Inspired to tinker

Recently, I've been looking at a lot of other professional photographer's work. Of course, I did this before but, since I decided to get a bit more serious about this whole photography stuff, I've been looking with new eyes. Yes, technically, I'm interested in exposure and lighting and all that fun stuff but I've also been really focused on style.

What I mean by style is the over-arching look-and-feel of a photographers pictures - color saturation, light vs. shade, angles, props, posing, amount of post-editing etc.. . Not just within one particular photo shoot but across the whole spectrum of the photographer's images. Some  more of a definable style than others; some are just great photographers who take solid, well-exposed shots with traditional framing and posing, and don't do an awful lot with their images after taking them (except for maybe punch a few things up here and there.) Yet others seem to have a stamp that leave on every image they take (or at least, that they share.) Some of this is what they do with their camera and their subjects and some of this is what they do in post-editing programs like Lightroom and Photoshop.

Increasingly, I have been drawn to photographers in the second category.

During my second photo class recently, the teacher took one look at my fancy camera bag and deduced that I love color; strong bold, bright, splashy color. (And yes, I do, baby!) So, she suggested I check out a female photographer called Beth Jansen. (View her work here: http://www.bethjansenphotography.com/) Right away, I was hooked. Her photos have a very saturated, other-worldly quality about them and, appropriately since she takes mostly photos of babies and children, they feel as though they came straight out of a child's fairytale book. There is color EVERYWHERE and it's not just happenstance - Beth obviously considers it her trademark and provides tips for her subjects' parents about what to wear and what props to use. She probably also has a handy toolbag of her own props too, to help her inject more color into her shots. Some of the ways she frames newborns, for instance, are super cool. I've never seen work like this before in a family photographer (vs. commercial) and I was/am inspired.

And then I found an Australian photographer who, at least to my sensibilities, blew even Beth away. Her name is Barb Uil and her company is JinkyArt - great name, by the way. One of the coolest things, if you click on the company name and link-over to her site, is the video that auto-plays when you log in. It's a well-produced re-enactment of what a photo-shoot with Barb would be like for a little girl and it's A-MAZING. Barb's images are just as color-rich as Beth's and have a similar other-worldly quality about them but even more-so than Beth's, they are bathed in rich, honey light that invokes childhood summers with warm sun on your skin, and carefree, empty days in open fields with nothing to do but play and daydream. It makes you want to just jump through the computer screen and into the world of the photo. It almost brought me to tears, I have to tell you. Now how amazing is THAT!?

Anyway, all this perusing has got me messing around with Lightroom, which I purchased recently to help me punch-up my own photos. I've also been spending some time looking at old pics I took, back before I knew basically anything at all about exposure and my camera's cool buttons, and trying to learn from the mistakes I made. I've also, through learning a bit here-and-there online and experimenting through Lightroom, been able to breathe new life into some old photos that I under or over-exposed or that were great shots that lacked life or definition.

I had lots of fun last night, for instance, playing with these shots I took back in October of last year at a playdate party at my parents' house. The end result may not be for everyone, of course, but I'm playing around, experimenting, and clearly going with the saturated look. I personally like how they turned out. Let me know what you think.
BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE


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BEFORE


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Poorly worded with good intentions

No smoking or no screaming kids allowed - todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR

I saw the above news story on TV this morning as I was laboring on the treadmill. At first, my mother-bear reared-up and started growling back at this restaurant owner. I mean, who can HELP their kids screaming? Kids do this. They don't understand "inside voice" and, even if they do, they think its funny to push mom and dad's buttons and ignore the concept. Hell, I'd be fighting mad if I was told to leave a restaurant just because my kid was screaming.

But then I stopped for a second. Hmmmm, thought I, how many times have I glared-down a mother or father who refused to get up from their table to take their screaming child outside?

The answer is A LOT. Even though I'm a mom and I totally understand that you cannot "control" your kids' volume or the timing of their often inexplicable tantrums, I do realize that I have control over my own legs. I can pick-up my kid and leave the restaurant until she calms down, or even get my food to go, if necessary.

