Don’t Take My Picture by Craig Alesse is a good photography 101 for the family shutterbug who likes to take snapshots at all the family events, but get a little better at getting those shots. Topics covered include composition, lighting, group shots and how to put all these tools together to see a good shot. The writing is simple, casual and direct with very little photo jargon. The focus is understanding situations and when to click the shutter button.
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Don’t Take My Picture – Craig Alesse
Don’t Take My Picture by Craig Alesse is a good photography 101 for the family shutterbug who likes to take snapshots at all the family events, but get a little better at getting those shots. Topics covered include composition, lighting, group shots and how to put all these tools together to see a good shot.…
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Emma Donoghue – Room
Room: A Novel, by Emma Donoghue, tells the story of a boy named Jack, who lived the first five years of his life in an isolated shed. The circumstances for his sheltered life stem from his mother being kidnapped and imprisoned and bearing the kidnapper’s child, Jack. Jack narrates the story in four acts: life…
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A physicist solves the City equation
Geoffrey West, a physicist, set out to study cities and urban growth and find variables for growth and decline. Consuming massive amounts of data, he discovered cities are governed by Laws, just like physics. After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few…
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An Intimate Portrait of the Carousel Horse
An intimate portrait of the carousel horse. Vol. 1 — Southern California is a vintage, specialized photography book from 1982. John R. Cook photographed carousel horses. The copy I looked through contained no forward or afterward to detail what the intimate portraits were attempting to achieve. Most of the photos appear to be snapshots and…
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Kevin Smith and how to work for yourself
Kevin Smith on working for yourself: Life is mutable; the rigidity of working for someone else doesn’t allow for much flexibility. So create your own ideal universe.
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Kevin Kelly – What Technology Wants
In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly views technology’s evolution from multiple perspectives–the anthropologist, the sociologist, the evolutionary biologist, the technologist and the futurist. Using these perspectives, he examines his core thesis: technology is an extension of our abilities. Broken into four sections, Origins, Imperatives, Choices and Directions he combines ideas from various disciplines with stories,…
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Seth Godin – Tribes
Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us serves up a compact guide to be a leader of ideas. How should a leader of a tribe, a movement, cause, purpose devoted to a singular mission act or think? That’s what Godin covers with a mixture of anecdotes, stories from people who have led and…
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A Darwinian theory of beauty
Denis Dutton gave a TED talk about beauty from the perspective of Darwin. In it, beauty is a representation of the best possible outcome, be it animals (rabbits), art, a soccer kick and on and on. We’re hardwired to recognize beauty, despite its subjectivity.
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Can technology end poverty?
Kentaro Toyama worked at Microsoft Research India for several years leading research initiatives but also ICT4D, or Information and Communication Technologies for Development. ICT4D seeks to address global poverty with technology. He learned a few things while there. Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a…