Highest Rated Blog Posts

• Racial Undertone

  • From: Obamawon
  • Description:

    I am very dissapointed in the way Vermilion and Lafayette Parish residents are so pissed the President-elect Barack Obama has won.  I now know  certain people's true charcter.  Black people have voted for white presidents since black men were allowed to vote.  I guess people down here are still very slow, uneducated, ignorant and obviously racist.  I hope these people took a good look at who put Barack Obama in the oval office,all true Americans did, not racist ones. That is why you'll LOST!  You'll were way to worried about him being a terriost, anti-american who didn't say the pledge and who will be sworn in on the Karan.  Obama and his camp were more worried about the economy and how he can  make this America the way it use to be.  If he was a white man no one would have every question his patriotism, but because he is black, Omg, his is everything negative anyone could think of.  Shame on you.  It time to get over, because like it or not a black man, with his black wife, and their black children will be in the white house and your leader for the next 8 years.  Please always remember what your mama taught you God does not like ugly and their is nothing uglier than HATE!  Thank you to all true Americans who went out and supported our President-elect Barack Obama

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 174

• Performance Enhancing Drugs

  • From: ratdaddy1999
  • Description:

    Today, Miguel Tejada (Short Stop for the Houston Astros) plead guilty to lying to congress concerning the steriod investigation.  I guess what I'm looking for is what are peoples opinions on the matter.  Obviously it is very wrong to use any chemical outside of medical neccessity (sorry pill poppers, smokers, snorters and shooters, as well as dealers, you are wrong, no excuse).  His is a different issue because he didn't lie about taking them, he admitted to purchasing HGH (human growth hormone) when with the Oakland A's.  He is charged because he said he had never discussed with any other individuals about using HGH or other PED's (perforance enchancing drugs).  He plead guilty as part of a plea bargain, and will be sentenced in March, as to whether or not he will still be eligible to play will depend on whether he is deported, or eligble, or if the Astros choose to terminate his contract (which legally they can).

     

    I have been a baseball fanatic since I was a child, mainly supporting the Astros (refuse to support a team such as the yankees, and love the fact that they loose despite spending tons on high dollar players) as well as the Diamondbacks (i'm a big support of the National League).  When I was in Highschool, it was all about Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa's home-run race, which to me is tarnished by their steroid abuse during this period, and then within a couple of years, was broken again by Barry Bonds (who I feel also was an abuser as well)  I was a big supporter of Roger Clemens, but since he left Houston, it seems as his demons are now spilling out, and he has been fingered as an abuser as well. 

     

    I think alot of fans are to blame just as much as the players.  Would the Sosa/McGuire race had been as exciting if they weren't shooting up.  Probably not, as they probably wouldn't have come close, and people wouldn't have tuned in, and neither Sosa nor McGuire would have made the money they did off of that season.  MLB is just as much to blame, as they let this problem get out of control until Jose Conseco spilled the beans on the big guns in the league.

     

    The issue here is, should those accomplishments be removed from record books, as they were earned by using an unfair advantage.  I guess its a question of should they be allowed to play, and be allowed to keep their records and rewards.

    I know I hate to look at the fact that Roger Clemens helped the Astros get to the world series, and that he may have been using PED's to achieve that.   Although it seems there are more indightments towards those who lied under oath, than there is concerning players currently abusing.
    

  • Blog post
  • 9 months ago
  • Views: 284

• pumpkins

  • From: franklinite
  • Description:

    when you find who did this take them and smash their heads in, see if they think thats funny

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 335

• Marilyn: Then, Now...and Forev

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    Everyone thinks Marilyn Monroe is dead. Not at all! She's been living in New York City for years.

    I had met her, briefly, while in college in Memphis, in 1968. (This was during her "Elvis years"-- something the media never caught on to. Marilyn had been "dead"--as far as the public knew--for five or six years at that point. But Elvis, and several other close friends, including Aristotle Onassis, were helping her "disappear." When Onassis married Jacqueline Kennedy in the late 60s--providing her sanctuary on his island Skorpios--Marilyn was romping around the island, too, unseen by the world. Ironic, isn't it, in light of the affair between Monroe and JFK? At first, Jackie didn't know Marilyn was ensconced on the other side of Skorpios, but in time, when Onassis would be off in Paris trysting with opera diva Maria Callas, Jackie learned of Marilyn's presence on the island and they became friends. The two, after all, had much to talk about, and bond over. But that's another story....)

    All this may have you wondering whether Elvis is dead. He did live some 15 years beyond Marilyn's "death," and, like Marilyn, it's understandable that he, too, would like to have "checked out" of the celebrity rat race. But, as the Munchkins sang regarding the Wicked Witch of the East, Elvis is morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead.
    
    At any rate, in 2000, I literally bumped into Marilyn on a side street just off New York City's Fifth Avenue. (Believe me: that was some bump!) I reminded her of our brief meeting years before in Memphis. She said she remembered. But, considering her age, I doubt it.

    As we walked down the street, I asked her why--if she was trying to remain anonymous--she was out on the street dressed in a replica of the costume she wore in what's probably the most famous scene in her most famous movie, Billy Wilder's "The Seven-Year Itch." She said this was the beauty of her plan: because people see virtually everything on the streets of New York, they think she's merely an impersonator. Consequently, Marilyn says, they simply smile and walk on by. In other words, she was "hidden" in plain sight.

    "But what about the media?" I asked. "Oh, a select few know the truth," she responded, "but they respect my privacy. They're longtime friends."

    I know she's undergone cosmetic surgery in New York over the years. But about 30-35 years ago, she went to Dr. Patanguy in Rio de Janeiro for his truly revolutionary cosmetic work. He perfected a cosmetic procedure that bears his name: The Patanguy Method. It consists of removing a circular piece of scalp from the very top of the head and pulling everything up--uniformly.

    She also says she assiduously avoids the sun. That's when I asked, "Then what are you doing out here on the street in the middle of the day?" She said she had "cabin fever," that several days of non-stop rain had kept her trapped in her apartment. But she promised that her "stroll" would last no longer than 30 minutes.

    As we continued to walk, I noticed we were approaching a subway grate. I couldn't help myself: as any lover of movies would have done, I asked Marilyn if she'd have her picture made with me. "Why not!" she said. (She's such a kid; that's one reason people loved her so.)

    As the subway rattled beneath us, a gust of wind--right on cue--blew up through the grate. Marilyn struck that famous pose and--voila!--here you see the result: a virtually dead-on re-creation of her famous scene from Wilder's 1957 film.

    I suggest you eat plenty of tomatoes. Marilyn attributes much of her good health to what she calls "the tons" of tomatoes she eats year-round. (She grows them in several mini-greenhouses on the rooftop of her Upper West Side apartment building.)

    And remember: cooked tomatoes are best because the cooking process fully releases their anti-cancer and anti-aging properties.

    But doesn't Marilyn look good? No one knows her age for sure. But at 80-plus, she's something of a tomato herself, don't you think?

    -- Hoyt Harris/Paris 2003

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 398

• Digital Photography Glossary

  • From: gizzardgutz
  • Description:

    July 20, 2007

    I found this glossary online in a magazine, unfortunately the authors name didn't copy and I haven't been able to find where I copied it from. Sorry. Also, it would not copy here without problems so I retyped it to word myself. I am not a typist, far from it and by the time I finished and realized the authors name wasn't there it was too late. I couldn't find the website at all.

    That said, I found this glossary to be very helpful to me. I haven't been using my digital camera for very long and have been confused by the terms used when trying to learn how to set the camera. It works wonderfully on auto, but with all of the features included I feel the need to at least achieve a basic understanding of what can be accomplished with the camera.

    ********************************** ***************************

    Aberration

    Essentially, an aberration is anything in an image that isn’t supposed to be there. For example, optical imperfections within a lens may cause distortions such as barrel distortion or pincushioning. Barrel distortion, the outward curvature or bowing of straight lines, is most noticeable in wide-angle lenses or at the extreme wide-angle end of zoom lenses. Pincushioning, the inward curvature or bowing of straight lines is most common in telephoto lenses or the extreme telephoto end of zoom lenses. When corrective elements are incorporated into the lense design, most spherical aberrations can be minimized. Additionally, these spherical aberrations can often be adjusted with image editing software.

    AD Converter

    The analog to digital converter (ADC) converts the light waves that are absorbed by the photodiode (pixel) on an image sensor in the digital code. This digital information is then processed into image data that is then stored on the camera’s media card or internal memory. This image data can then be read as a photograph by a camera or computer.

    Aperture

    Measured in f-stop numbers, it is the variable opening in a lens that controls the amount of light that hits the image sensor, thereby affecting exposure. A small f-stop number (i.e., f/2.8) represents a wide lens opening, which allows more light to pass through the lens to the sensor and is beneficial in low light conditions. A larger f-stop number (i.e., f/8.0) narrows the lens opening allowing less light to hit the sensor. The latter provides a broader depth of field, while the former decreases the depth of field.

    APO (Apochromatic)

    Lenses that use internal elements to bring all colors of the visible spectrum to a common point of focus, creating a sharp image and minimizing chromatic aberrations, are referred to as APO lenses. These lenses are generally more expensive than non-APO lenses.

