This is the view camera I've started using. It's a Toyo 45A 4x5 field view camera and mounts a 210mm Rodenstock Sironar-N lens in this picture. Of course, it's not the thing that made this picture. The picture was made with the loathsome Leica Digilux II I paid far too much for awhile back. That is a 5MP quasi-rangefinder that has serious artifact problems at ASA400, the minimum speed I ever use for anything (except sometimes snapshots of my motorcycles).

I did photograph Masha (shown here modeling one way to use a view camera) with the Toyo, but haven't developed the film yet. In that camera I use Ilford HP5 B&W film, as I've grown to distrust Kodak. (The story behind that has to do with two distinct films both called "Tri-X," their decision to package some developers {XTol comes to mind} in packages to make 5 liters {how useless is that?} and their decision to overall put less emphasis on film photography {even though that is necessary for them to survive}.)

As time goes on you'll see more 4x5 images, though I have decided that I have to keep shooting 6x7 as well while I'm still spooling up on the big camera.

It's been awhile since I talked about books. Currently I'm reading Celine's Journey to the End of the Night. I got there because in Pulp, Bukowski's protagonist calls Celine "France's greatest writer." And I was reading Bukowski as an antidote to overdosing on Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" novels. It's good to be back reading challenging material after four or five bubblegum books in a row.

In other news, Lucky commented that because of my shoot on the 9th I'll miss his birthday party. And because his birthday party includes heaps o' naked chicks, that will be a shame. It will indeed. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Besides, it's still possible the model might change her mind. I hope she does not, but if she does, Lucky's party is a fine default.

This is Anne. She modeled for me a little, but mostly was a fine make-up artist. She's another of those girls that is there...then isn't. Then is again. Etc.

Feast and famine. My schedule is getting booked up again. I think it's a seasonal thing. I've had to start a google calendar to keep track of scheduled photoshoots now. This is good as it means new pictures. And it's got a downside as well - it's a lot of work. Keeping up with film limits other free time activities. In all it's certainly worth it.

The next shoot should be on June 9th, with a tall, skinny, gorgeous fashion model in Los Angeles. I will use medium and large format cameras, all in B&W. And this will be a whole new genre for her of course. There are the models I'm flying in over the summer, and a girl who has cancelled a few times (local) is now saying she's serious. We'll see; because she's local and it will be a studio shoot there's no risk of losing any money anyway. And there are others who have contacted me, and we just haven't set up a time and date yet.I figure it's all about karma.

Cynnamon and Angela, photographed in my hotel room in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada a couple of months ago. They'll be here in July.

Chix & bikes. I hate that genre. And clothes! What's up with that? It was her idea really.

Well this is Masha, photographed yesterday in the studio on my old beater Kawasaki KLR 650. Those bugs are a permanent part of the windscreen as the bike has taken me all over the western U.S. and I never wash it. She wondered why I had her put her feet up like that, but it was to show her legs, shoes and cleavage.

Masha was my muse some seven years ago. Then I introduced her to a goth boy who turned out to be straight and I lost her. We tried to shoot again about five years ago and it just didn't work. She wrote me saying she wanted to try again, then came down on Monday and we made some pictures. I used the digcam as I didn't expect anything usable from the kind of shoot we planned to do. (There is some 4x5 B&W film awaiting development, too. B&W 3/4 length portraits. Still with clothes.)

I took another day off yesterday to hang around with her and make more pictures. It was a lot of fun seeing her again. Masha's still a babe.

Sorry about not posting. Masha's been visiting and modeling and talking. Lots of talking. This isn't her, by the way. This is Lindsey, photographed getting off in Chicago.

Anyway, we've shot digital and large format and will probably get around to medium as my film runs out. I didn't load enough film holders. Masha's keeping her clothes on. Bummer, as she's been walking around in her undies and has a way hot body.

Anyway, back to Masha...

Moving holidays around to assure three-day weekends makes me wonder what's more important, the purpose of the remembrance, or the time off. Memorial Day is now mostly about gas prices and hotel occupancy rates, it seems. I know there are people who do celebrate the lives and sacrifices of our war dead, but most of the people I know are more concerned with their RVs and the holiday marking the change to summer fashion. Pisses me off. I'd like to see the holidays fixed to their original dates. But I'm a curmudgeon and don't much like change in general anyway.

