Been a couple of days. Sorry. Zoning on scooters. A guy at work showed up with a Russian- made Ural sidecar rig with a driven sidecar wheel ... and it stunned me. I wanted it. Then common sense took hold and I realized I had no place to store it except the street outside, and that's a bad idea.

Then I started missing the Kawasaki KLR650 big dirt bike I'd ridden 40,000 miles and sold recently. Missing it badly. Thoughts about trading my flash green bike in on a new KLR whipped through my head. But for only a couple thousand more I could get a Husky SE610SM, a really hot supermotard. So I went to look at those and got distracted by the new Ducati Hypermotard. I figured I could trade up to that, but it's only got a 70-mile range. Tons of fun in 70 miles though. But neither of those were practical replacements for the flash green bike so I thought maybe I should just buy a third bike for fun.

But my studio is crowded as it is. So smaller is better. And cheaper is better, too. I'm trying to clear all debt before I retire and am online to do that. So what's cheap? Scooters!

I've always thought the Honda Ruckus was pretty cool. 90 miles per gallon, top speed of 35mph. Tiny for me, but way cool. I could ride it downtown easily and save some gas and roll out time doing that. Then I browsed around looking for hop-up parts to make it faster and found a lot. If I got them all the bike would be much more expensive and still not perform anything near as well as that KLR650.

But for a few thousand more I could get a much hotter, more fun town bike...

And so on.

Candy, photographed in West Hollywood earlier this year.

Photographing two models together usually involves some choices. If you want to make it sexual, then you have to make it convincing. Two completely straight girls are never going to be convincing lesbians. Another option is to have a competitive vibe between them, sometimes framed as one being photographed and the other looking on with distain or envy or some other sort of conflicted emotion or vibe.

The chances of screwing up a shoot also rises exponentially with the number of models involved. I.e., a bad view of one makes a bad picture, and there are twice the odds of that happening. Two girls are four times the chance of a screw-up and three are nine times the chance.

With these two I was very fortunate. It's hard to find a bad angle on either, and they got off on each other. All I really had to do was pick the perspective and stay out of their way. Very little coaching beyond an occasional "lift your chin" or "turn the face slightly to the left."

Basically, I was of as much of interest to either of them as the chair in the corner. And that worked pretty damned well.

Angela (bottom) and Cynnamon (Top) in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada back in March of this year. The rest of their story is scattered in postings for June.

Tall. Oh so long. I couldn't get all of her in without folding her up or using a wide angle lens. The part missing from this picture is also long. It didn't occur to me that because I had to look up to talk to her that she might not fit my tiny studio. Rebecca is an excellent photographer who kindly aquiesced to model for me. That must be so strange, working both sides of the lens.

Not that I haven't been asked to model, mind you. I have. Frequently. but for all the wrong reasons. Or maybe the right ones - this is unclear. People want to photograph me for who I am, rather than what I look like. I photographed Rebecca because she's a babe and not necessarily because she's a photographer. Though the latter made the intro to this post a lot easier. No one wants to photograph me because I'm a babe.

Nevertheless I'm very flattered. Portraits initiated by other than the subject mean someone wants to photograph me because of what I've done or who I am or something like that. It's easy to get a big fat head over stuff like that.

I'm still not sure why they all want me to take my clothes off though.

You can probably tell from the look on her face that she wants me. Wants me bad. Yeah, I get a lot of that. There's no one sexier than a sturdy old guy creeping around a cheap motel room with a huge noisy camera breathing loud and dripping sweat. Take it from me. I'm hott!

It's a sexy job, but who better to do it than yours truly, a stalwart photographer who can be trusted to resist the panting advances of the young lovely women drawn to him? A man with scruples who writes in the third person. A man with defences robust enough to just say no. A man who should have hung it up years ago to photograph landscapes done better by postcard manufacturers. Who better than the legendary D. Brain Nelson?

Was that spelling a Freudian slip? Dunno. That's how Desiree keeps spelling my name. Seems she's hung up on my well-hung intellect, huh?

The adorable Desiree, diddling herself in my motel room in Long Beach while eyeing my thick, extensible lens.

Erin, the naked blogger. Unfortunately, she hasn't updated her blog in a very long time, so I had to drop the link. Erin, get your butt in gear - post some stuff! A stunningly beautiful girl, but I don't feel like I did her justice in enough of the pictures. Guess we'll have to do it again (insert smiley face here).

