Lipnica Wielka, 1999
photography
A View
From 19 years ago.
Shopping in Boston, 2001
Cutting
Tonight, I spent a fair amount of time going through photos from the last year to create our yearbook. It’s a simple process: go to Lightroom; create a new collection with all flagged pictures from the year; begin deleting pictures. I started out with 1800; I’m down to 330 now.
It’s a good way to get an overview of the year. We had dozens of pictures of the family playing games (Sorry, Monopoly, hearts, etc.); we had dozens of pictures in the park going for walks; we had dozens of pictures of E and me exploring in our creek. How many nearly-identical pictures does one need?
Random Thoughts About Today’s Mass Reading
Today’s gospel reading was the famous parable of the talents:
Jesus told his disciples this parable: “A man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’ His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter? Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten. For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'”
I noticed a few things about this parable that I’d never seen before: first, the master leaves all these things and then “he went away.” There’s nothing in the text that indicates the master expected the servants to do anything with the money. Perhaps that’s implied, but it’s not explicitly stated that the master expected any growth on his investment or that it even is an investment.
Second, I find it entirely reasonable that the third servant hides the money. What if he invested it and lost it? Wouldn’t the master be even angrier then?
Third, what’s all this stuff about “harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter”? Just what are the master’s expectations? What kind of a man is this? He doesn’t seem very reasonable at all.
Finally, there’s the disturbing ending: why the severe punishment?
I know, I know — it’s a parable. It’s not really about the money at all but it’s about an individual’s talents. At least that’s how everyone has always interpreted it. That leads to a realization I’ve had recently: why did Jesus speak in parables? If his goal is to transmit information, metaphor and parable are not the most effective, efficient means of doing that.
Politics, As Always
Removal
Looking at a picture of K from 2004, just after our wedding.
“It’s a shame I wasn’t aware of how my own shadow was falling in the frame,” I thought.
But it’s fixable.
Distant Relative
Before and After
At the Swing
For a few years there, you could count on pictures down at the swing and hammocks. It was such a regular occurrence that I pretty much stopped taking pictures down there. How many pictures of your kids swinging do you really need?
Today, we all went down to the swings for a while before dinner. I took some pictures, then gave the camera to the Boy.
He’s got a good eye, that little fellow.
Boston Diner
Bridge
A bridge of the Lipniczanka, which I photographed just shy of twenty years ago, but with a little processing looks like I could have found this image in a box of old photographs.
Revisiting Old Pictures
Images revisited from our 2008 trip to Poland, our first one back after leaving in 2005.
Click on images for larger version.
K’s Day
Views from the Past
Visitor
Independence Day 2020
Not much for today — didn’t even take any pictures. Here are three re-worked pictures for Boston in 2002.
The Boy’s Photos
Work-Around
I figured out a work-around for the lack of storage that, upon talking to the local Lenovo service department, promises to be relatively easily mended.
So I spent a little time this afternoon seeing just how much faster the new computer is than the old. It’s fast. Blazing fast. The old computer was particularly sluggish in Lightroom when doing spot adjustments with the brush. Switching on the mask overlay could take a few seconds if there were enough adjustments on the photo. On the new computer, it’s instantaneous.
Day 37: Tuesday
The Boy was at it again today — 177 photos spread through the day, from morning to evening.
Today, he got some really good shots. Part of that came from experimentation: I let him use a telephoto zoom, which helped him fill the frame more that he’s done the last two days. He liked it, but in the end, he preferred the little prime lens he’d been using. “It’s so much less bulky!” he exclaimed.
He also learned a little lesson: not everyone whats to be photographed all the time. The Girl, for example, appears less frequently in here because she’s increasingly resistant to photographs. (What 13-year-old wants dad writing blog posts about her?) During dinner, then, he asked everyone who’s willing to let him photograph them. Only L opted out.
But he still snuck a few shots, much to her frustration.
“If you’re a spy, it’s okay to take pictures without permission. Otherwise, it’s not a good idea,” I said.
Excitedly, he heard what he wanted: “If I were a spy I could…”
“But you’re not.” I could envision him redefining that word to suit his own purposes.
I’m afraid, though, that I might have encouraged it the other day.
“What do you like taking pictures of, Daddy? What’s your favorite thing?”
“I like taking pictures that show people just being, just doing what they do every day without thinking about it.” If I had more guts, I might be able to parley that into a gig as a street photographer, which in its own way is a certain kind of spy.
There was a little photo session after dinner, with the Boy getting a few poses out of K. He walked over to her and manipulated her arms into the position he wanted — something like a dab — and then took his position. “Perfect.”
Day 36: The Photographer!
The Boy is hooked — for now. But still, hooked. I gave him our old Nikon D70s (older than L) and a 35mm lens, which on a crop sensor like the D70 is like a 50mm lens on a film camera (in other words, what all of us who learned to shoot with film started with), and told him to look for two things: interesting light and interesting lines.
He didn’t always take that advice — he did what everyone fascinated with photograph does in the beginning. He took pictures like crazy. 266 pictures, to be exact. I chose eight from them, chose a preset for each one in Lightroom and did no other editing.
This is probably the only post I’ve had here without a single one of my own pictures…
Day 35: The Photographer?
The Boy has been showing an interest in photography from time to time. It’s not an everyday thing, but he enjoys it when I give him the little Fuji to shoot with.
This afternoon, we went out on a photo walk, and he asked me if it would be possible for him to edit some of the photos in Paint.net, a free editing program that I use for quick things like cropping screenshots and the like. I’d taught him how to do gradient overlays with it, and he loved the idea of editing photos like that.
“Do you use Paint.net for your photos?” he asked.
“No, I use Lightroom.”
“Can you put gradients on pictures in Lightroom?”
Technically, yes, I thought, but not the way he was thinking. “Not really, but you can in Photoshop.”
“Can you teach me how to do it in Photoshop?” The Boy loves to learn if it’s something he’s interested in — but then, doesn’t that describe us all?
“Well, for what you were doing, it’s probably best just to keep using Paint.net.”
“Can you teach me to use Lightroom?” he pressed.
And I thought, sure. That’s entirely possible. There’s a lot less to overwhelm initially on Lightroom, and to be honest, it’s a less powerful program in a lot of ways: there’s nothing you can do in Lightroom that you can’t do in Photoshop, but there’s tons you can do in Photoshop that you can’t do in Lightroom. Still, for most photo editing, bringing Photoshop into the picture is like using a backhoe for gardening.
So when we go home, I installed Lightroom on the computer we have upstairs, and we’ll start editing tomorrow.
Will he love it? At first, most definitely. I look forward to sharing some of his edited images.
Will he stick with it? We’ll see. But seeing how much he loves trying to copy me, I think there’s a good chance we might begin something long-lasting tomorrow.
Editing isn’t the only thing we’ll be starting tomorrow. Spring break is now over, so we’ll all head back “to school.” I have real reservations about the ultimate efficacy of what I’m doing with students. Are they learning? I doubt it. Are they slipping? I hope not — that’s really the only hope most of us educators have.