Monday, September 30, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Photographer literally draws life into his photos
To call Ben Heine’s photography “cool” or even “eye-catching”
is a bit of an understatement. His images are mesmerizing.
Ben’s Pencil vs. Camera series perfectly blends illustrations
in surprising but clever juxtapositions.
The end result offers viewers a glimpse into
an imaginative and surreal world.
“In my work, I’m really trying to interact with the viewer,”
the Belgian artist tells The Weekly Flickr in the accompanying video.
“I want to make them laugh or smile, and if I can, surprise people
so that he or she doesn’t understand how it’s made.
I’m having so much fun and I want them to feel the same.”
“Pencil vs. Camera” mixes drawing and photography, i
magination and reality through illusion and surrealism.
Ben says the idea was the result of a long graphic exploration
“The initial idea happened randomly
while I was writing a letter in 2010,” Ben explains.
“When I held the letter up to put it inside an envelope,
I noticed the paper was transparent enough
suddenly saw two images working together:
the words on the paper and the action of the television.
“The very next day I made Pencil vs. Camera #1,” Ben says.
“It wasn’t very creative, but it was the beginning of this new concept.
Since then, it’s evolved into more and more complex drawings,
and it’s always changing into something bigger and better.”
The process behind the series is very simple.
Ben draws a picture by hand
His hand is almost always visible in the image
“The drawing has to be nice,
and the location where I’m taking the photo has to be interesting,” Ben says.
“When I edit my photo, like every photographer, I’m always adjusting.
Since these are raw images,
I’m adjusting the light, the colors, the contrast – everything.
In some cases, I adjust the composition
because I want the final image to be perfect!”
In “Pencil vs. Camera”, Ben generally focuses on
architecture, portraits and animals.
Among many others, the main themes he approaches
are love and friendship.
because they are a reflection of what I love the most in life,” Ben says.
“I’ve made many photos showing duos… either two people
or two animals in love or in a friendly situation with each other.
It’s a beautiful feeling.”
There is also a lot of illusion and surrealism depicted in Ben’s art.
Throughout his career he’s been influenced
by famous artists like Rene Magritte.
Ben says he likes to play with shapes, geometrics
and create illusions with tricky objects and perspectives.
“One of my favorite images shows a lion
jumping out of the image,” Ben says.
“I took this photo in Tunisia
and drew in a lion jumping and appearing.
The picture is unfinished, because I mainly wanted
to attract the attention of the viewer on the lion’s roar.
I liked the powerful effect of this image – y
For me, graphic art can sometimes be dull,
but this image is powerful.”
The reactions Ben’s received from his series has been extremely positive.
He credits the reception and encouragement to Flickr.
“I started posting my pictures in 2006, and since then,
the feedback from other members has helped me to improve my work,” Ben admits.
“I really strive to create a new form of art.
For me, it’s very important to be innovative and do something different.
I’m having fun only because I’m trying to surpass myself daily.
I want people to see I’ve given my utmost best in each of my images.”
You can discover more of Ben’s amazing work
Also check out his website for more info.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
"Gimme a G!"
Sun City Poms: Retirement Mecca's Golden Girl Cheerleaders
With age comes wisdom—and miniskirts, pom- poms, and some rad stunts. The Sun City Poms is a cheerleading squad made up of ladies of a certain age, so if you're under 55, don't even bother trying out.
The group was established in 1979 at the massive Sun City retirement community in Arizona and now performs 50 shows a year, including one at the Fiesta Bowl.
British photographer Todd Antony crossed paths with the vivacious ladies while working on a landscape project of the American West and quickly found himself smitten.
"They were effervescent and fun," Antony tells Yahoo Shine, "while also being very professional about getting their poses correct." The Poms do pyramids, high kicks, pinwheels (a move in which three teammates flip another), and other risky stunts.
Shooting one training session, Antony said he was nervous when one woman got stuck three-quarters of the way into her split. "It seemed no one in the group was particularly concerned by this and looked on for some time as she got into a position where she could actually stand up again," he recalls.
Antony will be releasing more pictures of the amazing Poms this fall. —Sarah B. Weir, Shine senior writer
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Get this!