I scanned that chrome yesterday. It was Ektachrome 160T, pushed +1 (that film doesn't like to be pushed at all). I had to suck some red out as the lighting was all tungsten bulbs in the motel room. In 35mm I used to use Ektachrome 320T pushed up to three stops with pretty good results, but there isn't any decent substitute in 120 format. Yet another reason I prefer to shoot B&W.

Back to work this morning. I was given a heads up that I may be sent to a couple of Arab countries to do some troubleshooting. Nothing definitive. That info goes into the same box with the tenuous plans for South Korea and Spain. We'll see. It'll probably all happen at once and I'll never be home.

Well, I'm scanning now and feel a little better. This time a roll of London was in the mix (I pull rolls to develop randomly from the bag of stuff to do), along with more of Desiree (shown here) and Erin. Only three rolls of 120 left to develop and seven left to scan. Not overwhelming.

I like this picture too. Everything about it. Good tonal range, interesting composition, I get to show off the texture of the sheets, and of course a beautiful model all tied up.

Anyway, there should be all new pictures for the coming week at least. I think I'll go clean my bike while the scanning is being done. It's a slow process.

During the week I wait for the weekend. During the weekend, I wait for it to end. Something's missing here. What's missing is a life. When I don't have film to work I'm bored. When I do have film I don't seem to get to it fast enough.

I walked downtowon today and brought the new little camera along and exposed a roll of film. After I soup the next four rolls of 120 for the girls I've kept waiting I may do that roll just to get an idea of what the Olympus XA can do in my hands. This is a 28 year old camera, but it feels as contemporary as anything. Like a Studebaker Avanti, for you car guys. Only that's even older. This is the oldest camera I own, excepting the Minox B. (The newest one is the folding 4x5 camera - this confuses people.)

Chem's in the fridge cooling down to precisely 24C. Once the film's developed, maybe I'll go hang at the bookstore. Though I don't do that much anymore.

Erin straddling me. I was too tired to actually get up to make pictures, so she came to me.

Time to take a look at the results of pulling the blog off the search engines. Overall visits are down by about a half. Returning visits are down a little, but not too much. I think some returning visitors would find the blog linked somewhere and click over, but didn't bookmark it. Comments are about the same, or even up a little. The overall trend remains downward slightly because there are a few search engines out there that don't spider as frequently and still bring up the blog for some search terms. And I like it because it all feels more personal.

I should be picking up the Olympus XA from the shop today. I had a local camera repair shop install new light seals. $35. It would have taken me a couple of hours to find materials and do the work. Maybe next time. I've got a couple rolls of old 35mm Tri-X that I'll run through it tonight. I still have a bunch of 120 film with latent images of London, Desiree, Rebecca and Erin on them to develop and scan, but I should be able to piggyback a couple of rolls of 35mm in there somewhere.

Cynnamon, looking mighty proud of herself...

Notice the props. I use the phone and remote control in a lot of hotel room pictures. They make it a hotel room with all the loneliness that implies and add some pathos to the scene. Sometimes personal stuff like water bottles, or in the case of Erin, beer bottles, are included.

I'm a traveler. I spend almost as much time in hotel rooms as at home, though it's been pretty slow so far this year. Travel is lonely. Usually the people you know in a town are those you work with during the day. You're a stranger, and only fit in at the hotel or associated chain restaurants. Trying to make any kind of contact is futile as you'll only be there a short time. While I like that sort of isolation, I don't think normal people do. For them it must be a form of hell.

So the pictures I produce usually involve some loneliness. Sometimes there's a tryst or an implication of waiting for a tryst - those are at least a little more joyful.

Desiree in a motel in Long Beach. She wasn't really traveling - I stayed in the room and felt completely isolated. Then I got up early the next day and drove home.

For the last two days I've been buying camera equipment. Pentax 6x7 stuff a local guy used for photo- astronomy (astro- photo- graphy?) mostly. But one of the by-products of the deal is that I ended up with an Olympus XA with the A11 flash. The flash doesn't work, which is just as well as I don't much like flash photography anyway. The camera needs new light-seal foam, something I can probably do myself.

Anyway, back in 1979 this little bitty true rangefinder was put on the market. I won't get into the designer or the features much, but since I started shooting seriously in the mid-'80s, I've wanted one. It was well-known as the pocket camera that fashion shooters took to parties and on vacation because it had great optics and almost full manual control. Exposure was aperture-piority auto, but even that could be fooled by a back-light override or by changing film speed to suit. The 35mm f2.8 lens is equivalent to the mighty Leica M-series "normal" as well.

