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New Version of UPCA Church Interior

This is an updated version of a previous post of the interior of United Presbyterian Church in Albany, Oregon.

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Seeing Human Traits in AIs

Bashful and Bold

This picture is titled “Bashful and Bold”. To me, it evokes two people standing next to each other. The one on the left looks like it is shyly hiding its face behind the shoulder of the other, while the one on the right looks like it is facing the viewer with arms outstretched, blasting forward.

Of course, these are only unusual flowers with none of the emotions described above. It’s common for people to attribute emotions or other human characteristics to inanimate objects. While this is fairly harmless for something like this picture, things get a little more complicated when we think about the latest developments in AI and how people may react to them.

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Antique Powerland Steam Sawmill

Steam Sawmill
This is a steam-powered sawmill at the Antique Powerland museum complex in Brooks, Oregon, my “Work” entry for the World Wide Panorama project.

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Recent Articles

25
Oct

An Experiment in Looking Carefully

This photograph of a flower was taken in a local rose garden. Like many such photos, it’s been enhanced to show aspects of the flower that, although they were subtle, still jumped out at me enough to want to share them. The very subtle colors of an ostensibly white flower, the overall form and symmetry, the water droplets speaking of a cool, damp, fall morning. All these things were there in the original view, but not as clear.

Click or tap on the picture, and you will see a version of the picture with no distractions around it. Then click or tap again and it will become an interactive picture that lets you look around and see the whole location where the picture was taken.

Swipe to pan around, and pinch to zoom in and out. Find the flower and tap it again to return to the original picture.

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4
Oct

A Community Park

This is the Yachats Commons Park in Yachats, Oregon.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

Yachats is a small coastal town, popular for tourists looking for a quiet place to spend some time on the coast. My original plan was to shoot this Wrinkle panorama in the same rose garden as the first two, but plans changed, as they often do.

This park isn’t necessarily anything special, but it did allow me to keep sort of a garden theme, and I did think this particular spot was pretty.

12
Sep

Junction City

This is Junction City, Oregon, a city in name only.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This spherical picture was my entry for the “Cities” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.

Junction City is a very small town; its name can be seen if you look closely at the orange banners hanging along the street or the water tower peeking over the trees across the corner. Despite the name, it’s a small town with a lot of typical small town character.

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22
Aug

Waikiki Sunset

This is sunset on the Waikiki beach on Christmas day, 2008.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This picture was taken during a family vacation but never processed. Our family had traveled to Oahu for a Christmas break vacation, and I took the opportunity to take this sphere (in addition to other photography, of course). I decided to finally finish this picture for one of my World Wide Panorama (WWP) 20 Year celebration entries this year.

This picture was difficult from several standpoints. Obviously, the bright sunset and dimmer surroundings were a challenge for photography. I had to use high dynamic range (HDR) techniques to get this much range. But also, we were traveling and I didn’t have my normal tripod. This made some aspects of taking a spherical picture more difficult.

30
Jul

A Picture of Evolution

This is the Independence Amphitheater in Independence, Oregon. It’s part of an effort by the town to transform itself from a small historical town into a vibrant destination for other communities.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This spherical picture was my entry for the “Evolution” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.

One meaning of “evolution” is directed change — change that has direction or purpose and is not totally random. We often think of the term as the direction of increasing complexity of biological systems that occurs as the result of natural selection. However, many different systems can evolve when they change purposefully, such as the evolution of this town.

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28
Jun

Avery Park (revisited)

This is the rose garden in a local park.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This picture revisits the same location as an earlier post.

In that earlier post, new growth was just starting. Now, many flowers are in full bloom in different shades of red, although some are white like the ones in the trellis surrounding the camera.

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7
May

McDonald Research Forest

This was taken in the McDonald Research Forest.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This panorama is one of my entries for the World Wide Panorama “20 Years” project, and is a repeat of one take almost seven years ago at the same location. (That earlier VR was incorrectly titled “Peavy Arboretum”. )

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21
Apr

More About Local Wonder

An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.

There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.

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15
Apr

Neskowin Ghost Forest

This is the Neskowin Ghost Forest, a grove of trees that was buried in sand around 2000 years ago.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

Although many reports claim that these trees were buried in an earthquake, the best consensus is that they were buried by gradual dune encroachment. This often happens on coastlines.

This buried forest was uncovered in 1997-8 during a winter of El Niño storms and have been exposed ever since.

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5
Apr

Avery Park

This is the rose garden in a local park at mid-morning as the sun is just starting to illuminate it.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

Taken at the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, new growth is just starting. This picture was taken as my initial entry in the World Wide Panorama (WWP) “Wrinkle” project, in which 360 panoramas will be taken all over the world during the 24-our period surrounding each solstice and equinox.

I hope to take all of the Wrinkle pictures here, although perhaps in slightly different spots, to show the change of seasons in the garden.

The Wrinkle project is to take multiple pictures at the same time but at different locations. With luck, my entries will also be the compliment of that — taking multiple pictures at the same location but at different times.