While attempting to photograph the architecture of this town, people kept getting in the frame. This mail carrier went about her job methodically and precisely while the streets teemed with people. I found great interest in how one block can have non-stop Bourbon St revelry and the next block is a shockingly quiet residential setting. The Quarter is partying but I see people living there too.

This male ruby throated hummingbird was very close to me and took a methodical turn around this salvia bush. The bird was so close I had to back off the zoom to fit the whole body in frame.

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I ordered some film the other week and i was exited to get an nice big parcel in the post.

actually some turned up the first day and then a bit more a few days later, and then some more on friday, but i missed the post so had to go to the post office, but got there too late on sat, so had to wait until tuesday. I was hoping for a nice big parcel and was gonna do this shot last week, but logistics and the postal system were against me.

So this is the film that arrived, plus a few extras from my fridge for artistic value.

I don;t really know what makes up the differences between films, and i'm not really experimenting methodically, so if you have any opinion on a film here, please let me know, as it would be good to learn.

I know some people are very loyal to one brand, so what works for you? and why?

D200, nikkor 18-200mm, sb600 on full power though brolly, alison holding the backdrop, and it looks like i need a bigger fridge

“The greatest wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Muir...(Two minuscules standing before a towering Sequoia)

The nymph Anemone was loved by Zephyrus, god of the west wind. Complicating things, Zephyrus was married to Chloris, goddess of the flowers. Chloris, knowing that -- to put it delicately -- nymphs fell in love a lot, was not pleased. What happened next depends on who was telling the tale, Greeks or, later, Romans. So, taking some associative liberties, and recognizing that all ancient mythologies spring from the same generic source anyway, the following blended summary is suggested: Chloris turned Anemone into a windflower and offered her up to the rude and brutish Boreas, god of the north wind, who nowadays would be considered something of a stalker.

When I think of this tree as ‘Anemone’, it is in reference to a thoroughly modern Anemone; standing strong, tall, defiant. Certainly no victim. With a nod to William Faulkner, an Anemone that will not merely endure, but will prevail. And ‘Anemone’ has prevailed...This tree may have been well over two thousand years old when the ancient Greeks began reformating the root mythologies to conform them to emerging Archaic culture.

Great Basin bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) confirmed to be over 5000 years old are very rare. There is only one -- rumored to be 5066 years of age and, as Benedick said of Beatrice, “...yet living”. The officially oldest known living tree, Methuselah (4850 years) is nearby in the White Mountains of California. For their protection, the precise location of each is kept secret by the Forest Service. It is said that even the District Ranger typically does not know where they are.

As one prominent researcher complained shortly after the existence of Methuselah was publicized in 1958 -- by the researcher himself -- leading to, among other things, a rash of souvenir-taking, “The public is destroying my research material.” The conceited conundrum of that statement of course being that, being public land, the public had as much right to unfettered access and ‘souvenirs’ as he did.

The tree WPN114, aka 'Prometheus', felled in 1964 in the Snake Range of eastern Nevada by a grad student under the pressure of winter’s approach and an expiring grant, had an inferred age of 5000 years. A living tree when felled, it would now be over 5050 years old.

And yet, a leading tree ring researcher was quoted in 2013 as saying,“I cannot believe that WPN114 was ever ‘the oldest’ Bristlecone pine." As for finding an older individual, he added, “this would be a difficult and thankless task for which there is no real research incentive.”

It is difficult to know if such a statement was intended as specious sleight of hand -- or merely ingenuous. It was apparently based on the speaker’s professed belief that a mere grad student could not possibly have blundered onto the one tree older than all others. The odds were too much against that, he explained. Or so he apparently wanted others to believe.

Truth is, the grad student had carefully searched for a very old tree, in a very specific area, for two seasons. And he found one. One person familiar with the tree, who had watched the full-course of events unfold and, at a key point, had attempted -- outside of any jurisdiction he possessed -- to intervene, later put it simply, “He knew what he had.”

His was not a random act of cutting. Nor, as I have recently read, was it “accidental”; as if the grad student, exhausted by exertion at altitude, had merely leaned against the tree and, lo and behold, over it went. Or, as I have even more recently heard, the dismissively high-brow sniff, "inadvertent"; as in "Well, how was I to know it was a Ming!"

Of course, no one can know for certain if a given tree is actually the oldest of its species. It would be sophistic to claim that one did know. There is always a possibility, however remote and vanishing, that the oldest is still out there; somewhere in an "endless forest". In this way, there will always be an enticing illusory tree that benefits the self-professed believer with the advantages of its anonymity. It is a looping absolution, a variation on the myth of a boundless Earth. In Nevada, the Silver State, such reasoning has kept miners running in circles for generations.

In 1966 the Forest Service funded two simultaneous, two-year, independent studies of bristlecone in eastern Nevada. Officially, they were attempting to discover places where long chronologies could be developed by scientists.

Word on the street was they were trying to provide cover for the Chief of the Forest Service who had proclaimed, after the felling of WPN114, ”We have a lot that are the same age, or older.” The studies found nothing.

If solace is to be taken, it must be in the form of the oldest ‘known’ living tree. Odds are, there can be only one of those at a time.

WPN114 was felled not because there was scientific interest in identifying the oldest living organism on the planet. It was felled in a grant-funded quest for a theoretical chronological record of specific short-term weather conditions as recorded in tree rings. WPN114 just happened to be the oldest living individual organism on the planet.

Yet, scientific focus can be so narrow that, even if the grad student had suspected that his selected tree was the oldest on the planet, and deserving of some circumspection, it would have been irrelevant. It would have been outside the specious parameters of his thesis. It would have been a fortuitous, ironically appropriate anomaly. It would have been that holy grail of all scientific inquiry: More data. (Not that anomalies can be such a bad thing; in a pinch they can be passed-off as secret passages to the holy grail. You know, the old adage: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”)

Besides, he surely must have known that the most eminent tree ring researcher of the era had already, in the White Mountains, felled similar trees.

The scientists now have an 11,000 year chronology (with a 500 year gap). They have no need for a 5000 or even a 6000 year old tree--known or unknown.

In 1965, I enrolled in Geology 101 at the state university. The first day in class, a young post-grad instructor launched into a heated critique of continental drift - a controversial theory proposed fifty years earlier. It was apparently his intent to set a tone for those wishing to become the next disciplined generation of geologists. He used words like “ignorant”, “crackpot”, “mumbo-jumbo”, “insulting”, “impossible” and - my favorite - “coincidence”.

Having already received the full lifetime's complement of indoctrination in high school, I dropped the course. A couple of years later, the young instructor’s insular Pangea shattered when continental drift was confirmed beyond any doubt.

Scientists can be like this. On the bright side, it can make them good at what they do. On the dark side, what they do is no longer science. It is why the Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Planck wrote in his 1949 autobiography a sentiment that has been paraphrased ever since as, "Science advances one funeral at a time".

Scientists depend on grants; or, as the researcher quoted above put it, “...real research incentive”. Grant dependency is why one of the most common findings of grant-funded research is the urgent need for further grant-funded research.

Grants, if they are pitched right, are obviously a great way to build career security. Paid consultants, for example, routinely do this by employing what might be called the ‘trickle down’ theory of client access to relevant information.

In what might be referred to as a sort of “Nero Syndrome”, it is not too difficult to imagine that there is a lot of science and funding out there that is ‘fiddling’ while the planet burns. The almost fifty-year-old colloquialism for this is "Junk Science".

But junk science is a rather quaint, old-fashioned, concept considering that the methodical, human-centric, process of review and citation is already drowning in a sea of fake review and citation generated by AI. Think of it as no longer just being identifiable nonsense, but as in the process of becoming fictitious nonscience as well.

The New York Times recently published an article defining the contemporary golden age of discovery and innovation in the U.S. as having occurred in a twenty-five year period between 1945 and 1971. The article then went on to demonstrate that not much has happened since; which seems odd because the National Science Foundation has been issuing billions of dollars worth of grants per year since its establishment in 1950.

On the other hand, funding for curiosity or whimsy or following one’s heart (e.g. the elderly Charles Darwin's self-funded fascination with earthworms), are pretty much nonexistent. This can have the effect of reducing things scientists do not study to curiosities -- leavings for gawkers or philosophers or poets.

‘Anemone’ would be such a curiosity: A living tree that could be inferred to have an age in excess of 5000 years, standing on an isolated ridge in remote eastern Nevada, within a Research Natural Area, within the least-visited national park in the country, just off a route ‘Life’ magazine in 1986 referred to as “The Loneliest Highway in America” -- all within a region identified on maps well into the late 19th century as ‘Terra Incognita’.

It is basically a tree without credentials. A scientific orphan. Frivolous. A curiosity. Under those circumstances, it becomes, to a certain kind of mind, a potentially unrestricted commodity.

It goes something like this: Build a trail and people might flock to it. They arrive with a whoop and a yelp, take the obligatory selfie, and tear off back down the trail, cutting every switchback along the way. Hopefully, they find their way to the gift shop and buy the tee. Or get the grant.

Great Basin National Park has recently built just such a trail. Even so, getting there is no ‘walk in the park’ -- a single linear mile of the new trail includes fifty switchbacks. The trailhead sign coyly suggests that, “some [trees] may be over 5000 years old”. “O brave new world that has such people in it.”, indeed.

‘Anemone’, by the way, is not a formal name applied to this tree, it is a personal association -- a crude attempt to put a way of seeing into words. The tree has no name, nor, in my mind, any need for one. Men -- rarely women -- have named trees. Men have also imperiously named the stars. Preemptively imposing their will on all who follow, they predominantly use the names of mythical gods, philosophers, warriors, generals, politicians -- names that convey strength, power, prowess.

Make of it what you will, I sense a strong, enduring, feminine in trees, especially bristlecones. It is what I see in the defiant windward line of ‘Anemone’, complemented by the leeward flow of wind-sculpted branches. It’s not just me, in the gender-based Greek and Latin languages trees are feminine. Winds, for existential balance, are masculine.

Usually, my associations are highly personal, spontaneous -- shortcuts along existing neural pathways when confronted by the new, the unexpected, the inexplicable. Or, as Muir wrote way too often, the “sublime”. I rarely verbalize these free-flowing associations in the wild. Intuitively, they surface days, weeks or months later, usually when I am watering the garden or maybe mowing the grass.

Wilderness is, for me, a largely non-verbal, receptive, experience. I am open to every endless possibility. I neither rationalize nor covet anything. Everything in wild nature has a validity, an inherent potential transcendency. The mere existence of generative, entangled nature -- of consciousness itself -- defies logic, defies probability, defies expectation. Why would anyone question anything within it? Or their own deepest responses to it?