But it was far too expensive for me to buy as a toy when I needed to feed the family and make a living shooting. Now, with film equipment prices dropping so radically, it's so cheap I bought it for the price of a fancy lunch.

In the interim between not being able to afford it and now I have picked up toys of various sorts. A Minox GT, a Minox B and maybe one of those little Rollei bricks. I didn't use any of them. I carried them around but found that estimating distance was fussy and I needed to stop down to make sure I had focus. So they sat around until I gave them away (except the Minox B, which still just sits around). This one I really think I'll use. Really.

You've heard me preach that money can't buy happiness. Maybe I was wrong. Fifty bucks has made me giddy with delight. Finally a little street shooter that fits in a pocket and can make real B&W photographs with full range tonality. I'm stoked!

This is Erin again. She was photographed with the big Pentax using B&W film at ASA1600.

Time for the first annual predictions of Life in the Future! Or maybe monthly. Kinda hard to tell looking forward just when I'll do the next one. But it's easy to tell a few things, so here goes:

1) Air travel will decrease dramatically! While it's getting cheaper and cheaper the cost in annoyance, discomfort and loss of dignity will drive those with the resources, both time and money, to find other ways to travel, or better yet to do the job without traveling at all. In a way this means that the bad guys won, but in another way it means that travel, particularly business travel by air, isn't as necessary as it's been in the past. Taking its place will be telecommuting, road trips, trains and buses and boats. And motorcycles, for sure! Unlike the common response in the '70s of "you're so lucky," the future response to a person announcing air travel will be, "you poor bastard." Actually, it already is.

Airplanes will be seen more and more as a way to move only stuff and "overnight" won't be fast enough. FedEx already has, I believe, the largest fleet of commercial airplanes in the world.

2) The web will have several severe melt-downs. It's a house of cards waiting for the cat to visit. Every business in the country and most in the world now are totaly dependent on the web for everything from communication to logistics to off-site computing. German teenagers can shut it down whenever they want. Eventually one of them will want to. Then we can all go home until it's up again. But what will we do at home, being that most household and many entertainment systems are also web-dependent? Not to mention power distribution and even lighting schedules. Can't go shopping, as they'd have no way to verify credit card stuff. It'll be weird to find out just how much this thing (which didn't really exist in the '80's) is necessary to life as we know it. I believe that eventually the web will evolve into many fragmented private systems, both for redundancy and security. Then it won't be free any more. I'm wondering just how our big thinkers decided that something basically free is a good thing to bet so many lives on. But I guess that's what makes them big thinkers.

3) People will finally see wall-to-wall carpeting, bottled water, credit cards, television and designer jeans as the scams they are and will shun them, only to fall for brand new scams that I cannot predict. If I could, I'd be getting in at the ground floor, fer shur.

4) While it's already happening, I think that more people will start realizing that all one can really have are time, space, friends and stories. Everything else is junk.

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That gorgeous girl up there playing with herself is Desiree, photographed in Long Beach last week. Remember...time, space, friends and stories.

I just deleted a post that used this same picture. It was too negative. It was about Leona Helmsley's death, and I took too much joy in it. Schadenfreude? Anyway it wasn't "nice" as pointed out by a commentor. I had to think about that, too. He had meant "nice' in regards to Helmsley being dead anyway, but I'm thinking in terms of the very quality of niceness.

In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" the protagonist goes crazy when faced with the fact that the single word "quality" means two different and opposite things when used by the two competing worldviews. Similarly, "nice" means opposite things depending on the worldview of the person using it. "Nice" is a good thing, according to my mother. "Nice" is really boring and implies a lack of value, according to me.

The worst possible critique of a photograph is to say it's "nice." The most abrupt dismissal of a person is to call her "nice." "Nice" is the default comment when something is entirely lacking in other qualities or charms.

For those who use "nice" frequently, I'd recommend considering the word "good." The photograph is nice. The photograph is good. On the surface they sound almost alike, but the "good" comment actually means something. Mapplethorpe's bullwhip picture was certainly "good," but most certainly not "nice."

"Good" describes value, while "nice" seems to mean something about acceptability (though it's too vague even for that).

I'd rather be good than nice. In fact I'm not particularly nice (or if I am, somebody slap me!).

Angela in my studio a few weeks back. Single hot light bounced off a white mat board. Black paper backdrop.

I'm deathly shy. May have mentioned that before. I can hear all the sarcastic responses already, but I'd also bet that there are several of you who know exactly what I mean and compensate about the same way I do. When she was visiting a little while back I mentioned my shyness to Cynnamon and she said, "I know." To her the shyness was obvious. Maybe because she too is that way. Or maybe not.