    Artifacts

    Digital image anomalies caused by the image sensor, optics or internal image processing of the camera. These anomalies include: blooming (brightened highlights usually visible along high-contrast edges); maze or moiré artifacts (as the name implies, maze artifacts appear in a maze-like pattern, while moiré artifacts occur as wavy lines); chromatic aberrations; jaggies (pixels visible in a stair-stepping pattern); noise; and sharpening halos (a bright or white area similar to blooming appears along an edge when an image has been over sharpened).

    Autofocus (Active & Passive)

    Active autofocus cameras bounce infrared beams off the subject to determine what the focal length of the lens should be. Passive autofocus cameras use the k\light falling on photocells to determine the correct focus. When a scene is out of focus, the intensity of light on each adjacent photocell is very similar. The microprocessor moves the lens until the contrast of light between each adjacent photocell is at its maximum.

    Autofocus (Continuous)

    Available on some digital cameras, this AF option signals the camera to constantly focus on whatever object is in front of the lens. While some cameras perform better than others, continuous AF is helpful when photographing a moving subject.

    Bit

    A bit is the smallest data unit of binary computing, being either a 1 or 0. eight bits make up one byte.

    Bit-Depth

    Also referred to as color-depth, bit-depth determines the maximum number of shades or intensities of colors that can be represented at a time. Camera sensors typically have 12 bits per channel color (red, green and blue) for a 36 bit image (which JPEG compression reduces to 8 bits per channel). Although more bit-depth is preferable, there are diminishing returns beyond 8 bits per channel (8 bits x 3 channels = 24 bit-depth). Image file sizes increase dramatically, and not all devices (printers, monitors) will benefit from higher bit-depth. Additionally, some image editing may have limited - or no - capabilities of working beyond 8 bits.

    CCD (Charge-Coupled Device)

    CMOS (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor)

    The two types of sensors used in digital cameras are CCD and CMOS. These sensors are the equivalent of film in that, as the light enters the camera through the lens; the light waves are focused on the sensor, recorded electronically and then processed into the digital image. The CCD is the most common electronic image sensor used in digital cameras and is noted for its high quality but also for its extensive power requirements. CMOS is a sensor technology that encompasses all required camera circuits on a single chip. In the early days of digital photography, CMOS sensors were used in low-end digital cameras because they were less expensive to manufacture. However, more recently, because of technological advancements and the low power requirements of CMOS technology, a number of high-resolution, high-quality digital cameras now use CMOS sensors.

    Chromatic Aberration

    A fringe or outline of any color generated when the lens does not focus all light waves at the same focal point. While chromatic aberration can be purple, the term “purple fringing” – a purple/blue fringe along high-contrast edges - refers to a separate phenomenon that is generally caused by characteristics of the sensor.

    Color Spaces

    Every device that produces measures or captures color has its own way of reproducing all the colors in the visible spectrum, which is known as its color space. The most common color spaces in digital photography are Adobe RDB 1998 and Adobe sRGB. The former has broader color gamut (range of colors/tones), while sRGB has a smaller color gamut.

    Compression

    Compression is the process of encoding files through an algorithm, which decreases the size of the file for storage or transmission over the internet. There are two types of compression: lossy and lossless. Lossy compression (JPEG is an example) can result in visible degradation of image quality, especially when saving the image as a JPEG multiple times, because some image data is lost in each compression process. Lossless compression (like LZW compression) preserves all image data.

    Depth of Field

    Depth of field is the degree to which the scene remains in acceptably or perceived sharp focus in front of and beyond the focal plane. A larger aperture number (i.e., f/16) produces a broader depth of field. A smaller aperture number (i.e., f/2.8) can be used to throw the background out of focus, drawing the viewer’s eye to the main subject.

    Digital Zoom

    Digital zoom is a simulated zoom effect that enlarges the image on a portion of the image sensor. Akin to cropping, fewer pixels are used to capture the image, and although you end up with a closer view of the subject, the final image is generally of significantly lower resolution. With lower resolution, the ability to enlarge the photograph without affecting image quality is reduced.

    Dynamic Range

    The range of tones, from lightest to darkest, that can be recorded, displayed or reproduced by devices such as image sensors, scanners, printers and monitors are known as the dynamic range. The term is also used to describe the light-sensitivity range of film and the range of reflected light of a print. A photograph produced by a camera with a high dynamic range, for example, will retain image detail in both the shadows and highlights.

    Effective Pixels

    Effective pixels are the pixels on the sensor actually used to capture an image. Often, not all of the pixels on a sensor can be used because: 1) some pixels on the surrounding edges of a sensor are masked off to determine a black point; or 2) some cameras, especially compact ones, have lenses that are unable to cover the entire sensor area. The difference between actual and effective pixels is usually minimal, i.e., a 5.2 megapixel camera, for example, will provide 5.0 effective megapixels.

    Exposure

    A controlled amount of light projected to an image sensor or a frame of film is the exposure. This determines the lightness or darkness of an image and can be controlled manually by the photographer or automatically by the camera or by a combination of the two. If the aperture is too large and /or the shutter speed is too slow, an image will be too light, i.e., overexposed and vice versa.

    Focal Length

    The degree to which light from a scene is magnified by the lens is focal length. A short focal length, such as 28mm, will have a wider angle of view compared to the tight or telephoto focal length of a large 300mm lens. Zoom lenses have the ability to move through a range of focal lengths, while prime lenses are fixed at a specific focal length.

    Histogram

    A histogram is a sloping graph, resembling a mountain range with peaks and valleys, illustrating the exact ranges of tones the image sensor has captured for a particular shot. Anything past the left edge of the graph is pure black and anything beyond the right edge is pure white. The height of the graph represents the number of pixels for a given area. Some digital cameras have “live” histograms that are visible on the LCD when taking pictures to help the photographer determine the proper exposure. Other digital cameras have a histogram in the playback mode so the photographer can determine, albeit after the fact, if the image was properly exposed. Many image editing programs use histograms as a visual aid when adjusting image files during post processing.

    Image Stabliziation

    Optical image stabilization utilizes gyroscopic sensors within the lens to detect and compensate for motion or “camera shake.” Alternatively, some cameras achieve IS by moving the image sensor when camera movement is detected. But not all image stabilization is the same, nor as effective. For example, the latest trend in compact cameras is “image stabilization” that does nothing more than boost the ISO (light sensitivity) to achieve higher shutter speed to avoid blurry pictures. Unfortunately, this type of “stabilization” is usually compromised by high levels of image noise.

    Interpolation (Resampling)

    Artificially increasing or decreasing the number of pixels in an image through the use of an algorithm is known as interpolation. Some cameras increase the number of pixels automatically to compensate for digital zoom but this interpolation often results in degradation of image quality. Image editing software also interpolates pixels when enlarging an image beyond its core values of pixel count and resolution.

    ISO (Light Sensitivity)

    The ISO rating is an indication of light sensitivity in digital photography. Sensitivity is increased by amplifying sensor output, which also increases noise output, much like the increased grain in film with higher light sensitivity. ISO levels range from 50 to 6400. The higher the ISO, the less actual light is needed to achieve good exposure. At the same time, by increasing the ISO number, a higher shutter speed can be achieved, lessening the probability of a blurred image caused by camera shake, often at the expense of higher image noise levels.

    JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

    A common algorithm for the compression of image files, JPEG compression can vary from nearly lossless to highly lossy. All digital cameras are capable of capturing images in JPEG format, and because JPEG is standard, JPEG image files can be read by all image processing software.

    LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)

    In photography, Liquid Crystal Displays are typically a 1.5 to 2.5 inch screen comprised of liquid crystals that are stimulated by electric current to act as a viewfinder and/or preview screen of your frame. The LCD on most, but not all, digital SLRs is only used for viewing already captured images and navigating menus. Technology developed to allow a “live view” on digital SLRs is currently available only on a handful of cameras, but this feature may become more widely implemented in the near future.

    LD, ED and UD Glass

    (Low-Dispersion, Extra-Low-Dispersion and Ultra-Low-Dispersion Glass)

    All of these terms refer to a glass type used in lenses. These formulated glasses correct the path of light rays as they pass through the lens, making all colors in the color spectrum focus at the same point. Lenses constructed with these types of glass eliminate or lessen the occurrence of aberrations and some kinds of artifacts.

    Macro

    Primarily used for close-up photography, macro refers to a one to one or higher magnification of a subject provided by optics (i.e., a macro lens). The focal length of a macro lens determines how close the lens must be to the subject to attain a one to one image capture. For example, a 60mm macro lens will require a shorter lens to subject distance than a 100mm lens.

    Megapixel (one million pixels)

    The number of photodiodes (also known as photosites or pixels) on an image sensor is expressed in megapixels, which in turn is the resolution of the device (a camera, scanner, etc.). Most sensors have one photodiode for each pixel in an image. For example, a 5 megapixel camera has five million photodiodes. Megapixels, however, are not the only factor that determines image quality. The lens, processing algorithms and other attributes are also critical factors.