These associations -- which almost always surprise me -- obviously say something about my perceptions of reality, and nothing whatsoever about any confirmed actuality of a tree. It is very much like what good art, sooner or later, can do. Feel free to try it yourself. Call this tree, or any other, whatever you want, whatever speaks to you. A caution though: Just as ‘you are what you eat’, you evenmore are what you see.

I once encountered a woman on the remotest stretch of the Methuselah Loop Trail in the Bristlecone Ancient Pine Forest of the White Mountains. We were going in opposite directions on the same dusty loop path -- both as far from Methuselah as the Forest Service designed that trail to take us.

She strode toward me, her husband following meekly behind; middle-aged, white sneakers, floppy straw hat, oversize sunglasses, dressed for the California sunshine. Dangling haphazardly by a strap around her neck, was an extravagantly expensive camera.

Expansive, chatty, she announced that she was determined to find Methuselah. When she found the tree, she explained, she was going to take its picture and, leaning-in, laughing confidentially as if sharing a ribald joke at a cocktail party, proclaimed, “I am going to hang it in my bathroom!”

I chose to not ask why.

"The organ goes back to an instrument that was built between 1683 and 1684 by the organ builders Johann Jobst Schleich and his journeyman Nikolaus Will. The original, preserved front of the main organ in the west gallery was built by Johann-Jobst Schleich. The painted front pipes of the Praestant 8′ are also original and are playable. The instrument was rebuilt several times by the Weiß organ building company in Zellingen. The organ has 64 sounding stops (4,266 pipes) on four manuals and a pedal. The pipes from the Chamadenwerk are on grinding and clay comb drawers; the remaining pipes are on cone leden. The actions are electro-pneumatic, those of the Chamadenwerk are electric. A special feature of the instrument are the special musical mechanisms Celesta (bell chime with brass bells, c 0 – d 3 in the swell mechanism) and Carillon (tube chime, g 0 – g 2 in the remote mechanism). The organ also has an adjustable cymbal star (8 tones, brass bells) with a visible, rotating star in the main tower of the front; the cymbel star comes from the instrument from 1683/84.

The Roman Catholic parish church of St. Andreas in Karlstadt, the district town of the Lower Franconian district of Main-Spessart in Bavaria, was built from the 14th century on the foundations of a late Romanesque basilica.

From the previous Romanesque building, which dates back to the time the city was founded around the year 1200, the current church contains remains of walls in the nave, as well as the former sacristy in the southern choir corner (today the baptismal chapel), the crossing and the west tower. From the middle of the 14th century, the transept and choir were built in the Gothic style. The Rieneck chapel, which opens to the northern transept and choir, was built in 1447, as evidenced by a keystone on the vault bearing this date. The nave was built around 1481 and vaulted in 1512/13. Around 1583, the Würzburg Prince-Bishop Julius Echter had the tower increased by one storey and given a new pointed helmet.

Over the centuries the church was redesigned several times. In 1614 it was painted in the Renaissance style by Wolfgang Ritterlein from Innsbruck. Some of these paintings are still preserved on the frames of the portals and on some windows. During the Baroque period, the church received new furnishings, which were exchanged for neo-Gothic ones at the end of the 19th century. In 1999/2000 the church was further renovated and new furnishings were created.

Karlstadt is a town in the Main-Spessart in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) in Bavaria, Germany. It is the administrative centre of Main-Spessart (Kreisstadt), and has a population of around 15,000.

Karlstadt lies on the River Main in the district (Landkreis) of Main-Spessart, roughly 25 km north of the city of Würzburg. It belongs to the Main-Franconian wine-growing region. The town itself is located on the right bank of the river, but the municipal territory extends to the left bank.

Since the amalgamations in 1978, Karlstadt's Stadtteile have been Gambach, Heßlar, Karlburg, Karlstadt, Laudenbach, Mühlbach, Rohrbach, Stadelhofen, Stetten, and Wiesenfeld.

From the late 6th to the mid-13th century, the settlement of Karlburg with its monastery and harbor was located on the west bank of the Main. It grew up around the Karlsburg, a castle perched high over the community, that was destroyed in the German Peasants' War in 1525.

In 1202, Karlstadt itself was founded by Konrad von Querfurt, Bishop of Würzburg. The town was methodically laid out with a nearly rectangular plan to defend Würzburg territory against the Counts of Rieneck. The plan is still well preserved today. The streets in the old town are laid out much like a chessboard, but for military reasons they are not quite straight.

In 1225, Karlstadt had its first documentary mention. In 1236, the castle and the village of Karlburg were destroyed in the Rieneck Feud. In 1244, winegrowing in Karlstadt was mentioned for the first time. From 1277 comes the earliest evidence of the town seal. In 1304, the town fortifications were finished. The parish of Karlstadt was first named in 1339. In 1369 a hospital was founded. Between 1370 and 1515, remodelling work was being done on the first, Romanesque parish church to turn it into a Gothic hall church. About 1400, Karlstadt became for a short time the seat of an episcopal mint. The former Oberamt of the Princely Electorate (Hochstift) of Würzburg was, after Secularization, in Bavaria's favour, passed in 1805 to Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Tuscany to form the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and passed with this to the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The Jewish residents of the town had a synagogue as early as the Middle Ages. The town's synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass, 9 November 1938) by Nazi SA men, SS, and Hitler Youth, as well as other local residents. Its destruction is recalled by a plaque at the synagogue's former site. The homes of Jewish residents were attacked as well, the possessions therein were looted or brought to the square in front of the town hall where they were burned, and the Jews living in the town were beaten.

Lower Franconia (German: Unterfranken) is one of seven districts of Bavaria, Germany. The districts of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia make up the region of Franconia. It consists of nine districts and 308 municipalities (including three cities).

After the founding of the Kingdom of Bavaria the state was totally reorganised and, in 1808, divided into 15 administrative government regions (German: Regierungsbezirke, singular Regierungsbezirk), in Bavaria called Kreise (singular: Kreis). They were created in the fashion of the French departements, quite even in size and population, and named after their main rivers.

In the following years, due to territorial changes (e. g. loss of Tyrol, addition of the Palatinate), the number of Kreise was reduced to 8. One of these was the Untermainkreis (Lower Main District). In 1837 king Ludwig I of Bavaria renamed the Kreise after historical territorial names and tribes of the area. This also involved some border changes or territorial swaps. Thus the name Untermainkreis changed to Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg, but the city name was dropped in the middle of the 20th century, leaving just Lower Franconia.

From 1933, the regional Nazi Gauleiter, Otto Hellmuth, (who had renamed his party Gau "Mainfranken") insisted on renaming the government district Mainfranken as well. He encountered resistance from Bavarian state authorities but finally succeeded in having the name of the district changed, effective 1 June 1938. After 1945 the name Unterfranken was restored.

Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).

Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.

Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.

Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.

The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

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A good thing continues

Some six months ago, I posted almost 100 images and a few thoughts I felt were missing from the many existing RX1 reviews. The outpouring of support and interest in that article was very gratifying. When I published, I had used the camera for six full months, enough time to come to a view of its strengths and weaknesses and to produce a small portfolio of good images, but not enough time to see the full picture (pun intended). In the following six months, I have used the camera at least as frequently as in the first six and have produced another small set of good images. It should be noted that my usage of the RX1 in the last six (and especially in the last 3) months has involved less travel and more time with the family and around the house; I will share relatively few of these images but will spend some time sharing my impressions of its functionality for family snapshots as I am sure there is some interest. And let it be said here: one of the primary motivations to purchase the camera was to take more photos with the family, and after one full year I can confidently say: money well spent.

The A7/r game-changer?

In the past six months, Sony have announced and released two full-frame, interchangeable lens cameras that clearly take design cues from the RX1: the A7 and the A7r. These cameras are innovative and highly capable and, as such, are in the midst of taking the photography world by storm. I think they are compelling enough cameras that I wonder whether Sony is wasting its energy continuing to develop further A-mount cameras. Sony deserve credit for a bold strategy—many companies would have been content to allow the success of the the RX1 (and RX1R) generate further sales before pushing further into the white space left unexplored by camera makers with less ambition.This is not the place to detail the relative advantages and disadvantages of the RX1 versus the A7/r except to make the following point. I currently use a Nikon D800 and an RX1: were I to sell both and purchase the A7r + 35mm f/2.8 I would in many ways lose nothing by way of imaging capability or lens compatibility but would pocket the surplus $1250-1750. Indeed this loyal Nikon owner thought long and hard about doing so, which speaks to the strategic importance of these cameras for a company trying to make inroads into a highly concentrated market.Ultimately, I opted to hang onto the two cameras I have (although this decision is one that I revisit time and time again) and continue to use them as I have for the past year. Let me give you a quick flavor of why.

The RX1 is smaller and more discrete

This is a small a point, but my gut reaction to the A7/r was: much smaller than the D800, not as small as the RX1. The EVF atop the A7/r and the larger profile of interchangeable mount lenses means that I would not be able to slip the A7/r into a pocket the way I can the RX1. Further, by virtue of using the EVF and its loud mechanical shutter, the A7/r just isn’t as stealthy as the RX1. Finally, f/2 beats the pants off of f/2.8 at the same or smaller size.At this point, some of you may be saying, “Future Sony releases will allow you to get a body without an EVF and get an f/2 lens that has a slimmer profile, etc, etc.” And that’s just the point: to oversimplify things, the reason I am keeping my RX1 is that Sony currently offers something close to an A7 body without a built-in EVF and with a slimmer profile 35mm f/2.

The D800 has important functional advantages

On the other side of the spectrum, the AF speed of the A7/r just isn’t going to match the D800, especially when the former is equipped with a Nikon lens and F-mount adapter. EVFs cannot yet match the experience of looking through the prism and the lens (I expect they will match soon, but aren’t there yet). What’s more, I have made such an investment in Nikon glass that I can’t yet justify purchasing an adapter for a Sony mount or selling them all for Sony’s offerings (many of which aren’t to market yet).Now, all of these are minor points and I think all of them disappear with an A8r, but they add up to something major: I have two cameras very well suited to two different types of shooting, and I ask myself if I gain or lose by getting something in between—something that wasn’t quite a pocket shooter and something that was quite a DSLR? You can imagine, however, that if I were coming to the market without a D800 and an RX1, that my decision would be far different: dollar for dollar, the A7/r would be a no-brainer.During the moments when I consider selling to grab an A7r, I keep coming back to a thought I had a month or so before the RX1 was announced. At that time I was considering something like the NEX cameras with a ZM 21mm f/2.8 and I said in my head, “I wish someone would make a carry-around camera with a full frame sensor and a fixed 35mm f/2.8 or f/2.” Now you understand how attractive the RX1 is to me and what a ridiculously high bar exists for another camera system to reach.

Okay, so what is different from the last review?

