If you are a scientist, from time to time you hear a discussion about Open Access or Impact Factors… You for sure have your opinion on those “hot topics”. Now, is anybody ever thinking about how unfair the peer review procedure is? The reviewer always knows who wrote the paper he is reviewing, and I am sure quite often people who should do not refuse. Isn’t reviewing somebody’s paper the best way to get to them? And you will never know, because the reviewer remains anonymous. I am leaving alone the fact how often reviewers know little about the subject and ask really….. trivial questions.
Now, there are two possible ways to change the peer review process. My favorite would be to make it double blind- reviewer doesn’t know whose paper he is reviewing and the author doesn’t know who reviewed his manuscript. Sounds fair to me. But recently discussing it with my husband, he came up with another idea- the double-open peer review. Scientists prepare manuscript and simply put it out to the open discussion by everybody who cares. Of course if you ever read all the comments to news stories on any news web page, you realize that the discussion to be constructive needs to be somehow moderated. Moderated, not censored! I cannot think of simply making that type of open review happen, but I like the idea.

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The Daylight Saving Time since last weekend is the only sign of spring coming so far. And maybe Easter next weekend. There is still snow on lawn and driveway. OK, maybe the spring will arrive eventually, so we decided to do some spring cleaning yesterday. Our walk-in-closet went first. Hmmmmm… Last time we went through our clothing three years ago, when we packed stuff to move to US. Since then we were just buying more hangers. No wonder, we managed to prepare two large bags of unused (one year rule ) pants, tops, sweaters. I will drive by Goodwill tomorrow after work. We have more space in our closet, and about 50 spare hangers. And I feel psychologically lighter, stuff off, burden off.

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Last Christmas, my husband and I got a nice new camera. My dream camera I should add- we had a few nice cameras before, but I really dreamed of a Nikon. So, having a Nikon D40x for the first time in my hands, I decided- now or never. Let’s finally start taking a pictures like a pro.
A little bit of history now. My first contact with photography was when my father was taking out his gear- all his cameras I don’t even remember the brands, lenses, filters… It was overwhelming, but ultimately leading to weekends spent in dark room which small bathroom in my parents flat was becoming. Developing the photos was magic, and preparing the solutions- fun. It was my first contact with chemistry laboratory as well. It all resulted in me becoming a chemist rather then photographer, though.
Anyway, my take on every new hobby or interest is to get about every book they have in local library and read it. After two months, I am at my sixth book and feel that I am getting a handle on things. Let’s see, few basic rules I already figured out:
1. Shooting like a pro? You just need to remember to set 4 things before pressing the shutter- ISO, shutter speed, aperture and white balance. And do it in less than few seconds? Yeah, my record is about 7 min, just because my accompanying husbands gets irritated by then…
2. Pro photography requires a tripod and most of all- time. When you go with friends for vacation, you end up taking snap shots anyway. On P mode, to make you feel like a pro.
3. If already everybody knows (and does) shoot flowers from their level, it is not original and fresh anymore.
4. OK, maybe “RAW is a format, not a religion” (I cannot find in which book this was) but I think that pro-amateurs may in fact appreciate more shooting RAW than JPEG. I can correct easily few basic mistakes in software when I have RAW- like wrong white balance or a bit of over or under- exposure.
Let me get on reading now :).

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