechanism. The serial number indicated a year-1962 production starting with 1.000.000, closed to my first FOCA URC. The camera works in every functions like on its Day-1! The camera came with a late version 1962 of the OPLAR 1:2.8 f=5cm standard collapsible lens of excellent quality, the FOCA UCR dedicated ever-ready leather bag with the original leather neck strap in good condition.

The original O.P.L. camera warranty and a registration postal card fortunately followed the life of the camera, indicating that this beautiful FOCA Universel RC was sold to its first owner on August 9, 1963 by the official FOCA dealer « ROYAL-PHOTO, Photo-Ciné-Magnétohone », 42, rue Vignon, Paris 9ème arrondissement, France, today a Weill fashion shop at the same address. The address of the owner also still exists with the original Parisian building in place, Boulevard Poniatwski, next to the Métro station « Porte de Charenton », Paris 12ème arrondissement.

The shown original FOCAL Universel RC user manual is the one that came with my other FOCA URC camera.

These information pushed me to question what were the news in France on this Friday, August 9, 1963… France was mainly on vacation, by an exceptional wet and fresh weather that wasted many French citizens holidays. The whole national radio information bulletin is still available online here :

www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/audio/phd94020557/inter-actua...

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM du 9 août 1963

Inter actualités de 7:15 PM - 09.08.1963 - 29:58 - audio

Ina.fr (English translated)

- Headlines - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: The Marseille and Bordeaux sailors' strike ended this morning, but nothing has been resolved in Le Havre. Many heads of state and government sent messages of condolence to President Kennedy for the death of his third child shortly after birth. Other headlines in the newspaper (2'20"). - André Brière: It does not appear for the moment that work will resume in Le Havre. Mr. Pisani would agree to the distillation of 2 million hectoliters of wine, which is clogging up the market, but a subsidy would be required. Discontent is growing among winegrowers in the south, whom the population accuses of various acts of sabotage in the Narbonne region. Complaints from winegrowers in the southwest. Farmers scattered 5 tons of potatoes yesterday in the streets of Douai (3'30"). - Jacques Behingue: Secretary of State Dean Rusk will return to Washington from Moscow on Monday. He will give a presentation to senators on the Moscow Treaty. This morning, Dean Rusk was received by Mr. Khrushchev on the shores of the Black Sea in Cagra. This evening, Mr. Dean Rusk will host a dinner in Moscow at the US Embassy. Tomorrow, he will be in Bonn, received by Mr. Adenauer. The Moscow Treaty was signed by 11 new countries, with Japan set to sign next Wednesday. North Vietnam has refused to sign. Mr. MAC MILLAN declared that underground tests, which are not prohibited, are not of great importance because nuclear weapons can only be modified following atmospheric tests (4'40"). - Gérard TAVERA: Two years after Bizerte, France and Tunisia signed an agreement this morning that includes two chapters: the first concerns the 30,000 Tunisian workers living in France, the second concerns economic cooperation. This agreement resolves the economic problems concerning Bizerte. After an African trip, Mr. BEN BELLA returns to Algiers. In Accra, Mr. BEN BELLA declared that the next session of the UN would be an African session. Yesterday, AIT AHMED violently criticized the FLN party and the constitutional project. All French newspapers reproducing Mr. AIT AHMED's Declaration were seized this morning upon their arrival in Algiers. Since July 16, in Morocco, leaders of the UNFP are detained in rather precarious conditions following the "plot" against the monarchy (2'25"). - André Brière: before the State Security Court, opening of the trial of the station commander, among those who are bringing a civil action is Mr. Jean OUDINOT, former director of RTF in Algiers (1'05"). - Victor VRAMANT: the body of Doctor WARD was cremated this morning, only members of Doctor WARD's family attended the funeral ceremony. The weather in France and Europe. It is raining everywhere in France except on the Côte d'Azur. Road accidents (2'). - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: Gaston GELIS, former director of "Paris-journal" died in a road accident in Seine et Marne (1'). - Victor VRAMANT: a major drug trafficker was arrested at Orly. In Italy, following the arrest of a repeat offender, a 22-year-old American woman was arrested for drug trafficking (1'30"). - Jacques CHABOT: Charles TRENET has not yet been released; he would be released tomorrow morning after payment of bail (25%).

WEATHER:

SOURCE: www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1963

June 14, 1963: a particularly cool day - it was no more than 12°C in Rouen, 13°C in Paris, St. Quentin, Lille, Le Havre, and Caen.

