I got a little carried away yesterday. Sorry about that.

Picked up the Ranger yesterday. This is my first four-wheeler since 2002. This is a 2001 Ranger Edge standard cab 4x4 in white, with the 3.0 V6 and auto transmission. Everything seems to work right and I'm looking forward to doing some winter travel in it. Drove it to work this morning. I won't be doing that often though as motorcycles are faster, cheaper and cut through urban traffic better.

This is Mindy, photographed in my hotel room in Columbus, Ohio last month. It is notable that this hot babe is 41 years old.

As these things happen sometimes, the last three books I've been reading have dealt with "The Singularity." Two are fiction and one that I've mentioned earlier, Radical Evolution by Garreau, is non-fiction. The Singularity seems to have become a meme these days.

As simply as I can describe my own understanding, The Singularity is the point (date, year) when the accelerating curve of technology, which asymptotically approaches vertical, becomes vertical or close enough that no individual or organization or computer system can keep up with it. More knowledge has been added to the world in the last ten years than in all the rest of human history. Think about that.

What I find more interesting is that in all three books the authors have suggested that rather than a singularity what we really will have is a discontinuity. Obviously time must continue. The question is how does time continue after knowledge or computing power or human/machine ability becomes close to god-like? The math answer is that the X-axis doesn't stop there, but another curve (not sharing a point on the X scale with the first curve) picks up from Y-value zero and now asymptotically approaches some Y value that describes some fixed limit (or geometric increase) to knowledge, computing power or human capability. Visualize a hyperbolic curve where X and Y (or something close like Y= 0.01X) are the normal tangents to the curve.

So life will go on after everyone says "What the fuck?" and some guy will climb into the technological equivalent of a '53 DeSoto and wonder how to make it faster as he drives off to his job calculating actuarial tables using a slide rule.

(This photograph has nothing to do with the preceding, but is simply there because it fits the title of this blog. Angela, photographed in my hotel room in St. John's, Newfoundland, two weeks ago.)

Tex-Mex, New Mexican, California Nuevo Cuisine...I love Mexican food. I've eaten at Mexican chains in Ankara, Paris and Hamburg and at mom & pop places in New York, Arizona, Colorado and Mexico, but there is no Mexican food better than what can be found here in San Diego!

I just had dinner at Pokez (say Poke-ease). The best carne asada made from flank steak as it should be, stuffed with cheese and beans into a plate-sized chimichanga (think deep-fried burrito), covered with guacamole, sour cream, more cheese, and with cabbage and carrots on the side. Five bucks. There is no better food deal in the world, provided you don't mind eating a whole lot of things that will eventually kill you. Washed down with a local microbrew IPA. Heaven.

Pokez is a "socialist" restaurant on the corner of 10th and E Street downtown. Run by a team of brothers and one sister, staffed by cousins, locals, transients, etc. They just got around last year to putting tile over the black-painted plywood subfloor that has served them since it opened a decade back. The place is full of counterculturalistas, punks, skaters, bodymodists, artists, kids of all ilks and a few burbies coming in for the adventure.

Others I recommend locally are Chuey's (just down the block here in the barrio and usually filled with local gov't and business insiders) and for tourists, The Old Town Mexican Cafe, which, depite it's targeted customer base, has some real good food. I recommend the chilaquiles with verde sauce, coffee and a paper for an early Sunday breakfast with the local longboard surfers.

Trish playing with Marriah in a motel room in West Hollywood a few weeks back. And I was there!

So it's on for Toronto over New Years and I've booked my flight. Hotel reservations next somewhere near Kensington Market/Chinatown/Funky Artsy Place.

Not much else going on. I've decided finally to buy a pickup truck again. It's been a long time only riding motorcycles and that cramps my ground travel in the winter. I'll be looking at a 2001 4x4 Ranger tomorrow that's undervalued (unless there's something I don't know yet). If that doesn't work, something similar will come along.

Sorry, no profundity tonight. I'm hungry.

Lindsay Lee getting awfully close to it in the Chicago hotel last month.

In a comment to a post below, James asked about my preference for B&W over color photography. I answered with a few true statements but think there's more to be said.

