Weirdo Camera Accessories Can Be Surprisingly Useful

Here’s a picture of, oh, I don’t know, I guess it’s the Citibank Building in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a panoramic shot stitched together in Photoshop, taken from one of the elevators of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel:

September 19, 2020 — Los Angeles, California

I know what you’re about to say: Sure, Kevin, whatever. Kinda boring. Still, you got surprisingly little reflection through the elevator glass. That was pretty lucky. But no! This took extra-special photographic gear, pictured below:

If you put the camera right up to the glass with this huge rubber lens hood attached, the hood blocks off all the reflections. This was very, very handy at the San Diego Zoo last month.

Now, as it happens I actually bought this lens hood in hopes of using it in the rain to keep water off the lens. I haven’t had a chance to try that yet since there’s been no rain lately here in Southern California, but I’m optimistic. And if we get heavy rain? Check this out:

That should do the trick! Assuming the wind doesn’t just blow the whole thing away and I end up like Mary Poppins.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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