children

PotD
The Virtue of Silence
January 26, 2016
charles i. letbetter - virtue of silence

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.—Khalil Gibran

 

 

charles i. letbetter - virtue of silence

In silence we hear the whispers of wisdom

Among the list of people whom I can no longer find, and may well be deceased, is an associate professor of music by the name of Robert Woods. Dr. Woods was a rather unassuming individual from my student perspective, but in January of 1982, while teaching a course in electronic music, he taught us a very valuable lesson about the importance of silence. His assignment sounded simple enough: find a place with absolute silence, and see how long you can stand it. Being cocky college students, we laughed. It was J-term and the campus was more than half empty. Finding a quiet spot would be easy.

But Dr. Woods didn’t say find a quiet spot. His instructions were to find a place absolutely void of sound and when class convened the next day we shared our stories of just how difficult it had been to complete the assignment. So difficult, in fact, that I was the only one who had actually found a place of complete silence: the morgue.

I worked part time in a funeral home. After everyone else had left for the evening, I went into the empty embalming room, which was totally sealed, and shut the door. The experience might have been eery had I not been accustomed to being in the room. There was nothing in there that would make a sound without human intervention, or so I thought. As I settled in on a stool, I soon realized that the fluorescent bulbs were humming. One wouldn’t have noticed under normal conditions, but when all other distractions were removed, there it was: a low but distinct hum. There was only one thing to do: turn off the lights.

Yes, sitting along in a sealed embalming room in the dark is eery. Worse than the dark, though, was the complete silence. Not a sound. I not only could hear my own breathing, but my heart beat sounded louder the longer I sat there. I’d shift my weight on the stool and the shuffle of my slacks against the metal was loud. I cracked my knuckles and it sounded like fireworks. With its ceramic tile floor and walls, the acoustics of the room amplified any sound, but the only sound was that of me, being alive. I stayed for what felt like an eternity then felt my way along the wall back to the door. I had been in the room a mere four minutes.

Dr. Woods’ point had been that silence is a necessary part of music and he wanted us to experience silence so we would appreciate the presence of rests amidst a flurry of sound. Music, he explained, finds its life not in the cacophony of notes and sounds as we might layer them together, but in those brief moments of silence, the rests, especially when unexpected, that allow us to catch our breath.

I can’t say I learned a great deal from the remainder of that class. Electronic music was still finding its roots and our resources, which had been borrowed, were painfully limited. Dr. Woods soon left for a teaching position at a university that appreciated his forward thinking and we went on to do other things that had no relationship to our degrees. What stuck, though, was that very important lesson in the virtue of silence.

Life since that moment in 1982 has only gotten increasingly louder. The reason I get up at 4:00 AM every morning to write these articles is because, in relative silence I can think, put words in order, consider what phrasing best communicates an idea, and pull together stories that are, hopefully, worth reading. Outside this morning, the wind is literally howling and the heater is struggling to keep our house warm, but in the absence of children laughing, music playing, or the whole world trying to talk at the same time, there is a peacefulness that gives life amidst the cacophony.

One of the reasons I so dislike presidential election years is the amount of overwhelming noise they generate. Every candidate, especially at this point of the approaching primaries, is shouting as loud as they can, trying to shove their message through the eye of the needle that is our attention span. Add to that all the sports, not just the impending Super Bowl, but all the cricket and the soccer and the basketball going on around the world. There are ads, and movies, and trailers, and … I think someone has a field trip today but I don’t remember which child. Then, there’s laundry and dishes and I suppose I should plan something for dinner because people do need to eat every once in a while. Pictures to schedule and take and edit. Conversations about books and an upcoming deadline and no I’ve not even started that outline. Did I remember to order underwear? I hope so, because I don’t have time to go out and buy more. Rumors that Sarah Burton is leaving Alexander McQueen and going to Dior, are they true? Men’s fashion in Paris, then couture, then, SHOWTIME, a month of ready-to-wear. And …

So. Much. Noise.

Learning the virtuosity of silence doesn’t happen by accident. Too many people ignore the rest signs. We need those quiet places; in our lives, in our thoughts, in our schedules, in our creativity. We  need space to take a breath so that we don’t choke on our own lifelong diatribes.

May you find that moment, if not now, soon, where you can experience the virtue of silence. May you find Peace. And thank you, Dr. Woods, wherever you are.

Continue Reading

Advertising
Everyone Wants Your Money
January 25, 2016
charles i. letbetter - everyone wants your money

Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have.—Will Rogers

 

charles i. letbetter - everyone wants your money

By 2017, Millennials will have more buying power than any other generation in the industrialization era

Everyone is after the Millennials and their money. As a group, Millennials have replaced the Baby Boomer generation as being the most attractive to advertisers. They are more likely to have expendable income and both their earning and buying power is just beginning to grow. Brands that lock in Millennials as repeat customers now are likely to enjoy a long purchasing relationship in the future.

The challenge is that Millennials have a very different outlook on the world than did my generation when we were their age. Therefore, they don’t respond to the same form of advertising and marketing campaigns that have worked before. Ad agencies get this because, no big surprise here, a large portion of their creative staffs are Millennials. Convincing their clients of the need to change, however, is not always easy. Some get it, some don’t.

Among those who seem to understand the need to market differently to Millennials is MillerCoors. Sure, it’s no big surprise that Millennials like beer; in many ways they have fueled the craft beer boom almost single-handedly. The traditional big-volume beer sellers have struggled, though, in no large part due to the fact that Millennials don’t like mass-market beer. As a result, we see companies such as MillerCoors looking to smaller agencies like Mekanism to create campaigns tailored specifically to the Millennial, such as this one:

Among the things worth noting about this ad:

  • it’s short. 16 seconds is all the time it takes to make their point. Millennials tend to not have long attention spans and a 30-second commercial is likely to be overkill.
  • it’s real. Millennials are hitting their childbearing years and responding to that natural desire. However, these are not super-young 20-something couples; they’re older, more mature, which is common among this and subsequent generations.
  • it’s not sexy. No girls in bikinis, no buff guys in baby oil. While the couples are reasonably attractive, Millennials don’t respond to over-sexualized images the way that Boomers did.
  • it shows a reasonable income bracket. No large pool, no large house. Millennials want homes, but haven’t been able to afford them, so showing a smaller house that is more likely a rental is appropriate.

MillerCoors isn’t the only one getting the message. Hilton Worldwide has announced it will be opening a new chain of hotels called Tru that is designed specifically to attract Millennials. The first hotel is scheduled to come online later this year, with approximately 132 facilities planned for cities that are popular among that generation, such as Portland, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver. The hotels will focus on highly personalized service and what they refer to as a “common, youthful look.” Their ads will be, “visually represented through spirited photos with playful and vibrant colors; custom, fun illustrations; circular shapes, not only to invoke our logo, but also to convey that we are different; and the custom vernacular we’ve created for this brand using three-letter words like zip, jam and fit,” according to Alexandra Jaritz, global head, Tru by Hilton.

There’s no question that Millennials like to travel, but even there they’re not doing it in the same way as Boomers. This is evidenced by the very existence of AirBnB, which is counting on Millennials (and Chinese tourists) to help make it profitable. Can Tru by Hilton create an experience-based standardized accommodation that actually competes with staying in someone else’s home? I have to admit, this could be entertaining to watch. I’m just glad I don’t have any money invested with either approach.

For all the places that are at least trying to understand Millennials, however, there are four or five times as many companies who don’t, and those are likely to be some of the major losers over the next few years. Here are some of the sectors I think really need to step up their game if they want to stay solvent once Boomers are no more.