When art galleries and museums were still resisting color photography (not that long go) I joined an organization that had the specific charter of forcing color to be considered. At the time there were a few cibachromes shown and giclée prints were just beginning to be acceptable (only because they weren't called "ink jets"). But the preponderance of art photography was B&W and there was a presumption that color would have to be made by an artist already recognized in B&W. I've always thought the art establishment were pretty stupid, but what they really are is ultra-conservative.

Color photography is just fine. But color as a substitute for structure or detail isn't. These days, when most art buyers prefer my old color work, I'm back making B&W and trying to get it right before adding color again. That's how I want to think about it - the addition of a feature. A wash of color over a well-structured photograph.

A person unwilling or unable to think hard and critically is good and truly fucked, for the best part of the world is that which appeals to the only unique human characteristic - the mind. Some will argue that there's a soul, and if there is, the same thing applies; hard critical thought spurs the soul to growth and depth.

I've argued that art should be hard. One doesn't go duck hunting for the meat. One goes duck hunting for the duck hunting, and while the duck is nice, it can be bought for far less than is usually spent on a duck safari. Art is not only the product, but the process. An easy process produces a shallow product. There is nothing of the artist invested. This is not to say that a long hard process always produces deep and enduring art, of course. I've wasted a lot of time and effort producing schlock (witness this nice picture which could have been made as easily by anyone with luck and a disposible or digital camera). But everything good I've made has been accompanied by thought and hard process.

Picasso used to pay his bills by cheque, knowing that the recipient would likely value the signature over the money. Picasso's source of signatures was infinite. But his source of art wasn't. His paintings took work, imagination, thought, planning, time and money to make. But if people thought somehow his signature had value aside from his art, they were welcome to think that and he was happy to have the money remain in his account. If you were to ask him whether he placed some art value on his signature, I'm pretty sure he would have laughed at the folks he knew he was scamming.

Despite what people will say publicly, the art they value most is that which has the most work invested. And art with the most work invested is usually the best.

Angela in a nice snapshot made in a hotel in St. John's, Newfoundland, last weekend. But there are better photographs coming.

(By the way, anyone with an opposing viewpoint is invited to comment, or even better, to do a guest post here with an appropriate image. Send me an email link through comments and I'll get back to you without posting your info.)

Uma bound in our room in Chicago. Took awhile to get the lighting to work here. Had I wanted her to show better, then everything outside the window would fall off the curve and be blown out. But I wanted to show the parking lot out there with her tied in full view of any passerby, so I went with sorta hard contrast and a little dodging to brighten her face just a bit. In the process the edge of her left leg was lost to the shadows, but that's not as important as the other factors.

The jacket and shirt were left where they were to put another identity in the room, and I like the way this one worked out. Some other photographs from that shoot didn't work as well as the contrast of the scene combined with added contrast from pushing the film meant important shadows were lost or highlights were blown out. Reducing contrast digitally could be done, but then the contrast within the subject, Uma, would be lost. Or I could have lassoed the window and treated it as a separate layer, but I generally don't want to do something I wouldn't do in the darkroom (though it could be done by masking there too if I really wanted to work hard).

OK, enough techie shit. Back to philosophy next post.

"Bohemian" can describe any person who lives an unconventional artistic life, where self-expression is the highest value - that art (acting, poetry, writing, singing, dancing, painting etc) is a serious and main focus of their life. This paraphrase of a Wikipedia definition (the one not having to do with the Czech Republic) pretty much covers it. The definition is updated by BoBos in Paradise (Brooks) to include those who don't have that traditional bohemian virtue of poverty.

The motivation, "self-expression is the highest value," means that everything else has a lower value. Luxury, money, even intellect are relegated to the back seat in favor of art. The "unconventional lifestyle" mostly plays its role in keeping the bohemian honest. It isn't an easy sell to say that art is everything while living in the 'burbs and driving a minivan. It could be the one saying that is just doing time with the family thing until eventual freedom sets in, but it's like the guy that says he's really a lesbian; cut it off, get some implants (or hormones), then come back and I might believe it.

Angela, hotel, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Last weekend.

Livin' it.