And don't even get me going on Arbor Day...

This photo is from one of the last three rolls exposed in Newfoundland in March. You can see how I spend my vacation time. Cynnamon and Angela, once again.

A photographer friend and I had breakfast this morning at Java Jones, downtown. He's becoming more and more of a nomad, living out of his VW camper and traveling around the U.S. He just got back from the jazz festival in New Orleans. As one of my options after I retire is to do about that sort of thing we talked about the options and I mentioned the Airstream trailers. He seemed enthusiastic about them, no doubt because they have bathrooms, where his camper doesn't. He also raved on about quality, etc. In any case, it's nice to talk to someone who doesn't think I'm crazy for considering this as a reasonable thing to do.

Of course I now have to also consider a VW camper as an option, with occasional motel visits interspersed to do laundry and shower.

Let's see...these ladies are Trish and Mariah.

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. Hoardes of folks will descend on San Diego and there will be traffic accidents and drunks on the beaches. Sounds reasonable to me. How many will remember the guys that died for our country?

Anyway, that's not the point. Holidays are excuses to party, and I'm just glad that I'm not spending the weekend in Delhi fixing airplanes, as was the original plan.

This is another picture of Cynnamon and Angela from the film scanned last night. Now there are only three rolls (30 frames) left to develop and look at. After only two months, it's coming down to the wire. The last three rolls are spooled and in the can waiting for me to develop them tonight. By Saturday I should be finished scanning. Then comes the job of deleting duplicates and inferior pictures, resizing the existing huge scans to printable size, burning some CDs and mailing them to the models. Then I shoot again on Monday. That will be a mix of digital and 4x5 I think. Sort of depends on the mood of the shoot, I guess.

Motorcycle Daily is one of my daily reads. A few days back Dirck published a lament about the loss of the good old days of motorcycling, when bikes were kick-started, bankers didn't look like outlaws, and rain was just part of the environment. He also said something about it being a man's world back then, and that got him some hate mail from women who rode. When I read the article I generally agreed with his views, but knew he'd at least get some complaints. I remember back when women did not ride their own bikes too. In part that was because a rider had to be able to pick the beast up after a fall and few women could do that. And in part it was because there were things men did that women didn't, and vice versa. Bikes were, with very few exceptions, a manly thing.

Anyway, if any of that is of interest, click the link and go see the responses.

Of course this whole thing got me thinking about the changes in photography in the last twenty years. While I've been riding motorcycles for forty years, I've only been making photographs for twenty, so that's as far back as I can honestly consider.

When I first entered photo school the basic course was about half women. Many of the top photographers were women. Photography has never been a man thing. But back then it was a technical craft involving math and chemistry and metal machinery and lenses and tongs and hours standing up in a dark, damp room. It took the confidence to walk away after a shoot with undeveloped film in the bag, knowing that hours or days later when the film was developed you'd have exactly what you saw through the viewfinder. Some folks used polaroids to confirm strobe lighting (relatively) instantly, but those were confined to studios as continuous lighting didn't need confirmation - photographers knew what the combinations of film, meter, camera, lens and settings were going to produce.

Retouching wasn't an option unless you had a huge budget, so it had to be right on the take unless one was willing to use bleach on a print or to spot medium format or larger negatives. It was much easier just to get it right on the film.

That dire and dismal scenario of twenty years ago would have been heaven to photographers of seventy years ago of course, and a ninety-year-old photographer who has been shooting since the thirties would probably bemoan how easy we had it when I started shooting, what with in-camera meters and the rude beginnings autofocus, and all the various films available (including color!).

Things do get easier. And there are always more people who get involved once the hard parts are gone. And there are always more people, period. So motorcycling, once the domain of the rugged male, is now full of the nicest people who couldn't change or patch their own tires or ride home with a broken rib. Anyone can do it. And photography, once a craft involving materials and chemicals and machinery, is now available to most anybody as well.

