I’ve been working on a new picture book manuscript, my first one in a while. It’s a poem that came out of experiences with my kids and with others’ and the troubles they face.
I put it away for a couple days, pulling it out again this morning. Now that I’ve decided it’s a picture book, I’m revising it with an eye to the requirements of the format.
O the horror! It’s unillustrateable!
(Yes, I just made that word up.)
What do I mean? Continue reading
As part of a course I’m taking through Carol Tice’s amazing website Make a Living Writing, I received the following homework assignment: put an avatar up on Gravatar to pop up whenever I comment on blogs, etc. Now, I could use a photo, but that would just be no fun, so I decided to create my own Gravatar.
Me, in black and white and nothing on my head to cover my hair. For shame!
I started off by googling “free avatar tools” and discovered a lot of nifty links to different programs to help you make your avatar. The best site I found was Digibody. The results of a picture created with their Avatar-Maker tools look much nicer and more professional than those created with other programs, I found.
However, that left me with a small problem. Or rather three:
Here’s what I did:
Thanks to Microsoft Paint, I added my headscarf, glasses, and a touch of color.
This is my DIY avatar. It’s recognizably me.
What do you think of the end product? I’d love some reviews in the comments.
I just saw the cover of this week’s Ami Magazine (November 29, 2012), and it just made me feel good all over (and I’m pretty sick today, so that’s an accomplishment). On it, Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser is on his skateboard and playing guitar. He looks so frum and like he’s having so much fun. He’s an amazing speaker, by the way, and I think he’s in the States right now promoting his Possible You seminar.
Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been hearing about images that break your heart or just make you angry. But this photo warms my heart.
Anybody out there care to share the details of a photo that warms their heart? Please do so in the comments.
Two recent articles are worth a peek for what the reveal both about contemporary politics and about the nature of photography itself.
The pieces–one in the Washington Post, the other on Breitbart.com–describe misleading pictures published during the recent Gaza conflict. Most notably, photos of dead and maimed children were used by pro-Palestinian journalists in order to accuse the Israelis of being brutal assassins of the young. Whether you feel Israel’s actions were justified or not, Palestinian children were hurt and killed during battle (and so were Israeli children). However, further investigation revealed that one of the photos–said to portray a Palestinian child gravely wounded by Israelis–was in fact a child attacked by Syrian forces in the conflict in that country. And another child, supposedly killed by Israelis, was most likely killed by a Palestinian rocket that misfired. These are only two among many “photo-ops” that were intentionally mislabeled for political purposes.
If I spill some ink from this bottle, what will you see?
Of course, as the Washington Post article points out, the misrepresentation isn’t always by the pro-Palestinian side (although usually Israeli press just doesn’t publish images of Palestinians who are hurt or injured). And I don’t really want to get into the political aspects of this case. What I would like to do is point out how this issue goes far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Continue reading
Rebecca Klempner 