[null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.peterpatau.com/2009_12_27_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2638/4231510171_580bb22e3e.jpg", "src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2638/4231510171_580bb22e3e.jpg", "formatted_filename": "bb e e", "alt_text": "Wishing You a Happy and a Peaceful New Year", "rendered_width": 410, "rendered_height": 307}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.peterpatau.com/2009_12_27_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2794/4232286544_e118264e2f.jpg", "src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2794/4232286544_e118264e2f.jpg", "formatted_filename": "e e f", "alt_text": "Sun Sets on a Troubled Decade We'd Do Over (and Better) If We Could", "rendered_width": 410, "rendered_height": 230}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.peterpatau.com/2009_12_27_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4227893542_64550e1aa9.jpg", "src": "http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4227893542_64550e1aa9.jpg", "formatted_filename": "e aa", "alt_text": "I Pointed My Big Superwide Lens at the Federal Courthouse Yesterday", "rendered_width": 410, "rendered_height": 272}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.peterpatau.com/2009_12_27_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2736/4226376770_6788ae56f0.jpg", "src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2736/4226376770_6788ae56f0.jpg", "formatted_filename": "ae f", "alt_text": "Coming Back in February", "rendered_width": 410, "rendered_height": 370}, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.peterpatau.com/2009_12_27_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2541/4220806953_2f84c70f0a.jpg", "src": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2541/4220806953_2f84c70f0a.jpg", "formatted_filename": "f c f a", "alt_text": "Looking Back at December's Snows and the University Avenue Lights", "rendered_width": 410, "rendered_height": 272}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]

2009 in About One Minute

Here's my 2009: A year in Pictures set scrolling by in just over a minute. Most are personal moments or things that just caught my eye, day-to-day, though there was the green interlude in the spring when I just pointed my camera at T's tulip bed every day until they bloomed. Occasionally national events made an appearance, snapped off the teevee -- like Pete Seeger singing at the Inaugural Concert. Once a public figure stepped into range of my camera, when my Washington-Minneapolis flight also carried Senator Al Franken. But mostly it was pretty mundane stuff. If you'd like to click through to see any of the individual pictures just follow this link to the set.

I didn't think I'd join another picture-a-day group after this one was finished. I'm not sure it's all that great for photography. Often you find yourself just shooting a picture to shoot a pictures. But now that I have a set representing the whole year, it is sort of interesting to page through them all. So I don't know. I might do it again, though if I do, I think I'll join a group that accepts videos as well as photos. But I think I'll take a few days off before making up my mind.
Posted by Peter Patau at 8:51 PM No comments: Links to this post 

Wishing you a happy and peaceful new year! With the emphasis on peace.
Posted by Peter Patau at 4:17 PM 1 comment: Links to this post 
It can only get better, right?
Posted by Peter Patau at 3:59 PM 1 comment: Links to this post 

I pointed my big, fat superwide lens at the federal courthouse and nobody hassled me! Although the Sigma 10-20mm zoom on my Nikon D90 is a pretty impressive piece of glass, nobody came out and hassled me. Amazing! In the past I've been hassled.

"What are you doing?" asks the security guard. He looks like he could be a retired cop -- trim but a bit heavyset, with thinning gray hair and glasses. He looks very suspicious, and he's not smiling.

"I'm taking a picture," I reply. "I really like this building. It's fun to photograph."

"Taking a picture? Then why are you so close? You can't even get the whole building in the picture from here. People usually shoot from back there on the sidewalk.

"Why do you have to be so close?" he asks again, fixing me with a skeptical look. "This is a federal building, and we have to be careful."

"I have a wide angle lens, so I have to get close" I say. "Here. Take a look through the viewfinder. It's really cool."

"No, I can't see through that with my glasses. Do you have any ID?"

Other Madison photographers have also been hassled, even getting into extended correspondence with officialdom about it. But yesterday afternoon, nothing. Nada. There were guards right inside the door, but they never came out. Maybe it was too cold. Or it was the spirit of the holidays. More likely, the bright neon entrance of the Kenton Peters Kastenmeier Federal Courthouse -- which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year -- is such an obvious tourist photo subject they usually don't bother.

But stay away from the alley out back, or the parking lot.
Posted by Peter Patau at 1:42 AM 3 comments: Links to this post 

She's lovely -- and she's coming back soon 

It's great to know that the condition of Madison's Statue of Liberty has been stabilized and that it will continue to reappear in the winter.
Posted by Peter Patau at 2:06 PM No comments: Links to this post 

"The system works" -- I guess that means the Transportation Security Administration doesn't

Who doesn't wonder when they take a plane whether all that TSA folderol actually accomplishes anything other than to build the world's largest collection of confiscated pocket geegaws with sharp edges? I like to think that TSA is more than the do-nothing federal job creation caricature critics make it out to be, but like a lot of folks, I wonder now and then. The sorry saga of the would-be Christmas Day skybomber on that Detroit flight certainly gives critics of TSA lots of ammunition.

But the real confidence-shaker was the way Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano limped on a single leg from one Sunday morning talk show to another with her other foot planted firmly in her mouth, two full days after the event. It was amazing she could talk at all with her mouth so full. She told CNN the incident demonstrates "the system works." She said the same thing on This Week when I was was watching. I couldn't believe she said what I thought she said and had to turn to the internet to confirm it.

If you take what she said literally, she seems to be advocating an extreme privatization approach to homeland security in the air -- that is, making it the responsibility of individual brave, quick-thinking and resourceful passengers. I doubt that's what she meant. But since it's impossible to figure out what she really did mean, can't President Obama at least reassign her to some distant Homeland Security outpost where she would have no operational responsibility whatsoever and wouldn't have to talk to the press? Someplace like Antarctica?

And while he's at it, he might show some real concern and urgency about ending the track record of hapless security bungling that seems to be taking place on his Administration's watch lately. They shouldn't have gate crashers at the White House, and they shouldn't be letting a person they were warned about board a U.S. plane with pentaerythritol trinitrate taped to his leg.

Update: Now she says the system didn't work after all. Which is it? We haven't seen such an example of complacent cluelessness in public for some time. "Heckuva job, Brownie."
Posted by Peter Patau at 1:27 AM 3 comments: Links to this post