Have you found your purpose in life? By Calvin Dorman

Do you know what is driving you? Why are you working so hard and doing so much to get what you want? Do you know your purpose for being here?

It seems strange that most of the time we go through life without any real purpose of our own. At times we do achieve great things and have the appearance of having a wonderful life. We may even have every material thing we could ever want and be successful at our careers, businesses and every thing else. But, as many who have achieved success will tell you, you can still feel empty inside and your life can still lack real meaning.

Have you ever noticed that everything has a purpose in life. The trees, ants, bees, birds and every living thing have a purpose for being. Human beings, whatever you believe their origin to be, are the greatest of all of nature?s wonders. Why then are most of them so purposeless in their existence?

It seems like many of us exist simply to exist. We live year in and year out as though living itself is our ultimate goal. If we make enough money and have enough things to get us through to the next year we are satisfied. Surely, there is more to our lives than that?

If you are anything like most people you are probably waiting for some miraculous experience that will tell you why you are here and what you must do. Such moments do occur for some people, but they are the exception and not the rule.

The fact is, most people already have the starting point for knowing their purpose in life.

It may be something that interests you, excites you, inspires you, or just that small voice in the back of your head that tells you you ought to be doing something.These are often the clues that hold the answer to finding your purpose. Unfortunately, they are often the clues we tend to ignore or suppress. Yes, they may not be complete clues. Certain pieces of the puzzle may be missing. But these pieces can only be found once we decide to set off on the journey.

Making that decision is the key. Therefore, (1) decide that there is purpose to your life. Then (2) decide to commit yourself to finding your purpose.

Without these two decisions being settled in your mind you will wonder through life like almost everybody else out there: busy, but achieving nothing.

Deciding to find your purpose will set you on the right track and make your mind receptive and ready to see every day things in a new light.

However, you have to seek out the answers. Read books that make you think, watch inspiring movies, spend time with the right people, develop your interests and passions.

All this is part of keeping your mind in the right environment, an environment that is right for your very own "a-hah moment".

There is no way in the world anyone can do what I have just described to you and end up living a meaningless life. One piece at a time the puzzle will become clear and complete.

You will discover your purpose, and when you do, it will likely not be some experience where you got hit on the head and nearly knocked out by the revelation. It will come naturally.

It will be something that combines most of your life?s experiences and your abilities into one perfect purpose. It will be something you probably had a clue about all along. However, don?t ever make the mistake of wanting to know everything before you start anything. Start where you are with what you have and with what you know.

Gentle reader, awake to the fact that you are already all you can be. You simply have to be brave enough to make the decision to go out there and be it.

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Going on Vacation? Photographic Advice, Part II

Vacation photography is a form of photo-journalism. In this case the events have personal family historical significance, but the mission is similar. You want a visual narrative of your trip, and the experiences of all who went on it with you. This is not as easy as it sounds, involving some thought and insight, all while enjoying the white-water experience of the vacay from your own viewpoint, and the zombie-fying glaze that settles in on about day three of any trip.



Every day is different for each member of the family. Try to focus on the highlights, yes, but also on everyone. Learn to work fast so as to bring some spontaneity to your trip pix, yet take the time to work situations, posed and candid. Remember to make good portraits, and be sure to back off to include overall shots. Everyone photographs food nowadays, but remember to do things like still life pictures of museums, decorations, hotel rooms (before and after you trash them). Many photo-cliche's exist for a reason. Do not be shy about making your own, even the usual frisky wife/hubby shots and those X-rated ones using the self-timer. The more photos you have to work with at the end of your trip, the greater the possibilities for making different types of albums.







Unless traveling with another photo-crazed person, it is best to focus on the shared experience, instead of risking mutiny by making everyone wait for "perfect light", etc. Like a photojournalist, traveling light and being able to work fast and thoroughly is of utmost importance.






A point-and-shoot is perfectly suited for this task, particularly the non-super-zoom kind. They close up flat, cover decent wide to portrait length tele, some do RAW mode (for when you dive deeper into photography). My recommendation in this category is the Canon S110 (about $450 or less).