    Memory Card (Media Card)

    A memory card is a digital camera storage medium. Although these cards are available in a number of different formats: SD (Secure Digital), CF (Compact Flash), Memory Stick (with several variations), xD-Picture Card, each camera can only accommodate only one (sometimes two) of these formats. All cards come in different capacities, measured in megabytes (i.e., 256 MB) or gigabytes (i.e., 2 GB). Some cards are also designed to facilitate high performance, decreasing the time it takes for the camera to write the mage data to the card. Card capacities continue to increase in all formats, although not all cameras may be able to use these large capacity cards. It’s also important to note that, with the exception of Micro Drives (CompactFlash Type II), which have movable parts like a hard drive, all other media cards are solid-state or flash memory cards and are, therefore, fairly nonvolatile.

    Metering

    Metering is the processing of defining the light levels in a scene and providing a measurement for a proper exposure value. Popular modes include center-weighted metering (an average of the frame, with the emphasis on the center of the image), spot metering (generally 1 to 3 percent of the image), and evaluative or matrix metering (an average of independent areas of the image). Most digital cameras offer at least two, and generally three of these metering options.

    Noise

    Image artifacts caused by complex variations with color that manifest themselves as grain on an image is referred to as noise. Excessive noise, which is most often seen first in shadows, usually results in an objectionable looking image. High resolution digital cameras with small image sensors, where more pixels are forced to live in a smaller space and have physically smaller photodiodes are more subject to noise than sensors with larger photodiodes. High ISO (light sensitivity) also generates image noise. Most digital cameras are equipped with some form of noise reduction that is either automatically triggered with high ISOs or long exposures or, in higher end cameras, can be turned on and off manually. When noise reduction is applied in camera (or via image editing software), it can result in softened or blurred details to lessen the visibility of the noise.

    RAW

    RAW is an image capturing option containing the maximum information available from a sensor without the application of in-camera processing algorithms. This allows photographers to have more control over the final image by processing the image manually in a software program. The format is offered by many high-end compact digital cameras as well as D-SLRs. Each camera company has its own RAW format and corresponding software to support the software. Image editing applications like Adobe Photoshop are also capable of opening and processing images shot RAW.

    Resolution

    Camera resolution is expressed in the number of photodiodes (megapixels) on the image sensor. More megapixels equals higher resolution. It’s important to note that many factors go into image quality, and resolution is only one of them. If you have a poor lens on a high resolution camera, you’ll get a high resolution image of poor quality. Higher resolution image files can produce larger prints than lower resolution files.

    RGB

    RGB refers to the three primary colors of red, green and blue that our eyes perceive as the basis for every other color. When added together equally. They make pure white. Most, but not all, digital photography uses RGB color space. (see also Color Space)

    Shutter Speed

    Shutter speed is the amount of time the lens shutter remains open when the shutter is pressed. This controls, in conjunction with the aperture setting, the amount of light that hits the sensor, thereby determining the exposure. At the same time, the shutter speed can affect whether or not the image is in focus, especially if the subject is moving. Faster shutter speeds are measured in fractions of one second—averaging 1/4000 ^th of a second or higher. Many cameras also allow the shutter speed to be set in full seconds for longer exposures.

    SLR/D-SLR

    Modern D-SLRs are digital cameras based on the same mechanical and optical features of film SLR (Single Lens Reflex) cameras, minus the film. SLR cameras channel light through a lens and a mirror to a viewfinder that gives an exact preview of the shot to be captured.

    TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

    TIFF is a standard file format for bitmapped graphics. TIFF files are uncompressed and, therefore, very large compared to compressed formats. Not only do TIFF files occupy more hard drive space for storage, it also takes longer for the camera to write these files to a media card, therefore slowing down some aspects of camera performance. Because TIFF is a standard, TIFF image files can be read by all image processing software.

    White Balance

    White balance is a calibration of color temperature to a degree on the Kelvin Scale where white reads as white, rather than the varying shades of white caused by different lighting conditions. White in the morning, for instance, is a cooler blue of white, especially when compared to the very warm yellow of afternoon sun. White balance settings can be changed within the digital camera to adjust for sun, shade, tungsten and fluorescent lighting; automatic white balance is also an option, although accuracy is generally inconsistent. Custom or manual white balance is available in many cameras and is accomplished by pointing the camera at a white surface and clicking the shutter. Higher end cameras have a variety of white balance options, including the ability to set Kelvin temperatures manually.

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 190

• Your Guide to Camera Modes

  • From: gizzardgutz
  • Description:

    Your Guide To Camera Modes Get better images more easily with your digital camera’s pre-programmed settings

    By Wes Pitts

    Who needs all these modes? You might ask yourself this question when you pick up a digital camera loaded with custom exposure settings. Program, Aperture priority and Shutter priority modes have been around for a long time on film cameras, but many new modes have been added on the latest digital models, each finely tuned for specific shooting situations. Some cameras have more than a dozen of these specialized scene modes. The point of these automated modes is not to dumb down the camera. Like Aperture and Shutter priority settings, the goal is to create quick shortcuts to correct exposures. These modes help make photography more enjoyable and successful, bypassing the guesswork, particularly when you need to act quickly in order to catch the shot. They also make your camera more family-friendly so that anyone in the clan can get better results. One important thing to note about these modes is that while they practically guarantee a good exposure, you’re usually restricted in your ability to override certain aspects of exposure, such as white balance, flash, ISO and the like. Manual and semi-manual modes, like Aperture priority and Shutter priority, will allow these sorts of changes, but the modes dedicated to specific conditions generally will not. If you’re wondering why you can’t change your white-balance setting, check your mode.

    We won’t cover every special mode you may have on your camera, as they vary from model to model. Here are several of the most common modes and what they do for your photography.
    
    Manual. The shooting mode that started it all. You set the shutter speed and aperture, with options to change white balance, ISO, flash and even focus on some cameras. Choose this mode if you’re sure of your exposure or want maximum latitude for experimentation.
    
    Aperture Priority. In this mode, you select the aperture, thereby determining your depth of field, and the camera automatically sets the best shutter speed to match the conditions. This is a terrific mode to use with a stationary subject when you want to control your depth of field and aren’t concerned about shutter speed. It’s also a good choice when you want the camera to automatically select the fastest possible shutter speed (just set the camera to its widest aperture).
    
    Many professionals choose Aperture priority as their default setting. With the traditional SLR, this allowed them to quickly change the exposure without taking their eye off the subject or their finger off the shutter, by spinning the aperture ring with their left (lens-holding) hand.
    
    Shutter Priority. This mode helps you control motion, both as it relates to the subject and the camera. You select the shutter speed and the camera chooses the best aperture. The obvious example for stopping action is sports photography, where you’ll need a high shutter speed.
    
    Photographing a walking person might require a shutter speed of 1/125 sec., and a golf swing might take 1/500 sec. Conversely, there will be times when you want a slow shutter speed, such as for blurring moving water in a stream—try a speed between 1/15 and 1/60 sec.
    
    For controlling camera movement and to improve your handheld exposures, use a shutter speed that’s the reciprocal of your lens focal length (i.e., 1/300 sec. for a 300mm telephoto lens). Program. This all-purpose, mostly automatic exposure mode can be used for general photography. In this mode, the camera selects a median shutter speed and aperture based on the meter reading. Usually some fine-tuning of features like flash and white balance is possible. You can manually shift your aperture or shutter-speed setting in this mode after locking exposure (or while holding down the shutter release halfway on some models).
    
    Most Program modes try to give some blend of shutter speed and aperture setting that will allow for handholding and be fast enough to freeze action, and still provide satisfactory depth of field. However, not all manufacturers design their Program modes in the same way. Learn how you camera’s Program mode responds. As you become more experienced, you’ll be better at guessing the combination of shutter speed and aperture that will produce the results you want. You then can set the Program mode more accurately using the program shift feature to favor a faster shutter speed or slower aperture as you may prefer.
    
    Auto. Of all the modes on your digital camera, this one probably requires no introduction. If you just want to point and shoot, or hand the camera off to someone else and need a foolproof setting, this is it. When set to Auto, the camera does everything and locks out any adjustments to the exposure. Features like exposure compensation, white balance selection and ISO usually will be disabled. Note that if you find you’re unable to make these adjustments when photographing, make sure your camera is not set to Auto.
    
    Landscape. In Landscape mode, your camera will select the smallest aperture possible under the conditions to maximize depth of field in the image. Some cameras also will apply effects such as sharpening and color saturation when set to this mode.
    
    While Landscape mode will attempt to deliver sharpness from the foreground to the background, this isn’t always possible, and depends on the light and the capabilities of your lens and camera. For this reason, it’s best to set focus on the most important areas that need to be sharp.
    
    Portrait. Flattering portraits emphasize the subject by de-emphasizing the background. When you choose Portrait mode, the camera will select a wide aperture setting, minimizing your depth of field for a soft background effect, and also may adjust your zoom. The flash will usually switch to red-eye reduction when shooting in Portrait mode. More advanced cameras might even alter the in-camera processing of the image to accentuate skin tones. Here, accurate focus is important because with less depth of field, your margin for error is reduced. Make sure that the eyes of your subject are in sharp focus. Also, if you’re shooting a group of people, Portrait mode may not be the best choice if the subjects are standing at varying distances from the camera. In this situation, you’ll need more depth of field to ensure that everyone is sharp. Choose Aperture priority mode instead to select the smallest aperture possible for the exposure conditions.
    
