#and then when he becomes a product of aperture he just wants to be put out of his misery..... he really went out with a whimper huh

[junuve]

i love the bold bravado of early aperture Cave as much as the next guy, but can we talk about the era of Cave Johnson where you can tell he's just sickened. not physically (yet) but spiritually, and not for moral reasons (lmao). it's the kind of sad, quiet angry you get with so many repetitions of failure, of not being good Enough to "make it"; of being #2 perpetually.

aperture is stuck endlessly circling the drain, but never getting any closer to going down or escaping the whirlpool. and Cave is the captain who goes down with his ship, but like.... in the pettiest, bitchiest way possible. now THAT is a man.

[introvertguide]

Singin’ in the Rain (1952); AFI #5

The next movie on the AFI list is perhaps the most popular musical in American Film, Singin in the Rain (1952). This film is far and away the highest ranked musical on the AFI list. It is a comedy set in early Hollywood when movies switched from silent to having sound. A lot of actors were suddenly exposed as talentless with a pretty face and the old vaudeville performers suddenly regained popularity. A film that didn’t hold any punches as to the difficulty Hollywood had with understanding this new aspect of movie media, this is definitely worth checking out. I want to go over story details before addressing the behind-the-scenes aspects, so...

SPOILER WARNING! THIS DESCRIPTION COMPLETELY SPOILS THE STORY SO WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST!

At the premiere of his latest film, The Royal Rascal, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) tells a gathered crowd an exaggerated version of his life story, including his motto: "Dignity, always dignity." His words are humorously contradicted by flashbacks showing him alongside his best friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) working all the undignified jobs involved with acting. He is with his shallow leading lady Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), who turns out be very screachy and stupid. The new movie is a hit and Don leaves with Cosmo to the producer after party when the car breaks down and Don is recognized. To escape from his fans, Don jumps into a passing car driven by Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds). She drops him off, but not before claiming to be a stage actress and sneering at his "undignified" accomplishments as a movie star.

At a party, the head of the studio, R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), shows a short demonstration of a talking picture, but his guests are unimpressed. To Don's amusement, Kathy pops out of a mock cake right in front of him, revealing herself to be a chorus girl. Furious at Don's teasing, she throws a real cake at him, only to accidentally hit Lina in the face. She runs away. Don is smitten with Kathy and searches for her for weeks. While filming a love scene, Lina tells him that she had Kathy fired. Don finally finds Kathy working in another Monumental Pictures production. She confesses to having been a fan of his all along.

After a rival studio has an enormous hit with its first talking picture, the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, R.F. decides he has no choice but to convert the next Lockwood and Lamont film, The Dueling Cavalier, into a talkie. The production is beset with difficulties, including Lina's grating voice and strong New York accent. An exasperated diction coach tries to teach her how to speak properly, but to no avail. Don is also given diction lessons which turns in a great tap number with Cosmo to Moses Supposes. The Dueling Cavalier's preview screening is a disaster; the actors are barely audible thanks to the awkward placing of the microphones, Don repeats the line "I love you" to Lina over and over, to the audience's derisive laughter, and in the middle of the film, the sound goes out of synchronization, with hilarious results as Lina shakes her head while the villain's deep voice says, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" and the villain nods his head while Lina's squeaky soprano says, "No! No! No!"

Don, Kathy, and Cosmo come up with the idea to turn The Dueling Cavalier into a musical called The Dancing Cavalier, complete with a modern musical number called "Broadway Melody". The three are disheartened when they realize Lina's terrible voice remains a problem, but Cosmo, inspired by a scene in The Dueling Cavalier where Lina's voice was out of sync, suggests that they dub Lina's voice with Kathy's. R.F. approves the idea but tells them not to inform Lina about the dubbing. When Lina finds out, she is infuriated. She becomes even angrier when she discovers that R.F. intends to give Kathy a screen credit and a big publicity buildup afterward. Lina threatens to sue R.F. unless he orders Kathy to continue working uncredited as Lina's voice. R.F. reluctantly agrees to her demands, as a clause in her contract states that the studio is responsible for media coverage of her and she can sue if she is not happy with it.

The premiere of The Dancing Cavalier is a tremendous success. When the audience clamors for Lina to sing live, Don, Cosmo, and R.F. tell her to lip sync into the microphone while Kathy, concealed behind the curtain, sings into a second one. While Lina is "singing", Don, Cosmo, and R.F. gleefully raise the curtain, revealing the fakery. Lina flees. A distressed Kathy tries to run away as well, but Don proudly announces to the audience that she's "the real star" of the film. Later, Kathy and Don kiss in front of a billboard for their new film, Singin' in the Rain.

I really enjoy the movie, but I have to admit a couple things that I have noticed over the years on different viewings. One thing is that the acting is not very good. It is all very hokey and I like to believe that this was done on purpose, but I have seen other productions from these actors and the acting from all three is  pretty similar. Another thing is that the pitch for the “modern number” that turns out to be the Broadway Melody was just shoved in for timing reasons and it comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. I noticed that Rita Morena is in this film and she is a complete triple threat, but a 19-year-old Debbie Reynolds got the lead.

There are some very well known behind the scenes trivia notes that are pretty general knowledge to American movie fans, but I will go over a couple things. The Singin’ in the Rain number was set up but Gene Kelly was very sick with a fever so he did a practice take and went home. They continued filming the next couple of days but most of what is in the movie came from that initial sick take with fill shots from the other takes. 

Debbie Reynolds was not a dancer or a singer, but a gymnast. She had to be taught how to dance and you can see in her face how hard she is trying. Strangely, the speaking that she put in for Lina Lamont was actually the actress Jean Hagen (who played Lamont and was nominated for best supporting actress) who did not have that high pitch voice but a deep smoky voice. The singing that was dubbed over was not Reynolds either, but a professional singer named Betty Noyes. 

The film had a lot of difficulties as takes had to be redone because the crew did not really know what they were doing. There were episodes where the mic was poorly placed on the actor’s body (Debbie Reynolds) and there was difficulty getting clean takes, including an episode when the mic picked up her heartbeat. Donald O’Connor had to do the Make Em’ Laugh number twice because the cinematographer left the lens aperture open and the film fogged over. A lot of numbers actually had to be redone because of a fire. 

None of the other actors in this film ever reported working with Gene Kelly as a positive experience. Kelly had a very high standard and a very specific style which could be difficult as Reynolds was not a dancer. Kelly also had just come off of filming the previous year’s best picture, An American in Paris, and really wanted the movie to do just as well. He was mean to Reynolds and made her cry. He also had her do the Good Morning number over and over until vessels broke in her feet and she started to bleed all over the stage. O’Connor did not like the way the Kelly pushed around the other actors and referred to Kelly as an aggressive control freak. Gene Kelly admitted later to being far too hard on his fellow actors during this filming and both O’Connor and Reynolds forgave him suggesting it was a learning experience. It still sounds like pretty awful working conditions to me (edited)

Only two of the songs in the film were original for the movie, Moses Supposes and Make Em Laugh, although the former was based on a children’s rhyme and the latter was very similar to Be A Clown by Irving Berlin. This was actually the seventh movie that had Singin’ in the Rain as a feature song. It seemed like an homage to the popularity of the Follies in the 1920′s, using all of the popular notes of the year to commemorate the past. 

So should this film be on the AFI List? Absolutely, although I don’t know if I would have put it in the top 5. It is a lot of fun, it is very well known, it is still mentioned frequently in current popular media, and the actors really put a lot into the production. However, I wouldn’t put it above movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. That is a little much. And would I recommend it? Of course! This movie is a lot of fun and one of those movies that the pace pulls you through without ever needing to check the time. The dancing is fabulous and the show of the misunderstanding of sound in movies by the characters is truly hilarious. It is 100% certified fresh an Rotten Tomatoes and I completely agree. 

[writingsofmyimagination]

Restraint Ch.4

Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Vampire AU, Smut.

Warnings: Swearing, SMUT(YAY!)(oral f&m receiving, fingering, penetration Slight BDSM dom themes).

Word Count:2083

Summary: As Jungkooks best friend recently moved to Seoul, there is one of the boys you have yet to meet. This one has a dark secret and has to use all the restraint he can to control himself around you.

My first BTS fanfiction :) happy reading Armys! Remember to reblog, comments always welcome :). 

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | 

🎵Charlie Puth – How Long🎵 you sighed when you realised your phone was on the bed and you’d just sat down;you rushed up and accepted the call.

“Hey Kook what’s up” You chirped pleasantly sinking back down consumed in the comfort of your new sofa and draped your fleece throw back over your shoulders. “We’ve just finished practice if you want a hand unpacking” he offered despite the exhaustion embedded in his voice. You sighed exasperatedly and audibly. “Or do you want an excuse to avoid it” he re-offered

“Please” you pleaded. Jungkook chuckled softly 

“Okay well how about you come over after your showcase and we can watch a film” 

There was a light knock at the door, heaving yourself out of your snuggly contentment you opened the door. You were greeted again by Yoongi a faint curve to his lips which snowballed into a full gummy smile on meeting your gaze, you turned and left the door open nonchalantly 

“You can crash too if you want, Yoongi has a small bed in his studio, I’m sure he won’t mind especially for you” 

You half flinched as Yoongi pressed himself up behind you, hands pressed to your bare stomach which was exposed under your crop fleecy jumper. Running his lips softly to the crook of in your neck imprinting his moist soft lips; you couldn’t help but sigh.

“Why do you say that” you blurted attempting to stabilise your voice. His breath gliding across your skin was swiftly undoing the work of your run and shower; your resistance was crumbling. “I think he has a thing for you” You couldn’t help but find this incredibly amusing giving your current situation, Yoongi seemed to share this amusement feeling his lips shape into a grin.

“Seriously? Where do you get that idea from, his overwhelming lack of interaction with me? Well typical really trust me to attract the grumpy one” you toyed, one of his hands quickly wrapped in your hair and pulled, ripping a slight moan from you lips which you disguised with a cough. He heard your heart crash into your ribs. He continued his punishment and delicately trickled his hand under your waistband; you rebuffed him and moved away before the heat completely consumed you.

“Don’t give me that you’ve always had a crush on him, anyway I’ll ask him about the bed when he gets back, I can’t match make without you both here” Yoongi’s eyes glimmered with amused knowing, his nose slightly crinkled at the force of his cheeks pressing against it. Shit he can hear exactly what Jungkook just said. You leant on the table prepared to ward off any advances temporarily. “I’ll message later when I’m on route” you confirmed avoiding his last comment.

“Okay babe See you later”

“Bye”. The phone clicked and you placed it on the table.

“Had a crush on me do you?” He teased he stalked closer to you

“You can’t talk Mr couldn’t come near me because I smelt nice, now are you going to stop teasing me and fuck me already” Near enough launching at you crashing lips and everything else into you knocking all the wind from your lungs. He shed his unbuttoned chequered shirt without breaking contact, your hand searched for the bottom of his black tee and relieved him exposing the white creamy tone of his torso and it reminded you of the moonlight. His blue jeans hung onto his hips taunting his V line. Following your lead he ravaged you of your jumper. He disturbed the lustful need stepping back to admire you in your lacy red balconette bra. He latched back onto your lips with more urgency like he needed them to survive

“I guess I should start back where I left off” he breathed breaking the fitted puzzle pieces of your lips. He coaxed his way beneath your waistband and pleasingly found you’d neglected to put underwear on after your shower. Sliding his fingers through your excitement you both exhaled in sync “I love how wet you get for me” He lifted you up round his waist and carried you at a human pace and cradled you down onto the bed and disposed of your trousers. He yanked your bra down and his tongue delicately whirled around your nipple in contrast to his other hand roughly kneading your other breast. His nose traced down your stomach as delicately as an artist’s pencil before flattening his tongue where you desperately needed it. With the build up from earlier it wasn’t long before you was on the brink. He felt your muscles begins to quiver where he held you at the top of your hips

“Don’t stop” you managed in the middle of a cry tangling your hand in his hair, uselessly trying to tilt your hips into his tongue as it was pressed to your clit and moving in waves, each motion feeling more like a tsunami of bliss. Muscle tension was at breaking point. As soon as your muscles started their frenzied quest for succor Yoongi thrust his fingers into you giving your walls something to clench around as the pulses shuddered through you. You cried out rolling your head back into the pillow, your back curved in steep arch. You watched him sit up and back onto his legs licking his fingers like the cat that got the cream. “Don’t you dare think I’m done with you baby girl” the glimmer of prurience in his eyes seemed all the more blinding through the dark aperture of his pupils.

“Don’t you dare think I’ve had enough” You countered biting your lip and grappled with his belt with intense fervor. Letting you pull his jeans free freeing his member which had definitely been uncomfortably restricted. You stood up flushed with poise and pulled him round and pushed him to sit on the bed. He smiled and exhaled an amused breath

“I’ll give you 5 minutes in charge”

“Who made you the boss” you challenged knowing full well you fully endorsed his control. He snatched your wrist and dragged you roughly onto his lap reasserting his strength and dominance, feeling him in between your legs.

“I’m the one who can get you to do anything I want” you respond digging your nails into the back of his neck kissing him greedily trying to avoid his fangs, you yelped faintly as one of his teeth perforated your lip shallowly. His tongue darted out straight instantly enjoying the product. His grip tightened on your behind as your blood surged through his system like heroin; inundating his synapses causing a euphoric surge. Yoongi rocked himself and his member along your arousal

“Is that a hint” you teased. Those eyes of his grew wide and bright; this was extinguished as you removed yourself from his lap and deprived him. His bottom lip pouting out, sulking. He forgave when you dropped to your knees and silenced any response escaping his lips. All he managed was a low guttural sound as you took him in your mouth, his head lolled back and sucked at his bottom lip as he enjoyed your tongue exploring his shaft “Fuck Y/N” he hissed breathlessly when you took him further into your mouth and teased the remaining with your hand. His breathing was becoming more and more staggered; his hand clenching in your hair “Times up baby doll” sounding disappointed, you complied and got back to your feet where he stood a hairs length from your face “I want that mouth crying out for me now” the abrupt pause of your breathing only stirred more need for you.

“You like it when I control you, I can hear the smallest variation in your breathing and not to mention your blood rushing faster” he affirmed. You were almost shy feeling exposed; you couldn’t hide your desires or reactions from him. Eyes directed at the floor a small ministration sucking your lip raising your eyes with as much innocence as you could. “Don’t play with me, on the bed!” you did as you were told while unclipping your bra and dropping it to the floor with a glare commanding him to you. He diffused into a blur and was on you, your body jumped with excitement. Legs wrapped round his waist, his weight was piled onto your hands only straining the intensity flowing between you. Your skin on his beautifully poisonous, just so intoxicating. You was desperate for him now, bucking your hips against him, you sighed frustrated almost struggling. This only causes his face to crease into a wicked smile knowing you were completely his.

“What do you want?” he whispered in your ear, his lips close to your burning skin. Even Yoongi was struggling to keep himself at bay but he wanted to hear you beg.

“You, stop teasing” you wriggled childishly having a tantrum beneath him. He looked to the right mimicking deep thought as he considered your reply, he moved and aligned himself with you and teased his tip before pulling away. You audibly exhaled your anger, more at the fact he’d reduced you to begging. “Yoongi please I need you inside me” you desperately pleaded.

“Mmm that’s better” he kissed your neck and sucked blossoming purple flowers in the wake of his lips. He thrust into you, the pleasure causing a relieved cry; from both of you. Fingers gripping tightly at his sides bracing for him to bite you again; he very nearly did, he was overwhelmed at how good you felt around him It was exquisite, not to mention the deep bass of your pulse. You fingers dug in deeper as your sweet spot was being hit racing you to the edge. “Yoongi I’m going to..” He decided to stop dead

“Not yet you’re not baby” In a smooth motion he climbed off you and rolled you onto your left side and his skin pressed up against you, your bodies fitting together so naturally. You wailed as your hair was yanked down stretching your neck back, he held you there your ear in line with his lips “You cum when I say” he panted, torturously slowly entering you again. You fought against his unfaltering grip wanting nothing more than to roll your head into the pillow muffling your cries which became less audible and more resembling breathless pants. The slow crank turning the wheel of the knot inside you began tightening again, the agonisingly slow pace was only making the climb sweeter and harder all at once. Knuckles drained of colour as they tangled in the sheets. His hold on your waist holding you in place, he let you move when his hand found you throbbing bundle of nerves. “Baby” he panted “you feel so good” pushing yourself back harder into him; your body felt almost on the verge of collapse. He circled your clit at the same pace as he pushing into you.

“Please Yoongi I can’t..” you cried, every moan, every breath out you were pained trying to stop yourself from coming undone. “Cum over me baby, let go” the apex of cliff collapsed underneath you, succumbing to the full body spasm dragging a moan verging on a scream out of you. His lips clamped onto your neck puncturing your skin, your moans climbed higher a scream. The pressure of him siphoning your life force commanded your walls to pulse around him with more intensity; you felt a cool trickle of blood make its way across your chest. A dim sting in your neck began to creep in despite your body still suffering pleasantly from aftershocks. He was thrusting faster, still dragging cries from you, his hips jerked succumbing to his own release.

