It’s not unheard of that portions of council meetings are held in camera. 

Monday’s council meeting wasn’t an exception.

An in-camera deliberation comes both as a curse and a blessing for members of the press gallery.

It gives us time to catch up writing stories or make extra phone calls to add more information and make a story more compelling.

But it also bores, especially when the only thing you need for a story was the vote of yes or no, and you’re ready to hit send.

In camera, is derived from Latin, which means “in a chamber,” but in legal terms it means “in private.”

In court cases it means a session to which the public and press are not admitted. It’s the opposite of trial in open court where all the parties and witnesses testify in a public courtroom, and attorneys make their arguments in public.

Entire cases may be heard in camera when, for example, matters of national security are involved. In camera reviews may also be used during otherwise open trials – for example, to protect trade secrets or where one party asserts privilege, such as attorney-client privileged communications. 

This procedure allows the judge the opportunity to review the document in private before determining its admissibility in open court.

In camera may also be used to describe a closed board meetings which covers information not reflected in the minutes and not available to the public. 

Such sessions may discuss personnel, financial or other sensitive decisions that must be kept secret, for example, a proposed merger or strategic change which the organization does not yet want competitors to know about.

It’s like when your parents decide to have a closed-door conversation in their bedroom and you’re not allowed to come in and be part of it.

If you’re curious enough you can try and ask your mom or dad, what they talked about behind closed doors, in private.

After an in-camera council session, reporters, who care to stay, wait outside the chamber to ask the mayor or any council members ballsy enough to talk about what transpired in the secret meetings.

Yes, we’re like children wanting to know what was discussed and how such decision would affect ordinary citizens.

Sometimes we get lucky when the mayor tells us. Of course we don’t get details. We just get the filtered version, but if you find a strategic way to ask questions and get the answer you need, your stories could grace the paper’s next day front page.

Secrecy, for whatever reason, acceptable or not, legal or otherwise, proprietary or simply whimsical, always stirs one’s appetite to know.

There’s something sexy about knowing what’s the secret exchange was about.

But also there’s a lot of frustration.

Every single time that an in-camera meeting takes place, there’s always a motion that council members agree to: keep the information protected under the Freedom of Information Privacy Act.

They seal it from the prying eyes of reporters, who are always hungry for details, reporters who’ve committed their lives to unearthing the truth in the name of keeping the public informed.

Who am I kidding, I’m just simply programmed to want to know, because I somehow feel a certain power in knowing that I know something that others don’t and I want to let them know that I know.

Seriously, it feels great to know. And when you do, you want those not in the know to know. So you write the story.

There are days your mom or dad will tell you what they talked about in secret, but you won’t know the details.

Sometimes it quenches your thirst for information. At times, it breeds more questions and confusions.

But when either of them won’t say anything, it makes you wonder if you had done something wrong.

There are days, I feel that I have contributed to council members’ desire to go in camera.

More often, I tell myself, they’re just cutting their losses. They just don’t want their embarrassing exchanges become fodder for columns and fiery criticisms.

In a way, I can’t blame them when they’ve fallen prey to a journalist’s search for a subject of a political tirade that sometimes skins them alive.

But that’s part of the contract they signed with the public when they asked them to mark that ballot that put them on their seats.

I’m now ready for my in-camera. Wait, why am I smiling? 

Oct. 5, 2009

DarwinWiggett gives some tips on how to produce

eye-catching color in your photos: 

#mce_temp_url#

In my latest RAW Processing Solutions column for AfterCapture I turned to digital imaging powerhouse Scott Rickenberger of Chase Jarvis Studios to shed some light on Clarity, the nifty and powerful, but confusing and often-misunderstood raw developing control in ACR and Lightroom.

After Scott (and some other friends) clued me in on Clarity I’m see how well I can use (and not use) this gem. It turns out that a +100 Clarity setting might work great on one image while +5 might ruin another. All depends on content.

If your not fully Clarity conscientious read my article, and let me know what you think.

Perhaps the easiest and most popular form of photographic forced perspective is done while positioning the subject somewhere in the scene so that they appear particularly large or small in comparison to the world around them. The trick is particularly amplified when you can get the subject to interact with rest of the scene in way which would be unnatural or unexpected. Such as leaning on the Leaning Tower of Pisa or eating a nautical submarine that’s in the water.

When you take a forced perspective it’s best to have the foreground and background look like they are together and interacting. This can be a problem when you have a shallow depth of field so you’ll want to maximize the depth of field by using a small aperture and using a wide angle. The wide angle is also helpful for exaggerating perspective. However, the small apertures often slow the shutter speed down to much to take a sharp photo, so on all but the sunniest of days you may need to increase the ISO (if you use Auto ISO, it should do it for you). Another way to increase the believability of the interaction between subject and scenery is to remove from the composition (in camera or by cropping later) items that make the interaction too improbable. For example, if where the subject is standing in front of fence and the scenery was behind it, it would be recommended to try cropping the area where the fence resides. A final trick before I leave you with summary, if the subject is supposedly exerting force against the scenery, consider tilting the camera to help convey that movement.

ISLAMABAD: The joint sitting of Parliament’s in-camera session has been adjourned till Wednesday at 11:00am.

Earlier, Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman said war against terrorism was being fought for the larger interest of country.

The federal minister, while briefing the parliamentarians on government’s security policy, said that government had devised a three-point strategy for tribal areas which includes dialogue, development program and military operation as a last option.

The information minister explained that government was holding talks with those who had laid down their arms.

Meanwhile, some members of PML-N lodged strong protest for not allowing to speak on point of order.

Later, Speaker National Assembly Fehmida Mirza adjourned the joint session of parliament till Wednesday at 11:00am.

Mapping the journey to create a Reusable Learning object for others.

1. The Rules
2. The acts
3. The Courts dates calendar

I have added a new Links category called Music to Sample. Click on the link and it should load up for you or you can right-click on the link to save it to your hard drive. These songs are freely shared by the artist. Some of the links may rotate off the list or simply evaporate for no more reason than I decided I didn’t like them after all. So it’s best that you grab them while you can.