Happy Christmas?

As a friend usually says every Christmas - this Christmas  may you receive everything you wished for others last Christmas.

As this post is written, rain falls constantly and heavily. The forecast for the rest of the day is 100% rain with thunder and lightning. This was probably not the kind of weather that the Three Wise Men encountered all those years ago on their way to Jerusalem.

The tale goes that there was no room at the inn so Mary and Joseph were given a stall in the stables. Whether this demonstrates a lack of humanity toward an expectant couple in not giving them a room or whether it exhibits humanity in giving them at least somewhere to stay is debatable. Whatever the back story was, the fact is that many places have some wonderful nativity displays that are well worth photographing.

It is somewhat ironic that so much care and attention is paid to being peaceful at Christmas and not being so at the rest of the year. Indeed, the most memorable Christmas was the Christmas Truce during the Great War on Christmas Day 1914 when German troops under the Kaiser played football with British troops. That was a widespread truce that was entirely unofficial. Sadly this would most likely not happen today.

With each passing year, society becomes morally poorer and materially richer. The lack of religious direction and observance in people's lives is notable - from the terrorists that target innocent people to the stores that charge high prices and pay low wages.

Before you buy that new camera, think about the misery it has caused during its life so far. From poverty waged laborers in China etc who made it - very often convict labor - under threat of death to the poorly paid store staff that sell it. Take the average minimum wage shop assistant. $7.25 an hour for 20 hours a week does not even pay the rent. Before tax that's not even $150. After tax it'll be more like $120.

At $120 a week or $580 a month, after the cheapest rent of $500 a month, that $80 does not buy much gasoline, car insurance, car tax etc. More than that, most part-time workers particularly in stores are expected to be available 100% of their personal time to be called in for a couple of hours as required. Failure to be available due to a second job often means they are fired as unreliable. Food stamp claims have rocketed. Every part-time Walmart position seems to be supported by food stamps and social housing.

Think before buying that new camera at that low price about the trail of misery that the camera has already caused. Instead of buying at a rock bottom price and contributing to the destruction of social morality, ask where you could buy it that the trail of misery is reduced or eliminated. Better still, ask yourself if you need it or whether your existing camera will suffice. I've used mine for 10 years and it still takes a great image.

The poverty waged staff that sell the goods in Walmart etc are a fertile ground for terrorist masters looking for disaffected youth to convert. Low wage stores and businesses are a breeding ground for future terrorists. Resist the urge to use them. What kind of Christmas do the poorly paid staff have? The staff that live in old cars, old busses, under bridges, that share houses with several people in a room? Modern commerce has brought the return of the Victorian slum.

Merry Christmas?

Catching Ebola online

Surely not, I hear you say. You can't get Ebola from the internet! But yes you can. The biggest potential source for Ebola in the world today is the Internet.

Nobody is ever satisfied with what they have. Everybody wants more, wants it cheaper, better and faster. Amazon is playing with drones to get goods to internet shoppers within hours. The faster goods travel, the less chance of diseases carried on the goods of perishing on the way there is.

Let's look at camera gear as an example. It's made largely in poorer areas of China though some things come from the Middle East and Africa. Given that many diseases can live for several days outside of the body, a disease such as Ebola, originating in Africa could end up in America or in Britain within days. Flying at 37,000 feet will freeze all pathogens as aircraft holds are rarely pressurized or temperature controlled. Upon landing the pathogens unfreeze and become dangerous again.

The cheap item from eBay could be a fast way to the grave. Buy Liberian diamonds with 10% extra free Ebola. Buy that cheap photo gizmo from China with 15% free Ebola.

Have no doubt, Ebola is coming to a neighborhood near you sometime soon. There have already been cases in the US and the UK, doubtless too in Australia, France, Germany, Russia etc. It may not always be carried on a camera or by a roving photographer or by an errant tourist. It may come as a biological weapon from the likes of al-Quaeda, Sendero Luminoso, Mabion Glyndwr, Hamas or any one of the myriad of terrorist groups around the world.

The best thing YOU can do to protect YOURSELF is to cease buying cheap trinkets online or cheap trinkets made by Ebola-contaminated labor forces outside your own country. Be safe, buy domestic.