For one, I had an issue with the camera’s AF motor failing to engage and giving me an E61:00 error. I had to send it out to Sony for repairs (via extended warranty and service plan). I detailed my experience with Sony Service here [insert link] and I write to you as a very satisfied customer. That is to say, I have 3 years left on a 4 year + accidental damage warranty and I feel confident enough in that coverage to say that I will have this beauty in working order for at least another 3 years.For two, I’ve spent significantly less time thinking of this camera as a DSLR replacement and have instead started to develop a very different way of shooting with it. The activation barrier to taking a shot with my D800 is quite high. Beyond having to bring a large camera wherever you go and have it in hand, a proper camera takes two hands and full attention to produce an image. I shoot slowly and methodically and often from a tripod with the D800. In contrast, I can pull the RX1 out, pop off the lens cap, line up and take a shot with one hand (often with a toddler in the other). This fosters a totally different type of photography.

My “be-there” camera

The have-everywhere camera that gives DSLR type controls to one-handed shooting lets me pursue images that happen very quickly or images that might not normally meet the standards of “drag-the-DSLR-out-of-the-bag.” Many of those images you’ll see on this post. A full year of shooting and I can say this with great confidence: the RX1 is a terrific mash-up of point-and-shoot and DSLR not just in image quality and features, but primarily in the product it helps me create. To take this thinking a bit further: I find myself even processing images from the RX1 differently than I would from my DSLR. So much so that I have strongly considered starting a tumblr and posting JPEGs directly from the RX1 via my phone or an iPad rather than running the bulk of them through Lightroom, onto Flickr and then on the blog (really this is just a matter of time, stay tuned, and those readers who have experience with tumblr, cloud image storage and editing, etc, etc, please contact me, I want to pick your brain).Put simply, I capture more spontaneous and beautiful “moments” than I might have otherwise. Photography is very much an exercise in “f/8 and be there,” and the RX1 is my go-to “be there” camera.

The family camera

I mentioned earlier that I justified the purchase of the RX1 partly as a camera to be used to document the family moments into which a DSLR doesn’t neatly fit. Over the past year I’ve collected thousands and thousands of family images with the RX1. The cold hard truth is that many of those photos could be better if I’d taken a full DSLR kit with me to the park or the beach or the grocery store each time. The RX1 is a difficult camera to use on a toddler (or any moving subject for that matter); autofocus isn’t as fast as a professional DSLR, it’s difficult to perfectly compose via an LCD (especially in bright sunlight), but despite these shortcomings, it’s been an incredibly useful family camera. There are simply so many beautiful moments where I had the RX1 over my shoulder, ready to go that whatever difficulties exist relative to a DSLR, those pale in comparison to the power of it’s convenience. The best camera is the one in your hand.

Where to go from here.

So what is the value of these RX1 going forward, especially in a world of the A7/r and it’s yet-to-be-born siblings without an EVF and a pancake lens? Frankly, at its current price (which is quite fair when you consider the value of the the body and the lens) I see precious little room for an independent offering versus a mirrorless, interchangeable lens system with the same image quality in a package just as small. That doesn’t mean Sony won’t make an RX2 or an RX1 Mark II (have a look at it’s other product lines to see how many SKUs are maintained despite low demand). Instead, I see the RX1 as a bridge that needed to exist for engineers, managers, and the market to make it to the A7/r and it’s descendants.A Facebook friend recently paid me a great compliment; he said something like, “Justin, via your blog, you’ve sold a ton of RX1 cameras.” Indeed, despite my efforts not to be a salesman, I think he’s right: I have and would continue to recommend this camera.The true value of the RX1 going forward is for those of us who have the thing on our shoulders; and yes, if you have an investment in and a love for a DSLR system, there’s still tremendous value in getting one, slinging it over your shoulder, and heading out into the wide, bright world; A7/r or no, this is just an unbelievably capable camera.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like things just right! Sewing projects are no exception.

The heron is a common subject in folklore worldwide. For Buddhists, their grace and slow, methodical behavior is seen as a symbol of wisdom and awareness. Often, and especially in Native American lore, they have come to symbolize life and death, the cycle of everything.

Taipei, Taiwan

One of these days I'm going to have to see if they'll hold something in their mouths. As I've near-zero* luck in the past with any of the dogs, I'm guessing not and haven't bothered trying.

*Henry would BRIEFLY** hold anything I physically put in his mouth (open mouth, insert object) - briefly, because he wasn't the quickest (understatement) and I usually had enough time to get out of the way and snap the picture before he methodically dropped whatever I'd put there.

** except the cheeseburger (see comments). He was happy to hold that - and didn't even try to eat it!

Oddly, Zachary - who I was able to train to do just about anything (e.g. unload the dryer) staunchly refused, even when using his favorite clicker method of approximations. Total no go. If I remember correctly I couldn't even get him to put his lips on items.

With these two (Riley and Toby) I might have a shot with Riley. As it took me months to get Toby to the point where he looks forward to photography (e.g. "Cookie Time") I'm not inclined to do anything to spoil his accommodating mood.

Our Daily Challenge - THE STONE AGE is the topic for Wed May 7 2025

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With Tamron SP AF 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di VC USD Lens

The intermediate egret or yellow-billed egret (Mesophoyx intermedia) is a medium-sized heron, stalks its prey methodically in shallow coastal or fresh water, including flooded fields. It eats fish, frogs, crustaceans and insects. It often nests in colonies with other herons. It is a resident breeder from east Africa across the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia and Australia.

Gajaldoba is a small village on the western side of Teesta River in the Oodlabari area of Jalpaiguri district (West Bengal, India). Gajaldoba is famous for the dam on River Teesta, constructed for irrigation of agricultural lands, which resulted in a large waterbody upstream and has become home to many migratory birds during the winter. The natural beauty of the place with its view of the forest, river and majestic Kangchenjunga is awe inspiring!

The wetland with sprawling vegetation and reedbeds is a safe haven of at least 100 species of birds, primarily the waterfowls, which attracts a number of winter migrants. Birds from Europe, Central and southeast Asia, Ladakh and Himalayas winter here. Gajaldoba now host at least 20,000 waterfowls in the peak season (November to March) and becoming a significant global waterfowl habitat.

Gajaldoba took increased prominence due to the state government's initiative to promote a mega tourism hub in the area. An area of more than 200 acres has been demarcated for the purpose and infrastructure is being developed. In the near future, the area is expected to become one of the high end tourist destinations of Bengal.

This 8 shot panorama of the Exeter River will be the last of its kind. Just days after this was taken and processed, they began the process of removing the dam that created this pool of water. Today, as they methodically tear down the dam, there sits nothing but a mud puddle. Once complete, the Exeter river will flow freely through the town.

Dans une vue plongeante , le regard s'arrête d'abord sur les personnages : un paysan qui laboure son champ, un berger appuyé sur son bâton, un pêcheur de dos qui tend son fil. Le rouge de la blouse du laboureur et de l'echarpe du pêcheur attire l'attention sur leurs occupations. Quand les yeux peuvent s'en détacher, on découvre la profondeur de l'espace quasi infini. À l'horizon, le soleil forme un disque qui irradie et unit le violet du ciel à l'émeraude de la mer. Les montagnes qui bordent celle-ci paraissent irréelles, blanches et légères, comme le port qui s'éveille dans une lumière rose.

L'esprit se plaît à admirer ce paysage harmonieux et paisible mais l'œil, irrésistiblement revient au rouge sang du premier plan, vers ce paysan absorbé par sa tâche. Nous le voyons de biais, la scène étant construite en diagonale et l'impression d'un travail continu, méthodique, en train de se faire, en est accentuée. Derrière lui, les taches claires des brebis guident le regard vers les voiles beiges du navire qui passe. Il est temps alors de découvrir les « détails » de cette scène quotidienne : près du bateau, devant le rocher, la mer se ride et deux jambes s'agitent : Icare est en train de se noyer dans l'indifférence de l'entourage et de la nature. Icare, coupable de s'être approché un peu trop près du soleil, qui a cru braver les lois de la gravité et de la condition humaine, plonge dans le vert émeraude profond et personne ne le remarque. Pas même la perdrix dont le regard vague et lointain rappelle celui du berger qui tourne le dos au drame.

Deux interprétations parmi beaucoup d'autres :

Comme souvent, le peintre prend l'inverse de la tradition, l'envers des choses et distille discrètement son ironie. Si les personnages d'Ovide sont représentés pour la première fois, l'essentiel est inversé : les gens à l'aube d'une journée de travail, sauf le berger qui regarde le ciel, n'ont pas de temps à perdre avec l'ambition d'un fou ou d'un rêveur. Il faut ensemencer et pêcher, il faut retendre les cordages afin que le navire, comme la vie, avance vers la lumière ou l'or philosophal, selon une lecture ésotérique.

Stoïcien et humaniste, Brueghel exprime l'accord de l'homme avec les lois de l'Univers dont il n'est qu'une petite partie. À l'avant-plan, l'épée et la bourse, posées près du laboureur, évoquent un de ces proverbes populaires que Brueghel a illustrés dans d'autres tableaux : « Épée et argent requièrent mains astucieuses. », van Lennep.

Pierre Francastel développe une autre théorie qui a le mérite de situer le peintre dans le contexte historique de son pays. Icare incarne aussi le courage, l'aventure positive de ceux qui osent. Prisonnier de Minos, il a la volonté de s'enfuir et l'audace d'essayer. C'est l'ingéniosité de son père, Dédale, qui lui en fournit le moyen. Son seul « défaut » est de succomber à la griserie de la réussite. Il est jeune encore. Dédale reste le forgeron, l'artiste et le créateur génial. Au XVIe siècle, le mythe trouve un écho dans ce pays sous domination étrangère : c'est l'appel de la liberté et le rêve d'évasion… La vie continue, oui mais les questions restent posées : toute tentative libératrice est-elle voué à l'échec ? N'y a-t-il plus place pour le rêve ? L'indifférence n'est-elle pas l'écueil le plus dangereux pour l'aventure humaine et le progrès ?

In a plunging view, the gaze first stops on the characters: a peasant who plows his field, a shepherd leaning on his staff, a fisherman back who holds out his thread. The red of the plowman's blouse and fisherman's scarf draws attention to their occupations. When the eyes can be detached, we discover the depth of almost infinite space. On the horizon, the sun forms a disc that radiates and unites the violet of the sky with the emerald of the sea. The mountains that border it seem unreal, white and light, like the port that awakes in a light pink.

