Kurt Hochenauer-Creator of Okie Funk

I had the privilege of hearing award winning blogger Dr. Kurt Hochenauer speak in class last Thursday and i was surprised to find how enthralled i was in what it takes to become a successful blogger today. Despite the fact that he has made most of his success back in 2008 and 2009, he still remains today as a strong willed, successful liberal blogger in an extremely right wing state. I don't want to say it was easier to break into the blogging scene when he first started in 2004, but there was certainly less competition. Back in 2004, there was around 2.5 million blogs. Now, however, there is upwards of 200 million blogs. That being said, Dr. Hochenauer did an excellent job converging his media to the changing scene. He switched blog platforms multiple times as he grew in popularity. That is a feat in itself, let alone the feat of remaining a valuable read as a liberal blogger in Oklahoma. Sure, he gets his fair share of criticism, as do most controversial writers out there. 

His status as a writer has also grown since he began writing. He has held multiple writing and editing jobs for various newspapers from the beginning of his blogging career. He has worked at the Oklahoman, the Tulsa Tribune, and the Kansas City Star. One of the most honorable things i found about Dr. Hochenauer is that he purposely does not accept revenue from his blogs success. The ads that would be a result from him accepting the money, he says, would clutter and cheapen his blog and disappoint his readers. My view on blogging has changed, in that, i don't necessarily need to compromise my beliefs and morals to please my readership. As long as i stick to my guns, proofread my work, and blog often, I'm pretty much guaranteed hits.

If you are interested in reading his work click the link below 

http://www.okiefunk.com/ 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Long Exposure Photography-Part 2

Long Exposure Photography

            From the splitting of an atom, to galaxies far, far away, pictures have been used to develop and spread information all across humanity. It has played an outlandishly large role in the development of society since it’s introduction in France in the early 1800s.  Joseph Nicéphore Niépce most likely knew, upon taking his first photo, he had stumbled upon something that would revolutionize the way information was spread. This invention along with the variety and artistry involved with taking and examining photos continues to shape the way we live our lives; more so than the typical person may be aware of.  There are many different types of photography. One such type is Long exposure Photography.

Long exposure photography is a style in which the shutter is left open for as longer amount of time (be in 8 seconds or 8 hours) as to let more light in. therefore brightening and sometimes blurring any movement.  It captures a different point of view and skews the way a viewer perceives time. It’s almost an eccentric way of capturing movement yet it has also been used to capture an eerily still environment.  One of the many different styles of long exposure photography is the way in which space is examined. It’s used for research purposes and artistic purposes. 

Many photographers use long exposure photography for artistic purposes. One such photographer is Lincoln Harrison. Lincoln Harrison takes most of his pictures in his homeland of Australia. His choice of setting and angle is the reason he is one of my favorite photographers in this genre.  Lincoln uses a website called “500Px” to display his pictures. His work has over 359,000 views and 18,500 positive reviews.  His works have been viewed all over the world as a great representation of what great long exposure photographs should look like.

Another one of my favorite long exposure photographers weighs around 24,000 pounds, travels 17,000 miles per hour, and has been taking non-stop shots for around 22 years now. The Hubble telescope was carried into space in 1990 and remains active today. When long exposures are used while traveling 17,000 miles per hour, compensation must be made in order to keep the shots from turning out as a blurry mess. This compensation is met using technical equations regarding motion versus distance and mirrors implanted into the telescope that stabilize the lens. As you can assume, many upgrades and tweaks have been made to the telescope since its launch and it remains as one of the most technical pieces of equipment NASA has ever built.  The pictures this telescope transmits to Earth are objects hundreds of thousands of light years away, yet the detail they portray remains captivating. Hubble has been used primarily for research. It has shed light on distant universes and given scientists an even closer look as to how small and insignificant Earth truly is in the scheme of things.

Long exposure photography will always be a big interest in mine and I feel, like all photography, I will never truly master it. This art takes practice and, most certainly, persistence. After all, it’s a bit more disappointing when you find your shot to be blurry after waiting 8 hours.

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor get...More Poor

"We are the 1%"

No, Occupy wall streeters. You're more like roughly the 21%.

.......Awkward.

ANYWAY, I covered the article in the New York Time's called, "Income Data Shows Widening Gap Between New York City's Richest and Poorest". 

Now, pause for a moment while we recognize the uncanny ability of New York Time's writer Sam Roberts to come up with a catchy title...*continued ellipses*

Despite the title being..questionably witty, the content of this article was actually somewhat surprising to me. Since the recession officially ended in 2009 and Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly conveyed the imminent and "obvious" recovery of New York's economy,  recent data shows that, actually, this politician may be lying. or maybe he's just been given bad information? Surely he wouldn't lie to the city to maintain the job of mayor and keep a reputation?..I digress. 

