Tuesday, August 25, 2020

New York City : Skyline At Night


Two years ago, as I've done many times before, I rode my motorcycle to Jersey City and the Exchange Place Boardwalk in New Jersey to try to capture a light-painted image of my motorcycle using the amazing New York City skyline in the background.

Jersey City, Hoboken, and the Exchange Place are some of my favorite locations to photograph the Manhattan skyline, especially at night. After finding the perfect spot, I waited one hour before sunset to shoot several pictures of the intense blue color of the Manhattan Skyline. Afterwards, I left the camera setup in the same location in the boardwalk, and waited hours for the sun to go down below the horizon.

There are lots of restaurants near the boardwalk. I decided to kill some time and had dinner on the boardwalk, before the Manhattan skyline lighting was optimal for the type of shot I was looking for. I had my favorite flounder, shrimp and fries platter. The food was delicious.

Finally, it got dark enough to allow me to use a shutter speed of up to thirty seconds for light-painting my bike, and to capture the skyline night silhouette background. I took lots of pictures, hoping to catch at least a few good images.

As the title of one of the songs of my favorite band Linkin Park says, "In The End", I was very happy with the final result.

Discuss.



Sunday, August 16, 2020

President Trump, Our Racist-In-Chief


I knew it was a matter of time before the usual suspects would attack Kamala Harris using the same racist trope that the Trump campaign is using. No surprises there, the racists are just being racists.

The over sexualization of black women is nothing new, it goes back centuries. Women all over the world have always been objectified and sexualized, they have been demeaned and belittled to sexual beings. Some of our-racist-in-chief followers are now saying that "Kamala Harris was used as a mattress, slept her way up and was a public escort".

Not surprisingly, the Lying King and his followers are promoting a sexist, racist misinformation campaign against Kamala Harris. Our-racist-in-chief is calling her a nasty black angry woman, and also even promoting a racist birther conspiracy theory that questions her eligibility for vice president.

He is basically trying to instill fear in White Americans insinuating that a black woman born and raised in Oakland, California, is not American. In other words, the Orange Clown is back returning to familiar territory with this line of attack; he is implying that she is an immigrant, therefore she is not qualified.

I am not surprised this moron is trying to exploit Kamala Harris background for personal gain. For the past 40 years, I have witnessed Donald Jenius Trump bigotry.

Last Friday, during his appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch was asked how it is that Donald Trump still has the trust of one-third of Americans? Donny Deutsch flat out stated that they are racists.

I must be in denial, but despite what I see, I refuse to believe that one-third of Americans are racists.

[ The top cartoon original creator is Clay Jones from Claytoonz. ]

Discuss.


Saturday, August 8, 2020

The Obligatory Bathroom Selfie


I have acquired a habit of taking selfies and behind the scene pics when shooting at a location. Most times I don't even use my Nikon, I just grab my old trusty point and shoot Sony Cybershot DSC-W530, and take a couple of pics.

From past experience, I don't like asking a stranger to take photos of me, pics never comes out the way I like. It is the reason why I always carry a tripod with me. I've been spending more time on Instagram lately, more than any other social platform. Lots of times I browse Instagram to get inspired.

Selfies are the only self-portraiture that I use to explore my photography. As much as some people like to criticize those of us who indulge into taking pics of ourselves, taking selfies is a norm these days. Not sure if you noticed, but often those that criticize, are usually folks without pictures.

In my opinion, selfies aren't going anywhere anytime soon! Taking a cool selfie is only half the fun. Now you got to share it!

[ Top cartoon image is the obligatory bathroom selfie. ]



Friday, August 7, 2020

Trump Caught Spreading Misinformation

 

On Wednesday, our Liar-In-Chief presidential campaign account, finally got temporarily "restricted" until he removes lies they posted on Twitter.The Lying King shared a video that contained false claims about coronavirus. The tweet showed a video of Trump's FauxNews interview in which he said children are "almost Immune" to the virus.According to Twitter, the tweet "is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation. The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can tweet again."Facebook also removed the post featuring the same interview for similar reasons.Imagine for a second that president Obama is currently the president of the United States, and from the White House, on national television, spread a lie, that is going to get people killed?To put it into context, in Georgia, a second grader tested positive for COVID-19, and now his entire second grade class including the teacher are quarantined for two weeks. And this is just the first week of school. In the meantime, the president of the United States is spreading lies, from the White House, on national television.Surprisingly, even FauxNews pushed back, and confronted Minister of Misinformation Kellyanne Conway about the White House lies and spread of incorrect information. The FauxNews host Sandra Smith told Kellyanne, "kids are getting this disease Kellyanne". As expected, Kellyanne distorted the truth, tried to divert and never answered the question.The FauxNews host interrupted Kellyanne and bluntly said, "Kids are getting infected and spreading COVID-19. The debate right now is over the spread of misinformation by the president about children being nearly immune."In Trump's defense, he doesn't know what immune means.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Stop Being Stupid Or Die


Two weeks ago, I wrote about a camp in Texas where dozens of children at a summer camp became infected with coronavirus. Now, we have a new report from a Georgia summer camp where 260 children and staff tested positive in an outbreak that spread in just days.

The group with the most number of children infected were the youngest kids, children ages from 6 to 10 years old. The report says that 75% of all children known to have contracted coronavirus experienced symptoms.

I thought children couldn't get it or spread it? Anyway, that's what my conservative friends keep telling me.

This news report blows the conservative theory out of the water that children don't get infected, they are asymptomatic, and they don't show signs. The republicans pushing for schools to reopen have been feeding the country lies about the virus not causing disease in children.

It reminds me when Dan Patrick, Texas Republican lieutenant governor encouraged grandparents to die for the economy. According to Dan Patrick, "old people should volunteer to die to save the economy".

On a related note, remember when former GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain kept repeating FauxNews talking point that there is no pandemic? Herman Cain died of COVID-19 this past Thursday.

Moral of the story : Stop being stupid or die.

In the meantime, our moron president tweeted today again that "if we tested less, there would be less cases". If we follow this moronic imbecile line of thinking, it means you'll never get pregnant, if you never take a pregnancy test.

Anyone who still demands schools to reopen needs to be booked as an accessory to mass murder.

Discuss.