Another week went by

Honestly, with the way life is at the moment, the photography blog seems to be taking way too much of a back seat.

This week has been the most incredible whirlwind. Let's see what has happened this past seven days:
Thursday last week was spent cooking and working.
Friday the cooked food and some clothes were packed then off to work then off for the weekend.
Saturday was spent working all day on my bus, filling screw holes on the outside.
Sunday was spent painting the roof of the bus - from breakfast til dusk without a break.
Monday I drove from where my bus is parked to work then after work to my home.
Tuesday I worked my voluntary hospital job then my paid job then went home.
Wednesday (today) I attended a hospital Christmas party then went off to work.

How much photography time have I had? None! Until the bus is completed, photography has to take a back seat. The bus is future accommodation. As soon as the outside is done, I'll start work on the inside then and only then can I move into it and away from my current accommodation. After that, there might again be some photography time.

Taking photos is fun

My experience of photography echoes that of many others. Brought up in a world of different types of film, where ISO 400 was regarded as fast and ISO 25 as high-quality, the digitization of photography has yielded many changes - some welcome, others not so. In the old days, somebody with a camera had to be sought out to take family photos. Amateurs and professionals enjoyed their photography.  Along came built-in camera meters and out went a barrier between professional and amateur photography. Now amateurs could take photos that were as well exposed and consistently well exposed as the professionals. Then came auto-exposure. Now there was no excuse for a poorly exposed image. Then came auto-focus and another barrier between the professional and the amateur had gone.

Digital arrived with a bang, heralding yet further change. Now image editing could be done in homes as opposed to having to be done by specialists in darkrooms. The darkroom became a thing of the past. Developer trays and tanks, expensive enlargers and expensive enlarging lenses that had cost many weeks wages were unceremoniously tossed out in the garbage. The professional felt the squeeze. Now there was little to separate the professional from the amateur bar a word. Amateurs could just keep taking a picture until they got it right. The barrier of 36 exposures, $5 in film and $10 processing had gone.

With the plethora of cameras and computers available at ever lower prices, a new breed of photographer emerged. Sometimes called "Moms with cameras" they were a new breed of entrepreneur that because of their social networks could take pictures at births, weddings and gatherings. Their lack of knowledge of anything other than the auto function on the camera did not stop them from repeating photos til auto got it right. Their friends and associates were so willing to buy their images that many started websites and tried to sell themselves as photographers.

Then came the iPhone revolution where every iPhone had a really good camera. Following this spectacular success, all the other manufacturers came out with cameras on their phones and linked them to the internet for easy photo sharing. Moms with cameras and professionals became hard pressed to get work. Many went out of business and the future became ever bleaker for those that hung on.

Camera manufacturers found that cellphone users are very happy with the image quality from their phones. The images are by and large so good now that hikers, trekkers, campers and climbers now prefer to bring a phone camera as opposed to a bigger camera. Cameras began to be left behind and camera manufacturers ceased manufacturing the vast array of compacts, concentrating on superzooms, Digital SLRs and a new breed of interchangeable lens compact.

Camera sales continue to slide, professional photographers continue to lose work. This is inexorable. At the same time, professionals are squeezed from another angle - the internet. People that want photos for websites etc now just lift them off websites to use or ask some philanthropically minded amateur for free use of their work. The free online photo album has reduced the profitability of many professional photo libraries for all but historical works.

I can honestly say that all of my website photos are now done with a Nexus 4 cellphone.  The quality is more than adequate for the task. Indeed, even printing to 10x8, the cellphone images are more than adequate. Now there's a thing - how many people now print to 10x8? The rise of the digital picture frame, the tablet and the laptop has really eliminated much need to have physical prints any more.

It is fairly safe to predict that professional photography will have died out entirely by about 2020 as the last dedicated professionals retire. Many of the camera companies will go out of business as cellphone cameras become much improved. Fewer people will want to spend thousands on cameras that are out of date in 6 months or on gear that plummets to no resale value. As an example, I own a 580Ex2 that cost $550 new. It will barely get $200 now. In terms of the value I got out of it, that was poor. In terms of resale, that's poor too.

