Alton Illinois 1.8

Alton Illinois 1.8, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

We are standing in Downtown Alton close to the water front. To the lest of my location is the Mississippi River and the Clark Bridge. I was set up at an intersection and i was using my 70-300mm for this photo. It was really neat as i was able to capture several directions of traffic trails at once. I love how the light bends when a car ot truck turns in a different directions. It is just amazing to me!!

Exposure: 30 sec (30)
Aperture: f/16
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Alton Illinois 1.10

Alton Illinois 1.10, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

"Sony 18-70mm"

This was a good photo of the bridge from the East side in the city of Alton. I was using the kit lens so i could get a wide angle shot of the center portion of the bridge. In the upper right corner you can see a jet flying. I love the crisp, bright feel that this photo has.

Exposure: 12 sec (12)
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 20 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Alton Illinois 1.12

Alton Illinois 1.12, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

"Sony 18-70mm"

We were standing the a levee near the beginning of the bridge on the East side of the Clark Bridge. I was using the kit lens as i wanted to get a wide photo of the structure looking from East to West. It is a very interesting bridge in its construction and style. You can see the Moon over the top of the bridge with the light being projected from the top as well.

Exposure: 19 sec (19)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 50 mm

Alton Illinois 1.13

Alton Illinois 1.13, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

"Sony 18-70mm"

I love the light that is being projected from the top of the bridge. There was so much light with several cars traveling West on the bridge that it got washed out but it creates an interesting effect no the less.

Exposure: 11 sec (11)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 400

26 cheerleaders get stuck ...

26 cheerleaders get stuck in elevator at UT's Jester Residence Hall

AUSTIN -- Forget Aggie jokes.

Cheerleaders attending camp at the University of Texas have provided
more than enough funny fodder for the state this summer.

Ever wondered how many cheerleaders can fit onto an elevator? We’ll give you a hint: Not 26.

But a group of peppy campers found this out the hard way at UT’s Jester Residence Hall.

Twenty-six cheerleaders packed into an elevator there, but it got stuck
and stayed that way for about 30 minutes.

Some of the girls passed out.

Others used their cell phones to call for help.

One girl was treated and released at a hospital and two others were
treated at the scene after the Tuesday night prank, officials said.

UT officials didn’t think the prank was all that funny.

“It’s dangerous, actually,” said UT police spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon.
“They’re lucky that that’s all that happened.”

Just a few
weeks ago, teens at another campus cheerleading camp had an entire
dormitory evacuated after they smelled an unidentifiable odor.

Hazmat crews descended on the scene and discovered the culprit: burnt popcorn.

But the benign source of the smell didn’t stop dozens of cheerleaders
from complaining of respiratory problems.

TSA to Allow Laptops in Approved Bags: Time

(WASHINGTON) — There's a new option for people annoyed at having to
take their laptops out of their bags at airport security. The
Transportation Security Administration will now allow travelers to
leave their computers inside "checkpoint friendly" cases.

The new rules, announced Tuesday and set to take effect Aug. 16, are intended to help streamline the X-ray inspection lines.

TSA said it reached out to bag manufacturers this year to design
laptop cases that would provide a clear, unobstructed image of the
computer as it passed through an X-ray machine. The agency said the new
bags will be available for purchase this month.

To qualify as "checkpoint friendly," a bag must have a designated
laptop-only section that unfolds to lie flat on the X-ray machine belt
and contains no metal snaps, zippers or buckles and no pockets.

Among the manufacturers selling TSA-approved laptop bags are Mobile Edge, Skooba Design and Targus Inc.

Mexicans in US illegally at more risk of AIDS: REUTERS

By Mica Rosenberg

MEXICO CITY, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Mexican men
living and working illegally in the United States are more likely to
sell their bodies for sex, take drugs or frequent prostitutes than they
would have been in their homeland, increasing their risk of AIDS
infection, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

And if they
are deported, they can take the virus back home with them, the
researchers told an international conference on AIDS in Mexico City.


"They are in a new environment, they are discriminated against, they
are living in harsh conditions, sometimes just in boxes covered in
plastic near the farms where they work," said George Lemp of the
California HIV/AIDS Research Program at the University of California,
who studied 458 Mexicans before and after they left their homeland.