But I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that some shy people find ways of getting around it. The web means seldom having to actually meet people face-to-face. Having a conversation with a couple of people is great, but for me more than that forces one of two choices: freeze up; or become the life of the party. Believe me, lots of people have seen me freeze up. This is speculation because I really don't know, but it's possible that models (and submissives) like Cynn here find that they can overcome shyness by letting control out of their hands.

This particular photoshoot was interesting because I had her come next door where there were half a dozen guys working, then undress and strut. She seemed to enjoy it. (They enjoyed it, of course.) Now that I think of it, she did go to a party damned near naked right after that, so maybe she doesn't need the prompting. OK, I could be very wrong about her. Others though ... some others I know use modeling nude as a way of compensating for shyness.

After all, how could we be shy if we show the world everything?

P.S. An anonymous admirer has noted that I'm very much in control of what I show. I guess she didn't notice the sarcasm, huh?

Input requested!

Which is the better photograph? This one or the last one? Why? (The model is Desiree.)

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I joined Bondage.Com a long time ago with a free account. I'd intended to let surfers there find a link to here. No one came. Yesterday I upgraded my account, found and "friended" several of the models that you've seen here. And I snooped around a bit. To upgrade I spent about $150 for a year. It gave me access to the dirty pictures, better options for email and such, no ads, and other things I haven't figured out yet.

Mostly what I found were a huge group of old guys who want to smack around, tie up, torture or order around women. (There are other minor permutations that involve mixing up the genders, the motivations, etc.) I'm an old guy and am interested in smacking the buttocks of pretty young women, so I fit right in. Too much so.

I've talked to some of the girls about this place and they pretty much ignore old guys - we're the white noise of BDC. So the question arises, "How do I get noticed so eventually I can smack the buttocks of pretty young women? And photograph them, of course?"

Some of the greatest minds of the era are pondering this right now. Me too. I'll break it down into three phases: Initial contact, building a relationship and smacking asses (and taking pictures).

Initial contact. There are about four options available. E-mail (through BDC), chat, audiovisual chat and getting noticed on forums or for articles. The chat room is huge and I don't have a camera or sound equipment on the laptop, so those are out. As far as I can figure, attractive young women don't populate the forums, but those are so big I haven't com;leted a survey yet. I can write, but don't really have much to write about (except that long summer when models were lining up to get naked, be tied up, photographed then spanked afterward - maybe this is something to write about?).

Building a relationship. Be who I am. Not a problem.

Smacking asses. Actually, I'm good at this, so again, not a problem.

I'll let you all know how this works out. Anyone else who's a member, feel free to "friend" me. My name there, as everywhere, is dbriannelson.

Well, I've gotten some film developed and am scanning right now. This one of Desiree just came up and I liked it so much I scanned full-frame. There wasn't anything in the frame I didn't like.

We had a good time up there in Long Beach a couple of weeks back. Or a week back. I can't remember, dammit! Have to check the calendar. Anyway, she's a student at Boston U., and a professional salsa dancer and a really neat kid. Nineteen, if I remember correctly. I'd wanted to shoot high contrast like Albert Watson's prison work in [i]Cyclops[/i], but she was more caramel than I expected. So I shot for caramel. And by gum, we got it!

Back to scanning...

So having set my mind to it, I went downtown and saw the newest Harry Potter movie. One old su- spicious- looking guy, all alone. It turned out there were maybe fifty adults and only three children in the movie house. I guess most of the kids had seen it in the first three or four days. I wasn't so out of place as I'd expected. Whew!

While she's not one of the girls in the picture, a model friend asked me if I ever felt like I didn't belong anywhere; like I didn't have a home. She was feeling that way, of course. I replied that yes, I often feel that way and believe it's part of the human condition, that dissatisfaction with what is, driving the pursuit of the what might be. The question comes at a time when I'm shopping for a new place to start the next phase ("retirement") of my life, and am looking toward the last place that felt like home, the Midwest.

The closer I look as I shop around, the more I am sure that wherever I end up will have to be made into home, as it won't just seamlessly appear. And it may never feel like home, as that is really a place of foggy memories edited for content and sometimes format. You can't go home again, because it wasn't really like that in the first place. Best you can do is avoid as many of the things that grate as possible, then go to work on making it what you want it to be.