The moment his mouth left you you buried your head completely spent and a bit light headed. Hand resting on your hip, his head pressing to your back breathing frantically “I can’t get enough of you” he panted softly kissing your back. He leant up on his arm bit his fingers a bulge of blood grew and he painted it over the puncture sites; a slight itching and then they were gone. You couldn’t even muster a response, your breathing was still tapering off. Twisting to half face him exhaustedly smiling, his hair clinging to his forehead layered with sweat. The gentle caress of his lips meeting yours dispersed a warm comforting feeling within you. Propped up on his elbow he peacefully held you fall into a restful slumber.

[axlhazarikain-blog]

Film Studio Northeast India

Get high-quality experience every time you book our Film Studio Northeast India

A studio space designed with creators in mind

Are you looking to base your production in a studio? We can help you find a studio or alternative space that fits your specifications and schedule. Our Film Studio Northeast India is uniquely versatile. Everything you need is here, in the house. Give us a call to custom builds your package.

Film Studio

Some of the world's most beautiful and most historic film studios are based in and around the capital. With a diverse range of spaces and facilities, we can offer an unparalleled base for your production. Our all-white infinity cove is perfect for isolating any subject and can be creatively lit. So if you need a Film Studio Northeast India, lights or even cameras, we have it all.

Our highly skilled digital production team are creative and experienced professionals able to facilitate any aspect of filming. We produce broadcast quality HD and 4K video for a wide range of clients, including television, corporate production, live webcasts, Google Hangouts, online video content, pack shots, interviews, media training and presenter links to the camera.

Our Featured Services providing excellent services to our customers

Film Studios provides studio space and facilities for film and television production, along with commercials and stills photography. The continuing investment programme to renovate the studios and the main building are well underway. 

Film Studio Northeast India

To arrange a visit to the studios or a meeting with the team, get in touch.

We had an ambitious project, filming across two stages, with a ton of equipment, loads of cast and a sizeable crew. The studio manager and all his team were extremely helpful and accommodating, and the facilities, from dressing rooms to the canteen and offices were all great.

Trusted By Industry Leaders:

Solid Photography Tips That Can Be Used Immediately!

Photography is a great hobby, a form of art, and a way to pass some time and relieve stress. When you begin to take photos, you may notice yourself seeing details you never saw before. It’s true that a picture speaks in volumes.

A good tip you can use when shooting photographs are to practice using digital techniques. With the right methods, you can make your photos look like classic works of art. There are a variety of photo editing programs out there, but all the cool kids use Photoshop. Converting your pictures into works of art is just a few clicks away.

Shutter Speed

Play around with shutter speeds to determine which work best during what situations. You can either capture a precise moment or use a higher exposure to blur together a period. Using a faster shutter speed will let you catch objects while they are in motion, while slow shutter speed is excellent for capturing serene natural settings.

Film Studio Northeast India

Framing your subject is an important thing to do in photography. Make sure to zoom in on the focus of the picture, and keep distracting elements out of the film. It will unclutter the photograph as well as eliminating unnecessary focal points.

Often a photographer will be so concerned with a landscape background that he neglects the details in the foreground. However, this is the first place the viewer’s eye will land. Consider a natural frame in front of the photo so that a perception of depth is achieved. If taking pictures with people in them, blur the background slightly. When you don’t obscure the environment, it becomes harder for a viewer to focus on the subject. An easy way to do this is to make your background is further from your question.

Putting your models at ease is essential, especially if they are unfamiliar with you. Many people have an instinctive negative reaction to someone taking their picture. Therefore, you should be friendly and welcoming and get your subject’s permission before taking any photographs. Make people understand photography is an art rather than an invasion of their privacy.

Macro Photography of Flowers. How to Take a Great Close-Up Photograph

One of the most significant aspects of macro photography of flowers, at least in my opinion, is flowers don’t move, unless you choose a windy day to go out on a photographic adventure.

More Than Just A Hobby

All of us have experienced the time when we are wondering to what it is that we wanted to do in our life, whether it may be on the personal growth and relationship, career and other things. But risk has always been attached to the pursuit of a person’s passion. 

All of any career or decisions have their challenges which might cause for someone to succeed or lose valuable time. Such passions include the ones about arts like photography. This career like others might give a chance to someone to excel or give up and take the other regular jobs in society. To enter this industry, one must know how to start photography.

What Does It Take To Be A Photographer?

To excel in this career and learn photography, sometimes the real passion and about makes a big difference from others. If taking photos is what you are passionate about then photography might be more than just a hobby you and you will be a full-time photographer. Although there is a presence of the people called career experts who would take some time to make a statement discouraging the photography career aspirants, what shall be done is to listen to one’s self, if it is what he/she desires, then there is no reason to quit and reject it. 

There it is, you have the initial courage of taking the first step, but the rest would be strict as the difficult times will arise and put you in the test of patience and perseverance. By then, thoughts will be created in your mind as a result of past challenges and makes you wonder if what you are doing is worth, will it ever be a tool for the future, or it is just a job that will make you stay where you are.

Now that you have your equipment let’s discuss some techniques for capturing an impressive landscape photo. We have amazing deals on Film Studio Northeast India, camera and lights packages.

A foreground object can make, or break your photo. You want something that is noticeable, but not something that takes away from the main subject. The foreground object can be anything from a rock to a plant or a tree. Dead trees add some character.  Foreground objects will also add some scale to your photo.

It is also a good idea to include a view of the distant horizon in your shot. It will add even more scale and distance to the photo. Well-defined midground objects are also important.  They help to lead the viewer’s eyes through the gallery and toward the main subject. The studio photographer’s arsenal includes some tools to soften and redistribute light to the best advantage of the question. Among these tools is the Softbox which provides soft, even lighting by using a diffuser in front of the fire.

Film Studio Northeast India

In outdoor photography, cloud cover diffuses the light of the sun much like a photographer’s softbox, producing a soft even light that results in softer contrasts. While high contrast can be quite dramatic, the softer contrast allows for more detail in both the sun and the dark areas of your photograph. The softer light is also more flattering for portraits or candid shots of people.

On your first few cloudy day adventures, consider taking your digital camera. In spite of the differences in the cameras, what you learn about how the lighting changes your compositions and setup will be equally useful with your film camera. And with the digital, you’ll feel free to experiment without the added cost of film on your mind. Some difficult subjects which benefit from the diffused light include waterfalls in dark forested areas, sea life caught in a tide pool and wildlife hiding in the shadows, as well as close-ups of flowers and people.

Diffused lighting is not as bright as direct light, indoors or out, and you will need to compensate with slower shutter speed. Or widen the aperture and adjust the depth of field. You should count on needing your tripod for wide or long shots. The picture can be blurred by even slight camera movement with really slow shutter speeds, so use your remote if you have one.

Everybody likes looking at pictures. By going into photography, you can make memories that would’ve otherwise been missed. Photography can be a fulfilling and enjoyable activity. You will find that sharing your photography skills with others will be a great stress reliever and give you great pleasure.

Navigate to this website for getting more information related to Film Studio Northeast India.

[kyjust]

Scott kelby perfect layers

#Scott kelby perfect layers update#

#Scott kelby perfect layers software#

#Scott kelby perfect layers download#

#Scott kelby perfect layers free#

#Scott kelby perfect layers software#

OnOne Software has put together some fantastic videos, available for viewing on their website.

Super fast launch and file-opening speed.

Layered files are easily opened in Photoshop if needed.

Use the built-in layer masks and masking tools to blend multiple layers together.

Adjust layer size, position, blending mode and opacity.

Combine multiple images into a layered Photoshop-compatible file.

Features of onOne Software Perfect Layers We’re extremely excited to provide you with powerful layered functionality that seamlessly integrates into your photography workflow. Use it to change skies, composite multiple images together and retouch portraits using the built-in blend modes. With Perfect Layers you can create and edit multi-layered Photoshop files directly from Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture, or use it to combine images from almost any workflow application. Perfect Layers is the fast and easy way to create layered files with Photoshop Lightroom or Apple Aperture.

#Scott kelby perfect layers free#

Free for owners of Perfect Photo Suite 5.5.

Add Color Fill Layers for photographic effects.

Use layer masks and masking tools to blend multiple layers together.

Combine multiple images from Lightroom, Aperture, or any application, into a single, layered file.

Inspired by and designed in conjunction with Scott Kelby.

However, during the pre-order period for Perfect Layers 1.0, onOne Software is discounting the price an extra $30 to just $99.95. The price of o nOne Software’s Perfect Layers will be $129.95.

#Scott kelby perfect layers update#

Perfect Layers will appear as a software update when it becomes available in a couple of weeks. Perfect Layers 1.0 is free to owners of the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 (aka Plug-In Suite 5.5). Your layer should look gray with a little of your image show- ing through. From the Blending pop-up menu, choose ‘Subtract.’ For Scale choose 2. From the Layer pop-up menu, choose Layer 1. Basically, it adds Photoshop style Layers functionality to Lightroom by way of the plugin. Retouching Faces With SCOTT KELBY Step Three:Click on the top layer. I am a little behind in sharing this great new product with everyone, but onOne Software has new software coming out for Adobe Lightroom.

#Scott kelby perfect layers download#

Suite owners and anyone interested in Perfect Layers can download the free public preview now.Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Email Share on SMS At that time, Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 owners will receive a free product update that will include Perfect Layers 1.0. The final version, 1.0, will be available for purchase in mid-2011. The Perfect Layers Public Preview will expire on June 30th, 2011. Scott has been playing with early development builds of Perfect Layers and he (and the rest of his team including Matt Kloskowski and RC Concepcion) are very excited about the possibilities that Perfect Layers will bring to Lightroom users. OnOne have been working closely with Scott Kelby from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals on Perfect Layers to refine the feature set and get great ideas in general on Lightroom users need. If you use Lightroom or Aperture and you’ve ever wanted to or wished you had the ability to create a layered file, then this is definitely for you.īeing able to take two or more files and combining them into a single layered file or taking a single image and duplicating it to create multiple layers and use blending modes to enhance them is very powerful and opens up all kinds of creative things you can do. Perfect Layers is a standalone application that works on its own allowing you to create and edit layered Photoshop files. OnOne Software have announced that a Public Preview of Perfect Layers is now available to download and try out, free of charge.

[kkintle]

Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman; Quotes

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

“When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause button on human beings they start,” argues my friend and teacher Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, which advises global businesses on ethics and leadership. “You start to reflect, you start to rethink your assumptions, you start to reimagine what is possible and, most importantly, you start to reconnect with your most deeply held beliefs. Once you’ve done that, you can begin to reimagine a better path.” But what matters most “is what you do in the pause,” he added. “Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: ‘In each pause I hear the call.’

As the editor and writer Leon Wieseltier said to me once: technologists want us to think that patience became a virtue only because in the past “we had no choice”—we had to wait longer for things because our modems were too slow or our broadband hadn’t been installed, or because we hadn’t upgraded to the iPhone 7. “And so now that we have made waiting technologically obsolete,” added Wieseltier, “their attitude is: ‘Who needs patience anymore?’ But the ancients believed that there was wisdom in patience and that wisdom comes from patience … Patience wasn’t just the absence of speed. It was space for reflection and thought.” We are generating more information and knowledge than ever today, “but knowledge is only good if you can reflect on it.”

That is why, I explained to Bojia, as a columnist, “I am either in the heating business or the lighting business.” Every column or blog has to either turn on a lightbulb in your reader’s head—illuminate an issue in a way that will inspire them to look at it anew—or stoke an emotion in your reader’s heart that prompts them to feel or act more intensely or differently about an issue. The ideal column does both.

It is okay to change your mind as an opinion writer; what is not okay is to have no mind—to stand for nothing, or for everything, or only for easy and safe things.

the Talmudic saying “What comes from the heart enters the heart.”

Indeed, as the world becomes more interdependent and complex, it becomes more vital than ever to widen your aperture and to synthesize more perspectives.

Wells describes three ways of thinking about a problem: “inside the box,” “outside the box,” and “where there is no box.” The only sustainable approach to thinking today about problems, he argues, “is thinking without a box.” Of course, that doesn’t mean having no opinion. Rather, it means having no limits on your curiosity or the different disciplines you might draw on to appreciate how the Machine works.

The time of static stability has passed us by, he added. That does not mean we can’t have a new kind of stability, “but the new kind of stability has to be dynamic stability. There are some ways of being, like riding a bicycle, where you cannot stand still, but once you are moving it is actually easier. It is not our natural state. But humanity has to learn to exist in this state.”

Lives are changed when people connect. Life is changed when everything is connected. —Qualcomm motto

We need to keep a close eye on the monopoly power that big data can create for big companies. It is not just how they can dominate a market with their products now, but how they can reinforce that domination with all the data they can collect.

When the world is flat you can put all the tools out there for everyone, but the system is still full of friction. But the world is fast when the tools disappear, and all you are thinking about is the project.

There is something wonderfully human about the open-source community. At heart, it’s driven by a deep human desire for collaboration and a deep human desire for recognition and affirmation of work well done—not financial reward. It is amazing how much value you can create with the words “Hey, what you added is really cool. Nice job. Way to go!” Millions of hours of free labor are being unlocked by tapping into people’s innate desires to innovate, share, and be recognized for it.

People say that in hockey you don’t go where the puck is, you go where the puck is going (…)

“Mobility gives you mass market, broadband gives you access to the information digitally, and the cloud stores all the software applications so you can use them anytime anywhere and the cost is zero—it changed everything,” said Hans Vestberg, former CEO of the Ericsson Group.

As a result, the motto in Silicon Valley today is: everything that is analog is now being digitized, everything that is being digitized is now being stored, everything that is being stored is now being analyzed by software on these more powerful computing systems, and all the learning is being immediately applied to make old things work better, to make new things possible, and to do old things in fundamentally new ways.

Think of the historic problem with wind-generated electricity. Because the wind blows intermittently and the electricity it generates cannot be stored at scale, and thus a utility could never be totally assured of sufficient supply, the ability of wind to replace coal-fired power has always been limited. But now, weather-prediction software using big data analytics has become so intelligent it can tell you the exact hour when the wind will blow or the rain will come or the temperature will rise. And so a utility in a city such as Houston can know twenty-four hours in advance that the next day is going to be a particularly hot day and demand for air-conditioning will spike in those exact hours, meaning that demand for wind-generated electricity could exceed supply. That utility can now notify buildings in Houston to automatically turn up their air-conditioning between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., before employees arrive, and when the wind is generating the most electricity. Buildings are good storehouses of cooling. So that stored cooling keeps the building comfortable most of the day. As a result, the amount of wind power that utility generates, rather than being insufficient, perfectly matches the demand—without having to worry about storing it on batteries or needing to call in coal-generated power. An incredibly complex demand-response challenge was solved at a cost of … zero—just by bringing intelligence to all the machines and optimizing the whole system. All the complexity was abstracted away by the software, and it is starting to happen everywhere today.

The system does not answer our questions because it ���knows.’ Rather, it is designed to evaluate and weigh information from multiple sources, and then offer suggestions for consideration. And it assigns a confidence level to each response. In the case of “Final Jeopardy!,” Watson’s confidence level was quite low: 14 percent, Watson’s way of saying: ‘Don’t trust this answer.’ In a sense, it knew what it didn’t know.”

“In the twenty-first century, knowing all the answers won’t distinguish someone’s intelligence—rather, the ability to ask all the right questions will be the mark of true genius.”

“You know how the mirror on your car says ‘Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear’?” Well, he said, “that now applies to what’s in your front windshield, because now it’s the future that is much closer than you think.”

Indeed, these digital flows have become so rich and powerful they are to the twenty-first century what rivers running off mountains were to civilization and cities in days of old. Back then, you wanted to build your town or your factory along a rushing river—such as the Amazon—and let it flow through you. That river would give you power, mobility, nourishment, and access to neighbors and their ideas. So it is with these digital flows into and out of the supernova.

It turns out, Corbat explained, that a person’s voiceprint is actually more accurate than their fingerprint, iris scan, or any other means of identification. And as more consumers use their smartphones to pay for things, access data, and check on their accounts, passwords and PINs are less workable. So your unique voice now becomes the key that opens all doors.

“The principal factor promoting historically significant social change is contact with strangers possessing new and unfamiliar skills.” The corollary of that proposition, he argued, is that centers of high skill (i.e., civilizations) tend to upset their neighbors by exposing them to attractive novelties. Less-skilled peoples round about are then impelled to try to make those novelties their own so as to attain for themselves the wealth, power, truth, and beauty that civilized skills confer on their possessors. Yet such efforts provoke a painful ambivalence between the drive to imitate and an equally fervent desire to preserve the customs and institutions that distinguish the would-be borrowers from the corruptions and injustices that also inhere in civilized life.

Warning: in the age of accelerations, if a society doesn’t build floors under people, many will reach for a wall—no matter how self-defeating that would be.

God always forgives. Man often forgives. Nature never forgives. —Saying

We are wickedly bad at dealing with the implications of compound math. —Jeremy Grantham, investor

A “black elephant,” it was explained to me by the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan, is a cross between a “black swan”—a rare, low-probability, unanticipated event with enormous ramifications—and “the elephant in the room: a problem that is widely visible to everyone, yet that no one wants to address, even though we absolutely know that one day it will have vast, black-swan-like consequences.”