Fortunately, although Missy has been gaining volume recently while dining, we haven't had to do this too often in our 17 months as parents. But, I would if I needed to, without hesitation; I don't like to eat while hearing a child screaming in my ear either - whether it's my child or someone else's.

So, it occurs to me that the restaurant owner could have avoided all this controversy if she had just been a little more thoughtful in her wording. Because what she really means is that she won't tolerate parents who do nothing when their kid screams continually and disturbs other diners.

How about, instead: "Parents please leave the dining area if your child is loudly crying or screaming"

When black or white is gray

At the gym in the morning, I have taken to listening to NPR instead of music on my iPod. I like the intellectual stimulation and find it makes my workouts go a lot faster. With music, my mind wanders. With NPR, it's engaged.

Often times, I will hear something on NPR that really makes me think, or just a story that is so interesting that I say to myself "I have to go home and blog about this..." but then life takes over and I rarely remember to.

This morning, however, a particular story that is part of a series called "American Lives", was so incredibly fascinating to me that I had to share.

Here is a teaser...

   " Ada Copeland, an African-American woman born in Georgia just months before that state seceded from the Union, moved to New York City in the mid-1880s. There, she met a man named James Todd. He was light-skinned, handsome, had a good job for an African-American man in that time — a Pullman porter. They hit it off, and eventually married. They had five children and a house in Brooklyn. Their story would be unremarkable if not for one detail: Nothing James had told his future wife was true. James Todd was really not black ..."    Read more here


If you're anything like me, right about now you're saying to yourself "How the bejeezus can a woman marry a man and then not know the color of his skin? Surely she would notice THAT!?" And indeed, it's a reasonable question. And even more reasonable given that THIS is a photo of said James Todd:

Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

However, author of the book "Passing Strange", Martha Sandweiss, goes on to explain that, after the Civil War, many Southerners got worried that they would no longer be able to identify a "slave" just by the color of his or her skin any more. So, one of the solutions they came up with to help them categorize folks was to say that, if one of your eight great-parents was black, you were black, no matter what color your skin. (I wonder how many of us would be "black" these days, based on THAT categorization?)

This made it possible (although extremely rare, for obvious reasons) for a white person to claim they were African American.  Later, Ada and James' daughters, although brought up as African American, both married white men, made possible by each sister "swearing" for the other, that they were, in fact, white. Yet their brothers, when registering for the draft in World War I, were placed in all-black regiments.

I've always been the kind of person who is unobservant to race and this just makes me smile. At the end of the day, race itself is just about a society's label for someone based upon a number of cultural, economic, or societal factors, not really about anything genetically significant.

Are you up for a little silliness?

A friend of mine posted a link to a video on my Facebook account over the weekend. The video, posted below, is a Volkswagen commercial (of all things!) but, as she knew it would, it strummed a little chord in my mischevious mind and almost even made me cry (I said almost).

The reason for all the nutty emotions over a commercial is it's whimsical nature and the sudden jolt of reality that something so simple can brighten so many people's days. It's so against the grain of our serious culture, where silly behaviour in adults is frowned-upon, categorized as "juvenile", "immature", "irresponsible" (what if you fell???) or just "plain crazy".

The fact that so many people (particularly adults) were open to jumping on this slide, in a public place, WITH OTHERS WATCHING, that they threw aside routine and any fears they might of had about being judged by others, tells me that something is missing in our culture's definition of adulthood. The smiles on people's faces say it all.

So, it got me to thinking... what could I do, what could YOU do, to bring a little silliness into your week?

That's why I'm throwing out a challenge, to me, to you, and to those you love, to do something silly this week. Something completely out of character (I say this because some of us are already more silly than others). Something that requires you to throw fear of being judged or labeled, to one side. Something goofy, a little wacko, a tad nuts, something that would have elicited the reaction "grow up!" from your mother or father.

Go on! You know you want to!

