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HDR Trifecta

Couldn't help myself... again...

Photoshop and iPhoto were open, as were some images just begging to be HDRed.

This is of a terrace just outside of Naples on the island of Capri (yes, the one that Capri pants are named after).

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Newest HDR Image, Take 2

I couldn't help myself, I found another bracketed photo I took of the ruins at Segesta, in Sicily.

Enjoy!

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Newest HDR Image

One of the things I'm really glad I did on my European Disney Cruise last summer was to take bracketed exposures of various shots.

That means I can come back and process some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs of those scenes.

The one for today is a shot of what I call "The Mouse at the Wheel" (Disney calls it "Helmsman Mickey"), a sculpture in the atrium of the Disney Magic inspired by "The Man at the Wheel", a cenotaph in Gloucester Mass.

I tried to avoid giving the photo the appearance of false color you sometimes get with HDR photos.

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Why Did McCain "Suspend" His Campaign Again?

The Washington Post reports what John McCain's day was like.

His plane apparently landed around noon, but even before his plane left for DC, "senior Democrats and Republicans at the Capitol were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached."

Wow, the very act of just flying to DC is apparently enough to get both sides to agree on a plan. But then:

Earlier, McCain had emerged from his office in the Russell Senate Office Building around noon to a crush of reporters, saying nothing as he made his way to Boehner's office. In tow were a trio of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), as well as top campaign aides Rick Davis and Mark Salter.

Boehner and McCain discussed the bailout plan, but Republican leadership aides described the conversation as somewhat surreal. Neither man was familiar with the details of the proposal being pressed by House conservatives, and up to the moment they departed for the White House yesterday afternoon, neither had seen any description beyond news reports.

Are you friggin kidding me? McCain, now the supposed jewel of the Republican party, who just weeks ago accepted his party's nomination, who put his campaign on hold to bring everyone together about how to save the economy, couldn't be bothered to be brought up to speed about the plan proposed by members of his own party?!

At 1:25 p.m., McCain left Boehner's office through a back door, walking across the Capitol's rotunda to the applause of tourists. Graham conceded the group knew little about the plan the nominee had come to Washington to try to shape.

Wow. Simply wow. Either McCain is an incompetent boob, or his party hates him so much that they'd rather leave him out in the cold, unprepared to even talk about the plan they've been discussing!!

McCain ducked into the ornate Mansfield Room on the Senate side of the Capitol for lunch with colleagues. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, his chief economic adviser, met separately with the House Republicans' top four leaders. But aides said Holtz-Eakin did little of the talking. Instead, he was told in no uncertain terms that the deal touted in the morning had next to no support among the House Republican rank-and-file.

By now it's starting to sound like McCain assumed that the deal was in the bag, that both sides had agreed to the plan, and all he had to do was show up just in time for the photo op of the deal being consummated, and he could walk away the hero, having suspended his campaign to broker the deal, bringing both sides together in a feat of bipartisan patriotism (among cries of God Bless America and "Kum-Ba-Ya")... But sadly it wasn't to be:

At the White House, the gathering turned contentious when House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) brought up a new set of principles that conservative House Republicans had been laid out earlier in the day."

Boehner's move was received poorly by Obama and the other Democrats, who quickly pressed McCain to say whether he supported Boehner's position, according to a detailed account of the meeting. McCain declined to commit, one source said.

Declined to commit, huh? He suspended his campaign to go to Washington and... sit on the fence? He could have done that from the late night talk show circuit...

For much of the day, McCain shuttled between meetings and his Senate office, but rarely came close to the Capitol suites and committee rooms where the negotiations were taking place. He had returned to his Crystal City condominium by 6 p.m., where aides said he continued to work the phones in support of the deal.

Curious, couldn't he have "called it in" from New York?

Maybe the McCain campaign ought to rethink this "Maverick" moniker. It's no use being the guy that's "shaking things up" when you a) don't know what the hell is going on, b) when people in your own party spite you by keeping you in the dark, and c) when you've spent so much time aggravating people they'd rather interpret your efforts as damage and route around it (with apologies to John Gilmore).

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