Here it is - the much-awaited possible promised day - the day when we can start to reclaim our damaged country, and I am as busy as i can manage keeping my mind off the events of the day.I voted about two weeks ago and now there is nothing further I can do to help fix things. In order to keep my mind off the incessant drivel from the ubiquitous commentators, I am updating my website. It needs it badly; I have so many new photos to put up, and it is good for me to be doing something useful, even if it not useful for the country in general.

Anyway, welcome to my maundering. You'll find some new flower pictures under vegetable-other flora. I hope you like them! Happy Election Day, and may someone bless the United States of America!

For the last year or so, I have been putting most of my new photos not here, but on Instagram. I thought I would try it out and see how it worked. I try to post every day, and add a new photo each time. It's been very interesting to have this plan pushing me to shoot more photos. As always, I want these photos to be worth posting - I see no point in showing the world (or at least the part that sees my work) photos that aren't good enough. 

One of the things about feeling pressure to shoot more photos is the question of what to photograph. In my case, I have turned to flowers for my inspiration. Since we here in Albuquerque have a world-class BioPark, that's where I have mostly been making photos. 

Anyway, if you want to see my latest photos, look me up on Instagram under jeremysteinphoto. And, as always, you can comment here or on my pictures, or send me email. I'll try to post more often here from now on.Thanks for listening!

Here’s a great chance to get prints of my images for much less!

Now that I am no longer doing Arts & Crafts Shows, I have too many framed prints on hand. Most of them are framed to 16x20, but there are several larger ones as well. In order to shrink this inventory, I am announcing a sale of all framed prints on hand for 25% off their usual prices. I also have many of my images printed at 8x10/matted to 11x14, ready to drop into frames. Those are now on sale for $15 each.

Take a look at my images, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/jsteinfoto) and here on my website at www.jsteinfoto.com. Contact me by email (jeremy@jsteinfoto.com) to see if the image(s) you want are included in the framed print inventory, and you can get them for a good price!

As if that's not enough, if you want a print of an image that is not in my inventory, I am reducing the prices of all my prints by 10% for this sale. Just let me know which picture(s) you want and what size, and I will get back to you with a lower price than usual!

Merry Christmas (or the holiday of your choice!)

The Iceland trip pages are now live here, under "Travel Snapshots." The trip description and photos come to four pages (Iceland 1 - 4). I hope you like them; it was a good trip and the scenery was really terrific. I would have liked to see lava, but "You can't always get what you want!"

Enjoy the show...

Well, after a long time of doing very little with this site, I have just added a "Roses" gallery. I have put it under Galleries - Vegetable - Roses. For a long time I found roses very difficult to photograph to my satisfaction, but lately I have been working on them quite a bit, and I have put up a my latest results for your viewing pleasure. Please let me know your thoughts on them - I am interested to see if you like them as much as I do.

I plan to add more to this site now that I have once again learned to use the  Weebly editor. Soon there should be a new travel entry from a visit to Iceland - look for it!

I just finished adding a number of pages to this site on Macro and Close-Up Photography. I have meant to add informative and useful pages to the site for some time, but the real impetus to do it is the mentorship presentation I am giving for members of the Enchanted Lens Camera Club. I'll be giving the presentation from 7 PM to 9 PM this coming Tuesday evening, February 11. I have no idea how many will attend, but I'm hoping for a good crowd and a good discussion. I'll be doing it as part lecture and part live demo, so it should be interesting - for me if no one else! Anyway, even if you do not come to the presentation, take a look at the macro pages; maybe you'll find something useful. If you find any errors, please take the time drop me an email and I'll fix the error and thank you for the help. Thanks in advance...

As you can doubtless see, I do not often post to this blog. Still, here I am again, to let you all know that I will soon add a closeup and macrophotography section to the website. This will primarily center on techniques and equipment for such photography, but I hope it will also come to include photos and descriptions of how they were made. We shall see, he said ominously...