Does that devalue motorcycling or photography? Yes, actually. It devalues both of them because the qualifications and level of commitment required for entry are no longer very high. Anyone can do it. If the reason for doing one or the other is exclusivity and that's gone away, then one certainly would feel cheated.

But if the reason for doing these things is about the pleasure of the ride or the beauty of the photograph, then why would someone care if others are jumping in once the barriers have been lowered? Wanna be macho - go ride a bull. Yes, women do that too, but not many. Want a technical challenge, go build a radio. Or keep using film like I do.

Here Nathaniel - Lisa.

Gotta buy a bed today. Probably a folding bed or a cot. Maybe two. Houseguests at the studio have always been a problem. One time I went through several air matresses in a month as the girls slept in them, then the cat destroyed them. So probably camping cots, I guess. Then there's the issue that my bathroom has no door, just a curtain made from a painters' dropcloth, held in place by welding clamps. Yes it's primitive. Sorta like camping indoors, actually. It's a guy thing...

Just finished my third-in-a-row novel by Lee Child last night and began the fourth. Sometimes I get hooked on a writer and plow through everything he's written, then when finished I never read his stuff again. Haruki Murakami comes to mind. I read everything he'd written, but once done I haven't been able to make myself read his three newest novels.

Wore new chukka boots walking yesterday and blistered the ball of my right foot. Today's walk will probably be painful. But unless it gets infected, it will heal. I am wearing the old chukkas today.

This is Myra's butt. It's a big comfy one. Photographed (along with the rest of Myra) in a bordello converted to a hotel in Hamburg, Germany a few years back. No, I don't understand where those colors came from either.

Today I walked that 5.5 mile course again at noon. That's six work days in a row. A friend walked with me and pushed me more than I thought he could - we talked the whole way and still cut a minute off last week's best time. 1:14 today. Best over that course for me was last November at 1:11, so I have some ways to go. But I have lost two pounds since last Monday - not really a goal (the goal is to feel good), but a nice side-benefit.

This is Cara. I think I've shown this picture before, maybe several times, but I really like it. It was made in an apartment in Hollywood. I unscrewed one of two ceiling bulbs and shot with the remaining one. Ektachrome 320T rated at ASA 1250.

Another weekend down. Finished a couple of books, spent some time at a cafe talking to a guy who rode in on a bobber he'd built. I'd like to build a bobber.

For those who aren't motorcycle folks, a "bobber" is a short motorcycle with no rear suspension generally powered by a Harley Davidson or vintage English motor. The word itself comes from the "bobbing" of the rear fender, which for many vintage bikes was a heavy hinged affair. Where legal there is usually no front fender. This particular bobber had a foot clutch and hand shifter, a style I've ridden and consider suicidal.

My ideal bobber would probably have a 45 cubic inch WWII-vintage flathead H-D engine in the stock frame, with most everything else removed. That engine is good for something like 20 HP so it wouldn't be a highway machine, but just for cruising around town. I think I'd keep the stock military tank, too. Trouble is these old bikes which sold for nothing twenty years back are now collectors' items. Oh well, another project I probably will never do. I tend to leave projects half-completed anyway.

Angela and Cynnamon in Newfoundland in March. Angela just returned home yesterday from visiting Cynn in Virginia. I think they had a good visit. Both will be out this way in late July.

The landlady sort of offered me a chance to move right downtown into a place about twice as large as my current studio and for a reasonable monthly rent. It's a second floor space that is currently broken up into offices, but it had a real kitchen and could easily be rearranged to work as a very nice studio. But...no place to park the bikes inside (unless I ride them up the stairs) though I could probably get a space for the truck that was secure. Still...it sure would be nice to have a real darkroom again. Maybe I'll ask her to talk to me about it again in six months.

This is Jackie. She asked me to tie her up, so I did. I thought it was kinda fun too. Minneapolis, last summer.

Ever since the local Mervyns closed I've had trouble finding boxer shorts I like. What I like is solid color, flat cotton, no button, no frills skivvies. You'd think that would be easy, but I now have several pairs with skull or motorcycle patterns because I couldn't fine solid colors at any stores downtown.