    Sports. Sports and action photography demand a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of your subject. Switch to Sports mode, and your camera will automatically choose the fastest shutter speed possible so you can concentrate on the action.
    
    Depending on the capabilities of your camera, this mode also will activate continuous shooting (as opposed to single frame) to help you capture the decisive moment in a series of shots. If your camera has an advanced evaluative metering mode, this likely will be employed rather than center-weighted or spot metering. Flash is usually disabled.
    
    Macro. Close-ups usually make for interesting images, provided that they’re sharp. The Macro or Close-Up mode in digital cameras allows you to focus on objects at amazingly small distances—sometimes just a few centimeters from the lens. Use the Macro mode when the little details really count. Depending on your camera, your zoom range may be restricted, and you also may be required to manually set your focus. The flash will likely be disabled as well.
    
    To get the best results, a tripod is recommended. Macro photography also is one of those applications where a flip-out, swiveling LCD is a huge benefit, as you can adjust the angle of the LCD to give you a clear view of the image even in tight quarters.
    
    Night. Night scene photography turns out best when you make the most of your ambient or existing light, which requires a slow shutter speed for a long exposure without flash. A tripod is absolutely necessary for best results. A long exposure of several seconds or more is often required for night shots. This raises quality issues of which you should be aware. Digital camera sensors are particularly susceptible to noise problems during long exposures. The sensor must remain active for the duration of the exposure, which generates heat. This heat, in turn, can cause pixel errors that show up as grain-like irregularities in the image. Some of the more advanced cameras have technologies that help reduce noise in long exposures, but no camera is yet immune to this problem. So, if possible, try to include a lot of ambient light in your night photography, or choose to compose your shot with objects in the foreground that can be illuminated by flash to add light to the exposure.
    
    Night Portrait. Some cameras offer a Night Portrait mode in addition to the standard Night mode. Night Portrait uses a long exposure to capture the ambient background light and a reduced-intensity, slow-sync flash with red-eye reduction to softly illuminate the subject in the foreground. This gives a pleasing balance between the flash and existing light. A tripod is important in this mode, as you want the ambient light to be as sharp as the subject illuminated by your flash.
    
    Beach & Snow. The often bright, reflective and contrasty environment at the beach or in snowy landscapes provides an exposure challenge for even the most sophisticated metering system. It’s easy for the meter to be fooled into “thinking” that the scene is much brighter than it really is, which in turn causes the camera to underexpose the image. This mode will compensate for the abundant ambient and reflected light by slightly overexposing based on the meter reading.

    	Aperture Priority. This is a terrific mode to use with a stationary subject when you want to control your depth of field and aren’t concerned about shutter speed. In this mode, you choose the aperture setting and the camera automatically sets the best shutter speed to match the conditions.
    	Shutter Priority. You’ll usually want to choose shutter priority when you need to capture a moving subject. In this mode, you select the shutter speed and the camera chooses the best aperture for a proper exposure.
    	Program. This all-purpose automatic exposure mode can be used for general photography. In this mode, the camera selects a median shutter speed and aperture based on the meter reading.
    	Landscape. In Landscape mode, your camera will select the smallest aperture to maximize depth of field in the image. Your image will be as sharp as possible under the conditions in both the foreground and background. Some cameras also will apply enhanced color saturation to the image.
    	Portrait. This mode emphasizes the subject by de-emphasizing the background. The camera selects the widest possible aperture setting to minimize depth of field for a softened background. The flash usually will switch to its red-eye reduction setting when shooting in this mode. Remember to focus on your subject’s eyes.
    	Sports. Speed is the name of the game in Sports mode. Your camera will automatically choose the fastest shutter speed possible, and also will enable continuous high-speed shooting if available. Evaluative metering is usually the default for this mode, helping to ensure a decent exposure even in contrasty light.
    	Macro. Macro shots can be an interesting window into a smaller world that we don’t usually notice. One of our favorite features of compact digital cameras is the ability to shoot close-ups without a special lens. Macro mode allows you to focus on objects extremely close up, though your zoom range may be restricted.
    	Night. Successful night photography requires a slow shutter speed for a long exposure without flash. The exposure may last several seconds, so use a tripod when shooting in this mode or place your camera on a solid platform. Also, be aware that most digital sensors generate image noise during exposures of more than a few seconds.
    	Night Portrait. For flattering portraits in dark conditions, you want a combination of flash with a long exposure to pick up ambient background lights. In this mode, the flash fires to freeze the action of your subject amid the lengthened exposure. Whenever possible, use a tripod with this mode for best results.
    	Beach & Snow. The bright reflections and high contrast of sand and snow often will trick your camera’s meter into underexposing the scene. This mode will ensure a proper exposure by slightly overexposing based on the meter reading

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• Angola Prison Field Trip

  • From: critterkeeper
  • Description:

    Today, 27 VOICE group members took a trip on a yellow school bus to Angola Prison and had a most interesting day.....to say the least. My V.O.I.C.E. support group was personally invited by Warden Burl Cain, himself. This man is a very sincere person who is faced with an intense job!! He looks to people like us, who has lost someone due to murder for confirmation on what he's doing right to try to end the cycle; hard job, eh? He seems to really know where we're coming from, and knows our pain; because he sees both realms......the inmates' families are filled with pain themselves, especially the children (they're innocent). Warden Cain had us out to the farmhouse, where we had lunch, prepared and served by trusties. It was delicious, and they were VERY polite.

    We got a guided tour of the WHOLE facility which sits on 18000 acres. This prison is self maintained and grows most all of the food prepared; the inmates are served 3 meals per day @ a cost of approx. $5.00 per inmate for 5166 inmates and they also feed their staff, which reside on the grounds of the prison.

    We walked down death row, which was a bit eerie; we were NOT allowed to talk to any inmates, except for the trusties. We saw inmates working in the hot fields, being guarded by armed/unarmed guards on horses. The lethal injection room was a lil eerie as well; it was the actual table that was in 'Dead Man Walking', and another movie as too. The inmates with life sentences are locked up for 23 hrs. per day with one hr., 3 times a week for exercise; we saw a few, shackled, cuffed, and just walking in circles or back and forth. The only A/C was in the farmhouse, the hospital, and the museum; everywhere else is cooled by fans....very uncomfortable even for the guards. The trusties are housed in Dorms; which is a large open room with 60 beds per dorm, open bathroom facilities, 1 TV and lots of fans.

    When an inmate dies in prison, they bury within 24 hrs. because they do not embalm. They're laid to rest in a coffin made by inmates and are carried in a horse drawn hearse made by inmates (very talented people).

    The museum was interesting, too; but with so much stuff to see, and so little time, our day had to end. We all had a great time spending the day together and are looking forward to the next field trip :-)

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  • 1 year ago
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• "SHARK!! SHARK!!"

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    In the summer of 1974, I spent three weeks on Maui. Everyone, it seemed, had read "Jaws" that summer. But not I. I'd been too busy finishing my master's degree back in suburban Chicago. On July 4, I was bobbing along with our hostess off the coast of Lahaina in what had been a rectangular raft. But, while awaiting our turns to use one of the surfboards, we had used the raft so much for body-surfing, riding waves up onto the beach, that the sand had finally torn the bottom out, leaving a rectangular "inner tube."
    
    Nancy and I were sitting in it, at opposite ends, facing each other, our legs dangling down into the water. We were about 200 yards from shore. All of a sudden, she clamped her finely manicured fingernails into my forearm and gave me a quiet but intense "SSShhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!"
    
    I thought, "What's wrong with this woman?" Following her gaze, I turned my head to see one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. There, not three feet from the raft and less than two feet below the surface was an 8'-10' shark. It was just hovering there--suspended in the water--as if it wanted us to climb aboard for a ride or something. Stunned but fascinated (and you're not going to believe this), I started to reach down to TOUCH the creature. At this point, blinding pain shot through my forearm. Nancy had dug her nails deeper into the skin, drawing blood.
    
    At this point, people on the shore are running around, screaming, "SHARK!! SHARK!!" A young man is running toward the water with a rifle held in one hand above his head.
    
    The shark begins to ever-so-slowly swish his tail back and forth, angling slightly away from us. Having bobbed back into water only chest-deep, Nancy and I slowly walked--within the rectangular "tube"--toward shore. Rifle shots rang out. The shark got the hell out of Dodge. Then everyone regaled me with the book "Jaws."
    
    The next summer--1975--as I was ending my first year in TV news--I took the woman I would eventually marry to see Spielberg's movie version at a Nashville theater, which was packed with screaming movie-goers. Then and only then was I scared witless at what could have happened the previous summer when I --very, VERY stupidly--had even CONSIDERED touching the damn thing.

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• A break, a lake and a corpse..

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    During a class break while a Northwestern grad student in 1974, I walked the less-than-200 steps to the edge of Lake Michigan--the spot is just behind me in this photo. (That's the Chicago skyline in the distance.)