When an engaged couple calls off the wedding, it is usually a time of sadness and anger. But one family in Atlanta found a way to turn a terrible situation into a beautiful one. Carol and Willie Fowler's daughter Tamara was set to get married at the Villa Christina catering hall, when the wedding was called off just 40 days before the event. Initially the Fowlers were upset to hear that the lavish gathering they had planned and paid for was not going to happen. Then they had a genius and generous idea: They invited 200 of the city's homeless to feast on the four-course meal that would have been part of Tamara's wedding reception.
The Fowler family called Elizabeth Omilami from the Hosea Feed the Hungry organization for her help in getting the group together. At first Omilami thought she was being pranked! Carol Fowler said that even daughter Tamara attended the event, adding, "She was also very delighted to see and know that others had an opportunity to enjoy something, rather than just allow it to go to waste." Children make up about 70 percent of Atlanta's homeless, so to make the dinner more fun for them, a clown was hired for their entertainment. The event was titled "The First Annual Fowler Family Celebration of Love," and the family says it plans on hosting another charity dinner next year. It's a great example of how you can turn any bad situation into a positive one.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Whew! We barely made it!
Fans of Walt Disney World were fuming last spring following reports
of people gaming a system that allowed disabled park guests to advance to the front of lines. Now it seems the entitled few have ruined it for everyone. Disney Parks has just announced a change in policy: People with disabilities will no longer be ushered to the front of lines.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
The ukelele gets respect
Ukelele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro. (CBS News)
(CBS News) Playing the ukelele is a lot of fun. And playing it very, very well is harder than many people might think. Here's Seth Doane:
This report was originally broadcast on October 14, 2012.
So much sound, from just four strings.
In the skilled hands of Jake Shimabukuro, the ukulele is transformed.
The 36-year-old virtuoso picked up the instrument when he was just four, and as a young man was relegated to performing at weddings and coffee shops . . . until a certain video first hit YouTube in 2005.
He still has no idea who posted his rendition of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."
"I was just like, 'Oh my gosh, this is crazy. You know, what this is?' And back then my name wasn't even on this video. It was just 'Asian ukulele player,' " he laughed.
Grabbing more than 10,000,000 hits to date, YouTube says it's one of its first "viral" videos.
From his home base in Hawaii, Shimabukuro -- who plays many different types of music, from classical to jazz to blues -- has become an ambassador of sorts for the instrument. And no question it needed a little help . . . remember Tiny Tim?
At the University of Hawaii, Doane met Jim Tranquada, a ukulele historian -- his great-great-grandfather made some of the first ukuleles in this last state to join the union.
Doane asked, "Historically speaking, why has the ukulele gotten so little respect?"
"It's small, so it's easy to pick on," Tranquada replied. Plus, "it's always been marketed as the instrument that 'anyone can play -- you don't have to have any knowledge of music.' "
And while many may think of the ukulele as distinctly Hawaiian, it's originally a Portuguese instrument, from the tiny island of Madeira, off the coast of Morocco.
They were brought to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants in 1879. At the time, the Hawaiian Gazette referred to them as "strange instruments . . . a cross between a guitar and a banjo."
But Hawaiians quickly adopted what was originally called a "machete" and began crafting the ukulele out a native wood, called koa.
That tradition is carried on at Kamaka, where a four-generation family business still makes the ukulele from that now-trademark koa wood.
Craftsmen at Kamaka Hawaii create ukeleles out of koa wood.
"If you're going to pick up a Kamaka, you're picking up one of the best," said Casey Kamaka. The grandson of founder Samuel Kamaka Sr., Casey does the custom detail work.
This factory once employed a number of deaf people, because folks here believed the secret to perfecting these instruments was in how the wood vibrated. It was a concept taught by Casey Kamaka's father.
"You couldn't hear anything anyway 'cause the machines were so loud," Casey Kamaka told Doane. "And so what they did was [teach] them how to feel the wood. So when he found one that was the right pitch or right sound, he gave it to them and said, 'This is what I want.' "
Today, their ukes are priced from around $800, to more than $5,000 for custom ones -- like those designed by Jake Shimabukuro.
In Hawaiian, the words "uku" and "lele' mean "flea" "jumping," and it's no mystery why the name stuck -- your fingers jump from string to string.