A friend of mine has cancer. She's an artist and is about my age. The way she's talking this morning, it doesn't look good. Chemo may kill her one way and cancer another. She's opted for a different treatment involving radiation and some surgery, though that method seems to be still unproven. I wish her all the best.

At my age some friends die. Parents die. This friend is facing it as well as any I've known, though of course it's not a sure thing that the cancer will kill her. Inevitably something will kill us all. Anyone having gotten close to death acknowledges his mortality and realizes that sooner or later death's gonna get him. How one chooses to face death has a pretty good correlation with how one chooses to live life.

I have family and friends for whom death is a transition to another life. The idea of immortality is a particularly human invention. Some hope held out for a better future. But the evil of this view is that it relieves one of the responsibility and pleasure of living the one life we all are really sure of.

Like Asimov's three rules for robots, there are some hierarchical rules that can help make the life we know pretty damned good. First, cause no intentional harm to oneself or others. Second, avoid causing unintentional harm as much as possible by looking at likely outcomes of one's actions. Third, enjoy each day individually in every way possible.

Living like that doesn't make everyday a holiday and every meal a banquet because too many things happen that get in the way. People need to have jobs, fulfil responsibilities, take care of others, and, well, shit happens. But those rules are a good place to start. "Will doing this hurt someone?" Etc.

Well, I've got more film to process and making these pictures means more models wanting me to make more pictures, which inevitably means I get to hang with more sexy naked chicks. So that's what I'm gonna do today.

The sexy naked chicks in this photograph are Trish and Marriah, made in a retro-tacky motel room in West Hollywood about four weeks ago. Fun shoot that I talked a bit about a few posts back.

The mini-shindig in Chicago last month was excellent! A few photographers and models got together and talked, drank, smoked, made photographs, argued, and stuff like that. Might do it again next year. In the mean time an East Coast friend is starting to chat up another one. He initially suggested Paris (pretty cosmopolitan fella) but I countered with Montreal if he really wants to speak French.

So it's just in the early planning stages. Not a workshop, just a clustergaggle of folks with similar interests. He's more into the traditional fine art side of figure work, while I'm a bit odder, but there should be a place where there'd be adequate numbers of pretty models looking for pix that we should be able to manage something.

I don't know when he has in mind, but I've got a ton of time over the Holiday break. That would pretty much rule out street nudes unless we go south. Las Vegas? SoBe? That would coincide with the SoBe fashion cycle.

Lindsay Lee, photographed in my hotel room in Chicago about a month ago. Doing herself. Love those eyes on me as she starts smiling. Makes me think it has something to do with me.

Nah...

P.S. It now seems to be Toronto. I can live with that.

Cruelty. Last night there was a short discussion on one of the model/photographer websites about Helmut Newton. One writer called him a "nice guy." He wasn't. He was cruel to his models and it shows in his work and in the videos of him working. And in the stories of those who have assisted him. It wasn't an overt cruelty, but a more passive-aggressive kind; the kind that can be mistaken for "nice." Yet models lined up to shoot with Newton for a possible polaroid and maybe to be published.

Cruel photographers aren't rare at all. Others that come to mind include Bettina Rheims and Guy Bourdin. (I mention those two because Rheims wouldn't deny it and Bourdin is dead.) I've heard that having been humiliated as a model herself, Rheims goes out of her way to humiliate young girls. One published series shows awkwardly posed, apparently humiliated, barely clothed, very young agency models in Paris in front of white paper. Bourdin routinely left models crying.

A salient point here is that I clearly remember the work of both photographers and that of Newton, of course. In each case the photographs are uniquely their own and they have tremendous impact. I would like to put some of that cruelty into my own work but am hindered by a couple of things: First, I want my models to have fun; and second, my models tend to be some pretty tough girls who wouldn't be easily cowed.

Still, I think the work would improve if I pushed a little harder and took the girls just past the edge of their comfort.

What do you think?

What color should that be? Can't answer that one easily. Are we talking light defined by red, blue and green, or pigment defined by cyan, magenta, yellow and black? Should it look like the original under sunlight, skylight, tungsten, or fluorescent lights? Does the photograph color really have to match the original subject?

