New Year's Eve Sailing

Bull Creek, Austin, TX

Rain and more Rain in San Diego

Inspiration: "Scissors" Gallery

Scissors is one of many collections or online galleries of photos and images collected from various sources and updated on a regular basis. It's similar to the popular fffound.com, except its images are collected only by one person instead of a social network.  I love Scissors because the curator Adam Miller usually chooses images that appeal to my aesthetic, that feel honest and visually interesting.  Like fffound, Scissors does have a lot of imagery that I consider exploitative as well, but there are some gems amongst them.  Both are a good resource for treatments and mood boards.  Here's some of my recent favorites from Scissors (talk about a meta post).

News and Media Part 3: Good Night and Good Luck

As part of my series on the state and future of media and news reporting, I’d love to add a plug for George Clooney’s 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. If you haven’t seen it, you should. The film tells the story of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s battle against Senator McCarthy and his witch-hunt in the 1950’s. 

Besides being lit meticulously and filmed beautifully, its message is clear and compelling: do not let fear and cowardice shout down the truth. An interesting message for a film that looks a bit like a polished film noir, with low light shots and interesting angles.  Films noir, the stories of the human condition, our unfailing ability to sabotage our own happiness, inevitably ensuring we are evicted from the garden; seem at once so close and so far from  Clooney's story of the height of honorable journalism ethics. This story probably the only thing on this earth that can make me seem nostalgic for the 1950’s. 

It begs the question, what has happened that has caused the state of journalism to be so far from the right and honorable these days. The shattering of our societal consensus has certainly contributed to the fall in honor and respect held by the public for those who report the news, but they have also brought about their own downfall. In the 1950’s, disseminators of news sources were much more highly respected and people were much less skeptical. Now we take it for granted that there are many sides to the story and we only ever hear one. Not only that, but often there is no attempt at all to either tell the truth or even pretend to be unbiased. Commentary now passes for news. One wonders where this sense of duty to fight to show the public the truth has gone. Perhaps we no longer care to know it. Or are we all so jaded that we think there is nothing good and honorable in this world for which to take a stand anymore? But what is truth? We are exposed to so many different viewpoints now, that maybe we are of the mind that there is no absolute truth, and reality is not so immutable as it once seemed.

Previous Posts in News and Media:
News and Media Part 2: LA Times' "Ink Spots" Spot
News and Media Part 1: Review of Dennis McDougal's "Privileged Son"