Figures of Grace

16 Years of Art Nude Photography

2011-08-19T03:30:00.000-04:00

Hi, everyone.

It has been seven months since I lasted posted anything on my blog here on Blogspot. That's not to say that I haven't done any blogging for the past seven months. I've done plenty. It's just that it's now happening over on Wordpress, where visitors don't have to deal with the annoying warning page that they have to deal with here.

You can visit my new blog by clicking here. Please come to visit often!

The reason why I'm making the update here now is that today is the 16th anniversary of my first art nude photo session, which happened at a workshop in Woodstock, New York. To celebrate the anniversary, much as I did one year ago, I've prepared a special blog post with one photo for each of the 17 years that I've photographed fine art nudes. If you like my photography, you'll enjoy this post, so please take a look. You can access it today, August 19, by clicking on the general blog link above, but if you're getting here late, you can see the special post by clicking here.

Be well, everyone. I hope to see you over on Wordpress!

Yours,

Dave

A Farewell to Blogger

2011-01-19T11:52:00.008-05:00

I just made a new post at my new blog on Wordpress, but unlike the past few postings, I am not making a parallel post here. That's because, from now on, I will only be blogging on Wordpress.

I have enjoyed my time here at Blogger, but the annoyance and inconvenience of readers' having to get through the content warning page is just too much for me to deal with anymore. If any of the admin people happen to read this, understand that that is the primary reason why I am moving over to Wordpress.

To see my new blog, please go to: http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/ . I encourage all 64 of my followers, plus any others who happen to come by this page, to look for my new postings there.

I will leave Blogger with two photos. The one at the top is one of my most popular photos - that of Carlotta out in the Nevada desert in 2006 - to give people an idea of what kind of art nude photos I will be posting at my new site.

The other photo, below, is of some cute kids waving goodbye after my group visited the home of a family in Tibet in 2007. It seems an appropriate way to end things here.

Be well, everyone! I hope to see you over at Wordpress.

Yours,

Dave

Oh, My Aching Back!!!

2011-01-16T20:19:00.005-05:00

I hurt my back again yesterday. This is something that happens from time to time when I sit a certain way, turn a certain way or do something like that. I’ll be feeling fine, I’ll sit down, and when I try to stand up – oy!!!

This time it may have been sitting in front of the computer here at home that did it yesterday morning. My back was bothering me so much that I was barely able to bend forward enough to put my socks on. When I got out of bed this morning it hurt so much that I just had to drop to my knees. A hot shower, though – and perhaps the ibuprofen that I took – has helped.

Sometimes these back attacks can strike at inopportune times. It happened once during the time when I was working at the Metropolitan Opera as a supernumerary (i.e. extra) in Puccini’s final opera, “Turandot.” My part called for me to carry a ten foot high banner on stage, after walking up a flight of rickety stairs about fifteen feet high. The way my back was killing me, especially with the back spasms I was having, I don’t even know if I could have made it up those steps carrying my prop. If I could make it up and then had a bad spasm, my banner could have taken out half the people on stage. (Well, maybe not half, but it could have done a lot of damage.)
Needless to say, I opted out until my back was better.

Then there was the time it happened in Japan in 2005. I remember how it happened: washing my socks in the sink. There I was in my hotel room in Kyoto, leaning forward while wringing the water out of a sock, and all of a sudden – oy!!!!!!!!!

As bad as it hurt, and even though I was having spasms every few minutes that would literally make me freeze in place when it happened, I was determined to not let it stop me from doing what I had planned to do. I had not gone all the way to Japan to just lie around in the hotel.

The next day, I had plans to make a day trip to Himeji. The castle in this city is the finest original castle still existing in Japan (as opposed to castles rebuilt after the Second World War). It’s truly worth the effort to go and see it.

Taking a train to go someplace is one thing, but climbing up the steep steps of a Japanese castle with a bad back, carrying twenty pounds of camera gear, is something else. I really wasn’t sure if I should even try, but when I saw eighty or ninety year old little old Japanese ladies doing it, I figured that I might be able to make it, too – and I did.

The two photos here are of Himeji Castle – which is called “white egret castle” for its resemblance to a bird – and give just a hint of how fine and beautiful it really is.

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Despite my aching back, I still went into Manhattan as planned yesterday to go to the International Center of Photography. (I’m also scheduled to photograph a model tomorrow, and you know that my back won’t stop me from doing that!)

The exhibit at ICP was “The Mexican Suitcase,” which I had read about last year. Not actually a suitcase, the object in question was three boxes containing negatives made during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937 by Robert Capa, David (Chim) Seymour and Gerda Taro. During the chaos of that event and World War II, the negatives had been sent for safekeeping and somehow ended up in the possession of the Mexican envoy to the Vichy government in France, eventually winding up in Mexico City. Not long ago, they were returned to the heirs of the photographers.

Of those photographers, I had of course heard of Capa and Seymour but not Taro. Having escaped Hitler’s Germany, she was a young photojournalist who was tragically killed covering the war in 1937. It’s believed that she was the first female photojournalist to die in action. She was only 26 years old.