  • Banking & Finance. Millennials don’t trust banks and they damn sure don’t trust Wall Street with their money. As a result, the climate is right for an alternative to come in and set a genuinely new paradigm in the financial sector. Unfortunately, this also may make Millennials more financially vulnerable in the long-term.
  • Cable Television. It’s been suggested that there is too much television already. What’s driving this concern is the fact that only 46% of Millennials watch any television programming at all, and the vast majority of that is on mobile devices. Millennials have cut the cord with cable pretty hard and I’m not sure it is remotely possible to convince them to come back.
  • Transportation. Just as the auto sector is starting to recover from the recession and sales are picking back up, they soon need to begin re-examining their approach to the Millennial market, which, as a group, doesn’t exactly like cars. Even with the new hybrids and promising growth among alternative-fuel vehicles, Millennials would still rather ride their bicycles, take public transportation, or call Uber for a ride. Environmental concerns override money issues on this one. While there are more than enough Boomers still buying cars, and big ones at that as gas prices plummet, automakers need to re-work their approach to a generation that doesn’t have the brand loyalty their grandparents did.
  • Warehouse Clubs. This one kind of makes sense. Millennials live in smaller places and have limited transportation options that don’t involve carrying around a pack of 46 paper towel rolls. While all the major warehouse clubs have online purchasing options, the positioning, design, and marketing of those options leaves a lot to be desired. If they want to capture Millennials, the folks at Costco and Sam’s Club need to follow Amazon’s example and then improve upon that experience.
  • Family-related services. This includes anyone involved in health care, children’s services (including clothing and education), and anything to do with weddings. Millennials are totally redefining family. Who and when they marry, when or if they have children, and how they approach health care have significantly different answers than previous generations. A lot of traditions are being left in the dust and will not recover. Those who survive will do so only by completely re-configuring how they do business and how they market to this new generation.

These are not insurmountable issues. For all the challenges some companies may face, there are reasonable answers for most. There’s no time to waste, though. Companies who don’t have a Millennial-focused plan by the end of this year are going to find it increasingly difficult to ever win that business at all. You want Millennials’ money, you’ll have to work for it!

Continue Reading

PotD
#MondayMotivation
January 25, 2016
charles i. letbetter - #MondayMotivation

The older you get, the more fragile you understand life to be. I think that’s good motivation for getting out of bed joyfully each day.—Julia Roberts

 

charles i. letbetter - #MondayMotivation

Does a positive attitude really increase our life span? Does it hurt to try?

Another week is starting and if ever there were a time the hashtag #MondayMotivation was necessary, this would be it. Getting out of bed was rough; there’s rain coming in today and my arthritis has my hands hurting to the point that every letter I type is painful. I can use a little encouragement to get through the next several hours. There’s too much to do to stay in bed.

More than just getting out of bed in a timely manner, though, I’m trying an experiment this morning. It may run a day, or a few hours, or all week. I went to the death clock yesterday for amusement (yeah, I’m that weird) and noticed something interesting. Of all the variants that might make a difference in my longevity, attitude played the biggest role. If I leave all the settings at their default, which is what I’m inclined to do, the death clock has me kicking the bucket at age 73, which is less than 20 years from now. I’m not especially happy with that outcome. However, if I change the “mode” or attitude to “optimistic” the calculator has me living to the ripe old age of 93. Twenty years difference in longevity simply based on attitude. Now there’s some #MondayMotivation for you.

Of course, the calculator is meant for entertainment purposes only and while there’s some lightweight science behind their use of the BMI index, it certainly shouldn’t be taken too terribly seriously. Things happen that we can’t predict. Still, it got me thinking that it probably would make everyone’s life a bit more pleasant if I made more of an effort to be just a touch more optimistic in my attitude, and that certainly applies to how I feel about Mondays. This is rarely my favorite days, and for me, Tuesdays are often worse.

However, none of that replaces the fact that the joints in my fingers are screaming at me this morning. So, rather than type a lot of motivational platitudes at you, I’m going to borrow some from Twitter, which conveniently stores all the #MondayMotivation things in one place. These are totally random, but hopefully they at least give you reason to smile a bit.

Continue Reading

Advertising
Oreos Flavors With Love For Everyone
January 20, 2016
charles i. letbetter - Oreos Flavors

Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.—Robert Redford

 

charles i. letbetter - Oreos flavors

His mommy was NOT happy when I gave him his first Oreos, but he’s grown up fine.

For all the health food fanatics out there claiming that GMOs and other nasty things in our food are waiting to kill us, the general public isn’t paying a great deal of attention. In fact, sales of what are considered “junk food” have been on the rebound the past two years. Leading the pack is an old-fashioned cookie that has become a national obsession: Oreos.

Introduced by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) in 1912 Oreos almost immediately became a best-seller in the cookie department. Just as quickly, Americans found different ways of eating them: dunked or not dunked, whole or split open, eating the filling first or not. Verbal battles have erupted over what is the correct way to eat Oreos and I’ve even seen cookies thrown in anger because someone didn’t eat their Oreos correctly. I wish I could say that had been a child displaying such behavior, but it wasn’t.

Our national obsession with the brand seems to have reached new levels. CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert mentioned Oreos, or rather the lack thereof, on one of his first broadcasts last fall and the company hooked him up, complete with a hotline for ordering more should his supply ever run low. In return, Colbert has repeatedly mentioned the brand in his monolog.

Colbert isn’t the only celebrity that has been pulled into the Oreos marketing web, though. Popular musicians such as Kacey Musgraves, Owl City, Tegan and Sara and Chiddy Bang have been part of the brand’s growing Open Up With Oreo campaign that is rolling out to over 50 countries in the first half of this year. Yesterday (January 19) Billboard announced that American Idol alum Adam Lambert had joined the effort as well, with his music backing new 30-second and 15-second animated commercials. Take a look:

https://youtu.be/wN0G9qdMDYI

One of the reasons Oreos are appealing to Lambert and many others is their consistent message of inclusiveness. Oreos are for everyone. Underscoring that position is the habit of constantly rolling out new flavors for the filling. Nabisco (which is owned by Kraft) has been careful to keep supplies of the special flavors limited, which helps both in keeping demand high and preventing flavors from becoming boring. The latest flavor, also announced yesterday, is Cinnamon Bun. The resulting ad, which also brings back the Red Velvet flavor, is called Wonder Vault and hints at many more flavors to come. Whether those are new flavors or simply the return of previous favorites is not yet known. Here’s the ad:

https://youtu.be/Bji57u_NCF4

Company representatives have also hinted that the two flavors are now a permanent part of the Oreo lineup. Take that proclamation with a grain of salt, though. If sales lag, be sure the company will pull a flavor from shelves for a while to be brought back later. Such is the nature of Oreos supply and demand.

What remains consistent, and shows no sign of abating, however, are American’s love for that original cookie. The only person who doesn’t seem to like the cookie is a certain presidential candidate who is upset that parent company Mondelez moved some of its operations not related to Oreos to Mexico. Do we really want to trust the running of the country to someone who doesn’t like Oreos? To paraphrase a previous president from the same party, I don’t think that would be a prudent move at this juncture.

And as for any concerns about the health dangers of eating too many Oreos, I tend to defer to Mark Twain’s approach to the subject:

“Be careful about reading health books.
You may die of a misprint.”

Continue Reading

pop culture  /  PotD
#IShouldNotBeAllowed
January 11, 2016
charles i. letbetter - #IShouldNotBeAllowed

#IShouldNotBeAllowed to restore paintings when I’m drunk —Charley Kaye (@charley_ck14)

 

charles i. letbetter #IShouldNotBeAllowed

Emery should not be allowed to make a snack of his mommy’s nose

There are a lot of interesting topics that get attention on social media. Most of them are pure nonsense; we leave them alone and roll our eyes when they show up in our feeds. There are details of one’s life that the rest of us really do not find interesting. #IShouldNotBeAllowed is an exception, however, because not only can I personally think of several things that I should never be allowed to do, I can also think of similar lists for every member of my family and several friends.

We all have those moments when we know damn good and well that we ought not to do something, but we go right ahead and do it anyway. Think of those times when you’ve gone just one drink past your limit, and then another, and another, and …. Or think of that time you thought drunk texting that person you just met would be really cute, and it wasn’t. I’m sure you could add to the list. I know I can, and am going to do so at the end of this paragraph. Before I do, though, be aware that if you want to join in the fun just navigate your way to https://twitter.com/hashtag/IShouldNotBeAllowed and enjoy. Now, here’s my list:

#IShouldNotBeAllowed

  • to drink more than five cups of coffee within a two-hour period of time; the world isn’t ready for me to be that hyper.
  • to edit when I’m angry; those pictures just never turn out quite right.
  • to play with small children when their parents aren’t looking; I will give them Oreo® Doublestuffs™ and then take pictures.
  • to “sample” the wine while cooking; dinner will be burned and there won’t be any wine left.
  • to “make myself at home” when there’s clearly no place to set 23 half-empty coffee cups.
  • to assist with any home repair involving electricity; there are some things homeowners insurance doesn’t cover.
  • to sleep in an upright position with my head back; no, that wasn’t an earthquake, it was me snoring.
  • to go out drinking with people half my age; the poor children can’t keep up without puking.
  • to light my pipe when I’m half asleep; there’s no repairing the burn holes in my pants—or your pants if you’re sitting too close.
  • to fly across the country within 46 hours of having eaten at Taco Bell®; flight attendants aren’t paid enough to deal with that.

