Anything Smart: April 2018

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Review: Travel Photography: Travel Photo Essentials by Margaret Brown

This is a tiny but useful book for travelers who want to bring better pictures home from their journeys. It seems to be aimed at beginning photographers which is what I am so that is perfect for me.

There are many helpful tips in a small space here, tips that will help you improve the quality of your travel photos and, just as important, there are some great pictures included to provide inspiration for your own efforts.

One expression I never heard before is "zoom with your feet," in other words, get up close to your subject and try to fill the frame with it. There is lots of advice about making use of shadows and sunlight to get interesting effects.

Ms. Brown reminds us to look for the unconventional shots, the pictures other people are NOT taking. She advises us to look for different angles by getting up high or crouching down low or even lying flat out on the ground and not to worry if we "look a bit odd" taking photos.

That's good advice!

The Kindle edition of this book seems well worth $6.99 to me and it is so short we can give it a quick read before every trip to help us bring some memorable photos back with us.

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[This excellent little book will help you take better pictures on your next vacation!]

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Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Collusion!

Our free press is good at giving us pieces of the puzzle.

Books like "Collusion" by Luke Harding help us put the pieces together.

Christopher Steele worked for MI6 as a Russia expert for 22 years before he went into business for himself. (One of his private jobs led to uncovering the famous bribery scandals involving FIFA, the world soccer organization, and to the indictments of 14 people.) When he gathered the information that went into the famous Trump dossier he took it very seriously and brought it to an FBI contact he knew in June 2016.

Steele also shared the Dossier with Sir Andrew Wood, the UK ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000. Wood also took the information seriously and shared it with Republican Senator John McCain. McCain sent a former Bush administration assistant secretary of state named David Kramer to talk to Steele about the information he had gathered. Kramer took the dossier seriously and reported back to McCain.

By then McCain took the dossier seriously and delivered a copy to the head of the FBI who was named James Comey.

NONE of these people believe the dossier is 100% true. It is raw intelligence. The information was collected from several different informants. Parts of it will turn out to be true and parts of it will turn out to be false. But all of these people believed the dossier, and the issues it raised, needed to be investigated, and I agree.

Let's look forward to Mueller's final report so we can see what he has learned.

In the meantime this great book helps us to see what was going on behind the scenes in the 2016 election.

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[This excellent book pulls together the story of what happened between Russia and Trump campaign during the 2016 election. A book that should be read by every American.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

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