The mind takes pleasure in admiring this harmonious and peaceful landscape, but the eye, irresistibly, returns to the red blood of the foreground, towards this peasant absorbed by his task. We see it sideways, the scene being constructed diagonally and the impression of a continuous, methodical work being done, is accentuated. Behind him, the light spots of the sheep guide the eyes towards the beige sails of the passing ship. It is then time to discover the "details" of this daily scene: near the boat, in front of the rock, the sea is wrinkled and two legs shake: Icarus is drowning in the indifference of the entourage and of nature. Icarus, guilty of having approached a little too close to the sun, who believed to brave the laws of gravity and the human condition, plunges into the deep emerald green and no one notices it. Not even the partridge, whose vague and distant look is reminiscent of the shepherd who turns his back on the drama.

Two interpretations among many others:

As often, the painter takes the opposite of tradition, the reverse side of things and discretely distils his irony. If Ovid's characters are represented for the first time, the essential is reversed: people at the dawn of a working day, except the shepherd who looks at the sky, have no time to lose with the ambition of a madman or a dreamer. It is necessary to sow and fish, it is necessary to tighten the ropes so that the ship, like the life, advance towards the light or the philosopher's gold, according to an esoteric reading.

Stoic and humanist, Brueghel expresses the agreement of man with the laws of the Universe of which he is only a small part. In the foreground, the sword and purse, placed near the plowman, evoke one of those popular proverbs that Brueghel illustrated in other paintings: "Sword and money require clever hands. Van Lennep.

Pierre Francastel develops another theory that has the merit of situating the painter in the historical context of his country. Icarus also embodies the courage, the positive adventure of those who dare. Prisoner of Minos, he has the will to flee and the audacity to try. It is the ingenuity of his father, Daedalus, who provides him with the means. His only "fault" is to succumb to the excitement of success. He is young again. Daedalus remains the blacksmith, the artist and the brilliant creator. In the sixteenth century, the myth finds an echo in this country under foreign domination: it is the call of freedom and the dream of escape ... Life goes on, yes but the questions remain: are any liberating attempts bound to failure ? Is there no room for dreams? Is not indifference the most dangerous stumbling block for human adventure and progress?

Tag Challenge (courtesy of Flickr member Rooners Toy Photography): If a global rise of zombies threatened the very existence of humanity...what team would you assemble to save the day?

www.flickr.com/photos/puuikibeach/9230654731/

Any figure or doll of any scale are allowed in this challenge.

Are you up to the challenge? If so, choose a Team Leader, Brawler, Weapons Expert, Brains, Medic, Speed Fighter and a Mascot.

Optional: guy who dies first

Okay... let's get out there and SAVE HUMANITY (or your alternative species of choice)!

If you see this, please consider yourself tagged and join in. It would be great to get this going again.

Team Leader: Leon S. Kennedy.

Who better to lead a team against zombies than this guy? His vast experience of zombies and bio organic weapons is vital to their success.

Brawler: Wolverine.

Logan will cut down anything in his path! His regenration ability means the zombie virus won't effect him.

Weapons Expert: T-800.

Who knows more about weapons or detailed human anatomy files than a T-800? You know this reprogrammed terminator will not stop until the threat is gone.

Brains: Wednesday Addams.

This brainy teenage sleuth with her methodical mind will save them all! and you know that Thing, will save her.

Medic: Grogu.

Not only is this small jedi padowan a great fighter, he also has mastered the ability of force heal.

Speed Fighter: Tifa Lockhart.

This brutal hand to hand fighter never backs down from a challenge. She is never scared to dive into battle.

Mascot: Adipose.

This little plump of fat is an ideal moral booster when the team is feeling down.

I'm pregnant! Baby #2 is due April 8, 2014. I'm definitely showing earlier this pregnancy, and have been in maternity pants for a couple weeks already.

The last couple months have been challenging. I had some complications early on, and for several weeks, it wasn't clear what to expect. I had 5 ultrasounds within about 7 weeks. Luckily, it seems like everything is going well now. And, bonus, with all those ultrasounds? We've watched the progression from blob, to bigger blob, to blob with some bumps, to something that is starting to look like an actual baby. We had our standard 12-week ultrasound with the maternal-fetal medicine specialist last week, and things are looking good.

I've also had terrible nausea, heartburn, etc. Zofran and Zantac are my friends. I've tried a few different anti-nausea meds, but Zofran is the only one that works without making me fall asleep at inconvenient times. Like while at my desk at work, or while driving. My insurance company doesn't cover a full prescription for it, so I'm paying for some of it out-of-pocket. My OB prescribed every-6-hours course of meds, but insurance covers 9 pills a week. $6 per pill seems expensive, but it's a small cost to pay for not puking at work. (I end up doing ok with just 1 or 2 pills most days.) I'm hoping that this gets better in the second trimester. In the meantime, I'm living on bread, pasta, potatoes, cheese and crackers, carrots and hummus, grapefruit, and watermelon. And, on rare occasions, Chinese food and fried chicken. Yeah. I don't even. Fried chicken? Where did that one come from? I never eat fried chicken.

Thom has been a wonderful support. I have a hard time in the evenings, when the exhaustion hits hardest. As soon as Henry is in bed, I'm a useless lump on the couch. Thom has picked up a lot of the slack at home and with Henry. And Henry, uh, has been introduced to the miracles of TV. He's especially fond of Curious George. I, meanwhile, have started to methodically work my way through The Good Wife. Have I mentioned that Thom is the best? Especially when I caught some sort of virus and was sick for over a week, and out of work for 4 days, in the middle of September. He took care of me and Henry, with some help from my mom when Thom was at work.

We've started to pick out names already, and have one or two top contenders for each sex. We will definitely find out the sex at our 2nd trimester ultrasound, if not sooner. I may be eligible for the Maternit21 genetic screening blood test, since I am of "advanced maternal age" at the ripe old age of 35. That test can also make an early determination of sex.

We are both excited to welcome this baby to our family. And I am hoping that the second trimester may be a bit easier than the first.

Methodical experiment

Subjective significance

Reliability reason

This Choco Toucan was one of two birds first seen in the distance. As they moved through the forest, they were very deliberate and methodical. They tilted their heads and changed postures before flying or hopping along a limb, evidently checking for predators.

July 8, 2014. Milpe Bird Sanctuary, Pichincha Province, Ecuador.

The water buffalo or domestic Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is a large bovid originating in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. Today, it is also found in Europe, Australia, and some American countries. The wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) native to Southeast Asia is considered a different species, but most likely represents the ancestor of the domestic water buffalo.

Two extant types of water buffalo are recognized based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of South Asia and further west to the Balkans, Egypt, and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The origins of the domestic water buffalo types are debated, although results of a phylogenetic study indicate that the swamp type may have originated in China and was domesticated about 4,000 years ago, while the river type may have originated from India and was domesticated about 5,000 years ago. Water buffalo were traded from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq, 2500 BC by the Meluhhas. The seal of a scribe employed by an Akkadian king shows the sacrifice of water buffalo.

At least 130 million domestic water buffalo exist, and more human beings depend on them than on any other domestic animal. They are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of dairy cattle. The large feral population of northern Australia became established in the late 19th century, and smaller feral herds are in New Guinea, Tunisia, and northeastern Argentina. Feral herds are also present in New Britain, New Ireland, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, and Uruguay.

CHARACTERISTICS

The skin of river buffalo is black, but some specimens may have dark, slate-coloured skin. Swamp buffalo have a grey skin at birth, but become slate blue later. Albinoids are present in some populations. River buffalo have comparatively longer faces, smaller girths, and bigger limbs than swamp buffalo. Their dorsal ridges extend further back and taper off more gradually. Their horns grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral. Swamp buffalo are heavy-bodied and stockily built; the body is short and the belly large. The forehead is flat, the eyes prominent, the face short, and the muzzle wide. The neck is comparatively long, and the withers and croup are prominent. A dorsal ridge extends backward and ends abruptly just before the end of the chest. Their horns grow outward, and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The tail is short, reaching only to the hocks. Height at withers is 129–133 cm for males, and 120–127 cm for females. They range in weight from 300–550 kg, but weights of over 1,000 kg have also been observed.

Tedong bonga is a black pied buffalo featuring a unique black and white colouration that is favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi.

The swamp buffalo has 48 chromosomes; the river buffalo has 50 chromosomes. The two types do not readily interbreed, but fertile offspring can occur. Buffalo-cattle hybrids have not been observed to occur, and the embryos of such hybrids do not reach maturity in laboratory experiments.

The rumen of the water buffalo has important differences from that of other ruminants. It contains a larger population of bacteria, particularly the cellulolytic bacteria, lower protozoa, and higher fungi zoospores. In addition, higher rumen ammonia nitrogen (NH4-N) and higher pH have been found as compared to those in cattle

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR

River buffalo prefer deep water. Swamp buffalo prefer to wallow in mudholes which they make with their horns. During wallowing, they acquire a thick coating of mud. Both are well adapted to a hot and humid climate with temperatures ranging from 0 °C in the winter to 30 °C and greater in the summer. Water availability is important in hot climates, since they need wallows, rivers, or splashing water to assist in thermoregulation. Some breeds are adapted to saline seaside shores and saline sandy terrain.

DIET

Water buffalo thrive on many aquatic plants and during floods, will graze submerged, raising their heads above the water and carrying quantities of edible plants. They eat reeds (quassab), a giant reed (birdi), a kind of bulrush (kaulan), water hyacinth, and marsh grasses. Some of these plants are of great value to local peoples. Others, such as water hyacinth, are a major problem in some tropical valleys, and water buffalo may help to keep waterways clear.

Green fodders are used widely for intensive milk production and for fattening. Many fodder crops are conserved as hay, chaffed, or pulped. Fodders include alfalfa, berseem and bancheri, the leaves, stems or trimmings of banana, cassava, fodder beet, halfa, ipil-ipil and kenaf, maize, oats, pandarus, peanut, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, bagasse, and turnips. Citrus pulp and pineapple wastes have been fed safely to buffalo. In Egypt, whole sun-dried dates are fed to milk-buffalo up to 25% of the standard feed mixture.

REPRODUCTION

Swamp buffalo generally become reproductive at an older age than river breeds. Young males in Egypt, India, and Pakistan are first mated at about 3.0–3.5 years of age, but in Italy

they may be used as early as 2 years of age. Successful mating behaviour may continue until the animal is 12 years or even older. A good river male can impregnate 100 females in a year. A strong seasonal influence on mating occurs. Heat stress reduces libido

Although buffalo are polyoestrous, their reproductive efficiency shows wide variation throughout the year. Buffalo cows exhibit a distinct seasonal change in displaying oestrus, conception rate, and calving rate. The age at first oestrus of heifers varies between breeds from 13–33 months, but mating at the first oestrus is often infertile and usually deferred until they are 3 years old. Gestation lasts from 281–334 days, but most reports give a range between 300 and 320 days. Swamp buffalo carry their calves for one or two weeks longer than river buffalo. It is not rare to find buffalo that continue to work well at the age of 30, and instances of a working life of 40 years are recorded.

