On the Kootenai Creek trail.

In the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.





Yesterday in Montana.

Taking the high road.

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The view from the Big Horn Scenic Byway in Wyoming, where we were the other day.

(You can talk about whatever you want in the comments.)

Shell Falls.

In the Bighorn National Forest:





(That's the fisheye lens on both photos, the second of which was taken by Meade.)

I love the fisheye lens...

... but this thing's insane!

Compared to that, this thing, the one I've had so much fun with, seems quite reasonably priced.

Late Saturday morning, at the Capitol.

There's the Farmers' Market, along with a few protesters, including the hunger striker:


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A 9/11 Truther:


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Inside, quiet visitors:


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Enthusing over the new Sarah Palin video.

"Regardless of whether you support her or not, for President or not, no one does inspirational political (campaign?) videos better than Palin."

You be the judge. Me? I love the fisheye lens!

At the Backward Café...

... don't back down.

Protesters at the Capitol rally against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

It was a constrained and organized media event, with the sign-holders arrayed on the steps around the "Forward!" statue and the speakers in front of them facing the media...



... including the shameless New Media Meade:



There were lots of handmade signs and preprinted signs, and for some reason quite a few men were holding signs that said "We are Wisconsin Women":



"You can put lipstick on him, but it's still Prosser," declares this woman who is "Waiting 4 Justice":



It strangely seems to suggest that the judges ought to be women, but I assume it means he's a pig — an allusion to the old "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" remark. The lipsticked face of Prosser has a speech bubble that reads "Bitch," a reference to an incident, leaked to the press, in which Prosser, provoked by something that wasn't leaked, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch." Does that make him a pig in the sense of "male chauvinist pig"?

This is my favorite sign, because I love the way "GOP" is inserted:



You can see the whole sign in this enlargement of the first photograph. It begins "Prosser is Unqualified!" and then lists 4 problems. Given the insertion mark, I take it she originally wrote "Follows a political agenda," which really does make a person unfit to be a judge. I can only guess at the thought processes of whoever worked on that sign. Adding "GOP" like that shot the righteous indignation to hell.

ADDED: Here's a news report on the rally:

Progressive groups, elected officials and protesters led a call for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser to step down pending the results of an investigation into his workplace behavior at a rally Tuesday afternoon. Held at noon on the Capitol steps facing State Street, it was organized by Lisa Subeck, City of Madison alder and executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin.

"The Wisconsin state Supreme Court should not be allowed to choke out justice for women," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, who represented the Women's Medical Fund at the rally. "Prosser is a supreme disgrace."

At the Protest Dog Café...

... you can yap all night.

What Meade fisheyed at the Tea Party/anti-Tea Party protest.

A man in a Reagan mask says "Tear down this WALLker," while a man in a Mad Hatter costume says "The Mad Hatter called/He wants his Tea Party back."


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A man and woman in colonial costume. The sign says "The REAL Tea Party was about lack of representation & revolt against corporate greed," and the tea kettle has a label that reads "Walker's Kool-aid."


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A man has a sign that reads "Imagine Taxing the Rich," and a woman with a blindfold that says "Fox" holds a sign (in her skeleton-gloved hands) that says "Blinded by the Right."


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And here are 2 pro-Scott Walker guys:


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Everybody wants to take a photo of a man wheeling the large pile of shit that has a "Hello My Name Is Scott Walker" sign stuck in it.

Posing for Democracy... Crying for Liberty....

"It's About Freedom!"



"Now Settle Down, Kitty!"



Inside the rotunda, this afternoon.



All this fisheye comes to you from the inimitable New Media Meade, AKA Meade the Press.

At the Morning Snow Café...

... come on in and sit down...



... everything is all fluffy right now. But the big clumps, accumulating, are starting to drop off, and this prettiness can't last too long, which makes it especially pretty in that evanescent way.

In the Capitol this morning.

Photos by Meade. Looking up into the dome:



Looking down into the rotunda:



And off to the side in at the first floor level (one level up from the ground floor):



Way in the back there are some plastic toys on the floor. It seems to be some sort of grotesque play area.

Meade takes the fisheye to the protest today...

"Who will want to risk their life for no pay?"



"Officers, you have a choice/Disobey illegal orders":



Teachers Assistants Association:



Confrontation of pro- and anti-Walker folk:



An "I support Scott" guy with an antagonist coming up behind him:



Solidarity:

Ending the Capitol protest.

Right now it's 4:00 and the building is about to be cleared. You can watch the live stream here. [UPDATE: Off line now.]