For a week, the Newfoundland hotel room in the above picture felt like home. An idealized home of beautiful women, few worries, too much wine and good conversations. Sigh ... that's what I'd really like to retire to. Cynnamon and Angela's ass. (That last bit sounds like a book title, eh?)

P.S. One of the books I'm currently reading, Vernor Vinge's classic Tanja Grimm's World, touches on themes of dissatisfaction and ambition. Pure escapism, but you might like it Yulja.

Question: If Person A holds a door for Person B, is Person B obligated to hurry to the door to avoid further inconveniencing Person A? Answer: No. Person A chose to accept the inconvience by holding the door in the first place. Yet Persons B are seen hurrying to the door all the time. What's with that? I think it's courtesy gone bad.

But perhaps Person A felt an obligation to hold the door in the first place. I mean, isn't that the polite thing to do? But is it still polite when it forces Person B to hurry up? Of course not.

It makes an interesting 2x2 game theory matrix, with on side being Hold/Not Hold and the other being Hurry/Not Hurry. Completion of the exercise is left to the student.

Erin, photographed the weekend before last in West Hollywood, that hotbed of sex and iniquity.

Erin from the weekend before last, photographed in that same West Hollywood motel. And me too, back there in the mirror. This is one of the "trophy pictures" I make so that someday sitting on the porch of the retirement home I can impress the hell outta the other codgers by showing them that in relation to my life, theirs sucked so bad...

On that topic, ultimately all one has are stories. Seems to me that if one doesn't bother doing what it takes to make stories now, then one will eventually have nothing. A big fluffy house, spiffy pimped out car, costly piezo-quantum camera gear and blow-dried transplanted hair are nothing without stories.

Make your stories now while you can. If you don't make 'em now, the only ones you'll have to tell on the porch of that retirement home will be about your irregular bowel movements and subsequent medical procedures. And no one wants to hear those.

It's summer here and all thoughts are on staying cool. Air-conditioned public spaces beckon, but the effort to get to them is daunting. One must cross the heat to get to the cool. Personally, I point the fan at myself and stay home.

Not that San Diego has the worst of it - by comparison with most of the country we're pretty moderate right now. But still...

A few nights back I sat at an outside table with my Ex and her s/o and had a ice cold micro-brew and Hunan duck quesadilla while looking over the yachts and smaller boats in the bay. The conversation was worth the price of admission - one thing I can never have enough of is good conversation. And a good conversation is hard to find.

This is Angela's profile in a rather strange format for me. In the frame her head was tilted back, but her far shoulder intersected her jawline in a way I didn't like. To make it work I tilted the picture six degrees left and cropped very tightly and this is how it came out.

Years ago I read The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau. Check that link. Garreau posits cultural and geographic differences so deep that what we consider the borders of three or four countries are largely irrelevent. I'm currently reading Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan, a science fiction novel set a hundred years hence when North America has been divided similarly, but with a few interesting differences.

In this novel North America is comprised of "The Rim States," "Jesusland" (or "The Republic"), and "The Union." They are respectively: The Pacific Coast (into South America), for whom trade and culture are shared with the burgeoning Asian powerhouses; the central and southern states where fundamentalist Christianity has produced a backward, racist wasteland; and the northeastern seaboard where most of the traditional American values and European relations drive the culture and economy.

One could almost see the novel as an update of Garreau's vision. And it makes me more than a little nervous about retiring and moving back to "Jesusland."

Trish and Mariah playing in my motel room in West Hollywood some time back. Sure, they can play - they're in "The Rim States."

Party next door tonight. Not sure I can take it. What's with Monday night parties anyway? Dinner with the Ex and her beau. That'll be nice - good people. Got the distilled water so maybe I'll just develop film all night.

Sorry about all the social commentary of late. Since I pulled the blog from the search engines I've felt more like talking about stuff not directly related to either photography or naked chix. Or books or bikes. At some point I'll get back on about naked chix as I can't see myself never drooling again.

Cynnamon, photographed in the place where the party will be, about two weeks ago.

I am a huge fan of Eisenhower's interstate highway system. It was designed and built as a defense corridor for moving military equipment and people, with the secondary purpose of civilian use. Given the primary purpose, other highways should have been built and maintained to carry all normal traffic, with the interstate system being more or less a convenience, rather than the critical component of non-rail surface transportation.

Of course legislators took the easy way out by depending on the system rather than the difficult path of taxing people to build other roads which would appear to be redundant.

Now everyone's forgotten that the interstates are military roads and no one can go anywhere without them. And they can't handle the loads imposed.

