Fiorito: Did you smile? You were voting on candid camera

Fiorito: Did you smile? You were voting on candid camera

If you live on an upper floor in a highrise overlooking the Don Valley, and if you look west at night, you can see the valley woods and they are lovely, dark and deep.

Nice, in a “miles to go before I sleep” sort of way.

If you live in the highrise at 701 Don Valley Rd., and if you had tuned your television to the lobby channel on election day, you could have watched your neighbours lining up to vote at the polling station near the entrance.

Nice, in a “we’re all in this together” sort of way.

But if you had magnified the lobby camera view on your TV screen — given the angle of the spy camera and the placement of the voting tables — then you could have seen, with some degree of certainty, how your neighbours cast their ballots.

And that is not so nice, in a “secret ballot as a cherished principle of democracy” sort of way.

Yes, this is one last small story in the aftermath of the election. Sorry, that’s not quite true; there will be four whole years of stories in the aftermath.

Back to the lobby cam.

I dropped in on my friends Peter and Francoise the other night. They live at the aforementioned building.

Peter’s field is industrial robots. Francoise is an environmental scientist who specializes in brown water. They are a smart couple.

Francoise said, “We voted in the advance poll.” Because of that, they knew whose name was where on the ballot.

We were chatting in their living room. They have a big TV. Francoise had it tuned to the lobby channel. I saw a couple of views of the entrance, and then the spy pen camera cycled over the laundry room, and then it cycled back to the lobby again.

That’s where the polling station was.

Francoise happened to be pet sitting the night of the election. She had turned on the lobby channel to see what sort of crowd she’d have to wade through when she went out.

Peter said, “You could see the backs of the people as they voted, and the mini spy camera was at an angle so that you could see the ballot; if you zoomed in, you couldn’t read the names, but you could tell.”

I glanced at the TV. I saw an old fellow with a walker leave an elevator and enter the lobby. Francoise hit zoom. Up close. Personal.

Yikes.

Peter said, “In this riding, the councillor’s name was at the bottom of the ballot; you could tell. We were sort of stunned.”

What did he do?

“I thought of saying something. I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. Instead, I sent a letter to the organization that handles municipal elections in the province.”

In the letter, Peter indicated that he wasn’t interested in seeing anyone hauled up on any carpet; he just wanted to be sure that, when polling stations are set up in apartment building lobbies, the position of the lobby wireless spy camera be taken into account.

I’m not sure what anyone would do with the information, by the way. But that’s not the point. The point is that you might think you know how I voted, but you don’t have the right to see me doing it.

I glanced at the TV again.

The old fellow was still sitting on his chair when a young man came by and engaged him in conversation. Francoise said that was the sort of building they lived in; nice, neighbourly.

Peter showed me a note he got in return from the elections guy. I think they’re going to take a look.

An “over the shoulder” sort of look.