August 1963 was autumnal because it was very cool and very wet. On August 3, 1963, torrential rains caused catastrophic flooding and the death of eight people in the Lyon region. On August 4, 1963, 400 houses were also flooded between St. Jean de Luz and Le Boucau (Pyrénées Atlantiques). On August 17 and 18, 1963, it was no more than 10°C. and 15°C in the northern half - many summer visitors leave early - it's snowing in the mountains and the harvest is very difficult.

Historical landmarks of the year 1963

August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King leads the march on Washington. October 11, 1963: Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf die within hours of each other. November 22, 1963: President J.F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. The yé-yé movement is in vogue - the debut of Françoise Hardy and the politically engaged singer, Jean Ferrat.

Bass absorption and reverb time treatment

Acoustic Sound Absorption Fabric 3D Panels for Office Partitions Decorative.

Usage:

Parlor, Bedroom, Office, Meeting Room, Hotel, KTV.

More detail from xmnoya.en.made-in-china.com/product/nebQykTFHSaA/China-Ac...

My photo walk of July 29, 2023, Lyon, France, district of La Croix Rousse, with my Pentacon Praktica VLC3 camera, a German 35mm SLR of the 70's fitted here with a normal lens Pentacon "electric" 1:1.8 f=50mm.

For this session, I loaded an Ilford HP5+ 36-exposure film and I fitted for all the views a 49mm pale yellow (coefficient. x1.5) screw-on filter on the lens.

I exposed the film at 400 ISO for the Praktica CdS cell that gave similar measuring compared to my trusted Minolta Autometer III with 250 ISO setting to compensate the filter absorption. The Autometer III Minolta light meter was fitted with a 10° finder for selective measurements privileging the shadow areas but I mostly used the camera measuring that is quite reliable.

Focusing was done using the Pentacon focusing screen with a central stigmometer.

Shutter speeds from 1/1000s to 1/125s and f/16 to f/5.6 were used along the session between 2pm and 4PM and a very changing light due to clouds passing by.

Place Colbert, July 29, 2023

69001 Lyon

France

After exposure, the film was revealed using Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developper at dilution 1+25 and 20°C for 6 min. The film was then digitalized using a Sony A7 body fitted to a Minolta Slide Duplicator installed on a Minolta Auto Bellows III with a lens Minolta Bellow Macro Rokkor 50mm f/3.5. The RAW files obtained were processed without intermediate files in LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures.

All views (plus some smartphone documentary pictures) of the film are presented in the dedicated album either in the printed framed versions and unframed full-size jpeg

About the camera :

The Praktica VLC is of the 3rd generation (VLC3, 1978-1981) and was manufactured by "VEB Pentacon" (formally Zeiss-Ikon) in Dresden, Germany. It came with a number of orignal Pentacon accessories including, a shade hood for its normal lens Pentacon "electric Multi-coated" 1:1,8 f=50mm, a waist finder, a loup magnification finder, and the regular pentaprism. There are also 6 different focusing screens, the Pentacon hot shoe for a flash, lens and body caps, and a Praktica ever-ready case.

The camera has a CdS photometric circuitry powered by an unusual 4.5V battery that I replaced by a set of 3 LR44 alkaline batteries in series. As the ASAHI PENTAX Spomatic SP, the bridge circuit is insensitive to the voltage difference. To be independent of the finders, the cell is functioning behind the mirror as in the Topcon Super D or the Miranda Auto Sensorex EE.

This Praktica operates at full aperture using an electrical transmission of the aperture using 3 contacts on the M42 lens mount. It could however operates any non electric M42 lenses at real aperture too by acting on the rotary switch at the top left. As for the other Praktica of the L series the shutter is made of vertical steel curtains making the X-flash synchro at about 1/125 s.

Overall Pentacon produced 85 000 Praktica VLC between 1974 and 1981 among about 3 millions of Praktica "L" (LLC MTL TL L etc).

after extraction ( absorption of complete memory card ) by the " Extracteur " the memory giver sign a aggreement that he gives all the copyrights to the artist Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel

It is a beautifull touching moment of trust and generosity , a moment of transmission

www.emergencyrooms.org/sprengelmuseum/

www.emergencyrooms.org/sprengelmuseum/

(McAllen, Texas, December 18, 2025) Mexico Agrees to Meet Water Treaty Obligations for Farmers in the American Southwest. On December 12, 2025, the United States and Mexico reached an understanding to meet the current water obligations of American farmers and ranchers and for Mexico to repay the water deficit in Texas as part of the 1944 Water Treaty. This agreement extends to the current cycle and the previous cycle’s water deficit. For more information, see www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/12/12/me...