The fussiest photography buyers are those who really need the pictured textiles to look like what their customers will expect. (Food photography needs to make the products look appetizing, though the pictures seldom even get close to the real thing.) But even textile photo buyers must specify which light will be used in matching. And in getting a fabric to look right, everything else in the photograph will be thrown slightly off. Photographs cannot exactly match reality.

William Eggleston made photographs of middle American streets and such that are flat and relatively lifeless. They closely match reality. They also make reality look pretty dull. Most other photographers take liberties in their choices (film, contrast, subject) to make reality look better than it is - to match viewers' ideas of what is worth photographing.

I think Angela is worth photographing. You might notice a little too much cyan. She was lit by the sky, which will do that unless filtered out with a "skylight" filter (when using Provia slide film). But I left it this way because even though my brain filtered out the cyan (as it corrects for all these different colored lights), it really was there and she really looked pretty much like this. Pretty much.

Angela, photographed in my hotel room in St. John's, Newfoundland, last Sunday. Her freckles aren't visible under tungsten light.

The possibilities are numerous. Two beautiful naked women in a cheap motel room. Sneaking out on their men for a tryst, maybe? One is a Top, the other a bottom. What to do, what to do?

Up front I was told there wouldn't be any real sex - simulated was OK. Mutual munching has been done to death anyway. From among the remaining options a couple of them seemed interesting. One girl would watch the other masturbate. Voyeur kink. Then a twist, reversing roles putting the Top in the subservient role, just for fun. I've only scanned two of Trish and Mariah so far (as you know, I'm way behind) but this one of Marriah watching Trish looked interesting, so here it is.

Once again, I'm not getting all the shadow detail I want. And once again, it's a matter of nailing the processing time of the Ilford Delta 3200 at ASA1600 using XTol. I went another 30 seconds beyond the last batch and it's getting better. Of course the other problem is shooting into a light source that's probably eight stops brighter than the subject. It's presentable and interesting.

Coming up next, a monograph on color...

Uma was getting dressed to work with Melvin Moten as she certainly wouldn't get dressed to model for me. We were hanging out at Lapis' place in Chicago and I had the super-wide on the Pentax 6x7, so I took the shot. I like the effect on the leg and foot. And I like the mask, OK?

I just scanned some where she's straddling a dildo on top of a TV showing cartoons. Underexposed them some, but they seem usable. I may show those eventually here, but maybe not. It's the quality thing. No shadow detail, and in those pictures shadow detail would be a real plus.

Trips coming up include Nashville, Huntsville, Philadelphia, New Bern and Korea. If you don't know where those places are, then we're probably not going to cross paths there. If you're a photographer or model and want to talk over coffee, let me know in comments (add email address and I'll respond without publishing the comment).

Gotta go cut film of Lapis, Uma, Trish and Marriah now.

I am getting ahead of myself here (forgive me Lapis, Lindsay Lee, Uma, Trish and Marriah) but I did some color and color is faster as a lab develops it. This is Angela from St. John's, Newfoundland, last weekend in a sweet picture. I tend to keep color sweet because the local pro lab sees them and I want to be able to keep doing business there. The sexual stuff will come along later in B&W.

Back to scanning Lindsay Lee, Uma and Lapis. Haven't even developed all their film, much less Trish and Marriah. If it isn't hard work, it isn't art. (But it certainly can be hard work and still not be art. 'Tis an conundrum.)

O Canada! Must be something in the water, as Ashley here told me once. I've just come back from my second Canadian photo-safari certain that I'll be returning for a third. In a comment below David (dyanov) suggests a long history of Americans beaver hunting in Canada. In truth it was French Canadians that came south for the beaver first. Maybe those crafty francophones took all our beaver up north, eh?

I have now photographed Canadian models from Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and St. John's. But I think Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax are on future safaris and certainly wouldn't mind going back to any of the places I've already visited.

While the sample size is still small, there are some things I think are generally different about Canadian girls. One is that they really like to have fun. Not constructed elaborate fun, but simple fun. They know how to relax without having to work too hard at it. Sexuality is innate, not some secret prize to be withheld from all but a select few. Maybe it's in the school system, or maybe it's the long winter nights otherwise filled with marginal television. Maybe it's the good beer. (Though generally not as good as German beer, there is no Canadian beer as bad as Bud Lite.) I don't think I'll speculate further or my American models will start sending me hate mail.