Canon S110 camera.

 This is a first-rate small camera that is perfect for light travel. It lacks long zoom, but that long zoom means a bigger body, more weight, and to use those long focal lengths, you will need a tripod, too.

For a larger, fancier P&S, the Fuji X100 is an elegant, more professional instrument, with a great fast lensm a bigger sensor (here bigger is beter, specially (yes) in the dark. Cost? About $900.00 and....no zoom. But all the old men on the tour will be asking you about it, and if you do your best, this thing is capable of first-rate results and easily of 16x20" prints, if you need to make some.



The current King of P&S's is the Sony DSC RX-1. It has a 24x36mm sensor, the same as pro DSLRs, yet is far more portable. 24 megapixels, great low light capability, RAW, big print sizes, etc. All for a measly $2,800.00 and big for a P&S, overkill for 99.9% of all vacationers.

Sony DSC RX-1

No matter which camera you get, purchase at least two extra batteries (from the same company as the camera), perhaps an extra charger (to speed up the charging process). It is essential to take far more than enough high quality, large capacity memory cards. Do not delete any pictures on these cards while on your trip. Even if you download to your laptop or tablet, do not format and re-use the cards until you have them stored in at least two locations (drives) after you get home.






Camera bags are like underwear. Highly personal items. Plan on spending time at the store making certain you like yours. Take your camera, batteries and one or two spare memory cards, make sure they fit, are accessible, and can be taken out and returned to the bag with ease. Get the smallest one that does this well. For P&S use, I prefer Lowe-Pro brand.

Um...

_____________________________End Part II_______________________________






 

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Going on Vacation this Summer? Photographic advice, Part I .

Going on a summertime escape from our 90+ degree, 90+% humidity? A change of scenery? Grab some Culture? You'll want mementos, photographic fetishes, or fine art pictures of your trip, family, where you were. This post is to help you do that efficiently and well. We should begin by defining ourselves and our photographic mission. Are you the kind who is OK with carrying a big camera/lens all day? What will you do with your trip pictures? 30x40" prints, or maximum 8x10, Instagram, Flickr, etc.? Or put them in a one-man show in a gallery when you get back? If you are doing the latter, you need a far more comprehensive education than this post can provide, and probably have no time to acquire it before your trip.

There is no substitute for a talented and educated eye. You don't have a lot of time to work on that before you go on vacation, so you will have to make do with what you have on this trip. I suggest writing down all our major stops, going on Flickr and searching for pictures taken there. This gives you an idea of what others did, which you might want to improve on, imitate (blah) or discard. The next most important thing is to practice. Whatever you own, carry and use it every day, from now until you depart. Make lots of exposures, familiarize yourself with controls and modes, to the point that it becomes transparent.



Oskar Barnack invented the Leica because he was convalescing from tuberculosis, and a tourist in high, dry territory in the mountains. He wanted a small, pocketable camera he could take along on his walks, and created the Leica. He would have loved cellphones. If you are OK with prints around 10x10" or maybe 12x12", can live without long telephoto focal lengths, low-light performance and its other limitations, your phone might be all you need. You already own it, it weighs nothing (since you would carry it anyway), and can send pictures back to friends, facebook, instagram, etc. It also does not get in the way of enjoying times with your family. In order to get the best possible outcomes with your phone, you need to acquire serious experience with it. Before your trip, use it frequently, trying out the different modes and see the results.



I would advise getting a larger capacity battery for the trip, and  at least one or three extra memory cards, plus a car charger that plugs into the cigarrette lighter (if you're going by or renting a car when you get there.

Put in some practice time and test the different metering modes as well as your flash to ascertain the maximum distance that it can reach. On location, no matter what camera you are using, make LOTS of exposures, if possible. By lots I mean 5+

_______________________________End Part I_________________________________






Point and shoot cameras are small, lightweight, self-contained, and more flexible than most phones. 

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Become Your Motivational Speaker and Be Inspired in Life

These days it has been noticed that most of the people are unhappy with the ways that they currently living their lives. Stress at work, weight issues, stuck in a boring, dissatisfaction of the job. There are so many problems within this world that we often get hung up on it all and we allow ourselves to be hanged along; we are just stuck in a heat just waiting for something chilled to come along to change things for us.

