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| {an engagement session . . .} Charlottesville’s Sweet Pea Photography |
I spent my Monday evening photographing this newly engaged couple and enjoying the nice weather and the shooting conditions of the "golden hour" aka "magic hour". What is the "golden hour"? Well, its basically the best lighting for an outdoor session. ...
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| Tags:
golden, hour, session, engagement |
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Ashley + Brandon’s Engagement Session
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The three of us drove toward the mountains and the setting sun. The destination was Chiles Peach Orchard in Crozet, VA. Afterwards we hit up Blue Mountain Brewery for some eats and drinks! A great finish to a great day. [...]
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Taking time away: A wonderful wedding and the wonders of Pt. Reyes
We are in Northern California reconnecting with our dearest ones. On Saturday I had the pleasure of presiding at the wedding of Susan, who we've known since she was quite tiny. Susan and her two sisters are as near to being daughters as we will ever have, so this wedding was truly "in the family."
Our joy was ten-fold -- a thousand-fold -- because we nearly lost Susan 18 months ago from a medical condition she did not know she had. The UCLA Medical Center doctor who saved her life and his wife came to the wedding, and everyone shook his hand Saturday and more than a few tears were shed. Miracles do happen.
The wedding was held in a wonderful little chapel at Nicasio, a tiny town near Pt. Reyes (and the wedding party and guests occupied nearly every inn around Pt Reyes this weekend).
For those unfamiliar with the geography, Pt. Reyes is a triangular chunk of land that sticks straight out into the Pacific Ocean north of the Golden Gate. The distinctive landscape is shaped by the San Andreas fault slicing it off from the mainland.
It is said that in 1579 Sir Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind at what is now called "Drake's Bay" because the ship's seams were splitting open from the weight of Spanish gold. That would also mean the first Anglican worship service in North America was held in California at Pt. Reyes.
Pt. Reyes is now part of the Golden Gate National Seashore, making it part of the National Park system.
The terrain unbelievably spectacular, and the weather is windy and harsh. Sandstone cliffs resembling Dover can be seen far from shore, and from vistas near Chimney Rock on the point jutting out to sea.
Sea lions long ago set up shop in a rookery below the steepest rockiest cliffs near the point, and we could see a few in the water this weekend (and hear their barks from the cliffs above).
During the whale migration season in April or so, the California Grays can be spotted from the lighthouse as they round Pt. Reyes on their migration to warmer waters off Mexico. Terrific hiking trails abound at Pt. Reyes, and we've dayhiked and backpacked most of them over the years.
Here are a few photos from the wedding and around Pt. Reyes I took this weekend.
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My IPS analysis on Iran crisis ripples
... is here . Also archived here . Of course, the 1,200-word format is ways too short to give due consideration to all the actual and potential ripples from the recent crisis in Iran; and as it happened what I ended up giving shortest shrift to in the piece was the effects Iran's internal crisis will inevitably have on the prospects for ramping down the still very dangerous confrontation between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear technology program. So what the article dealt with mainly were the also very important arenas of Iraq, the balance in the Persian Gulf more generally, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and Afghanistan. On Gulf balance issues, I just went back and re-read this December 2003 JWN post , 'Geopolitics of the Gulf 201'. It still looks pretty helpful today (along with its precursor, 'Geopolitics of the Gulf 101 '. I had written about the effects of the Iran crisis on the nuclear issue in this June 20 post on JWN. I see that Laura Rozen has a new post on her blog on (mainly) this topic. Hat-tip for that, btw, goes to the interesting new blog being produced by Trita Parsi's National Iranian-American Council. The bottom line from the 'experts' cited by Rozen on how the Iranian crisis will affect the prospects for Obama getting a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue is really all over the place. She quotes Parsi himself as saying,
"It's very tough for the president to engage in a serious manner within the next three-to six months because of how the Iranian government has been conducting itself... It's politically far more difficult for him to pull this off," than before the Iranian government crackdown on opposition supporters. "I'm not saying it's impossible."
Then she quotes Georgetown University's Daniel Byman as saying,
"Some people are more optimistic, some are less... To me, we can hope to have more leverage, but we could have less. My impression is, we were going to try [engagement]. If it didn't work, we'd move on. We would not be naïve that it would work."
That is a fascinating quote, for two reasons. First, he is frank in admitting he does not know which way it will go. Second, what's this thing about "moving on"? It strikes me that is almost certainly a reference to a plan that if the negotiations didn't work the US would attack Iran militarily, or allow Israel to fire the first shot in that. Scary. Anyway, I'll try to get back to this topic more when I can.
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How effective is Obama’s Palestine policy?
I have been among the many criticizing Obama for moving WAYS too slowly on Arab-Israeli and specifically Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking. However, evidence is now emerging that his "slow and steady" approach is bearing some significant fruit: Item #1: Marc Lynch, just back from a quick trip to Israel and the West Bank, blogged this last night:
without much publicity Obama's pressure has already started generating some important results on the ground -- not just Netanyahu's carefully hedged uttering of an emasculated two state formula, but the significant easing of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank... That Israel has quietly made significant changes to the checkpoints in the last few weeks -- after ignoring six years worth of Road Map commitments, snubbing Tony Blair and the Quartet's persistent demands, dismissing the recommendations of the World Bank and other international development agencies, and greatly expanding them even while negotiating during the Annapolis process -- suggests that Obama's tough love approach has actually been the only one able to achieve real results.
