counter customizable free hit
About This Website

This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

Search this site
Recent Topics
Journal Categories
Archives by Month
Subscribe
listed

Photography Directory by PhotoLinks

Powered by Squarespace
Login

BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries in fashion and beauty (4)

Thursday
Mar202008

nfscd # 7 ~ Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America

crushedtriptychsm.jpg1044757-1426889-thumbnail.jpg
Shattered hopes and dreams * click to embiggen
decay # 14 drew a reply from James that, distilled to its essence, said "... Vegas disgusts me. It is, in my opinion, the ultimate example of, to quote Mark, 'dumping all over' America and squandering our resources." If you haven't read my entry, you might want to give it a glance in order to understand why James thought his Vegas anecdote was relevant to the discussion at hand. IMO, it was appropriate.

However, The Landscapist's ever vigilant fact-checker (the guy who lets me get away with nothing), Paul Maxim, disagrees. He opined that; "Sorry, I don't get it. Las Vegas is no worse than most American cities and better than many of them. Is that good enough? Probably not. But to paint this city as the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America is as ludicrous as it is uninformed."

Ok. It seems that we all (me, Paul and James) agree re: Las Vegas - "Las Vegas is no worse than most American cities and better than many of them. Is that good enough? Probably not." But, IMO, Paul's defense of Las Vegas is a bit of damning with faint praise. I, personally, have never considered the phrase "not good enough" to be a positive endorsement of anything that I might be doing.

However, I don't wish quibble over that particular point. I'm more interested in the notion of considering Las Vegas is as "the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America" and I think there is a very good case for thinking of it as such. Why? The manner and message of how the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau (or some such other tourism promotion agency) wants us to think about the place.

All tourism promotion entities are forever trying to come up with the tag line or phrase that most memorably places a mental picture of the place in the perspective tourist's mind. Las Vegas has landed upon the tag line, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". IMO, you would have to be naive or an idiot to think that what they are suggesting by "what happens in Vegas" is about double parking or jaywalking.

What it suggests to me is activities involving sex, drinking, drugs, gambling, and excessive indulgences that, after you arrive back home, you are not going to brag about (or even discuss) to your wife, your kids, your mother, your priest, or another 'upstanding' citizen of your community. This is not to suggest that some, maybe even most, don't go to Vegas just to have some good clean fun but then, when you think about it, why would they care whether or not what they did in Vegas, stays in Vegas?

IMO, I think that a very good case can be made for considering Las Vegas to be "the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America" if for no other reason than that's how the LVCVB wants us to think about it.

Friday
Mar142008

nfscd # 6 ~ a pictured woman

annmariesm.jpg1044757-1412632-thumbnail.jpg
A look both waysclick to embiggen
What makes a great portrait? That's a question posed by Miguel Garcia-Guzman on his blog, [EV +/-] Exposure Compensation.

It's a good question and the answers from a number of great photographers, editors, curators and bloggers are also good answers. It's well worth your time to check it out.

And, while you're at it, what do you think makes a great portrait? Do you have one to share?

FYI, re: today's picture - Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine ... Now, just replace 'gin joints' with 'photo studios' and you'll get the point.

Tuesday
Mar042008

nfscd # 3

waistcafesm.jpg1044757-1387073-thumbnail.jpg
Self promotion piecesclick to embiggen
I was the first photographer in Pittsburgh to dive into the digital darkroom with a Mac/Apple IIci and Photoshop 2.5.

The IIci has a 25mhz processor and a 40mb hard drive. It maxed out at 128mb of RAM. FYI, at the time, 1 Mb of RAM cost around $50 so my IIci maxed out at 32mb of RAM. Processing speed was a tad slower than a snail on downers.

Photoshop 2.5 didn't even qualify as a pale imitation of its present self - the first stab at layers, limited masking, no image previews, (to see the effect of a filter, you had to apply it and then wait - sometimes wait and wait and wait - up to 10 minutes or more with some filters. If you didn't like the result, undo it and start again.), and, BTW, only one undo ... Even back then PS had powerful, pre-press capable color editing tools but I also used Painter because it had superior brushes, masking and layer blending capabilities and files could be moved back and forth into Photoshop.

In any event, making photo-based illustrations like Waist Knot and Cafe Society was a long and tedious process which was why, after a long day of photo editing, I turned off the work software and got lost (on occasion, until the sun came up) in the world of MYST.

Monday
Mar032008

nfscd # 2

pghcvbsm.jpg1044757-1384713-thumbnail.jpg
Dancing and leapingclick to embiggen
Back in the days before Photoshop, creating pictures like 'dancing and leaping' was a long and demanding process. In this case, our intrepid subjects, Rod Woodson of the Pittsburgh Steelers and a dancer from the Pittsburgh Ballet, were required to leap, jump, twist, turn and generally contort their bodies every which way over and over and over again.

In today's PS universe, a photographer can work with each subject individually in order to capture the 'perfect' body language and then paste the 2 separate images together in PS. Back in the stone ages of the analog photography world, it was necessary to keep shooting and shooting until the photographer felt he 'had it' in the can. Notice, I said "felt he had it", because there was no way of knowing for certain that you 'had it' until the film came out of the soup.

The difficulty / challenge of getting 2 subjects to get the right body language at the same instant is, well, difficult and a challenge. In this case, a series of pictures for a Pittsburgh tourism campaign, the degree of difficulty was mitigated by the fact that I was able to photograph a professional athlete and a professional dancer who were, in a sense, just 'doing their thing(s)'. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if I had to use models who would have had to fake it.

Just thought you might like a glimpse at life before faking it has become the way to go.