Photography itself will not die out. It has become so commonplace though that its value has gone. Many will still find it fun. The Googleization of the world where every location is ready to see via Google Earth means that there's not a whole load of point in buying a camera to take a photo of something that can be seen without spending a penny on the internet. As a DSLR owner, I am questioning the point of owning something that never gets used because my cellphone camera is so darned good. It's becoming more a point of not how much I'd get for it but can I even sell it. Certainly I'd like to have a small camera for the funkier things I want to do such as astrophotography but I certainly don't need a hulking great big camera with interchangeable lenses to fiddle about with.

Six Months of no photography

Yesterday, I switched on my malfunctioning Macbook for the first time in possibly two months. The reason being that I needed to pay my cellphone bill and check to see if I'd paid my electricity bill. As it turned out, my cellphone bill was $44.71 and my electricity bill hadn't been paid and had reached the giddy heights of $27.35. As for DSL - I don't worry about that any more because I use a MiFi pad though yesterday's connection was made using my cellphone as a MiFi gateway. Needless to say I had the usual problems with my Macbook which I suspect are attributable to a bad driver that Apple has used.

The Macbook problem is that it's a 2007 Macbook that originally had Leopard on it and which I upgraded earlier this year to Snow Leopard for the princely sum of $29. Not many months after that, the screen started going black. Shining a light at an angle on the screen meant it was possible to read the screen. Toggling the brighter and dimmer buttons it was possible to get the display to flash up briefly. Now here's the kicker - when the battery is fully charged AND the Macbook is plugged into the wall, it all works just fine. On battery alone, the toggling gets brief flashes of display but it's unusable like that. Changing the battery for a cheapo eBay battery worked a bit but there's something wrong with the driver and I just can't fathom that one out. In the interim, I'm using a Nexus 7 tablet for all my internet stuff. Both the tablet and the Macbook work happily with my Nexus 4 used as a WiFi source and with my MiFi pad. Inquiries of Apple as to what the problem is indicates it might be a driver and I'll have to drive to Greenville, Charlotte or Charleston to get it sorted out. All well and good but its a 100 mile trek each way to any of those. Were I to drive my car then it's a cost of $25 in gas or were I to drive my bus, $80 in diesel plus parking, of course. That's without mentioning it'd take me away from work for a day which would mean lost wages would have to be added to the bill so we're looking at a cost greater than my refurbished Nexus 7. You can see why I went for a Nexus 7 now!

Meanwhile, when I checked my Macbook, I also looked at my photos and noted that the last photos I took with my DSLR were in June. I just haven't had time to go to take photos. I've either been working, zooming about to job interviews, looking for work (dressed in my finest and not really thinking about photography nor wanting to risk my finest) or with my ladyfriend. All of those come way before photography and there just hasn't been the time. Ah but, you may ask - what about that bus. Well, I have to point out two things - firstly that the bus will become a motorhome - a place for me to live instead of paying rent (which is pretty important given that my current job doesn't quite pay my normal bills and since nobody seems to respond to my CareerBuilder applications other than time-wasting recruitment agencies. I could tell you the number of times I've been asked to drive to Charlotte for an "interview" that was a joke at best and which yielded "we'll call you" but never any calls). Secondly, the bus is parked in my ladyfriend's back yard while I'm working on it so it's a case of getting the best of both worlds - I'm at my ladyfriend's house and we don't get under each other's feet but we get to spend time together.

There is a vague plan to do some stellar photography of the night sky one night since my ladyfriend's place is out in Pelion, South Carolina. It's an "interesting" area where it's possible to hear gunfire just about any day. People seem to keep themselves to themselves up there and are generally pretty polite. They do say that an armed society is a polite society. It's a mono-ethnic area where diversity isn't really that welcome. I noticed that when I was in the store. There was an African American cashier and long queues at the checkouts operated by Caucasian Americans but none at her checkout. Needless to say, I chose the shortest line as skin color means nothing to me. All I care about is whether people are nice to me.