To continue on this topic, I have agreed to present a talk on closeup and macrophotography as a mentorship program for the Enchanted Lens Camera Club here in  Albuquerque. I intend to put all the notes and reference material for that talk here on my website. This will provide all the information to the audience without requiring them to take notes. It will also provide a starting point for anyone who visits my website to learn more about this fascinating aspect of photography. So, stay tuned: I hope to have all the basics up here within a month or so. (Wish me luck with that!)

It's approaching Christmas, and I have a complaint. It's not a new complaint, but it's time to bring it up again. I'm here today to complain about parking lots! Not the lots themselves, although they usually have the lanes too narrow for easy and safe backing out, but the behavior of people in those parking lots.

Here we are in the season of love and charity, and it sometimes seems that it's really the season of parking lot gladiatorial combat. First of all, people almost invariably drive too fast in parking lots. They are in a hurry to get in the store and spend money, and so they race around the lot seeking a space within 10 feet of the store entrance. Of course, there isn't one, so they speed up and criss-cross the lot to find a space that's near enough for them. They wind up spending more time and energy by far than they would have spent just parking well away from the store in the first open spot. And while they are zipping back and forth in the lanes, they are looking only for spaces, not for people. I'm surprised that so few people are maimed in parking lot encounters. It's usually just fender benders, but lots of them!

And look at their faces while they are seeking space to park: there are no smiles to be seen. Grim, intent, tense, children crying, adults complaining - all in the spirit of a merchandise Chri$tma$! Add to that the harried people trying to get from their cars to the bargains, not ever looking behind them; and the children, often not holding parents' hands, bewildered by the whole thing - it's amazing that there aren't more accidents.

So, please, when you are in one of those parking lots: please slow down, take the time to look around, park relatively far from the store so you don't spend so much time and money just driving in the lot, and watch out both driving and walking. Pay attention to the people and cars around you, and smile and be happy and share the spirit of the season! And by the way -- Happy Holidays!

It's Monday afternoon, and the Weems Artfest is over. We tore down last night and I have just finished unloading the van full of pictures, lights, and the myriad other bits and pieces it takes to do the show. It was a good show: lots of people, good conversations with interested folks, some sales, some leads to follow up, and a lot of energy derived from showing my work to so many people. I truly enjoy talking with the people who take the time to come into the booth and tell me what they like and what they don't like about my pictures. I learn a lot from them, and I hope they learn something from me. People are always interested in how I got a picture, where I went to get it, and any of the other things that make each picture more personal.

The hours are long at these shows. Friday it was officially open from 10 to 9, but I got there about 8 in order to adjust positions and lighting, arrange all the matted and bagged prints, and prepare myself. Once the people come in the door there is little time to do anything else, like lunch or bathroom breaks. By the end of the day I am tired and my feet hurt. My voice is nearly gone and I usually wind up a little dehydrated because I forget to drink enough. Then home, eat something, fall into bed, and get up ridiculously early the next day in order to do it all again!

I have been watching (and listening to and reading) the advertisements and cross- and counter-claims being made for and by the various candidates for public office. I also had the misfortune to watch a PBS program showing the way the campaigns are being run and guided. It seems, if I got it right, that the campaigns have unprecedented data on virtually all the possible voters: data on opinions, statements, shopping and reading habits, public and not-so-public statements, memberships, google searches made, movies watched, books read, etcetera. They have handed these data to political computer programs designed to enable them to target everyone in each person's particular weak or susceptible area. The scope and capabilities of these programs are staggering, and, for me at least, enormously frightening! It would a small step from using such programs for political purposes to using them or something like them to watch and listen to all of us for the purpose of altering our opinions or convictions by feeding each of us with targeted information.
Hence the title of this blog entry: I submit that George Orwell had the idea right in his book "1984" but he had the date wrong. The title should have been 2012 or 2013 or 2014. Big Brother is already watching us, and doublespeak and thoughtcrimes are already to be found in our newspapers and "news" broadcasts.