I am very interested in reading about ghostly stories and spirits etc. A couple of years ago I heard about a story which is apparently true, about a murder which was solved from the grave.
This happened in the UK.
A woman in her twenties always believed she had special powers of being able to have contact with the spiritual world, however she did not want these powers and she certianly had never told anybody else about it. For the purpose of this article, I will call the lady Sue.
One evening about five miles away from where Sue lived, another young lady who I will call Lisa, was brutally murdered by somebody she had never met before.
Sue and Lisa had never met.
As you may be aware, the police find it harder to solve murder cases where the victim is unknown to their killer. These types of murder are also quite rare.
Later that evening Sue was awaken by a noise in her bedroom. As she sat up there was a woman on her bed sobbing, it was Lisa. Sue who was strangely quite calm asked her, who she was, why she was crying and why she was in her bedroom.
"I have just been murdered, I know you can help me"
Sue who was obviously shocked, asked how she could help her.
"I want to tell you what has happened to me and I want to describe the killer to you. I then want you to go to the police station tommorrow to tell them what I have told you. This will help them to find the killer, then I will be able to rest in peace."
Sue reluctantly agreed and Lisa disappeared.
Sue did go to the police and described the killer, telling them many things about him, including that he had a tattoo on his arm with the words "crazy fox" on.
The police did not take her as a serious witness, even though they found it strange that she seemed to know so much about the killing itself.
The murder itself went unsolved for twenty years, until a man was arrested for drunk driving. The police took his DNA and it was matched to the murder of Lisa.
Have a guess what he had tattoed on his arm, "crazy fox".
About The Author:
Stephen Hill has a number of websites including:
http://www.stammering-stuttering.co.uk
http://www.lasik-laser-surgery.co.uk
http://www.arthritis-specialist.com
Flower Pictures - A Mild Obsession #3
Yellow daisy, oh yellow daisy - please tell me about fills and flags! How does one use them effectively?
Good question sighs my daisy. An answer or two...
One can shoot anything straight without flash in good daylight and get okay results. I've read a load of articles in the last few months saying that bright sunshine is bad, bad, really bad, for color saturation when shooting flowers or anything for that matter - true often, but not always so.
One needs to consider all sorts of things - purpose, time of day, result required, etc! Dawn and dusk produce warm, shadowy light and if one wants to take a landscape photograph of note, this would be the ideal time to do it...using a tripod of course! Shutter speeds slow down in order to get the depth of field required, f16 or even f22, so one is often shooting at ¼ or ½ a second. I've met a few people who can handhold shutter speeds that slow but most of us...never in a million years! In the landscape world tripods rule okay!
I know, I know, ironic considering that I spent a bit of Mild Obsession #2 justifying my desire to shoot unfettered by a three legged monster. I did say in my defence, though, be consistent. Part of that consistency is recognition of the tools needed in each particular situation. Life is a balancing act, no more so than in the world of photography.
Another natural lighting situation to consider is sunlight mid-morning to mid-afternoon (harsh front light, but often awesome backlight), tricky at the best of times but even this light can be used well and effectively if one knows how to control it.
A really good way to learn lighting in controlled circumstances is to use angle poise lamps and a small subject on a plain background. For my subject I chose a yellow daisy...not the same one plucked from a faraway field, no, a yellow painted tin daisy, beautiful nonetheless, which I stood up on a piece of white A3 card!
What about color balance you cry? At the risk of being boringly repetitive...digital technology...white balance (WB)... All hail the little tiny green men inside one's camera, running around changing the color gels so that we can shoot color corrected images no matter what the light source. Incredible stuff!
Try this...
Grab a plain backdrop, a cotton sheet, piece of white card or anything that detracts as little from the subject as possible. Take your subject, place it on your backdrop not too close to the background, set up an angle poise lamp to the left side of the subject and point the light directly at the subject (preferably slightly above). You should be producing huge, harsh shadows. Interrogation time!
Now grab a piece of white card and line it up side on to your subject on the other side from the lamp and move it around until the shadows on the subject are softened to some degree .i.e. fill...The more one can soften the light on subject the better, so next step is to soften the source.
Turn the angle poise around pointing away from the subject angled 45 degrees up, then place a piece of white card in front of it reflecting the light back toward the subject - hey presto softer light -much softer. Soften things even more by playing with more fills on the other side of the subject too. A good soft result, not so dramatic perhaps, but eminently flattering.
I hasten to add at this point that I have done fashion shoots in the past using just harsh direct light, emulating movie-lighting of the 30's, and achieved gorgeous results. It all comes down to control i.e. positive decision making rather than negative.
Play with this studio lighting setup in miniature until you get a feel for it. There are so many possibilities...
Try this too...
Shine two lamps at the center of your background, one each side, angled at 45 degrees to the plane of the background. Make sure that your subject is flagged to stop any light falling directly onto it. How? Place black card (flags) on each side of the subject (slightly back of the subject) showing the background clearly but not allowing light from the lamps to spill onto the sides of the subject. Now place two pieces of white card in front of the subject facing the background. Leave a small gap to shoot through.