Nariman Ansari:candid camera

            Nariman Ansari:candid camera
“You can’t pay people enough to shoot children,” says photographer Nariman Ansari, who specialises in child and family photography. She is also the first photographer to do maternity and pregnancy portraits. As she leans back on the warm green couch in the living room of her Karachi apartment, frames of all shapes and sizes cram the wall behind her.
She chuckles as she remembers Kulsum, a two-year-old fireball who was brought to her studio a few months ago by her mother Marzia, to get photographs taken. “That girl gave me a gym session I will never forget!” Ansari remembers the day when Kulsum ran out of Ansari’s home studio, outside into the living room, jumping behind their huge sofa, and then running round and round the dining table, and back into the studio with Ansari chasing behind her with the camera and Marzia trailing after, her hands flailing, expression aghast and a stream of hopeless apologies pouring out of her mouth. “There was a moment where Kulsum was running towards me really fast, her hair flying and pink dress fluttering and her eyes full of a delirious kind of joy, and I was running backwards, away from her clicking my camera. I just had to capture the moment.”
Ansari, 31, one of a handful of child and family photographers in the country, started Firefly Fotoworks out of her one-room home studio in November last year. Before that, the young Indus Valley graduate dove headfirst into directing right after she finished university, giving her photography minor a backseat. For two years she assisted director Saqib Malik with high profile commercial music videos like Fuzon’s “Khamaj”, Ali Azmat’s “Na re Na” and even the India-based “Ghoom Tana” featuring actress Nandita Das. She worked for a couple of production firms and briefly directed a Pakistani sitcom called “Minglish”, until she gave birth to her son Izdeyar. It was not until the beginning of last year that she decided to pick up her spy pen camera again and start a business from home.
“I spent about two to three years feeling like a failure because I wasn’t directing, something I had wanted to do ever since I was 12. I thought that by now I would’ve directed a serial. It felt even worse because people had had so many expectations of me because of who my parents were,” she says referring to her mother, popular TV personality Bushra Ansari, and her producer/director father Iqbal. “And then I had to make a decision. I couldn’t keep feeling sorry for myself. I decided to make the most of what I had — if my lifestyle was giving me the opportunity to do this, with my children, or with my yummy mummy friends who had children, who was I to say no? It was time I accepted who I was and stopped trying to be someone I thought I was going to be.”
It was Ansari’s newfound appreciation of her relationship with her husband and son which inspired her to take up this kind of photography. She remembers trying to get her son Izdeyar’s picture taken at Jimmy’s studio, and how nerve-racking it was. Izdeyar simply would not allow the man take a decent picture. “There was no chemistry between them,” explains Ansari, “the photographer was a sombre old bearded man waving a ganda sa khilona in front of Izdeyar and nothing was happening. There was no magic.”
It was then that Ansari returned home, took out her studio lights and her digital spy camera and started setting up a studio space in her home. She called over her neighbour Maroosh and her twin daughters and held a trial photoshoot. “I needed to see if I really had the chemistry I thought I did with kids. I had to see if I could bring magic.” The pictures turned out great. And that’s hardly surprising given Ansari’s playful nature and comforting look. The cuddly yummy mummy has short curly hair, a sweet coaxing voice and lots and lots of patience. It is with this gentleness that she slowly wins the trust of the fussy divas that visit her studio, and once they feel comfortable they allow her in, and she gets her picture.
While photographing, it is relationships in their rawest most natural forms that continue to intrigue Ansari; relationships between a mother and daughter, husband and wife or grandfather and grandson. She captures moments that are as natural as they can get, be it anger, sadness or utter joy.
She clicks away with her mini spy camera for hours on end if she has to, never directing. “You cannot direct children, they are not going to listen you because they don’t even listen to their moms.” Ansari simply allows her subjects to interact; interact with their families, their surroundings and themselves. Some of Nariman’s favourite pictures include a little girl, Leena playing with her long curly hair, and another one that she took of the fireball Kulsum in between her fits of energy when she’s rubbing her eyes and her mother is kissing her head, or the one of baby Haadi flashing a smile with his eyes twinkling so mischievously they seem like they’re on fire.
“It is so important to cherish those moments,” says Ansari, “I wish I had somebody take pictures like that of me when I first met my husband as opposed to those emotionless wedding portraits that have been photoshopped to death. They aren’t memorable at all!” She then gets up from her seat to show me a photograph that hangs on her living room wall, a picture of four generations of Ansari women, Nariman holding little Izdeyar, her mother Bushra, Bushra’s mother and grandmother, in two rows of two, with the top row standing and bottom sitting, staring straight at the wireless spy camera with forced smiles. “This just documents what we look like, but it doesn’t capture what we had between us,” she says sadly, “and for this we went all the way to Lahore to get the photograph taken with my great grandmother. I would make this sort of effort for a photograph…and I would want to cherish the magic that existed between all of us.”

Smile: that candid camera is filmming you

           Smile: that candid camera is filmming you

Catching two elderly men tussling in an argument at an off-leash dog park may not be what the Port of Coupeville had in mind when surveillance spy cameras were installed at Greenbank Farm.

But the mini spy cameras, which also went up at Coupeville Wharf, are helping police catch vandals and hopefully helping to deter thieves – even if the need to protect taxpayers’ investment in the community results in a loss of a sense of privacy.

It may be disturbing, and for some even disheartening, but if you think someone is watching you, in this day and age – and right here on Whidbey Island – it might just be true.

Islanders are used to the ubiquitous ferry cams. In fact, most of us welcome them and turn to the Washington State Ferries website to peek at loading backups and count the cars in line.

With the placement of traffic spy pen cameras by Whidbey Telecom along Hwy. 525 in Clinton and by the state Department of Transportation at all of the ferry terminals, mountain passes and scattered along roadways throughout the state, it’s possible that a driver could be viewed at various spots along a 300-mile, cross-state route from downtown Clinton to Spokane.

It might be easy to take monitoring of the roadways for granted, but what about when you’re trying to get away from it all, like at parks and beaches? You can bet that if you find cameras there, it’s because someone else’s bad behavior got there first.

