You Have To Love Digital

This may only be of interest to my photo enthusiast friends, but you have to love what digital can do. This image was taken at this past Saturday's wedding. It is a nice photo, but what you need to appreciate is that the lighting was really poor when this was taken. It was late afternoon and there was a pretty heavy overcast. In film days I would have said "forget about it". Even Saturday I was lamenting the poor quality of light. I cranked up the ISO to 3200 and just hoped all would be well. I knew my camera (Nikon d700) was capable of good clean photos at 6400 ISO, but still get nervous with it, especially when photographing people. Anyhow, I'm impressed with how well this photo held up under the conditions. You would think this was taken under much better lighting conditions than what was really the case. No flash used. Digital rocks.

Mitch & Lindsay December 11 Wedding

Here are a few quick picks from Mitch and Lindsay's wedding Saturday. Always fun to work with a couple Park View grads. Some of these images were shot at Claude Moore Park. It was a bit cool, but the mid 40's temp was definitely better than the low 20's this week and the week before. Click on image to enlarge.

Defining Life

So this week NASA announced the discovery of a microorganism that is able to thrive and reproduce using  the toxic chemical arsenic. Presumably this raises the possibility of the existence of life beyond Earth. Says Ed Weller, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate: "The definition of life has just expanded. As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it." This excitement by scientists reminds me of back several years ago when what I believe was a meteor was discovered in someone's backyard. While dissecting this meteor's remnants, scientists came to believe that there was evidence within the meteor for the possibility of the existence of life (again, I believe) on Mars. Because of this finding, scientists went to great lengths to protect this meteor.

Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but whenever I hear people talk about the possible existence of life or signs of life on another planet, I cannot help but think of the abortion issue. Here we have NASA scientists going all crazy about a microorganism as being a "life", something to be valued, protected, and looked upon in awe; and yet every day hundreds of actual human lives are aborted with little if any consideration. No value, no protection, no awe. Imagine an alien scientist from outer space, not understanding human reproductivity, seeing for the first time a baby in the womb of a human. Would they be as amazed of this "life" as our scientists seem to be about life beyond Earth?