The problem with stellar photography is light pollution. I had a go at some stellar photography in a darkish area but the light pollution was terrible. Had I been interested and known more about stellar photography when I was in Key West in March of 2013 then I would have done some better sky photos there as there was no light pollution down there. Sadly the photos were exposed correctly for what I wanted to achieve then but way underexposed for stellar photography. It's too far to drive to retake a photo. From here to Mile Zero of I95 it's about 800 miles in each direction. I've driven it before, partnering with the lady I went to Key West with. She was the manager of a Woodforest Bank in Charleston. She drove 8 hours, I drove 8 hours then we stopped for the night. It took two days in each direction.

The low point of the year

Some will claim Christmas is the high point of the year - a time to celebrate and a time to have fun. Good old Scrooge would say something like "Bah. Humbug!". Increasingly, it's correct to see Christmas as "Bah, Humbug".

A present for Uncle Jesse, a gift for Aunty Maud, gifts for parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters. But what of the little boy whose parents could not find room at the inn and had to give birth in a manger? Who remembers him?

All around us, Christmas jingles and festivities. Over drinking, over eating and partying. Rushing about the place exchanging presents. No gift for Bob because he didn't give us one last year. No card for Jeremy because his never arrived last year.

Christmas has ceased to be a celebration of the birth of an individual of great significance and has become a celebration of the worst excesses of Capitalism. Behold your new Savior - The Holy Banknote. Behold your new Prophet - the advertising agency at Some Corporation.

Instead of being thankful for what we have, we take out loans to buy ever more stuff then rent a storage unit to house it all. There's a reason why manufacturers bring out new models of things shortly before Christmas. It's to capture the suckers that believe Christmas is all about that new camera; all about buying the love or friendship of somebody with a new camera or other trinket.

The reality of Christmas is that many will spend Christmas envying the partying and gifts. Those who are unemployed or underemployed will be worrying about where their next meal is coming from. While others are eating turkey with all the trimmings, it's a can of cold lentil soup in a draughty unheated room in a run down house under threat of foreclosure for too many. For others, there will be war around them and the threat of violence will take away any joy or relaxation.

It's easy to look upon giving money to some charity as a way of assuaging one's guilt that one is enjoying oneself while the world around is in  poverty and misery. It's akin to buying penance. The point is Christmas is not about the garbage that the media and corporations peddle. It's about the celebration of change, of compassion, of charity and of helping one's fellow man not just to eat for a day but to achieve success in the same manner you did.

That which was foretold

Ages ago, I recall stating on various online forums and in my two books on high-speed imaging that the future of high-speed photography lay in LED flashes. I recall being thoroughly pooh poohed by the denizens of those online forums whose vision never seemed to go much further than their next beer or doughnut. Indeed, it could be said that online forums attract those with limited intelligence and limited foresight - hence I tend to stay away from them these days.

A few days ago, a kick starter project came to my attention. This was for an LED flash designed for high-speed photography with a flash duration of 1/2,000,000th of a second. With a flash that fast, it's somewhat surprising that the inventor chose to show photographs of a BB going through an apple rather than a .223 bullet exploding on impact with a brick. A BB travels at 250 - 750 feet per second. The lower speeds are more common. A .223 bullet travels at 2,500 feet per second. Thus at 500fps a BB will travel 0.00025 of a foot or 0.003 of an inch. At 2,500fps a bullet will travel assuming 1/2,000,000th flash - about 0.019 of an inch.

In the end, it's all about perception. Seeing a slow projectile frozen is probably a better sales gimmick to sell a product to the uneducated masses. To somebody that knows what they're doing, it's little short of asinine. The creator makes some good points that his product will:
1. Reduce the cost of ultra-high-speed photography.
2. Be inherently safer due to the lower voltages.
3. Be cheaper to produce.

The creator has added some interesting features to his flash unit though what he has created is little more than 9 Cree LEDs with a transistor, a mylar capacitor and a couple of resistors. The stroboscopic effect produced is interesting as is the ability to link several units together. Otherwise, it's little different from what's currently available.

The high-speed images on the high-speed page of this blog were all taken with a 580EX2 at 1/128th power or around 1/38,000th of a second. While the creator has identified a gap in the market with his Velo unit, he has created something which is so niche that it will be very hard to sell. The hobbyist into electronics will build their own for the heck of it. People without too much money will use a regular flash instead and produce images like mine. The market he's aiming for is very small - people with enough money to spare that they can buy single use things that won't get a lot of use anyway.

