Just when I was getting sort of serious about my photography I sort of got sidetracked by ...politics...no, I'm not thinking of running for a political office or anything like that (got enough crazy people in office already...haha...), I started to become interested in what our country is going through today. I've never been too interested in politics...I do vote every election...but I'm beginning to care about what our elected officials are doing and if they're doing the right thing. In a way I wish I was still ignorant about such things...
After becoming very disenchanted with main stream media and the stuff they consider news (anything Kim Kardashian does is important news? Come on...give me a break...), I started looking around the net for sites that at least presented information that dealt with important topics (and no, I really care that whats her face named her kid North...sheesh...). Being someone who doesn't watch TV much I really didn't know where to start, but I was determined to find a web site with real news.
Do you know how hard it is to find a news web site that actually has real news? It's not easy, especially since I never was really interested in keeping up with current events. Of course I tried the obvious choices like CNN, MSNBC (or whatever they're calling themselves now), ABC News, CBS News, etc...and what I found at those sites didn't feel right. It was news, but something was wrong...it felt like they were putting a spin on things rather than being objective and impartial. It felt more like they were trying to present topics that were entertaining rather than informative.
So I tried to use Google to locate alternate news web sites and tried to search for things like "real news" (and I found a site called TheRealNews.com), "honest news", "truth"...things like that. At first I got some pretty wild sites that seemed to be tilted towards radical views rather than actual information, so I just kept looking. I decided to check out the BBC since I figured it would news from a place that valued information and found that it was different from their American counterparts, but it was not quite what I was looking for...which was actually hard to do since I really didn't know what I was looking for.
Actually, what really I wanted to know was how we (the U.S.) got to where we are now...it seems the U.S. is in a very strange place and I felt it was time to take the blinders off. I found a site called Truth-Out.org that presents a lot of topciss that are not covered by the mainstream media. Of course I really don't know if what they have on the site is really the "truth" or not, but most of the articles seem like they're covering real events. And most importantly, the site is not owned by one of the media giants, so that's a plus. And this site led me to BillMoyers.com, a site with a name I recognize which seems to be a good source of information.
And what did I find out after finding some decent informational web sites? I found out the U.S. is really messed up right now...I mean, it's really messed up. Corporate greed, corrupt politicians, profits over people, the disappearing of the middle class, income and wealth inequalities, politicians with agendas that don't serve the public interest or good, ALEC, the Koch Brothers, crazy Republicans, corporations that want to control everything...it almost seems like I'm living in a Third World country now. What the hell happened?
After spending a few weeks of being more politically informed, I'm starting to get kinda tired of it. I'll try to keep up with what's going on, but I don't want to spend all of my free time reading about politics and the messed up nation we live in. It's depressing. So I'm turning my attention back to photography and I'm determined to improve both my shooting and my post processing skills.
I've come to realize that I've been really limiting myself when it came to processing my images because I rarely did localized adjustments...I'm a global adjustment kind of guy. But I'm finally learning how to do Dodging and Burning the correct way...I never bothered to find out how to do it before and I was just winging it and didn't like the results...and that's because I was doing it wrong! I'm much happier with the results after finding out the correct way of doing it.
And I'm also putting more effort into learning how to use luminosity masks and exposure blending. I'm even starting to use my Wacom tablet now and learning how to use the brush tool more effectively...it really does make a difference if you bother to look for tutorials that actually teach you how to use the tool properly...duh...I'm even using the gradient tool now. I can finally say I understand how masking works now and I'm even using custom actions to help speed up my workflow.
Anyway...the point of this blog is that I got distracted but now I'm trying to refocus on photography again. Maybe next time I'll actually have some photos to share.
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