Discovering Black American

In 1978, we founded our parent company Abacus as a publisher of books and software. So for 35 years I’ve been involved with everything that accompanies the task of books – acquisition, contracts, manuscripts, editing, rewriting, printing, marketing, reviews, etc. The books that we publish are technical books: computing, electronics, aviation. While this gives me some expertise evaluating and reviewing books of this genre, I admittedly lack experience evaluating and reviewing history books.

Consequently, the mini-review that I’m about to give here is not based on my in depth knowledge of the subject matter. Rather it’s based only on my personal interest in this topic. Professionally speaking I’m not qualified to comment on history – but can you cut me some slack when I describe the book’s attractive layout and appearance, riveting content, easy reading, and many fine photographs and illustrations?

Discovering Black America is an in depth look at the forced settlement, migration, education, struggle, emergence and contribution of the Americans of African descent. I was surprised to learn that as early as 1500’s many of the early explorers to America were accompanied by black sailors. I read how the slave trade was fueled by the demand of southern farmers to establish and maintain a plantation economy. I learned how our archrival, the British, schemed to free tens of thousands of slaves during the Revolutionary War.

And so the author’s narrative continues methodically through the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the two World Wars leading up to the contentious Civil Rights movement and onto the surprising election of our first Afro-American President.

Discovering Black America is divided into eight chapters arranged chronologically. Each chapter has several sub-sections. I found the reading to be short and sweet – quite descriptive but without any fluff. I didn’t have any trouble reading a few pages at one sitting and being able to easily pick up from where I left off later. The chapters are generously enhanced by attractive sidebars that provide additional interesting detail. The author somehow manages to apply a matter-of-fact voice to some very depressing and disappointing periods of American history.

Overall, the 240-page hardbound book is printed on high quality stock. The large book is handsome enough to adorn your coffee table, but you’ll be much better served by reading rather than just looking at it. Oh, did I mention the fine photographs and illustrations that abound its pages?

Full disclosure: since I’ve been a Facebook user, I’ve rekindled numerous friendships from the past. One of these is with Linda Tarrant-Reid, the author of Discovering Black America. Since we both graduated from New Rochelle High School (New York) in 1967, you can judge for yourself how far back this “past” extends. Anyway I’d like to commend Linda on the fine work that she’s shared through her book.

Why a review at Stay Focused? Maybe we can attribute it to editorial privilege. While “stay focused” is a term that is commonly used in photography, it is also a phrase that suggests that we don’t become distracted from things that really matter. I’d like to think that understanding the black sub-culture in our country is one of those things that really matter.

For those interested, I bought my copy of Discovering Black America online from Amazon for about $21. I found the book to be well worth its price.
 
 
Title: Discovering Black America
Author: Linda Tarrant-Reid
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 9 780810 970984

Reviewed by: Arnie Lee
 
 

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Photographically speaking, a panorama is a photograph that encompasses a very wide view. I like panoramas because they reproduce a scene as if I were viewing it live by turning my head from the far left to the far right. I can view the photograph in small ‘chunks’ as I scan the entire image from the left to the right.

In the past, making a panorama was a complicated, multiple step process involving capturing the images and then stitching them together whether it be done chemically in a darkroom or digitally with a computer. I won’t go into details of making panoramas using either of these two “conventional” ways. Instead, I’ll point out the ease with which a feature on certain cameras enables me to easily make panoramas in one step.

For the past two years I’ve been using several Sony Alpha series and NEX series cameras to shoot panoramas. These cameras enjoy a feature called Sweep Panorama. When this feature is chosen, you simultaneously depress the shutter and move the camera in a sweeping fashion to the right. As you do this, the camera captures multiple images of the scene. The camera signals the completion of the sweep by halting the shutter. A few seconds afterward, the panoramic capture appears on the camera’s LCD for your review. Press the PLAY button and the image is displayed from left to right – in video fashion – but is actually a single, still panoramic image.

Above, I explained that the sweeping motion is from left to right. But in fact these Sony cameras let you sweep left to right; right to left; up to down; and down to up. These cameras also capture three dimensional appearing images using 3D Sweep Panorama that can be displayed on certain compatible 3D television sets.

Here’s a few of the panoramas that I’ve taken with various Sony cameras. You can click on each of the images to see a wide view of the panorama.
 

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada
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a case for more activity

 

This year, summer has been an especially busy time for us. I’m just catching up with some of my tasks including writing these articles. I’ll do my best to keep sharing some of the things I’ve learned having spent so many years with a camera.

We all know that light is the agent that makes photography possible. Most often we spend our time making sure that the light is “perfect” – the right intensity and direction to bring out the essence of our subject.

When light diminished or missing, your camera records the darker areas as shadows.

Here’s a few examples of how I’ve played around with shadows.

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One of the reasons for a busy summer was two cross-country trips by car from Grand Rapids to Reno, Nevada and back – a journey of 4400 miles x 2 or a total of 8800 miles. That’s a lot of driving. On one of these drives, my five year old granddaughter and I took a side trip to visit nearby Yosemite and decided to hike a long 3 miles to gaze at the Giant Sequoia trees. The entire trail was tree covered and occasionally the sunlight would burst through the leaves. When I spotted our stark shadows ahead of us on the path, I simply snapped the shutter to capture an interesting shot of both of us hiking.

Skip forward to last weekend. We’ve just returned from the second drive out west. As I’m admiring the colorful stencils on one of the grandkids’ bedroom wall, I see a captivating reflection superimposed over the cartoon characters. The sun shining through the window is casting a reflection on the wall too. The shadow of the window has turned the stencil into a magical scene.

 

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We see that lighting (or the lack of lighting) can be used to create neat pictures too. Experimenting with the shadow side of lighting was easy and in my case fun too.

 

 

Written by Arnie Lee

 

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