Three days travel for two days of photographing Angela last weekend. I may have some color scanned soon, though the B&W will come along behind the balance of Lapis, Lindsay Lee, Uma, Trish and Marriah. (Things are FIFO here.)

O Canada!

Umberto Eco has come up in this blog before. He's an Italian writer of complex historical novels constructed with layers and layers of meaning and self-reference. In the airport in Toronto (4 hour layover) I purchased his Island of the Day Before, a work I'd avoided previously, either because in the hardcover the cost/benefit ratio was questionable or I didn't like the jacket synopsis. The paperback I found seemed to have escaped the currency exchange inversion and was clearly worth the price, even if I were to discard it half-read.

Because I'd accepted an awkward flight plan in my enthusiasm to get where Angela was, I had to spend last night in Vancouver. The "cheap hotel" my limo driver took me to cost $140(Can) and I figured the entire eight hours there would be taken up sleeping, but Island kept me awake for a couple of those precious sleep hours.

As is his wont, Eco has at least two obvious stories progressing at once that are intertwined and compared and contrasted. Mysterious elements may or may not ever be resolved. The stories happen during and just after the Thirty Years War. Much is real and finds its way into the stories. Much may not be, but except for medieval scholars, the two cannot be separated.

This is what I want my photography to do. I want multiple levels of story. I want ambiguous truth. I want humanity that draws in viewers, but with impossible perfection that can only happen in art. Whining a little, I complain that with words all of that is possible, but with photographs only that which exists can be shown (limiting myself intentionally to unmanipulated photographs).

One male viewer recently told me that my pictures are clearly mine because I'm in them all. That may be a second story-line. The first being the obvious actions of the subject, of course. The women are masturbating because I'm there. Not because I'm the object of their fantasies, but because I asked them to for the pictures. Or the pictures can be seen as women masturbating by themselves and the presence of the camera and myself ignored. Or one can most realistically tie those things together into some abstract whole that involves/doesn't involve me.

So I think some of that effort to build layers has been working for awhile. I am still not happy with the limitations to subtle references that I want to build. For now they have mostly been simple devices like hotel phones in the background. They locate the pictures, but don't add much else. There is a photograph of Uma coming up with a very blatant use of a television screen that is along the lines I want, but there's a good chance no one will notice the TV image because of what's going on above it.

Soooo, that's what I've been thinking about here on the Bombardier CRJ 100/200 on the way from Vancouver to San Diego.

Cheers!

(Model is Lapis in Chicago three weeks back. Doing herself.)

I arrived here at the hotel in St. John's, Newfoundland, about 4:30 this morning. Got about five hours of sleep before I woke up through no fault of my own. Had a little breakfast then wandered around town for a bit before meeting up with Angela, the model I'd come this far to photograph.

Beautiful, young and skinny, and enthusiastic. It's hard to beat enthusiasm. She thinks I'm funny. In any case, six rolls of film were exposed and we're shooting some tomorrow, including some stuff kinkier than usual.

The two lovely Canadians in this picture are Ashley and Chantel, photographed in a Winnipeg motel November last.

Canada is beginning to really get my attention. Vancouver or Calgary next?

No need for me to be greedy. Come again Lapis? I had to do some cropping on this picture. See by her forehead where the white sheet behind her is just barely showing? I cropped into that as far as I could to avoid the distraction, then cropped into the bottom of her hair/head to match. That forced viewer attention to her face or maybe her jawline way down in the corner, though I'd focused on her left eye, rather than her right. I wasn't thinking far enough ahead when I exposed this one.

The remainder of the cropping was to get the right feeling to the frame proportions while leaving in enough context to suggest a hotel room (which it was - Chicago, if you've not been keeping up).

Then there's the contrast choice. Lapis is pale but she had enough sun on her face to make it less reflective than her body, so this position was chosen to put her face as close to the slightly open drapes as possible to counteract that. Even so I had to select a pretty hard contrast (around Grade 3 1/2) to clean up the face. I think I dodged it a little as well, almost to the point of losing too much detail.