The Rio Grande is the lifeline of South Texas agriculture, and its flow is shaped by an international agreement—the 1944 Mexico Water Treaty. This treaty ensures that water from six Mexican tributaries is shared between Mexico and the United States. The U.S. receives one-third of the natural flows, while Mexico retains two-thirds. Mexico must order the release of their share in specified amounts. In this case Mexico has agreed to release 202,000-acre feet of water to the United States with deliveries expected to begin the week of December 15, 2025. The US/Mexico water is stored in two major international reservoirs: Amistad Dam near Del Rio and Falcon Dam near Zapata. Amistad holds most of the water because its depth reduces evaporation. When irrigation districts downstream need water, the Rio Grande Watermaster orders releases from Falcon Dam. For Edcouch, Texas, water takes about a few days to travel from Falcon. As the water flows down the Rio Grande, some is diverted by the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 pumping station, which serves McAllen and surrounding areas. The pump station uses up to ten 400 horsepower pumps (SEEN) to take up water in submerged 42-inch uptake pipes, lifts it 32 feet, when the flow is measured as it is discharged at a capacity of up to 680 cubic feet per second into a main canal. This process ensures that every drop is accounted for—meeting agricultural needs while minimizing freshwater loss to the gulf.

Today, two pumps provide the flow needed by the system. Water will flow in the primary delivery canal for a short distance into a nearby settling pond to help clarify the water before continuing into a main conveyance channel that leads north, through McAllen, Texas. Smaller channels or pipelines will branch off to municipal and irrigation water districts such as the Delta Lake Irrigation District and it’s Delta Lake Reservoir, with the capacity of 10,669 acre-feet of water and a surface area of 2,371 acres. Delta Lake Irrigation District currently serves 69,500 acres and diverts municipal water to the City of Raymondville, La Sara, Monte Alto and the City of Lyford. Their irrigation canals flow to the farms where growers such as the Edinburg Citrus Association then use their pump houses to draw the water and distribute it to their fields using pressurized pipelines for drip irrigation systems that deliver life-giving water to the grapefruit orchards. Their micro-irrigation tubes/tapes deliver a slow flow to the base of each tree to increase absorption into the soil, reduce evaporation, runoff and unwanted growth between the rows and other benefits.

The organization that diverts water from the Rio Grande for irrigation and municipal use in Texas is managed under the Rio Grande Watermaster Program, which operates under the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The Rio Grande Watermaster Program is a system managed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that oversees and regulates the use of water from the Rio Grande in Texas. Its main job is to make sure water is distributed fairly and according to legal water rights. The Watermaster calculates how much water is needed by farmers, cities, and industries, then orders releases from reservoirs like Falcon Dam and Amistad Dam. It also tracks water as it flows down the river to ensure that every drop goes to the correct user and that as little as possible is wasted or flows into the gulf.

In 1932, a group of South Texas citrus growers came together to form the Edinburg Citrus Association (ECA), a non-profit co-op. The goal of the group is to maintain the highest quality pack and provide customers a highly marketable product at a competitive price.

USDA Media by Lance Cheung.

For more information on this and other resources, please visit extension.psu.edu/pesticide-education

Where trade names appear, no discrimination is intended, and no endorsement by Penn State Extension is implied.

Illustration by Garo Goodrow, Pesticide Education Specialist

Penn State Pesticide Education Program

© The Pennsylvania State University 2016

For the test film of the Jupiter-9 lens I mounted it on the Leningrad camera (see below for detail about the lens and the camera). The lens was fitted with a generic yellow filter (screw-on 49mm) and a generic cylindrical metal shade hood designed for a 50mm lens. By safety, a lens cap fitted on the hood (55mm) was also used to protect the shutter curtains from an accidental sun burning (I forgot twice to remove the cap before shooting...)

I loaded the Leningrad with a Rollei RPX 400 film exposed for 250 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter. The light metering was done using a Minolta Autometer III with the 10° viewer for selective metering privileging the shadows areas.

The viewer of the Leningrad has build-in frame for the 85mm and is fully compensated for the parallax error.

View Nr. 13 : 1/250s f/9 focusing @ 25m

Les Quais du Rhône, February 17, 2025

Quai Victor Augagneur

69003 Lyon

France

After completion, the film was rewound and processed using 350 mL of Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developer prepared at the dilution 1+25 for 12min15 at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.

The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.2) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.