But there are only so many pairs of goofy-patterned shorts one may own before someone eventually comments on it, so I went out looking on the web yesterday and found City Boxers. They have a bewildering array of materials, cuts, features and aren't cheap, but I ordered four pairs in the size that I thought would be correct. Actually I ordered the last pair one size larger just so I'd have a way of comparing for possible later purchases.

I got an email from them shortly after the order suggesting they deliver one pair first to let me see if I'd like to change sizes or features, and they're sending swatches so I can see other materials as well. Wow! They will make them any way I want, button or not, covered elastic or not, whatever material, whatever length, inside key pocket, anything! Maybe I'll have them monogramed so eventually they'll have collector value for any model that gets that far.

Right.

Anyway, this is the long tail of the web. Exactly what I want is now available, though I will have to pay for them. And I am happy to pay for something that close to my ... uh ... heart.

Cynn photographing Angela. Neither is wearing skivvies. Cool, huh?

Monica here, photographed just after I tossed the sheet over her as she began masturbating in my bed in a hotel on Times Square. I think this was the first girl I ever photographed playing with herself and it embarrassed me greatly. I think that's why she did it. Either that or I was just so hot she couldn't control herself (see my picture on the right). I think I have a few frames exposed before I put the sheet on her - have to go find them sometime.

Late last year I started walking just to feel better. When I got back from Buenos Aires and was sick I quit. I'd lost 18 pounds and as of Monday had gained 16 back again. So Monday I walked 5.5 miles over the lunch hour. And Tuesday and Wednesday too. And I'll walk that same 5.5 mile course again today. It just makes me feel better, whether I lose weight or not. And it gives me uninterrupted time to think. For example, yesterday I was thinking what a long nasty walk it was to take on a muggy day and how much my feet hurt. Today I'll probably think about my lower back, thighs and ankles as well. Then when I feel really good I'll decide that walking isn't what it's cracked up to be and I'll quit again.

Looks like I'm photographing my old muse Masha on Memorial Day. That will be interesting, as I haven't seen her for a few years and I do miss her.

Allison here just popped back up out of the blue yesterday. She's going to be in San Diego soon, and with any luck I'll be able to photograph her again. I think it's been three or four years and she's moved from Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta in the mean time.

Sorry about the clothes. I did post another picture of her way back in the beginning of the blog with significantly less clothing, and did make a couple of nudes, but managed to screw them up so I haven't shown them - I don't always get it right. I think I was intimidated by her boyfriend sitting outside the hotel room door. Probably with a gun.

It came to me last night in a dream. The next thing. Oh man is it going to be tough. And moving. And I don't think anyone's done it before. But I can't tell you what it is until I have some exposed film and can show it. No more talking about it.

Filled the flash green bike with gas yesterday and the guy that works there commented on how clean it was. I looked and there was chain lube on the back wheel, brake dust on the front, mud splattered under the fender and the mirrors were dusty, so I went home and spent a couple of hours cleaning and waxing the wheels and under the fender. It's still not clean, but it is less vile than before.

This is the lovely Angela, nude, examining herself in a mirror. Last week Google moved this site from the #4 slot down to the third page on searches for "nudes." I finally figured out why. I had written several posts without the word "nudes" or "nude" in them and the spiders therefore decided the blog wasn't very relevant for that particular search. Well, it's climbed back up to the #5 spot now, but I'm going to make sure I use the right words in my posts, even if they are about naked motorcycles. "Naked." Gonna have to use that word more too and see what happens. Mebbe even "naked chicks."

I've gotta get shooting again. It's been another dry spell and I need some practice with the 4x5. My resolution to take the camera out and photograph inanimate objects crumbles every time. It just seems a waste of film and time to photograph anything but beautiful nude women. Yes, yes...I'm spoiled.