And this is a horizontal. I don't much like shooting horizontal, even when the subject is. There are others of this general configuration done vertical, but this one's pretty nice. Hmmm, what else? Well I didn't burn in the lower right pillow. It used to be mandatory to "frame" the subject by burning corners, but doing it too obviously is worse than not at all. So I just left it alone here, as it's not approaching blown out yet.

Wow, whooda thunk I had enough pictures to post regularly since February 16th? This is Ashley from her San Diego visit several months back now. I know she checks the blog to see if I've posted more of her...so here you are Ashley!

The dayjob company has approved my request for a BlackBerry. As I travel about half time and our laptop connectivity is chancy at best it will let me take business emails wherever I am, including Korea (next month) or Europe. My obligation is to respond to my customers promptly as this (relatively) new technology comes with a price. In order to do that I'll have to come up with a way of carrying more reference materials with me, but as this exercise is mostly about not having to carry the corporate laptop I'll have to find a medium that will accomodate large .pdf files that I can open on this personal PowerBook. A medium that I can load at work where I have access to the digital reference materials.

Or, given that I will now have anywhere/anytime email capability, I will also be able to forward technical questions to the staff that stays in the office.

In quite a few ways life gets easier by getting harder. Remember, if it weren't for the convenience of wall-to-wall carpet we wouldn't need the convenience of vacuum cleaners.

This is, of course, connected to my choice of a future automobile. My response is to go shopping for an older car with a carburetor, breaker point ignition, water-cooled four cylinder engine and rear wheel drive. I understand that's a response and not necessarily rational. I don't think people make rational decisions often. I think that more often than not any "rational" argument is more likely to be rationalization to reach a foregone conclusion based on what one's read, seen or experienced most recently.

No, I'm not going anywhere specific with this.

Just scanned another lovely negative of Lapis, but after the Mindy frenzy of late, decided not to do the same with her. Remember, there's still Lindsay, Uma, Trish and Marriah film waiting to be processed and after this weekend, add Angela to the queue.

Ah...Lapis. Kinda horny Marilyn Monroe-style here I think.

Here's what I know and what I think about Lapis. First, she writes and comports herself as an old school artists' model. She thinks about art all the time it seems. She also thinks about sex all the time. Which makes sense to me as they're so damned intertwined that no one's really been able to undo that Gordian knot (without cutting it and rendering both the sex and art to shreds in the process). Her PhD candidate roommate confirms that she thinks about sex a lot as they couldn't seem to keep from climbing on each other without some self-discipline (more about discipline later) - though as there were three to five models, two or three photographers (Lapis included) and some others around, those two only did it for special occasions, of which I am not one. Melvin Moten may have been one of those occasions.

I did pry her away from said SO (and Melvin) by promising her the opportunity to get off with me (I really gotta do those T-shirts someday)... well, in the hotelroom with my camera anyway. Something she's in the throes of at the time this was taken. Fortunately, timing isn't everything as she was in said throes for quite awhile so I have lots of film unscanned still.

I'd mentioned her artist-intellectual written impressions? Well, first thing through the door she was onto so many topics at once I couldn't keep up. Coherent, mind you, but scattered. Seemed to me like extreme nervousness, though she says not. She did collect herself so I could follow for the rest of the weekend. Wonderful hosts, funky place surrounded by funky folk who don't blanch at the site of a nude model smoking in the French door or drifting into the courtyard.

OK, more later with more pix.

This will be the last of Mindy for awhile. I don't usually show the same model over and over, but I was just finishing up the scanning of her film and this last one got my attention. I like photographing women masturbating. It can be very personal.

So I went for a walk downtown this morning. What I learned is that I'm in terrible condition. I've about forgotten how to walk and have to think about foot placement. Pathetic. I was an athlete in highschool, college and then was a Marine for 10 years. Because of that intense experience I'm not big on exercise for exercise' sake, but I would like to feel a little more comfortable on my feet. So I'll be walking a little more in the near term.

Mexico over Iran 3-1. The Barrio is full of flags and honking SUVs and huge smiles. I'm not a sports fan, but it's hard not to be swept up by enthusiastic neighbors.