About the camera :

After several months, my local repair shop gave up to repair my first exemplary of Leningrad camera. I got that GOMZ Leningrad for less than the price of the lens (50€) a year ago (February 24, 2024, flic.kr/s/aHBqjBftyP) at the monthly collector meeting in Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure, near Lyon, France. I looked then again for a working one.

Leningrad’s are fascinating Russian range-finder 35mm camera’s produced in Leningrad (USSR) / Saint-Petersburg, from 1956 to 1968 at about 76.000 units. It is not really a rare camera but appears only from time-to-time in the classical collector’s networks.

The Leningrad camera project was developed by GOMZ company (ГОМЗ, Государственный оптико-механический завод, Ленинград = Gosularstvennyi Optiko-Mekhanicheskii Zavod =State Optical-Mechanical Factory), Leningrad, USSR. The Leningrad ’s were constructed to a very high degree of precision and likely the most advanced rangefinder ever made at that time in Russia. At the 1958 World Exposition in Brussels, the Leningrad was awarded the "Grand Prix de Bruxelles”. Modified Leningrads were also used in the Soviet space program. In addition to a complex parallax-compensated multi-focal (for 3.5, 5, 8.5 and 13.5cm) collimated system, the camera has a built-in spring-powered mechanical motor for an automated film advance after each view taken. The Leningrad mounts the 39mm Leica-type thread lenses, especially of the Jupiter series of lens derived of classical Carl Zeiss lenses designed for the Contax (Biogon 3.5cm and Sonnar’s 5, 8.5 and 13.5cm).

In 1965, GOMZ became LOMO ( ЛОМО, Ленинградское oптико-механическое oбъединение (Leningradskoïe Optiko-Mekhanitcheskoïe Obiedinienie) that is still existing, producing instrumental optical devices (www.lomo.ru).

On eBay, I focused on a LOMO Leningrad year 1965 in working condition but without the original film plate. I got the camera for 130€ including the leather bag and a standard lens Jupiter-8 1:2 f=5cm. The seller adapted cleanly a different film plate that looked to work, but my idea was to use the camera back of my faulty Leningrad. This film plate may a precision glass plate special designed for optimum film transport and optical planarity. I received my new Leningrad on January 31, 2025 in good condition.

After a very careful inspection and a detailled cleaning, I decided to make a test film using a FOMAPAN 200 black-and-white film. On the Leningrad it is said that there is absolutely no way to check the correct film advance during the shooting session. The rewind should not be up since the mechanical forces induced would be too high for the spring-powered spooling barrel. The film should be also in a quality not too tight film cartridge and should be checked before use. This stressful machine should be manipulated with maximum care when not familiar with it.

About the lens Jupiter-9:

New in my collection in Feb. 2025, this very popular lens Jupiter-9 1:2.8 f=85mm for my Zorki’s and Leningrad camera’s. The lens was produced in 1978 by the LZOS company (Лыткаринский завод Оптического Стекла , Lytkarino Zavod Optychisovo Sticklo) located in Lytkarino (about 100 km Noth to Moscow).

I sourced a clean exemplary in Germany at regular price given the popularity of the Jupiter-9 (170€) with the Leica 39mm thread mount, front and rear caps plus the lens black storage canister. The lens is popular especially among videographers due to its peculiar bokeh and perfectly round shaped diaphragm made of 15 blades.

Originally, the Jupiter 9 is based on the design of the Carl Zeiss Sonnar designed for the Zeiss Ikon Contax in the years 1930’s. Production began in USSR in 1948, when the lens was initially called the ЗК-85 (Sonnar Kransogorsk) and it was assembled using mostly German parts in Contax/Kiev mount. The lens was also adapted to Zorki (M39) mount to fit the Zorki cameras early in production It appears, for both Zorki and Kiev mount, in a 1949 catalogue. By 1951 the name changes to Jupiter 9 (Юпитер-9). The lens has seven glass elements in three groups; a single glass at the front, and two cemented groups of three. All versions of the lens are coated. It was made by the KMZ (Красногорский механический завод, Krasnogorski Mekhanicheskii Zavod) and LZOS factories, in Leica 39 mm thread mount for Fed and Zorki rangefinders, but originally it was a Contax bayonet used in Kiev cameras. Jupiter-9 lenses were also made at the Arsenal factory in Ukraine, for Kiev rangefinders,but initially released as KMZ. It was later adapted for M42-mount Zenit SLR cameras, with an M24×1 thread mount.