People forget, noted Rockström, that it is impossible to regulate the climate without biodiversity. If you don’t have pollinators in the air and microrganisms in the soil and birds and other animals depositing seeds for new trees through their waste, you don’t have a forest. If you don’t have a forest, you don’t have trees to soak up the carbon. If you don’t have trees to soak up the carbon, it goes into the atmosphere and intensifies global warming or into the oceans and changes their composition.

When you mix CO2 with water you get carbonic acid, which dissolves the calcium carbonate that is the essential building block for all marine organisms, particularly those with shells, and for coral reefs. When that happens, “oceans, instead of playing host to marine organisms, break them down,” said Rockström. “We can only ruin so much calcium carbonate before the marine system turns over and cannot host fish and coral reef as it did throughout the entire Holocene epoch before now.”

As the singer Joni Mitchell once put it in her song “Big Yellow Taxi,” “They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot.”

(...) mankind has become large enough in numbers and empowered enough by the supernova to be both a force of nature and a forcing function on nature.

I have said it before and I will keep saying it as long as I have the breath: we are the first generation for whom “later” will be the time when all of Mother Nature’s buffers, spare tires, tricks of the trade, and tools for adapting and bouncing back will be exhausted or breached. If we don’t act quickly together to mitigate these trends, we will be the first generation of humans for whom later will be too late.

We’re entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the twenty-first century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress; organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace. —Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google

My other vehicle is unmanned. —Bumper sticker on a car in Silicon Valley

Suddenly, I understood what the organizational consultant Warren Bennis meant when he once famously observed that the “factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” And then I stopped laughing at even that joke. This was getting serious and starting to get way too close to home.

Her post was entitled “Why ‘Keep Your Paddle in the Water’ Is Bad Advice for Beginners.” Have you ever stopped to consider what the phrase “keep your paddle in the water” actually means? If you did you wouldn’t ever recommend it to a beginner whitewater paddler. The paddlers and instructors who give this advice are well intended and what they are really expressing is: “Keep paddling to maintain your stability through rapids.” When beginners hear “keep your paddle in the water,” they end up doing a bad version of a rudder dragging their paddle in the water back by their stern while using their blade to steer. This is a really bad position to be in … To enhance stability in rapids it’s important to move as fast or faster than the current. Every time you rudder or drag your paddle in the water to steer you lose momentum and that makes you more vulnerable to flipping over. And so it is with governing today. The only way to steer is to paddle as fast as or faster than the rate of change in technology, globalization, and the environment. The only way to thrive is by maintaining dynamic stability—that bike-riding trick that Astro Teller talked about.

Social technologies are how we organize to capture the benefits of cooperation—non-zero-sum games. Physical technologies and social technologies coevolve. Physical technology innovations make new social technologies possible, like fossil fuel technologies made mass production possible, smartphones make the sharing economy possible. And vice versa, social technologies make new physical technologies possible—Steve Jobs couldn’t have made the smartphone without a global supply chain. But there is one big difference between these two forms of technology, he added: Physical technologies evolve at the pace of science—fast and getting exponentially faster, while social technologies evolve at the pace at which humans can change—much slower. While physical technology change creates new marvels, new gadgets, better medicine, social technology change often creates huge social stresses and turmoil, like the Arab Spring countries trying to go from tribal autocracies to rule of law democracies. Also, our physical technologies can get way ahead of the ability of our social technologies to manage them—nuclear proliferation, bioterrorism, cyber crime—some of which is happening around us right now. Our physical technologies won’t slow down—Moore’s law will win—so we’re in a race for our social technologies to keep up. We need to more deeply understand how individual psychology, organizations, institutions, and societies work and find ways to accelerate their adaptability and evolution.

Today’s American dream is now more of a journey than a fixed destination—and one that increasingly feels like walking up a down escalator. You can do it. We all did it as kids—but you do have to walk faster than the escalator, meaning that you need to work harder, regularly reinvent yourself, obtain at least some form of postsecondary education, make sure that you’re engaged in lifelong learning, and play by the new rules while also reinventing some of them. Then you can be in the middle class.

Like everything else in the age of accelerations, securing and holding a job requires dynamic stability—you need to keep pedaling (or paddling) all the time.

For more than a decade after the Internet emerged in the mid-1990s, there was much lamenting about the “digital divide”—New York City had Internet and upstate New York didn’t. America had it and Mexico didn’t. South Africa had it and Niger didn’t. That really mattered because it limited what you could learn, how and where you could do business, and with whom you could collaborate. Within the next decade that digital divide will largely disappear. And when that happens only one divide will matter, says Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, and that is “the motivational divide.” The future will belong to those who have the self-motivation to take advantage of all the free and cheap tools and flows coming out of the supernova.

Using government data, Bessen studied the impact of computers, software, and automation on 317 occupations from 1980 through 2013. In a research paper he published on November 13, 2015, he concluded: “Employment grows significantly faster in occupations that use computers more.”

This is a broad trend in the workplace, as Bessen noted: the skilled part of each job requires more skill and rewards more skill, and the routine, repetitive part, which can much more easily be automated, will pay minimum wages or just be given over to a bot.

The new social contracts we need between government, business, the social sector, and workers will be far more feasible if we find creative ways—to borrow a phrase from Nest Labs’ founder, Tony Fadell—to turn “AI into IA.” In my rendering, that would be to turn artificial intelligence into intelligent assistance, intelligent assistants, and intelligent algorithms.

The new social contract, Donovan added, is that you can be a lifelong employee if you are ready to be a lifelong learner.

“for all the jobs that machines can now do—whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food—they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

“if it’s just technical skill, there’s a reasonable chance it can be automated, and if it’s just being empathetic or flexible, there’s an infinite supply of people, so a job won’t be well paid. It’s the interaction of both that is virtuous.”

As Warren Buffett says, “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”

The human being is just a more intelligent animal, and if [he or she] is pushed to the extreme, the animal instinct will come out to survive.”

“‘Freedom from’ happens quickly, violently, and dramatically,” notes Seidman. “‘Freedom to’ takes time.

Ghonim sees five critical challenges facing today’s social media in the political arena: First, we don’t know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now believed and spread among millions of people. Second, we create our own echo chambers. We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, unfollow, and block everybody else. Third, online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. All of us probably know that. It’s as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars. And fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in one hundred forty characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet, and we are less motivated to change these views, even when new evidence arises. Fifth—and in my point of view, this is the most critical—today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. It’s as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.

“Some ants go out and look for food and some stay home and take care of the young, and that enables those who look for food to cover bigger areas. Specialized ant colonies have foragers and nest-keepers. This, too, is an adaptation, a learned behavior. It is not in their DNA. You cannot sequence such differentiated behaviors, but you can observe and mimic them, and doing so over time can become so powerful and advantageous that the organisms that do it dominate everyone else in their niche, just as we do as mammals.”

To put it in human terms, Mother Nature believes in lifelong learning; species that don’t keep learning and adapting disappear.

Mother Nature is the opposite of dogmatic—she is constantly agile, heterodox, hybrid, entrepreneurial, and experimental in her thinking. “Nature is restless, always exploring, inventing, trying, and failing,” adds Tom Lovejoy, university professor in environmental science at George Mason University. “Each ecosystem, and each organism, is an answer to a set of problems.

Still, that ecosystem and its balance have to be reproduced and defended every day; species rise and fall, and compete with one another, every second. Which is another of Mother Nature’s killer apps—she never confuses stability with stasis. She understands that stability is produced by endless acts of dynamism. She would tell us that there is nothing static about stability. In nature a system that looks stable and seems to be in equilibrium is not static. A system that looks static and is static is a system that’s about to die. Mother Nature knows that to remain stable you have to be open to constant change, and no plant or animal can take its position in the system for granted—just as a durable economy, says the University of Maryland’s Herman Daly, is macro-stable but micro-variable.

In systems with healthy interdependencies, explains Seidman, “all the component parts rise together. In an interdependent system that is unhealthy, they all fall together.”

While there is much we humans can learn from Mother Nature, “one should never idealize nature,” argued Mittermeier. “Nature is brutal. It is a system of conflict, stresses, and adaptation, where different species of plants and animals are beating the hell out of each other 24/7/365 in a dynamic struggle to reproduce themselves.

Ronald Heifetz, who says the role of a leader is “to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make change” as their environment changes to ensure the security and prosperity of their community.

There are people who are constantly cursing their luck, and there are people who will play the ball as best they can from wherever it lies and see it as a challenge. They know that the one thing they can control is not the bounce of the ball but their own attitude toward hitting it. In that context self-confidence and optimism are powers unto themselves. There are cultures that, when faced with adversity or a major external challenge, tend to collectively say, “I am behind, what is wrong with me? Let me learn from the best to fix it.” And they learn to adapt to change. And there are those that say, “I am behind, what did you do to me? It is your fault.”

When someone assumes ownership, it is difficult to ask more of them than they ask of themselves.

Kshirsagar once remarked to me, if you want to solve a big problem, “you need to go from taking credit to sharing credit to multiplying credit. The systems that all work, multiply credit.” Multiplying credit is just another way of making everyone in the system feel ownership, and the by-product is both resilience and propulsion.

Mother Nature would not be for telling anyone what to eat, but she would be for making sure they are fully aware of the consequences of excess.

There has never ever been a time when the human being was capable of doing something and yet, eventually, that something did not happen. That means one of three things: 1) the human psyche is going to change fundamentally (good luck with that!); 2) the worldwide social contract changes so that the “angry men” can no longer be “empowered” (good luck with that too!); or 3) boom! —Garrett Andrews, online comment on my October 21, 2015, column on NYTimes.com

Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to fix our [expletive] problems. —Comedian Samantha Bee, commenting on the Orlando massacre on her TBS show, Full Frontal, June 13, 2016

As Rabbi Marx put it, “In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free. If you are not free, you are really not empowered, and if you are not empowered the choices that you make are not entirely your own.

If there was ever a time to pause for moral reflection, it is now. “Every technology is used before it is completely understood,” Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New York Times Book Review on January 11, 2015. “There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences. We are living in that lag, and it is the right time to keep our heads and reflect. We have much to gain and much to lose.”

When I think of this challenge on a global scale, my own short prescription is that we need to find a way to get more people to practice the Golden Rule. And it doesn’t matter which version you were taught. It can be “Do unto others as you would wish they would do unto you,” or its variant from the Babylonian Talmud, where the great Jewish teacher Rabbi Hillel famously said, “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” Or any other variant enshrined by your faith.

What is so special about the Golden Rule is that while it is the simplest of all moral guides, “it produces the most complex of all behaviors—it’s ever adaptive, it applies to every imaginable situation in a way that no rulebook ever could,” argues Gautam Mukunda, a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School. When the world is already complex, you don’t want to make it more complicated. Make it simple. And no moral edict packs more punch simply than the Golden Rule—everything else really is commentary.

Gorbis is right that we are wired to be tribal, but we are not hardwired to view our tribe in the narrowest way possible. Unlike animals, we can adapt, and we can learn that in order to survive we have to widen the circle of the campfire.

A rabbi once asked his students: “How do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?” The students thought they grasped the importance of this question. There are, after all, prayers and rites and rituals that can only be done at nighttime. And there are prayers and rites and rituals that belong only to the day. So, it is important to know how we can tell when night has ended and day has begun. So the first and brightest of the students offered an answer: “Rabbi, when I look out at the fields and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.” A second student offered his answer: “Rabbi, when I look from the fields and I see a house, and I can tell that it’s my house and not the house of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.” A third student offered another answer: “Rabbi, when I see an animal in the distance, and I can tell what kind of animal it is, whether a cow or a horse or a sheep, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.” Then a fourth student offered yet another answer: “Rabbi, when I see a flower and I can make out the colors of the flower, whether they are red or yellow or blue, that’s when night has ended and day has begun. Each answer brought a sadder, more severe frown to the rabbi’s face. Until finally he shouted, “No! None of you understands! You only divide! You divide your house from the house of your neighbor, your field from your neighbor’s field, you distinguish one kind of animal from another, you separate one color from all the others. Is that all we can do—dividing, separating, splitting the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough? Isn’t the world split into enough fragments? Is that what Torah is for? No, my dear students, it’s not that way, not that way at all!” The shocked students looked into the sad face of their rabbi. “Then, Rabbi, tell us: How do we know that night has ended and day has begun?” The rabbi stared back into the faces of his students, and with a voice suddenly gentle and imploring, he responded: “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you, and you can see that person is your brother or your sister, then finally the night has ended and the day has begun.”

Anyone who has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in the neighborhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true selves. —Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si’,” May 24, 2015

When people trust each other, they can be much more adaptable and open to all forms of pluralism. When people trust each other, they can think long-term. When there is trust in the room, people are more inclined to collaborate and experiment—to open themselves up to others, to new ideas, and to novel approaches—and to extending the Golden Rule. They also don’t waste energy investigating every mistake; they feel free to fail and try again and fail again and try again.

“Collaboration moves at the speed of trust,”

Where trust is prevalent, he explained, groups and societies can move and adapt quickly through many informal contracts. “By contrast, people who do not trust one another will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, sometimes by coercive means,” wrote Fukuyama.

The heart pumps in two cycles—systole, when it contracts, and diastole, when it relaxes. And one of the things we often think is that contraction is the most important phase, because that is what gets the blood pushed out everywhere around your body. But you realize when you study medicine that it’s in diastole—when the heart relaxes—that the coronary blood vessels fill and supply the heart muscle with the lifesaving, sustaining oxygen that it needs. So without diastole there can be no systole—without relaxation there can be no contraction.

It was a powerful lesson in community for me: When you are in a real one, never, ever say to someone in need: “Call me if you need help.” If you want to help someone, just do it.

“Littering has two parents—the guy who dropped it and the guy who walked past it.

‘I just can’t support this. I don’t think it will work.’ And he said something that I will never forget as long as I live. He said: ‘We robustly debated it. I want you guys to know I am not going to support it. I just want you all to know that until this passes, I will be against it. But once it passes I will be 110 percent for it, because I don’t want it to fail. [Afterward], he was the last guy in the world to say ‘I told you so.’”

“Too bad your idea didn’t work. I know you meant well for the country. What should we try next?”

We should not just shrug off the loss of $535 million, but venture investing isn’t called “venture” for nothing; some projects are going to fail. The larger point is that in Washington, D.C.—no matter what the issue or the party—you are guilty today until proven innocent. In a healthy community, you are innocent until proven guilty, and even then people will cut you slack if they think you made a good-faith effort.

But government also has to do the little things well, added Jacobs, “because they are not little—the stop signs, the curbs, the sidewalks, mowing the parks—[they are] what make people feel like they are living in a community … We have only one stock in trade—it is not building sidewalks or plowing the streets—it is trust, and if you lose that, you have nothing.”

The transition will not be easy. But human beings have made transitions like this before and I believe they can again. “Can” doesn’t mean “will,” but it also sure doesn’t mean “can’t.”

[eiskellerforschungen]

ABOUT ORDER, Gates of Europe | Mobility, Connections and Directions, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta, 2020, Photo: Sabine Linse  

GATES OF EUROPE | MOBILITY - CONNECTIONS AND DIRECTIONS

Sandra Contreras, Homage to Copernicus and Astrology, 2018, Cotton fabric. The mural “Homage to Copernicus” by Sandra Contreras is part of a trilogy of artistic research on cosmological issues. Two other pieces of fabric (not shown here) are dedicated to the teachings of Pythagoras and Babylonian astrology. Her embroidered curtains follow the structures of nature, body and cosmos and create complex "textures". She does not use a sewing machine, she sews “by hand”. Such hand-made objects have existed since the beginning of mankind and are an expression of individual identity and home.

Maria Tello, Ojo, 2015, Metal bowl, protactor, magnifying glas, threats. The work "Ojo" (Spanish for "eye") by Maria Tello can be read in the context of "Gate of Europe" as something that literally "keeps an eye on" these entrance gates. Understood from the perspective of the person asking for admission as well as the person controlling the admission. “Ojo” consists of a metal bowl, a protractor, a magnifying glass and taut threads. The mundane things of everyday life have a special meaning in Maria Tello's work. They become border symbols of a world that is shaped by changes of location.

Maria Tello, Estómago, 2015, Embroidery, threads and cotton fabric. In the embroidered work “Estómago” (Spanish “stomach”) by Maria Tello, an inner movement is expressed, which is visualized by the knotting of the threads. For the artist, the stomach is a mirror of emotions: knots and tangles, possible pathological tumors. Maria Tello pursues strategies of healing injuries in her work. The movements that arise through the artful connection of the fine threads seem to contain old healing powers, a knowledge that she wants to keep from being forgotten.

Héctor Velázquez Gutiérrez, TAMAULIPAS 1, 2, 2012, Photography. Tamaulipas is a federal state in northern Mexico, which is ruled by criminal gangs. In 2010, 72 people were murdered in this city because they refused to give them money. As a reaction to this massacre, these two photo productions were created, which show the artist in a quilting robe in front of the quilted landscape of Tamaulipas. In his work, Hector Velazquez combines the physical nature of the earth with the human body. The first photograph shows the artist lying in front of the topographical landscape. The second photograph documents the motion blur, created by opening the aperture of the analogous camera for an extremely long time.

