Archive for February, 2010

Cindy Landrum

Photography happening at the zoo

by Cindy Landrum

No Comments    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
25

20100220-20100220-_DSC1440

It only takes a trip to the zoo.

A trip to the Greenville Zoo or the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia costs a few dollars compared to a few thousands of dollars for a trip to Tanzania.

The animals at the zoo are often better photographic subjects because they are in better condition since they don’t have to fight for their food or find shelter.

At zoos, you are more likely to get the animal in the right pose or even see the animal at all.

Some tips:

Go early or stay late. The best light for photography is in the early morning or a couple hours before sunset. The animals are usually more active in the morning when it’s cooler. Save the indoor exhibits for photographing in the mid-day when the light is harsh.

Focus on the eyes. The eyes are the focal point and they must be in focus.

When shooting through the fence, get as close to the fence as possible. Use a telephoto lens and zoom in as far as you can. Shoot wide open, using the largest aperture (which actually is the smallest numbered f-stop) to get a shallow depth of field. Even if the fence is visible in your photo, it won’t be as noticeable.

When shooting through glass, change your angle of view until most or all of the glare disappears. If you have to use flash, it’s best to use it off-camera so you can hold it at an angle.

Be patient.

Bookmark and Share
Joan Herlong

Staying true … to what?

by Joan Herlong

5 Comments    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
11

Just when I thought our first lady had broken the mold by not “standing by her man” while he blathered on about his breach of trust, she writes a book and cashes in on her family’s pain.

In her media blitz ad nauseum this week, Jenny Sanford mechanically relates the pain she felt when her sons read their father’s steamy (more like smarmy) e-mails to the Other Woman in Argentina that were published on line.

That kind of pain is understandable.  No kids should ever read scarring-for-life tripe written by their dad. No parent should ever be thrust in the position of having to explain their spouse’s infidelity to the family.

But if that was so agonizing, what makes Jenny think that her sons will benefit from reading about their father’s personal and formerly private foibles, known to their sainted mother only by virtue of marriage?  I soooo don’t care about Mark Sanford’s worry about his growing bald spot, his sexual naiveté, his world class penny pinching, his second hand gifts, his insistence that expensive gifts (that he gave) be returned, or his desire (I cannot resist irony) as a newlywed to bunk with his brothers at the farm instead of with his bride.

If I don’t care, how could her four sons really care, or benefit, from this exposure?

Saint Jenny says she wrote the book “for her sons.” What therapist in their right mind would suggest telling your children the intimate details of your marriage and/or about their father, let alone in a book for all the world to read (and buy)?

She reveals that her then fiancé insisted that their marriage vows be amended to omit faithfulness. But that’s not news.  What’s news is that Phi Beta Jenny AGREED to the edit.  (I think I might retract my previous assumption about her being the brains behind his throne, but then again, everything is relative.)

Speaking of marriage vows, we need to add a fiduciary clause to the standard version.  Edit out that nonsense about obeying (as my Reason for Living and I did) and put in fiduciary guarantees.

Think about it.  If your lawyer learns confidential, personal things about you during the course of your lawyer/client relationship, he or she can NEVER reveal that information to any third party without your permission.  That’s also true of your accountant, and even your realtor.  Seriously.

Marriage is so sacrosanct, that it makes pundits parry, priests pontificate, and politicians pander.  But if it is so special, so blessed, why it is acceptable for a “wronged spouse” to make the private nuggets of a marriage public grist for their money mill?

If my Reason for Living were to kick me to the curb, he has already promised he won’t even the score by writing a tell-all book about how I routinely scorched dinner, left shoes everywhere, and routinely counseled our children to tell obnoxious peers to go to hell. (They never would listen to me, though.)

Even the “marriage privilege,” as it’s known in legal circles, is eroding.  No one can be compelled to testify against their spouse, but it is becoming more difficult, on a state by state basis, for someone to prevent their spouse from testifying against them in court if their spouse wants to.

At this point, even my comatose friends are more aware of the sad and sordid details of “the Sanford affair” than they ever wanted or needed to be. That’s one of the consequences of a public demolition of the marriage of two people who chose the sparkle of life in the public eye.

But the private details gleaned from the comparatively happy days of a marriage should remain just that: private.  If you share the intimate details of your marriage with others, you forfeit intimacy.

Jenny Sanford pleaded for reporters to respect her, and her sons’ privacy during the immediate aftermath of Governor Sanford’s stunning and stumbling public confession.   All well and good, bravo.

In a bizarre turn, she’s now tired of privacy.  Like her estranged and strange husband, she likes the limelight, seeks it.  She says writing Staying True was cathartic for her (but then again so is writing nasty emails, and then hitting delete instead of send – or so I’m told).

We are supposed to be inspired by her memoir, the final act in their tragedy where she “stays true” to her principles, to her sons, and to her faith.