I'd like to go off and talk about concrete patches on asphalt, use of eminent domain to widen the highways and the disruption that causes, but instead will point out the similarities with water systems designed to support half or less of current populations, power grids that perhaps cannot be more reliable than they currently are (not too bad unless you're stuck in an elevator or walking in a dicey neighborhood when outages happen), sewage and other waste handling, and other distribution systems we depend on to eat and otherwise live our lives.

It's all patches, folks. There is no original fabric left. And no one's even thinking about buying or making a new dress.

This is Angela photographed a few weeks back in my studio in San Diego.

So yesterday in Long Beach I photographed Dulcea and I just finished shooting Rebecca here in the studio. There will be pictures of Erin, London, Dulcea and Rebecca, along with more Cynnamon (shown here) and Angela in the coming weeks. I won't be booking any more shoots until I feel I have a handle on the stuff stacked up right now. There must be 18-20 rolls of 120 B&W to develop and two rolls of color of Erin to drop off at the lab. (Note to self: buy distilled water.)

It's hot enough here that I have to chill the developer, and that's a pain. Easier to warm it up than to cool it down. San Diego's been pretty hot lately and it hasn't rained in forever. Drought. These will probably happen more and more often too. I really want to wash the truck but feel guilty about it. So I won't for now.

I think the next post will be about the failing infrastructure. Not just bridges but highways, water and sewer systems, commercial transportation and all of it. It's going to hell in a handbag and the crunch is coming.

Cynnamon, photographed in the music factory next door a few weeks back.

This is Chioma, diddling herself in West Hollywood awhile back. She's a dancer and very, very black. What I really wanted to do was show her skin in the extremely high contrast manner of Albert Watson (see his Cyclops). I attempted this using only pushed film for the contrast and am sorta happy with how her face looked, though I'm not happy that I lost detail along her torso.

I'll be leaving pretty soon for Long Beach where I will photograph another Black model, (Dulcea, also a dancer) and will try again for that high contrast. Someone told me it takes a green filter to turn the red tones of the skin very black, while not interfering with the specular highlights. I don't have any green filters, but I do have a green gel and may tape it to the lens or to the single hot light I'm taking with. Or I may not.

Anyway, it feels funny categorizing women as Black or Not Black, but it shouldn't. The skin's color and texture makes a huge difference in how one photographs it and the photographic treatment will be different. The human factor is not affected in any way.

So, wish me luck. I don't photograph nearly enough Black women and am looking forward to this.

A week ago I put a "nofollow" line into the code here, preventing spiders and such from being able to index this blog, specifically to get it de-listed from search engines. This follows a long effort to keep it on the front page of popular Google searches and an effort to increase readership. So the scope is being contracted quite a bit. I've decided that the readers I want aren't necessarily those who are surfing for free porno, but people who are interested in photography and all the rest of the stuff I spew about here daily. Now to find the blog one must be referred by one of many websites that act as filters or gatekeepers.

There are several reasons I've done this: First is that I want to be able to taper off from photographing only nude women in hotel rooms. I mean, that is what the title promises you know. And while I am still delighted to make those pictures, I also want to be able to make other pictures without feeling that I'm somehow obligated to produce for this blog. Yeah, yeah, that old familiar angst again.

As a result of the "nofollow" fix the blog has slipped to page three of a Google search for "nudes" and it will eventually drop off all searches completely. For those who decide to come back, I'll still be here. As you've noticed, I'm not talking a whole lot about naked chix and such anymore - in the future I may go even farther afield.

But...here's Trish, buck naked in a motel room in West Hollywood awhile back.

No secret that I dislike advertising or any other effort to push products at me. I seldom buy magazines unless I'm in the mood to have well-designed ads compete with the articles for my attention, and even then the magazines I do buy are narrowly tailored to topics (and products) that interest me. I don't have a television because it's mostly advertising, and even that which isn't contains product placement ads.

So I read a lot of books. Well yesterday I ran across what appears to be a book with product placement advertising. Maybe.

William Gibson, the father of "cyberpunk" literature, has just released Spook Country, a very enjoyable novel of the recent past. One of the characters wears "Pendleton" shirts with the sleeves ripped off. As that particular brand is worn within that character's specific L.A. culture, this is OK with me. Then came the reference to "Adidas GSG9" boots, which a protagonist tests by doing a quick backflip. Right.