Anyway, I've still got film from Newfoundland to develop and scan and a few potential shoots coming up. One model wants to "talk about the shoot" ahead of time. I don't want to "talk about the shoot." I want the model to show up, do whatever feels good (or barring that, whatever I tell her to do), and with some luck we'll have good pictures to show. "Talking about it," as in discussing a concept or planning something specific is too much like the wife nudging me at 2AM saying, "Honey, we need to talk." I really don't plan photoshoots. I don't want to plan shoots. I want to record something that's happening. This makes me think I really don't want to photograph this model or any model that wants to "talk about the shoot."

OK, that's a pretty hard line to take, I know. But I think it serves as a filter to prevent me from photographing girls that don't get it, aren't ever going to get it and even if they did get it, would freeze up. A shoot - my shoots - must flow. No rules, no barriers, and a whole lot of trust. I know that's a tough thing, to trust a photographer, particularly one a model's never met, but it's the price of admission.

Re-reading the above, it's apparent now why I'm not shooting a whole lot.

Jackie, nude in my motel room in Minneapolis last summer. Excellent model of exactly the type I like. Uninhibited, curious, beautiful and kinky.

It's been another quiet weekend and I've had the time to do laundry, think about many things, finish up a couple of books and buy a couple more, ride the flash green bike around startling pedestrians and waking sleeping infants, drink too much coffee, think more about St. Paul (my mother approved of St. Paul for retirement on the Mothers' Day phonecon) and of course think long and hard about where I want my photography to go.

On that last thing, I still have no idea.

Angela says hi! She's visiting Cynn in Maryland right now and having a fabulous time. How could they not? Sigh...and I'm not there...

This however, is Paige, photographed nude in my Harrisburg, PA hotel room a few years back. I don't know how exactly to describe her except as I have before - earthy and sexual and womanly. Sure do wish I could photograph her again sometime.

Time for the Sunday Book Review! Two great books by established authors. One bellies up to the science fiction bar, while the other somehow avoids that tag, though it too requires the suspension of disbelief.

First, Brasyl, by Ian McDonald. His last book, River of Gods started strong, but accelerated, bringing in so many bits necessary to the hyper-plot that I lost my way around 75%, put the book down and never picked it back up. But the cover art of Brasyl and the other of McDonald's books I've read persuaded me to try once again. Like River the plots (three interwoven stories) accelerate, so keeping track is a matter of not setting the book aside for too long. Each of the three plots is good, exciting, supports excellent but slightly flat characters in three timelines in Brazil. A wonderful place for speculative fiction, as it's unfamiliar and surreal enough to sustain reader belief in the plot while not being on some distant moon or something.

Fine book. Buy it and read it, but don't set it down for too long or you'll lose track(s).

Before buying Brasyl I'd picked up a copy of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Having read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay awhile back, I avoided his two subsequent novels because Kavalier's gay themes made me uncomfortable - it was hard to relate, as that was a key element in the book.

Yiddish, like Brasyl, requires a suspension of disbelief. The premise is that after WWII the European Jews were unable to hold Israel and were given a temporary home by the U.S. government in the Aleutian Islands - Sitka, actually. Three pages in, that becomes the readers' reality. From here on it becomes a detective novel with a yiddish flavor and twisted intertwined plots involving governments, Indians, murder, the Messiah, espionage, chess, romance/sex and about everything one could ask for. I put it down briefly to Read Brasyl and had no trouble picking up where I'd left off. Now my entire interaction with religious Jews has been in buying camera stuff in NYC. I am not part of the culture, but the author cleverly assumes the reader can pick it up as he goes along. No pausing for explanations or definitions, just an assumption of the cleverness if the reader - and I really appreciated that.

But and read this one too. Maybe first.

I know there have been some books mentioned that I haven't returned to. Should you notice them, feel free to comment here and I'll let you know either what I thought or why I put the book away. I read enough that I could probably make daily posts on books alone, but of course that's not why most readers come back here.

The model shown is Simone, photographed nude in an office building by Columbia University in NYC six years ago. Tall, lovely and with a brand new PhD.

Sitting down at the cafe this morning I started thinking about the slide into irrelevance. The term "empty-nesters" defining a large part of the population with children grown and gone is one sign of acceptance of the growing loss of importance by which people have valued themselves.