I should take a break here and mention that not everything following the #IShouldNotBeAllowed hashtag needs to be serious. After all, there genuinely are things no one should be allowed to do. Ever. Let me just throw out a few things that come to mind that I shouldn’t do, and neither should you.

#IShouldNotBeAllowed

  • to believe everything I read on the Internet; we both know damn good and well most of it isn’t true.
  • to vote for someone who already has more money in the bank than the yearly budget of my home town; the rich only look out for the rich.
  • to brandish a weapon when there is no immediate threat nor cause; intimidation of any kind is being a bully and that’s not acceptable behavior.
  • to interfere with the personal rights of others even if I disagree with how they exercise those rights; everyone has a right to live as they see fit.
  • to let a belief system trump scientific concensus; believing an airplane can’t fly won’t keep a well-engineered craft on the ground.
  • to ignore or disregard expert opinion just because I disagree with it; ignorance doesn’t fit anyone well.
  • to disparage any person because of their race or national origin; there is no race, we are all the same species: human. We are one family.
  • to steal from the poor and the ignorant in the name of religion; the demons you fear are of your own making.
  • to demand my fair share when those around me have no share at all; greed is an ugly color and will be our downfall.
  • to let my fears determine how I respond to another person; I probably look just as scary and threatening to them.

We could probably go on all day with this sort of thing, but I’m fairly sure at least one of us has some actual work to get done. If you think of more, just hop on Twitter and add them. I’ll be watching for a while and can’t wait to see what you post. Be sure to tag me: @charlesletbette so I’ll see what you shouldn’t be allowed to do!

Continue Reading

Advertising
Ad Trends for 2016
January 5, 2016
charles i. letbetter - ad trends for 2016

It is in revolutionary periods that the culmination of previous trends and the beginning of new ones appear.—C. L. R. James

charles i. letbetter - ad trends

Minor Rebellion. Model: Kat Gulling. Makeup: Danelle French. Hair: Kelly Walsh. Styling: Jantina Anderson

Advertising is all about trends, when to follow and when to start new ones. Get it right and your client loves you. Miss the boat and millions of dollars go down a worthless hole. There is no sure thing. Trends have to be played just right or they can make a brand appear insincere. Declaring trends is easy, but knowing which ones to follow is extremely trepidatious.

We’re here to help. Looking at numerous sources, including Sparks & Honey’s A to Z Culture Glossary and AdWeek’s exhaustive trove of trend research, we’ve compiled what I think are going to be the most important trends for advertisers in 2016. Whether or not we’re correct is, as always, arguable, but these are almost certainly worth considering more than once.

Strong, Powerful, Independent Women

The only way I would put a woman in a kitchen this year is if she happens to be running her own cooking network. Actually, Food Network president Brooke Johnson claims she’s not a good cook, so yeah, totally can that idea. There’s no more “little woman” waiting at the door to greet … anyone. The marketable influence of women has grown exponentially and those who ignore such are risking doom and despair. Yes, they can still be sexy (see Ronda Rousey’s ad for Carl’s Jr.). Yes, they can still be vulnerable while showing tremendous courage (see Ram Truck’s “courage is already inside” ad). What they are not is weak, dependent, desperate, or needy on any level. This includes young girls, by the way, who can play with light sabers just as well as any little boy.

What this trend means for a lot of companies who have yet to catch on, or think they’re somehow immune from the trend, is re-thinking their approach toward women, especially if women are their primary market. There is no tolerance for any level of condescension, even in jest. Women with small children need to be shown as competent and caring in the face of exhaustion. Girls should be shown as not merely cute or sexy but equally as intelligent, witty, and humorous. Oh, and they play video games with a blood-thirty vengeance that is frightening. This is one trend that is only going to grow stronger. Ignore it at your own peril.

Rethink The Concept of Gender

LGBT rights scored some tremendous victories in 2015 but if you think merely placing a same-gender couple somewhere in the back of an ad has you covered, think again. Watch the 16-24-year-old demographic very closely on this one. If you’re not already familiar with the term gender fluid, you might want to ask your intern. Older teens and young adults are leading a rapidly growing trend wherein claiming a specific gender identity just doesn’t work for them. They’re not merely gender neutral, mind you. They are gender fluid, a term and a lifestyle that is just beginning to make its way into mainstream consciousness, even though the practice has been around for centuries. As we build upon the successes of the past year, gender fluidity is the next step toward total acceptance.

We saw the ire Target drew when they removed gender classification from toys in 2015. When moving forward in matters like this, one has to expect backlash and possibly even consider building in an appropriate response as part of the campaign. The issue goes beyond toys, though, and forward-thinking advertisers will find ways to include transgendered and gender fluid people into normal office and social settings without trivializing or being condescending toward anyone. As more young people grow comfortable expressing themselves in this fashion, expect older adults to do so as well, making public lifestyles they’ve kept hidden their entire lives. Smart advertisers will position their brands to stand for inclusion and acceptance in increasingly meaningful ways.

Finding Moral High Ground

A touching, heartfelt ad makes everyone feel good about themselves and the brand. Transference is what psychologist call it; because the ad shows people representing a product or brand doing something good, consumers feel they are also participating in the good thing, whatever it is, by buying that product. This is far from being a new concept, but what we saw especially in the last quarter of 2015 was a rather surprising uptick in just how responsive people were to ads and products that have some participation in the greater good, whether that might be environmental, economic, or health-related. So, a company that addresses iron deficiency in Cambodia sees sales increase in the US and EU. Car maker Volvo records an increase in dealership visits after announcing a spray that keeps pedestrians safe at night.

Let’s be real honest here, finding a moral high ground that someone isn’t already attempting to stake as their own is going to be challenging. What’s more, once one claims such space the company is obligated to make a commitment to that cause beyond the life cycle of the current campaign. This is not a cheap trend to embrace and doing so for the wrong reasons are almost certainly going to backfire. However, as the world grows smaller and awareness of interactions and their consequences becomes more common, people care more about what is going on in places other than their backyard and truly want to help. Find a way to help your target audience help someone else and your brand becomes a champion.

Not Being Perpetually Online is Death

Connectivity issues are going to be huge this year and for all the talk about needing to unplug the reality is that not only are we afraid to be disconnected from the Internet, in some cases being disconnected can be life threatening. This gives advertisers and marketers a giant opening that we’re just now beginning to study and understand. Even more, the biggest opportunity may be for small- to mid-sized companies in markets that have yet to leverage the digital potential in any significant way. Going beyond merely having a website, which is still a big deal for small, entrepreneur-driven business, interacting with customers via third party apps such as Instagram and Periscope represents the new way of communicating directly with a brand’s consumers.

Fashion is already learning that what happens on Instagram impacts the retail market. What happens next is seeing that same interaction in other business models, especially those that historically have not been able to facilitate high levels of customer contact. Think how such interactivity might affect business-to-business models or allow a reluctant tourist to see what actually happens on a cruise before booking their trip. What might be the benefits of a restaurant that allows patrons to live-stream their meal being prepared? People are afraid to put down their mobile devices and that means advertisers have to find creative ways of making sure that is where they interact with customers.

Even Higher Tech

From virtual reality hoods to a Japanese noodle company that provides a digital “companion” for those eating alone to customized fragrance experiences to live-streamed medical assistance, if you’re working with last year’s technology, you’re already behind. With the rapid development and deployment of new tech reaching something close to the speed of light, advertisers can no longer wait two or three years, or even months, for a new technology to prove itself. Yes, this means assuming some higher level of risks as not all new tech is going to survive. However, that is a risk well worth taking as falling behind the tech curve increasingly becomes a death sentence, especially for retail-centric products and businesses.

