I was bemoaning the state of things recently when I had a startling revelation. My trust factor has done a complete reversal since I was a kid. If I now ask myself the question, “Who do you trust most between a politician, a reporter, and a used car salesman?” I now would answer the used car salesman. When I was a kid, the used car salesman was the stereotype of the person who was not to be trusted.
Back then we believed everything that was in the paper. I don’t anymore. I’ve come to realize how the biases of reporters or their bosses can come into not only what is written, but, perhaps more importantly, what is written about in the first place. Without knowing those biases, I can’t evaluate whether what is being said is giving me a complete picture of the subject.
I will credit current reporters/academia for teaching me that the past reporters were letting some things slide back then, The Ike’s and JFK’s were not as trustworthy as we were led to believe back then. The current ones certainly do a job pointed out some of the things our current politicians do that makes them untrustworthy.
I guess the way I look at things now is far more realistic than I did before, but I sure do miss the feeling that someone with more power than me was looking out for my best interest.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Last night we went to a National Geographic lecture at the field museum. It was titled “Waking the Baby Mammoth” by Daniel Fisher. It was about the baby wooly mammoth found fully preserved by a Nenets reindeer herder.
As part of his talk he told about spending some time living with the herder’s family. It was during that part of talk he said, what to me was, the most memorable part of the evening. He described the living conditions of the family. As one can imagine living in a tent, in the arctic doesn’t sound like something I’d call ideal living conditions. Not only were there were none of the modern conveniences, there wasn’t even electricity. Add to that every few weeks the entire home is packed on a sled and moved to the next place the reindeer will find feed. The children all had definite responsibilities that were essential to the family’s life.
All of that seemed reasonable, but what blew me away was he told us the kids were the happiest kids he’d ever seen. These were teens and pre-teen kids. They were living in conditions that would most likely get their parents charged with child endangerment here. They had very limited clothes, no TV, no cell phones, no electronic games, and even very few neighbors. Yet, these were the happiest kids this
It got me to thinking about a quote from Allan K. Chalmers I’d recently used in my thought for the day email. The quote was “The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
If we assume this quote to be correct, it may provide the clue as to why our teens have so much unhappiness. It’s not hard to imagine both the
Listening to what US kids do in a day or week, if I said they didn’t have anything to do, most would accuse me of being crazy. However, if you look at what those kids do that is really important to others; we may have a different point of view. While the
I’m not sure exactly how we convince kids what they do is as important as helping head the reindeer or mending their family’s clothes, but it is something to think about.
I’ve become involved with a photography contest run by the local CBS television station. Photographers may submit photos of people and things related to the
I’m very reluctant to comment on other people’s photography for two major reasons. First, my background as a technical consultant has left me very frustrated with non-experts offering advice. I’ve spent a lot of time correcting misinformation in my area of expertise. While I’ve been using a camera for around 60 years, I certainly don’t consider myself an expert in photography and wouldn’t want to be accused passing out misinformation.
The other thing concerning me about making comments is art (I do consider photography art) is subjective to the individual who is viewing it. As an example, I don’t like Picasso’s or Dali’s work. There are many people who do. The wonderful (some time frustrating) thing about art is there isn’t a “right” answer. I’ve had the opportunity to take a couple of classes at the Morton Arboretum. In those classes works were critiqued by the instructors. I was particularly impressed with the way the second instructor approached critiquing. In almost every case he asked, “What were you trying to achieve with this photograph?” He then commented on the photograph from that perspective. When trying to comment on something on the internet, I can’t know what each photographer was trying to achieve. I don’t know whether he or she achieved their goal.
One the other hand, if someone asks me what makes me like a photograph or not, I’d say there are a number of criteria and, unfortunately, they all must be met.
1) Subject - If this subject isn’t interesting, no matter how technically perfect the photograph is, I simply don’t care about the picture. In some cases the subject has been made boring by so many pictures being taken of it. In other cases, the subject is not interesting because it is simply not interesting to me in the first place.
2) Focus – To me the focus of pictures needs to be very sharp. The sharper the focus the better I like it as long as it looks real. (I’ve seen pictures that have been over sharpened.) Oh yes, there are instances where blur is desirable. Streams and sporting events photos with blurred focus to create an effect. But, if something is out of focus for any other reasons, it has to be so out of focus so that it’s not a distraction.
3) Haze – Haze is a lot like being out of focus to me. It is mostly apparent in ‘scapes. It’s rare when the
4) “The other stuff” - If I’m taking someone’s picture I don’t want the background to be distracting from the picture or the foreground for that matter of course the old standby is the tree growing out of people’s heads
5) Flat Horizons - The last aspect I look for is a flat horizon. With digital photography it’s easy to fix the camera if the camera wasn’t level with the horizon initially. Unfortunately, far too many photographers don’t take the time to correct this fault.
Isn’t it funny, when you hear someone say, “I can’t complain” in response to a the question of how business is, it really means that business is pretty terrific?