Everyone wants to be important to others. But it seems, at least from my experience, that one slowly develops that importance, then quickly loses it. The slow climb through the grades of public school to the point of being a senior and in acceptable cliques gives way to being a freshman at a secondary school. Repeat. For me the slow climb through the ranks in the Marines was abruptly ended when I quit as a captain. Raising my children, years and years that I thought would never end, simply ended one day with my last kid's demonstration of complete independence. And despite the feeling of having done the job well and having taught my children to be independent, once they were, it was another abrupt drop to irrelevance for me.

Yesterday I paid off the remainder of the alimony that I owed my Ex-wife. While it feels great to be out from under that recurring expense, it also means that there's one more person for whom I am less important (even though I know that's not completely true).

In a few years I'll be retiring. The company will find someone else who can do my job, probably better than I do it. And probably cheaper, too. There may be a few follow-up phone calls asking questions, but eventually they won't bother calling anymore and my contribution to the company where I've worked for so many years will be zero. I will be irrelevant, except as a cypher that gets a monthly check until someone tells them I've died.

I haven't mentioned photography yet, but there are some parallels. Unknown girls who, once launched, have forgotten who pushed them into the stream. Photo styles I pioneered that are now being done everywhere - sometimes direct copies and sometimes better than I ever developed them. A few publications that once begged for my work that now won't answer emails. Put out to pasture before I'm ready to shrug off the harness.

And I'm not the only one - I hear things like this all the time from other folks who have experienced that slow climb/quick drop-off pattern. The only thing that really can be done is to find the next area of relevance and start the long, slow climb again.

This is Nana. She is neither nude nor in a hotel room. Armenian girl from Moscow. I seem to have lost track of her, though I do know she's still here in San Diego somewhere.

Today I paid off the alimony obligation to my Ex. It's been a tough nine and a half years of monthly payments, but I paid off three months in advance just to be done with it. Feels good.

Ashley, photographed in my hotel room in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada a few years back. She recently wrote me to say she was getting married. I wish her happiness and a long joyous marriage. Barring that, I hope she scores on alimony.

A friend from work confessed today that he's been looking around for other employment. Hoping to relieve his guilt I told him everyone does that. From his desk he's seeing more and more top-down administrative bullshit that prevents him from spending the time necessary on his program and with his team and customers. Of course the "top" just wants to know what's going on in some standardized format so they can look for problems and inefficiencies. But in doing so they create most of the non-productive uses of time.

I attended a meeting yesterday. I avoid meetings as eight people spending an hour in a room is a wasted man-day unless something is accomplished. Nothing was accomplished. The hour was spent discussing how to best accumulate metrics consistent with the "top's" needs. Nothing at all was said about product problems or customer requirements. Our "customers" are now mostly our own top management, rather than those who depend on our hardware for their businesses or for national defense.

Is it efficient to spend two hours reporting for every one hour of work? But enough about that. I've avoided posting about my dayjob so far and will avoid it in the future, but this morning it was a dark cloud on my mind. Five and a half years longer and it's behind me and the next couple of generations can puzzle out what went wrong with American efficiency and competitiveness.

Trish (in the mirror) sitting on Mariah. Trish will be in Fargo this summer and is looking forward to working with North Dakota photographers.

So I've spent time looking at St. Paul, Minnesota lately. For retirement. I don't know why I overlooked it before, but my guess is they are used to being overlooked. Lots of great condo-ized old buildings, lots of wonderful old houses. Prices are reasonable - not Duluth cheap, but not San Diego expensive either. A friend told me that St. Paul probably is more my style than Minneapolis, and from what I've learned surfing, she's probably right.

So now I've gone from Amarillo, Texas, to Duluth to St. Paul as the probably location of the next phase of my life. Or I could just stay here in my warehouse (un-condo-ized). But the critical date keeps getting closer every day and I'm looking forward to it.

Cynnamon and Angela, fooling around in Newfoundland in March.