Some cities are iconic. Everyone has some idea of what Manhattan and Brooklyn are like whether they've actually been there or not. And Paris. The Paris of Picasso and Cartier-Bresson and Atget and Newton. The London of Cecil Beaton and Bailey and the Mods and Rockers. We develop expectations and when we do eventually visit, the city does or does not live up to it's billing. These cities exceed expectations.

Others, San Francisco and Los Angeles (specifically Hollywood) and Chicago are pretty close. They may disappoint those expecting to see gay couples in tye-died drag smoking doobies on every street corner or celebrities in clumps or, um, hot dogs, but those things really are there; you have to scrounge around some to find them. London and Istanbul seem to fit this category too.

It's been awhile since I've been to Tokyo or Las Vegas or Manilla, but my recollection is that you have to go to some very specific places in order to sample their iconic natures.

Some places lost their iconic features a long time back. Dodge City is basically a small farm town with some strip malls and a lot of cheap motels (my kind of place?) and Tel Aviv is simply a modern business center that would be completely uninteresting if it weren't for the Hebrew signs. Without subtitles I'd probably starve there.

What set me off on this was thumbing through a Guy de Maupassant book that was set in Paris in the 1830s (I think) and already knowing what to expect of the pre-Haussmann city.

I'm starting to itch to travel again. Fortunately I'm flying to Newfoundland on Thursday. My preconceived notions of St. Johns are mostly from visiting it via the web and reading a little popular history.

Can't wait.

This is Mindy in Columbus, Ohio. A city that is exactly what you expect it to be.

Uma in our shower a few weeks back in Chicago. (Notice how that "our" implies lots of stuff?

I was sitting down at the bookstore a little earlier thumbing through a copy of Wad magazine. While this fashion magazine is about as current as it's possible to be in a magazine, it occurred to me that by the time something is in print the originators are already off doing or wearing something else. In the military we called it something like being "inside reaction time." Something like that. By the time the bad guys knew what we were doing, we were already doing something else. Technology advantages helped.

In mainstream couture Spring fashion is photographed in Fall or early Winter. It's already existed for 4-6 months before it hits the runways and gets reported a month or two after that. Anyone who then buys is 5-8 months behind what the insiders already knew. And anyone buying knockoffs is another month behind. In street fashion a month or two is the best you can do if you depend on print.

I need to start taking notes when I read stuff on others' blogs. The population consists of initiators, early adopters, followers and the clueless. Initiators do something first or use gizmos as soon as (or before) they are available. Early adopters, once clued in, go get what the hipsters (initiators) got. Eventually most folks think iPods are cool and get them. Those who don't probably never heard of iPods. Or have been off into non-DRM sources and volatile memory for a long time already.

People value different things. Fashion, gadgets, motorcycles and social thought are among them. In my own case I'm 55 and still wearing denim, though I ride state-of-the-art rice rockets. I am still sceptical about those huge highway-going scooters with automatic transmissions, however. Hrrrmph! Almost as weenie as Hardley-Davidsons.

Seems that if one is really interested in what the early adopters are doing the internet is the only way to find out in almost realtime.

If one cares.

Thinking a lot about retirement these days. My boss retired a week ago and the engineer I work most closely with will leave the end of the year. I'm vested and eligible right now, but would have a hard time living on the monthly stipend, so I'm still looking at another 5-7 years before I bail from aerospace and move back to the Great Plains.

I need a city. Bookstores, enough models that I'm not off photographing landscapes all the time, and throngs of anonymous people to immerse myself in once in awhile. The most likely candidate is Amarillo, Texas, where there's also a likelyhood of aerospace consulting work if I want it. There aren't many other candidates. Souix Falls, Fargo, North Platte, Lincoln, Oklahoma City, and Billings I guess. Not too many cities on the Great Plains. Lubbock is the largest of them with about 200,000 people. The southern Great Plains depends on the Ogallala Aquafir for water. Predictions are that it'll be dry within 20 years due to its unplanned and unlimited use for irrigation. Just another thing to think about. All of the Great Plains is losing rural population. Maybe a place forty or fifty miles outside a city?

So that's what's on my mind these days.

Here Lindsay Lee is cuter. Starting to get scrunched up though. I love to see that face just start to go...