Still, not wishing to be a complete wet blanket, it is something I would buy if it was good value. At the moment, I really don't see the value over an ordinary multi-use unit such as a 580EX2 or even a Vivitar 283 set to use as a single use unit. The big problem for the fellow will come when hobbyists come out with an open-source version and when the Chinese start making and selling them for far less money.

The PayPal rip-off

As regular readers will know, this blog used to be updated from an Apple Macbook but is now updated from a Nexus 7 tablet on the grounds the Nexus 7 does everything that's needed for 90% of online usage. As more astute readers may well recall, the Nexus 7 has a $9.95 keyboard cover that I got on eBay. The cover is looking a little dilapidated due to having been used heavily since April when it was purchased.

Today there was a cover on eBay that I saw and wanted to buy. It was listed at $7.86 Canadian which works out at $6.92 US. PayPal, however, wanted to charge $7.20 for something the seller had at $6.92. One can only assume that PayPal was charging a premium to convert $US to $CD then charging the seller (in China) a further premium to convert to Yen.

There is an unholy alliance in this world of eBay and PayPal. eBay at one time and might still own PayPal. What they do is to feed clients from one to the other as a monopoly. eBay skims a bit from each transaction. PayPal skims a bit from each purchase and skims more when funds are transferred to a bank account. It's really a skimming operation for something that really should not be costing any money. No work is performed nor goods produced. What's happening is people are being charged through the nose for being allowed to push a few electrons around on somebody else's servers.

The following are photos of the listing and photos of the PayPal page. The unholy alliance of PayPal and eBay is exactly why I chose to drop this transaction and go to my local flea market on Saturday instead.

Low bills.

Today the subject of poverty came to mind. One of the reasons why I didn't go up North to photograph the fall colors was financial. While I *could* have driven up and done the photos I wanted, it just seemed more sensible to maintain a more balanced budget and to increase the buffer between myself and abject poverty.

In my real life, I work with underprivileged children. It really is amazing how many parents are in such desperate poverty that they have to rely upon charity to get clothes for themselves and for their children. Oddly enough, most of those parents are working all the hours God sends and yet still can't make ends meet.

A good many are trapped into South Carolina's poverty economy where heroin is cheaper than a Big Mac. They're by and large not poor because of bad spending or debts but poor because of the jobs they can get. It's a vicious cycle of poverty where people live in rundown shacks and work for poverty wages from places like McDonalds, Waffle House, Wendys etc, subsisting on Food Stamps.

When I say trapped, I do mean trapped. They have one part time job which calls them in at irregular times. If they can't come due to work at another job more than a very few times, the employer lets them go. Basically it's a part time job but they have to be full time available for it. The money they earn pays their transport costs and rent but nothing extra. Were they to find a job elsewhere then they would lack the funds to go to that place.

South Carolina is definitely not the land of the free. With part-time hourly working being the norm, few can afford to do anything. This is why the program for which I work is so well staffed and so very busy.

But back to the bills. As mentioned yesterday, my internet bill is as low as it's possible to get while still retaining internet coverage. While I am not trapped into a cycle of poverty, it's close enough to merit extra care to remain well away from it. Thus, just to shock people, here are my monthly bills...
Rent $525
Internet $20
Phone $45
Electricity $27.37 (last bill)
That's a grand total of $617 and does not include food nor travel expenses.

Let's look at a typical SC resident. Let's call him Mr Blue. Mr Blue works for Walmart on 20 hours a week. All Walmart hourly employees work a maximum of 20 hours for minimum wage ($7.75). Were they to work more hours then their employer would have to give them health and retirement benefits which would cost money. So Mr Blue earns $155 a week or $620 a month. Mr Blue has to claim food stamps (probably $150 a month) and quite possibly some other benefits as well in order to subsidize his employer.

This is the cycle of poverty. Naturally Mr Blue finds a partner and they have a child which is where my program comes in - to help the children. So, in South Carolina we have a low-wage economy where employers are subsidized by Food Stamps and other federally funded programs (such as mine) and where the workers are pretty much slaves. Certainly they get paid but not enough to live on. It's rather akin to slave owners throwing a half eaten apple core on the ground near a slave for the slave to pick up out of the mud and eat.