Do it and then post your experience here in comments, on my FB wall, or even shoot me a picture (if you caught it on camera) to britvixen@london.com. If you don't mind (and tell me if you do), I'll even post the results on a future post here next week, including my own escapades, whatever they might be.

Come on... who's up for THE RANDOM RANTS SILLINESS CHALLENGE?

Here's a little inspiration to get you started, although I should provide a disclaimer and say that I am not promoting any dangerous behavior. Choosing to slide down the bannister with no underwear on is something you do at your own risk!

Honey my nuggets are foaming!

Further proof that U.S. food is full of more crap than any other country's.

This came up for us once before when we thought Hubby was gluten intolerant. We found, through our research, that a lot of the food in UK supermarkets was already gluten free by default. Whereas, in the U.S., you had to read down a list of 400 different ingredients to determine if food contained one of the many different gluten culprits, or go to a health food shop - three words that just send Hubby reaching for the puke bag.

For the most part, I don't eat this stuff a lot and, like my awareness that sausages are full of all kinds of stuff I would rather not know about, my attitude is usually: if it tastes good, who cares once in a while?

But I have to say that the anti-foaming agent got me. AN ANTI-FOAMING AGENT for chrissakes!? What the hell is that stuff, which is normally used in silly putty of all things, doing in food?

According to the golden arches, it's to avoid the nuggets splashing the workers when they're dropped in the boiling hot fat. They couldn't find gloves for that?

I for one am boycotting the McNugget from hereon out and I shan't be giving it to Daisy either. BLECH.

Photo A Day: Wednesday, June 24 - a steal

Since my ultimate dream job would be to travel the world, meet interesting people, take pictures of them and write about them, it goes without saying that I am madly jealous of travel photographers or photo-journalists who travel the globe. So, I decided to cover my lack of a picture for Wednesday, with a steal and a link to a photographer's blog I found per-chance.

Sarah Elliott is a photojournalist with an amazing portfolio of pictures spanning multiple countries.

This particular image of hers was linked from the Medicins Sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders website.

See more of her work here: http://www.sarahelliottphotography.com/

I am in awe of her life and her talent. Her photos tell a story in a way that no words ever could.

If I'm going to commit a crime, I'm going to Norway

Maybe we've been thinking about this whole crime prevention thing wrong.

At first I guffawed at the idea of inmates being treated like hotel guests but then I read on and thought about it some more. How would it be if we spent our time trying build our offenders into more well-balanced, valued members of society, rather than locking them up and, more likely than not, ensuring that neither their attitudes or actions change for the future?

It's the whole carrot or stick debate, I guess. I can't see this sort of thing going down well with the heavy-handed right (oh my gosh, can you just imagine the chorus of "bleeding heart liberal" comments that would ensue!?) but I wish Americans would be a little more open-minded about things like this, especially when it seems as though it might just work.


Norway Builds the World's Most Humane Prison

TIME: Monday, May. 10, 2010
By William Lee Adams

By the time the trumpets sound, the candles have been lit and the salmon platters garnished. Harald V, King of Norway, enters the room, and 200 guests stand to greet him. Then a chorus of 30 men and women, each wearing a blue police uniform, launches into a spirited rendition of "We Are the World." This isn't cabaret night at Oslo's Royal Palace. It's a gala to inaugurate Halden Fengsel, Norway's newest prison.

Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits. Unlike many American prisons, the air isn't tinged with the smell of sweat and urine. Instead, the scent of orange sorbet emanates from the "kitchen laboratory" where inmates take cooking courses. "In the Norwegian prison system, there's a focus on human rights and respect," says Are Hoidal, the prison's governor. "We don't see any of this as unusual."

Halden, Norway's second largest prison, with a capacity of 252 inmates, opened on April 8. It embodies the guiding principles of the country's penal system: that repressive prisons do not work and that treating prisoners humanely boosts their chances of reintegrating into society. "When they arrive, many of them are in bad shape," Hoidal says, noting that Halden houses drug dealers, murderers and rapists, among others. "We want to build them up, give them confidence through education and work and have them leave as better people." Countries track recidivism rates differently, but even an imperfect comparison suggests the Norwegian model works. Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway's prisoners end up back in jail. In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%. Of course, a low level of criminality gives Norway a massive advantage. Its prison roll lists a mere 3,300, or 69 per 100,000 people, compared with 2.3 million in the U.S., or 753 per 100,000 — the highest rate in the world.

