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.
Quote: This Isn’t Right…
“This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.”
-Wolfgang Pauli
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.
Sharing In Abraham Lincoln’s Concerns
The postage stamp picture above was on display at Arlington National Cemetery. The quote says:
“That government
of the people,
by the people,
for the people,
shall not perish
from the earth.”
-Abraham Lincoln
The quote comes from the Gettysburg Address which was given by Abraham Lincoln during a very dire time when civil war threatened to destroy the union. Today we don’t face civil war but I wonder if Lincoln wouldn’t be just as worried about the stability of the government as he was when those words were spoken.
As our national debt to gross national product continues to remain high with no decrease in sight I can’t help but wonder if history hasn’t repeated itself and the nation is in another precarious situation.
The nation has come a long way in the 147 years since these words were spoken which makes his concern even more important. If we slip from this precarious slope then the accomplishments and sacrifices of those before us will have been in vain. Our nation is a very small portion of the world’s population but we have weathered storms that larger nations haven’t overcome. Don’t agree with me? Read the constitution and the amendments to it (bill of rights) and decide for yourself.
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” -Abraham Lincoln