But not everyone's. Take, for instance, the slowest-ever rendition of "Tiny Bubbles" by Seth Doane. Roy Sakuma, Shimabukuro's one-time teacher, assured him that he could learn to play in just a few minutes.
Seth Doane gets some tips on performing with a ukelele.
Jake Shimabukuro says that when people see the ukulele, or see others playing it, "They immediately think, 'Oh, that looks like fun, I can do that. Let me try!' "
This instrument seems even more fun in a place like Hawaii . . . where the ukulele provides the perfect soundtrack to paradise.
For more info:
- jakeshimabukuro.com
- "The Ukelele: A History" by Jim Tranquada (University of Hawaii Press)
- Kamaka Hawaii, Honolulu
Hmmm...
Is America crazy?
Sep. 20, 2013 @ 02:01 PM
Is America crazy?
Twelve people killed at a secure naval installation virtually on the front porch of the federal government, eight others hurt, the shooter shot to death, and it's just another manic Monday, another day in the life of a nation under the gun. So yes, maybe it's time we acknowledged that gorilla in the back seat, time we asked the painfully obvious.
Is America crazy?
You know, don't you, that Muslims watched this unfold with a prayer on their lips: "Don't let him be a Muslim. Don't let him be a Muslim. Please don't let him be a Muslim." Because they know -- the last 12 years have forcefully taught them -- how the actions of a lone madman can be used to tar an entire cause, religion or people.
In the end, almost as if in refutation of our ready-made narratives and practiced outrage, the shooter turns out to be a black Buddhist from Texas. It is a uniquely American amalgam that defies our love of easy, simplistic categories.
As we are thus deprived of ready-made cultural blame, the story will likely fall now into a well-worn groove. Someone will disinter Wayne LaPierre of the NRA from whatever crypt they keep him in between tragedies and he will say what he always does about how this could have been avoided if only more people in this secure military facility had been armed. And we will have the argument we always have about a constitutional amendment written in an era when muskets were state of the art and citizen militias guarded the frontier. And politicians will say the things they always say and nothing will change.
Is America crazy?
Infoplease.com, the online version of the old Information Please almanac, maintains a list of school shootings and mass shootings internationally since 1996. Peruse it and one thing leaps out. Though such tragedies have touched places as far-flung as Carmen de Patagones, Argentina, and Erfurt, Germany, the list is absolutely dominated by American towns: Tucson, Memphis, Cold Spring, Red Lake, Tacoma, Jacksonville, Aurora, Oakland, Newtown. No other country even comes close.
In 1968, when Robert Kennedy became the victim of the fifth political assassination in five years, the historian Arthur Schlesinger famously asked a question: "What sort of people are we, we Americans? Today, we are the most frightening people on this planet."
Forty-five years later, we may or may not still be the most frightening. But we are surely among the most frightened.
Indeed, for all our historical courage, we are in many ways a terrified people. Scared of the face at the window, the rattle at the door, the Other who wants to take our stuff. Scared of the overthrow of one of the most stable governments on earth.
So we arm ourselves to the tune of a reported 300 million guns in a nation of 316 million souls -- no other country has more guns per capita. Americans, you see, don't just like and use guns. We worship guns, mythologize guns, fetishize guns. Cannot conceive of ourselves without guns.
Thus, the idea of restricting access to them threatens something fundamental. Apparently, we'd rather endure these tragedies that repeat themselves that repeat themselves that repeat themselves as if on some diabolical loop, than explore reasonable solutions.
Is that a quantifiable malady, a treatable disorder?
Is America crazy?
Last week, the Des Moines Register reported that the state ofIowa issues gun carry permits to blind people. And people began debating this on grounds of constitutionality and equal access as if the very idea were not absurd on its face.
Is America crazy?
Look at those people fleeing the Navy Yard, look at the Senate on lockdown, look at the blind man packing. Ask yourself:
Does that look like sanity to you?
Leonard Pitts’ email is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Is America crazy?
You know, don't you, that Muslims watched this unfold with a prayer on their lips: "Don't let him be a Muslim. Don't let him be a Muslim. Please don't let him be a Muslim." Because they know -- the last 12 years have forcefully taught them -- how the actions of a lone madman can be used to tar an entire cause, religion or people.