    Standing there, I stared out across the lake--which takes up the entire horizon, as if it were an ocean.

    Something below caught my eye. I looked down. There, less than 15 feet below, was a nude male corpse, face down, gently lapping against the wooden pylons.

    It was one of those surreal "Is-this-really-happening?" moments: in broad daylight, I'm looking at a corpse bobbing just below my feet.
    
    I quickly went back to the journalism building and reported it to the Chicago Police.

    Then, I reported the story--my first "scoop"!

                                                                                 ###

     

    <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Hoyt-Harris/1130596464" title="Hoyt Harris's Facebook profile" target=_TOP><img src="http://badge.facebook.com/badge/1130596464.206.903299997.png" border=0 alt="Hoyt Harris's Facebook profile"></a>

     

     

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• VERMILIONVILLE 1869-Where's Th

  • From: DavidBarry
  • Description:

      Hi there. I'm a Lafayette native but I live in Houston Texas now. It's a relatively easy driving distance between Houston and Lafayette. When I turned fifty years old, I found things that seemed unimportant, or, not relevant to my life, seemed very important all of a sudden. As a child I would ride my bicycle around on St. John Street, Lafayette Street, Vermilion and the like, never realizing I was riding on the original Vermilionville street grid that was laid out by Jean Mouton.

       In preparation for my then, up-coming 50th birthday, and with it, "absolute confirmation of old fartdom," I figured I might ought to learn some of this, old fart, stuff. I started last January with an initial trip to the Lafayette Public Library. I looked through several books and that's when I found the original street grid. Wow! Apparently our founder laid out what he considered at the time to be, the most important street first. Named for his patron saint, St. John the Evangelist. (Ten feet wider than the rest). The second  street was named after George Washington, followed by the Marquis De Lafayette.  The names of the other north and south streets further to the east, weren't so etched in stone They could be subject to change, depending on whether this individual's politics were favored by Jean Mouton at the time. Cutting in east and west,  he laid down Vermilion Street on the northern side of the grid, Main Street in the middle, and Second Street. (Now Convent). And that was pretty much it. That eureka moment set me off and running. And that's when I saw all those city directories, telephone books.and the rest is, oh, I can't say it.

       My grandfather was a conductor on the Southern Pacific Sunset Route. And I have always been fascinated by the train depot in Lafayette. Watched its decline, its being badly burned, and now, looking like a great train depot at the Rosa Parks transportation center. Standing in front of the depot in the sixties, I remember very well the three railroad tracks in front of the depot with the Southern Pacific freight operations on the other side. To my two o'clock position would  a huge Tonka Toy wonderland with a giant sand pile and conveyer belt to climb on. A veritable death trap to any modern child but merely playground equipment for us kids of the sixties. I remember sitting on my bike at the underpass waiting for the three o'clock train from New Orleans. I'd watch the people arriving and departing, wondering where they were going and where they had been. Sigh. So it's safe to say, that railroads will be a constant subject in our get togethers. Along with the plantations, how they were divided, and of course the evolution of the downtown street grid. There's the "additions" and all those long gone businesses and the stories that might be dug up. Also I am ravenously going through Advertiser archives, and the stuff I'm finding is nothing short of amazing. In my column I'd like to open up discussions about the things that I have found about Vermilionville and Lafayette history and pick the brains of readers who know things that I don't, and of course share things I have found. And that's what I'd like to do today.

     

      I've been left waiting for the Amtrak Sunset Limited for many hours on more than one occassion. The tardiness usually occurs eastbound coming in from Los Angeles since it has more time to accumulate delay. From New Orleans it's arrival times in Lafayette are usually closer to schedule. Amtrak attributes this to the fact that the tracks are owned by Union Pacific between L. A. and Lake Charles, with the rails between Lake Charles and New Orleans by the BNSF Railway Company. They have started tracking their delay causes and posting them on their website detailing where and why the delays have occured. It seems to have improved their on-time performance.

       Of course, I'm sure we all know that before it was the the Amtrak Sunset Limited, it was the Southern Pacific Sunset Route. As early as 1874. So if it's currently 1869, and we're in Vermilionville, we'll be waiting for more than a just a few hours for that three o'clock train. How much longer will we have to wait?

       To give us a hint, I dug up the following as it appeared in Vermilionville's weekly newspaper, the Lafayette Advertiser, on January 23, 1869. 140 years ago today. And yes, it was called the Lafayette Advertiser when we were still officially known as Vermilionville.

     

              THE OPELOUSAS, HOUSTON AND PACIFIC RAILROAD

      We have seen Mr. J. B. Price since his return from Texas, and he speaks in terms of confidence in regard to the early completion of the railroad between Houston and New Orleans. He thinks that capitalists are so thoroughly appraised of the importance of the road, and the profits it will pay, that other companies would immediately take it up, even if abandoned by Messrs. Price and Chonteau.
      Besides, the attention which is now turned to this great southern route to the Pacific coast makes this enterprise still more important. The snows on the two upper lines of the Pacific Railroad are found to be terrible impediments in winter, and the lower route will be entirely free from this difficulty. Beyond a doubt, in from ten to twenty years the great highway between the Mississippi and the Pacific will be through Attakapas, and over this part of the Opelousas Railroad.------Banner
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     

      In this same edition of the Advertiser, there was this re-print from the Houston Telegraph, the first newspaper of Texas.

     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     

            Missouri  Captialists wish to build the Texas and New Orleans Railroad

     

      Yesterday we had a protracted interview with Gen. Thomas L. Price and J.B. Price of St. Louis, the former, one of the company of Price, Chonteau and Co., lessors of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad to Texas. Gen. Price has just closed a contingent lease--to be made final on the 24th if profits in this quarter are satisfactory--for the early completion and extension of the Orleans road from the Brashear line, to the texas line. Gen. Price is managing director and principal stockholder in the Kansas Union Pacific Railroad, now some 400 miles west of Kansas City.  This road has been transporting Texas cattle to eastern markets, that have been driven to Abilene and other stations on it's track three hundred miles north of the Red River, at the rate of 48,000  per month.

     

      Impressed with the fact of the prospective importance of a rail route that would connect the whole projected system of roads now in Texas, with the entire of Southern Roads east of the Mississippi, recieving the tide of travel and traffic as a neck to an hour glass, through which would pour the concentrated commerce of the region east and the region west of the great dividing river ; we say that Gen. Price, first realizing on the Kansas Pacific the enormous value of the Texas beef trade alone, and upon subsequent inpection, having seen that the Opelousas Road would be the only connecting link between the Gulf States east, and this great Southwestern grain and beef region, he visits Texas to learn what can be done to remove the rubbish on the track this side of the Sabine.

     

      If the complications that now envelope this section of the road from Houston to Orange are adjusted so that the whole route from New Orleans to Houston could be under one administration, and thus insure those who build Louisiana, and that they could have certain connections with this city, Gen. Price assured that upon these facts being manifested to him he would close his contingent lease on the route in Louisiana, and prosecute the work to immediate completetion of the Texas line.

     

      So deeply interested was he in the route, that he has traveled from Brashear (Morgan City) over land to this city, to inspect the topography of the line, and the present actual condition of the Texas end of the road.

     

      He finds the embankments where thrown up, in better condition than expected ; but all the ties rotten and worthless, and the road in the same condition as if nothing but the iron lay convenient for ultimate construction.

     

      What can be done to reconcile, harmonize and remove the cloud of complications that envelope this Texas end of the road, so calculated to repel any effort upon the part of capitalists to embark in the work, either in Louisiana or Texas?

     

      The case stands thus--that the bondholders and creditors, and all the others interested in any manner with the Texas road, from this city to the Sabine have a lifeless, and rotting and rusting apology for a railroad, that is not only utterly profitless, but unless capitalists from abroad come to the rescue, is an incubus on their hands, and a shameful ulcer on State enterprise.

      What will these parties at interest do to induce Gen. Orice, or any representative of money to embark at once to vitalize and repair, and complete the work from city to city?

     

      We have heard on this day several of our largest local bond holders say that if Gen. Price will take hold of the work, they relinguish or extinguish their at present wortlhess bonds and stocks. Unfortunately most of the bonds are in the hands of non residents and foreigners--can they dispose of satisfactory to them. We answer yes!

       

      We will make our point as brief as possible. We assume as irrefutable that this road is the sole connecting link between the Texas system of roads and the whole system east of New Orleans, with the positive certainty of its being the coast link of the Southern Pacific connecting New Orleans with the International Pacific track at Austin and San Antonio. This route, we say, from Houston to New Orleans can carry first and second mortgage bonds of $20,000 each per mile, and pay the handsomest dividends of any road, without exception, on this continent.,Mortgage bonds of $15,000  per mile, can be put in the market and the work, and and the whole complications, now so seriously embarrasing the work, can be disposed of, if the bond holders of the old road, and all others legally interested, will consent to convert their now worthless interests and claims into second mortgage bonds, convertible into stock at same rate, say fifty percent below their face value.

       

       Well, we now know that all the people that were needed to make it all happen, did eventually "get on board."  And that, is when Vermilionville, really,  begins to grow.