Think you’re already pretty tech savvy? If you’re not familiar with twitch.tv, typographic neuroscience, ultrasonic sciences, 4D smart paper, or brain-computer imaging (BCI), you have some heavy catching up to do. One of the most important trends for advertising this year is going to be the ability to recognize break-out technologies and being among the first to use them in marketing and advertising situations. For many agencies, especially in smaller markets or those with boutique clients, this likely means making technological innovation a team-wide responsibility. Those with sufficient budgets already have personnel whose sole function is to reach out to new tech companies and find ways to apply science and innovation to the ad experience. Failure to follow this trend may well mean some smaller shops close their doors by year’s end.

Of course, there’s more

I could go on for several more pages, I’m afraid. There are a lot of more niche-oriented trends, such as senior tech for an aging but still mobile (and well-financed) population, family outsourcing, and a lot of really amazing medical innovations. What we do with our leisure time is changing as well and that impacts how consumers respond to certain methods of advertising.

What matters most is that we not rely as much on our past experience and use these trends and innovations to spark our creativity, finding new and exciting, perhaps longer-lasting ways to reach consumers and clients. 2016 belongs to the ambitious. Get up and get moving.

Continue Reading

Photography  /  PotD
Time To Say Goodbye
December 1, 2015
charles i. letbetter - time to say goodbye

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.—Jean Dubuffet

charles i. letbetter - time to say goodbye

Today is my birthday. Unless something dramatically changes, which might not be a good thing, I’ll likely spend the bulk of the day alone. Weather will likely dictate whether I even try walking anywhere. Kat and the kids are at school. The kids will be home by mid-afternoon, fussy, tired, hungry, and destined for an early bedtime. Kat won’t be home until late, though, and I may already be in bed.  In many ways, the day is inherently understated and that is not terribly inappropriate.

This feels like a good place to stop. We built this current site in a rush after the previous server totally crashed back in March. Changing hosts forced us into some design decisions we didn’t really have a chance to adequately test and now that we’ve been doing this for several months, we need to make some serious adjustments. There’s no way to do that with the site fully live.

Should you visit over the next month, and we certainly encourage you to do so, you may see things in the middle of transition; not all the links may work all the time and there may even be points where it’s all a giant jumble. When you’re likely to see the biggest change is after Christmas, when we start preparing to take the sight completely live.

You can probably say goodbye to the #POTD as we now know it. #POTD has been fun for the most part, but maddening at times. When we started, I thought I’d just pull pictures from the archives, no big deal. What we quickly discovered is that some of our oldest pictures needed some help to be appropriate for the newer high-resolution monitors everyone is using now. Fixing those images morphed into using special effects and completely re-processing the majority, which was a lot of extra work. IF we continue the #POTD, it will have to be in a different vein that is considerably less effort.

At the same time, I want to leave room to expand our creativity. I’m not sure what all that may entail or how it might be presented, but there almost certainly will be new things on the site next year that we’ve not seen before.

So, with this post, we say goodbye for the remainder of 2015. Thank you for joining us on this adventure. To show our appreciation, here’s a quick review of some of our favorite images from the past few months.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Continue Reading

Art  /  Music  /  pop culture  /  PotD
5 Memories From Last Summer
November 23, 2015
charles i. letbetter - 5 Things About Last Summer

We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.—Gary Zukav

charles i. letbetter - 5 things to remember about last summer

Technically, this isn’t the best photo I’ve ever taken, even though it’s one of my favorites. Summer photos are usually brighter and the fact that the whole photo is set on a diagonal slant is a bit unnerving to the eyes. The location had limitations that prevented me from shooting from a better position, though, and working with a diagonal frame was the only way to capture the reflection with the equipment I had available.

I don’t know how things are where you live, but we’re shivering in our shoes this morning with a wind chill of 20° F. I know many of us in the North had our first significant snowfall this weekend and while some find that exciting, most of us are less than thrilled. Where did that extended summer go? Summer is always full of memories, and this one was no exception, so let’s take a look at five things from this summer that we really shouldn’t forget.

No5US Wins Women’s FIFA World Cup
Did we see that coming? No, not really. We wanted it to happen, but when it comes to FIFA level play, the US just hasn’t had the best luck in the past. Routing Japan 5-2 was totally unexpected unless one happens to be a die-hard supporter of the team. This was one of the best feel-good moments of the summer.

No4Misty Copeland Promoted to Principal Ballerina at American Ballet Theater
This just doesn’t happen; black women don’t become principals in American ballet. One of the longest-standing bastions of racist tradition in the US fell with a thundering crash when Misty Copeland was promoted to Principal Ballerina this past June. Her promotion not only opens the door of diversity in American ballet but gives hope to millions of little girls in pink tights and toe shoes all across the country. Here’s a sample.

No3Inside Out Hit Theaters
There were lots of movies that had a bigger box office this summer, but none will have a larger long-term effect than this animated movie from Disney/Pixar that, more than anything, helps kids better understand what emotions are and the importance of feelings. The price of a movie ticket and popcorn is likely the cheapest source of therapy this generation will ever experience.

No2Shut Up And Dance was the feel-good song of the summer
Again, it wasn’t the biggest seller of the summer, but Walk The Moon’s catching song and its unusual video was the one song that brought multiple generations onto the dance floor to strut their stuff. My youngest son introduced me to the song and it’s been on my playlists ever since. Even now, the song is still charting.

No1Spending Time With Family
This is why we love summer; those moments in the park, or the pool, or the lake, or hiking, or whatever brings your family together. While school is in session, everyone is going their own direction with a dozen different activities, but summer gives us time to do things together, things we’ll remember the rest of our lives. We went traveled, spent time with extended family, and cooked food outside over fire. There are so many pictures I’m still not done editing them all. This is how summer should be.

I can’t keep the cold from coming any more than I can keep my old bones from hurting, but we can keep the memories of summer alive and maybe, just maybe, that will help keep us warm on the inside a little bit longer.

Continue Reading

pop culture  /  PotD
The Final Countdown(s)
November 22, 2015
charles i. letbetter - the final countdown(s)

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

charles i. letbetter - the final countdown(s)

We’re hurtling toward the end of the year and that means we only have ten, count ’em, #POTD posts left before we take our December break. So, we’re going to spend these final few days with pictures that we weren’t able to make fit anywhere else and counting down a number of things we think are fun and important.

There’s no real cohesive point to the images. Some, like today’s, are quite old by digital standards. The Legends Football League’s Cynthing Schmidt was only 19 years old when we took this picture. Now, you’ll find her popping up in places like Sports Illustrated’s Lovely Lady of the Day feature. She seems to have done quite well for herself, but that has absolutely nothing to do with today’s list.

10 Things We Need To Do Before The End Of The Year

No10Kiss A Baby. 
Chances are, unless you live in a cave with absolutely no interaction with anyone, you know someone who has a baby, or at least a toddler. Nothing is as calming and joyful as being slobbered upon by a six-month-old who thinks you taste good.

No9Spend five minutes doing nothing but petting an animal. Animals are wonderful givers of affection and are surprisingly effective at de-stressing humans. Just be selective about the animal. Lions and fish aren’t so cuddly.

No8Take an online class. Yep, there’s still time for you to actually accomplish something so that you’re not totally embarrassed while visiting with family over the holidays. Mashable has a good list here.

No7Donate some time to a charity. This time of year, charities who directly help the poor need more than just money, they need your time. Packing and distributing food take a lot of effort. If you have children, make it a family affair. The lesson in giving is invaluable.

No6Count your blessings. Seriously. Pen. Paper. Write. Do it the old-fashioned way so that it actually sticks in your head how fortunate you’ve been this year. Then, seal it in an envelope to open next year when you’re feeling blue.

No5Try the new Oreos® churros. Seriously. They’re real. Check here for details. The holidays are time for special treats, right? J&J Foods just gave us the best present ever. You know you want to try them. Go ahead. Give in. We won’t tell.

No4Read a book. You’ve been meaning to do that all year, but somehow the time just slips away. There are a lot of lists with great titles from which to choose. We rather like the choices at NPR Books, or just visit a bookstore and browse!