The percentage difference between the financial eschelons in New York actually got worse this last year(or better depending on which end you look at it from), climbing almost a full percent! A full percent!

Here are the numbers:
The poverty rate is now at 20.9%--up from 20.1% last year.
-Median Household Income: $49, 461--Down $821 from last year (as compared to this # being down $642 nationally
-Median income for the LOWEST fifth (the poor side of town): $8, 844--down $463
-Median income for the highest fifth in town: $223, 285--UP $1, 919
In Manhattan, the numbers are more steep.
The rich brought in an average of $391,022
The poor only $9, 681

The only other city in the nation that reported this steep of an income gap was Clarke County, Ga.
Granted, 1/3 of Clarke County residents are college students. 
^Respect.^

Click HERE to see Sam's article.

Experimenting with Long Exposures

With these pictures i have set the Shutter speed to "bulb" which means the shutter will remain open until i direct it to close. This setting can make nighttime almost seem like daytime. Let me show you what i mean.

Let there be light!

Taken on 2nd Street just outside Freddies, this shot was about a 15 second exposure.

Any light visible to the lens during the exposure will almost be magnified due to the length of time the lens sees the light. 

You may also have seen pictures of cars on the highway that look like all of the headlights and taillights are blurred together to create just one line. This, again, is done with a long exposure.

This was taken on Bryant just North of OU Medical Center on 2nd street. There are less street lights on this part of the road which makes it easier to avoid what i call "Light Pollution" when unwanted light finds its way into the lens therefore spoiling any hope to keep the surrounding area dark.

Notice the fountain. (Not the best fountain to show off long exposure photography)

Im actually not a fan of this picture but my roommate liked it therefore i will show it.

Now, not all long exposures are used to show light blur. Sometimes its used to simply let more light in and make the picture brighter. Its tough though because there can't be any movement in the shot or it will blur. 

Here's an example.

This picture take in Edmonds First Baptist church. It is too dark and needs to be better lit. Well, when you set it to a longer exposure the following is what you'll get.

The lights didn't change. Just the exposure time. I apologize for the slight blur (I forgot my tripod) ;)

I hope you find time to get out there and try some longer exposures! Its one of my favorite things to do!

Blog Review Assignment

I decided to review the blog "[Tech Blog] Microsoft in the Hardware Biz" by Shane Kempton. 
This blog helped me realize many simple things to quickly raise the "wow" factor on my blog. Due to this blog being completely simple and more like an online article, I don't necessarily think it has a "wow" factor.  There are a few things, however, that make me more interested in reading it. 

To begin, it has line breaks in the text to start new paragraphs and to keep the reader's mind from overheating. Also, it keeps the text alive by adding pictures and links to go to different sites that explain the material. This is extremely useful in order to better explain the topic of your text especially if you, as the blogger, are having trouble explaining your point. 

As Grief Turns to Pride

Since photography was first introduced, pictures have been used as a way to convey emotion, bring back memories, and tell such incredible stories that words just won't do them justice. One such story is that of a calm September morning that changed the course of American history. 
To this day, the pictures that were taken on that fateful day still have the ability to bring up unspeakable emotion. Untellable anger. Unfathomable grief.  
But, After the dust settled and the rubble was cleaned up, our anger turned to advancement. Our grief turned to pride.

We will always remember..

The State of the Bloggersphere-What i Learned

Every year the president stands on a podium and gives a speech to Millions of people called "The State of the Union", simply named, due to the fact that he's discussing....well...the state of our union! All politics, lies, and half hearted devotions aside, Technorati releases similar data every year except they explain the State of the Bloggersphere. All the research they've attained after polling, scanning, and counting through all the bloggers and blogs is taken and they post these findings on Technorati's website.

Most researchers tend to post their results in hard to find places and the majority of the time they're hard to read. Seems to me, 90% of the time those results might as well be in Chinese because they're so hard to decipher. Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" is a very useful tool, in that, it's very easy to read, straight forward research that is relatively easy to find. Their graphs and tables representing their data seems to be the most effective way of distributing their findings. I learned many things while reading through the results. Some of the things i learned i had already inferred and some i hadn't. I was surprised to find that the majority of bloggers are actually male. Its not a stereotype to say that i thought women would be more into blogging, its just that, in my experience, girls seem to be the one's more interested in finding emotional outlets. ;) i.e blogging. As you can see, my thought wasn't completely outrageous. Girls dominate the social world aside from only one: blogging.