Swift XRT light curve of Sw J1644+57 for the first 3 weeks

of observations. The X-ray events were summed into time bins containing 200 counts per bin and count rates were calculated for each time bin. Because of the strong spectral evolution of this source and its large in-

trinsic absorption, light curves in physical units cannot b

e produced with constant count rate-to-flux conversion factors. We use time-dependent conversion factors to convert count rates to fluxes. Spectral fits were performed on time slices of data that typically contained about 3000 counts (see Supplementary Methods). Count rate-to-flux conversion factors were calculated for each spectrum, using absorption-corrected fluxes

in the rest frame 0.4-13.5 keV band. These time-dependent flux conversion factors were then interpolated to obtain fluxes for each time bin.

The right-hand axis gives the conversion to luminosity of th

e source, assuming isotropic radiation. The dashed line shows at−5/3 curve (where

t is time since the BAT trigger). Error bars are one standard deviation.

(McAllen, Texas, December 18, 2025) Mexico Agrees to Meet Water Treaty Obligations for Farmers in the American Southwest. On December 12, 2025, the United States and Mexico reached an understanding to meet the current water obligations of American farmers and ranchers and for Mexico to repay the water deficit in Texas as part of the 1944 Water Treaty. This agreement extends to the current cycle and the previous cycle’s water deficit. For more information, see www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/12/12/me...

The Rio Grande is the lifeline of South Texas agriculture, and its flow is shaped by an international agreement—the 1944 Mexico Water Treaty. This treaty ensures that water from six Mexican tributaries is shared between Mexico and the United States. The U.S. receives one-third of the natural flows, while Mexico retains two-thirds. Mexico must order the release of their share in specified amounts. In this case Mexico has agreed to release 202,000-acre feet of water to the United States with deliveries expected to begin the week of December 15, 2025. The US/Mexico water is stored in two major international reservoirs: Amistad Dam near Del Rio and Falcon Dam near Zapata. Amistad holds most of the water because its depth reduces evaporation. When irrigation districts downstream need water, the Rio Grande Watermaster orders releases from Falcon Dam. For Edcouch, Texas, water takes about a few days to travel from Falcon. As the water flows down the Rio Grande, some is diverted by the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 pumping station, which serves McAllen and surrounding areas. The pump station uses up to ten 400 horsepower pumps (SEEN) to take up water in submerged 42-inch uptake pipes, lifts it 32 feet, when the flow is measured as it is discharged at a capacity of up to 680 cubic feet per second into a main canal. This process ensures that every drop is accounted for—meeting agricultural needs while minimizing freshwater loss to the gulf.

Today, two pumps provide the flow needed by the system. Water will flow in the primary delivery canal for a short distance into a nearby settling pond to help clarify the water before continuing into a main conveyance channel that leads north, through McAllen, Texas. Smaller channels or pipelines will branch off to municipal and irrigation water districts such as the Delta Lake Irrigation District and it’s Delta Lake Reservoir, with the capacity of 10,669 acre-feet of water and a surface area of 2,371 acres. Delta Lake Irrigation District currently serves 69,500 acres and diverts municipal water to the City of Raymondville, La Sara, Monte Alto and the City of Lyford. Their irrigation canals flow to the farms where growers such as the Edinburg Citrus Association then use their pump houses to draw the water and distribute it to their fields using pressurized pipelines for drip irrigation systems that deliver life-giving water to the grapefruit orchards. Their micro-irrigation tubes/tapes deliver a slow flow to the base of each tree to increase absorption into the soil, reduce evaporation, runoff and unwanted growth between the rows and other benefits.

The organization that diverts water from the Rio Grande for irrigation and municipal use in Texas is managed under the Rio Grande Watermaster Program, which operates under the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The Rio Grande Watermaster Program is a system managed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that oversees and regulates the use of water from the Rio Grande in Texas. Its main job is to make sure water is distributed fairly and according to legal water rights. The Watermaster calculates how much water is needed by farmers, cities, and industries, then orders releases from reservoirs like Falcon Dam and Amistad Dam. It also tracks water as it flows down the river to ensure that every drop goes to the correct user and that as little as possible is wasted or flows into the gulf.

In 1932, a group of South Texas citrus growers came together to form the Edinburg Citrus Association (ECA), a non-profit co-op. The goal of the group is to maintain the highest quality pack and provide customers a highly marketable product at a competitive price.

USDA Media by Lance Cheung.

Listed building with beautiful natural acoustic absorption

All Weather Sound Panels completely surround a chiller unit to quiet the noise.

Visit Our Web Site for More Information