Anette Kuhn, Metamorphic Rock 1, 2008, Drawing with graphit, oilsticks and pastells on foam rubber. The work “Metaphoric Rock 1” by Anette Kuhn is part of a series of three amorphous stone drawings, the largest of which is over 5 meters long. "Metamorphic Rock" is a geological term that describes that the rock formations can be constantly transformed under the conditions of enormous heat and pressure in the earth's interior. These processes of change remain legible and document the rock formations for future generations. For the artist “Metamorphic Rock 1” is a huge metaphor for upheavels in life especially when you expect conditions to remain eternally the same.

Sabine Linse, Evolutionspsychosen II, 2012-2014, 5 drawings on aquarell paper. The drawings “Evolutionspsychosen II” by Sabine Linse belong to a complex of works in which she creates organic connections between plants and animals, animals with animals and human organs with plants. The realistic representations are reminiscent of chimeras from the realm of literature and art. The title "Evolutionary Psychoses II" refers to the controversial topic of genetic manipulation.

Héctor Velázquez Gutiérrez, Stuttgart, 1992, Photographie, Digital print, Hahnemühle Fine Art Print. The “Stuttgart” photograph documents an action in which Hector Velazquez first worked with textile material. The artist was 23 years old, had just left his home country of Mexico and started studying at the Stuttgart Art Academy. It is a reflection on soul and spirit nourishment in times of transition. He uses transparent nylon stockings filled with humus as material. In later work phases, larger-than-life coats were created, which put the transfer of superhuman burdens into the context of the Saint Christopher story.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Laura Mars is a successful New York fashion photographer celebrating the publication of her book “The Eyes of Mars.” Laura dreams that a killer leafs through her book, cuts out the photograph of her editor, Doris Spenser, and stabs Doris in the eye with an ice pick. Laura awakens and calls Doris, but there is no answer. The next evening, Laura’s limo driver, Tommy, drops her off at Elaine Cassell’s gallery exhibition celebrating Laura’s book. Laura’s agent, Donald Phelps, and her models, Lulu and Michelle, are among the guests. Laura’s violent photos of the beautiful models are controversial. One man who does not recognize Laura tells her it is tragic this kind of “junk” passes for art. Everyone is shocked when police arrive with news of Doris Spenser’s murder.

The next day, Laura’s photo shoot centers on a fiery car accident staged behind models pretending to fight. Laura captures it with her camera, but is stopped momentarily by a disturbing “vision” of someone following Elaine Cassell. After the photo shoot, Laura rushes to Elaine’s place but is stopped by another vision as the killer stabs Elaine’s eye with an ice pick. The police are already at Elaine’s building when Laura pushes her way through the crowd. Laura blurts out that she saw Elaine’s murder, but has to admit she was blocks away. Laura tries to leave but the cops take her in for questioning. Everyone from the photo shoot is also brought to the police station, including Tommy, who has a police record. Detective John Neville questions Laura and she recognizes him as the man from her gallery showing. Neville is not sure what to think about her “visions” and shows her classified police photographs of several unsolved murders. Photos from Laura’s book are almost exact duplicates of these crimes. Laura is disturbed that the police photographs were taken at the same time she started to use violent images in her work. Neville takes her to Elaine’s apartment where Laura learns that her own alcoholic, ex-husband, Michael, has been living with Elaine and is now on the run.

When Laura returns home, Michael is waiting. He claims to be innocent and says he still loves Laura. They argue until Laura gives him money and he leaves. The next morning, Tommy drives Laura and Donald to her waterfront studio for another photo shoot. Things become tense when Donald urges Laura not to talk about her psychic visions, and Tommy confesses he has a prison record. At the warehouse studio, Laura is upstairs alone when she has another vision from the killer’s point of view as he comes up the stairs behind her. She runs blindly across the warehouse, unable to see what is in front of her. All she can see is what the killer sees as he chases her. The vision ends when Donald reaches her on the stairway. They call the police but Donald talks Laura into proceeding with the photo shoot.

Laura tries to photograph the high fashion “murder scene,” but is so upset she cannot continue. Neville arrives as the shoot is cancelled. They do not realize Michael watches them from another building while Neville questions Laura about her visions. Next, Neville questions Lulu and Michelle at the police station about any crazy fan letters they might have received. Laura works in her darkroom that night when she has a vision of Lulu and Michelle being murdered, each with an ice pick in the eye. Laura frantically calls, but they are dead. After the models’ funeral, Neville offers to drive Laura home. Laura is upset and does not want to rush back to the city, so they take a walk in the woods. They finally admit to their strong mutual attraction and end up making love at her studio. Before he returns to work, Neville gives Laura a gun for protection.

That night, Tommy drives Laura to Donald’s birthday party, and she asks him to return in an hour to pick her up. Laura receives a call from Michael during the party. He is drunk and needs her help. Donald is worried that Michael will kill Laura but she insists he is not a murderer. She does not want to lead the police to Michael, so Donald impersonates Laura, and strolls out of his building. The police follow him as Laura drives off in Donald’s car. As she drives, Laura “sees” through the eyes of the killer who follows Donald back into the building, gets on the elevator and stabs an ice pick into Donald’s eye. Laura crashes the car into a building as she screams for Donald. Neville brings Laura home from the hospital and promises to take her away once the killer is found. They are interrupted by news of a break in the case. One of Tommy’s playing cards was found under Donald’s body, so the police head to Tommy’s apartment. Tommy calls and will only talk to Neville. The other cops leave and Tommy shows up, claiming he is innocent. When Neville asks him about any lapses in memory, Tommy thinks the cops are trying to put him in Bellevue, and he takes off running. The police give chase, and, before Neville can stop it, Tommy is shot. Neville calls Laura to tell her it is over and now they can go away together. The security detail is dismissed and Laura starts to pack. She comes across the gun in a drawer and places it on the dressing table. Neville arrives at her building and when the elevator door opens, Michael is inside.

Laura suddenly has a vision of the killer in the elevator. He stands over a man clutching his bloody eyes but Laura cannot tell who has been killed. Laura races to bolt her door. The killer bangs furiously against the door, then stops. A moment later, Neville smashes a chair through her balcony door and rushes in to protect her. She tells him about her vision but he assures her that he just got off the elevator and no one was there. Everything is okay now because Tommy is dead. Laura doesn’t understand why Tommy would kill everyone. Neville says Tommy hated Laura and thought her work was glorifying violence. As Neville explains Tommy’s background, Laura realizes he is not talking about Tommy at all. Neville has a split personality and his violent half is the killer. That personality is now dominant and Laura is blinded by another vision in which Neville follows her into the bedroom and aims an ice pick at her eye. Laura suddenly hugs him and professes her love. Neville pushes her out of the way and jams the ice pick into the mirror. Laura brushes against the dressing table and grabs the gun. Neville begs her to shoot him. She can’t and points the gun away. He puts his hand over hers, brings the gun back to himself, and cocks it. Neville tells Laura he loves her just before she shoots. Laura calls the police to report Neville’s death and her image freezes in a close-up photograph of the eyes of Laura Mars

DEVELOPMENT/PRE-PRODUCTION When John Carpenter’s first feature film, the sci-fi satire Dark Star (1974), failed as a calling card to Hollywood for the USC-trained filmmaker, he fell back on his secondary career as a writer-for-hire. Of the several spec scripts Carpenter had on the back burner (one of which eventually saw the light of day as Escape from New York [1981], starring Kurt Russell), the first to attract industry attention was Eyes, a psychological thriller set against the backdrop of New York’s high fashion demimonde.

Seeing Eyes as a vehicle for his then-girlfriend, recording artist and Academy Award-winning actress Barbra Streisand, hairdresser turned independent producer Jon Peters persuaded executives at Columbia Pictures in 1975 to pay out $20,000 for the rights to Carpenter’s screenplay… only to have Streisand demur, due to the violent nature of the material.

In my version Laura Mars was a crime photographer. Also, I think Irvin Kerschner failed at making the visual style of the visions compelling. Finally, if you could see through someone else’s eyes you would be essentially blind to your own surroundings. You’d experience vertigo, lose your balance, etc. – John Carpenter

Even though it was a treatment by Carpenter that had secured Peters the Eyes deal, Jon Peters claimed in Variety that he had written the treatment himself. Carpenter wrote four drafts of the screenplay, all of which left Peters dissatisfied. He wanted more eroticism and glamour. Finally, he fired Carpenter—who went on to make a name for himself as a horror film director. Carpenter described his experience working with the producer as one he would not want to repeat. “Jon can’t take any criticism of any kind because of his massive insecurity,” Carpenter told a reporter. “He was brutally critical if he didn’t agree with me, but he couldn’t take it if I’d come back and say an idea of his wasn’t going to work.”

“I’m not a producer who comes up with a concept and lets somebody make it their way whether I agree or not,” Jon retorted. “I have definite ideas, and it’s my money. I’d rather get it done my way than be loved.”

Jon Peters

In subsequent rewrites by Joan Tewkesbury, Mart Crowley, David Zelag Goodman, and Julian Barry, Dunaway’s character was made more provocative, walking on the dark side with her sadomaschostic photographs. The screenplay was not finished when shooting began in the fall of 1977.

The film would be the first in Jon Peters’ three-picture deal with Columbia Pictures. The project was budgeted at approximately $3 million with a planned February start. This was Peters’ first time producing by himself. He had previously shared producing responsibilities with his then girlfriend, Barbra Streisand, on A Star Is Born, which would have been extremely difficult for any novice producer, let alone someone whose background was in hairdressing. And now Peters was working with another strong-willed actress. Faye Dunaway would receive $1 million for starring in the film. Dunaway would decide on her leading man, but he would not be another famous actor since this was a starring vehicle.

“That was the first bad boy I played. He wasn’t really wicked he was just an ex-con, he was actually a sympathetic character. We spent two weeks rewriting it, it never really quite got rewritten right. There was a lot of tension on the set. I enjoyed Dunaway a lot. I also enjoyed working with Tommy Lee Jones. I don’t think the two of them enjoyed working with each other though. It was just very unsure, nobody was really quite sure of the material and they were right, the material had problems. Those of us who weren’t involved in all of the bad stuff were having a great time actually. You know it’s great to be in New York. I was young. I was surrounded by really gorgeous women. I stayed at Hotel Navarro which was kind of really wild hotel and by then I knew a lot of people in rock and roll and people used to come to my hotel suite and play all night. I had a real party going.” – Brad Dourif

Roman Polanski was Jon’s dream director for Eyes—but he was in exile in France. (Polanski had fled the country to avoid sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor.) Peters hired and fired Michael Miller before settling on Irvin Kershner, who had directed Streisand in Up the Sandbox (1972). Dunaway, who had just won an Academy Award for her brilliant portrayal of a ruthless television executive in Network (1976), wasn’t Jon’s first choice either, but Streisand had turned him down, saying that she hated thrillers.

Dunaway & Kershner

Peters concerned himself with the film’s hip, New York fashion world look. He was closely involved in recruiting the top models who appear in the film, Lisa Taylor and Darlanne Fluegel. He personally streaked Dunaway’s hair and chose an old industrial building on the Hudson River as the location for the photographer’s lush studio. He commissioned Helmut Newton, then the reigning prince of whips-and-leather photography, to provide Eyes with images to stand in for the protagonist’s work.

Dunaway was 40 pounds overweight when she was cast and still heavy as principal photography approached. A former Columbia executive recalls asking then-studio chief Dan Melnick, “What are you, paying her by the pound?” In one of her first scenes Dunaway was scheduled to wear a Theoni V. Aldredge ball gown with ruffles at the neck. “They locked her up for the last few weeks to lose weight,” says the same source.

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY Filming began in New York on 17 Oct 1977, Dunaway, high-strung in the best of times, was even more insecure than usual. She wasn’t looking her sleekest and was in the process of breaking up with her husband, Peter Wolf. She battled with Jon over the unfinished screenplay-she found herself inventing much of her own dialogue—and later spoke of “the agony of writing as you go.”

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Peters wanted to keep “the provocative visuals, unusual photographic tricks and twist-plot” a surprise. He also insisted on secrecy so that TV networks or low budget producers could not copy the story and rush out inexpensive versions. Indoor sets were closed, but outdoor shooting was not so private, therefore those scenes were set up so that observers would not necessarily understand exactly what was happening. For example, according to production notes from the AMPAS library, a sequence filmed over four days at Columbus Circle in New York City involved a moment where Faye Dunaway seemed unable to finish the scene. Bystanders did not fully understand she was playing a pivotal scene in the movie. Production notes also reported that, unbeknownst to pedestrians, hidden cameras filmed a chase sequence featuring Tommy Lee Jones and Brad Dourif in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen.” The photography studio was filmed by the Hudson River in a deserted passenger terminal that had plenty of room for the various set requirements, including an overhead walkway, a glassed atrium and an indoor pool. Filming of the “Soho art gallery” exhibition actually took place at the Jersey City Armory. The movie also filmed at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. An item in the 11 Jan 1978 Var reported the film shot entirely in New York and New Jersey, and the 56 day shoot ended with a car crash filmed on East 106th Street.

Jack H Harris

How did you get involved on Columbia’s Eyes of Laura Mars? Jack H. Harris: That was an idea that John Carpenter came to me with: I was able to get it turned into a picture.

Were you happy with the finished film? Jack H. Harris: I was… fairly happy with it, not ecstatic. Even though Faye Dunaway had just come away with the Acaderny Award and it was a coup to have her, I felt she didn’t get her face dirty enough, she wore high heels when she should have been wearing sneakers and she didn’t look as vulnerable as the gal should have. Eyes of Laura Mars was too glossy and too chic, and I think it lost heart by doing that.

The secrecy continued throughout the editing process, and Peters allowed only the projectionist and editor, Michael Kahn, in the editing room. Columbia had moved the film’s release from September to July, and editing was due to be finalized in mid-April.

While Jon called Kershner a “genius” in interviews, privately he told his staff that he felt the movie’s direction was weak. Nevertheless, he threw himself into the marketing campaign, which cost Columbia $7 million-as much as the film’s budget.

Peters & Dunaway

“It was a volatile, highly emotional set,” Peters admitted. “Fortunately, my nineteen years in the beauty shop served me well. I am used to dealing with temperament.” After praising Dunaway, he added, “My only concern now is that after all the problems on my first two pictures people will begin to think I must be some kind of crazy person.”

Eyes of Laura Mars Billboard -Sunset Strip- West Hollywood, CA August 1978

The working title was Eyes, but Jon Peters changed the title to The Eyes of Laura Mars as soon as filming wrapped. The final title is simply Eyes of Laura Mars. Though Eyes was destined to be a disappointment at the box office, grossing only $20 million, Jon and Dunaway sheathed the knives and plugged the movie like professionals. “He has great instincts,” Dunaway said, “and he’s totally unafraid to admit he’s wrong.”

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Eyes of Laura Mars Rebecca Blake Photographs The end credits listing “Gallery Photographs by Helmut Newton,” “Special Photographic Consultant Rebecca Blake” and “Eyes of Mars Photographs by Rebecca Blake” were disputed by Rebecca Blake. Blake’s contention that just two of Newton’s photographs appeared in the opening scene at a gallery, and the rest of the photographs exhibited were Blake’s.

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Executive producer Jack Harris disagreed and said that approximately six of Newton’s photographs were used in that scene. Harris stated they were legally required to give a credit to Newton, so he received the gallery credit while Blake got the other two credits for her work. Harris also noted that an exhibit in New York of Blake’s photographs was financed as part of the film’s publicity. Blake’s 4 Sep 1978 letter to the editor of Village Voice acknowledged that her collection “Through the Eyes of Rebecca Blake,” which included photographs taken for Eyes of Laura Mars, was exhibited at the opening night party. She chose to pursue legal action, however, because the “misrepresentation of who did what caused her embarrassment both personally and professionally.” Blake’s lawsuit against producer Jon Peters and Columbia Pictures had been settled. Blake received financial compensation and acknowledgment that her work was not accurately credited in the film.

SCORE/SOUNDTRACK Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978) Artie Kane

Barbra Streisand’s single, “The Theme from Laura Mars (Prisoner)” would be released before the movie opened because, Peters’ planned to create a hit song to help build advance interest in the film. Streisand’s music label, Columbia, was not affiliated with Columbia Pictures, which had its own recording label, Arista.

CAST/CREW Directed Irvin Kershner Produced Jack H. Harris Jon Peters Laura Ziskin Screenplay John Carpenter David Zelag Goodman Story by John Carpenter

Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars Tommy Lee Jones as Lieutenant John Neville Brad Dourif as Tommy Ludlow René Auberjonois as Donald Phelps Raúl Juliá as Michael Reisler Frank Adonis as Sal Volpe Lisa Taylor as Michelle Darlanne Fluegel as Lulu Rose Gregorio as Elaine Cassel

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Hit and Run Nancy Griffin, Kim Masters Battleroyalewithcheese AFI Fangoria#53 Psychotronic Video#14

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) Retrospective SUMMARY Laura Mars is a successful New York fashion photographer celebrating the publication of her book “The Eyes of Mars.” Laura dreams that a killer leafs through her book, cuts out the photograph of her editor, Doris Spenser, and stabs Doris in the eye with an ice pick.

