Insidethe.com

Insidethe.com

Random Life and Technology Bits

Lunar Eclipse Pictures from Northern New Jersey

It was a beautifully clear night in Bergen County New Jersey and it would be such a waste not to share such a celestial sight. The first picture was taken about 2:15 AM EST and the second about 30 minutes later. Both were captured using a standard dSLR camera with 200mm lens and remote shutter.

Before the eclipse started there was enough light outside to easily move around and see the dials on the camera. By the time the second picture was taken the light was gone and it was almost pitch black. The moon was a dark red color as it passed into the Earth’s shadow.

Little Girl’s Point Beach 360 Panorama

A beautiful sunny day ahead and not a soul on the beach. Lake Superior is truly an inland ocean with it’s own beauty and magnificence that makes all the world’s oceans envious.

Little Girl’s Point Beach

Ironwood, MI
Notes: One of my earliest semi-successful 360 images. Focus was set to infinity which caused problems stitching pictures of the beach pebbles. The fine detail and variation of the beach made it difficult to stitch the nadir cap image. The water and the sky presented their own challenges due to lack of unique control points to stitch the images against. My shadow turned out to be a surprising artifact that I hadn’t planned on remaining in the final blend. Instead of trying to mask it I ended up emphasizing it.

Click to open in larger window

I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them

Henry David Thoreau was a reporter to a journal of no wide circulation (according to his words). His accounts were never recognized and he described himself as a “self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms”. He admits to accurately reporting for a number of years until the lack of recognition brings him to tell this story as a description of his situation and chosen course of action.

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house
of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any
baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!”
exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve
us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off–that
the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and
standing followed–he had said to himself: I will go into business; I
will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he
had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be
the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary
for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make
him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be
worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate
texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet
not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them,
and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my
baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why
should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

-Henry David Thoreau. Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Our society is centered around buying and selling. We devout such attention to selling our selves, our skills, our personality, so that other people will buy our wares, our time, our friendships. As a consumer society have we neglected the other side, how to “avoid the necessity of selling”?

Baylor Massacre Memorial Park

Baylor Massacre Memorial Park

River Vale, NJ
Notes: This was compiled using the same technique used in the Pine Meadow Lake pano. Care was taken to clear away the leaves directly under the camera to prevent any leaves from being accidentally scattered while the images were being taken. Standing in the shadow of the tree hide what little shadow would have been cast by me and helped create the interesting flare while facing the sun.

Click to open in larger window