Photographers, particularly those who are not reporting news - idealize. I want to make subjects more friendly, more beautiful, more comfortable than they may actually be in real life. A friend (Marek) wrote me a little about his own nostalgic street work and it struck a cord with me. I look at his work and want to make that sort of thing, but look around here in San Diego and there's nothing that looks like Paris or Krakow or anything remotely Old World here aside from Balboa Park (which is instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with SD and reeks of tourists in Bermuda shorts).

But that would be shooting the past anyway. How about looking the other way and shooting a friendly future? I don't think the future looks very friendly right now. Back in the '50s, when the future promised a hovercraft in every garage and glass buildings in the sky, it beckoned. Now it promises religious wars, energy shortages and distopia. There are some who specialize in post-apocalyptic pictures, but they tend to be Road Warrior clones and are particularly depressing to a guy who really just wants to sit the future out. Hardly a comfortable vision.

Maybe I'm just not interested in disturbing visions anymore.

This is Trish in my motel room in West Hollywood awhile back. Love that girl - she'd do anything...

P.S. Trish is going to be up near Fargo, N.D. this summer. Photographers can contact her through her website.

Point of diminishing returns. At the bookstore yesterday I noticed "Simple" (or "Simpleness" or Simplify") magazine on the shelf. The cover blurted something like "101 things to buy to simplify your life." Man, I felt like I needed to buy that magazine, so I knew which stuff to buy to make my life simple. I'd probably have to move to a bigger place to have room for that simplification stuff.

Please note the sarcasm. Back in the olden days people knew which stuff to buy because it was the stuff they needed to do something necessary, and couldn't do it without the stuff.

My PDA is dying. I'm not going to replace it. When I got it I thought connectivity everywhere was such a cool thing. I bought a wi-fi contract and could get personal email and surf almost anywhere. When I had the PDA with. Jeans don't have a PDA pocket upon which one doesn't sit. So it came along only for trips that involved my briefcase. Along with the laptop that did the same stuff.

Now I have a company-issued Blackberry. Somehow I thought that would be a good thing to have. I read "Wired" magazine and think of all the great things I could do with the gadgets now available, then see the latest in gadget clothing I'd have to wear to have places to tuck the stuff and think maybe the gadget industry hasn't quite got their act together yet. Then I think maybe they never will. Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it must be done.

Remember, marketing is all about convincing people to buy stuff they don't need. If people need stuff, they don't have to be convinced.

One last example. We bought a house once, my Ex and I, a lovely old redwood-framed historical thing with a huge yard and a deck and garden. We imagined sitting on that deck, looking at the beautiful yard, drinking mint juleps, taking life easy. Didn't have time for that, with the maintenance, yard work and all, but it seemed like a good idea. I should probably mention the symbiotic relationship between wall-to-wall carpet and vacuum cleaners too - think about it.

"Labor-saving" often involves far too much work.

Chantel, taking it easy.

Behind Angela is the entire St. John's Harbor. I'm sure some visiting merchant seamen got an eyeful about then. Reflected in the glass is Cynnamon, also nude, but with her own camera. I managed to hide the reflection of my own bulk by careful positioning, making this another self-referential picture, hopefully a little puzzling and a little provocative.

During the shoot I didn't really pose the girls, and though Angela is clearly posed here, she isn't posed for me, but for Cynn, so by carefully selecting my argument, I can say truthfully that this too is an unposed picture, as it was made during their interactions with each other, and not specifically for me and my camera.

Nathaniel commented a post or two back that I should decide whether I'm doing this blog for me or for the readers. Answering as honestly as I can, it's both. Sometimes I need to write, mostly I want to entertain as well. If you keep coming back to read this, it makes me feel good. So for now I'll probably continue daily posts, though sometimes I may have to stretch a little for topics. I think I hit all the best topics back during the first month of the blog's existence.

Kinda looks like she's sucking her thumb, but Fetish Queen Cynnamon isn't a thumb- sucking kind of girl. It was just a pose, I think. Point a camera at a pretty girl and you never know what she'll do. Spend more time pointing it and it gets even more random and wonderful. Spend four days pointing a camera at two girls and anything can happen. See below.