Haven't been developing film since Friday. Saturday was pretty much an all day thing going up to Hollywood to shoot and I needed fresh XTol to develop with and NuFix to fix the film and slip sheets to put the film in and canned air to blow off the negs before scanning. Forgot to get that stuff yesterday so I pretty much took a day off from the process. Remembered today so I dropped about $150 at Nelson Photo for that stuff and two bricks of Ilford Delta 3200 120 film for the trip to Newfoundland coming up. I'll spool up four more rolls tonight and probably develop them tomorrow. And I'll probably scan more tonight as Mindy, Lapis, Uma and Lindsay Lee are all waiting to see the rest of their pictures (as am I). Mindy first, as I shot her first.

Stuff doesn't come along evenly distributed. Months of nothing, then seven models within three weeks. Sitting at home for weeks, then a bunch of travel. Getting along just fine, then financial or health problems. There was something on another blog yesterday about "83 Problems." Everyone's got 83 problems. Those that think they're the only one with problems have 84 problems. I'm reading a wonderful book by Joel Garreau called Radical Evolution. Garreau wrote two other outstanding books that I enjoyed awhile back: Edge City and The Nine Nations of North America. In Radical Evolution there is a discussion about the meaning of what it is to be human, and having and solving problems may be central to our humanity. The other piece of good news is that one to five drinks a day can reduce my risk of heart disease by up to 41%. So I'm going to start that regimen right now.

And...Lindsay Lee in Chicago eight or so days ago. Notice that the last two pictures have a distinct feeling to them? A little motion, an intent to catch something in the faces rather than pose them maybe? I hope so, as that's what I was looking for. But at a cost of better composition and lighting I think. Not real sure where I'm going with that yet, but I like it right now.

Lindsay Lee is so damned cute you just want to put her on your lap, hug her and pat her head. She probably isn't happy to hear that again (she probably hears it too much already), but it's true. Later pictures may show that cuteness more than this one, but this one shows a side that the cute pix don't - a side that's just as valid and real.

I found out that Mindy (below a few posts) has retired from modeling and I'm bummed about it. The world needs more models who are happy about being 41. I don't know her reasons and wouldn't post them if I did, but I do remember a few years back looking hard to find women in their thirties and over who would model for me and not finding even one (except my girlfriend at the time, and she's all over my website). I do get to buy Mindy dinner when she gets out this way or I out her way though.

Edit: My new stat tracker says that 12% of you are repeat visitors. "Regulars" is a better term. Thanks for coming back.

Lapis, photo-graphed in my motel room in Chicago last weekend. This is the first of the Chicago work that's coming down the pike. Lots of it. In addition to Lapis, there are Lindsay Lee and Uma (again). There are links to each of them a few posts below, so you can go see how other photographers saw them, then compare to how I do.

Just rode back from West Hollywood this morning, getting an early start to avoid the worst thing about L.A. - traffic. Photographed Trish and Marriah up there. See all of Trish below.

I generally don't mention specific hotels I use, but the one in West Hollywood is going to be an exception. I really like the Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel. It was designed and built in the 50's, has a courtyard with a swimming pool (usually complete with bathing beauties), is attached to the famous restaurant, Swingers, which is manned by waitresses in short skirts, fishnets and Docs. The hotel is cheap for Hollywood at $110 a night, remains period except for a few upgrades like phones with buttons (and built-in wake up programming) and wi-fi. Almost all the stuff I've posted here and other places that was shot in a "motel in West Hollywood" was done there. It was actually recommended to me by another photographer. And it's the scene of casting calls, porn shoots, straight and gay trysts, wannabes cramming six to the room, and every kind of counter-culture that finds itself in L.A. with no place to crash.

As I said, I like it.

Another of Mindy. The second I've scanned actually. I have two rolls of her left from yesterday's batch, then two more rolls of her just hung up to dry. Drying along with those are one roll each of Lapis and Uma from the Chicago shoot last weekend. And a ton of stuff just sits there staring at me, too, waiting for me to soup it. I think things will be getting a bit more explicit pretty soon...

At some point there will be a trophy picture of me tugging on Uma's left nipple ring while she's strung from the rafters wearing nothing but a mask. I'll show it to you if I look OK. She will, of course.