Item #2: On Tuesday, JTA reported this:
According to the survey of 800 registered [U.S.] voters, which was conducted June 9-11 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, those who believe Israel is committed to peace has dropped to 46 percent this month from 66 percent last December. The poll found that some 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September, and only about 44 percent of voters believe the United States should support Israel -- down from 71 percent a year ago .
Item #3: Rep. William Delahunt's "Sense of the House" bill that spells out support for a two-state solution and for George Mitchell's peace mission, now has 105 co-sponsors , reflecting the success of the campaign that the White House and several pro-peace organizations have undertaken to slowly and steadily build congressional support for thse positions. These are all key pieces of evidence that Obama's strategy is working... Though it has until now been, as I said, a painstakingly slow one. I completely recognize that the removal of, actually, just a handful of the roadblocks with which the Israeli occupation stifles normal life, including normal economic life, in the West Bank is a thin 'achievement' indeed. (The PDF of the UN-OCHA's latest weekly update on the situation is here .) Also, steps like that or, for example, an increase in the number or types of goods Israel allows into Gaza each week, are incredibly easy to reverse. We can recall, too, what the cocky Likudnik strategic thinker Efraim Inbar told me about what he expected from Obama when I spoke with him back in March:
"The Americans may push us some, so we’ll remove one or two outposts or one or two roadblocks. We’ll play with the Americans.”
And meantime, the occupation as a whole grinds on and on and on... and so does Israel's expropriation of additional amounts of Palestinian land, its construction of additional blocks of settler-only housing, and its continued maintenance of military law over the 2.3 million Palestinians of the West Bank and of a punishingly tight siege against the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza... It is that big problem of the occupation that Obama has set himself to tackle. And so far he's taken only baby steps toward doing so. But here's the important thing: In taking those baby steps and in presenting the Palestinian-Israeli issue in the way he has to the US public and Congress, Obama has actually succeeded in building up, rather than diminishing, the support his approach in the US public and Congress. That is unprecedented for US Presidents trying to move towards a more even-handed Arab-Israeli peace policy. One of my friends who works this issue intensely reports that Sen. Mitchell has actually spent just as much time "working" key members of Congress on the issues as he has doing fact-finding in the Middle East. However, I don't think anyone in or out of the administration judges that "just" getting a few more West Bank roadblocks removed, or a few settlement outposts theatrically "demolished" (only to be re-erected someplace else the very next day, as has often happened in the past), or "just" getting the Israeli military's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to add beans into the "diet" of the Gazans this week, or potatoes next week, or whatever, is going to solve this problem. Everyone understands this is above all a political/diplomatic problem; and if Obama and Mitchell don't take some significant steps at the level of authoritative diplomatic engagement pretty soon, then the whole, still perilously fragile balance in the Arab-Israeli region could still, oh so easily, explode. That, at a time when the US military is working overtime to finetune the modalities of a safe exit from Iraq , the situation in Iran remains extremely murky, and NATO's entire situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan is poised on a logistical knife-edge. So the actions Obama and Co. have taken until now-- expressing a firm stand on Israeli settlement construction (though not, actually, doing anything yet to hold Israel accountable on that score), and expressing a firm stand on opening up the crossings into Gaza (again, without any actions to implement it)-- are in a sense an overture to the main, that is diplomatic, act that should, and I believe will, follow. They have also served to both test and prepare public opinion in both the US and Israel for the main act. (And the results of that 'testing' would, I think, encourage them to move ahead even more boldly.) But when will they make the big diplomatic move? Nobody knows. This team has proven incredibly good at holding its cards close to its chest. It's also good at using a little tactical deception when it wants to. For example, until today, nobody has a clue whether Dennis Ross's latest move-- over to the National Security Council, from the State Department, is a move up, sideways or into some form of bureaucratic sidelining. As Politico's usually very well-informed Ben Smith writes : "As for how much influence he'll have, we'll have to wait and see." For my part, I believe Ross will now come more effectively than before under the command of General Jim Jones, who runs a tight ship on the NSC. But as Smith says, we'll have to wait and see.
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Brynne & Kevin’s E-Session with Sarah Cramer
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In looking through my notes of my meeting with Brynne & Kevin last fall I discovered that they’d hired the talented Sarah Cramer of Cramer Photo to capture their big day. I sent Sarah an e-mail right away to see if she’d done an engagement session with these two lovely people and if she’d [...]
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Real Wedding: Mimi & Jeremy ~ Part 1
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Remember Mimi & Jeremy’s cute engagement session that I posted last month? Well, now I’m so excited to share their wonderful wedding day with you in two parts: today the details and getting-ready images and tomorrow the ceremony and reception. Mimi and Jeremy were such a fun couple to work with and I [...]
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