Design plays a key role in Halden's rehabilitation efforts. "The most important thing is that the prison looks as much like the outside world as possible," says Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the prison's architects. To avoid an institutional feel, exteriors are not concrete but made of bricks, galvanized steel and larch; the buildings seem to have grown organically from the woodlands. And while there is one obvious symbol of incarceration — a 20-ft. (6 m) concrete security wall along the prison's perimeter — trees obscure it, and its top has been rounded off, Hoilund says, "so it isn't too hostile."

The cells rival well-appointed college dorm rooms, with their flat-screen TVs and minifridges. Designers chose long vertical windows for the rooms because they let in more sunlight. There are no bars. Every 10 to 12 cells share a living room and kitchen. With their stainless-steel countertops, wraparound sofas and birch-colored coffee tables, they resemble Ikea showrooms.
Halden's greatest asset, though, may be the strong relationship between staff and inmates. Prison guards don't carry guns — that creates unnecessary intimidation and social distance — and they routinely eat meals and play sports with the inmates. "Many of the prisoners come from bad homes, so we wanted to create a sense of family," says architect Per Hojgaard Nielsen. Half the guards are women — Hoidal believes this decreases aggression — and prisoners receive questionnaires asking how their experience in prison can be improved.

There's plenty of enthusiasm for transforming lives. "None of us were forced to work here. We chose to," says Charlott-Renee Sandvik Clasen, a music teacher in the prison and a member of Halden's security-guard chorus. "Our goal is to give all the prisoners — we call them our pupils — a meaningful life inside these walls." It's warmth like that, not the expensive television sets, that will likely have the most lasting impact.

Exactly

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The nature of love

I heard this on NPR this morning. It's one of the many stories that come out of the Story Corps series that touch my heart and leave me sitting in the car long after I should have got out, with a lump in my throat.

I have thought about sharing many of them over the years but this one was too wonderful to pass up. It speaks to me about the nature of love. So pure, so honest, so authentic. It's the stories and moments like this in life that make it worth living... at least for me.




On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to confirm that I have not given up on FRIDAY MOTIVATION posts. However, since I have been more focused on my physical therapy and trying to follow that plan, losing weight/gaining muscle has not been at the top of my list.

But, I have been trying to keep my weight down, by cutting back further on calories, especially given my decreased overall activity on the new therapy plan. (Something which pains me, by the way, my exercise is for my mental as well as physical health and I'm having a really hard time not "going for it" at the gym and not doing any yoga.)

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I'm still hovering around 148lbs... if I can at least not put on weight while I'm on this limited activity program, I'm going to consider that a win.

Random Friday Sharings

From NPR this morning: One of the most touching stories I have ever heard. The part about the child's premonitions definitely pulls at your heart-strings but it was the father's acceptance, in reflection, that made tears prick my eyes.



Santa no longer returning mail in the U.S.

Yes, it's true. If you're a kid in any other country in the world, you can send a letter to good ole Saint Nick but here in the U.S., we've perfected the art of the knee-jerk reaction to such an extent that one issue last year has led to the canceling of the Letters to Santa program.

(See more from CBS news here)

I don't care what cock-and-bull excuse the USPS come up with for this, as usual with everything in this country, people over-react because of the fear of litigation. All it takes is one whiff of a situation that may result in a law-suit and organizations (over) react faster than Billy the Kid at the OK Corale.

I used to groan at one of my friends for claiming that the world will have gone to hell in a handbasket by the time her kid is old enough to enjoy it but now I see what she means.