Washington State Parks spokesperson Linda Burnett said vandalism at South Whidbey State Park had become such a vexing and expensive problem that cameras were permanently installed.

The cameras, which went up about four years ago, monitor traffic to and from the restrooms, which had been besieged by graffiti and thousands of dollars in damage to toilets and quarter machines. A camera was even mounted to point at a tree whose bark had repeatedly been burned by vandals.

The cameras cost $1,000 each, but Burnett said they’ve already more than paid for themselves in preventing more damage to the restrooms.

So far, South Whidbey is the only state park on Whidbey Island where damage had become so pervasive that surveillance was required. Accessibility may be the reason it’s become an easy target. It’s located on well-traveled Smugglers Cove Road and the restrooms are near the park entrance.

Coupeville Mayor Nancy Conard said there were once cameras at some of the town’s parks, but that program has been discontinued.

Coupeville Marshal David Penrod explained it was because the amount of crime didn’t warrant the staff time and effort involved in implementing the cameras.

But the standard is different for law enforcement, Wallace said. All Coupeville and Oak Harbor patrol cars have cameras that capture a view of an officer as he or she approaches a vehicle that has been stopped.

Law-enforcement personnel also wear remote microphones. They’re only required to advise anyone they stop that they are being recorded.

Davis said he is pretty happy with the results of his surveillance equipment.

“It’s served me well,” he said, adding that he figures that people can assume they’re on “candid camera” just about anywhere there is something of value that needs to be protected from theft.

“I would imagine most retail businesses must have surveillance,” he said.

While that may be an overestimation on Davis’s part, at least here on Whidbey, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility in the near future as wireless spy cameras become cheaper and easier to use.

Just try to remember you might not be as alone as you thought – and remember to smile.

Will reduce the quality of life of Low-carbon living it?

           Will reduce the quality of life of Low-carbon living it?

The recent introduction of the “second Five-Year Plan” to develop recommendations, explicitly as a major energy saving special plan, Forced expected to establish mechanisms and long-term mechanism.

In fact, energy conservation, low-carbon lives not far away from us, turning off light, save water, and fewer cars and other acts, all belong to low-carbon lifestyle. But others worry that life will reduce the quality of Low-carbon.

I was quite supportive of this initiative, Low-carbon life can benefit our health, lower living expense, which have a social responsibility performance, but also make us more beautiful living environment together.

For energy conservation, little thing from the side as long as we do not need to bother to pursue this outcome, just take it a habit like, We can also carry around mini camera to friends shoot down some good acts of life, on the Internet ,make more and more people to added the team.

In order to protect our planet, we should call more people to joint to the cause, the government can hold on to promote the game of civil energy industry innovation, pen camera filmed entertainment and either play advocacy role, and strengthen efforts to publicize and popularize knowledge of energy conservation, improve the environment and public transport services, so people experience the benefits of this initiative. Kids can also use your camera mode car meaningful people and things around, know how to protect our planet and become a real Altman.

Who will pay for my youth?

               Who will pay for my youth?

I watched the leaves on campus suddenly burst into tears, Could not help but hand to touch them, perhaps their own, and they have the same destiny, so there are feelings connected with the disease. I know that maybe only I can feel their helplessness and loneliness, because I often use the camera mode car to cuptured them, baby leaves, do not cry! No one feel sad that we do not go anywhere, a alone become a habit that will not hurt.

There will always be an illusion：I do not belong to the raucous Red! But how are they escape, Everytime and hit the oncoming stranger face to face, I will not help slow down the peace of their own, because I like to hear their heart, because I want to know their heart is not struggling like me? From the pen camera can see now I looked haggard, nothing like normal people.

I was not already hopeless? Every day with their own brilliant smile to greet all, but there will always be unprepared in case of their own have no reason to fall into the mud flow being sad.

Human” character, although only a simple two-strokes, but it also extends to the two extremes of unlimited, I stood for my life to the turnoff and the hesitation and uncertainty which ones to wander, Not no target is not do not know what I want, but always for my next step to put the hesitation.

Those who use the pen with camera in this dress of the youth why the vicissitudes of life in the groaning and struggling alone? Cycle next life I can choose what kind of imprinting in the world to exist? Con I do not make a person? Flowers why litter the wings to the sky and understand the desire to fly? How to release those who have the “War”? learn to forget, is not it can no longer to sad? their youthful elegy why only their singing with tears not vanish into absolute sound?

Who will pay for my youth?