Robert Capa is known for his photo of a soldier being killed during the war in Spain and then for his photos of the Allied landing at Normandy on D-Day. Sadly, he too was killed in action covering the Vietnamese war of independence against the French in 1954.

As to the exhibit, it was primarily enlarged contact sheets from the found negatives along with quite a few vintage prints of the photographers’ work from the Spanish Civil War, along with numerous vintage publications of their work. Anyone interested in the history of photojournalism should try to see it. For more info, click here.

As usual while at ICP, I made a visit to the book store. Rather than looking at books, I spent most of my time looking over the cheapo plastic cameras they have – Holgas, Dianas, Lomos and the like. In this age of hearing more and more blather about digital cameras, I find myself drawn to these plastic cheapies as a source of fun in photography.

I have one Holga now. Who knows what will follow.
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For those of you out there who are more interested in photography of the nude, I recommend that you take a look at the latest blog post by my friend Bill Ballard. He asks some questions about why people photograph nudes and why other people treat photography of the nude differently from other kinds of photography. See by clicking here. There’s also a nice nude photo posted with it for your viewing pleasure.
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Finally, this may well be my last blog entry here on Blogger. My new blog page over at Wordpress is pretty much complete, subject perhaps to a few more changes in the future.

Therefore, to those of you who have been kind enough to follow me here on Blogger, I would recommend that you change my blog settings to those over at Wordpress. You can see my latest posting by clicking here, and the overall blog link is:

http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/

Double X

2011-01-13T20:49:00.005-05:00

Here’s another photo of Revielle that I made during my trip to Ohio this past August. This one, though, is part of my double exposure series. This is a series that I work on now and then – basically when I remember to do it on when on location – to try to create a different look to some of my images. Some work, some don’t. I don’t necessarily think it’s one of my best, but I like it all the same. Hopefully you will to.

I made some other double exposures with Revielle and I’ll be posting some of those in the future. **************************************************************

As for me, I’ve finally finished working overtime at the office. I worked two consecutive weekends (Saturday and Sunday), worked five consecutive twelve hour days and put in nearly 70 hours of OT in about a week and a half. It’s good to get back home at a normal time, though today I got home an hour late because of a subway delay.

Still, today was a pretty good day overall, as I had lunch with a friend at a good Vietnamese restaurant in Greenwich Village. On the way to the restaurant, we met the actor Wallace Shawn on the street and talked with him for a short time. (Well, it was us mostly talking to him, telling him what characters we remembered seeing him play on the screen, like the Grand Nagus Zek in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and Diane Keaton’s old boyfriend in “Annie Hall.” He seemed to appreciate it.)
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For people who may be interested in purchasing my art nude calendar for 2011, Lulu is now having a 30% off promotion through January 15. The discount code is: SEASON305.

You can view and order the calendar by clicking here.
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As I've written in my previous posts, I am continuing my transition from here on Blogger over to Wordpress. If anybody from Blogger is reading this, the primary reason is to get away from readers having to deal with the annoying content warning page that they have to deal with before reading my blog.

You can see this post on the new blog at:
http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/double-x-2/

On the new blog, you can now subscribe to my posts, too.

Full Gallop

2011-01-03T23:10:00.003-05:00

So, here we are in 2011, a new year. I hope it will be a happy, healthy and prosperous one for all of my readers.

I normally stay home on New Year’s Eve, but stay up long enough to watch the ball drop in Times Square at midnight. I went to bed earlier this time, though, as I’ve been working overtime at the office and wanted to get in early on Saturday. I’d planned to get to bed by 10:30 p.m. so I could get up around 4:30 a.m., but I didn’t actually get to bed until a bit after 11:30.

Then I was kept awake after what I assume was midnight. Firecrackers began to sound in the distance, but what was really bad was that some major asshole nearby was blasting some kind of loud horn outside (and I mean LOUD). I think I heard somebody shout out to him to stop the racket, but that didn’t stop him. All that I did was see myself in my mind picking up and aiming a rifle, pulling the trigger and watching the imbecile’s head explode as the bullet struck. He eventually went away, but then came back and blew the horn so loud that I actually jumped when roused from my slumber!

I got up around 4:30 anyway.

During the day on Friday I put the finishing touches on a CD of photos to send in to B&W magazine for its annual portfolio competition. I got a Bronze Award recently in the magazine’s single image competition (see here), so I figured that I’d try sending in some portfolios, too.

One of the portfolios I submitted was my series of photographs of archers in competition during the Tosho-gu Grand Festival in Nikko, Japan, in 2005. I think I have a total of 14 photos, so I had to scan all but two of those negatives, two having been scanned previously.

At the top you can one of those previously unscanned images. As I’ve explained before, there was no way I could get a sharp picture, as I had to focus manually on a man riding a horse running at full gallop. Even if I could maintain focus, there wasn’t enough light to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop motion.