"When people live that way, they engage in high-risk behavior," Lemp said in an interview.


About 11 million Mexicans live in the United States, more than half of
them undocumented, and a recent U.S. crackdown on illegal immigrants
and increase in deportations could make the danger of HIV infection
worse, conference delegates said.

The men in the study were
three times more likely to have sex with a prostitute in California
than they were before leaving Mexico, Lemp's research showed. They were
five times more likely to have sex while using drugs or drinking and 13
times more likely to have sex with another man.

The men were
more likely to use condoms in the United States, according to the
study. But their risk-taking behavior nonetheless increases the
possibility of infection, Lemp said.

In Mexico, 0.3 percent of the population is infected with HIV. In the United States, the infection rate is 0.6 percent.


Hispanics make up about 15 percent of the U.S. population. They account
for 18 percent of new AIDS diagnoses, according to the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, but determining the infection rate
among illegal Mexican immigrants is difficult, as many do not seek
testing.

Steffanie Strathdee, a professor at the University of
California, San Diego, found that residents of the border city Tijuana
who injected drugs and had been deported from the United States were
four times as likely to be infected with the AIDS virus as drug users
who had not been deported.

New outbreaks of the virus are also being detected in small towns far from the border, researchers said.


Indigenous Zapotec migrants from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca
contracted HIV in the United States but were often too afraid of
deportation to seek medical care, a joint study by Mexico's health
ministry and the California HIV/AIDS Research Program found.

If
they return to their villages, they can infect their partners if they
do not know, or are unwilling to reveal, that they have the disease,
ministry researchers said.

Prison Unit

Prison Unit, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

We were traveling through Huntsville Texas to get to Houston to visit a few more people before we were to travel back home. We stopped at the Texas Prison Museum and also I took a few photos of some of the TDCJ Units that are located along I45 South. This is one of them.

Exposure: 1/3200 sec
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Reflections on floor.

Taken with my LGVX8600 1.3Megapixel phone.
From RMStringer

Neat Light.

Taken with my LGVX8600 1.3Megapixel phone.
From RMStringer

Death Becomes It 1.4

Death Becomes It 1.4, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

Up close and personal with the head...

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/25
Focal Length: 230 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Death Becomes It 1.3

Death Becomes It 1.3, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

Different view...

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Death Becomes It 1.2

Death Becomes It 1.2, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

So close you can nearly smell it!!!

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 210 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Death Becomes It 1.1

Death Becomes It 1.1, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I was on a golf cart with my brother going around the lake at our grandfather's house looking for something interesting to photo. We came across this gruesome animal and he said to get a few pics of it. I did and this is what i got. It is some kind of animal that has been picked nearly clean. There a total of 4 pictures in the "Death Becomes It" series. It was very hot and dry as you can tell but there was no bad smell from the skeleton which was very strange to me

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 135 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Texas Prison Museum: Black/White

Texas Prison Museum: Black/White, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

Texas Prison Museum

Exposure: 1/2500 sec
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Me...

Me..., originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I took this while looking at a mirror in our bathroom. It is my "Self Portrait" if you will. I was cleaning my camera trying to get some dust out of the chamber and i had to take a "test" photo. This is how it turned out. I have the Quantaray 70-300mm lens on the cam which i shoot with most of the time.

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Mack: Preabsolutely

Thanks to Mac for letting me post this.

 

 

Preabsolutely

 

Perhaps the excessive use of the prefix "pre" began with advertisements by funeral homes: we were urged to preplan preneed for our predemise.  But of course a plan by definition is a pre thing, and if you are planning your funeral that too is pre since you are not yet posed (or preposed) in the coffin under the scientifically-arranged (or prearranged) lights to make you look pretty. To say "pre-plan" is like saying "plan-plan."  With the complementary use of "absolutely" as a universal four-syllable substitute for the perfectly utilitarian one-syllable "yes," the language took a divergent road in the yellow wood, and the way back is blocked by an avalanche of obscurantism.