Result?
A subject only lit by backlight and reflected light from the card in front. It's a really good way to produce a backlit daylight feel. I use it all the time with studio shots of people. It can be fantastically flattering, if done well.
Play! Play lots. Light control is very satisfying when you get the hang of it.
To learn how to translate this lighting control to daylight conditions and to find out more about flags, scrims and other goodies, keep a lookout for Flower Pictures - A Mild Obsession #4.
Remember always - good lighting is good lighting period. Sounds obvious, I know, but real easy to forget.
See the beauty!
Copyright 2005 Patrick Heathcock
About the Author: Sometime commercial photographer London, fulltime flower art photographer and web designer living in the southern semisphere, soaking up the sun. Visit A Flower Gallery to view the yellow daisy and more!
Breathe Better, Learn Better!
Guess what action you've performed more often than any other in your life? Is it eating? Sleeping? Crying? Laughing?
No! Give up? It's breathing! You've been breathing pretty much non-stop since you were born, with few exceptions.
So with all those years of practice you probably think you've figured out how to do it properly by now. Would it surprise you to learn that your breathing technique was probably better when you were an infant than it is today?
Watch the way a baby breathes when it's lying on its back. The baby's little abdomen moves up and down with each breath, going up when the baby breathes in, and down when the baby breathes out.
This action is caused by the diaphragm, a powerful muscle located below the chest cavity. It is the movement of the diaphragm that pumps air in and out of the lungs.
Take a few moments to observe the way you are breathing, right now, without changing the way you are doing it.
Notice which parts of your body move as you breathe. Which parts of your body are not moving? Is the top part of your chest filling up with air while your lower chest and abdomen remains motionless?
Where do you feel tense? Are your shoulders slumped over or caved in? Do your shoulders move up and down as you breathe in and out?
If your shoulders move up and down as you breathe, you are introducing a lot of unnecessary and ineffective tension into your body. You are also wasting a lot of muscular effort performing an inefficient movement. Your shoulders are not designed to pump air in and out of your lungs.
Remember that it is your diaphragm that powers your breathing. If you don't know where your diaphragm is, it is located approximately below the bottom of your ribcage, beneath your lungs and above your stomach and intestines.
If your breathing fills up and expands the top third of your lungs while the lower two-thirds do not move, you are not taking oxygen into your body very effectively.
This is a bad habit that many adults have developed. You can eventually end up over-expanding the air-sacs in the top third of your lungs, while those in the bottom part of your lungs never fill up properly.
Although we have wonderful breathing techniques as babies, we often develop bad habits and accumulate physical and emotional tensions as we grow older. These can eventually impede our breathing and our overall body and brain effectiveness.
Short changing your body on oxygen will hurt your brain more than any other organ. Remember that this three-pound organ can require as much as 20 to 25% of your body's oxygen supply!
If you are a student who is studying, your brain cells need to have an adequate supply of oxygen. When you don't breathe properly, your brain cells can't function at their best, and you won't be as good a learner as you could be.
To increase your ability to think clearly and concentrate, make certain you are avoiding some of the worst breathing disrupters. If your shoulders are hunched forward you diminish your breathing capacity. If only the top part of your chest is filling up, you are not making use of all the cells in the lower part of your lungs that are desperate to take in some air for you.
Put your hands on the lower part of your ribcage, one on each side. As you breathe in and out, can you feel whether your lungs are filling and pushing outward near the bottom? Or is all the movement at the top of your chest?
Lie down and practice breathing the way a baby does. Allow your body and mind to become very relaxed and let your abdomen move up and down freely. You may have to give yourself mental instructions to relax your shoulders, chest and abdomen as you breathe.
Spend some time becoming familiar with this sense of bodily relaxation. Try to remember the sensation of breathing smoothly and freely.
When you breathe in and out, do you make a smooth transition from your in-breath to your out-breath? Do you notice that you sometimes stop your breath? Learn to avoid this habit. Holding your breath, unless it is a part of a deliberate breathing technique can result in difficulty paying attention while you learn.
For most learning purposes what works best is a very smooth, relaxed, and flowing in-and-out breath with no pauses. If you want to slow down your brain waves while you take in new information, you can count slowly and smoothly while you breathe in and out rhythmically.
For example, breathe in smoothly while you count to four, and breathe out smoothly to the count of four. You may relax even more effectively by breathing in to the count of four, and breathing out to a count of six or eight.
Do this easily without straining, for a few minutes before you start to study. Don't pause between your in-breath and your out- breath; make the transition smooth and flowing.
Each time you are faced with a learning situation, take the time to check your breathing. Be sure you are relaxed and your breath is flowing smoothly.
When you breathe more smoothly, with less tension, your brain cells will be better able to get the oxygen they need for you to be a better student!
This article is written by Royane Real, author of the new book "How You Can Be Smarter – Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better, and Be More Creative" To learn more about how to look after your brain better, download it today at http://www.royanereal.com