TAXONOMIC HISTORY

Carl Linnaeus first described the genus Bos and the water buffalo under the binomial Bubalis bubalus in 1758; the latter was known to occur in Asia and as a domestic form in Italy. Ellerman and Morrison-Scott treated the wild and domestic forms of the water buffalo as conspecifics whereas others treated them as different species. The nomenclatorial treatment of wild and domestic forms has been inconsistent and varies between authors and even within the works of single authors.

In March 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature achieved consistency in the naming of wild and domestic water buffalo by ruling that the scientific name Bubalus arnee is valid for the wild form. B. bubalis continues to be valid for the domestic form and applies also to feral populations.

DOMESTICATION AND BREEDING

Water buffalo were domesticated in India about 5000 years ago, and in China about 4000 years ago. Two types are recognized, based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of the Indian subcontinent and further west to the Balkans and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The present-day river buffalo is the result of complex domestication processes involving more than one maternal lineage and a significant maternal gene flow from wild populations after the initial domestication events. Twenty-two breeds of the river type water buffalo are known, including Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Surti, Jafarabadi, Anatolian, Mediterranean, and Egyptian buffalo. China has a huge variety of buffalo genetic resources, comprising 16 local swamp buffalo breeds in various regions.

Results of mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that the two types were domesticated independently. Sequencing of cytochrome b genes of Bubalus species implies that the domestic buffalo originated from at least two populations, and that the river and the swamp types have differentiated at the full species level. The genetic distance between the two types is so large that a divergence time of about 1.7 million years has been suggested. The swamp type was noticed to have the closest relationship with the tamaraw.

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATIONS

The water buffalo population in the world is about 172 million.

IN ASIA

More than 95.8% of the world population of water buffalo are found in Asia including both river and swamp types. The water buffalo population in India numbered over 97.9 million head in 2003, representing 56.5% of the world population. They are primarily of the river type, with 10 well-defined breeds comprising Badhawari, Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Jafarabadi, Marathwada, Mehsana, Nagpuri, Pandharpuri, Toda, and Surti. Swamp buffalo occur only in small areas in the north-eastern part of the country and are not distinguished into breeds.

In 2003, the second-largest population lived in China, with 22.759 million head, all of the swamp type with breeds kept only in the lowlands, and other breeds kept only in the mountains; as of 2003, 3.2 million swamp-type carabao buffalo were in the Philippines, nearly three million swamp buffalo were in Vietnam, and 772,764 buffalo were in Bangladesh. About 750,000 head were estimated in Sri Lanka in 1997.

The water buffalo is the main dairy animal in Pakistan, with 23.47 million head in 2010. Of these, 76% are kept in the Punjab. The rest of them are mostly in the province of Sindh. Breeds used are Nili-Ravi, Kundi, and Azi Kheli. Karachi has the largest population of water buffalos for an area where fodder is not grown, consisting of 350,000 head kept mainly for milking.

In Thailand, the number of water buffalo dropped from more than 3 million head in 1996 to less than 1.24 million head in 2011. Slightly over 75% of them are kept in the country's northeastern region. The statistics also indicate that by the beginning of 2012, less than one million were in the country, partly as a result of illegal shipments to neighboring countries where sales prices are higher than in Thailand.

Water buffalo are also present in the southern region of Iraq, in the marshes. These marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein in 1991 in an attempt to punish the south for the uprisings of 1991. Following 2003, and the fall of the Saddam regime, these lands were reflooded and a 2007 report in the provinces of Maysan and Thi Qar shows a steady increase in the number of water buffalo. The report puts the number at 40,008 head in those two provinces.

IN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Water buffalo likely were introduced to Europe from India or other Oriental countries. To Italy they were introduced about the year 600 in the reign of the Longobard King Agilulf. As they appear in the company of wild horses, they probably were a present from the Khan of the Avars, a Turkic nomadic tribe that dwelt near the Danube River at the time. Sir H. Johnston knew of a herd of water buffalo presented by a King of Naples to the Bey of Tunis in the mid-19th century that had resumed the feral state in northern Tunis.

European buffalo are all of the river type and considered to be of the same breed named Mediterranean buffalo. In Italy, the Mediterranean type was particularly selected and is called Mediterranean Italian breed to distinguish it from other European breeds, which differ genetically. Mediterranean buffalo are also found in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, and the Republic of Macedonia, with a few hundred in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Hungary. Little exchange of breeding buffalo has occurred among countries, so each population has its own phenotypic features and performances. In Bulgaria, they were crossbred with the Indian Murrah breed, and in Romania, some were crossbred with Bulgarian Murrah. Populations in Turkey are of the Anatolian buffalo breed.

IN AUSTRALIA

Between 1824 and 1849, water buffalo were introduced into the Northern Territory from Timor, Kisar, and probably other islands in the Indonesian archipelago. In 1886, a few milking types were brought from India to Darwin. They have been the main grazing animals on the subcoastal plains and river basins between Darwin and Arnhem Land since the 1880s. In the early 1960s, an estimated population of 150,000 to 200,000 buffalo were living in the plains and nearby areas.

They became feral and are causing significant environmental damage. Buffalo are also found in the Top End. As a result, they were hunted in the Top End from 1885 until 1980. The commencement of the brucellosis and tuberculosis campaign (BTEC) resulted in a huge culling program to reduce buffalo herds to a fraction of the numbers that were reached in the 1980s. The BTEC was finished when the Northern Territory was declared free of the disease in 1997. Numbers dropped dramatically as a result of the campaign, but have since recovered to an estimated 150,000 animals across northern Australia in 2008.

During the 1950s, buffalo were hunted for their skins and meat, which was exported and used in the local trade. In the late 1970s, live exports were made to Cuba and continued later into other countries. Buffalo are now crossed with riverine buffalo in artificial insemination programs, and may be found in many areas of Australia. Some of these crossbreds are used for milk production. Melville Island is a popular hunting location, where a steady population up to 4,000 individuals exists. Safari outfits are run from Darwin to Melville Island and other locations in the Top End, often with the use of bush pilots. The horns, which can measure up to a record of 3.1 m tip-to-tip, are prized hunting trophies.

The buffalo have developed a different appearance from the Indonesian buffalo from which they descend. They live mainly in freshwater marshes and billabongs, and their territory range can be quite expansive during the wet season. Their only natural predators in Australia are adult saltwater crocodiles, with whom they share the billabongs, and dingoes, which have been known to prey on buffalo calves and occasionally adult buffalo when the dingoes are in large packs.

Buffalo were exported live to Indonesia until 2011, at a rate of about 3000 per year. After the live export ban that year, the exports dropped to zero, and had not resumed as of June 2013.

IN SOUTH AMERICA

Water buffalo were introduced into the Amazon River basin in 1895. They are now extensively used there for meat and dairy production. In 2005, the buffalo herd in the Brazilian Amazon stood at roughly 1.6 million head, of which 460,000 were located in the lower Amazon floodplain. Breeds used include Mediterranean from Italy, Murrah and Jafarabadi from India, and Carabao from the Philippines.

During the 1970s, small herds were imported to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Cayenne, Panama, Surinam, Guyana, and Venezuela.

In Argentina, many game ranches raise water buffalo for commercial hunting

IN NORTH AMERICA

In 1974, four water buffalo were imported to the United States from Guam to be studied at the University of Florida. In February 1978, the first herd arrived for commercial farming. Until 2002, only one commercial breeder was in the United States. Water buffalo meat is imported from Australia. Until 2011, water buffalo were raised in Gainesville, Florida, from young obtained from zoo overflow. They were used primarily for meat production, frequently sold as hamburger.[38] Other US ranchers use them for production of high-quality mozzarella cheese.

HUSBANDRY

The husbandry system of water buffalo depends on the purpose for which they are bred and maintained. Most of them are kept by people who work on small farms in family units. Their buffalo live in very close association with them, and are often their greatest capital asset. The women and girls in India generally look after the milking buffalo while the men and boys are concerned with the working animals. Throughout Asia, they are commonly tended by children who are often seen leading or riding their charges to wallowing places. Water buffalo are the ideal animals for work in the deep mud of paddy fields because of their large hooves and flexible foot joints. They are often referred to as "the living tractor of the East". It probably is possible to plough deeper with buffalo than with either oxen or horses. They are the most efficient and economical means of cultivation of small fields. In most rice-producing countries, they are used for threshing and for transporting the sheaves during the rice harvest. They provide power for oilseed mills, sugarcane presses, and devices for raising water. They are widely used as pack animals, and in India and Pakistan also for heavy haulage. In their invasions of Europe, the Turks used buffalo for hauling heavy battering rams. Their dung is used as a fertilizer, and as a fuel when dried.

Buffalo contribute 72 million tones of milk and three million tones of meat annually to world food, much of it in areas that are prone to nutritional imbalances. In India, river-type buffalo are kept mainly for milk production and for transport, whereas swamp-type buffalo are kept mainly for work and a small amount of milk.

DAIRY PRODUCTS

Water buffalo milk presents physicochemical features different from that of other ruminant species, such as a higher content of fatty acids and proteins. The physical and chemical parameters of swamp and river type water buffalo milk differ. Water buffalo milk contains higher levels of total solids, crude protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus, and slightly higher content of lactose compared with those of cow milk. The high level of total solids makes water buffalo milk ideal for processing into value-added dairy products such as cheese. The conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content in milk ranged from 4.4 mg/g fat in September to 7.6 mg/g fat in June. Seasons and genetics may play a role in variation of CLA level and changes in gross composition of the water buffalo milk.

Water buffalo milk is processed into a large variety of dairy products:

- Cream churns much faster at higher fat levels and gives higher overrun than cow cream.

- Butter from water buffalo cream displays more stability than that from cow cream.

- Ghee from water buffalo milk has a different texture with a bigger grain size than ghee from cow milk.

- Heat-concentrated milk products in the Indian subcontinent include paneer, khoa, rabri, kheer and basundi.

- Fermented milk products include dahi, yogurt, and chakka.

- Whey is used for making ricotta and mascarpone in Italy, and alkarish in Syria and Egypt.

- Soft cheeses made include mozzarella in Italy, karish, mish, and domiati in Egypt, madhfor in Iraq, alghab in Syria, kesong puti in the Philippines, and vladeasa in Romania.

- The semihard cheese beyaz peynir is made in Turkey.

- Hard cheeses include braila in Romania, rahss in Egypt, white brine in Bulgaria, and akkawi in Syria.

- Watered-down buffalo milk is used as a cheaper alternative to regular milk.

