Daily Picture Theme - #Arrow

The Daily Picture Theme for 26 May 2024 is #Arrow. Featured archer was part of a performance at the 2013 Fourth of July celebration in New Boston, NH.

Daily Journal – 26 May 2024 (Sunday)

It's the birthday of documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895. She contracted polio when she was seven, and developed a permanent limp as a result. When she was 12, her father abandoned the family, so she dropped her middle name and adopted her mother's maiden name. She studied photography at Columbia University, and then in 1918 she began to travel, selling her photographs as she went. She ran out of money by the time she got to San Francisco, so she settled there, opened a photography studio, and made a good living shooting portraits of the Bay Area's upper class.

She began taking photographs of men on breadlines, striking workers, and the homeless during the Great Depression, to call attention to their plight, and she did indeed attract the attention of other local photographers. She was hired by the Resettlement Administration, which would later become the Farm Security Administration, to document the displacement of American farmers during the Dust Bowl years, and it's her photo, "Migrant Mother, Nipoma, California, 1936" that is her most famous. Her camera gave us a vivid visual memory of the Great Depression even if we weren't around to experience it.

She was hired by the War Relocation Authority during World War II to document the internment of Japanese Americans, but when she photographed Japanese-American children saying the Pledge of Allegiance shortly before they were sent to the camps, the Army felt the photographs were too critical of U.S. policy, and they were impounded.

She said: "One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it."

The Writer's Almanac from Sunday, May 26, 2013 - Garrison Keillor

Woke up to a brief downpour but it quickly passed and it is Sunday and a comfortable 61 degrees. I noted with dismay that the jelly containers for the Orioles were on the ground and empty. I can only guess it was done by some creature overnight. From now on that feeder will come in at night.

It was a good day for some choring around. I finally had the opportunity to use my new EGO Weedwacker and Rototiller and they exceeded my expectations. I had long given up the idea of the gas versions of these tools. Most of the time was spent trying to get them started. The weedwacker is powerful, chewed through some nasty invasive rose vines. The rototiller is small similar in size and weight to the Mantis unit I once had. I hated that thing.Never could get it running more than a few minutes.

These power tools make it a bit easier to do some planting. I still can wield a garden fork but I appreciate the technology. I planted some flowering alliums from Mason Hollow Nursery. Here are some photos from today.

AI Gone Wild

I pay for a subscription to Adobe for a suite of Photography tools. In the latest release of Lightroom CC they have introduced some Artificial Intelligence. It is Beta software, not fully cooked so naturally I wanted to see if I could break it a bit. They have added a regenerative remove function. Using a brush you can remove distracting objects and even people from a scene. I watched a video and noted the presenter had weird results from subjects standing in front of a brick wall.

I knew I had a similar photo which I took at my nephews graduation in 2009. As a test I removed my sister from the photo because she is a good sport and wouldn’t mind. When you do this in the software a call is made to Adobe Servers and they search to “understand” what the new photo should be. The result is nothing like you would expect.

The boy that replaced my sister came randomly from the AI world. I tried other variations and had random results including my nephew holding a deformed cake.

Ad Blocking Software

I posted a video of ducks and geese yesterday on this site. However I discovered if my readers are running ad blocking software the video is not displayed. I don’t blame anyone for blocking ads, I do it myself. This is the direct link to the short video of ducks and geese. I don’t know why it gets blocked, maybe the AI bots do it. This stuff is all smoke and mirrors anyway.

On This Date – May 26th

What was happening on May 26th in previous years? I went through the archives and found this collection. The year is specified in the captions. Welcome to the time machine. I wonder what became of that Didgeridoo.