No3Join a sing-a-long. The world is full of timid singers that would never dare to sing in public on their own, but one of the joys of this time of year is that several groups sponsor community sing-a-longs, usually featuring holiday songs that everyone knows. Look around and find one near you.

No2Wrap something different in bacon. There is no going wrong with bacon. I’ve put it around food I otherwise detest and it totally changes my ability to down brussel sprouts. I’m thinking bacon wrapped sugar cookies sounds like a good idea.

No1Thank a service member. Holidays can be especially tough for those who are away from their families. Remember, the US military is comprised totally of volunteers. Show them some appreciation for their sacrifice.

This is your final chance to keep the year from totally sucking and should keep you busy for a moment or two. Should you become bored, don’t worry, we have more lists coming all week!

Continue Reading

PotD
Father, In Absentia
November 18, 2015
Father, In Absentia

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.—Orson Welles

Father, In Absentia

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]This is going to hurt.

Even if I were perfect, there is no way I could ever live up to my impression of my own father. He wasn’t perfect himself, either, but even in his humanity and inevitable error, there was never a moment when I felt anything short of total, complete love from him. Were he still alive, Poppa would be 86 years old tomorrow and, regardless of what his physical condition might be. would still be trying to love everyone, including all the grandkids. That’s just who he was.

Unfortunately, he didn’t pass on much of that trait to me. Actually, I think my younger brother caught the gentle side of Poppa’s personality and he wears it extremely well. My brother makes a very good father to his little girl (even though she’s at an age where she may not appreciate that just yet). I picked up more of my grandfather Slover’s traits, the temper, the ability to keep people at a distance, being easily annoyed and slow to display any emotion. Does anyone want to trade?

I’ve been away from the boys now over ten years. I assure you, this wasn’t the plan. I was only going to Indianapolis for eight months, get my head on straight, then move back to Atlanta and start over. From Atlanta, I would have still been able to stay in the boys’ lives, attended concerts, show support, been something more like a dad. But that didn’t happen, did it? I was stuck up here and my boys were stuck with a dad they rarely get to see. Things have improved lately, we were able to spend some time together this summer, but still, the boys don’t have a dad, they have a father, in absentia.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Many years ago, I read an article I didn’t imagine could be true; that children of divorced parents were more likely to be strong leaders, to be tough and shrewd business people, and fare better than children who had both parents. Then, in 2013, Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), made the argument that children of single parents have more grit and determination, pushing them ahead, giving them the drive to succeed. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama were raised by single parents. So, maybe I’m doing them a favor by not being there.

Does anyone else think that’s nothing more than a copout? Statistics can be twisted to say just about anything we want and these studies seem, in my mind, to be little more than an attempt to cover the guilt of having left. And even if my boys are better in some way for having been without me, I’m certainly not better; I’ve lost.

I’m getting a bit of a second chance now. I’ve been with Kat’s little ones longer than their bio-dad. They’ve even, just recently, started calling me Dad and that feels all warm and fuzzy. But the guilt still plagues me. Can I give to these little ones the father my own children never had?

The picture on my desk reminds me that my boys are not children, but young men, one’s even a Marine, about to deploy to Okinawa in a few weeks. There’s not a day that goes by, though, that I wish I could have been the father for them that mine was for me. The guilt won’t pass. They deserved better. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD  /  Social Commentary
Getting By With A Little Help
November 17, 2015
charles i. letbetter - getting by with a little help

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.—Barack Obama

charles i. letbetter - getting by with a little help

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]The cane sits close to my desk, just in case I need the help. I hate the damn thing. I hate the sight of it, and even more the fact that I should probably use it more than I do. Rain will force me to use it today, I already know. Tomorrow may be another such day as well. With winter beginning to set in, the days when I need the help are going to begin outnumbering the days I don’t. I am somewhat pissed off by the knowledge there are 80-year-old men out running marathons while I can’t get down the hall to the bathroom without assistance.

I never have liked asking for help. Somewhere in my head, for some reason, me asking for help is a sign of weakness. I don’t mind others asking for help when they need it, though I am slightly annoyed when a certain five-year-old asks for help tying her shoes when she’s yet to try for herself. I don’t want to ask anyone for help and I don’t like so often being in a position of needing help that, at times, it feels as though I can’t do anything without some form of assistance. Losing any bit of my independence strikes deep at my soul, leads to depression and questioning my own value in the world. I have quite possibly thrown my cane across the floor in frustration.

Yet, here I am again this morning, needing to lean on something, or someone. I woke up this morning barely able to move. Independence is a myth. I’ve become reliant on Kat and some days when she has to be gone for prolonged periods I often limit my own activities for fear that, should something happen, there’s no one here to help (the cats are absolutely no help at all). When I go for a walk, I have to make sure my phone is well charged in case I should fall, become lost or confused, or need a ride home.

I never expected to have these limitations at this age and it angers me to no end that I can’t keep up with everyone else on the planet. Needing help, even from an inanimate object totally under my control, is emotionally deflating.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]I am one of the lucky ones. Despite my challenges, I have always known that someone has had my back; friends who have made sure I had something to eat, that drove me to doctors appointments, and kept a roof over my head. Not everyone is so fortunate. Nearly four million people in the United States will experience homelessness this year. Of those, almost 60 thousand of those are veterans; 1.3 million are children.  They’re just out there, on their own, struggling to exist.

The second stanza of the poem on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor reads:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

At this very moment, there are 10,000 Syrian refugees, and more from other war-torn countries, waiting at our shore, looking for help. Yet, because of the cowardly actions of a handful of Daesh morons, there are many of us wanting to hide behind a wall of fear and not let them in. We would rather let them starve or die of hypothermia than accept the risk that comes with being compassionate.

If America has become this country who is afraid too afraid of the shadow of terrorism to keep the refugees of that terrorism alive, then we have lost every last shred of our independence; our fear cripples us just as severely as arthritis in my back and legs. I have a cane on which I can lean, and friends ready to help. The millions homeless and those fleeing terror need help as well. The time has come to step up and be that help.[/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD
Always A Smile
November 13, 2015
charles i. letbetter - always a smile

Get up and dance, get up and smile, get up and drink to the days that are gone in the shortest while.—Simon Fowler

charles i. letbetter - always a smile

Zachariah (2015)

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I’ve been told that I don’t smile enough. Such comments typically come from people who really don’t know me all that well. Those who are around me the most often know that I actually smile rather often, but my smiles are not the big, toothy smiles that many people associate with happiness. Rather, mine are more subtle: the turning up of one corner of my mouth given away by a certain look in my eyes. Kat catches me smiling even when I don’t think that I am.

As a photographer, a smile isn’t always what I’m wanting to see. Sure, if we’re doing engagement photos or at a birthday party, then by all means, smile away. But for more editorial looks, especially those that involved carefully designed and applied makeup, a big smile can ruin everything. Smiles change the shape of the face, push the cheeks up toward the eyes, and often cause people to appear as though they are squinting. For editorial or fashion work, the wrong kind of smile can be absolutely devastating to the photograph.

A smile is a form of encouragement, an unspoken greeting that is inherently cheerful. Mother used to complain that one of the biggest differences between living in Kansas versus Oklahoma was that people in Kansas didn’t smile as much. Mom had a habit of smiling almost any time she was in public. When she met someone on the street she would smile and say hello. People from Oklahoma were like that once upon a time. When she moved to Kansas in 1958, though, folks up there looked at her as though she were crazy for smiling so much. She found the difference quite disheartening.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Zach inherited his grandmother’s quick smile. Even when he was a small child sitting in the front of the grocery cart, anyone who would make eye contact with him would be greeted with the biggest smile he could find. Baby smiles are contagious, you know, and I don’t recall a single instance where his smile wasn’t returned. Twenty-three years later, he’s a lot bigger and doesn’t come close to fitting in the front of a shopping cart, but make eye contact with him and see if that same smile doesn’t flash across his face, even when he’s busy working.

Smiles aren’t just something that happens at the mouth. Smiles take up the whole face, especially the eyes. The look in a person’s eyes when they smile lets one know whether the apparent cheer is sincere. A smile can be evil, after all. I have met a couple of people whose noses changed shape and flattened when they smile, which was interesting to observe. There are also some people who can’t seem to smile without blushing, no matter what might be the circumstances.