[faithfulnews]

Wayne Grudem explains what the Bible says about spending, saving and charity

Bible study that hits the spot

A practical lecture on money – spending, saving, charitable giving – from famous pastor Wayne Grudem.

I like the way that Wayne Grudem navigates the Bible finding the passages that tell you who God is, so that you can make better decisions by analyzing alternatives and choosing the one that gives your Boss a maximum return on investment. He’s very practical.

The MP3 file is here.

The PDF outline is here.

Spending:

Christianity does not teach asceticism (= don’t enjoy anything in this world), Paul condemns it in 1 Timothy 4:1-5

When you buy nice things, even if it is a little more expensive, it’s an opportunity to be thankful for nice things that God has provided

Even being rich is OK, but don’t let it make you haughty and arrogant, and don’t set your hopes on your money (see 1 Tim 6:17)

It is important for you to earn money, and you are supposed to use it to support yourself and be independent

It is possible to overspend and live recklessly (Luke 15:13) and it’s also possible to overspend and live too luxuriously

Increasing your income through career progression is wise, because it allows you to give away more and save more

God gives us freedom to decide how much we spend, how much we give away, and how much we save

every choice a Christian makes with money will give him or her more or less reward in his or her afterlife

Do not spend more than you have – you should make every effort to get out of debt as quickly as possible

Saving:

Saving money is wise so you can help yourself and others, and have money in your old age when you will not be working

If you do not save your own money, you end up being dependent on others (e.g. – family or taxpayers)

Not saving money for the future is a way of “putting God to the test” (Matt 4:7)

You are to “be dependent on no one”, to the extent that you can (1 Thes 4:12)

We don’t know the future, that’s why we should prepare for an emergency, and buy insurance to guard (James 4:13-17)

It’s right for us to learn how to save to be able to buy bigger assets, like a car or a college education

Saving and investing in stocks and bonds lets people in business start and grow companies, creating jobs and new products

Don’t over-save, trusting too much in money more than you trust in God (Ps 62.10; Matt 6:19,24; Luke 12:15-21)

Giving:

it is required for the people of God to give something out of what they earn, but no percentage is specified (Deut 26:12-13)

you do not give money to become right with God, you can’t earn your salvation

a Christian gives to show God that you trust him to take care of you, and to experience trusting him through your giving

the quality of your resurrection life with God is affected by giving you do for the Kingdom (Phil 4, Matt 6:19-21; 1 Tim 6:18-19)

when you get involved in the lives of others and give to them, you have the joy of experiencing caring for others (Acts 20:35)

it’s possible to give too little, but it’s also possible to give too much – be careful about pride creeping in as well

The first part of this lecture made me think of my treat for the week, which is to get a double chicken burrito bowl after my weight lifting. It is very easy to say grace when you are hovering over a double chicken burrito bowl. It is good to have nice things especially when it makes you thankful for what you have.

I was so happy listening to this talk because he was condemning bad stewardship, which I see in a lot of young people these days. I was happy until he got to the part about trusting in your savings for your security, and then I thought – that’s what I do wrong! I save a lot but it’s not just for emergencies and to share with others, like he was saying – I want a sense of security. This was more of a temptation in my 20s than it is now in my 30s, though.

Charity should hurt

I can remember being in my first full-time job as a newly hired junior programmer when the 2001 recession struck. I would cry while signing checks to support William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith ministry, because I was so scared. I had no family or friends where I lived to help me if anything went wrong, and that’s been the story of my working life. If anything goes wrong, there is no backup. But it’s that experience of crying when I gave that allows me to say today “that’s when I became the man I am, that’s what a man does when he is a follower of Jesus”. If you are not doing the actions of charity, then you will not having the experience of trusting God and letting him lead you. There is more to the Christian life than just saying the right things – you have to do the right things.

Don’t follow your heart

If you’re scared about giving when you are young, then do what I did in my 20s: work 70-hour weeks, get promoted often, and save everything you earn. I volunteered every Saturday for 9 months in order to get my first white-collar part-time job when I was still in high-school. The faster you increase your savings, the easier it’s going to be to take a genuine interest in caring for the people around you. Read Phil 1 (fellowship), Phil 2 (concern for others), and Phil 4 (charity). Turn off your emotions and desires when it comes to choosing what to study and what work to do, and put Philippians into practice. Your freedom to give is very much tied to the quality of your decisions of what to study, where to work, how much you spend on entertainment, and so on. That’s why you need to turn off your feelings and desires and do what works, even it it’s not fun, and even if it involves responsibilities, expectations and obligations.

Go to the article

[blackley1995]

Third shoot/review and influence

This shoot was my third time visiting the River Plym by Blagdon’s Meadow. Focusing on objects including; cans, bottle caps, plastic bottles, glass bottles and plastic bags. My aim this time was to solely focus on the objects and eliminate as much space around the objects as I could to isolate them, so I could capture the detail of each object. The images from the contact sheets below represent the unappealing condition of waste when it eventually comes back to us after long periods of time in rivers and seas. Showing the waste we throw away eventually ends up in a worse state.

For this entire shoot I used my 50mm macro lens on my canon 700d camera body. I decided to use my macro lens for this shoot because I wanted to capture the important details of each object in crisp and clear focus. After deciding that I was going to focus on the condition of waste that washes up on land, using a macro lens seemed the obvious choice. This allowed me to use larger apertures than with my standard 18-55mm lens which I used for my previous shoots.

I explored more along the river than on the first two shoots which was an advantage as I found more objects and objects which were exactly what I was looking for. I chose to use my tripod this time but it became problematic because I could only use the tripod for birds eye view shots. When I was shooting a particular object and I wanted to shoot different angles it became tough in terms of constantly adjusting the tripods position and height. It was time consuming and I felt that without a tripod I could then be able to constantly move around and try a range of different angles and heights without any restrictions. So I decided that the best option would be to abandon the tripod and use my camera freely. Using my camera without a tripod made me produce better results and I could also be eye to with the object I was shooting on the ground.

I used a variety of different apertures throughout this shoot, ranging from f/2.5 up to f/6.3. I used aperture mode and autofcous. I also kept switching between my viewfinder and my cameras LCD screen. When I was trying to shoot on the objects level the cameras LCD screen was perfect. I could also then press on the screen where I wanted the main focus to be which is what I did for some of the objects.

The positions I shot the objects from were as I’ve mentioned, level with the object and right above the object. I wanted to keep using just one position but both positions seemed to work better for certain objects. I thought that some of the shots that were taken above the object looked basic and dull which is why I kept switching positions. I kept experimenting, in terms of discovering which position worked best for a particular object. I took some images standing up, crouched and most of the time I placed my camera on the ground which gave me an even more interesting perspective, totally blurring out the background.

During both my previous shoots I decided not to move the objects that I was shooting but this time I chose to do the opposite. For some objects I stood them up and positioned them to show off their detail more and I also laid some objects flat. Looking back at my images I feel that the images that show objects standing up look more powerful, engaging and dominant. I took a carrier bag with me during this shoot, after taking shots of some objects I put them in my bag. This is for further experimentation, taking the object out of their environment and thinking about different ways to photograph them.

Just like my second shoot the weather was constantly changing, some images were taken during overcast weather and some were taken with sunlight beaming onto the object. The weather change made me change the iso quite a bit. During sunlight I used 100 - 200 and during overcast I was using an iso of 400. The advantage of shooting with sunlight helped exaggerate the specific details of the objects, in terms of dents, fading colour and rust. These are all very important features I want to show in my images.

In my opinion this is my most successful shoot to date, in terms of knowing what I am focusing on when shooting the objects. Using a macro lens has taken my work up another level, in terms of the standard of quality and capturing the detail and features of each object a whole lot better than with a standard lens. I maybe should have used a flash to focus on the specific features of each object even more which would have been more engaging.

I now know I’m focusing on the conditions of objects/waste but I’m still undecided whether to focus on general waste or just plastic. Because the number one problem in our oceans is plastic which is why I want to focus on that. I originally wanted to focus just on plastic during this shoot but I came across glass bottles and cans which were in worse condition than some of the plastic objects. So i need to decide which direction to take moving forward.

The image below represents what my main aim was during my third shoot. Solely focusing on an objects condition after spending a long period of time in the river Plym and sea and then time on land. This image is very similar to an image I have taken during my first shoot which was of a Coca Cola can which can be seen in one of my previous posts. This bucket clearly shows that it has spent a long time in the river and on land. For example, you can see that there are small barnacles scattered around at the top. The majority of the bucket is discoloured, between light and dark brown, probably from the dirt on the ground with help from the water to spread the dirt around the whole bucket. What was once a clear white bucket is now a cracked, discoloured and disgusting bucket.

I took this shot from directly above from a slightly crouched position. This image has been edited which is why the colour stands out. I have heavily increased the contrast and decreased the highlights to further exaggerate the colour and soften the natural light to make a more gloomy and unappealing image. I increased the clarity quite a bit so the textures were sharp and stood out. I have also cropped this image into a square format to eliminate unnecessary space. I want to show my viewers that the waste/objects that we ‘supposedly’ throw away end up washing up on land in a worse state.

Most of the bucket is in focus but I’m slightly annoyed that the top left corner is blurry. I would have preferred to have the entire bucket in focus. I tried positioning the bucket in a couple of different ways, the position you can see above and I tried standing it up. I preferred the bucket on the ground because it reveals abandonment whereas standing the bucket up didn’t have the same effect. I also felt that the river behind the bucket even thought it was blurred out was still a distraction which is why I prefer the bucket on the ground.

The settings that I used for this image were, f/2.5, 1/4000 sec and iso 100. I used my canon 700d with a 50mm macro lens. I used auto focus in aperture mode and used my cameras viewfinder without flash.

Influence

Below is an image from photographer Irving Penn’s project called Cigarettes. Penn collected cigarette butts he found on streets and brought them into his studio. He created these sort of minimalist images with very little space surrounding the subjects. Focusing on a popular product that is one of the most discarded products, scattered everywhere on the ground.

Cigarette No.17 (1972) - Irving Penn

I came across Penn’s project before my third shoot which gave me inspiration. His images made me think how can I make my images stand out and reveal in the best way possible my message? Engaging the viewer. For example, Penn’s tight composition, using the least amount of space as possible to fully focus on the subjects. Shooting directly above the subjects gives me the viewer an entire look at the cigarette butts.

The additional studio lights help the details of both cigarette butts become clear and reveal the textures even more. For example, the tears in the paper, the burnt ends and creases. In my opinion, the inclusion of black and white creates a more engaging and striking image that compliment the burnt parts and reveal the ugly side of cigarettes. 

The two main things that I took from Penn’s project and implemented them into my work were, firstly, the tight crop that Penn used to put the entire focus on my subjects. Secondly, was the decision to use my macro lens for the first time on this project to further emphasise the specific details of each object I was shooting and to capture the textures with a much larger aperture.

My only slight criticisms are the excess from the cigarette butts that are scattered all over the plain white background. This is only a minor fault but I would have preferred a clear table, for me they are a distraction but only a slight distraction. The bottom part of the cigarette butt on the left and the top of the cigarette butt on the right are slightly blurry but apart from those parts everything else is in clear focus.

But my main criticism is the space to the right of the cigarette butt on the right hand side. This part of the image is very bright compared to the rest of the backdrop. This part of the image seems to be affected by the position of a studio light the most. I don’t know if I’m right but I think that Penn has used a light either side of the cigarette butts but the light on right seems too bright compared to the light on the other side. I maybe wrong on how many lights Penn has used or the position of the lights or light. But there is definitely a light on the right side of the backdrop and it is too bright and affects the look of the image. There is a clear change in light when looking at the backdrop. The brightness of the light should have been decreased slightly to improve the image and make the light balanced throughout the image.

[cutsliceddiced]

New top story from Time: The Price of Insulin Has Soared. These Biohackers Have a Plan to Fix It

In a hip Oakland, Calif., neighborhood, just blocks from cocktail bars and swanky Mexican restaurants, is an enormous warehouse, home to Counter Culture Labs, ground zero for an audacious challenge to the high cost of prescription drugs. In the entryway stands a 1½-story cardboard T. Rex, and inside it’s a bit as if Dr. Frankenstein shared his lab with a hoarder: cluttered shelves hold piles of drying mushrooms, Clorox wipes, wires, kitchen pots, motor oil, two books about Darwin, ropes, a broken alarm clock, a telescoping magnifying glass, a heat gun, a 3-D printer and several jars of clear liquid with tubes running between them. One shelf holds plastic bins labeled Lab Coats, Paint & Brushes and Ebola Suits.

A group of professional scientists and amateur tinkerers founded Counter Culture Labs in 2013 with the goal of bringing biotechnology to the masses. At any time, it hosts dozens of projects; when I visit in July, there’s one whose objective is to make “vegan cheese” using yeast.

The Open Insulin Project has bigger plans. The group wants to reverse engineer how the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies produce insulin and then turn over the instructions to the public. In theory, anyone with a bit of cash could then build a DIY lab in their garage and make open-source insulin.

Photo-composite, photographs by Greg Kahn for TIME

Currently three companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi—control most of the world’s $27 billion insulin market, using a complicated web of regulations and patents to keep a hold on it. Open Insulin wants to rebuild it with no mega­corporations and no profit. The project is probably months, if not years, away from actually making medical-grade insulin, but its objective is as much political as it is production-oriented: bringing a sharp focus to the stratospheric price of insulin and, more broadly, the predatory pricing of prescription drugs in the U.S.

Over the past 60 years, the list price of a vial of insulin has gone from about 75¢ to $250—an increase nearly 43 times the rate of the U.S. Consumer Price Index inflation. “High drug costs exist throughout the system, but insulin is the poster child of this broken marketplace,” says Representative Tom Reed (R., N.Y.), one of the chairs of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. Some, in fact, think that the project is already working as a kind of provocation: a way to force the issue on what is really a policy problem. “If the price of insulin gets regulated, the project will just go away,” says Jean Peccoud, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University.

For now, the project seems to be in a regulatory safe space, but that may change as it gets closer to making actual medicine. In an email, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spokes­person acknowledged that the agency is aware of the Open Insulin Project, but noted, “We cannot comment on hypothetical situations or potential future states of regulation.”

Predatory pricing in the U.S. isn’t unique to insulin. A study of the world’s top 20 medications found that Americans pay an average of three times as much as patients in the U.K. do for a given drug. The science behind making insulin is old, which makes it a good first target for the disruption of the pharmaceutical industry.

Cayce Clifford for TIMEDi Franco, founder of the Open Insulin Project, works with yeast at Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, Calif.

Anthony Di Franco, one of the Open Insulin Project’s co-founders, has diabetes ­himself, and has watched as the price of managing his disease has gone up and up. He has a dual undergraduate degree in physics and math/computer science from Yale University and is currently on leave from pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Davis. He lives on contracting jobs, doing data science and researching machine learning and programming languages. Like many freelancers, he doesn’t have ­employer-sponsored insurance. But unlike most with the disease, he knew enough about science to start thinking there might be a better way—and so, in 2015, he launched the Open Insulin Project.

“The current system was built to exploit people with diseases,” Di Franco says. “Historians will look back and say, ‘How could they have done such a terrible job?’”

Diabetes is caused when the pancreas can no longer make enough or any insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar, or when a person’s body builds up a resistance to the hormone. Insulin, which helps the body use sugar for energy and lowers its levels in the blood, was first used to treat diabetes in the early 1920s. Physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best were working with dogs, inducing diabetes by removing their pancreases and then trying to figure out a cure. The two eventually extracted a substance from cow pancreases; purified it with the help of biochemist James Collip; and proved it worked by injecting it themselves and noting that they got dizzy, a sign of low blood sugar. By 1922, doctors were using insulin from cow pancreases to treat diabetes patients.

People with severe diabetes need insulin injections to stay alive. Without it, your blood turns acidic, your body dehydrates, your vision blurs, you get weaker and start to vomit. Over days, you slowly—and painfully—die.

This fact, coupled with the inefficiencies of the American health system, as well as a manipulable patent framework, has enabled pharmaceutical companies to steadily increase the price of the lifesaving drug, even as it’s become easier and less costly to produce. Generally speaking, drugs are cheap to make. The costs are mostly to pay for the research and development required to discover them. For example, one 2016 study that looked at 106 recently approved drugs from 10 different companies found that the average R&D cost for each was $2.78 billion, compared with only about $19 million per drug in costs of actual clinical trials.

Much of the industrialized world has some form of single-payer health insurance and strict price controls on drugs, usually determined by a board of doctors and experts. In the U.S., the pull of the free market was supposed to keep prices down, but instead has led to a complex system of profit-driven corporations, from manufacturers to insurance companies, who add cost at every juncture.

It wasn’t meant to be this way, especially not with insulin. Banting, who shared a 1923 Nobel Prize for his work on insulin, demanded his name not be put on the patent, believing profiteering off a medicine was unethical. His co-discoverers agreed, transferring their patents to the University of Toronto for $1 each.

The pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly and Company of Indianapolis offered to help the university develop the medication, and the school eventually agreed to license the technology. Eli Lilly contracted with slaughterhouses to receive pig pancreases by railroad car in order to squeeze out the insulin. It was crude, but effective—and cheap. Ads from the 1960s show vials of insulin available for 84¢ in the U.S., just $7.36 in today’s dollars. And then came a real breakthrough.