What we all need to do is bringing up of something very real that can give us spiritual relief. Fortunately, we are available with lots of speakers who have powers to motivate people in required direction only with their spoken words.

During every instance of life when we choose some wrong way, need some real motivation for you. Do you believe that sitting in some posture for long hours and thinking about one same thing is the solution for the particular problem?

We all need to have good motivation in ourselves irrespective of just waiting for something to happen. The only thing which stands in our way when we want to change something is our motivation. Even if we want something really bad we often do not have enough motivation to change things for ourselves. It is so much easier to simply sit back and do nothing, than it is to face yet another challenge in life in order to make things better for yourself.

We can become very good motivational speakers for us just need some factors that enhance our self confidence. Just remember the very first day of your life when you took birth, you were born singly. Now just put your mind on the day when you are going to die that is also the day when you will leave this world single.

Here today in this article I want you to introduce before a motivational speaker that is occupied under you. We all are grown enough to understand realities of life. Do not make situations complicated. Sometimes we keep on searching solutions just before the correct time. No time is like bad or good only our thoughts and lack of patience makes it like bad circumstance.

When you are reading this article promise yourself to be the motivation in your own life first than in other people's life. When you achieve something in life that does not matter whether it is little or big but the thing that make it's happening possible influence positive powers in you.

Motivation is not like materials you can bring home and use it when you feel like to be motivated. You have to make your priorities in life. Once you will start following the inner voice inside you, will achieve more than your expectations you ever made.

Just ask yourself have you done such things that motivate you to do even better? Most likely the answer is yes. Since we achieve lots of things in our child age to younger period, it is the sign of hidden motivation in us.

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Christos Tsirogiannis on "Something is Confidential in the State of Christie's" (The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2013)

Greek forensic archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis writes "Something is Confidential in the State of Christie's" in the Spring 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime.

This article is a report on the appearance of "toxic" antiquities, offered by Christie's at auctions in London and New York during 2012, which have now been identified in the confiscated archives of the convicted dealers Giacomo Medici and Robin Symes. The research aims to reconstruct the true modern story and full collecting history of seven antiquities: a bronze board, a terracotta ship, a pair of kraters, a terracotta statue of a boy, a kylix, and a marble head. New evidence in each case presents a different version of the collecting history from that offered by Christie's. This paper, going in order through the Christie's 2012 antiquities auctions, demonstrates that in many instances the market uses the term "confidentiality" to conceal the identities of its disgraced members, and to put an end to academic or other research for the truth. It also reveals that most of the dealers, galleries, collectors and auction houses listed by Christie's as previous owners have been involved in several other cases of illicit antiquities.

Christos Tsirogiannis

Christos Tsirogiannis studied archaeology and history of art in the University of Athens, then worked for the Greek Ministry of Culture from 1994 to 2008, excavating throughout Greece and recording antiquities in private hands. He voluntarily cooperated with the Greek police Art Squad on a daily basis (August 2004 – December 2008) and was a member of the Greek Task Force Team that repatriated looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities from the Getty Museum, the Shelby White/Leon Levy collection, the Jean-David Cahn AG galleries, and others. Since 2007, Tsirogiannis has been identifying antiquities in museums, galleries, auction houses, private collections and museums, depicted in the confiscated Medici, Becchina and Symes-Michaelides archives, notifying public prosecutor Dr Paolo Giorgio Ferri and the Greek authorities. He will shortly receive his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, on the international illicit antiquities network viewed through the Robin Symes–Christos Michaelides archive.