     

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• Cypermort Point

  • From: gert
  • Description:

    Does anyone have reports from Cypermort Point, we would like to know about how high the water is and if or when it is expected to go down. We own property down there but did not have it when Rita hit. Thanks to anyone that can help with info.

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• When I was 12, I shot Tallulah

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    May 1963/Redstone Arsenal/Huntsville, AL

    The day I photographed President John F. Kennedy in May 1963 (BLOG POST: “The Day I Shot a President”), I also shot Tallulah Bankhead. The legendary New York stage actress was a staunch Democrat and avid Kennedy supporter. Like hundreds of us, she waited in the hot sun of Redstone Arsenal for several hours for the president’s arrival.

    Tallulah was born into a family of powerful Alabama Democrats: her father, William Brockman Bankhead, was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1936 to 1940. She was the niece of Senator John H. Bankhead II and granddaughter of Senator John H. Bankhead.

    Bankhead was born in Huntsville , Alabama , on January 31,1902 . After winning a movie magazine beauty contest, she blew out of her home state at the age of 15, determined to achieve recognition.

    
    In New York , she was to have a career that spanned more than 40 years and more than 50 plays. Although her successes were erratic, she did have three huge hits: "The Little Foxes", "The Skin of our Teeth" and "Private Lives".

    Her film career was largely unsuccessful, except for the 1944 Hitchcock hit, LIFEBOAT, in which Bankhead played the gravel-voiced journalist who loses a diamond bracelet over the side of the boat.

    During her early New York years, she began to use cocaine and marijuana. She famously said, "Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know--I've been using it for years."

    She became known for saying almost anything, whether true or not. Once, at a party, a guest made a comment about rape. Bankhead replied, "I was raped in our driveway when I was eleven. You know, darling, it was a terrible experience because we had all that gravel."

    She reportedly engaged in hundreds of affairs with both men and women. Bankhead almost died following a five-hour emergency hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea , which she claimed she contracted either from George Raft or Gary Cooper . Only 70 pounds when she left the hospital, she stoically said to her doctor, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"

    She was romantically linked with a Who's Who of show business: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Hattie McDaniel (Mammy in "Gone with the Wind") and Billie Holiday.
    
    She smoked more than one-hundred cigarettes a day, drank gin and bourbon as if they were water and carried a suitcase full of drugs to help her sleep, stay awake and just function in general.

    She was the first white woman to appear on the cover of Ebony magazine.

    In 1968, on her deathbed in a New York City hospital, she is said to have whispered to the doctor,

    “…bourbon...cocaine...."
    
    

    Quotes

    · “I'm as pure as the driven slush".

    · “What's wrong, dahling? Can't you recognize me with my clothes on?"

    · “It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.”

    · “I'll come and make love to you at five o`clock. If I'm late, start without me."

    · “I've tried several varieties of sex, all of which I hate. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic; the others give me a stiff neck and/or lockjaw.”

    · My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.

    --Hoyt Harris

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• Salt Water Fish In Fresh Water

  • From: Historybuff
  • Description:

    Friday 9/12/08 I noticed all types of salt water fish swimming in the canal behind my shop. I am talking large fish, drum, sheephead, some huge chad, etc. all day long they swam back and forth in large schools. Even the fish no when its time to move on!

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• Cybill: The Golden Girl

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    You know how many of us, when dripping wet, look like drowned rats? I know I do. Well, on June 6, 1967, the day before I embarked on a summer in Europe, I spent the entire day with Cybill Shepherd. (Yes, THAT Cybill Shepherd.) Cybill is from Memphis but was visiting mutual friends of our families in my hometown, Lewisburg. We spent part of the afternoon swimming. A member of the swim team at East High School in Memphis, Cybill would do these absolutely perfect dives, swim the length of the pool underwater, coming up at pool's edge, long blonde hair gleamingly wet, looking for all the world like some sea goddess. We were 16 then. And while "youth itself is beauty", Cybill was perfect.
    
    At this point in her life, her only claim to national fame was that she had won Miss Congeniality in the Miss Teenage America pageant. Had this turned her head? Not in the least. She was as down to earth a girl as you'd ever want to meet. The next year--1968--her entrance onto the national stage got a major boost: she won Model of the Year in New York City and appeared on the cover of Glamour magazine, the first of what would become a record number of covers on Glamour.

    But that first cover was all it took. Her picture was spotted by film-critic-turned-Hollywood-director Peter Bogdanovich who cast her as "Jacy Farrow" in his THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, what Newsweek's Jack Kroll would call in the opening line of his review "a masterpiece." In it, Cybill had a quick nude scene: while standing on the diving board in a bathing suit, she quickly takes it off and dives in. (A perfect dive, of course.) She comes up out of the water--again a sea goddess. This time for the whole world to see. For me, of course, it was a case of art imitating life....
    
    In his Oscar-winning screenplay for 1950's ALL ABOUT EVE, in the movie's opening sequence writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz has the narrator say of Eve in voice-over:
    
    "Eve. Eve, the Golden Girl. The cover girl, the girl next door, the girl on the moon...Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes--she's been profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what she eats and when and where, what she wears and when and where, whom she knows and where she was and when and where she's going...."
    
    At the ripe age of 18, this was the world Cybill stepped into. You couldn't walk through a grocery or drug store without seeing her face staring back at you from a magazine cover. You couldn't turn on "The Tonight Show" without seeing Johnny Carson dazzled by her blonde good looks. Cybill was the healthy, athletic beauty who replaced the likes of reed-thin model Twiggy and preceeded the anorexic, coked-up-looking models like Kate Moss and the clones that followed. The powers that be in the fashion industry and on Madison Avenue should be crucified for glorifying models who look like concentration camp survivors. Had they continued to "glamour"-ize the likes of Cybill our young women today would be a lot healthier.
    
    In the early 70s, Cybill went on to do several films for Bogdanovich, with whom she was now living in Hollywood, but none as successful as PICTURE SHOW. Despite critics scathingly panning her work in Bogdanovich's period-piece, DAISY MILLER, and his musical, AT LONG LAST LOVE, she remained a fashion icon. And in 1976, she got good notices for her performance in Martin Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER.

    But in 1978--at the ripe, old age of 28--unhappy with where her career was "not" going, she went home to Memphis, became pregnant and had her first child, daughter Clementine. Her marriage ended in divorce several years later. A second marriage produced twins and ended in divorce after three years.
    
    But Cybill bounced back with the TV sitcom "Moonlighting," a huge hit for Cybill and the up-and-coming Bruce Willis. In the mid-90s Cybill showed her business chops when she executive-produced the TV sitcom, "Cybill", based loosely on her two marriages. It was a huge hit for Cybill and for CBS.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Fast-forward from when we swam in 1967 to 1991. I was in Memphis, having been invited by my alma mater to participate in the annual Rhodes Forum. My college put me up at the Peabody Hotel for the long weekend. Cybill was living in a Peabody penthouse while her Japanese-style home was under construction in Memphis on property that borders the Mississippi River.
    
    On side-by-side treadmills, we exercised---and we talked: Cybill has remained a fighter; with such an up-and-down career, she's had to. In hearing her story, it was fairly heart-breaking to see what Hollywood fame, the bust-up of her eight-year, on again-off again relationship with Bogdanovich, the failure of two marriages, life in the goldfish bowl of media coverage, and being a target of fevered entertainment reporters working overtime can do to the human spirit.

    She is a survivor. Over the years, she evolved into an out-spoken voice for civil rights. At 58, ingenue movie roles haven't come her way in decades. She now does television, having starred in two television movies portraying Martha Stewart. Personally, I think her life itself has the makings of a movie. She survived the beauty pageant circuit of the Sixties; she rose and fell and rose again in Hollywood; her personal life hasn't been "happily ever after."

    In many ways, she is Everywoman.
    
    But I will always remember Cybill as "the golden girl" of my generation, the dazzling-even-when-drenched sea goddess, the once-upon-a-time, quintessential, All-American girl-next-door.

    ---Hoyt Harris

     

    

     

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• PSYCHO (1960) HOW'D they DO th

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    How’d they do that ?

    PSYCHO’s Death of Arbogast

    Hitchcock: …I used a single shot of Arbogast coming up the stairs, and when he got to the top step, I deliberately placed the camera very high for two reasons. The first was so that I could shoot down on top of the mother, because if I’d shown her back, it might have looked as if I was deliberately concealing her face and the audience would have been leery. I used that high angle in order not to give the impression that I was trying to avoid showing her. But the main reason for raising the camera so high was to get the contrast between the long shot and the close-up of the big head as the knife came down on him. It was like music, you see, the high shot with the violins, and suddenly the big head with the brass instruments are clashing. In the high shot the mother dashes out and I cut into the movement of the knife sweeping down. Then I went over to the close-up on Arbogast. We put a plastic tube on his face with hemoglobin, and as the knife came up to it, we pulled a string releasing the blood on his face down the line we had traced in advance. Then he fell back on the stairway.

    ( Editor : Arbogast does not actually fall. His feet aren’t shown—not in a full body shot, but in a close-up cutaway--but the feeling one gets is that he’s going down the stairs backward, brushing each step with the tip of his foot, like a dancer.)