Smiling may be the best thing a face does. I think, at least anecdotally,  people who smile more are easier to remember. We respond more positively to people who smile when we meet them for the first time. The absence of a smile on a person’s face tends to make us feel uncomfortable and we worry what might be wrong.

It’s Friday the 13th and a lot of people are likely to be needing a smile. Why not help out their face and give them a smile they remember? You’ll improve the world one face at a time.[/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD
Many Faces Of A Mom
November 12, 2015
charles i. letbetter - many faces of a mom

She had a hit for every syllable: ‘Don’t. You. Ever. Talk. To. Me. Like. That. Ever. Again.’ That was the last time I ever talked back to Mom.—Misty May-Treanor

charles i. letbetter - many faces of a mom

Brittney Jo (2015)

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Moms come with more facial expressions than anyone else on the planet, and they know exactly when to use each one. There’s no class they have to take, there are no books they have to read, by the time a young woman suffers through nine months of carrying a child who has poked, kicked, and punched every internal organ she has, she has an entire encyclopaedia of facial expressions ready for that child and is just waiting for the opportunity to use each one of them. A mom is not someone with whom one messes around.

Mom faces are unique in that only your mom’s expressions work on you. Your best friend’s mom can give you the same face and you just blow it off like, “Meh, she’s miffed, but what’s she really gonna do about it.” When your mom gives you a look, though, you know what she can do on the follow-up and you know you don’t want her to go there, especially in front of your buddies. By the time you’re nine or ten and starting to think of some really serious trouble, your mom has those looks down so well she hardly even has to speak to you. You just meet her eyes and you know; either she loves you more than anything, or one more slip up and she’s burning your bed on the front lawn.

I don’t think moms, especially young moms, really have much choice than to develop those facial expressions. They have so many other things going on around them, they don’t always have time to give a child the tongue lashing they deserve. I can remember some Sunday mornings when my mother would be singing in the church choir, smiling away until she saw that I wasn’t in my seat, but under the pew playing with the car I’d snuck into m suit pocket. She’d keep smiling until our eyes met. Pow. I was done for, my future was sealed and it wasn’t going to be pleasant. All that in one very brief glance that most people probably never noticed.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Brittney’s made some interesting faces over the few years I’ve known her. Rolling her eyes is a frequent one that adults are likely to get. Then, there’s that frustrated sigh when people who should be listening don’t. Brittney is a retail manager so sometimes she has to treat both employees and customers as though they were misbehaving children, and out come the danger looks; it’s a necessity of the job. Then, when she is around her own two darling and energetic little boys, there is a totally different set of looks ranging from complete adoration to I’m-Going-To-Sell-You-To-The-First-Circus-I-Find.

There is not anyone who can achieve as much with a single glance as can a mom. One look and you sit up straight and stop pinching your sister. One look and you hear yourself confessing to stealing the last cookie. One look and you really wish the whole earth would just open up and swallow you.

One look and you know you are loved and cherished more than anything or anyone in the world.

I’ve seen comedians who could make a lot of different faces, but no one is as effective as is a mom; it’s a talent inherent to the position. You’re not going to beat them, ever, not even after you’re a mom yourself. I’ve watched it happen while I was backing slowly away trying to not make any noise. The older mom won. No contest. I’m pretty sure I felt the earth shake, though. All the more  reason to be good to y our mom. You don’t want that disappointed I-gave-birth-to-you look.

Behave. Mom’s watching. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD
Mischievous Grins
November 9, 2015
charles i. letbetter - Mischievous Grins

If I’m writing something and I’m not feeling mischievous, then I know it’s not going to be great.—Elizabeth Meriwether

charles i. letbetter - Mischievous Grins

Gabriel (2015)

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]One of the most attractive things about faces is their ability to smile. There are as many different kinds of smiles as there are people, but the ones that get my attention the fastest are those who don’t give you those big, toothy smiles, but rather those who just give you a mischievous grin. If you look, you’ll often find a bit of a sparkle in their eye which is indicative of an active mind; one just has to be a bit concerned as to what that activity might entail.

Some faces just have a mischievous look to them. Like any other smile, that grin can stick and people who have worn one for years might as well have, “here comes trouble” painted across their forehead. Not that they are bad people in any way. I think being mischievous is probably a greater sign of intelligence than what one finds on a standardized test form because mischievous people are creative and imaginative first of all. The problem is that their imagination tends to run well outside any box, resulting in actions and behavior than can be surprising.

Mischievous people are important to society because they challenge the boundaries of what we consider normal and conventional. Tell a mischievous child that a given action is unacceptable and watch them perform that action almost immediately. Why? Because they want to see if you were correct or just trying to coerce them into observing a set of rules that, from their perspective, don’t make any sense. So, they do what we would rather they do it, their little faces grinning the entire time.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Gabriel is the youngest of my three sons. I often tell people that he was born mischievous; it is part of his identity. When he was born, the nurses whisked him away to a nearby table to clean him up and check his APGAR scores. Nana, his maternal grandmother, followed along, anxious and excited as nanas tend to be about the arrival of a new grandchild. In her excitement, Nana got a little too close. Pow! Gabriel let’s loose an impressive arc of pee and hits his Nana right in the face. The little guy was less than five minutes old and already showing his personality. Doctors say babies don’t really smile, but I’m pretty sure I saw his first grin that morning.

Mischievous grins can, at times, be difficult to catch. Mischievous people often have a very dry wit and a sense of humor that allows them to deliver sarcasm with a straight face so that one is never really quite sure whether they’re serious or not. The give-away is the quick flash of that grin, the brief sparkle in their eye that lets you know they’re just having fun keeping everyone else on edge.

Society, and parents, tend to be easily frustrated by mischievous people because they are constantly finding uncomfortable ways of showing us our shortcomings. They seem to inherently see behind our façades and then find creative, and often humiliating, ways of calling us out. Yet, whether or not we want to admit it, mischievous challenges are often correct, and that smile is their way of celebrating. Embrace them; they’re smarter than we are.[/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD
Growing Up Too Fast
October 10, 2015
charles i. letbetter - growing up too fast

charles i. letbetter - growing up too fast

Uh-oh, Dirt; How Did That Get There?

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.—Phyllis Diller

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]All too quickly, our week of baby pictures comes to an end. I could easily go another week or more, but I’ll save those for another time. We need to move on here, just as babies move on with their little lives, growing up right in front of our eyes. Growing up happens much too quickly from a parent’s perspective, and too slowly from the child’s. Growing up is why we take pictures, so we have a record, so we can look back and prove that we really were tiny, cute, and cuddly. While our personalities develop in ways that may make us grumpy and prickly, pictures show us that we were once small, and probably even lovable.

None of us actually remembers growing up. If your parents took a lot of pictures and tell a lot of stories, it can feel like you remember that period of your life, but fortunately, we forget the sensation of sitting in a wet, poopy diaper and being force-fed strained peas. We forget the frustration of being immobile, or the fear of thinking that anything, or anyone, not directly in our line of sight was gone forever. Be thankful we don’t remember trying to put everything we touch into our mouths, or that diaper rash that your mom could never quite get to go away.  Growing up definitely has its advantages.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]When it comes to our own children, though, growing up is something that happens much too quickly. We put  them to bed at night, and wake up the next morning to find they’ve grown two sizes. They go from nursing to demanding pizza in a heart beat. When someone says one of my sons’ names, my first thought is still of them being little and riding on my shoulders. Now, they’re all well over six feet tall and could more easily carry me than I them. Birthdays whiz by at alarming speed and our babies go from playing with cars to driving them.

Watching your kids growing up is challenging not merely because we lose the baby and trade them in for adults, but because all the while they’re growing up, we’re growing old. There’s no escaping either condition, no matter how much skin cream one uses or in how good of shape one stays. By the time our children are grown enough to be out of the house, we’re old enough to be ready to sell it and move to an apartment near a beach. Life is rather cruel that way, isn’t it?