So, it looks like Daisy will have to write to Father Christmas (the English version of Santa) via the Royal Mail. If you have a kid that would like to get a nice, personalized reply from Father Christmas on a nice Christmas card (just like I got when I was a kid) here is the UK address:

Father Christmas
Santa's Grotto
Reindeerland
SAN TA1

You might also want to include an international stamp to encourage the cross-Atlantic response. Deadline for replies is December 13th.

Shame on US.

A compassionate, yet rational, perspective on our health care crisis.

"As many people die every three weeks from lack of health insurance as were killed in the 9/11 attacks." -- WOW.
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NEW YORK TIMES
November 12, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

America’s Defining Choice
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

President Obama and Congress will soon make defining choices about health care and troops for Afghanistan.

These two choices have something in common — each has a bill of around $100 billion per year. So one question is whether we’re better off spending that money blowing up things in Helmand Province or building up things in America.

The total bill in Afghanistan has been running around $1 million per year per soldier deployed there. That doesn’t include the long-term costs that will be incurred in coming decades — such as disability benefits, or up to $5 million to provide round-the-clock nursing care indefinitely for a single soldier who suffers brain injuries.

So if President Obama dispatches another 30,000 or 40,000 troops, on top of the 68,000 already there, that would bring the total annual bill for our military presence there to perhaps $100 billion — or more. And we haven’t even come to the human costs.

As for health care reforms, the 10-year cost suggests an average of $80 billion to $110 billion per year, depending on what the final bill looks like.

Granted, the health care costs will continue indefinitely, while the United States cannot sustain 100,000 troops in Afghanistan for many years. On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?

Who are these Americans who die for lack of insurance? Dr. Linda Harris, an ob-gyn in Oregon tells of Sue, a 31-year-old patient of hers. Sue was a single mom who worked hard — sometimes two jobs at once — to ensure that her beloved daughter would enjoy a better life.

Sue’s jobs never provided health insurance, and Sue felt she couldn’t afford to splurge on herself to get gynecological checkups. For more than a dozen years, she never had a Pap smear, although one is recommended annually. Even when Sue began bleeding and suffering abdominal pain, she was reluctant to see a doctor because she didn’t know how she would pay the bills.
Finally, Sue sought help from a hospital emergency room, and then from the low-cost public clinic where Dr. Harris works. Dr. Harris found that Sue had advanced cervical cancer. Three months later, she died. Her daughter was 13.

“I get teary whenever I think about her,” Dr. Harris said. “It was so needless.”

Cervical cancer has a long preinvasive stage that can be detected with Pap smears, and then effectively treated with relatively minor procedures, Dr. Harris said.

“People talk about waiting lines in Canada,” Dr. Harris added. “I say, well, at least they have a line to wait in.”

Based on the numbers from the Harvard study, a person like Sue dies as a consequence of lack of health care coverage every 12 minutes in America. As many people die every three weeks from lack of health insurance as were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Health coverage is becoming steadily more precarious as companies try to cut costs and insurance companies boost profits by denying claims and canceling coverage of people who get sick. I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where we sometimes had greased pig contests. I’m not sure which is harder: getting a good grip on a greased hog or wrestling with an insurance company trying to avoid paying a claim it should.

Joe Lieberman, a pivotal vote in the Senate, says he recognizes that there are problems and would like reform, but he denounces “another government health insurance entitlement, the government going into the health insurance business.” Look out — it sounds as if Mr. Lieberman is planning to ax Medicare.

The health reform legislation in Congress is imperfect, of course. It won’t do enough to hold down costs; it may restrict access even to private insurance coverage for abortion services; it won’t do enough to address public health or unhealthy lifestyles.

Likewise, troop deployment plans in Afghanistan are imperfect. Some experts think more troops will help. Others think they will foster a nationalist backlash and feed the insurgency (that’s my view).

So where’s the best place to spend $100 billion a year? Is it on patrols in Helmand? Or is it to refurbish our health care system so that people like Sue don’t die unnecessarily every 12 minutes?