    Hitchcock : First I did a separate dolly shot down the stairway, without the man. Then we sat him in a special chair in which he was in a fixed position in front of the transparency screen showing the stairs. Then we shoot the chair, and Arbogast simply threw his arms up, waving them as if he’d lost his balance.

    (SHOWER SCENE)

    Hitchcock: It took us seven days to shoot that scene, and there were seventy camera setups for forty-five seconds of footage. We had a torso specially made up for that scene, with the blood that was supposed to spurt away from the knife, but I didn’t use it. I used a live girl instead, a naked model who stood in for Janet Leigh. We only showed Miss Leigh’s hands, shoulders, and head. All the rest was the stand-in. Naturally, the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the montage. I shot some of it in slow motion so as to cover the breasts. The slow shots were not accelerated later on because they were inserted in the montage so as to give an impression of normal speed…. This is the most violent scene of the picture. As the film unfolds, there is less violence because the harrowing memory of this initial killing carries over to the suspenseful passages that come later. --Hoyt Harris

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• When Sondheim Wrote Me Back

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    I worship--and have for 35 years--at the shrine of Stephen Sondheim, our nation's greatest living theater composer/lyricist. This is the man who, at 26, wrote the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's score for the ground-breaking WEST SIDE STORY. At 28, he wrote lyrics to Jule Styne's score--and for Ethel Merman's voice--for GYPSY, arguably the greatest of all Broadway musicals. (Its music and words are the very soul of show business.)
    As a youngster, I, of course, had heard this music but had no idea who Stephen Sondheim was. All that changed, however, when I was a journalism graduate student and the girl I was dating--and the girl she shared an apartment with--were constantly playing the original cast recording of Sondheim's most recent show, 1973's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, the show that gave the world "Send in the Clowns", Sondheim's only bona fide hit. But disciplined musician/lyricist that he was and is, Sondheim never went for the easy hit. He prefers to write for the characters in the show: his words are character-driven and character-revealing. His lyrics spring from the characters' psyches.

    At any rate, when Northwestern's highly regarded School of Speech produced his COMPANY in the winter of '73/'74, I went. And my life was changed forever. More than any artist--any singer, any composer, any wordsmith, any vocal group--his work has "informed" my life; in fact, it has given me an extra education in what music can do and in human psychology.
    
    Ever since that 1973 production I have followed his work and his life as if he were a relative. For countless hours--while exercising, while driving, while mowing grass--I have learned his scores to the extent that they have become a sort of soundtrack of the last 35 years of my life. If you're not familiar with Sondheim, just listen to the original cast recordings of COMPANY, FOLLIES, SWEENEY TODD, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, PACIFIC OVERTURES, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, ASSASSINS, PASSION, INTO THE WOODS, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, BOUNCE (aka ROAD SHOW)--all shows for which he wrote music AND lyrics. (He also wrote the songs Madonna sings in Warren Beatty's DICK TRACY: "Sooner or Later", "Back in Business" and "More.")

    So grateful have I been for his work that I finally felt I should let him know. After reading his Manhattan address in a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover article, I sat down one night in May, 1994, and began writing what I intended to be a short "thank you" note. But two hours later, what I had written turned out to be a 1,000-word epistle (bet that doesn't surprise you in the least!!!) of gratitude. I mailed it.
    
    Exactly ten days later--while he was in the angst-ridden throes of getting his show PASSION on the boards of Broadway, and while the "butchers of Broadway" (read: critics) were trashing his work in previews--he had written me back.
    
    When I pulled the small envelope from the mailbox and saw his name and address embossed on the envelope's back flap, I couldn't believe what I was holding. So taken with his talent for so long, everything sort of went into slow-motion. I mean, the man is one of the towering talents of 20th Century America.

    I got the letter-opener. With hands practically shaking, I opened it.
    
    He began: "Dear Mr. Harris, Thank you so much for your wonderful letter...."
    
    I later learned that he himself types these notes in the wee hours of the morning when taking breaks from composing and writing.
    
    The fact that this man, this genius, had typed "Mr. Harris" was practically beyond my comprehension.
    
    For this is the man who wrote, for GYPSY:
    
    You'll be swell/You'll be great/Gonna have the whole world on a plate
    Starting here/Starting now/Honey, Everything's comin' up roses....
    
    And for WEST SIDE STORY:
    
    Tonight, tonight/Won't be just any night/Tonight there will be no morning star....
    
    And for SWEENEY TODD:
    
    There's a hole in the world like a great, black pit
    And it's filled with people who are filled with shit
    And the vermin of the world inhabit it
    And it goes by the name of...London....
    
    The man who wrote those world-famous words signed off with: "Gratefully, Stephen Sondheim," his distinctive signature in black ink.
    
    As I read Sondheim's note, I realized in that moment that Sondheim is not only a great musical genius. He is also--for I was holding the evidence in my hands--a gentleman par excellence. The fact that this Tony-, Grammy-, Oscar-, Kennedy Center Honors-, and Pulitzer-winning artist would take the time to write to even one of his legion of fans worldwide spoke volumes about the man's generosity of spirit and his humility.
    
    And, oh yes, despite the "butchers of Broadway," less than one month after I received his note, his PASSION won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
    
    Sondheim's note is rather expensively framed and woe be unto the person who ever even THINKS about moving it from its special spot on the baby grand.

    --Hoyt Harris

     

     

                

                          

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• "Falling" for VERTIGO

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    VERTIGO Hitchcock/USA/1958

    If any movie ever overtakes CITIZEN KANE (1941) as “the greatest movie ever made,” it will likely be Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. In this 1958 masterpiece of neurotic obsession, Hitchcock reveals more about his own neuroses than he did in any other film.

    Hitchcock was a famously controlling director, especially when it came to the women in his movies. His lead actresses were the same, again and again: blonde, icy and aloof: Janet Leigh and Vera Miles in PSYCHO; Grace Kelly in REAR WINDOW; Eva Marie Saint in NORTH BY NORTHWEST; Tippi Hedren in THE BIRDS. He was notoriously controlling of these actresses----on- and off-screen----trying to remake them to his own near-fetishistic tastes.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    VERTIGO, simply put, is the story of a man, Scottie (Jimmy Stewart)--something of a svelte stand-in for the portly Hitchcock himself in this film--who falls in love with a woman who doesn’t exist. His love-obsession is the creation of another man, who sets the plot in motion by paying a woman to double as his wife so that he can murder his real wife as Scottie, a retired police detective, witnesses what he thinks is an accident, or suicide. (And if that last sentence seems terribly convoluted, complex and confusing in the extreme, it's meant to: I refuse to spoil this film for those who may never have seen it.)

     

     

     

     

    What makes VERTIGO a great movie is the way Hitchcock takes the viewer in; the way camera shots reveal character—for instance, how Scottie is always seen driving “down” hills in his obsessive stalking of a woman who is not who he thinks she is, symbolic of the downward-spiralling vortex of emotion that has him "falling" in love with what is, essentially, a nonentity. “Falling” is a thread that runs through the entire movie; in his nightmares Scottie, who suffers from vertigo, is always seen falling. Early shots depict his fear of heights. Hitchcock shows us this fear from Scottie’s point of view: by zooming the lens in, while simultaneously pulling the camera back, Hitchcock's shot depicts walls—or a building, a staircase or a street below—approaching and receding at the same time. In cinema terms, this shot conveys, I would imagine, the dizziness, the nausea, that sufferers of vertigo experience.

     

     

     

    When VERTIGO was released, Kim Novak, who plays “Madeleine”—the dream object of Stewart’s desire---was ridiculed for playing the role robotically, without emotion. But time has proved Novak right: her character, after all, was a role another man was paying her to portray. Therefore, the way she moves—and you might call it “stiffly”—is exactly how many, if not most, would move if they were trying to project a persona not their own.

     

     

     

    If you see VERTIGO, make sure you get the remastered edition. The original print had faded much over the years until Universal Studios, using an expensive and painstaking process, restored it to the way Master Hitchcock intended it to be seen.

    --Hoyt Harris

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• REAR WINDOW: A nation of voyeu

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    REAR WINDOW

    Hitchcock/USA/1954

     

    REAR WINDOW is about the very act of watching movies. Like Jeff (Jimmy Stewart)—a man laid up in a body cast in a wheelchair—we, too, sit, as if trapped in the theater.

     

    REAR WINDOW is about watching.

     

    Have we become a nation of voyeurs, as Stella (Thelma Ritter) asks Jeff? (How else can one explain the phenomenon of reality television?)

     

    When it was released in 1954, REAR WINDOW caused at least one critic to complain that James Stewart's character was nothing but a “peeping Tom.”

    Director Alfred Hitchcock responded:  "Sure, he's a snooper, but aren't we all? I'll bet you that nine out of 10 people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room, will stay and look."

     

    That is the point of Hitchcock’s movie: We may not care to admit it, but we've always been a nation of peeping Toms. To prove it, Hitchcock makes us all voyeurs along with Stewart's housebound character.