In 1982, Eli Lilly introduced insulin made by genetically modified E. coli bacteria. The new insulin was less likely to cause allergies than the animal version, and it could be grown in vats. Novo Nordisk started making its own bioengineered insulin in 1991, and it looked like the drug was about to get really affordable, thanks to the competitive marketplace. Instead, prices went up. A congressional report written in 2018 found the list price of competing insulin formulations “appeared to rise in tandem,” doubling from 2012 to 2018. According to the report, that was most likely due to limited market competition, and to the fact that “each part of the insulin delivery chain is controlled by a small number of entities.” The marketplace never became competitive.

In theory, the U.S. patent system, which gives manufacturers sole rights to a drug formulation for 20 years, should eventually enable other drug producers to bring cheaper versions of the same medication to the market. But as Reed and the co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, Diana DeGette (D., Colo.), note, companies skirt this by “evergreening” their drugs—tweaking drug formulas slightly, often making incremental improvements, to renew the patent and prevent generics from ever entering the market. Lantus, a long-acting insulin patented by Sanofi in 1994, was due to enter the public domain in 2015, but instead the company filed 74 patents for newer versions of the drug, which delayed that until 2031. Novo Nordisk has done something similar with one type of insulin by upgrading the mechanics of its injection pen. These insulins are touted as improvements, although there is evidence these are typically minimal.

“People with diabetes experience different issues and complexities that can’t be covered by one solution, which is why we continue to bring forth programs that will directly benefit even more patients and work toward much needed longer-term systemic reform,” said a Novo Nordisk spokesperson in an email.

An Eli Lilly spokesperson told TIME in an email that the company does not evergreen. “None of our insulins is patent-protected and our most commonly used insulin, Humalog 100, lost patent protection in 2014,” the spokesperson said. While the patent for Humalog 100 has expired, because of the complexities of entering the market, only one manufacturer jumped in to make a version of the drug: Sanofi, which already makes its own formulation. Sanofi’s “generic” version of Humalog sells for just 15% less than its original price. Eli Lilly is also manufacturing an “authorized generic” version, currently selling for 50% of the price.

A Sanofi spokesperson, meanwhile, writes that the company’s original patent on Lantus has expired and subsequent patents “are related to new and unique inventions.” They also point out that despite increases in the listed price for Lantus, the actual price customers pay is lower than it was in 2006, a result of other inefficiencies in the market. The spokesperson added that “we also support a robust and competitive marketplace, including efforts by other organizations to develop new technologies and medicines—including Open Insulin Project.”

For insured diabetics, the high costs of insulin are borne primarily by their insurers, and so remain more or less hidden. But for those without insurance or for people on high-deductible plans that require them to pay for their own care until they hit a predetermined amount, these prices take lives. Alec Smith, a 26-year-old restaurant manager, couldn’t afford the $1,300 a month it took to manage his diabetes. In 2018, Smith was three days from a paycheck when he died alone in his apartment; investigators later found an empty insulin-injection pen in Smith’s home. The case made headlines, but the human price of the high cost of insulin isn’t hard to find. Some 13.2% of the 2.9 million people who take insulin in the U.S. do not take it as prescribed, and 24.4% asked their doctor for a lower-cost medication, according to the CDC.

It’s not going to take a Nobel Prize to make DIY insulin, just persistence. The good news for the Open Insulin Project is that it has the accomplished 33-year-old French biochemist Yann Huon de Kermadec as its lead scientist. He’s in the U.S. right now because his wife Louise Lassalle is studying for a Ph.D. at Berkeley. Huon de Kermadec donates his time, showing up at the lab five to six times a week to work long hours designing a new form of life: a yeast cell genetically engineered to produce a form of insulin people could use.

Cayce Clifford for TIMEHuon de Kermadec, lead scientist of the Open Insulin Project, at Counter Culture Labs

On his side is the fact that biotech is ­getting cheap. The same pressures that brought down the cost of total gene sequencing from a ­taxpayer-funded $2.7 billion project to a $200 drugstore test in under two decades mean you don’t need millions of dollars to start a biotech project anymore. The Open Insulin Project is able to do what it does because equipment has become so cheap—especially in the Bay Area, where high turnover in the biotech industry leads to a glut of second-hand, lab-quality gear—and, like your home computer, more powerful. There are now several companies that market vast databases of genes, searchable by utility, all of which are economical. Huon de Kermadec picked two sequences of genes: one that produces a protein that can be cut to make insulin, and one that makes the yeast resistant to a specific antibiotic.

Using these genes, he and the team created a formula for a plasmid, a tiny circular piece of DNA. Then he hired a company to manufacture a small quantity of these plasmids, which they sent to Counter Culture Labs in a tiny plastic vial. Dozens of companies offer this sort of service in the U.S., at prices as low as a few hundred dollars. Next, the team jammed the plasmids into yeast cells, and added an antibiotic solution to the cell cultures. That’s where the antibiotic-resistance gene comes in handy—the ones that successfully adopt the plasmid into their own DNA will survive, and those that don’t will die out. The next step would be to grow the surviving cells, which should contain the genes to produce both antibiotic resistance and the precursor protein for insulin.

The team thinks they’ve gotten this far. They know the yeast produces a molecule the size of insulin—which is a pretty good sign it is, in fact, insulin. But they’re scientists, so they’re not popping the champagne yet. They want to confirm that the molecule is indeed insulin by using mass spectrometry, a precise technique that allows scientists to identify specific proteins, before they say for sure.

Then they will have to prove their insulin is pure enough to inject into a person. They’ll also have to demonstrate they can make ­medical-grade insulin every time with their process. Then, to get it to the people, they’ll need to standardize the equipment so other people can manufacture or buy it.

When asked if he thought his team would eventually create a yeast that could produce insulin, Huon de Kermadec responded confidently. “Yes, of course,” he says, “it isn’t rocket science.” But then there are the regulatory hurdles.

Di Franco has been reading up on the history of democracy in ancient Athens and is trying to craft his organization’s bylaws in the spirit of the world’s first democracy. He also wants its product to be democratically affordable­: Di Franco thinks roughly $10,000 should be enough to get a group started with the equipment needed to produce enough insulin for 10,000 people. Each of these $10,000 setups would be somewhere between a middle-­school science experiment and an industrial laboratory, requiring rooms of equipment; think something closer to a medical-grade brewery than to a countertop bread machine. The resulting product, he says, would cost someone with diabetes dozens of dollars a month instead of hundreds.

That’s noble, in theory, but there’s a reason why the FDA puts a lot of effort into certifying the labs that make our medicines: mistakes can be fatal. The U.S. drug-development system may be expensive, but it does guarantee quality.

The Open Insulin Project falls into a black hole outside of FDA regulation, according to Peccoud, the Colorado State professor. For one thing, the project may skirt some regulations by being a nonprofit. Also, the FDA allows individuals to largely do whatever they want to themselves. “If you want to inject yourself with home-brew beer, there’s no law to stop that,” says Peccoud.

If it does reach a production phase, Open Insulin would have to conform to Good Manufacturing Practice, the FDA rules for factories that make medicine, food, cosmetics and medical devices. And because the group plans to share its insulin-production framework online, crossing state lines, there may be other legal issues on the horizon. One solution might be to partner with other players in the health care system, like hospitals and pharmacies, which create custom versions of everything from acetaminophen to opioids in a process called compounding and navigate the demands of the U.S. system already. However, that’s likely to make the final product more expensive.

Ultimately, it’s not clear that the Open Insulin Project’s real goal is to facilitate insulin minilabs across the U.S. The group intends to put the plan for their designer insulin-­producing yeast online as soon as it’s done, but only for “research purposes,” says Di Franco. And without brewing facilities or the ability to check and purify the hormone, the plans themselves are a long way—scientifically and legally—from the point where anyone will be injecting homegrown insulin. Di Franco has offered up his own body as a proving ground once the lawyers sign off: “I’d be thrilled to be the first person to take the insulin,” he says.

There’s ample evidence that insulin doesn’t need to be as expensive as it is in the U.S., even without DIY labs. For one thing, just across the border with Canada, a vial of insulin costs $30. In January 2020, Colorado will become the first U.S. state to put a $100 cap on the co-pays insured patients pay for insulin. Minnesota is considering a similar law.

“It’s an old drug,” says Peccoud. “It’s not hard to produce. It should not be more expensive than Tylenol. Insulin is just pure greed. And a failure of government.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

[thelifestyleeditor]

I HEART WORK

Who are you: Luisa Brimble

What is your work: Photographer

Where can we find you? Website | Twitter | Instagram

Describe your work in 5 words? I’m a lifestyle and food photographer - that’s more than five words!

Can you tell us a little about what you do? I photograph food and lifestyle stories - my favourite subject to shoot is food in context, and product in a lifestyle context.

What took you on the road to being a photographer? I picked up my first DSLR which is the Canon 400D and just started taking photos. Then when family and friends started saying I could do it for money, I started to take it seriously and taught myself how to shoot manual, bought a load of books, and watched a lot of tutorials. I only attended one photography workshop and it was with one of my favourite photographers – Jonathan Canlas, a film photographer.

Where is your office/studio and what is the view out of your window? I work from home and it’s pretty uninspiring view of the neighbour’s house!

What is the first thing you do when you get to work? Meet the team, talk to the client whilst I’m unpacking and setting up, and work out what the strategy is for the shoot.

Describe a typical day at work? If it’s a shoot day, then I wake up early, get my girls ready for school, drop them at school, drive to where I need to be for the photoshoot, photograph the whole day and in the afternoon pick up my girls at school, go home, upload photos, edit and deliver to client, BOOMPOW done! Then the rest of the time frees up to study, analyse and scheme-up the next story I’m shooting with Sarah Glover - a week doesn’t go by without photographing.

What cameras do you like to use? A Canon 5D mk3, and 50mm 1.2 lens – my go-to-lens, and never leaves my camera, I’d say 94% of the time.

What can’t you work without? My family’s support. Without it I don’t think I’ll have the luxury to be doing what I’m doing now.

Why do you love what you do? Passion fuels what I love to do! Because if I believe in a project but there’s no money to it, I will still photograph it. I believe that if it’s beautiful and different enough, chances are I’d be lining up to shoot it.

One shoot you won’t forget and why? Not just one shoot it is all of WILD Adventure Cookbook with Sarah Glover. Every scene created and photographed was full of life, new experience and it gave us the burst of energy to keep on going. It was like we were so inspired by the last shoot that we just kept going for 2 years. None of the recipes from the book was photographed indoors. It was all outdoors.

Who or what inspires you? Right now it’s all about Dynamic Symmetry and I’m seeing works of art in a different way. In a way that gave meaning to how I felt when I first laid eyes on a painting or a photo. It gave me the answer to the why. Right now the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier is really inspiring me to keep on studying and analysing art and photography.

What is the best advice you have received? One is better than nothing.

One moment in your career you will always remember? When WILD cookbook got funded via Kickstarter.

What is the best part of your job? I get to photograph what I’m passionate about, and because of this it gives me the opportunity to see parts of the world I thought I’d never see or experience.

And the worst? The selling unfortunately...I still have to work at finding work.

Which phrase do you overuse? ‘FREAKKIN BOOMPOW’! Because when I talk about something that’s passionate, I will give it to you with gusto!

What have you learned the hard way? Not knowing about Dynamic Symmetry. That I spent nine years photographing based on my feelings, and I never knew how to analyse or study works of art. It was frustrating. It was a question hanging around waiting to be answered. It was answered about a month ago now, when I was just watching YouTube videos and I came across Myron Barnstone’s film about ‘What is Dynamic Symmetry’, and it clicked! Since then I’ve been sharing my learnings via Instagram Stories. I share my analysis of works. It disappears in 24 hours. You have to be quick and you have to be paying attention. People who pay attention are the ones who get rewarded!

If you could do another job what would you like to do and why? I would probably go back to doing Graphic Design. I used to work in Marketing, creating all the collaterals, flyers and advertising in-house for a travel company. I did that for 10 years and I really did enjoy it. I would probably do something along these lines of multimedia.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to be a photographer? There are three stages in your photographic adventure:

1) You will spend your time learning how to press the buttons on your camera. Learn where to change your aperture, ISO, your shutter speed and your metering. It took me maybe two-three years to be better at this, and then it became second nature to me.

2) You will then be rewarded with being able to be creative in what you do. You can start to emulate the works of the photographers who inspire you. I’d say give yourself another three years to get better at this.

3) You discover that there is such a thing as Dynamic Symmetry and you spend your time studying it and analysing people’s work etc. Give yourself seven years to put this in practice.

4) BOOMPOW! If you actually practice and shoot on a daily basis say two hours a day, in 13 years time you have reached your 10,000 hours in becoming a master in what you do! You have to be in this for a long run!

Photography is not about just photographing pretty pictures and all you do is press the shutter. It’s all about designing your frame. Slow down before you press that shutter. Don’t just look at your subject, look at the background and what elements of design can you incorporate to make that image have the order, unity, harmony, movement and rhythm. Shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot and study, study, study, study!

Can you tell us about your new book WILD with Sarah Glover? WILD Adventure Cookbook is the collaborative cookbook project that I worked on with Sarah Glover. It was shot over two years at 17 locations along Australia’s East coast. This cookbook pushes boundaries wherever it finds them and it’s taking outdoor cooking to the next level. WILD is about breaking rules and challenging conventions. I believe that magic happens when food is photographed unadorned and uninterrupted. It may have taken us two years to photograph this book, but we would not have done it any other way. The desire to be different, to go against the grain, to push boundaries, create new work, instead of replicating what’s out there, is what connected Sarah and I to create this cookbook. This book is photographed ‘documentary style’ – out in the wild, completely free of studio and conventional kitchen. I was there every step of the way, capturing the moment; the ingredients, the processes, the locations, the people, the drama and the absolute magic that occurs when these elements all come together. I feel that photographing food in context gives it soul, which gives this project its point of difference. In a perfect world, I hope to photograph all future cookbooks in this style.

Can you tell us about any other projects you have in the pipeline? Currently WILD #2 is in motion, and we already have plans to travel throughout the year and at the same time going on roadshows to promote WILD #1. It really just depends on what opportunities come out of this, we just don’t know, but we have to keep going on the project because WILD #2 is beginning to show some ‘legs’, it’s in motion!

Do you have any favourite websites/Instagrams you can share? There are only two websites I will recommend for keen foodies who want to learn more about the in’s and out’s of food, and more importantly learn about history. The first one is Art of Eating, and the second one is Ideas in Food. Food blogs these days all become about a form of self expression, pretty pictures which are highly styled - it is now all about the styling and not about the food anymore, it’s all about yummy, beautiful, amazing, incredible blah blah blah… I feel that people are going to be wanting more. The blogs who will stay are the ones that give value and educate people.

How do you spend your downtime? My downtime is spent studying, improving my muscle memory so that I can practice learning about the elements of design. I spend it reading and analysing. Listening to podcasts and getting all psyched up! Or if I get sick of doing this I’d probably be cooking!

Can you give us a great tip on how to take better photographs? Yes, Google Dynamic Symmetry. Start with Myron Barnstone. Start watching his YouTube films.

What would you like to be doing in five years time? I’d like to be creating stories and getting paid for it so that my husband can be a stay-at-home Father for once, after all the support he has given to me. I’d like to be owning a house close to the beach and close to where Sarah lives, so that it’s easier for us to just keep producing stories to our hearts content, and get paid for it!

If you had an extra hour each day what would you do with it? You’d still find me studying and analysing work and scheming up stories to photograph!

What’s your personal motto? Nothing that you do in this life is ever a waste. What you give out comes back to you dollar-by-dollar. Nothing in this life ever happened without the hard work. Never ever hide your enthusiasm!

How would you like to be remembered? I’d like to be remembered as someone who gives value and is full of life. A life cheerleader, poms poms and all! BOOMPOW! Fist pump, over and out!

Thank you Luisa for talking to The Lifestyle Editor.

[sweet-christabel]

A Trusted Friend In Science

FF.net: (x) AO3: (x)

Chapter Thirty-Seven - 2036. Living With It.

The sun was hot on the back of Chell’s neck; once a welcome heat, now an annoyance. She wiped a hand across her forehead, adjusting her hat. She’d made it herself, weaving strands of straw together until it vaguely resembled a wide-brimmed fedora. It was the most hideous-looking thing she’d ever seen, and she wore it with pride.

She moved into the shade of the house, swinging her basket to the ground. Sitting on the blissful coolness that was the porch, she set to work washing her morning’s haul in a bucket, sighing as she dipped her hot hands into the water. She appraised each potato as she scrubbed it, searching for imperfections. It was with some irony that she reflected on her thriving potato crop. It was by far the best-growing food product in the garden. Although she was grateful to have a thriving crop of anything, Chell couldn’t help but wish for greater success with the tomatoes, beans, wheat or any of the fruit trees. Anything but potatoes. She ate them, of course, but it was still disconcerting to cook something that had once spent considerable time talking to her.

“Not the same potato,” she reminded herself, as she had done countless times since.

A chicken rounded the corner of the house, beady eyes appraising her with a suspiciously judging expression.