I don’t buy it.  I have no intention of buying it (nor will I buy Elizabeth Edwards’ screed). When it comes to underwriting things that undermine the privacy of marriage, I pinch my pennies even more tightly than her hapless ex ever could.

Bookmark and Share
Cindy Landrum

Break out

by Cindy Landrum

2 Comments    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
9
6053_1182895418634_1415677306_534361_1676526_s

Guess what this is.

Nobody gets hurt.

That’s what happens when photographers break out of their comfort zones and experiment with something new, former professional jazz musician turned nature photographer Tony Sweet told a group of nature photographers meeting in Greensboro, N.C., last weekend.

While many nature photographers prefer a literal style of photography, Sweet incorporates the improvisational, spontaneous and abstract nature of jazz into his image.

Sweet, who has been named a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens, uses a slight movement of the camera to give a landscape image a painterly feel. He uses a Lensbaby to give a flower shot a soft, mostly out-of-focus look. And he uses computer software to turn a blasé, otherwise pretty unusable image into fine art.

And he makes it work.

I’m sure many of the photographers who attended the Carolina Nature Photographers Association annual meeting will be inspired to try something new or use a technique they’ve never tried before because of Sweet’s presentation. I know I will.

After all, in the digital age of photography, a press of a button on the back of the camera erases all evidence of experiments that don’t work.

And, as Sweet says, nobody gets hurt.

Bookmark and Share
Susan Simmons

South Carolina’s giving spirit

by Susan Simmons

No Comments    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
5

I remember, back when the infamous “you lie” soared above the president’s voice in the U.S. House chamber, thinking: “oh please, oh please, don’t let that guy be from South Carolina.”

The fact that such a fear would instantly leap to mind was almost as discouraging as learning that the dread, alas, was justified.

The same sinking feeling arrived with my morning coffee two weeks ago when the latest blunder from our lieutenant governor headlined every website I visited.

Once again, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart nailed us: “Oh, South Carolina, you just keep on giving, don’t you?”

We do. We are blessed with an embarrassing riches of leadership devoted, as Stewart said, to making sure South Carolina “gives more than its fair share” to the nation’s comedy writers.

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, however, is a special case, uniquely gifted at “getting his mouth in place quicker than his head,” as Francis Marion political science professor Neal Thigpen noted to The State newspaper.

Bauer speaks so fast and so enthusiastically “it’s almost like a Gatling gun,” Thigpen said. And like a Gatling gun, there’s not much left but smoke and flame when he finishes raking his targets.

So it was when Bauer decided to attack the dependency culture created by welfare. He equated giving free school meals to poor children with feeding stray animals – a  mistake, he told a crowd in Fountain Inn, because “it encourages them to breed.”

He now says that’s not what he meant – but listen to the audiotape on YouTube. Here’s the pertinent quote:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you have to do is curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

What is clear, after listening to several of his post-disaster spins, is how completely that last sentence applies to Bauer.

Even “taken in context” – the refuge of every backpedaling politician – what he said is awful.

No question, we need to “break the cycle of generational poverty and dependence,” as Bauer insists is what he meant. No question, poverty and low parental involvement are linked to low test scores.

But what Bauer said – and has not apologized for – is that we shouldn’t feed the poor because they will breed mindlessly like animals. And like animals, they need their betters to curtail and control them.

A politician who talks like this – who does not grasp how profoundly demeaning it is – is not capable of the kind of leadership necessary to inspire the people of this state to even attempt to solve the problems Bauer is so proud of himself for recognizing. In fact, he makes a genuine conversation about them impossible, because he’s framed the issues so offensively.

Thigpen, the Francis Marion professor, told The State none of this matters, that Bauer has a “fanatical following” who will “forgive him almost anything and stick to him like glue.”

I don’t understand how that’s possible. Surely the state that keeps on giving has finally given enough. Surely South Carolinians are ready to put an adult, not a Gatling gun, in the governor’s mansion.

Dum spiro, spero. While I breathe, I hope.

Bookmark and Share
Lyn Riddle

On giving teachers the help they deserve

by Lyn Riddle

No Comments    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
5

I received an e-mail from a teacher the other day. She portrayed a world we don’t normally see.

Teachers working 50 or more hours a week (paid for 40). Grading papers at home. Meeting with parents after school. Buying supplies not only for the classroom but also for children who can’t afford them. And that includes clothes, book bags and Band-Aids.

“Ask anyone with a teacher in the family and they know,” the teacher wrote. “It is just wrong to think we work 8-3.”

The teacher said make no mistake. She is grateful for her job, but anyone who thinks teachers are overpaid – like our legislators who think teachers should not be paid for days students are not in school – should go get a teaching degree and see for himself what it’s like.

“Those built-in 10 days we have in our contracts when students do not attend school are only the ones for which we get paid,” she said. “All the days during the summer, weekends, etc., are on our own time. We get no overtime, but we do what we do because it has to be done.”

