Where do we go wrong?

Where do we go wrong? In my twenty years as a preschool teacher, I always experience Humans at their best. 3.5 – 5 year old children eager to participate, to learn, to play or even the shy ones that had a hard time asking for help. Children are straight forward honest;  Child, “Uh Teacher you cut your hair?” Me, “yes do you like it?” Child; “No I liked it better before”. Children are sweet, trusting and for the most part affraid of doing the wrong thing. On my drive home from work I always meet the person that honks at you and cuts you off, the one that gives you the finger, the one that try’s to cut in line, etc. I always asked my self, “when do we go from sweet to sour?” Then after listening to stats and what goes on in college campuses, I thought maybe that is my answer. College is the first place where the children are left in-to an environment where they are completely on their own to manage their lives. Organizational skills, Nutrition, Finances, plus the immense social and academic pressure to do well and excel. College, the place where young adults learn to drink, smoke, do drugs, party,have sex, https://www.addictioncenter.com/college/,  cheat on exams, cheat on their friends. College is where young girl learn to be abused by there peers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/1-in-5-college-study-raped_n_7293068.html, and what about  belonging to a sorority and the things this young adults have to do to belong to one, isn’t that elites or  exclusion? . On top of that, the pressure to do well and compete in life.That would be enough to turn the best of humans in to a complete mess. What do you think?

Camera Settings.

In this Digital era, cameras have made it easier to take pretty good photos. At the same time there are so many different settings that is hard to know  which is the best. Cameres have four main modes for taking photos. Auto, Aperture priority, Shutter speed priority and Manual. Using Auto will let the camera do all the exposure decisions, using Aperture Priority will let you decide what aperture you use and the camera will deicde on the shutter speed. Using Shutter speed will let you set the your shutter speed letting the camera decide on the aperture. All these settings will give you some creative control, but using the camera in Manual mode will give you more creative freedom by letting you set the camera’s ISO, aperture and shutter speed. It is very important to konw how each of these ( ISO, Aperture, Shutter-speed) interact with each other to have full creative control.  

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If you want to read more useful tips and Photograpy articles go to: photofocus

 

Iso Matters.

I have so many times heared Photographers say, “with this new cameras you can take photos at ISO 12000  and the resolution on the photo is still great” Technology has made it easier to take photos in low light yes, also because today most peolpe look at their photos in a computer screen (facebook,Instagram,etc), it is sometimes hard to detect the noise on the photos. The true of the matter is that the bigger your ISO settings the more noise is added to the photo and when you want to print a nice photo shot at a large ISO, the photo is going to be grainy, or noisy. I am often force to shoot at 4000 ISO because shooting in a theatre there is usually not to much light. I have a program call Dxo opticspro 9 that fixes some of the noise, but it is still noisy. So in the end my favorite ISO setting is 100 when possible, if not I’ll always go for the lowest possible.  

Thanks for reading.

 

  

Say Sorry!

During my twenty years in child development (preschool Teacher), I heard parents and teachers often say to their children “say sorry” every time they did something wrong such as pushing and hitting another child. At first I thought, well that is what you are supposed to do as a teacher, until I encountered a child that would say “sorry” as he hit other children. Sorry was just a word without meaning for this particular child. I realized saying sorry was not the answer, I am not saying that children shouldn’t be taught to say sorry, but children of preschool age  do not feel sorry when they act on impulse, it often means nothing for them. Children need to be taught compassion and remorse  by looking at the consequences of their actions. What I did every time I saw a child hurt another child I said, “Look you made your friend cry,  what can you do to help him feel better”.  Let the child be part of the solution instead of just “Say sorry”.

just my Opinion

If you where around during the 50’s and 60’s you would know that spanking children was a standard and accepted form of discipline. For some reason people tend to do things just because that’s the way it was done before, instead of looking for a better way. Still now in 2014 I hear people say
“All he needs is a good spank”. As a child I remember feeling humiliated every time my mother would spank me, and I think there is always a better way.
My wife and I made a promise never to spank our children, so when our first child was born we attended mommy and me classes. We wanted to educate our selves and do better than our parents. When our son turned three years old I went back to school to study child development. I feel that nobody is perfect and you can always try to better your self in every way. Hitting, spanking, and aggression is never the solution, children need to learn to follow directions because it is the right thing to do and not because they are afraid of been spanked. Spanking may stop the problem at the moment, but it does not teach anything but fear. Fearing the people that should be closest to you can stifle the child’s personality and confidence. One of my favorite lines is,
“hitting is never ok, is never funny”.