This disconcerting thing is that now I really want a pair of those boots. If it's advertising, it worked. (Advertising does work, by the way. If it didn't, it wouldn't exist.) I'm torn between resenting Gibson for slipping something in that looks like advertising and being grateful that he recommended shoes that really appeal to me. I would like to know if he received money or goods for the endorsement or if he simply used the brand(s) to demonstrate insider status.

Still, it's a fine book. But I hope this isn't the beginning of product placement advertising in books. I'd hate to give up reading.

Ashley, photographed in her hotel room in Imperial Beach, California last year.

OK, I haven't finished scanning the pictures of Cynn and Angela from two weeks back, haven't developed the film of Erin from last weekend, will be doing a short shoot with London Andrews this evening and have shoots on Saturday (Desiree) in Long Beach and Sunday (Rebecca) in my studio. I'm over my head again, shooting faster than I can keep up.

That's the way it seems to go though, with nothing for months, then a flurry of shooting that seems to bury me. I expect to be apologizing a lot for late delivery for the next two months or so.

Cynnamon, playing with Angela in Newfoundland last March. This wasn't exactly what Angela wanted, but I really liked it.

Hate the multinational corporations? Do your part. Buy local, buy crafts, buy used (they hate that), recycle, and instead of being a consumer, be the end user, fixing it if it's broke, then when it's really broke, using any parts you can for something else.

Don't buy in to planned obsolescence - only get what you think will last your lifetime. Babies need love, not a hundredweight of plastic toys. Clothes need washing and patching and buttons sewn back on, not replacing as the fashion winds blow. Food isn't grown in plastic wrappers, and it doesn't need to be bought that way. Shoes and boots can be resoled, recolored and refinished if they're actually well-made to begin with. Big corporations don't make good shoes. They'd put themselves out of business that way.

Now I don't do all of these things, either. I don't mix my own photo chem and do buy motorcycle junk (though I always believe that stuff will last forever), and I seldom patch any clothes that aren't meant to get dirty and greasy. But I keep and wear every free t-shirt and baseball cap I'm given.

And I do try to give as little as possible to the retirement funds of billionaire CEOs.

This is Ashley, photographed in Winnepeg a few years back.

Tonight I ignored the bunch of scanning and developing I've got to do in order to change out the chain and sprockets of the nasty go-fast green motorcycle. But I couldn't get the front sprocket off. And I had to go buy a deep socket to try even. And the plug on my hand grinder (to bust the existing chain) was broken so I bummed a plug next door and fixed the grinder. But I got the brand new D.I.D. X-Ring chain and the back sprocket installed. And some crash bungs, being as it seems likely I'll need them eventually. The smaller-than-stock front sprocket I'll have the shop install another time. Or I'll hit it with a torch to see if that breaks it free.

Anyway, it's been a nice sweaty evening and I feel like I got something done. At some point I'll have to either do the valve check on the red bike or decide to pay the shop ridiculous amounts to do it for me. That's a pain-in-the-ass, but it's a good bike and I don't want to risk burning a valve.

This is Cynn from the same shoot as below. The girl just has presence.

P.S. The woman whose car I dinged yesterday just called with a bill for $150 to fix her tail light. Gonna send her a money order tomorrow and I'm happy to get off so cheaply.

It is amazing how profoundly overnight shipping has changed the world. UPS and FedEx and the rest mean that when I order parts for my motorcycle I can have them the next day. Or books. Or almost anything if I'm willing to pay to have right now.

Many businesses have the cost of overnight shipping built in to their overhead. Of course that means the customer pays for it indirectly, but in the specific case of the bike parts that got me thinking about this, I'm paying the same as I'd pay if the parts were in stock, and while there is tax on parts bought through a local shop (as I've done), the prices are competitive with onine sources. If the parts are exchanged there's no further cost to the customer.

Back in the olden days... Well, many of us remember having to wait for stuff.

None of this has anything to do with this photograph of Angela made eight days back in my studio (same as the last picture of her). This seemed a good use of the 135mm macro lens. The negative does have detail of the shadowed side of her face, but I liked this higher contrast version.

So riding back from LA about noon the traffic sucked. I was splitting the number one and two lanes as usual. There was a tight slot opening so I dived the VFR800 Interceptor into it and the driver on the left put on her brakes. My left hand factory hard bag clipped her tail light and the bag broke off to go rolling into the very slow traffic.