“Oh, don’t you sass me, madam,” Chell addressed it sternly, gesturing with the potato she happened to have in hand. “Start laying again and maybe you’ll have earned the right to look so snooty.”

The chicken nonchalantly stared at her for a moment, before pecking at the grain that littered the ground. Chell watched it and its companions while she worked, amused by the way they fussed around the yard, their world reduced to the haphazard wire fencing that she had constructed around the borders of her garden. The house was a comfortable size that she had built herself, (with a lot of help from kind volunteers), and the garden was her livelihood. She’d designed it mostly for function, with the vegetable beds, fruit trees, and hen houses taking up much of the space, but she’d left room for flowers and a bench, and a modest memorial spot in one corner. Since it was the only house and garden for several miles, there was plenty of room for expansion if it was needed.

She was just rinsing off the last potato when a noise caught her attention. Glancing sideways, she heard the rattle of a key, then the door to the tiny outbuilding opened and a scientist stepped through. Her scientist, to be exact. She felt a smile break out on her face.

Doug looked stressed, his hair sticking up in wild spikes, but he returned her smile when he saw her, weaving his way through the chickens to sit beside her on the porch steps.

“Hi,” he greeted, ducking under the brim of her terrible hat to kiss her.

Chell obligingly pushed it up out of the way, tasting coffee on his lips, inhaling the faint, unchanged scent of the labs that hung about him like a cloud.

“How’s your day going?” she asked when he sat back.

“Slowly,” he replied at once. “The device is fighting back at every turn. The calibration needs tweaking. Again. I can’t seem to get it quite right.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she told him, gently chiding. “You’re building a country-wide – potentially world-wide – travel network. It was never going to be straightforward.”

“I know,” he said, folding his arms over his knees. “It will come together eventually, I’m sure. It’s just sometimes…I kind of wish that Caroline had dreamed slightly smaller.”

She tried and failed to hide her amusement. “I’m sorry, but she was right. It’s stupid to have working portal technology and confine it to puzzle-solving. It should be used to cross long distances, especially now that the world is how it is.”

“I know that,” Doug said with a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “I think she’s right too. I just have a headache. I want to get on with the work, not be tied up reporting to the damn president. I’m a terrible frontman for this project.”

“I disagree,” Chell countered, setting the potato down and drying her hands on the legs of her jeans. “The only reason I want you to step down from that position is because you don’t want to be there. But otherwise, you’re actually pretty good at it.”

“The only reason I’m staying put is because I don’t trust Kleiner with it,” he confided.

“Kleiner seems happy tinkering with the robots. And Angela’s keeping an eye on him.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “He’s good at running that department, I have to admit. But still…he’d have the right to get in on this, especially as one of the founders of this new Aperture. I think…I think I’m going to hand over to GLaDOS.”

Chell raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Will President James deal with an A.I.?”

“Once I introduce her to him, she’ll probably make a convincing case for herself without my help, but I’ll try and persuade him. How’s your day going?”

“Not bad,” Chell reported, nudging the basket with the toe of her boot. “I got a lot of potatoes again. You can take them back with you if you want. Gerry can use them in the cafeteria.”

Once again, Aperture ran alongside their lives, engulfing almost everyone they knew. But this time, it didn’t feel oppressive. Perhaps it was the state of the war-torn world they lived in, and the fact that the lab’s resources were being used responsibly for the first time in years – possibly ever – but Chell knew that neither one of them felt tied to it this time around.

After they had returned from their initial conversation with GLaDOS, both had formed set opinions about the propositions she had laid at their feet. Sitting in the back of Gordon’s car, they had shared those opinions and made plans for the future. Chell had admitted how returning to Aperture had made her feel safe, and Doug had said the same, confirming her suspicions that they were united in the realisation that escaping had done nothing to sever their ties to the place. It was there that their feelings differed.

Chell had resolutely decided not to take GLaDOS up on her offer. She had been tempted. The thought of resuming her old job, assisting with the running of the facility, and the familiar and new challenges it would throw up had looked appealing. It would have meant a place and purpose, an answer to the uncertainties she’d been worrying about ever since they had re-joined society. But it would have been the easy way forward, and Chell had never done anything the easy way. Instead, she’d set herself the task of becoming self-sufficient, of building a place to live not far from Julie and Angela, so that Doug could spend time with his sister when he wanted. It was the toughest challenge she’d ever faced, but she’d weathered it and emerged triumphant, providing not only for herself and Doug, but adding to the food supplies of the city of Wyoming and Aperture’s cafeteria. Compared to some of the farms, what she contributed was tiny, but it was all helpful, it was all needed, and it gave her more satisfaction than she’d anticipated upon starting up.

By contrast, Doug had become an Aperture scientist once more. For him, it was not about taking the easy route, but a desperate need to go back and fix what had gone wrong. There was no way to undo the past, of course, but Chell knew how much he needed to turn his work there into something more positive than it had been. He wanted to help move the company forward, to contribute to making the world better. She understood his reasoning, even if she couldn’t do it herself. He was trying to change his own perception of the place, so that it held no power over him. He could never forget that GLaDOS had killed his co-workers, just as Chell could never forget what had happened to her father, but they both knew it worked the other way too: GLaDOS would never forget how they had worked to bring her down twice. Tentative trust began to build up, bizarrely based on a foundation of mutual distrust. From there, they were all able to move forward.

Doug was working closely with GLaDOS to put portal technology to the more practical use that Caroline had first envisioned. It enabled him to live in Wyoming and commute to Ishpeming in a single footstep. Chell had built him a small outbuilding, where he had installed one of the panels that she remembered from tests, the ones that had supported the pre-placed portals. It linked to a similar small room inside his lab. Both were kept securely locked, for safety and privacy reasons, and they had proved a successful first application of the technology. Now they were thinking bigger, finding ways to cross states, even continents, as Chell’s shot to the moon had already proved that range wasn’t an issue. Doug was busy developing different portal frequencies so that there wouldn’t be any mishaps with destinations, working on the back of the techniques GLaDOS had developed when building the co-operative testing initiative, which allowed for four portals within the same puzzle.

New Aperture, as they had nicknamed it, had changed many of the lives around them. Chell sometimes went in with Doug, running through a few test chambers for old time’s sake. GLaDOS seemed to enjoy the opportunity to be spiky with her again, and Chell didn’t mind it so much now that she’d ensured the proper safety features were in place. Without deadly lasers, toxic goo, or lethal turret rounds to deal with on top of the barbed comments, the comments alone seemed much easier to brush off. Secretly, she knew it would have felt very strange to test without hearing them. She’d always enjoyed the challenge of the tests, somewhere deeply buried under the stress, anger and fear. Sometimes she relished the chance to set her garden aside and focus her mind.

Kleiner had happily accepted a job in the labs, and he was working on a series of non-sentient robots to aid with manual labour, dabbling in artificial intelligence on the side. Doug’s niece, Angela, had joined as his assistant, and to ensure that he didn’t get too carried away. Gordon had been offered a post, but had politely refused on grounds of enjoying his retirement. He had, however, taken on the task of distributing some of GLaDOS’s cures, which had only served to heighten his hero status, despite his adamant claims that he had had nothing to do with their development. He quickly gave that up, not just because of the attention, but also due to the fact that he and Alyx had their hands full following the birth of Eliza, their daughter. Occasionally, he would take some time out to visit and join Chell in running a few co-operative tests, and the two often engaged in friendly competition, despite the fact that the tests called for teamwork.

The citizens of Ishpeming had benefitted from Aperture’s re-emergence. Many of them got jobs there, as office clerks or test subjects, (again, with proper safety protocols in place), and Gerry had happily taken over the cafeteria. Chell had learned that he’d shown an interest in cooking before the war, and she was pleased that he’d managed to find a way to integrate it into his life. Trevor, like her, opted to stay aboveground, but he had his hands full growing produce for the sudden influx of residents in the town, mostly scientists who came to join Aperture’s new ventures.

Chell had a pleasing balance of solitude and company between her garden and the labs, and she could escape to either one as she wished. She didn’t even have to worry about Wheatley, as Angela had fallen head over heels as soon as she had been introduced to the talkative core, and had offered to look after him, instantly fascinated in his construction. Although GLaDOS had not relented on her decision to keep him away from Aperture, Angela still learned enough in her spare time to start developing new cores, albeit ones without the combination of ambition, selfishness and resentment that had led to Wheatley’s disastrous time in charge. Wheatley, in return, seemed to enjoy her company without the edge of guilt that would always taint his relationships with Chell and Doug, and the two of them muddled along well together, although Julie found his presence in her house trying, to say the least.

“You know what the hardest thing has been?” Chell spoke up, all the introspection making her want to share some of her reflections.

Doug blinked, momentarily taken aback by the change of topic, unaware of Chell’s lengthy thought process. “What?”

“Learning that we were going about things all wrong by running away from Aperture. We spent so long trying to escape. It was so jarring when it didn’t really solve anything.”

“I know what you mean,” he said with a nod. “The solution to our peace of mind wasn’t escaping Aperture but finding a way to live with it.”

“We couldn’t have figured that out any faster than we did, though,” Chell added with certainty. “We had to spend the time doing what we did in order to come to that conclusion.”

“GLaDOS had to reach it too,” Doug said quietly. “Do you think you can ever forgive her? Truly forgive her, I mean?”

Chell was silent for a long while before answering. She’d asked herself the same question many times before.

“I don’t know. It’s hard. It feels…impossible. But even if I don’t forgive, I do understand. I get why she reacted the way she did. So that’s a start, I guess.” She shrugged. “That’s more than I expected, given our history.”

A comfortable silence fell between them as they sat in the shade, looking out over their garden. Chell never forgot how lucky they’d been, how close they’d come – on multiple occasions – to never having a life like the one they’d built.

“I should get back,” Doug said at length, stretching his legs out.

“You haven’t eaten,” Chell reprimanded.

“I had a sandwich before I left. I just wanted to see you.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Rattmann,” she said with a grin.

“I’ll hold you to that!”

She stood up to give him a hug, sending him off to the outbuilding that housed the portal with her usual parting words.

“Go make the world better.”

Holding the basket of potatoes in one hand, he turned to awkwardly give her a salute before disappearing through the door. She watched him go with a fond smile. Another unlikely hero, like Gordon. Like herself. She knew Doug would never accept the label, but she’d given it to him in the privacy of her own thoughts. The war had made unlikely heroes of many people. Secluded from it in Aperture, they’d faced their own.

Left alone, Chell sat back down on the top step, watching the chickens peck. Wheatley had developed a strange sort of fearful fascination with them the last time he and Angela had visited. He was terrified of them because they were birds, but somewhat mollified by the fact that they couldn’t fly. After pushing past his initial alarm, he’d taken to making brash observations about them, bolstered by the bravado of being propped safely out of reach on the porch steps. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the cockerel.

Chell glanced towards the memorial in the corner of the garden, pondering what she’d said to Doug. She’d been honest with him about how she felt about forgiving GLaDOS. She didn’t know if she ever could, and she had no answers for whether that was fair or not. It seemed utterly unthinkable, if she was brutally honest, and she knew it had played a small part in her refusal to work at new Aperture. But once upon a time, understanding the reasons why GLaDOS had done what she’d done had seemed impossible too, and yet Chell did understand, and even felt a tiny measure of sympathy. That was a step towards forgiveness for sure. The problem was, Chell didn’t know if she wanted to forgive, whether it would feel like a betrayal to her father and all the others that had lost their lives to tests and neurotoxin.

She tried to think about what her father would say, what kind of advice he’d give, but the harsh truth was that she just didn’t know. He’d closed himself off from her in later years, to the point that she was forced to accept that she hadn’t known him very well. At the end, at least. She hoped that he’d have told her to be true to herself, because her own judgement was all she had to go on.

Perhaps she would forgive. One day. And when that day came, perhaps she’d be okay with it.

“Time will tell,” she said aloud. “You can’t force it.”

When she’d first started to develop a friendship with Doug, what she’d appreciated most about him was the way they could bounce opinions off each other, and argue their points in a fair debate. That hadn’t changed, even if everything else had, but their conversations often made her face things she’d rather not. She knew it was good for her, but it wasn’t always welcome. Still, it was a small price to pay to have him in her life.

Her life was good. It wasn’t what she’d expected after everything she’d been through, and she was grateful for every part of it. She’d lived so long on a knife’s edge, with the weight of tension pressing down on her, and then in an adrenaline-fuelled nightmare. There was nothing in her new life that ever surprised her, and she found it refreshing. Eventually, she suspected she’d tire of it and seek out something to keep her more challenged, but for now she relished just how reliable everything was. Nothing changed unless she gave it express permission, and she was more than happy with the feeling. She didn’t want to be surprised by a single thing for a good long while yet.

Much later in the afternoon, while she was elbow-deep in the vegetable patch, there came the rattling of the lock on the outbuilding, and Doug’s head appeared around the door, his expression preoccupied and apologetic.

“Uh…” he said.

Chell stood up, old fragments of alarm starting to uncurl in the pit of her stomach, and she cursed herself for tempting fate with her earlier thoughts. “Oh god, what?”

“I may have accidentally…” He took a deep breath, and Chell braced herself. “…agreed to watch over a toddler,” he spat out, words hurrying over each other after his initial hesitation.

Chell blinked at him.

“She…Gerry found her. In the wheat field, next to the body of her mother. They were starving. I mean…well, the girl had had food, but obviously the mother hadn’t, and…she’s all alone, I figured we could look after her for a bit. We have the space. I know I should have asked you, but…it’s literally just happened and GLaDOS has just invented a no-children policy. Gerry and Trevor don’t have room to take on a child, I don’t want to ask Julie, so I just thought…” He trailed off again and shrugged.

Chell took in his anxious demeanour, taken aback by his obvious desire to help. She’d never really labelled him as the paternal sort. In fact, his own words to her had spoken of his concerns about whether he was even suited to childcare. Of course that had been before, back when he’d still been coping with his condition, not giving himself enough credit for his control over it. Now he was free of it, but barring a residual, outward sense of calmness that he’d never allowed himself before, he was largely unchanged.

She debated whether she could handle taking care of an orphaned toddler, and whether she really felt up to it, but she was already moving towards the outdoor water pump, rinsing the soil off her hands.

“Lead the way,” she said.

“You don’t mind?”

“I was an orphan once too, remember?” she told him, joining him in the outbuilding and locking the door behind them. In a single step, she was standing on the Aperture-standard carpet tiles of his lab. “We should help where we can until we can come up with a long-term solution.”

He met her gaze, nodding firmly. “Agreed.”

Feeling strangely nervous, she added, “She shouldn’t stay too long, though. I wouldn’t want her to get attached.”

“No, nor me.”

“And someone should do something about the poor mother.”

“Gerry’s taken care of it.” He let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “If only she’d been able to make it into town.”

Chell reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. “She still might not have survived,” she said gently. “You know as well as I do that it’s a harsh world out there now.”

He nodded. “That’s why I wanted to help. The girl…she’s not old enough to understand what’s happened. She only knows a few words, but one of them is ‘Mom’…or some variation of it, at least.”

She squeezed his hand again. “So let’s go help.”

Doug looked down at her, and she saw her own nervousness reflected in his face. Briefly, she wondered why they were putting themselves through it, but she knew how desperate he was to help people, to atone for those he couldn’t help before. It was the right thing to do.

Together, they left the small room that the portal was locked away in, walking Aperture’s familiar corridors on the way to their mercy mission. It was simple: they would look after the girl, find her a place to live, someone to love her, then, when she was ready, she would leave. They could handle a short period of responsibility, Chell was sure. It was the simplest plan in the world.

It happened exactly as she’d intended it would. Almost.

They did look after the girl, and when she was ready, she did leave…at the age of twenty-three, when she wanted her own space.

In hindsight, Chell wasn’t surprised that their daughter had come from Aperture. Their lives had always been tied to it. They’d just needed to find a way to live with it in peace, and peace was a luxury they’d finally earned. She could live with that.

The End.

A/N: That’s it, guys, final chapter. Thanks to everyone who came along for the ride. It’s been fun :D

[lauralouisecourt]

ESSAY

The photographer, Lee Jeffries.  

Lee Jeffries is a predominantly black and white portrait photographer who lives in Manchester, UK. 

Lee Jeffries is a completely self-taught photographer who started out taking pictures of stock in a bike shop, however his epiphany came in April 2008 when, on the eve of running the London Marathon, he snatched a long-lens image of a lonely homeless girl who was huddled in a doorway. In that moment Jeffries knew he had to talk to her, Their resulting conversation changed not only his approach to photography; it changed his life. From then on, he has made it is main mission in life to talk to the homeless, befriend them and become someone to tell others their stories. Through his amazing imagery he shows the world the beautiful but devastating truth of the homeless.

Lee Jeffries travels to major western cities in order to meet unfortunate people who live on the streets. Whilst away from his day job as an accountant he strives in capturing their emotions, expressions and nobility of the homeless. Jeffries approaches these homeless people with humble and loving intentions. He starts conversations with them with allows them to establish a connection. This then makes it acceptable for a photograph to be taken of them.

