Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies
LOS ANGELES —
Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, has died. She was 48.
Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unclear.
At her peak in the 1980s and `90s, Houston the golden girl of the music industry and one of the world's best-selling artists.
Among her hits were "How Will I Know," "Saving All My Love for You" and "I Will Always Love You." She won multiple Grammys including album and record of the year.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies like "The Bodyguard."
But by the end of her career, drug use took its toll as her record sales plummeted and her voice became raspy and hoarse.
By Sharon Knolle
Whitney Houston's rep issued a shocked denial today to counter reports that the singer/actress has died
In a statement, her publicist, Nancy Seltzer, said, "I've just spoken to Whitney. She is perfectly fine and does not understand why, with everything going on in the world right now, they have to find new rumors to dig up. She is home in New Jersey with her family." Seltzer said people were calling the singer at home and sobbing, after apparently having heard reports of her death over the radio. According to the rumors, Houston had died of a drug overdose.
Fans and the media have speculated about Houston's health after her performance at Friday's Michael Jackson tribute concert at Madison Square Garden, where she appeared shockingly thin, even skeletal. The singer then bowed out of the second night of the concert without explanation, prompting heightened speculation about her health. Houston has long been rumored to have drug problems, and in Tuesday's edition of the New York Daily News — which was evidently published before horrific terrorist attacks brought the city to a standstill — Seltzer denied fresh reports that her celebrity client was on drugs.
"Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress, she doesn't eat," Seltzer told the New York tab at the time.
Houston and her husband, singer Bobby Brown, have had a history of drug- and alcohol-related issues, including possession of marijuana charges for Houston in January 2000, which were later dismissed, and a 75-day stint in jail for Brown in 2000, after he violated his probation (stemming from 1996 drunken driving charges).
ABCNEWS.com's Buck Wolf contributed to this story.
Auto Focus: Blessing or curse?
photo by Ray Tharaldson all rights reserved 2010
5 Reasons to Turn off Your Autofocus
by Alistair Scott.
When I started using a camera autofocus was something out of science fiction. I mean … it would never work in real life, would it? Apart from anything else, how could it know what you wanted to focus on?
Now fiction has become fact, and pretty well every camera has AF as standard. It works, and works well. But it doesn’t always work perfectly. It can pick up the wrong thing or fail to find anything to focus on, causing the lens to ‘hunt’ back and forth. Sometimes it won’t even let you fire the shutter.
So, here are ten situations when it’s worth turning your autofocus off and going back to the ‘good old days’ of manual focusing:
1. When there’s not enough light
In low light, contrast is also low, and AF relies on light and contrast to latch on to things. Your camera may have an AF assist lamp built in. But, even if you have it switched on, it won’t work in situations like in the shot above.
Though the image looks bright enough, in reality there was little light, and it required a 30-second exposure.
2. When there’s not enough contrast
If your AF metering spot is on something like a plain-coloured wall the camera will find it impossible to focus, no matter how bright the light, and the lens will ‘hunt’. You can re-frame your shot temporarily so the spot is on something with detail and press the shutter half down to activate the AF. Then keep the shutter button half-pressed to lock the focus, and go back to your original composition. Or focus by hand.
3. Shooting wildlife
Most wild animals have excellent hearing and, no matter how good your autofocus, it will make a noise. Even the slightest whirr is likely to spook wildlife. Switch it off if you want those great, natural wildlife shots.
4. With landscapes
When shooting landscapes you usually want things in focus from the foreground to distant mountains. This means closing down the aperture to increase depth of field and focusing about a third of the way into the scene (at a point called the ‘hyperfocal distance’ where everything from quite close to infinity is sharp). Switch off the AF. If you leave it on, when you press the shutter it will re-focus … probably on those far-off mountains.
5. If you’re doing HDR
High Dynamic Range photography involves taking several shots of the same scene, all exactly the same except for exposure, then blending them when you’re back at the computer. It’s important to have identical focus in each shot to ensure success. With AF on, it may choose a slightly different focus point for each shot.
By Tecca
Just how tough is your average DSLR memory card? Apparently tough enough to survive a year at the bottom of the ocean. Naturalist and aspiring photographer Markus Thompson was scuba diving in Deep Bay near Vancouver, British Columbia, when he found a Canon EOS 1000D. Curious, he brought it to the surface and took ut the SD card, and was actually able to recover about 50 photos.