I pulled over, gave insurance and contact info (and will probably pay cash for the tail light) but the bag was now a problem. I got it up between my arms and rode to the nearest exit in Downey, found a gas station where the kid had a roll of twine behind the counter that he was nice enough to offer, and tied the bag sloppily to the pillion seat. He also gave me directions to a Pep Boys where I bought a lifetime supply of bungee cords and secured the bag a whole lot better - good enough to ride home at normal speeds, and now narrow enough to fit those tight slots.

Not sure if I'll replace the bag or just go with soft luggage for any other touring I may do. Or maybe it's time to trade this very fast motorcycle in (I do have another faster one) on a DRZ400SM super motard, which is slower and possibly more fun.

Tomorrow I pick up the smaller front sprocket, new rear and new chain for the Z1000 so I won't have to slip the clutch so bad off the lights. That will reduce the top speed to something like 148mph, but as it's not real easy to hang on above 90mph or so, that's no big loss.

This is Angela, photographed in my studio a week ago today. She's in Germany now, studying (or so she says).

Cynnamon, next to "Soul in the Machine" next door. Ilford Delta 3200 in 120, exposed at ASA 1600, developed for 9 minutes at 24C in XTol. Lit with a single hot light with barndoors to prevent spill onto the polished stainless in the background. Nice detail throughout and no noticeable grain, even enlarged.

I've finally gotten to the medium format, with Cynn coming first, as I'd shown more color of Angela. Quite a bit of both left to scan, though I won't be done before tomorrow's shoot in West Hollywood.

Got the Honda VFR800 Interceptor off the trickle-charger and ready for the trip up. Should be a lot faster than the pickup I drove up in last week. Erin tells me she loves bikes and wants to see some of the tourist sites, so we'll ride a bit before we shoot. Gotta remember the helmet, jacket and gloves for her...

Back to scanning.

Angela again, in one of her new corsets. No more color of Cynnamon, but the B&W is spooled and ready to soup tonight, so it's coming soon.

This Saturday I'll be photographing Erin, a Twin Cities model. That bridge collapse in Minneapolis probably affected her, and it certainly has me. I've crossed that bridge frequently. But less specifically, if it can happen there, it's not just a San Francisco thing anymore. Or a Boston thing. Have engineering and construction gotten worse? My Leica digital camera doesn't work - is this part of the same devolution? I wrote a little while back about how nothing is special anymore - anyone can have almost anything, but few things are worth having. I wonder if this is part of the same big change, that things are just knocked out rather than crafted and designed. I know that if you compare a Craftsman hand drill from forty years ago to one available today, the old one not only shows actual craftsmanship, but it's repairable and durable. Will the ones made today even be around in forty years? Things today are meant to be replaced, not repaired. Was the bridge designed for replacement, unlike earlier bridges that were designed to last forever?

Is this all part of the disposible society we've read about? Is this a good way to live?

I don't think it is. But I also don't know how to avoid it except by avoiding junk. And that takes a lot of work.

After two weeks off, I've been walking again. During the time off - the girls' visit - I lost six pounds anyway. They don't eat! I can't go eat if they won't. Geez.

So for the last three days I've been back walking 5.5 miles each day around the airport. It really wastes me and all I want to do when I get home is grab a beer and lie down and read. And the reading part isn't that important. Monday I stopped on the way home and bought a "forty" of Mickey's. Yesterday it was a quart of Coors. Tonight I went to the store for some shoe polish and bought a 12-pack each of Red Hook ESB and Wing Walker Amber Ale. That should do me for the rest of the week and then some.

Gonna wear some Corcoran jump boots for the walk tomorrow. Big heavy things. That should be a pretty good workout.

Oh, I'm also getting tired of "slipstream." "Little, Big" is good, but I think I'll table the other two that are in process. Time for some noir.

Angela, last week.

Another of Angela - a candid as she came from the shower with a towel around her hips. Too much magenta, and she's not too keen on that bit of ear peeking out, but it's a candid. This was about the time Renee Jacobs called from L.A. and I was blubbering incoherently because two gorgeous girls were running around my tiny cave buck naked. You'd think this would be old hat for me wouldn't you, being as I'm an erotic photographer and all? Well, I'm not dead yet and it never gets old.

But maybe I've overdone Angela and Cynnamon lately (duh!). OK, I'll start seeding the blog with others. Obsession is a dangerous thing.

I finished up Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities last night. It was an quick easy read - a good thing because it wasn't particularly enjoyable. A series of fantastic (literal usage) observations of invented cities and an on-going conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. In the right mood I might have enjoyed the prose and allegory, but I didn't. I'm glad it's done. The book will be in my semi-permanent library for some future reading should the spirit move me. I probably missed something important there.