She worked eight days this summer with no pay. She gets $250 a year for supplies and estimates it doesn’t cover a tenth of what she truly needs to teach properly.

But she has a bigger point: public education represents the future of our state, a state that invested hundreds of millions of dollars to get Boeing to built a plant near Charleston.

“Shame on you!” she wrote. “Investing in children and our public education system will provide a highly qualified workforce.”

She said she provides love and counseling and performs negotiations that would impress the United Nations, nurses wounds, seen and unseen, and teaches.

“I worry every day if my students are getting enough to eat when they aren’t at school, cry when they have to move again because their parents have to move for lack of employment, and sometimes am the only person there for them at awards day or parent/teacher night,” she wrote.

She also takes classes that she pays for. If professional development days are eliminated, it removes not only the opportunity, but also the incentive for teachers to learn and grow in their profession.

“Of course, what am I expecting? Do I think that politicians can afford to do without their staffs or something?”

But she’s not just complaining. She has suggestions:

Stop the sales tax holiday, which generally saves a family no more than $30.

Make awards programs such as Palmetto gold, silver, SAT award, teacher of the year every other year, not annual.

Give the $250 supply money to first and second year teachers and science teachers who often buy lab supplies themselves.

Make judiciary, legislative, corrections and other state employees pay for professional development themselves.

Cut or reduce the Education and Economic Development Act to eliminate expensive mandates.

Make all state employees take a furlough.

There were several more, but the picture she is trying to paint is clear: school districts are a shapeless entity without a face, easy targets for state-mandated cuts.

The faces we should see when we talk about reducing school funding are of those teachers in the classroom and the children who look up to them.

Here’s how she put it: “I am a teacher because I love children and I hope that what I do in the classroom inspires my students to do greater things in this world.”

Bookmark and Share
Lyn Riddle

On taking the positive route

by Lyn Riddle

1 Comment    |   Email to Friend    |   Print    |   RSS 2.0
Feb
5

Dexter’s on the side of the room, lying down.

Freddie’s beside him, sitting regally.

Across the room, Gracie clearly does not know what to make of those two. She a bichon frise. And she’s wearing a pink sweater.

Dexter would have trouble sitting comfortably in the back seat of a car, he’s so big. He’s a 130-pound Great Dane on his way to probably 185 pounds. After all he’s seven months old. His paws are the size of a mayonnaise jar lid.

Freddie is a standard poodle and has the face of an expectant child.

They are at Speedy Paws for obedience training with Sue Conklin, who just won a national award for an essay she wrote about training with kindness.

“She’s better than the dog whisperer,” said Angela Blaugher, Freddie’s owner. “It is happy training, and Fred responds well to that.”

Blaugher says her friend brought an old dog believed to be untrainable to Conklin and six months later it was easy to live with.

With a little liver biscotti or Z-filets chicken, Conklin has these dogs eating out of her hand, literally and figuratively.

She learned it all from horses. She and her husband managed a thoroughbred horse farm in Pennsylvania for nine years. They trained in the way of the horse whisperer, gentle, consistent and positive.

When they left that job she went to a local PetSmart, prepared to be a groomer. Shortly she was the trainer. She’s been in business for herself – the Puppy Nanny – for six years in South Carolina. She’s trained 2,000 dogs – or rather their owners.

But she always had a story she wanted to tell. The story of Pam and Ginger, the subject of the essay judged among the top entries to the Association of Pet Dog Trainers contest. Ginger, a greyhound, lived with Pam, who raised and showed the breed for 20 years. She was no stranger to dog training, obviously.

But Ginger. She was a work all her own. She was afraid of a leash. Not a great trait for a show dog.

“She would run into her crate and hide with her butt facing the door,” Conklin wrote.

Pam was using old-school techniques, choke chains and pops that just backfired with Ginger.

Conklin went to Pam’s home and decided the way to get Ginger to accept the leash was with a clicker and some cheese. Conklin clicked, Ginger responded and earned some cheese.

Conklin put the coiled leash on the table. Clicked. Ginger looked at the leash. Got cheese. Then they spread the leash out, held it, held it close to Ginger, touched her with it. Ginger got some cheese. Finally Ginger put her head in the leash loop. Herself.

“Clicker training had saved her relationship with Ginger,” Conklin wrote.

Ginger was going to be a show dog. She was to be entered in the Greyhound Nationals.

Then one day not long before the contest someone left the door open at Pam’s house.

Ginger ran out, into the street and was hit by a car.

“Pam and I were devastated,” Conklin wrote.

But the good that came was a friendship for Pam and Sue as well as Pam’s conversion to another way of training.

In the years since Pam has trained three puppies that won Best Puppy at the Greyhound Nationals. She’s trained AKC champions, too.

“When she gets advice from handlers who think that she should crack down on her dogs more, she tells them that she has tried that and it didn’t work,” Conklin wrote.

And then she tells them about Ginger.

Bookmark and Share