Farm images

D300, ISO 1600, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11 mm, f2.8, 1/3s handheld.
These are pictures of the farm where my sister and my father's wife board their horses in the Netherlands. When we were there last winter, we went out for a horseback ride in the bucolic Dutch landscape. Of course it started snowing like crazy while we were out there.


Old barn window boarded up with pastic
D300, Nikkor 18-200mm at 22mm, ISO 6400, f3.8, 1/15s


This is Kasper, a gorgeous and very large horse. He was waiting to go back into the stable. The yellow light is from one little really old light bulb to the left.
D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 12mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/15s


Supplies
D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/13s


Old car
D300, Nikkor 18-200mm at 44mm, ISO 800, f4.5, 1/6s

"Food" industry run amok

And it is apparently buying itself legislation that prohibits anybody from taking a photograph of a "farm". Many states in the US already have absolutely crazy laws that prevent simple free speech that criticise the food industry (the so-called veggie laws) but now they also want to prevent anybody from taking simple pictures of farms even from public roads. Clearly they want to prevent the public from finding out about the abusive practices that some say occur in these highly industrialized places. If you have Netflix, I recommend you stream Food Inc to your TV/computer/iPad/iPhone to learn a little more but that is not as graphic as the video linked to in the New York Times article above. The book that the movie is based on "the Omnivore's dilemma" is better but takes a little longer to read. An instructive rant on the farm photography Stalinist laws is at silber studios.tv. Clearly this is not about the small farms that they make it sound like in the laws but about protecting the grind-them-up-alive operations that "produce" so much of today's "food". Of course the laws are written so that it applies to any food producing entity, not just the factory feedlot operations.

I don't know about you but I think something is deeply wrong when you could get thrown into jail for taking a cell phone picture of a farm next to a road. Note also how diametrically opposed this is to the well known right of photographers to photograph what can be seen from the public road excepting maybe a few national security related places such as certain DOE and DOD installations.