As Lee Jeffries does strictly humanistic photographs, it allows us as the views that all portraits are taken in good faith. Photographing the homeless can be a controversial subject, as it wouldn’t be fair to randomly photograph someone without them consenting or feeling comfortable doing so. I feel that Lee Jeffries give a good example out to other portrait / street photographers on how to stay humble. Every portrait is guaranteed to be consensual. We know that Jeffries would had taken his time with each individual and made them feel comfortable before any photographing takes place.

All his photographs greatly capture me every time I scroll past them on my social media feeds. The work stands out like no other. Every single portrait he has created shows so much emotion, pain and vulnerability. In his portraits, he edits with a deep black and white contrast. There is strong clarity throughout, enhancing all of the details in the subjects skin. The eyes show so much despair, sorrow and even sometimes remorse. You can almost imagine what stories they would have talked about just by looking at the photographs.

Lee Jeffries created a collection of images labelled ‘Lost Angles’. The name of the series already gives you a strong indication on what the series is about and how important and harrowing it is likely to be. Whilst observing these photographs individually you can see a pattern of anticipation. Every portrait shows many emotions but I feel the feeling of not knowing where you are going is very obvious in their eyes.

 There are a lot of other photographers who do similar shoots compared to Jeffries however I feel he takes more care in developing the progress to tell the story. Other photographers will photograph in this way purely for the ‘look’. All of his images are driven by a genuine connection with the person and understanding their emotions. I feel all of these factors create more powerful work, and it also makes it a lot more personal. 

In the photograph I have attached, we have a modest photograph of a young lady. I feel that this is a strong image as it shows so much sadness and empathy .

The subjects eyes are glancing up towards the camera whilst the head and face is pushed down. This implies she may feel defenceless. This may be because she can not handle what the world has been pushing onto her. The eyes are also not completely straight into the camera lens, intact she is just glancing past. This suggests she may be looking at Jeffries almost for reassurance. The look of tiredness is very obvious- it makes the audience feel sympathetic. 

The body language  conveys she is unsure, insecure and anxious, you can see her collar is up and her face is dripping down into it. This implies she is someone in need of help.

Going in depth to create a story around the individual rather than just taking a portrait of a homeless person. I understand now that Jeffries is known to photograph from the inside out rather than outside in. This is a out the box approach that seems to work very well.

Lee Jeffries uses the camera body of a Nikon D850, which he states gives him enough clarity to work off from. Whilst shooting, he would always use reflectors to help the light hit the subjects face in the best way possible. He also has stated he shoots slightly underexposed every time. In post production, he takes his time ensuring every photograph is deep in contrast, rich in quality and high in clarity. 

I imagine Lee Jeffries would use an ISO of no more than 200, as he wouldn’t want noise. The aperture would be around F4 as it focuses in on the central part of the subjects faces but most photographs have everything in clear focus.

Making the photos look high in resolution and clarity aids the photographer in getting his story across. As the quality is the way it is, we can more clearly see what situation and environment the subject would be base in.

Overall, Lee Jeffries is an ethical, fair and honest photographer. The work is thought provoking and every photo has a story behind it. Looking through any of his work we can almost put ourselves in the subjects shoes. Editing the photographs in this style makes them stand out.the work is easily recognisable as a Lee Jeffries portrait. You know it is his work when you see it.

[lauraramargosian]

Top 5 Trailers: What’s trending on Netflix?

Top 5 Trailers: What’s trending on Netflix?

If you just wrapped up one of your favorite shows and are looking for another great show, then knowing what’s trending on Netflix will help.

Currently, the top Netflix series trending includes Orange is The New Black, On My Block, Lucifer, FRIENDS and a handful of movies including Wind River, Hell or Highwater, APOLLO 13 and Boyhood.

Gaga: Five Foot Two is at the very top of the most popular documentaries, as well as Abducted In Plain Sight.

Because of this, we wanted to take a deeper dive into what’s trending on Netflix.

On My Block Rating: 4.8/5 Premiered: Mar 16, 2018 Platform: Netflix

POSITIVE CELEBRITIES TAKE ON THE SHOW

On My Block features characters, you will love instantly as you watch them face the harsh realities of life. The characters bring you laughter, tears, and even shock. The emotions put into this popular Netflix series was well planned.

Viewers might think the plot is going to take a particular turn but in our case, all we could do is scream “WHAT?!” each time the show took a new turn.

To be specific, one user on a Reddit discussion about On My Block opened about the series with those who also binge-watched the show.

“That ending was unexpected and completely devastating. I need season two right now.”

The production crew and creators Lauren Iungerich, Jeremy Haft and Eddie Gonzalez did a phenomenal job at writing a series which puts you into the shoes of each character.

Further allowing you to understand and even relate to their trials.

The show not only attracts those who are teens but adults as well. On My Block gives an insight into how difficult it can be navigating the halls of high school can become and truly makes you empathetic for many in the world.

Netflix: Dead to Me is binge-worthy and quite surprising!

When a creator puts an idea on paper, it takes time, time to plan, time to see things from the audience’s perspective. If you can make someone laugh, you can make someone listen and if you can make someone cry (relate) you can also make someone listen.

So, if this is what’s trending on Netflix then we can back it, give it a watch.

THE PLOT

Going to school, dating and staying out of trouble isn’t easy for this group of friends. Especially when they attempt to save their friend from gang life.

How do 5 teens navigate their now dangerous life?

Good and bad decisions are made, which lead these characters into some messy situations.

But what happens when things get messy and their friendships are on the line?

Honestly, On My Block a new Netflix series that truly holds up to the realities of high school struggles, love, and how the street life can affect others in their community.

Rings trailer will bring chills this Halloween

The new Netflix series was created by Lauren Iungerich, Jeremy Haft and Eddie Gonzalez.

Well, we won’t spoil that part for you, be sure to add it to your watchlist on Netflix. Most importantly, Netflix and chill with someone, you’ll both be talking when it asks if you’re still watching On My Block.

RIVERDALE Rating: 4.7/5 Premiered: Jan 26, 2017 Platform: Netflix

POSITIVE CELEBRITIES TAKE ON THE SHOW

The next answer to what’s trending on Netflix is Riverdale.

The show packs a punch by starting off with the death of Jason Blossom, his body was never recovered after possibly drowning in the early morning of July 4th.

The hit Netflix show is hauntingly addicting.

In fact, it doesn’t matter whether you live in a small town, there’s always crime but this runs deeper than just your everyday crime. Most importantly, keeping you on the very edge each time the show concludes an episode with each incredible cliff hanger.

Deception, love, crime, and secrets.

It was not hard to finish this series in a couple of days. The only hard part was waiting to see what would happen next on Riverdale.

So, if you’re wondering why it’s on our list of what’s trending on Netflix then let’s take a jump into the plot.

Positive Celebrity cannot wait to see the next well-written script for its next season.

THE PLOT

The creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa didn’t miss a beat when putting together a production which was based off the comic “Archie.” Although the truth is comics have never been on the top of our reading list, the CW drama-mystery is jaw-dropping.

Riverdale leaves you with characters like Archie, Veronica, Betty, Jughead (reminds me of The Outsiders), and people of the town. The production found the perfect cast starring Camila Mendes, Cole Sprouse, K.J. Apa, and Lili Reinhart.

What happens when a group of teens attempts to find a murderer who has been haunting the town and watching everyone since the drowning?

This seemingly wholesome town is now facing scandals and secrets.

JAILBIRDS Rating: 7/5 Premiered: Platform: Netflix

POSITIVE CELEBRITIES TAKE ON THE SHOW

Let’s take a look at what’s trending on Netflix in crime on documentaries. I mean, who doesn’t like a little insight on what goes on in jails around the world.

Positive Celebrity has always felt the jail systems are screwy. The production did a great job at giving viewers an inside look into the jail systems and just how hard life can be when you are sentenced to serving time in jail.

Jailbirds is one Netflix series tending that truly makes you feel emotions you would never imagine.

Most importantly, it gives insight on how important human contact is for inmates. Concluding our thought behind our opinion on how our jail system is broken.

Haven’t you ever thought “why does a mother get a much harsher sentence compared to a murderer or someone who was involved in homicide?”

The trending series on Netflix is one that you can pause and resume but instantly get hooked again, great for those weekdays where you know you

THE PLOT

At the Sacramento County Jail, incarcerated women fight the power and one another as they try to make the best of life — and love — on the inside.

LUCIFER Rating: 8/5 Released: May 8, 2019 Platform: Netflix

POSITIVE CELEBRITIES TAKE ON THE SHOW

It’s no secret Lucifer is on the what’s trending on Netflix. I mean, the devil comes back from hell to help the LAPD?

This show does not leave you time to go into your personal life. It’s definitely a binge watch. The producers, cast and crew did an excellent job with each episode. Most importantly, it’s great to see the whole “what if the devil was good?”

Many could likely relate to wondering that at some point in their life (not everybody). But it’s a great show and the cinematography is top notch.

Be sure to add this to your list of trending shows on Netflix. You won’t regret it.

THE PLOT

What happens when the devil gets bored with life in Hell?

Lucifer takes action and leaves hell to live life in the beautiful city of Los Angeles. He becomes a part of the LAPD looking for suspects.

The creator Tom Kapinos did a great job with this comic adaptation. The series stars some of the best in Hollywood including Tom Ellis, Lina Esco, and Lesley-Ann Brandt.

THE SOCIETY Rating: 9/10 Released: May 10, 2019 Platform: Netflix

POSITIVE CELEBRITIES TAKE ON THE SHOW

The Society is one of those Netflix TV series that keeps you hooked. How would it be to find out you were mysteriously transported to the greener side of New England? Further, your parents are missing.

This definitely belongs to positive celebrities what’s trending list.

Creator Christopher Keyser seriously nailed the writing, twists, and turns. In fact, it’s no surprise because he also worked Sisters, Party of Five, Tyrant, Time of Your Life, and Equal Justice.

The hit series proudly stars Kathryn Newton, Rachel Keller, and Gideon Adlon.

THE PLOT

A group of teenagers struggles to survive after they’re mysteriously transported to a replica of their wealthy town with no trace of their parents.

Positive Celebrity Gossip and entertainment news would love to hear what you thought of these shows in the comments below!

Don’t forget you can stay up-to-date on the latest positive celebrity gossip and film news by subscribing to our page or just giving us a thumbs up on our official Facebook below!

Blessed be!

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Laurara Monique is known by various celebrities as the youngest and kindest celebrity blogger. PCG has been described as a "celebrity safe zone."

Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Justin Bieber and Hails are just like us. Haha, those videos are cute.

Justin and Hails taught us what love endures, they inspire.

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"Everywhere Judy goes, chaos follows." Rating: 9/10 This has to be one of the funniest/real life series I've watched this year. There wasn't a moment I couldn't relate to the feelings that someone has during grief, moments of laughter and many other qualities a series should have to keep ya.... In-da,couch #DeadtoMe #ChristinaAppleGate #LindaCardellini, #JamesMarsden and #MaxJenkinsw #dramedy

Netflix: Dead to Me is binge-worthy and quite surprising!

What exactly happens when two gals become best friends but one of them is holding onto the heart-wrenching secret about Jen’s husbands hit and run? Check it out right here on positive celebrity go…

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High School Musical 4 continues filming Utah and Positive Celebrity has learned about the new film and series. #HighSchoolMusical4

High School Musical 4 continues filming Utah and what we know!

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Good job boys. #HighSchoolMusical4 again!

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Creative Critical Reflection

Q1: How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?

When producing any media text, conventions are followed and broken. Media texts with similar conventions fall under the same genre. There are general conventions in every medium, eg; establishing shots in films. To produce our music video, we had to follow and break many conventions of the electro-pop rock genre and conventions of music videos in general. Our music video has a proper start and an end, this is a common conventions of music video, this gives the video a realistic feel. The narrative represents a girl using a mobile phone using a dating app where she swipes left a lot of guys and then she swipes right and next she is sitting on her bed crying and depressed about her previous break-up. As she gets up she receives a notification where she gets the match. Here we broke one of the common music video convention, that women these days get cheated on most of the time and gets depressed about it. We broke this convention; in no way did we portray the character as an object or a prop but we created a character who develops throughout the narrative. She is being suppressed in the beginning, later she begins to stand up for herself, as she decides to move on and uses the dating app to find someone new which connotes a new beginning, and after she starts having fun conversations and is living her life now.

We picked up a few conventions from electro-pop music videos on how to represent the band, what shots to use, what the location should be like, how the mise-en- scene should be handled etc. As establishing shot is a very common convention in film and TV we broke another convention by starting our music video with a close-up of a hand using a mobile phone without it the video starts abruptly. As our genre was electro-pop most of the music videos which come under these are music clubs or house parties,  we used three different locations for this shoot like my friend’s house, a coffee shop and a ground (for performance base shoot)  the use of these types of locations in electro-pop  music videos is a common convention as houses and out-door locations fit perfectly.

The representation of the artist or band also follows conventions of electro-pop music videos. As in most bands only vocalists are present so we did the same we have shown different clothes in different places to give a cool electro vibe. He’s dressed as basic electro-pop genre artists. We’ve used mid close-ups mostly during narrative, so expressions are shown and when the lead singer looks into the camera he’s trying to connect with the audience. This is a common convention of music videos.

We used parallel cutting to show the band preforming and the narrative, this too is a convention of music videos. A common convention in music videos is that after going through a breakup the person is devastated in the narrative. He or she does are often seen using drugs or something negative but in our case we showed that she was free after the breakup she felt happy during the new date and as she gets catfished the cycle repeats from being depressed again, the process brought a moral lesson. We’ve represented social issues such as people making fake profiles and putting fake profile pictures to catfish as how online relationships starts and become toxic and lead to depression and suicide. Our main social groups are youngsters and millennials because these are the main groups who would be interested in relationships.

Q2 How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

Different elements of our production work include the music video, the digipak and the website. These three-cover film, print and online media. The three of the media texts serve a single purpose and that is to promote the music album and these three do that successfully. Digipak Music Video Website

An audience survey we conducted revealed that the majority of the audience watch music videos online on YouTube. Usually they are redirected to these sites from social networking websites such as Facebook twitter Instagram etc. Our band has pages on these websites and links to their pages on the websites. The digipack will be available in most music stores and the album will be available to buy online on iTunes the link of which is available on the website. All the elements are owned and produced by the record label which is RTM Records.

The house style concept helps make all our products look related. Such as some of the fonts used in the website is the same font used in the digipak. The images used are similar and so are the logos and the backgrounds. We created a color pallet and used the same color tones throughout our coursework.

 Q3 How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

Our products engage with the audience in various ways, firstly we have a web page that is easily accessible. There our music video is embedded and when someone enters our web page they see all the stuff related to our band and by scrolling what they see is the music video as well as the digipak and the track list of the album easily accessible because we embedded the sound-cloud link as they have a separate page there too , which gives the viewer an idea that it is an important aspect of the web page itself.

Moreover, YouTube also recommends videos due to one's search history. This means that if a person seems to have a taste in music that is similar to the genre of our band, our music video is very likely to be recommended on his main YouTube page. The most important thing is to be very active on social media, and to have official pages on as many as possible social sites. That is why the band has a SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook Instagram profile, so that they can reach as many people as possible, even if they are using just one social media Site. These profiles that they created can help promoting our music video by posting them on the above-mentioned sites. Furthermore, they can post images with the digipack and include a link to their website from which the digipack can be ordered. In addition, music video could be promoted on all band's media partner's websites due to their logos being printed on the digipack. Those websites could write special articles to present the release of the digipack and the music video.

Another way to engage with the audience is to actually have a performance artist on the stage with the band during the concert. This will make the audience more interested in the song, and might lead them to search the web. Obviously, we would promote the music video on TV, on channels such

as MTV and other music channels. We would do the same with radio stations, where they would also promote the digipack as a new album. It would also be distributed in the specialized music shops. The artist as we who actually created the digipack, music video and website can use their social media platforms and personal portfolio websites to promote the video and to tag the band. The web page link would be posted on each of their social media profiles, so audience can be informed that it exists. While the music video will be distributed digitally, as I mentioned before, on TV, YouTube, Facebook and many more.

Q4 How did you integrate technologies, - software, hardware and online - in this project?

 I had a little knowledge of professional camera usage. As I learned more about different cameras with different settings this time, I learned how to use a Canon EOS 80D with 18-135mm camera and also tripod. I learned how to set the Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed in order to get a desired lights and colors. Moreover, I learned how to focus my camera on the wanted area.  I find this very important in order to have clear footage that can be edited with ease. After the camera work platforms, we used to edit our music video was Premier Pro and iMovie For a heads-up I learned how to use Premier pro  from YouTube by watching tutorials and learned all the basics of editing, trimming, cutting, correcting the and saturation, opacity. And for the Behind the Shoot footage we used iMovie.

 For the after effects we used Adobe After Effects because we used a green screen in order to create the pop-up texts on the video. In order to do this, we had to learn how to use Key light effect which removed the green screen.

 I learned that research and planning is essential in order to get a final piece that you are satisfied with. Each shot, camera angle, movement, has to be previously thought of and tried so that when the shooting day comes one will not encounter problems. Moreover, without the online help, especially YouTube tutorials I would find it very hard to work in After Effects because it is a very complex software. But I searched on YouTube and on After Effects official site information in order to get the desired image.