Growing up is inevitable. Growing up happy is a gift. Having pictures to remember it all is a treasure. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

PotD
Uncontained Cuteness
October 9, 2015
charles i. letbetter - uncontained cuteness

charles i. letbetter - uncontained cuteness

While On A Walk

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.—Margaret Atwood

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I once heard someone say that Humans would never have survived as a species were it not for the fact our babies come filled with cuteness. Otherwise, ancient parents would have killed them the first time they threw up on mom’s favorite loin cloth, dented dad’s new wheel, or drew on the cave walls. Being cute is a necessity for a child to survive. I’m not sure how much they realize that their ability to live to the ripe old age of ten relies on their cuteness, but it certainly does. Just because we live in a modern, slightly more civilized and allegedly forward thinking age we don’t occasionally think about how nice it would be to sleep past 6:00 AM on a Saturday.

Cuteness isn’t necessarily distributed evenly, though, even among children. Adults don’t like to admit that, but we know it’s true.  Our firstborn had a way about him, an ability to look up at someone with those big blue eyes, and just cause any adult to melt. Neither of his brothers could do that. We still loved the other two, of course, but we didn’t get stopped at the grocery store to compliment them the way we did with the first one. Cuteness comes in varying degrees and some kids get it by the barrel full while other have to quickly learn to either be cute or get used to sitting around in dirty diapers all the time.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Sometimes I think little girls get more of a break in the cuteness department. We  put things in their hair, or if they don’t have hair we give them darling little headbands wth flowers the size of their skull and that distracts adults enough to think the kid is cute. The only accessory a little boy gets is dirt. Even with dirt, though, girls get more attention. Any time a girl gets dirty, it’s cute. When a boy does the same thing, we just dump him in the tub and blame his father.  No one ever likes to think of cuteness being sexist, but it is, and it always has been in most places, excusing those moments in history when being a girl could get you killed.

Most kids hit that period of unrestrained cuteness about the time they’re four months old, and typically hold on to it right up until the point they grab hold of the tablecloth and send the entire Thanksgiving dinner crashing to the floor, or smear lipstick all over Mommy’s new Dior dress, or do something to send the neighbor kid to the hospital in an ambulance.

Cuteness doesn’t last forever, which is a sad thing. I know more than a few adults who would have done well to hold on to theirs.     [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

Photography  /  PotD
Babies, Then More Babies
October 4, 2015
charles i. letbetter - babies, then more babies

charles i. letbetter - Babies Then More Babies

A Moment With C-Ma (2013)

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.—Jerry Seinfeld

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Babies. Why? Because you need a break from al the nudes and I need a break from trying to pander to you. These pictures may not be as popular, though they should be, but they make me happy, sort of. I love the wonder with which they come into the world, all fresh, curious, frightened but ready to explore. I enjoy watching them try new things, and the excitement on their faces when they do something for the first time. I love capturing the expressions on a baby’s face because they don’t know to hold back or hide their feelings yet.

The thing about babies is they grow up much too quickly. One day they’re tiny and sweet and the next they’re up on top of the refrigerator sneaking the cookies you thought you’d hidden so well. Some grow up into wonderful little humans. Others grow up to be just as bratty as their parents; at least, one of their parents. How many exasperated mothers have I met whose unruly and difficult children took after the other parent, the one who wasn’t there? More than a few, to be sure. Not that mothers don’t hold their share of influence, mind you. You know when your child is behaving just like you.

Fortunately, not all of one’s personality is shaped by nature. Every child has the chance to be better than its parents. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]My favorite pictures are newborns, especially within that first 24 hours of a new life. There is something about that freshness, the look in their eyes, the absolute innocence, that makes for great pictures. They don’t need to be posed, and personally I rather resent those who take little ones and try to be all cutsie and artsy by putting them in pots or baskets for their first pictures. Newborns simply need to be held, to be loved, to be given little kisses and friendly smiles. Even when we unswaddle a newborn for pictures, we don’t leave them that way long. They need comfort and care more than we need 300 shots of an increasingly frustrated and frightened infant.

So, this week we’re looking at babies, all under a year old. Each of these little ones have grown a lot and are becoming amazing little people. While it’s fun to see who they become, it never fails to make me smile to look back and see how their lives began. Babies give me hope that maybe, just maybe, the world won’t always be as full of assholes as it is now. Babies give me hope that the world can learn to love.

As long as their parents don’t blow it.[/one_half_last]

 

Continue Reading

pop culture  /  PotD
A Poverty Of Life
September 24, 2015
charles i. letbetter - a poverty of life

charles i. letbetter - a poverty of life

Leave A Simple Photo Alone (2015)

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.—Frederick Douglass 

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What did you have for breakfast this morning, anything at all? As adults, the meal is perhaps the easiest to skip. A cup of coffee and we’re out the door. We don’t have time, we’re not in the mood to prepare anything, and many people just don’t have breakfast food in the house. Maybe we could make toast, but that’s about it. I’ve heard mothers complain that they just can’t get their children to eat breakfast. My mother would be appalled. Breakfast wasn’t an option, it was a mandate.

Life really wasn’t all that different when I was growing up, but there was one thing about which my mother was adamant: you’re eating breakfast. It didn’t matter how early it meant we had to get up, we weren’t leaving the house without having food. Where we lived in rural Oklahoma, there was no catching something on the way, or stopping at the convenience store down the street because there was nothing there! I think school breakfast might have been an option, but I never knew anyone who actually ate it. There were some Saturday mornings in high school where the band bus left for a trip at some ungodly hour that required us to leave home at something like 5:00 AM. Guess what, we sat down and had breakfast first. Every morning. Not just something slapped together, either. Eggs. Bacon or sausage. Hot cereal during the winter. Toast. Fruit in season, when we could afford it. Breakfast was a big deal.

Today, there are more options. It actually makes sense for Kat’s kids to eat their breakfast at school; it’s built into their schedule along with lunch. We know they’re getting nutritionally appropriate meals and we don’t have the added fuss at home of trying to convince them to finish their food before the bus comes at 6:30. People who have to commute to work also have more options now than were available forty years ago. There’s a fast food option on every other corner. Seated service restaurants are in greater abundance. Grocery stores are open earlier. We’ve got it made, right?[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]No, we don’t have it made. Having it “made” means that everything is balanced and healthy and that we’re making the right choices. None of those things are accurate. Our lives and our diets are anything but balanced or healthy and we’re notorious for making bad choices. We create poverty within our own lives by eliminating the things we need most while being excessive in the things we need the least. Children get the worst of it, too. We place them in food poverty by failing to make sure they’re actually eating fruit. Globally, a lack of food in the diet kills 3.4 million people a year, and the great majority of those are children. They don’t only have impoverished diets, they have impoverished lives.

More than a financial state, poverty is a life condition. Even people whose incomes are well above what is considered the poverty line can still have impoverished lives because of the choices they make in how they spend what they have. One of the biggest areas of poverty, strangely enough, comes in having too few fruits and we replace that with an excess of sodium, which in turn kills yet another 3.5 million people. And no, grabbing a bottle of juice isn’t the same, especially for children. Juice doesn’t contain the fiber and other nutrients available in whole fruit. What’s sad is grocery stores and markets dump tons of wasted fruit every day. Global economies keep prices out of reach for people who need fruit the most, and those who can afford fruit look at it more as a dessert item, not a dietary necessity.

We like to think we’re rich, and comparatively we are, but look in your shopping cart the next time you buy food. If you have three different kinds of chips, packaged foods, and/or soda, and less than three different kinds of fresh fruit, you are creating a poverty of life for you and your family. We should all be appalled. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

Art  /  Photography  /  PotD
Varying Reality
July 15, 2015

Charles I. letbetter - varying reality

A Game Unthroned

Which is the true nightmare, the horrific dream that you have in your sleep or the dissatisfied reality that awaits you when you awake? -Justin Alcala

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]My dear mother, whom I  view now as a paragon on patience, more than once rolled her eyes in despair as she muttered in my general direction, “You’re just like a goose: you wake up in a new world every morning.” I don’t know how true that is of geese, but for children under the age of ten or so reality is a variable that changes on a whim.  There is nothing that is not possible and no adult can convince them otherwise. Varying reality is a given.  A child’s creativity and imagination create multiple complex universes that make perfect sense to the child and totally bale adults. A new world every morning? Why not?

