The UPS truck delivered something today that brought tears to my eyes: my own hardcover copy of the book Sexting including an chapter by lil’ ol’ me. Gale Cengage Learning approached me a year ago about including a blog post of mine, Sexting highlights society’s issues with privacy and shame, in one of their their textbooks. I agreed to publication with a writer’s fee and copy of the book. They complied with a check and a copy of the book as promised. My article appears as chapter two titled “The Threat of Sexting Has Been Exaggerated” on page 15 of the hardcover edition. The book is part of the At Issue: Social Issues series.

Here is the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sexting / Stefan Kiesbye, book editor.
p. cm. — (At issue)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7377-5161-1 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-7377-5162-8 (pbk.)
1. Internet and teenagers. 2. Internet–Safety measures. 3. Teenagers–Sexual relations. 4. Electronic mail systems. I. Kiesbye, Stephan. II. Title. III. Series.
HQ799.2.I5.S49 2011
004.67’80835–dc22

I am excited to be a part of this compilation and I look forward to reading the other chapters!

If you have an image editing / photo organizing application, you may input these scene codes in the IPTC Scene field under the Image section of the IPTC Core metadata. These codes (or keywords, if you will) help describe what a photo is “of.” You may also wish to add them as keywords or “tags” since sites like Flickr make it possible for people to search for photos by “tag.”

I’m sharing these IPTC NewsCodes™ under the IPTC licensing agreement. I hope these metadata help your photos and mine to be found and purchased in a prosperous new year!

IPTC Scene Codes

Copyright 2010, IPTC, www.iptc.org, All Rights Reserved.

headshot

A head only view of a person (or animal/s) or persons as in a montage

half-length

A torso and head view of a person or persons

full-length

A view from head to toe of a person or persons

profile

A view of a person from the side

rear view

A view of a person or persons from the rear

single

A view of only one person, object or animal

couple

A view of two people who are in a personal relationship, for example engaged, married or in a romantic partnership

two

A view of two people

group

A view of more than two people

general view

An overall view of the subject and its surrounds

panoramic view

A panoramic or wide angle view of a subject and its surrounds

aerial view

A view taken from above

under-water

A photo taken under water

night scene

A photo taken during darkness

satellite

A photo taken from a satellite in orbit

exterior view

A photo that shows the exterior of a building or other object

interior view

A scene or view of the interior of a building or other object

close-up

A view of, or part of a person/object taken at close range in order to emphasize detail or accentuate mood. Macro photography.

action

Subject in motion such as children jumping, horse running

performing

Subject or subjects on a stage performing to an audience

posing

Subject or subjects posing such as a “victory” pose or other stance that symbolizes leadership

symbolic

A posed picture symbolizing an event – two rings for marriage

off-beat

An attractive, perhaps fun picture of everyday events – dog with sunglasses, people cooling off in the fountain

movie scene

Photos taken during the shooting of a movie or TV production

This is a brief video I uploaded to see if a movie rotated in QuickTime 7 Pro can appear on YouTube in vertical format. I took this video with my Nexus One upright (vertically) at the Sea Life Aquarium in Tempe at the Arizona Mills shopping mall. Looks like it worked!

How to do this? Quoted from QuickTime 7 Pro help:

To resize or rotate a QuickTime movie:
In QuickTime Player 7, choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
In the Properties window, select a video track and click Visual Settings.
To resize the movie, type new numbers in the Current Size fields.
To keep the same height-to-width proportions, select Preserve Aspect Ratio.

To rotate the movie, click one of the rotate buttons.

2x digital zoom

1.5x digital zoom

1x digital zoom

I just remembered that I forgot to share the good news with everyone that The Smithsonian featured a photo of mine last March. It appeared in a Click! Photography Changes Everything post in the webzine The Bigger Picture – Visual Archives and The Smithsonian.

I am honored even though I realize that The Smithsonian has featured photos by thousands of photographers over the years. Still, how many people can say that The Smithsonian featured a work of theirs. It’s exciting to be a part of a great American institution.

I continue to take photographs and share them on Flickr. Some of my recent adventures include hiking Camelback Mountain for the first time, a weekend getaway to Jerome, going to the Arizona State Fair for the first time in the five years that I’ve lived here, going “full frame” by trading in my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and EF-S lenses for a used Canon 5D, and meeting a longtime Flickr friend from Brooklyn who visited me and my husband with his husband. It was great to bring the online life and real life together, and we all really hit it off. There are several other photo sets I’ve posted in months since my last blog post as well. The best way to keep up with what I’m up to in a visual way is to follow my Flickr photostream.

I’ve also really gotten into Facebook this year. I don’t add people I don’t know as Friends, and I don’t have a Fan Page, but I do enjoy keeping up with my friends through status updates, photos, videos, links, etc. I am sort of the designated photographer at gatherings of friends and coworkers, so it’s always fun to upload an album from a shared event and tag everyone in it who’s on Facebook– which is most of them. For a while there, I was spending a couple/three hours a day on Facebook, but I’ve cut back because I have so many other priorities. I felt I was neglecting my photography and Flickr social circle for a while there, so I’ve returned to spending a bit more time on that. One thing I love that Flickr added in the last couple of months is People in Photos, which allows you to tag your Flickr friends in photos the way you can tag your friends in photos on Facebook. Those friends have to be Flickr members in order to be tagged, so it’s most useful for photos from FlickrMeets; that is, when a group of photo geeks get together to go on a shooting spree. Not necessarily good for your neighbor’s family’s Thanksgiving party unless they’re all Flickrites themselves. Thanks to this new feature and my general hamminess, I can now point you to photos of me on Flickr. As of this writing, there are over 900, though I’m not sure they are all public!