MEAT AND SKIN PRODUCTS

Water buffalo meat, sometimes called "carabeef", is often passed off as beef in certain regions, and is also a major source of export revenue for India. In many Asian regions, buffalo meat is less preferred due to its toughness; however, recipes have evolved (rendang, for example) where the slow cooking process and spices not only make the meat palatable, but also preserve it, an important factor in hot climates where refrigeration is not always available.Their hides provide tough and useful leather, often used for shoes.

BONE AND HORN PRODUCTS

The bones and horns are often made into jewellery, especially earrings. Horns are used for the embouchure of musical instruments, such as ney and kaval.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Wildlife conservation scientists have started to recommend and use introduced populations of feral domestic water buffalo in far-away lands to manage uncontrolled vegetation growth in and around natural wetlands. Introduced water buffalo at home in such environs provide cheap service by regularly grazing the uncontrolled vegetation and opening up clogged water bodies for waterfowl, wetland birds, and other wildlife. Grazing water buffalo are sometimes used in Great Britain for conservation grazing, such as in Chippenham Fen National Nature Reserve. The buffalo can better adapt to wet conditions and poor-quality vegetation than cattle.

Currently, research is being conducted at the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies to determine the levels of nutrients removed and returned to wetlands when water buffalo are used for wetland vegetation management.

However, in uncontrolled circumstances, water buffalo can cause environmental damage, such as trampling vegetation, disturbing bird and reptile nesting sites, and spreading exotic weeds.

RESEARCH

The world's first cloned buffalo was developed by Indian scientists from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal. The buffalo calf was named Samrupa. The calf did not survive more than a week, and died due to some genetic disorders. So, the scientists created another cloned buffalo a few months later, and named it Garima.

On 15 September 2007, the Philippines announced its development of Southeast Asia's first cloned buffalo. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), under the Department of Science and Technology in Los Baños, Laguna, approved this project. The Department of Agriculture's Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) will implement cloning through somatic cell nuclear transfer as a tool for genetic improvement in water buffalo. "Super buffalo calves" will be produced. There will be no modification or alteration of the genetic materials, as in genetically modified organisms.

On 1 January 2008, the Philippine Carabao Center in Nueva Ecija, per Filipino scientists, initiated a study to breed a super water buffalo that could produce 4 to 18 litres of milk per day using gene-based technology. Also, the first in vitro river buffalo was born there in 2004 from an in vitro-produced, vitrified embryo, named "Glory" after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Joseph Estrada's most successful project as an opposition senator, the PCC was created through Republic Act 3707, the Carabao Act of 1992.

IN CULTURE

Some ethnic groups, such as Batak and Toraja in Indonesia and the Derung in China, use water buffalo or kerbau (called horbo in Batak or tedong in Toraja) as sacrificial animals at several festivals.

- Legend has it that the Chinese philosophical sage Laozi left China through the Han Gu Pass riding a water buffalo.

- According to Hindu lore, the god of death Yama, rides on a male water buffalo.

- The carabao subspecies is considered a national symbol in the Philippines.

- In Vietnam, water buffalo are often the most valuable possession of poor farmers: "Con trâu là đầu cơ nghiệp". They are treated as a member of the family: "Chồng cày, vợ cấy, con trâu đi bừa" ("The husband ploughs, the wife sows, water buffalo draws the rake") and are friends of the children. Children talk to their water buffalo, "Bao giờ cây lúa còn bông. Thì còn ngọn cỏ ngoài đồng trâu ăn." (Vietnamese children are responsible for grazing water buffalo. They feed them grass if they work laboriously for men.) In the old days, West Lake, Hà Nội, was named Kim Ngưu - Golden Water Buffalo.

- The Yoruban Orisha Oya (goddess of change) takes the form of a water buffalo.

FIGHTING FESTIVALS

- Pasungay Festival is held annually in the town of San Joaquin, Iloilo in the Philippines.

- Moh juj Water Buffalo fighting, is held every year in Bhogali Bihu in Assam. Ahotguri in Nagaon is famous for it.

- Do Son Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, held each year on the ninth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar at Do Son Township, Haiphong City in Vietnam, is one of the most popular Vietnam festivals and events in Haiphong City. The preparations for this buffalo fighting festival begin from the two to three months earlier. The competing buffalo are selected and methodically trained months in advance. It is a traditional festival of Vietnam attached to a Water God worshipping ceremony and the Hien Sinh custom to show martial spirit of the local people of Do Son, Haiphong.

- "Hai Luu" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, According to ancient records, the buffalo fighting in Hai Luu Commune has existed from the 2nd century B.C. General Lu Gia at that time, had the buffalo slaughtered to give a feast to the local people and the warriors, and organized buffalo fighting for amusement. Eventually, all the fighting buffalo will be slaughtered as tributes to the deities.

- "Ko Samui" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Thailand, is a very popular event held on special occasions such as New Year's Day in January, and Songkran in mid-April, this festival features head-wrestling bouts in which two male Asian water buffalo are pitted against one another. Unlike in Spanish Bullfighting, wherein bulls get killed while fighting sword-wielding men, Buffalo Fighting Festival held at Ko Samui, Thailand is fairly harmless contest. The fighting season varies according to ancient customs & ceremonies. The first Buffalo to turn and run away is considered the loser, the winning buffalo becomes worth several million baht. Ko Samui is an island in the Gulf of Thailand in the South China Sea, it is 700 km from Bangkok and is connected to it by regular flights.

- "Ma'Pasilaga Tedong" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival, in Tana Toraja Regency of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, is a very popular event where the Rambu Solo' or a Burial Festival took place in Tana Toraja.

RACING FESTIVALS

Carabao Carroza Festival is being held annually every May in the town of Pavia, Iloilo, Philippines.

Kambala races of Karnataka, India, take place between December and March. The races are conducted by having the water buffalo (he buffalo) run in long parallel slushy ditches, where they are driven by men standing on wooden planks drawn by the buffalo. The objectives of the race are to finish first and to raise the water to the greatest height and also a rural sport. Kambala races are arranged with competition, as well as without competition and as a part of thanks giving (to god) in about 50 villages of coastal Karnataka.

In the Chonburi Province of Thailand, and in Pakistan, there are annual water buffalo races.

Chon Buri Water buffalo racing festival, Thailand In downtown Chonburi, 70 km south of Bangkok, at the annual water buffalo festival held in mid-October. About 300 buffalo race in groups of five or six, spurred on by bareback jockeys wielding wooden sticks, as hundreds of spectators cheer. The water buffalo has always played an important role in agriculture in Thailand. For farmers of Chon Buri Province, near Bangkok, it is an important annual festival, beginning in mid-October. It is also a celebration among rice farmers before the rice harvest. At dawn, farmers walk their buffalo through surrounding rice fields, splashing them with water to keep them cool before leading them to the race field. This amazing festival started over a hundred years ago when two men arguing about whose buffalo was the fastest ended up having a race between them. That’s how it became a tradition and gradually a social event for farmers who gathered from around the country in Chonburi to trade their goods. The festival also helps a great deal in preserving the number of buffalo, which have been dwindling at quite an alarming rate in other regions. Modern machinery is rapidly replacing buffalo in Thai agriculture. With most of the farm work mechanized, the buffalo-racing tradition has continued. Racing buffalo are now raised just to race; they do not work at all. The few farm buffalo which still do work are much bigger than the racers because of the strenuous work they perform. Farm buffalo are in the "Buffalo Beauty Pageant", a Miss Farmer beauty contest and a comic buffalo costume contest etc.. This festival perfectly exemplifies a favored Thai attitude to life — "sanuk," meaning fun.

Babulang Water buffalo racing festival, Sarawak, Malaysia, is the largest or grandest of the many rituals, ceremonies and festivals of the traditional Bisaya (Borneo) community of Limbang, Sarawak. Highlights are the Ratu Babulang competition and the Water buffalo races which can only be found in this town in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Vihear Suor village Water buffalo racing festival, in Cambodia, each year, people visit Buddhist temples across the country to honor their deceased loved ones during a 15-day period commonly known as the Festival of the Dead but in Vihear Suor village, about 35 km northeast of Cambodia, citizens each year wrap up the festival with a water buffalo race to entertain visitors and honour a pledge made hundreds of years ago. There was a time when many village cattle which provide rural Cambodians with muscle power to plough their fields and transport agricultural products died from an unknown disease. The villagers prayed to a spirit to help save their animals from the disease and promised to show their gratitude by holding a buffalo race each year on the last day of "P'chum Ben" festival as it is known in Cambodian. The race draws hundreds of spectators who come to see riders and their animals charge down the racing field, the racers bouncing up and down on the backs of their buffalo, whose horns were draped with colorful cloth.

Pothu puttu matsaram, Kerala, South India, is similar to Kambala races.

WIKIPEDIA

thegoldensieve.com

A good thing continues

Some six months ago, I posted almost 100 images and a few thoughts I felt were missing from the many existing RX1 reviews. The outpouring of support and interest in that article was very gratifying. When I published, I had used the camera for six full months, enough time to come to a view of its strengths and weaknesses and to produce a small portfolio of good images, but not enough time to see the full picture (pun intended). In the following six months, I have used the camera at least as frequently as in the first six and have produced another small set of good images. It should be noted that my usage of the RX1 in the last six (and especially in the last 3) months has involved less travel and more time with the family and around the house; I will share relatively few of these images but will spend some time sharing my impressions of its functionality for family snapshots as I am sure there is some interest. And let it be said here: one of the primary motivations to purchase the camera was to take more photos with the family, and after one full year I can confidently say: money well spent.

The A7/r game-changer?

In the past six months, Sony have announced and released two full-frame, interchangeable lens cameras that clearly take design cues from the RX1: the A7 and the A7r. These cameras are innovative and highly capable and, as such, are in the midst of taking the photography world by storm. I think they are compelling enough cameras that I wonder whether Sony is wasting its energy continuing to develop further A-mount cameras. Sony deserve credit for a bold strategy—many companies would have been content to allow the success of the the RX1 (and RX1R) generate further sales before pushing further into the white space left unexplored by camera makers with less ambition.This is not the place to detail the relative advantages and disadvantages of the RX1 versus the A7/r except to make the following point. I currently use a Nikon D800 and an RX1: were I to sell both and purchase the A7r + 35mm f/2.8 I would in many ways lose nothing by way of imaging capability or lens compatibility but would pocket the surplus $1250-1750. Indeed this loyal Nikon owner thought long and hard about doing so, which speaks to the strategic importance of these cameras for a company trying to make inroads into a highly concentrated market.Ultimately, I opted to hang onto the two cameras I have (although this decision is one that I revisit time and time again) and continue to use them as I have for the past year. Let me give you a quick flavor of why.