The Art of Non-Confirmity

What I love about online networking sites is how you find out about the most interesting stuff that you would never otherwise have learned of. Whether it's mundane but insightful information about friends and acquaintances that would otherwise have passed-by in the daily grind of life, a special event in your local area you might have missed, a charity or cause that you hadn't heard of but are compelled to support, or a website that someone else became a fan of and that provided you with entertaining or interesting information, it's one of the few ways that technology has actually helped to enrich my life. I love it!

Today, for instance, I learned about The Art of Non-Confirmity, a blog and website that follows the travels and thoughts of one man, Chris Guillebeau. I would summarize what it was about this one man and his ramblings that drew me to him but I think it's best that I take the words right out of his mouth, from his blog. However, suffice to say, this man is my alter-ego in a parallel universe. He lives the life that I would have if I had been braver 10 years ago and made different choices. Of course, it's not too late for me to make those choices at some point in the future but, clearly, for many reasons, now is not my time.

Until it is, I shall live vicariously through his blog posts, which I'm sure are going to become a weekly favorite.

Here are the stated goals of Chris' blog and vocation....

The Art of Non-Conformity (AONC) project chronicles my writing on how to change the world by achieving significant, personal goals while helping others at the same time. In the battle against conventional beliefs, I focus on three areas: Life, Work, and Travel.

Twice a week (every Monday and Thursday) I write on at least one of those topics, and once in a while I profile other revolutionaries who are also changing the world through unconventional ways. You can follow along by RSS, email updates, or just by checking in here at the site.

More specifically:
I write about personal development and life design, with the conviction that you don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.

I write about entrepreneurship and other kinds of unconventional work, with the belief that the work we do should be both fun and meaningful.

I write about international travel, travel hacking in general, and my journeys to more than 25 countries every year.

The key theme that links each of these topics is nonconformity. I define non-conformity as “a lack of orthodoxy in thoughts or beliefs” or “the refusal to accept established customs, attitudes, or ideas.”

If you’re looking for specific examples of what this means in practice, take a look through the archives or most popular posts. Check it out for a while; you might like it. Or you might not, and that’s OK too.

All of the writing on the AONC site is presented freely with no advertising. If you’d like to support the project, join the small army.

Every Country in the World

The site also tracks my own stated goal for world travel. In my journeys so far I have visited more than 100 countries, and over the next five four years, I plan to visit every country in the world. You can view my current progress here.

World Domination

I’m interested in the convergence between highly personal goals and service to others. I use the metaphor of world domination (ruling and changing the world at the same time) to highlight all the things we can achieve when we choose to live with gratitude and purpose.

You can learn more about that subject in the Brief Guide to World Domination that has now been read by more than 100,000 people in 60 countries. The sequel, 279 Days to Overnight Success, provides a case study for anyone interested in building an alternative career using new media.

The essence of my philosophy is this:

1. You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.
2. If you don’t decide for yourself what you want to get out of life, someone else will probably end up deciding for you.
3. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.
4. You can do good things for yourself and help other people at the same time.

The Reason Why

At the University of Washington, I paid $32,000 over five quarters of graduate school to learn a lot of trivia about governance in Africa (my chosen subject) and this one important fact: it is always very important to carefully examine someone’s motives in communicating.

Whenever you read something, ask yourself, “What are the author’s motivations? Why did he or she choose to devote a great deal of time and effort to one particular thing in exclusion of others?”

On balance, I think this lesson is probably worth at least $32,000 in the long run, but if you can learn it for free and in less time, good for you.

As for me, I started writing for three reasons:

1) I felt I had something important to say.
2) I wanted to transition from helping a few people on an individual basis to helping more people through a broader platform.
3) I wanted to sleep at night.

In the nine months before I began this project, I kept waking up at night with more ideas. If I didn’t write them down, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I learned a while back that when you wake up feeling excited about an idea and can’t shake it, there’s usually a reason for it. It’s a good idea to pay attention to what you’re being told by the universe.

Since I started writing these things down, I’ve been advancing the vision of unconventional living, helping more people, and sleeping great at night.
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I mean... oh-my-freakin'-God! Isn't that just AWESOME!? How incredibly inspiring!