Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Arctic Light - TSO Photography


The Arctic Light from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
This was filmed between 29th April and 10th May 2011 in the Arctic, on
the archipelago Lofoten in Norway.

My favorite natural phenomenon is one I do not even know the name of, even after talking to meteorologists and astrophysicists I am none the wiser.What I am talking about I have decided to call The Arctic Light and it is a natural phenomenon occurring 2-4 weeks before you can see the Midnight Sun.

The Sunset and Sunrise are connected in one magnificent show of color and light lasting from 8 to 12 hours. The sun is barely going below the horizon before coming up again. This is the most colorful light that I know, and the main reason I have been going up there for the last 4 years, at the exact
same time of year, to photograph. Based on previous experience, I knew this was going to be a very
difficult trip. Having lost a couple of cameras and some other equipment up there before, it was crucial to bring an extra set of everything. I also
made sure I had plenty of time in case something went wrong.
If you can imagine roping down mountain cliffs, or jumping around on slippery rocks covered in seaweed with 2 tripods, a rail, a controller,
camera, lenses, filters and rigging for 4-5 hour long sequences at a time, and then
having to calculate the rise and fall of the tides in order to capture the essence - it all prved bit of a challenge.

And almost as if planned, the trip would turn out to become very
difficult indeed. I had numerous setbacks including: airline lost my
luggage, struggling to swim ashore after falling into the Arctic sea: twice, breaking lenses, filters, tripod, computer, losing the whole dolly rig and controller into the sea, and even falling off a rather tall rock and ending
up in the hospital. As much as I wanted to give up, the best way Out is
always “Through”. I am glad I stuck it through though because there were some amazing sunrises waiting. At 1:06 you see a single scene from day to night to day.

I asked the very talented Marika Takeuchi to specifically compose and
perform a song for this movie, and what she came up with is absolutely remarkable. Thank you very much Marika!



Available in Digital Cinema 4k

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Press/licensing/projects contact: terjes@gmail.com

Music: "The Arctic Light" by Marika Takeuchi
http://on.fb.me/kOezbO

Thank you to my sponsors:
http://www.canon.com/
http://www.g-technology.com/
http://www.dynamicperception.com/
http://www.fstopgear.com/
and to my friend Geir Nøtnes for all the help.

11-05-31 Memorial Day Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific/Lantern Floating Ceremony

Memorial Day...means Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of The Pacific and the Lantern Floating Ceremony at Ala Moana beach park.  This year I got brave and got in the water with the rest of the photographers and was able to capture shots that pleased me.











































































Saturday, May 28, 2011

11-05-28 Kaneohe Bay Sunrise/Kualoa Beach Park

This morning we returned to a favorite...sunrise on Kaneohe Bay with low tide.  Unfortunately the wind was pretty brisk today making it difficult to get the glassy water we got on previous outings.  We had to resort to ND filters and low f/stops.

I also made my first attempt at HDR...I know, I know I just got started late.


















Wednesday, May 25, 2011

7 Ways to Stop Wall Street's Con Game by David Korten





Wikipedia defines a “confidence trick” as “an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty.”(Photo by Jun)

Ever hear a business reporter on the evening business news say, “Today, investors drive up the price of commodities to create a hundred billion in new value,” or some such? Sounds great, almost implying we should offer thanks to these champions of the public good who are risking their fortunes to expand the pool of wealth to enrich us all. The reporter is manipulating the language to set us up as marks in the Wall Street con.
A more honest report might have said, “Today, hedge fund traders speculating with other people’s money walked away with multimillion dollar commissions for inflating the commodities bubble by a hundred billion dollars.” In a more honest world, the report would clearly distinguish between real investors creating real wealth through real investments and speculators creating phantom wealth with financial games. People who bet on the price of pieces of paper would be called “gamblers.” Those who hold the bets and distribute the winnings would be called “bookies.”
Boil it down to the basics and you see that Wall Street is in the business of operating four sophisticated, large-scale confidence games.
In a more honest world, business news would clearly distinguish between real investors creating real wealth through real investments and speculators creating phantom wealth with financial games.
  • Securities fraud: Selling shares in asset bubbles that are maintained solely by the constant inflow of new money is, in effect, a Ponzi scheme.
  • Reverse insurance fraud: Insurance fraud, by common definition, occurs when the insured deceives the insurer. In reverse insurance fraud, the insurer deceives the insured. In Wall Street practice this involves collecting premiums to cover risks the insurer lacks adequate reserves to cover and then refusing to pay legitimate claims.
  • Predatory lending: Using a combination of extortion, fraud, deceptive promises, and usury, predatory lenders lure the desperate into perpetual debt at exorbitant interest rates.
Because of Wall Street’s hold on lawmakers, these may all be perfectly legal, but phantom wealth is still phantom wealth, and these are all forms of theft. In three-card monte the dealer shuffles the cards so fast you can’t follow them, while talking even faster. Complex derivatives are a fast shuffle that makes it virtually impossible to follow the connection to any real value.
What makes the Wall Street con so much better for the dealers than a typical street con is that Wall Street dealers bet on their own game using other people’s money and then manipulate the market outcome in their own favor, rewarding themselves with huge bonuses when they win and taking billions in taxpayer bailouts when they lose.
Real financial reform would render unproductive speculation either illegal or unprofitable. Here are a few suggestions:
  1. Prohibit selling, insuring, or borrowing against an asset not actually owned by the seller, and issuing any security not backed by a real asset—all common Wall Street practices.
  2. Place strict limits on how much a financial institution can borrow in order to buy a property, and establish conservative reserve and capital requirements for institutions in the business of selling insurance of any kind.
  3. Regulate bond-rating agencies and impose strict penalties for fraudulent ratings.
  4. Impose a small financial-speculation tax of a penny on every $4 spent on the purchase and sale of financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, foreign currencies, and derivatives. This would have no consequential impact on real investors making long-term investments in real businesses and assets. But it would discourage short-term speculation and arbitraging.
  5. End the obscure tax loophole that allows hedge fund managers to report their billion-dollar compensation packages as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent.
  6. Assess a 100 percent capital gains surcharge on profit from the sale of assets held less than an hour, 80 percent if held less than a week, and perhaps falling to 50 percent on assets held more than a week but less than six months. This would render most forms of speculation unprofitable, stabilize financial markets, and lengthen the investment horizon without penalizing real investors.
  7. Eliminate debt slavery by raising the wages of working people and the taxes of the moneylenders.
Opponents will claim that such regulation and taxes will stifle financial innovation. Good. That is the intention. Wall Street’s financial innovations are mostly ever more sophisticated and deceptive forms of theft. They should be discouraged. Keep the casinos in Vegas. The need to rebuild financial institutions that meet our needs for basic financial services will be the subject of next week’s blog.
David Korten
David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, TheGreat Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

11-05-24 "Kaniakapupu" King Kamehameha lll's Summer Palace/Queen Liliokulani Gardens

Dwight is interested in stepping up to a DSLR but has been having a difficult time actually committing to the purchase.  In the interest of speeding the process up we went to see Josh at Hawaii Photo Rental to rent a Canon 7D for Dwight to try out for a day. 

Unfortunately all the 7D's were rented out so we had to settle for a 5D Mark ll...now we had to find something for Dwight to shoot.  Kaniakapupu and Queen Liliokulani Gardens here we come.

The first two shots are of the house behind the parking lot of Hawaii Photo Rental.  It was just interesting to me.