     

     We know it's wrong to "spy on" others, but when Jeff believes he has discovered that a murder has taken place, we feel complicit in the discovery which assuages at least some of our guilt. When the killer spies Jeff spying on him--and comes after Jeff--we are as trapped in the darkened theater as Jeff is in the wheelchair. (This is just one reason why movies--at least great movies--are meant to be seen on big, theater screens. Only when the screen is big enough to obliterate everything else, and when the theater borders on pitch black, are you seeing the movie as the filmmaker meant it to be seen. At the moment of watching a film, that film and that film only should be your universe. No phones. No fools. No pets. No cigarettes—unless, of course, it’s the exquisite face of a Grace Kelly doing the smoking.)

     

    In the 1980 serio-comic BEING THERE, the Peter Sellers character--"Chance"--constantly speaks the line, "I like to watch." Having spent most of his adult life watching television—his only window on the world—he is referring, of course, to television; but his line is misconstrued by others in the movie, leading to some hilarious situations.

     

    In REAR WINDOW, Jimmy Stewart's "Jeff", a globe-trotting professional photographer, has made a career out of "watching", "looking" at life through the telephoto lens on his camera.

     

    So obsessed with the world he sees through the lens, poor Jeff seems to have, in today's terminology, "commitment issues." He would rather watch the world through his camera than hold the flesh-and-blood Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), who does everything in her power to pull his focus. 

     

    The great supporting actress Thelma Ritter, as home-health nurse Stella, provides her typical comic relief, but more importantly in REAR WINDOW, she also plays Jiminy Cricket to Stewart’s Pinocchio: she is his conscience, providing sage commentary on what REAR WINDOW is all about: "What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change."

     

    But Hitchcock knows that we find it endlessly more fascinating to watch others. How often have we heard—or said ourselves: "I like to just watch people. It's the greatest entertainment there is--and it's free!"

     

    In REAR WINDOW, all that watching leads Jeff to begin to connect the dots as to what he sees going on in the apartments beyond the courtyard.

     

    The movies allow us to do something basic to our nature; that is, to watch, to spectate; in essence, to spy.

     

    To stare at the screen.

     

    A screen that does not stare back.

     

    Feeling a little uncomfortable right about now?

     

    Well, they didn’t call the first motion pictures “peep shows” for nothing.

     

    -- Hoyt Harris

     

     

     

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  • 1 year ago
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• PECAN ISLAND HOLLY BEACH

  • From: nadineguidry
  • Description:

    ANYONE HAVE ANY PICS FROM HOLLY BEACH OR PECAN I LAND BRAND CHENIERE OR CREOLE AREA?

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  • 1 year ago
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• PSYCHO How to manipulate an au

  • From: agentriff
  • Description:

    PSYCHO Hitchcock USA 1960

     

     

     

     

     

    "My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audiences;...[it] made the audience scream. I feel it's tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with PSYCHO we most definitely achieved this. It wasn't a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film ." 

     

    That’s Alfred Hitchcock talking to Francois Truffaut about PSYCHO, in the latter’s book-length interview with the British-turned-American director. Hitchcock is famously dubbed “the Master of Suspense.” Fair enough. But it would be a more accurate label to add “and Manipulation.”

    Hitchcock had developed a style of manipulating audiences, but never to the degree he did in PSYCHO.

    "I was directing the viewers," the director told Truffaut. "You might say I was playing them, like an organ."

    It was, in 1960, the most shocking film its original audiences had ever seen. I know. I was in one of those audiences. My parents were Hitchcock fans, having seen “North by Northwest”, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo.”

    On a very cold Sunday afternoon, after church and Sunday dinner, they were going to see PSYCHO. Like millions of other Americans, they had no idea that it was probably not what you would or should take a 10-year-old to see. But I already loved movies, I wanted to go and they didn’t refuse my request.

    Fortunately--because it was so cold on that Tennessee Sunday--I was wearing a car-coat as millions of kids did in those days. Luckily for me, the hood had a drawstring. When PSYCHO’s violins began to shriek during the infamous shower scene, I pulled the hood almost shut, leaving myself just enough peephole to see the center of the screen. If things got worse, I could always pull the hood completely shut—or close my eyes altogether, which, by the way, I never did. (Fascinated by film even at that age, I knew I was in the presence of something remarkable. I just didn't know what. And even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to express it.)

    ( SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU

    DON’T WANT TO KNOW

    KEY

    PLOT

    DEVELOPMENTS,

    STOP…READING… NOW !)

    Good grief! I couldn’t believe what was happening to this poor woman. Yes, she had stolen $40,000 from the bank where she worked. But hadn’t she made up her mind to return the money the next day? But even if she hadn’t, nobody deserves to be sliced to death in a shower—or anywhere—like a cantaloupe!

    Hitchcock intentionally made PSYCHO look like a cheap exploitation film. He shot it not with his usual expensive crew (which had just finished the expensive “North by Northwest"). Instead he used the crew that filmed his weekly television show. Even by 1960 standards, his budget was cheap—a mere $800,000. The Bates Motel and aging Victorian-style Bates house on the hill behind it were built on Universal’s back lot. Also, to give it that quickie, exploitation look, he shot in black-and-white. This was not going to be—nor was it supposed to be—another elegant Hitchcock thriller a la “Rear Window” or “Vertigo.”

    Yet, to this day—almost half a century after it was made—no other Hitchcock film has had a greater impact, on moviegoers or on filmmakers, than PSYCHO.

    First, Hitchcock sets up the movie in such a way that we root for Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to successfully get away with theft. We want to see her wind up with the man she loves, Sam Loomis (John Gavin). We root for her when a policeman stops her on her way to her lover’s hometown. We pray that he won’t see the envelope full of stolen money by her side in the front seat.

    Hitchcock has thus made her sympathetic. When she pulls off the road in a heavy rainstorm to spend the night at the off-the-beaten-path Bates Motel, then begins her association with Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

    Norman brings her supper, which she eats in his motel office. Their late-night conversation makes them both sympathetic characters. We think their relationship will be developed during the remainder of the two-hour film.

    But no. Less than forty minutes into PSYCHO, Hitchcock throws a curve-ball at the audience, something you simply don’t see coming: he kills off his heroine. Hitchcock not only kills her off, he does so in what was—and remains today—the granddaddy of all slasher-movie sequences. Movie directors have tried to top it, but no amount of gore, of up-close-and-in-your-face graphic detail has ever come close. Hitchcock doesn’t use gore. (He filmed in black-and-white, thinking audiences would be too squeamish to withstand so much blood in color.) The era, of course, would not have allowed it. But this master filmmaker didn't need gore. He used artistry to make us "think" we were seeing more than he was actually showing us.

    We never see the knifepoint pierce the skin * —although people will swear they do. That’s the power of montage: with quick-cut editing—and Bernard Hermann’s shrieking violins—our mind “completes” what is merely suggested. Is Hitchcock making us see what perhaps we want to see? (Again, “manipulation.”)

    Once Marion Crane is dead, Hitchcock shifts our sympathy. Right before our eyes, he shifts our sympathies for her to sympathy for Norman, whom Hitchcock has already established as a kind, if a bit odd, young man. We’ve sensed from the beginning there is something not quite right about Norman . But during the motel office conversation, when he elicits the sympathy of Marion--with whom we have already identified--he elicits ours as well.

    Employing a sort of bait-and-switch sleight of hand, Hitchcock has now transferred our attention—and sympathy—from Marion to Norman . So--when Norman starts mopping up the blood from the murder, we feel sorry for him now having to protect his mother who, at this point, we think is the killer.

    With no one else to care about, we pull for Norman. We root for him to mop up all the blood (actually, chocolate syrup), to leave no trace of evidence. When he puts Marion’s corpse in the trunk of her car, we pray it will sink into the pond. For a moment, the sinking car stops, half of it still above water. Our hearts stop. We’re as nervous as Norman as he nervously chews on candy-corn (a nice piece of business Perkins himself suggested and which Hitchcock allowed the actor to incorporate into his performance). Finally—thankfully—the car sinks below the pond’s surface. Whew! Norman is safe.

    Once again, we’ve been manipulated.

    All this manipulation, of course, has a single purpose: Hitchcock wants to shock us again. And he does when it is ultimately revealed that Marion Crane’s killer wasn’t Norman’s mother, but Norman himself; that Norman is a matricidal maniac who not only killed his mother but has kept her corpse stuffed like one of the taxidermied birds mounted on his motel office walls.

    Hitchcock, indeed, played us “like an organ.” I remember adults literally screaming--"Oh, no!", "Oh, God"--during the brutal shower sequence. I never screamed. But I sure as heck stayed hunkered down in that car-coat every time those violins began to screech.

    In theaters across 1960 America, Hitchcock reduced us to our last nerves and wickedly sawed away on those nerves like a violin bow scraping--staccato--on a very taut string. ---Hoyt Harris

     

    * The popular "myth" about the PSYCHO shower scene is that the knife is never seen to penetrate the flesh. This is not true. A frame-by-frame examination of the shower scene shows that the knife point disappears against the actress' torso just below her navel for the last three frames of one eight-frame sequence. But In order to see the penetration, the movie must be run in slow-motion, but it actually happens, albeit only once and briefly. Because film runs at 24 frames-per-second, a mere three frames (one-eighth of a second) is brief, indeed. ----H.H.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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