Now you see why I haven't been out to take photos lately and why my bills are so low? I'm building my financial buffer.

Low cost internet rules!

It is now 42 days since DSL in the form of Windstream got the boot. On October 20th, a 4GB internet card was purchased for $40 from Walmart together with a $80 MiFi pad. Since then just about 2.8GB of data has been used. Based on a month and a half's usage it seems to be around $20 a month is fine. During this period it should be pointed out that about a week was 3 tablets using the internet simultaneously with the MiFi pad in use for up to 4 hours a day. That's pretty impressive!

Windstream was used for 3 years approximately at $55 a month, costing a grand total of $1,980. Had a MiFi pad been in use and used in the way it is used, that cost would have been $720 - that's over a grand cheaper. Indeed, MiFi was considered at the start but not employed because back then it was $50 a month and I got suckered by Windstream's dishonest pricing in which they told me the price without any taxes added. Thus the cost piled up tremendously. Parting from Windstream wasn't that easy either. It wasn't the fight that Comcast puts up but the conversation went...

*me* Why is this month's bill $5 more expensive?
*windstream shop* Because we added a $5 late fee to your bill.
*me* Did I forget to pay it?
*windstream shop* Yes
*me* How many times have I forgotten to pay my bill? (knowing full well it was only the second occasion)
*windstream shop* We don't have that information.
*me* Here's your money - I'd like to cancel my Windstream account
*windstream shop* Why?
*me* Because you added a late fee and never attempted to email me to notify me that it was late.
*windstream shop* You have to call this number and your billing cycle ends on the 19th.

At that point, realising it was the 2nd of the month and I was in for a month's internet whether I used it or not, I decided to leave it until later in the month. This, ironically, gave time to research via Windstream, alternatives to Windstream. It turned out that of the alternatives, Walmart's Straight Talk MiFi which is run by Tracfone on Sprint's network was the most economical.

On the 16th I ordered the MiFi pad and a refurbished Nexus 7 online from Walmart because both were way cheaper online than going into the store to buy them. It just seemed more practical to use a tablet and a MiFi pad for most internet usage than a MiFi pad and a laptop.

On the 18th, the pad and tablet winging their way toward the local Walmart store (which I passed every day and eliminated the need to pay postage) I called the number Windstream had given me. Oh how I hate these telephone call centers.

*me* I'd like to cancel my windstream account
*windstream call center* Why? Have we done something wrong.
*me* (lying through my teeth in order to avoid a retention pitch) I'm moving house.
*windstream call center* You can transfer your account to a new address
*me* (thinking hard) I'm moving into a motorhome
*windstream call center* (ego deflates with a loud hiss) Ok. Thanks for being our customer for 3 years.

Now, had Windstream not charged me that $5 late fee, I'd still be sucker enough to be paying them $35 a month more than I'm paying Straight Talk. My internet usage has moderated in response to the new paradigm and my sleep patterns have improved as a result of moderated internet usage.

On the whole, MiFi is greatly to be recommended over constant internet as long as endless videos are not watched and mostly mobile websites are used. The connection on 3G is fast enough for the things I want. As far as I'm concerned, I have lost nothing that I really care about and gained a whole load of things I do care about by switching to MiFi.

Resolution

The connection issues of last week were resolved satisfactorily. An email had been sent which received no quick response. The solution turned out to be a case of phoning Straight Talk whereupon the issue that had plagued me for several days was resolved. It seems the phone helpline actually works even though understanding some of the strange accents was a little challenging.

No photography has taken place lately save for photographs of work in progress on the bus that is being converted into a motorhome. Sadly, until that is completed, blog posting will be taking somewhat of a back seat. The aim of the bus conversion is to allow freer movement around the country to work for more lucrative employers. The goal is to have the conversion done by January 1st.

Here follow some photographs of work in progress. The bus was stripped of bunk beds (down one side) then of the cabinets down the other side before finally being empty. Then it was used to help my ladyfriend to move house.