Mr. Tsirogiannis writes in the introduction to his article:

In 1995, the Italian and Swiss authorities confiscated the Giacomo Medici archive in the Free Port of Geneva (Watson & Todeschini 2007:20). Later, in 2002, the same authorities confiscated the Gianfranco Becchina archive in Basel (Watson & Todeschini 2007:292). In 2006, during a raid at a villa complex maintained by the Papadimitriou family (descendants of the antiquities dealer the late Christos Michaelides), the Greek authorities confiscated the archive of the top antiquities dealers of modern times, Robin Symes and Christos Michaelides (Zirganos 2006b:44, Zirganos in Watson and Todeschini 2007:316-317). These three archives -- and, especially, the combined information they include (almost exclusively after 1972) -- provide an unprecedented insight into the international antiquities market. Research in the archives uncovers the ways in which thousands of looted antiquities, from all over the world, were smuggled by middlemen and "laundered" by auction houses and dealers, before being acquired by museums and private collectors, in contravention of the guidelines of the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1970 ICOM statement on Ethics of Acquisitions.

Since 2005, the Italian authorities, based on evidence from these three archives, have repatriated about 200 antiquities, from the University of Virginia (Ford 2008; Isman 2008:25, Isman 2009:87-88), Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Gill & Chippindale 2006; silver 2010:263-264), J. Paul Getty Museum (in three different occasions, for the first see Gill & Chippindale 2007; Gill:2010:105-106; Silver 2010:268; for the second and third see Gill 2012b and Ng & Felch 2013, respectively), Metropolitan Museum of Art (in two different occasions, for the first see Silver 2010:252-253; Gill 2010:106; for the second see Gill 2012a:64), Princeton University Museum of Art (in 2 different occasions, for the first see Gill and Chippindale 2007:224-225; Gill 2009a; Gill 2010:106-107; for the second see Gill 2012: Felch 2012a), Cleveland Museum of Art (Gill 2010:105), the Shelby White/Leon Levy private collection (Gill 2010:108; Silver 2010:272), Royal-Athena Galleries (dealer Jerome Eisenberg, see Gill 2010:107-108; Isman in Godart, De Caro & Gavrili 2008:24), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Padgett 1983-86 [1991]; Padgett 1984; Gill 2009b:85; Gill & Tsirogiannis 2011:32; Boehm 2011) and the Dietrich Von Bothmer private collection of vase fragments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Gill 2012a:64). Recently, Toledo Museum of Art agreed to return an Etruscan Hydria to Italy (The United States Attorney's Office 2012), while Dallas Museum of Art announced the return of 5 antiquities to Italy and 1 antiquity to Turkey (Richter 2012; Gill 2013b). From the numerous antiquities depicted in the three confiscated archives, the Greek authorities have managed to repatriate only 2 so far, both from the Getty Museum in 2007 (Gill & Chippindale 2007:205, 208; Felch & Frammolino 2011:290).

Following their repatriation, these antiquities were published and exhibited with acknowledgement of their looted past (Godart & De Caro 2007; Godart, De Caro & Gavrili 2008), revealing the true nature of most antiquities in the confiscated archives. So incriminating is the evidence in the three archives presented by the authorities during the negotiations for each object that in no case has any museum, private collection or dealer tried to defend their acquisitions in court. The reason is that the photographic evidence presents, in most cases, the oldest part of the object's modern collecting history ("provenance," its first appearance after being looted; smashed and covered with soil, or recently restored, without any previously documented legal collecting history. An attempt to defend their illicit acquisitions during a court case would have brought (apart from the inevitable surrender of the object(s)) a long-lasting negative publicity for the museums, private collectors and dealers involved, additional embarrassment, an extra financial loss and the possibility that their and others' involvement in more cases of looted antiquities would be revealed. The subsequent returns in 2012 and 2013 from the Getty Museum to Italy and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Italy in 2012 prove that point. 

Although each repatriation case attracted massive media attention (Miles, 2008:357; Felch & Frammolino 2011:284) and non-specialists around the world began to be informed about the true nature of the modern international antiquities market, the market itself reacted badly. Having missed the 1970 UNESCO opportunity to reform, the market is now losing a second chance to change its attitude, since it is continuing to offer antiquities depicted in the three confiscated archives (Gill & Tsirogiannis 2011).

The ninth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by Noah Charney and published by ARCA, is available electronically (pdf) and in print via subscription and Amazon.com. The Associate Editor is Marc Balcells (ARCA '11), Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- The City University of New York.

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