In the end, almost as if in refutation of our ready-made narratives and practiced outrage, the shooter turns out to be a black Buddhist from Texas. It is a uniquely American amalgam that defies our love of easy, simplistic categories.
As we are thus deprived of ready-made cultural blame, the story will likely fall now into a well-worn groove. Someone will disinter Wayne LaPierre of the NRA from whatever crypt they keep him in between tragedies and he will say what he always does about how this could have been avoided if only more people in this secure military facility had been armed. And we will have the argument we always have about a constitutional amendment written in an era when muskets were state of the art and citizen militias guarded the frontier. And politicians will say the things they always say and nothing will change.
Is America crazy?
Infoplease.com, the online version of the old Information Please almanac, maintains a list of school shootings and mass shootings internationally since 1996. Peruse it and one thing leaps out. Though such tragedies have touched places as far-flung as Carmen de Patagones, Argentina, and Erfurt, Germany, the list is absolutely dominated by American towns: Tucson, Memphis, Cold Spring, Red Lake, Tacoma, Jacksonville, Aurora, Oakland, Newtown. No other country even comes close.
In 1968, when Robert Kennedy became the victim of the fifth political assassination in five years, the historian Arthur Schlesinger famously asked a question: "What sort of people are we, we Americans? Today, we are the most frightening people on this planet."
Forty-five years later, we may or may not still be the most frightening. But we are surely among the most frightened.
Indeed, for all our historical courage, we are in many ways a terrified people. Scared of the face at the window, the rattle at the door, the Other who wants to take our stuff. Scared of the overthrow of one of the most stable governments on earth.
So we arm ourselves to the tune of a reported 300 million guns in a nation of 316 million souls -- no other country has more guns per capita. Americans, you see, don't just like and use guns. We worship guns, mythologize guns, fetishize guns. Cannot conceive of ourselves without guns.
Thus, the idea of restricting access to them threatens something fundamental. Apparently, we'd rather endure these tragedies that repeat themselves that repeat themselves that repeat themselves as if on some diabolical loop, than explore reasonable solutions.
Is that a quantifiable malady, a treatable disorder?
Is America crazy?
Last week, the Des Moines Register reported that the state ofIowa issues gun carry permits to blind people. And people began debating this on grounds of constitutionality and equal access as if the very idea were not absurd on its face.
Is America crazy?
Look at those people fleeing the Navy Yard, look at the Senate on lockdown, look at the blind man packing. Ask yourself:
Does that look like sanity to you?
Leonard Pitts’ email is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Nonadapt
When I took Sawyer home this afternoon, Zack greeted me with,
"Emmy! How long have you been wearing those glasses?
I remember them when I was a kid...in the 80's!"
He's right!
I remember buying these prescription sunglasses when he was
probably ten or eleven; I wore them on one of our family ski trips
to Ruidoso, 26 years ago!!
Here's the story:
I went for an eye exam a few weeks ago.
(It had been at least 6 years since I'd had one.)
The doctor/intern (I just know she was!) told me that
my prescription had changed considerably and that it was time
for progressive lenses
(BIFOCALS!)
I said sure, whatever...
until I picked them up last Thursday
and tried them out for all of 24 hours.
I could hardly see at any distance, and I felt like
a menace to society out on the roads as I squinted and blinked
and bobbed my head in every possible direction, just trying to see
something...anything clearly!!
Long story short:
I turned them in on Friday, after Laura chastened me
numerous times that my instructions had been to wear them
for two weeks and that if at that time they weren't working for me,
"we'd" try something else.
I was not a happy camper, and I think Laura finally realized
that when I continued repeatedly to assert that I was not a wimp,
I had done hard things before,
and that I was very much a perserverer!
(Is that even a word?)
Finally, she softened her tone and gently offered that
it wasn't my fault; I was one of the "Nonadapts"
who just can't do the progressives.
She agreed to order my distance glasses for me,
even gave me my prescription for some drugstore readers (2.5)
and told me my new glasses would be in by Monday.
SO, these 1980's glasses have been my friend in the meantime,
even if they do make me look owlish.
I've always thought I was quite adaptive...
even overly so in my earlier years, in less than healthy ways.
How nice to realize I've finally reached
the golden age of non-adapting!!
Woo-Hoo!
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