I've been looking at commercial property in the areas I'm considering for retirement. I've always wanted to own a small town bank building, complete with vault. So many of those banks were built at the turn of the last century, and so many have gone out of business that those solid brick buildings with high ceilings are scattered all over and aren't suitable for much commercial use, even if the small town has viable businesses. They usually have office suites on a second floor that are suitable for a residence as well. Yeah, a big, open, high-ceilinged space for shooting and motorcycle tinkering below, and a place to live above. I can dig it. With all of them out there, you'd think more would be on the market.

A second alternative is a church that's grown too small for the congregation, or for which the congregation has grown too small. Again, something built of brick around 1900 would be nice. There are a few of these on the market, stained glass windows and all. Be nice to glass in a steeple and drag my favorite leather armchair up there and sit looking out over the countryside, reading a good book...

The first from that large format bondage shoot of Stacy. Unfor- tunately, the developer was depleted. Fortunately, I still got images, but on stained negatives. Fortunately, I only developed half the film. And as of now I have fresh XTol waiting for the next batch.

I also found that I'd been underdeveloping for the film and chem, according to Kodak's table anyway. Kinda strange, as I got the full range of densities on the (partially brown) negatives. But the thing I have now that's most important is my darkroom log telling me when I need to dump the developer and mix up more. Slowly, slowly I'm getting my developing act together, and that's part of the process change I started awhile back and am continuing with the 4x5.

Anyway, all pix from this shoot will be of Stacy naked and tied up. When she suggested it I realized that it would be a fine way to keep her in the frame and in focus while I was fooling with the camera. Oh, I did use a little front tilt to extend the depth of focus over more of her than could be done by stopping down alone. I thought that was sorta cool.

This incredibly grainy and warm picture of Lexi was made around 2001 in a hotel room in Billings, Montana. We had trouble coming up with anything that made sense, so I asked her to put her hands that way as if she were inspecting her navel or something. The picture was used in a feature of my work in (NotOnly)Black+White, the Australian picture magazine, a few years later though they printed it very flat. This was the last publication that wanted original art, meaning original chromes (or in the case of B&W, prints). Since then all published work has been from scans done on whatever cheap flatbed scanner I had at the time.

On an entirely different subject, now that my passport is out getting renewed and a visa for India, all sorts of potential for travel is popping up. Can't do anything until it gets back to me. Bummer - one of the trips was to Canada, and I like Canada.

Asses. Took me a long time to make my first decent butt shot. There was a lot to learn, so I did a lot of research, looking at asses in various positions, following asses down the street, grasping and kneading gluteus maximi to determine mass and elasticity characteristics necessary to predict behavour under various stresses. Then I began.

Now asses aren't a specialty or anything, but they are something a well-rounded photographer must deal with routinely. I think the first really good butt picture I did was one where I was unwrapping Little Robin from Saran Wrap and decided to expose her derrierre first. I know it's posted here somewhere.

This particular ass (and out-of-focus reflection) belongs to Tereza, my 45-yr-old girlfriend of several years back. She appreciated all that scientific research I had to conduct to further my craft, though she preferred I experiment on her. And that's one reason we're not together anymore.

I wasn't the only photographer at the Newfoundland shoot. Cynnamon studies photography and brought her own camera as well. So while she (wearing no trousers I might add) was photographing Angela (wearing no trousers either), I (wearing trousers) was photographing them.

The recursiveness of a photographer photographing another photographer has always interested me. I've been photographed while shooting and have photographed others while they were shooting but the whole "photographing a trouserless and beautiful photographer shooting a similarly trouserless and beautiful model" thing was probably a first for me. I'd probably remember if I'd done it before.

Ran out and got passport and visa pictures this morning as I have to renew my passport and get a visa prior to the trip to India. Later I found out that I'm going to be the backup of another engineer, in case he can't make it. As it's 115F in New Delhi, I think I could stand to miss this trip and wait for another more comfortable place to go. Still, I was looking forward to it and if the other guy bails, it could still be me.

Complicated paperwork. I'm having it all done by an expediting company in San Francisco, but they need all of the same paperwork, plus powers of attorney. Oh well, the dayjob picks up the tab in any case.

This is Little Robin.