Fisheying the protest yesterday:





ADDED: We should have our own pictures from the scene in a little while.

AND: Meade brought home the video, handed me the cameras, and said "I almost got myself arrested." He's out shoveling snow, while I'm uploading the video to see what he was talking about.

MORE: I've seen and edited the video. I'm just processing it out of iMovie and into YouTube. It's funny the second time you watch it! It looks like a Michael Moore-like thing... attempting to get past the police into the building. Actually, he's doing what I did yesterday, which worked to get us both right in.

ALSO: Based on Meade's interview with Dane County Sheriff deputies, I don't think anyone will be arrested. The people who don't opt to leave will be left alone, except to the extent that the cleaning crew will be working around them.

Inside the Wisconsin Capitol building, at the protest today.

In the rotunda, viewed with the fisheye lens (which feels at home in a round space):



The police presence was strong:



A man with a press pass sits on the ornate stone floor and works on his Power Book:


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"We Can't Lose" says a badly-drawn hand giving the peace sign:



Enlarge to read more signs — "Moms Can Tell You Are Lying," etc.

A man in saggy pants and a Teamsters jacket talks to an hipsterish guy near a sign that says "Get Out of Your EGO, And into Your Heart, Walker Causes GAS, And it's Time to FART":



Signs are laid out on the floor, and a woman sidles along viewing them as if they were a museum display:

The scene at the Veterans Memorial on Saturday.

Yesterday, Meade and I confronted the protesters who'd taped things to the Veterans Memorial at the Wisconsin Capitol and piled up a lot of stuff around it. They promised us they'd get their things off of the memorial and away from it. We returned today, and here's how it looked (via fisheye lens):


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The signs were off the memorial, but, as you can see, the junk was still piled against it, and Meade had a long talk with them — and the Capitol Police — about it. The protesters were very polite and circumspect, even as they fell back on the argument that they thought it was enough to take down the signs — and that they'd thought, yesterday, that it was enough to tape the signs only on the back of the monument. The assertion was made, as it was yesterday, that people can't tell from the back that it's a war monument. Quite aside from the fact that people are free to walk around the monument and see it from all sides, there is a bronze wreath embedded on the back. I asked one woman if she knew the symbolism of a wreath and I think she said she did.

Within a few minutes, the things were moved away from the base of the  monument. There were lots of police around (as you can see if you click through to the enlargements), and they were keeping a strong and professional presence and were excellent at talking to us about the problem (though they didn't want to be videotaped speaking).

I'm always looking for the fisheye lens.

Found, yesterday, on ski goggles.

"Am I the only person left in the world who worries about spilling his coffee on his laptop?"

2 years ago.

ADDED: I ran across that after reading the colloquy between AllenS and Meade in the comments to the post about Brett's fuzzy penis:

AllenS: Jenn Sterger (the woman) was hired because of some sexy pictures of her in Sports Illustrated mag, that Brent Musberger thought would be a good matchup for the male dominated football sports sceen. Jenn and Brent are just as much at fault here. I'm thinking of sending the woman a picture of my penis also. Could I borrow the fish bowl lens?...

Meade: It's a fish eye lens. Fish eye. It's for taking shots of massive objects or scenes which a normal lens can't take all in. A fish bowl lens would be for taking shots of tiny things. Like Brett Favre's... ability to make good judgments.

AllenS: Ok, ok. Can I borrow the lens that makes stuff look bigger?

But, in fact, the fisheye works really well to make something look large if you get the camera lens right up at it. Lots of other stuff is including in the picture, arrayed all around and looking comparatively small. Frankly — and this is not an offer to AllenS — it would be really interesting to take pictures of naked men and get the extreme closeup on the genitalia with a well-composed and interesting background. I went looking through my old posts with the "fisheye" tag to find some that prove my point.

The second picture here of the fisheye dog makes this point very well. Get right up to the nose. The scenery in the background isn't as interesting as I'd want for my proposed compositions, but you can see how tiny Meade looks in the background (when in fact he was quite close by). Here's another photograph that illustrates the point, albeit with the female body:



That's from the Khmer Dynasty room at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. Here's the effect of the lens looking at the room from the other side:



Here's some male and female nudity, to be fair:



That's the Museum of Natural History — not Brett and Jenn. You may recognize that couple from the movie "Election" — which is a great cautionary tale about the inadvisability of cheating on... many things (including your spouse).

And then — searching through the fisheye pictures — I found something that was extremely important to me: the purple tree, which had this.

"Do you guys TRY to not get laid?"