Politicians have a way of creating their own varying realities as well, though perhaps without as much amusement as that of a five-year-old. Politicians give words and worlds different meanings, create vocabularies the rest of us can’t hope to understand, and argue over the meaning of is.  By politicians’ reasoning, charity is bad if it comes from their pocket but good if they’re receiving an act of kindness. Taxation is bad if it effects them and their campaign donors, but necessary to keep the poor engaged. Civil rights are fineto talk about until it means sharing a restroom with a gay person and his transgender spouse. Politicians rarely have any concept of reality that aligns with that of their constituents.

We can also lose reality, which is a very frightening proposition. I remember watching my granddaddy suffer through the stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I was too young to totally understand everything that was going on, but watching his world change from something sure to a unstable mix of memories was horrifying. 5.3 million people have Alzheimer’s and for them reality can change with the blink of an eye. I can hardly think of anything more nightmarish.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10 px”]By comparison, creating alternate realities in Photoshop ™ is easy. All one needs is a bit of imagination and a truck load of patience. Here, we really can begin to create the worlds we imagined as children. Elephants can be any color we want and may fit in a box we keep on a shelf if that’s how we choose to portray them. Light can come from multiple directions at the same time  (which isn’t always a good thing) and laws of physics are easily suspended. For a number of very creative people, varying reality is what they do best and we delight in seeing this alternative universe.

Not that everyone is equally gifted in creating new worlds. Creating new space, finding balance and just the right amount of light and shadow requires a level of patience few have. Plug-ins offer some hope of speeding the process, but applied inappropriately or incorrectly they can result in a horrible display of mismatched elements and conflicting tonality. Today’s image took the better part of the days to create and by comparison with some is not even all that challenging.

No one lives in a prefect world and because of that our imagination is consumed with varying realities that solve our problems and make living a little more fun. Digital manipulation allows us to bring some of those realities to life, to get them out of our heads where we can deal with them. Some days is like waking up in a new world every morning. It certainly beats hours of therapy.[/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

Uncategorized
Independence, Done Well
July 3, 2015
charles i. letbetter

charles i. letbetter

For My Birthday (2012)

“I do as I please, Monsieur Beauchamp, and believe me, what I do is always well done.” ― Alexandre Dumas

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]As you are reading this, chances are I am on my way to Chattanooga to see the boys. Well, at least one of them, maybe. The oldest is happy to be working the holiday weekend. Pvt. Letbetter is taking a short leave with friends in L.A. So, the youngest is, by default, stuck with Dad. This is what happens when children are raised to be independent; they grow up and go do their own thing with their own friends. Maybe they’ll send pictures, if they happen to think about it, but chances are we’ll have to prod them just to make sure they’re still safe. While I’ll miss having the other two around, this is ultimately a good thing. They are exercising their independence and it would be inappropriate to attempt to prevent that.

I never have understood this whole trend toward helicopter parenting; hovering over one’s offspring as though the umbilical cord was still attached. Loving one’s children does not require smothering them with so much of your attention that they become unable to sufficiently function without you. As much as we love our children, we need a break from them and I’m quite sure they welcome not seeing our faces for a few minutes. We want to be accessible when they have a legitimate need for assistance, such as kissing a boo-boo after they’ve face-planted the sidewalk (just as soon as we stop giggling about how funny it looked). We don’t want to shadow them to the point they lose their identity in our desires.

One of the larger playgrounds we frequent with Kat’s little ones is the perfect place for them to run and play without us needing to eyeball them the entire time. They run, they play, they make new friends, and when they’re sufficiently exhausted they come find us. We then tell them to go and play thirty minutes more because we don’t want them getting a second wind on the ride home. This is not just an exercise in independence, this is an exercise in wearing the children out so they’ll fall asleep without two hours of argument. We love going there.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]However, I am always amused by the parents of their peers who never sit down and take advantage of the intelligent way the playground is arranged. They stay right there within arms reach, not letting their child take even the slightest risk, manipulating their peer relationships, and managing their playtime. I’ve noticed these parents don’t stay at the park as long and I can only assume that it’s because they exhaust themselves more than they do their children. Some parents just have an emotional need to be close to their children; I get that. Their children, on the other hand, would probably do much better if mom and dad would back off just an itsy bit every once in a while.

Independence is something into which a child should grow, not something to which they flee out of desperation.  Yes, they are going to make mistakes. Yes, they are going to fall, or get lost, or have heart breaks. How else does one learn how to manage the challenges of life if one’s parents are there rapidly applying salve to every little scrape and preventing them from experiencing the natural consequences of their actions? We’ve seen the adults   those children become and it’s not attractive.

Many of the models with whom we work now are close in age to my own children and I often find myself making comparisons. Were they to be like the model in today’s picture I would be happy; she’s independent, ambitious, knows what she wants and is in control of her future (to the extent anyone can be). Not many people we meet are so impressive. She’s had more than her share of challenges and has weathered them well. She loves her mom, but she’s unquestionably her own person.

Maybe we’ll only see one son this trip. That’s quite alright because we love all three enough to let go and let them become who they need to be. Laws of nature demand baby birds leave the nest and fly.  We just hope they’ll send pictures. That’s independence done well. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

Photography  /  PotD
Life’s A Blur
June 7, 2015
charles i. letbetter

charles i. letbetter

Watch Me Hoop! (2011)

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over. -Richard Branson

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Photography has enough rules to choke a mule. There are rules about exposure. There are rules about depth of field. There are rules about framing and composition. There are rules about color, rules about black and white, and rules about mixing the two. Rules here, rules there, and there will always be that social media troll who wants to argue that you didn’t follow this rule or that, therefore your image is flawed. I have even seen student photographers carry around and religiously consult notebooks full of rules, making sure with each shot that they weren’t breaking any of the important ones. I don’t think any of those students ever actually made it as photographers.

While rules are certainly there for a reason, and the greater majority of the time actually do make sense, photography is not about rules. It can’t be. When photographers set out to only play by the rules, they get photos that may be technically correct but are emotionally lacking in anything resembling passion. Photographs without emotion are pointless. Why capture something that doesn’t make us feel, that doesn’t stir something inside us, that isn’t worth remembering? We take enough flak already from those who say photography is too automated, too reliant on technology, to be an art. If all we are doing is following the rules then we prove our critics right: the results are not art.

So we are devoting a full week of #POTD to breaking all the rules. Well, okay, we won’t have time to break all the rules. After all, there are only seven days in a week and just about any photographer can come up with at least ten rules that govern their specific style of shooting. So, I’ve chosen rules that I, personally, am likely to break most often; the ones where, for me, passion and creativity are more likely to outweigh the need to observe the rules. Young photographers, please note: when I break a rule, I almost always do so intentionally and with a specific purpose in mind. This isn’t arbitrary, except when it is. Totally.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The obvious error in today’s image is the amount of blur, not just in the hoop, but the little girl as well. We talked about motion blur just a couple of days ago, so click the link and read that piece first if necessary. I won’t repeat much of it here. One can easily argue that the motion blur of the hoop is like the effect of water in a stream: the picture just wouldn’t look right without it. That part isn’t really breaking the rules. The question comes in whether I should have used a slightly faster shutter speed to stop the motion of the little girl. My answer, obviously, is no.

Children are, themselves, a constant blur of motion, especially when they are between the ages of two and three. I love being at the playground with Kat’s little ones and seeing all the motion, and with it an equal dose of emotion, coming from all these tiny creatures who are having the time of their lives. If children are so naturally given to motion, shouldn’t their photos reflect that reality? Sure, we can make them sit still momentarily for a portrait, but when one is trying so very hard to show me, with incredible amounts of pride, just how well she can hoop, just like momma, to not include the motion of her little body would have been absolutely criminal! She was gyrating so fervently as to involve every muscle she has.

So, we break the rules about motion and blur. We still managed to capture that look of determination on her face and all the colorful richness of that early summer morning. She’s framed well and the background isn’t overwhelming. We still have a very good picture. What’s most important, though, is we have a picture her mother cherishes. This little girl just finished kindergarten and is growing, as children tend to do, with more speed than a parent wants. She’s beautiful. She has a little sister now and I’m guessing by this time next year she’ll be trying to teach her how to hoop as well. Capturing the joy of these moments is more important than following a set of rules. [/one_half_last]

Continue Reading

Page 5 of 5