With a bounty of pictures and a desire to find the camera's owner, Thompson took to social networking for help. He posted his find to Google+, including pictures of the camera itself as well as the photos he was able to recover from the SD card. "Approximately 50 pictures on the card from a family vacation. If you know a fire fighter from British Columbia whose team won the Pacific Regional Firefit competition, has a lovely wife and (now) 2 year old daughter - let me know. I would love to get them their vacation photos," he posted.
The social network's hive mind then went to work. Details on just who the camera belonged to were slim at first, but after social network sleuths began scouring the photos, more information began to surface. The camera contained images that were shot at a region firefighting competition, and appeared to suggest that the camera's owner was on the winning team. After comparing faces to those on various websites that covered the event, the possibilities were narrowed down.
The owner, a firefighter from British Columbia, was finally identified. His station was then contacted, bringing an end to the pricey camera's unlikely journey. The waterlogged Canon - which can cost upwards of $500 in new condition - made its splash in August of 2010, and had been soaking ever since. Unfortunately, not further details are available on just how the device managed to find a home on the ocean floor, but we imagine a bump off the side of a leisure boat is a likely explanation.
We've seen the power of social media to spread information about important events and natural disasters, and it's nice to see it work on a much smaller and more personal scale. And while obviously the camera is a total loss, the family was able to secure their vacation photos, not to mention a story they'll be able to share for a lifetime.
WRLTHD Music News
all rights reserved 2011
By Brian Mansfield
Kenny Rogers likes his Christmas & Hits tour because it draws a completely different crowd than his concerts do the rest of the year. "Everybody's looking to remember what Christmas was like when they were kids," says the singer of country crossover hits like Lucille and The Gambler.
The 20-city music tour, which also features Billy Dean, kicks off tonight in Columbus, Ohio, and runs through Dec. 23 in Westbury, N.Y. "We try to do a lot of it up North, so we usually run into some snow."
Once upon a Christmas: The Christmas & Hits tour celebrates its 30th
anniversary this year. It all started with some guy in the back of
Atlanta's Fox Theatre during a mid-December show. "I was singing along,
and he yells, 'Are you going to do any Christmas music?' " Rogers says.
"I said, 'Well, wait a minute, I think I can.' So without even
rehearsing, we did some Christmas piece. And the next year, we did four
or five songs. It got bigger and bigger."
A Showman's life — and near death: During the late '60s, Rogers joined the New Christy Minstrels, a popular folk group whose skills didn't extend to an understanding of physics. Which is why it made perfect sense for Rogers and drummer Mickey Jones to put the big Fender Dual Showman amplifier on top of the station-wagon rack. "We thought, that's heavy enough," Rogers says. And it was, at 30 miles an hour. It was even OK at 40 miles an hour. "Once you hit 50, it's not OK anymore," he says. "That thing lifted up — thank God there was nobody behind us — and we looked in the rearview mirror and there were sparks flying for half a mile behind us. We hooked it up that night and it played, but it was a little bit scarred up."
A bridge too far: Rogers played upright bass during his year and a half with the New Christy Minstrels. On one tour, the constant shipping and jostling caused the wooden bridge that holds the strings away from the instrument's body to work loose. One night, "that sucker popped off and went flying out into the audience," Rogers recalls. "Then I couldn't play bass. Aside from the fact that we had no bass in the sound, I stood there like an idiot and held this bass that couldn't be played, with four loose strings on it."
Rogers has a theory: "The audience expects 100% entertainment," he says. "If the opening act only gives them 10, I've got to give them 90. But if the opening act gives them 90, I've only got to give them 10!" The audience got a few bonus percentage points during one early-'80s show in Chicago, when Rogers headlined a show that also featured comedian George Burns and R&B great Ray Charles. "It was one of the coolest things, that cross-section of humor and music, and it really worked somehow."
Traveling in style: The days of station wagons and Greyhounds are far behind Rogers, who now travels in a customized Prevost tour bus. "I have a flat-screen, I have a chaise lounge, I have a refrigerator," he says. "What else does a man need?"
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