David Enzel

I haven’t been able to travel much for a while now due to Covid and I miss Paris. I looked through some old photos I have yet to share and am sharing two photos from 2015. They are both views of Paris from the Centre Pompidou. I hope to visit later this year.

I want to give a shout out to Peak Design’s iPhone case and Mobile Tripod. The iPhone case feels great in my hand and has a very strong magnet. The Mobile Tripod folds up small but provides a sturdy base for making photos and videos and proping up an iPhone when you want to watch videos or just read or check emails. I love them both. They are well made and work as described.

I have tried other iPhone tripods but ended up not using them either because they were too bulky or cumbersome. This tripod to me is just right.

Charles Schwab posted this message to its customers:

Important Update Regarding Trading Russian Securities: Due to liquidity issues stemming from restrictions placed on all Russian securities (not just those impacted by recent sanctions) by Schwab’s clearing agents, neither buy nor sell orders on Russian securities are able to be accepted at this time. This is a rapidly evolving situation and we will continue to provide updates as they become available.

Hundreds of Ukrainians and their supporters gathered near The White House on Sunday, February 27, 2022 to protest Russia’s invasion of the country and to demand a stronger response from the United States. The protesters were peaceful. The police were very friendly.

Many motorists honked their car horns in support as they passed by. It wasn’t the 100,000 who marched in Berlin. Nonetheless, I was moved by the experience.

The Holodomor Memorial to Victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–1933 was opened in Washington, D.C. on November 7, 2015. Congress approved creation of the Holodomor Memorial in 2006.

The Holodomor was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. It was a man-made famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. Holodomor is term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).

The memorial was built by the National Park Service and the Ukrainian government to honor the victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33 and to educate the American public.

The memorial, designed by Larysa Kurylas, is one of three monuments in Washington, D.C., designed or co-designed by women—the others being the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.

The memorial is located near the U.S. Capitol building at the intersection of North Capitol Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and F Street N.W. It is diagonal to the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, about one block from Union Station.

You can read more in Atlas Obsura.

This tragedy is not well known in the United States and I imagine elsewhere. Ukraine - a country of some 43 million people - has not had an easy history.

A big snow day in Washington. Yesterday it was 60 degrees F!

On December 18, 2021, nearly 38,000 people showed up to place 257,000 wreaths at every gravesite, columbarium court column and niche wall column at Arlington National Cemetery. This year marked a full return to the event, after Arlington’s volunteer wreath-laying ceremony was canceled in 2020 due to pandemic restrictions. The 2021 commemoration began on Friday with Gold Star families visiting the National Mall in Washington D.C., to lay wreaths across the Vietnam, Korean, World War I, and World War II memorials.

Every time I pick up my camera, I forget the time and everyday life. The camera and the pictures take me to another world. I concentrate on the moment and try to get the best out of that very moment, the conditions, the subject, the location, the light and so on.

Patrik Seiler

Today, I discovered a bug in Photoshop. I ran Smart Sharpen on a photo and ended up with a vertical line in the photo. Adobe reports that this is a Monterey specific bug. Adobe is working on it. Other sharpening methods work without problem.

I recently upgraded my 15 inch 2018 MacBook Pro which has 32 GB of RAM and a 2.6 GHz 6-Core i7 processor. I use the laptop mainly with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. I don’t do anything more taxing. I bought a 16 inch MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64 GB of RAM.

I noticed a major speed improvement right away. I have one large Lightroom Catalogue with many collections and smart collections. On the 2018 MacBook Pro, the smart collections have been slow to load. On the new machine they are sometimes instantaneous and sometimes very quick. The difference is dramatic. Editing in Lightroom is quick and responsive. Photoshop handles large files quickly and easily.

The screen is amazing. I see detail I did not see before. Some photos that I thought were in focus now seem slightly out of focus. The dynamic range is wonderful. This is the best screen I have ever seen.The keyboard is very nice. The built in speakers are louder than I expected on a laptop. It’s early days but so far I love the new M1 Max. Apple really delivered.

The Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown opened in 1979, the year I moved to Washington. It is a beautiful property with outstanding service.

The Art Dealer (L’antiquaire) is a beautiful 2015 French film about a young Parisian woman portrayed by Anna Sigalevitch. She’s searching for paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.

Louis-Do de Lencquesaing who is in the hit French series Spiral does a nice job portraying the woman’ husband.

The cinema-photography is excellent and the slow uncovering of unflattering facts reveals what war brings out in human nature.