The RX1 is smaller and more discrete

This is a small a point, but my gut reaction to the A7/r was: much smaller than the D800, not as small as the RX1. The EVF atop the A7/r and the larger profile of interchangeable mount lenses means that I would not be able to slip the A7/r into a pocket the way I can the RX1. Further, by virtue of using the EVF and its loud mechanical shutter, the A7/r just isn’t as stealthy as the RX1. Finally, f/2 beats the pants off of f/2.8 at the same or smaller size.At this point, some of you may be saying, “Future Sony releases will allow you to get a body without an EVF and get an f/2 lens that has a slimmer profile, etc, etc.” And that’s just the point: to oversimplify things, the reason I am keeping my RX1 is that Sony currently offers something close to an A7 body without a built-in EVF and with a slimmer profile 35mm f/2.

The D800 has important functional advantages

On the other side of the spectrum, the AF speed of the A7/r just isn’t going to match the D800, especially when the former is equipped with a Nikon lens and F-mount adapter. EVFs cannot yet match the experience of looking through the prism and the lens (I expect they will match soon, but aren’t there yet). What’s more, I have made such an investment in Nikon glass that I can’t yet justify purchasing an adapter for a Sony mount or selling them all for Sony’s offerings (many of which aren’t to market yet).Now, all of these are minor points and I think all of them disappear with an A8r, but they add up to something major: I have two cameras very well suited to two different types of shooting, and I ask myself if I gain or lose by getting something in between—something that wasn’t quite a pocket shooter and something that was quite a DSLR? You can imagine, however, that if I were coming to the market without a D800 and an RX1, that my decision would be far different: dollar for dollar, the A7/r would be a no-brainer.During the moments when I consider selling to grab an A7r, I keep coming back to a thought I had a month or so before the RX1 was announced. At that time I was considering something like the NEX cameras with a ZM 21mm f/2.8 and I said in my head, “I wish someone would make a carry-around camera with a full frame sensor and a fixed 35mm f/2.8 or f/2.” Now you understand how attractive the RX1 is to me and what a ridiculously high bar exists for another camera system to reach.

Okay, so what is different from the last review?

For one, I had an issue with the camera’s AF motor failing to engage and giving me an E61:00 error. I had to send it out to Sony for repairs (via extended warranty and service plan). I detailed my experience with Sony Service here [insert link] and I write to you as a very satisfied customer. That is to say, I have 3 years left on a 4 year + accidental damage warranty and I feel confident enough in that coverage to say that I will have this beauty in working order for at least another 3 years.For two, I’ve spent significantly less time thinking of this camera as a DSLR replacement and have instead started to develop a very different way of shooting with it. The activation barrier to taking a shot with my D800 is quite high. Beyond having to bring a large camera wherever you go and have it in hand, a proper camera takes two hands and full attention to produce an image. I shoot slowly and methodically and often from a tripod with the D800. In contrast, I can pull the RX1 out, pop off the lens cap, line up and take a shot with one hand (often with a toddler in the other). This fosters a totally different type of photography.

My “be-there” camera

The have-everywhere camera that gives DSLR type controls to one-handed shooting lets me pursue images that happen very quickly or images that might not normally meet the standards of “drag-the-DSLR-out-of-the-bag.” Many of those images you’ll see on this post. A full year of shooting and I can say this with great confidence: the RX1 is a terrific mash-up of point-and-shoot and DSLR not just in image quality and features, but primarily in the product it helps me create. To take this thinking a bit further: I find myself even processing images from the RX1 differently than I would from my DSLR. So much so that I have strongly considered starting a tumblr and posting JPEGs directly from the RX1 via my phone or an iPad rather than running the bulk of them through Lightroom, onto Flickr and then on the blog (really this is just a matter of time, stay tuned, and those readers who have experience with tumblr, cloud image storage and editing, etc, etc, please contact me, I want to pick your brain).Put simply, I capture more spontaneous and beautiful “moments” than I might have otherwise. Photography is very much an exercise in “f/8 and be there,” and the RX1 is my go-to “be there” camera.

The family camera

I mentioned earlier that I justified the purchase of the RX1 partly as a camera to be used to document the family moments into which a DSLR doesn’t neatly fit. Over the past year I’ve collected thousands and thousands of family images with the RX1. The cold hard truth is that many of those photos could be better if I’d taken a full DSLR kit with me to the park or the beach or the grocery store each time. The RX1 is a difficult camera to use on a toddler (or any moving subject for that matter); autofocus isn’t as fast as a professional DSLR, it’s difficult to perfectly compose via an LCD (especially in bright sunlight), but despite these shortcomings, it’s been an incredibly useful family camera. There are simply so many beautiful moments where I had the RX1 over my shoulder, ready to go that whatever difficulties exist relative to a DSLR, those pale in comparison to the power of it’s convenience. The best camera is the one in your hand.

Where to go from here.

So what is the value of these RX1 going forward, especially in a world of the A7/r and it’s yet-to-be-born siblings without an EVF and a pancake lens? Frankly, at its current price (which is quite fair when you consider the value of the the body and the lens) I see precious little room for an independent offering versus a mirrorless, interchangeable lens system with the same image quality in a package just as small. That doesn’t mean Sony won’t make an RX2 or an RX1 Mark II (have a look at it’s other product lines to see how many SKUs are maintained despite low demand). Instead, I see the RX1 as a bridge that needed to exist for engineers, managers, and the market to make it to the A7/r and it’s descendants.A Facebook friend recently paid me a great compliment; he said something like, “Justin, via your blog, you’ve sold a ton of RX1 cameras.” Indeed, despite my efforts not to be a salesman, I think he’s right: I have and would continue to recommend this camera.The true value of the RX1 going forward is for those of us who have the thing on our shoulders; and yes, if you have an investment in and a love for a DSLR system, there’s still tremendous value in getting one, slinging it over your shoulder, and heading out into the wide, bright world; A7/r or no, this is just an unbelievably capable camera.

One of Munn’s decisive contributions to Canadian art was her fervent fusion od Christian symbolism in Cubist form. In the late 1920s she began a methodical practice of drawing scenes from the Passion of Christ, resulting in a fresh and radical update to one of European art history’s most traditional themes – an unusual subject for a Canadian modernist. This is one of the final drawings in the series, which included more than a thousand works on paper.

Italian postcard in the World Collection series, no. p.c. 471. Photo: Ada / Olympia. Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993).

Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis (1957) won the Best Actor Oscar for My Left Foot (1990), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2013). Day Lewis has also received more than 90 other acting awards fort these films and for his roles in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), A Room with a View (1985), Gangs of New York (2002) and Nine (2009).

Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis was born in Kensington, London, in 1957. His father was the British Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. His mother, actress Jill Bacon, came from a Jewish family and was the daughter of Sir Michael Balcon, former head of Ealing Studios. Cecil Day-Lewis was already 53 when his son was born, and it seemed that he had little interest in his children. Cecil died when Daniel was 15. Day-Lewis later said that he regretted never having had a good relationship with his father. At his school in Greenwich, Day-Lewis was often bullied by children, often because of his Jewish heritage and the luxurious way of life at home. Day-Lewis later said that he behaved badly in his younger years. He got into trouble several times for shoplifting and other illegal activities. In 1968, he went to a boarding school in Kent because his parents thought he was behaving too freely. Although he disliked the school, it was there that he was first introduced to two of his main interests, acting and woodworking. Day-Lewis made his debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger, 1971). He was 14 years old at the time and played a vandal. His role is not mentioned in the credits. According to Day-Lewis, he received two dollars for that role to wreck some expensive cars and he later said that this wrecking felt like "heaven". After two years at boarding school, he attended Bedalas School in Petersfield. He left the school in 1975. His behaviour had improved somewhat by then. Day-Lewis arrived at a time when he had to choose in which direction he wanted to go, acting or woodworking. He decided for acting, but he was not accepted because he had too little experience. That is why he chose acting. He followed a three-year course at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school. He then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies. He made his West End stage debut in 1982, starring for several months in the play 'Another Country'.

In 1982, Daniel Day-Lewis had another small role in a major film, this time as the bully in Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982). Later, he also starred in a 'Romeo and Juliet' play and had a supporting role in the film The Bounty (Roger Donaldson, 1984), starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. His next theatre role was in 'The Count', a play about Dracula. In My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears,1985), he played a lower-class, gay ex-skinhead in love with an ambitious Pakistani businessman (Gortdon Warnecke) in Margaret Thatcher's London. His next film A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1985) was again very well received. In that film, he played the fiancée of the main character played by Helena Bonham Carter. My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With a View opened on the same day in New York. Day-Lewis astonished critics and audiences with his chameleon-like versatility. The New York Film Critics Circle took particular note of his talent, naming him the year's Best Supporting Actor for his work in both films. In 1987, Day-Lewis starred in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1987), along with Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche. Day-Lewis played the role of a philandering surgeon from Prague, who gets an emotional relationship with a woman for the first time. In 1989, Day-Lewis did a brilliant performance as the disabled Irish writer Christy Brown in the film My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989). He won several awards for this role, including an Academy Award for Best Actor. During filming, Day-Lewis broke two ribs after an accident with the wheelchair in which his character always sat. After several films, Daniel Day Lewis returned to the stage for Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet'. He collapsed on stage, however, when (supposedly) the ghost of Hamlet's father came on stage. Day-Lewis later said that he mistook him for his father's ghost. After this incident, Day-Lewis never returned to the stage. In 1992, three years after he won an Oscar, Day-Lewis starred in The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He played a turn-of-the-century New York society man in Martin Scorsese's lavish adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder. Another success was In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993). For his role as an innocent convict of an IRA bombing, he lost a lot of weight and had to act with an Irish accent. According to Day-Lewis, he frequently urged crew members to throw cold water on him and use verbal abuse against him so that his anger, which his character must have in circumstances such as the film, would become more realistic. Day-Lewis was again nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his role. He was also nominated for a BAFTA for the third time and a Golden Globe for the second time. Next, he starred as the tragically adulterous John Proctor alongside Winona Ryder in The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner, 1996). The film was based on a script by Arthur Miller, who would become Day-Lewis' father-in-law. He then had a role in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997), as a former boxer trying to make a new life for himself after being imprisoned for fourteen years for his work with the IRA. He had to prepare for that role as well, training for six months in boxing with former world boxing champion Barry McGuigan.