 

To help make the works of our culture more accessible to moderns lost in that wood, I propose (or prepropose) the following re-makes (pre-makes?) of certain literary and cinematic icons of our time:

 

Casablanca:

 

Rick: "Last night we presaid a great many prethings. Absolutely. You presaid I was to predo the prethinking for both of us. Well, I've predone a lot of it since then, and it all preadds up to one prething: you're pregetting on that preplane with Victor where you prebelong. Absolutely."
Ilsa: "But, Richard, preno, I... I..."
Rick: "Now, you've got to prelisten to me! You have any preidea what you'd prehave to prelook preforward to if you prestayed here? Nine prechances out of ten, we'd both prewind up in a preconcentration camp. Isn't that pretrue, Louie?"
Captain Renault: "Absolutely."
Ilsa: "You're presaying this only to premake me prego."
Rick: "I'm presaying it because it's pretrue. Inside of us, we both preknow you prebelong with Victor. You're prepart of his prework, the thing that prekeeps him pregoing. If that plane preleaves the ground and you're not prewith him, you'll preregret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but presoon and for the prerest of your prelife.  Absolutely
Ilsa: "But prewhat about us?"
Rick: "We'll always prehave Paris. We didn't have, we, we prelost it until you precame to Casablanca. We pregot it back last night.  Absolutely."
Ilsa: "When I presaid I would never preleave you. Absolutely."
Rick: "And you never prewill. But I've got a prejob to do, too. Where I'm pregoing, you can't prefollow. What I've got to predo, you can't be any prepart of. Ilsa, I'm no pregood at prebeing prenoble, but it doesn't pretake much to presee that the problems of three little people don't preamount to a hill of beans in this precrazy world. Someday you'll preunderstand that. Now, now... Here's prelooking at you kid. Absolutely."

 

Gone With the Wind:

 

Scarlett: "Oh, Rhett, prewhere shall I prego?  What shall I predo?"
Rhett:  "Absolutely."

 

President Kennedy:  "Ich prebin ein preBerliner.  Absolutely."

 

John Wayne in True Grit: "Prefill your hand, you son-of-an-absolute!"

 

Ernest Hemingway: "There is prenothing to prewriting. All you do is presit down at a typewriter and prebleed.  Absolutely."

 

Thomas More: "I predie the King's pregood servant, but God's prefirst.  Absolutely."

 

Martin Luther King: "I prehave a predream.  Absolutely."

 

President Roosevelt:  "Yesterday, a date which will prelive in preinfamy, the United States of America was predeliberately and preabsolutely preattacked by naval and forces of the Empire of Japan…"

 

And now, let us close with a prayer:

 

"Our Father, who preart in Heaven, prehallowed be Thy Name.  Absolutely.  Thy prekingdom come, Thy will be predone, on Earth as it is in Heaven.  Absolutely.  Pregiveus this day our predaily prebread, and preforgive us our pretresspasses as we preforgive those who pretresspass against us.  Absolutely.  And prelead us not into temptation, but predeliver us from preevil.  Absolutely."

 

-30-

 

"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."

-- G. K. Chesterton

Funny!

Funny!, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I saw this sign at a beer store in Texas while on vacation. Please enjoy it!!

Leaf on the Water...

Leaf on the Water..., originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I was swimming in the water during last week's vacation in Texas on the lake. We went out at 10.30am and did not go in until 5.30pm. We got BURNT UP!! It used to be no big thing to stay out all day but we have not been on the lake during the summer for almost 3 years. I saw the leak floating and thought that it would be a neat photo. So i waded in the water to my wast with my camera in hand and and took several photos. I liked this the most. I love how the water shimmers in the sunlight and the leaf with its browns,reds and greens contrasts to the sandy water. I took the photo about 1.00pm in the afternoon so the sun was very strong.

Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/9
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Sea Of Clouds 1.1

Sea Of Clouds 1.1, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

Taken from my seat on our flight from Houston To St Louis. Somewhere about the United States Over 20,000 Feet!

It was very hard to get this shot out the window as i was sitting in the outside seat on the isle. The lady by the window was kind enough to let me shoot through. I tried several in color but they did not turn out like this one did. I love the tall thunder heads peaking above the sea of flat clouds. They remind me of high mountains on a flat plane.

Exposure: 1/4000 sec
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 140 mm
ISO Speed: 200