Like many people, I also got my Twitter account this year. At first, I was frustrated with it and with the way some people twittered “too much.” After a while, I just learned to accept it for what it is. I must admit I only occasionally log in to check up on the people I follow, and I don’t follow a lot of people to begin with. I don’t really care how many followers I have or how many updates I’ve posted. I’m in no hurry to send my thousandth tweet or garner my thousandth follower, though I wouldn’t put it past myself to announce the milestones when they hit.

In addition to sharing my life publicly on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, I created my profile on LinkedIn this year to network with other professionals and share my professional achievements. My greatest professional achievements this year have been coordinating the Purple Communications booth and interpreting pool at the 2009 Arizona RID State Conference, being promoted to Video Interpreter / Trainer at Purple Communications’ Arizona Communication Center, and representing Purple as an interpreter at the National Black Deaf Advocates conference. Outside of my work with Purple, 2009 was the first year I developed and taught ASL interpreting workshops. I know I’ve already shared some of this in this blog, and I’ve even castigated myself for perhaps going overboard in tooting my own horn, but at the end of the year, I must say that I have a feeling of pride. I have been through some dark times in my life, and when you’ve been through that and come out on the other side of it, you cherish every win.

Tonight is the beginning of Chanukah, the eight-day Festival of Lights. I look forward to lighting candles, exchanging gifts, frying donuts and potato pancakes, and going to a party or two. I do think that, in some ways, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. I love both Chanukah and Christmas for the festivities, the colors, the lights, the social events, the cold, dark nights, and yes, the gifts.

What do I look forward to doing next year? I hope that next year brings many more opportunities for me to train video interpreters at Purple Communications and in my own interpreting workshops. 2010 is a year for RID regional conferences, and I plan to submit presenter proposals in the hope of teaching my workshops at at least a couple of them. There is also the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in 2010, which I hope to attend and possibly present at. The National Alliance of Black Interpreters is hosting their conference right here in Phoenix in 2010, and I do hope to be a part of that as well.

What I wish to do in my personal life in 2010 is to show my family how much I love them, to show respect and support to my friends, clients, and colleagues, to take on new challenges and new adventures, to be happy relaxing and being, and to dive deeper into this rich experience we call living.

What may or may not be apparent is that I have felt shame and failure in my life, and there have been a few times I doubted I’d ever achieve anything. When I do manage to do something good, my feelings of past failure and inefficacy drive me to shout my achievements from the rooftops. “See! I’m not a complete failure! I DID something!”

Perhaps it is the fact that there have been so many times in my life when I have felt paralyzed into inaction. I’ve wanted to do many things that I didn’t do because I didn’t believe in myself. Now, when I finally do things that I’ve only been dreaming of doing for years, I feel… well… vindicated! Especially when other people didn’t believe in me, either. It’s like, “How do you like me now?!” Well, maybe not very much, I fear.

What good does it do to shove my success in the faces of people who doubted me? Are they really going to “like me now”? Or are they just going to resent me for rubbing it in their faces that I succeeded in spite of them? My fear is that they are going to resent me as much as I resent them. Resentment begets resentment. The thing to do is forgive everyone for everything, starting with myself.

Will I ever be good enough so that I can stop proving myself to people? Will it ever be enough just to be? Well, sure, but I’d still want to do something. There’s a time to be and a time to do. Maybe if I can master being, then I can be better with doing. Right now, doing is like, “Wow!” A miracle!” (Though, I wonder if that will ever change, for what are being and doing but miracles?)

Another consideration is there may be others who have done what I’ve done and not had the same level of success. Am I hurting them by touting my success? That is not my intention, but I fear it may be a consequence. Then again, there’s that whole thing about, “Who are you not to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?” I would like to think that when I let my own light shine, I give other people permission to do the same (re: Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love).

My best intentions, when I get past the neurotic ego stuff, are to promote the work for the good of others. The workshops I’m doing are designed to help interpreters become better at serving their clients and taking care of themselves. I would like to believe that the work is worth people’s time, and so I promote it so that people can benefit from it. And the truth is that I want to teach, and I can’t teach without students.

An actor cannot perform without an audience. The same is true of any artist or creator of any kind. We create what we do because of our creative impulse. There is nothing to be ashamed of about the creative impulse, and there is nothing wrong with admitting that I am a performer who needs an audience. Yes, I need to say something, and yes, I need you to listen. The tricky part is how to charm you into granting me an audience and then entertain you so you feel it was worth your time.

The best self-promotion is really not self-promotion; it is promotion of one’s work. It is a plea to “let me entertain you” so we can all “have a real good time” (to quote Sondheim). I may be ashamed of the way my ego gets in the way, but I’m working on seeing the greater good beyond myself. In my future promotions, I will be cognizant of the issues I’ve raised here and try to make my statements the kind that promote my work without building myself up or tearing anybody down.

As I lay in bed early this morning, I heard thunder, saw the occasional flash of lightning, and then saw the color of the sky change into a natural sepia tone. It was such a phenonmenon that I got out of bed early, turned off the house alarm, got my camera, and went outside to capture the moment.

Found this photo on Flickr of my greyhound photo on t-shirts sold at the Official Merchandise stand at the Blur concert in Hyde Park on July 3, 2009. I’m waiting to receive one of those t-shirts myself. I look forward to it!