Daniel Day-Lewis took a break for several years. He decided to focus on his old passion: woodworking. He moved to Florence in Italy. It was not until 2002 that another of his films premiered, Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Day-Lewis' decidedly methodic approach to creating convincing screen characters would ultimately pay off as many cited his Oscar nominated performance as one of the most convincing of the talented actor's career. Day-Lewis typically disappeared from sight yet again after Gangs, waiting two years before appearing again in a film. In 2005, The Ballad of Jack and Rose premiered. This film was directed by his own wife, Rebecca Miller. Day-Lewis played the role of an old man who is dying and reflects on his life. During filming, he lived apart from his wife to make his role as a lonely old man even more believable. His next film was based on Upton Sinclair's novel 'Oil!'. The film was renamed There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) and Day Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in that film. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. In 2013, he won his third Oscar for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2013) with Sally Field. Daniel Day-Lewis is the only person in film history to have won the Oscar for best male lead three times. In 2014, he received a knighthood for his services to drama. Following the filming of Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017 ), for which he was again nominated for an Oscar for best male lead, Day-Lewis announced that he was quitting acting. Day-Lewis is very protective of his privacy. He rarely reveals his private life in public. Day-Lewis first had a relationship with the French actress Isabelle Adjani. They had a son together, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis (in 1995), but by then the relationship had already ended. In 1996, while working on the film The Crucible, he went to visit the writer of the script, Arthur Miller. During that visit, he fell in love with Miller's daughter, Rebecca Miller. They were married two weeks before the premiere of The Crucible. They have two sons together, Ronan (born in 1998) and Cashel (2002). They spend their time together in their homes in the United States and Ireland. Daniel Day Lewis was in a relationship with Isabelle Adjani from 1989 to 1994. They have one son together, Gabriel-Kane Day Lewis (born 1995). With Rebecca Miller, he has two sons, Ronan Cal Day-Lewis (born 1998) and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis (born 2002). Daniel Day Lewis has dual citizenship between the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Sources: Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

A small, dark heron arrayed in moody blues and purples, the Little Blue Heron is a common but inconspicuous resident of marshes and estuaries in the Southeast. They stalk shallow waters for small fish and amphibians, adopting a quiet, methodical approach that can make these gorgeous herons surprisingly easy to overlook at first glance. Reference www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Little_Blue_Heron/id

Image - Copyright 2018 Alan Vernon

Drawiing from the open studio project Danforth Museum

Maker: Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)

Born: USA

Active: France/USA

Medium: gelatin silver print

Size: 13 5/8 in x 10 1/2 in

Location: USA

Object No. 2022.316

Shelf: A-4

Publication: The Beauty of Physics, The New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 1987, pg 10

Berenice Abbott, Marlborough Gallery/Lunn Gallery, 1976, No 187

Berenice Abbott, Photographs, Horizon Press, New York, 1970, pg 153

Hank O'Neal, Berenice Abbott, American Photographer, McGraw-Hill Book Co, New York, 1982 pg 220

Documenting Science, Steidl, Gottingen, 2012, pg 22

Ben Burbridge, Revelations, MACK, 2015, pg 143

Ann Thomas, Beauty of Another Order, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1997, pg 111

Other Collections:

Provenance: Estate of Harry Lunn

Rank: 900

Notes: Printed 1976. Signed in pencil on recto below image with Abbott's Abbott, Maine hand stamp on verso. Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was born in Springfield, Ohio and attended Ohio State University. In 1918 she moved to New York and then Paris in 1923 where she was introduced to Man Ray, who hired her to be his photography assistant. Despite having no experience in photography, Abbott soon started to produce her own work, eventually opening a studio of her own. In 1926, Abbott had her first solo show, featuring dynamic portraits of the artistic and literary avant-garde. Abbott had first encountered the work of Eugène Atget through Man Ray in 1925. Though Atget had been documenting Paris for three decades, he was long forgotten by the public by the time they became friends. The only known portraits of Atget were made by Abbott shortly before his death in 1927. She purchased more than 5000 negatives, glass slides, and prints of his work, returning to New York with the extensive archive she had amassed. She was fiercely dedicated to preserving Atget’s legacy over the next forty years. Abbott’s collection was ultimately acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. Upon returning to the U.S. Abbott took on commercial assignments and taught photography at the New School for Social Research. She dedicated herself to documenting New York with the methodical vigor and passion Atget had previously given to Paris, shooting its streets, buildings, parks—and of course, its people. With the support of the WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939, she created the seminal the body of work, Changing New York, an extensive socio-historical record of New York’s vanishing past as well as the construction of its modern future. The results of the project were distributed to high schools, libraries, and various public institutions throughout the metropolitan area; to this day, Changing New York serves as an invaluable record of New York’s history. Abbott then shifted her focus towards science. In the 1940s, she served as photo editor for Science Illustrated, and went on to photograph scientific principles and processes for the Physical Sciences Study Committee at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in 1958, developing innovative techniques and mechanisms which enabled her to capture scientific phenomena. Easily her most creative and innovative work, her aesthetically elegant photographs of swinging pendulums, bouncing balls, and wave patterns lend understandable reality to the many complex concepts of physical science. In 1970, Abbott’s first major retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art. Her work has since been exhibited and acquired by many institutions throughout the world. Abbott lived in Maine from 1966 until her death. (source: Howard Greenberg Gallery)

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I've gotten an ID on this large bee for which I had posted two photos a couple days ago. Since then, I remembered hearing a talk a few years ago from Indiana bee expert Robert Jean, and was fortunate to find his business card that I picked up at that meeting. I sent him photos and asked if he knew this bee. He says it is "a fairly recent addition to the Indiana bee fauna." It is native to Japan and China. I did not ask if he knew anything about how it got to the U.S. I also did not ask if there is any opinion among experts as to whether it might nicely blend into our fauna or if it might become a pest. Hopefully it will not become a pest.

This bee is quite large, being every bit as large as an average bumblebee. However, compared to a bumblebee, its shape is less compactly stout, and more elongate. The head appears large compared to the thorax and abdomen when compared to most typical hymenoptera.

In my prairie/meadow planting right now, the available flowering plants are mostly Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium). This bee was working over only the Culver’s root. Although I don’t remember seeing this bee in previous years, there were quite a few of them. Their behavior was quite interesting in that they very slowly and methodically worked their way around the entire flowering head of the Culver’s root, seeming to be in no hurry at all related to the duty at hand. I noticed that many other species of bees and bumblebees visiting the flowers had noticeably full pollen baskets, but this bee was carrying no visible pollen.

A storm clears the Friendship and the nearby Pedrick House. This building is the original building that was built in 1770 in Salem and at some time moved to Marblehead. In 2003 a local historian noted that this was not a building orignally in Marblehead but a Salem building. The park service managed to get the building transferred to them and Salem and then a labor of love began as it was taken apart very methodically and brought to Salem. It was then piece by piece put back together and it sits much as it had in the 1700s.

Tiny spider making its web, it had already completed the main outline and was methodically completing the filler threads.

A few days ago I was able to catch a pileated woodpecker visiting my deck, but so briefly that I didn't know why he was there. Now comes another member of the family, the Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) who has been here the last several days, allowing me to determine that it is the corn on the bird house which I receive every Christmas as a gift drawing their attention. Who knew? Usually completely devoured by the squirrels over the winter, this year it was ignored for some reason, obviously to the happiness of the woodpeckers. I had no idea they were corn-eaters.

Having discovered this, I placed the feeder/birdhouse in a more conducive spot for photo-taking and this was the result. He is really not as shy as most and spends a significant amount of time here, selecting a kernel (as seen here) before flying to a nearby tree to peck at it. Very methodical, you can see he has already dispatched of a number of ears, but will take some time to get them all. I now look forward to his visits and it's a pleasure to have him around.

If you look closely to the far lower left center, you'll also see a chipmunk dining on his own fare on the steps to the dock.

The Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk is a Reformed Protestant church and former Catholic cathedral located on the central market square (Grote Markt) in the Dutch city of Haarlem.

This church is an important landmark for the city of Haarlem and has dominated the city skyline for centuries. It is built in the Gothic style of architecture, and it became the main church of Haarlem after renovations in the 15th century. It is dedicated to Saint Bavo, who is commemorated for saving Haarlem from the Kennemers.

The interior of the church has changed little over the years, though the inner chapels suffered greatly during the Beeldenstorm, and many stained-glass windows were lost to neglect. Fortunately, the interior has been painted many times by local painters, most notably by Pieter Jansz Saenredam and the Berckheyde brothers. Based on these paintings, work has been done to reconstruct the interior so various items such as rouwborden or "mourning shields" hang again today in their "proper" place.

The organ of the Sint-Bavokerk (the Christiaan Müller organ) is one of the world's most historically important organs. It was built by the Amsterdam organ builder Christian Müller, with stucco decorations by the Amsterdam artist Jan van Logteren, between 1735 and 1738. Upon completion it was the largest organ in the world with 60 voices and 32-foot pedal-towers. In Moby-Dick (1851), Herman Melville describes the inside of a whale's mouth:

"Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes?"

Today concerts are regularly held in the church, and all through the year special opening times are organized so the public can walk in free of charge to listen to this famous organ in action.

No Fear of God

In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul has been methodically building his case that all mankind in Adam is without the righteousness that allows us to stand unafraid before God Almighty. The Gentiles who do not have the Mosaic law nonetheless suppress and reject the Lord's revelation in creation and their consciences. The Jews who have the Scriptures are no better off, for they have not kept God's law with the perfection required for justification—the Lord's declaration that a person is righteous in His sight. True, Jews have benefits that Gentiles lack, but mere possession of these benefits is not enough, and like the Gentiles, the Jews have fallen far short of God's glory. But although this teaching is offensive to anyone who measures goodness by comparing themselves to others and not to the Lord's perfect standards, it should not be difficult for anyone who actually knows the Old Testament. After all, the Hebrew Scriptures provide ample testimony of the pervasive sinfulness of humanity (Rom.1:18; 3:17). The worst indictment of all that we read in the Old Testament is Psalm 36:1, which the Apostle quotes in today's passage (Rom.3:18). "There is no fear of God before their eyes" represents a stinging and decisive rebuke for all who think themselves in the right before our Creator. Remember that the fear of God or the fear of the Lord is the foundation of all true piety. It is the starting point for godliness, the beginning of wisdom that leads to eternal life (Psa.111:10; Pro.10:27). The fear of God is properly held before our "eyes" because fearing Him means that we keep Him and His statutes as the focus and center of our attention. But human beings in Adam have utterly failed to view the Lord with such reverence. Because of this, we sin in what we think, do, and say. Ultimately, if we cannot keep the fear of God before our eyes, we cannot do anything else that is pleasing to Him. We start off on the wrong foot, as it were, and that means the entire direction of our lives is oriented away from the things of the Lord. Because there is no fear of the Almighty for the naturally conceived-and-born sons and daughters of Adam, "..None is righteous, no, not one" (Rom.3:10). Matthew Henry comments on today's passage, "Where no fear of God is, no good is to be expected." Fallen people might do civic goods that are praiseworthy from a human perspective, but they cannot do what is fully and truly good in the Lord's sight. Apart from Christ, we are as bad off as we could possibly be.

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Renewing Your Mind - A Message by R.C. Sproul

Devotional originally published at Ligonier.org