Presidential Memorandum: the Mexico City Policy

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Mexico City Policy – Voluntary Population Planning

What it does: "The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151b(f)(1)), prohibits nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive Federal funds from using those funds "to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." The August 1984 announcement by President Reagan of what has become known as the "Mexico City Policy" directed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to expand this limitation and withhold USAID funds from NGOs that use non-USAID funds to engage in a wide range of activities, including providing advice, counseling, or information regarding abortion, or lobbying a foreign government to legalize or make abortion available."

What Obama Said:"These excessively broad conditions on grants and assistance awards are unwarranted. Moreover, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning programs in foreign nations. Accordingly, I hereby revoke…"

So now my tax dollars are being used to pay for and promote the practice of abortion in foreign countries. *awesome*. 

Photo Analysis: Along the Tracks

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Along the Tracks by Chromasia.

You use this HDR technique a lot, and it adds a surreal quality to the images. In this case, I like the subtly. I prefer it in fact, to the the image you posted a few days ago, of the church interior.

I’ve always been fond of the desaturated color palate. It conveys a feelings of bleakness, and if you aren’t a bright person by nature, that studied lack of pretension (is use pretense lightly, i’m not sure its exactly the word i’m looking for) is soothing.

Compositionally i like the use of leading lines. Looking out into eternity adds to the restful nature of the photo. It also adds a bit of mystery. Where do the tracks lead? The subject itself taps into the cache of trains and brings to mind a bit of nostalgia, emphasized, I think, by the desaturated color palate.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of contrast in composition lately, and this photos use of it is interesting. In some ways, because of the use of HDR, there is less contrast over all in the dynamic range. HDR compresses the extreme ends, and this photo in particular has flat elements to its color.

on the other hand, you brought out contrast in color, in order to emphasize the texture of the tracks and railroad ties.

I noticed the HDR gradient effect, where in the texture of the tracks, it almost looks like a mask of clouds was added. That gives the photo as a whole a slightly dirty look, like it has been abused, which lends itself to the photo along side the overgrown nature of the scene.

Overall I see abandonment, nostalgia, and a touch of wanderlust all cast in a sense of heightened drama.

Very nice. :)

 

Notes and musings on photography taken during a recent workshop…

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Everything communicates something

Start with what you want to say, start with the story.
Know where you are going. (what’s your destination)

You are answering the question WHY. Why is the photo important. How am I going to use it. What am I trying to say.

Knowing how you’ll use it is important, partially because the end product may introduce constraints such as aspect ratio, resolution, etc…

When thinking about the why, ask yourself, what compositional elements do I need to tell that story.

Consider not just your own perspective, but consider the perspective of your intended audience. Consider the cultural context you will be communicating in.

Powerful images eliminate distractions.

Re: portraiture, know your subjects personality. Find ways to draw that personality out to say what you want to say.

Emphasize what is.

Art is about drawing attention to specific elements in life and the world around us. We use all sorts of techniques to warp what is seen to add emphasis to the parts we think are important. Boring photos emphasize nothing.

All images are relational, by which we mean, we relate the subject matter of the image. You, as the artist, define that relationship and manipulate it, in order to create in the audience an emotion.

Elements of composition

Dimension
– Texture
– DOF
– Foreground/Background
– Shadow (directionality of light)
– Rim lighting
– Size of subject

Perspective
– Shooting down,
– Shooting up, Shooting at subjects level,
– Profile,
– Mug shot, etc…

Balance (deliberate use or disuse)
– rule of thirds
– symmetry

Time/Timing
– Progression (DOF, repetition with slight changes)
– Freeze frames
– Repetition
– Blur

Leading Lines

Contrast
– light/dark (more contrast adds impact. The faster you go from light to dark in a gradient the more rich a photo will appear.) (see the concept of compression as it relates to dynamic range, similar to the way an audio engineer will use compression)
– anachronism (using two objects that don’t fit together – wrong time periods, opposing ideas [short/tall, thin/fat]- to emphasize the differences between the two.)

Know when to edit. Not all photos should be kept.
– Is the photo deceptive, unflattering?
– Quantity doesn’t mean quality.

Be familiar with moods/emotions. Be able to recognize them quickly, know how to work with each emotion.

Basic compositions for portraits:
– face
– head/shoulders
– waist up
– full profile

almost anything else is awkward.

 

Link

How your friends’ friends can affect your mood – life – 30 December 2008 – New Scientist

it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.

 

Misperception, Bush, politics and the press.

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With a post title like above, you probably expect a long article. But i’m not a voluminous writer. Over the past several years one of the things I’ve seen over and over again, both in the news, and in my personal life, is that our perception of the world is rarely complete. We just don’t see the whole picture, and that happens not just occasionally, but most of the time.

Too see a situation for what it really is, wholly, is rare. very rare.

I cite this article about impressions of Bush as an example.  

Take Note

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Lose-Lose on Abortion: Obama’s threat to Catholic hospitals and their very serious counterthreat.

If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that’s a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his desk. (Here he is at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in 2007, vowing, “The first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”) Though it’s often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn’t stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn’t be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute “material cooperation with an intrinsic evil.”

 

Link

Republicans for Family Values >> Theology Expert Says Obama ‘Grossly Distorts’ Scriptures to Support Homosexual Cause
” Presidential candidate Barack Obama has written in The Audacity of Hope-a book that perhaps should have been entitled The Audacity of Portraying Myself Messianically as the Herald of Audacious Hope-that he is not “willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans [about homosexual practice] to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.”[1] He repeated this line in a campaign appearance in Ohio this past March. He stated that if people find controversial his views on granting the full benefits of marriage to homosexual unions, minus only the name, “then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”[2] These remarks by Obama represent a gross distortion of the witness of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.” 

Link

Robert Gagnon — Obama’s Coming War on Historic Christianity over Homosexual Practice and Abortion
“If Obama is elected President this Tuesday he will make it a priority of his administration to pass legislation that will make war against Christians and persons of other religious convictions who believe that homosexual practice and abortion are immoral acts. Persecution will take many forms, as indicated by actions that have already taken place in parts of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe:” 

Some Things I’d Like to Say

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1) Perception is flawed. To believe otherwise is to open yourself up to deception.

2) We rarely have all the facts.

3) Until the law came, there was no sin.

4) Hope in anything except Christ is false hope.

5) I’ve become a very very jaded man.

6) I predicted Barack Obama would become the next President of the United States 2 years ago, before he declared he was running. Because people underestimate the power of words, and a silver tongue is more valuable than gold in politics.

7) I hope, very much, that Barack Obama’s decisions in the White House do not result in more freedom for women to murder their unborn children.

8) Its never good when the legislative and executive branch are controlled by the same party.

9) Its never good when the Senate and House have clear majorities on the same side.

10) Republicans and Democrats can’t be trusted.

11) We rarely have all the facts.

12) People lie, exaggerate, gloss over, and leave out information. Its not really done on purpose.

I thinks that’s everything. For now. 

I just don’t have the words…

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Public Discourse – Obama’s Abortion Extremism, by Robert George is a great article, articulating much better than I ever could, why voting for Obama for President is a patently unwise action to take if you wish to preserve the sanctity of human life. Below is a quote from the last paragraph, but please take the time to read the full article, which documents where Obama, by his actions, stands.

What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama’s America is one in which being human just isn’t enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama’s America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: "that question is above my pay grade." It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator’s pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy – and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.