Therefore, I resorted to the pan and blur technique of following along with the subject in the viewfinder as it moves across. Most of the photos I shot were of the horse and rider pretty much right in front of me. The photo at the top here is different, though, as the subjects were still off to my left. They were even far off away for me to capture the horses legs in motion. I kind of like it – and hopefully this post will help my photography get off to a fast start this year!
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As I've written in my last few posts, I'm in the process of switching my blog over to Wordpress. You can see my post there at: http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/full-gallop/

Warm Thoughts

2010-12-31T13:44:00.004-05:00

So here we are on December 31 – the final day of the year. It’s been a long one, certainly, with its share of ups and downs. I normally like to finish the year with a post looking over the past 12 months, but with a lot of stuff going on lately – like dealing with snowstorms and working overtime – I just haven’t been able to put together an overview yet.

Instead, I’m going to end the year with something simple: warm thoughts for all of my readers. Thank you all for taking the time to read my ramblings and look at my photos. I hope you enjoy them and will keep coming back.

On a more direct note, there’s another reason for warm thoughts at this time. Here in the northeast and in other parts of the U.S., we’ve been deluged with tons and tons of snow. My last blog post included a photo of a model photographed in Ohio earlier in the year – and last winter – in the snow.

To remind people that all of this cold stuff is temporary and that warm weather will (eventually) return, today I’m posting another photo of a model, Revielle, in Ohio – only this one was made half a year after the last one. Warmth had returned, after all, and there was no snow to be seen anywhere.

So, let’s just deal with the cold as best as we can and wait for warmer days. Just be patient and they’ll get here.

As for my own story, I was able to finally get to work on Wednesday, though I had to take a bus to another subway line as the one near me was still out of service. It’s back to normal now, though.

On the down side, it looks like I won’t be able to use my car for a while. All of the snow that had been on it is gone, but there’s a huge pile of snow directly behind it that’s too big for me to shovel away (and there’s no place to really dump it if I could), so there’s no way that I can back my car out of its parking spot in the lot.

I normally don’t use my car much in the winter, but I’m planning to go over to a friend on Long Island for his holiday party tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to take the railroad there instead.

For now, I wish you all a happy and healthy new year! See you again in 2011.

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As I wrote last time, I'm in the process of switching over my blog to Wordpress, as that blogging site doesn't put up a content warning page for people to get by before seeing my posts. I'll be doing parallel posts for a while until I can get things there finalized, so for now, please take a look at my new post over there and let me know what you think of how it looks. See it at:

http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/warm-thoughts/

Thanks again.

Snowbound Blues

2010-12-28T20:05:00.006-05:00

It snowed here in New York City on Sunday – a lot! We got at least 20 inches of snow. I heard on the radio this morning that it was the sixth largest snowfall that the city has ever gotten since record keeping began, which was probably in the late 1800’s.

I couldn’t get into work yesterday. I guess I hadn’t realized how much snow had fallen overnight, so I got up a little earlier than normal, went through my normal pre-breakfast morning routine, and then decided to take a look at my computer. I checked the website of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and guess what – the subway line that I take into work was out of commission. That line runs in on outdoor, uncovered gulley for the most part, so snow can easily accumulate there. Given enough of it, trains just can’t get through.

I never even left home. I developed three rolls of film from my trip to Japan instead.

Today was a different story. I checked the MTA website when I got up and, unfortunately, my subway line was still out of service. However, another subway line – this one elevated outdoors and close to where I used to live – was back in service but with delays. If I could get to one of its stations, I could get to work, even if I might be late. To get to a station, though, I had to take a bus that stops a couple of blocks from me. I decided to give it a try.

I should never have left home.

Walking toward the bus stop, I saw a bus making a turn as it’s supposed to do at that corner. “Great,” I thought, “the buses are running!” Then when I got closer I saw that the bus had no passengers, but its lights were flashing. Next, I saw the driver slumped against the window, apparently dozing. Then the sign in front reading “Not In Service.”

“What the hell’s going on here?,” I wondered. I walked down to the next stop, where I spoke to some people walking by. One man told me that the bus had been stuck in that spot since the day of the blizzard – two days ago!

I knew then that it would not be good, people saying that they hadn’t seen one bus running this morning. I walked on in the other direction, toward the supermarket where I’d go to get a few things to take home if all else failed. Waiting at the bus stop across the street, I spoke with a man who’d been waiting for about an hour and a half and hadn’t seen a bus. Then another man came by who said that three buses and an ambulance were stuck in the snow further along the buses route, indicating that no bus was likely to get through.

He did make another suggestion: walk several long blocks up to the next main avenue, where I should be able to get a different bus to that one working subway line. “Why not?,” I figured. “I’m out here already, so I might as well give it a try.”

Before I even got to that avenue I heard people along the way saying that no buses were running there, either. Still, on I went on the odd chance that a bus might actually go by. I gave up after about twenty minutes. By that time I'd been looking for a bus for over two hours. No bus seemed likely to go by, and even if it did, there’d be a good chance that I’d have to stand on it (if I could get on at all) and on the subway, too – and my bad foot was already hurting me so much that the prospect of having to stand for a couple of hours more was unthinkable.

So, in the end, ‘twas all for naught. (Well, maybe not all. I did get a gallon of milk on the way home.) What lay in wait tomorrow morning is yet to be seen. All I know now is what the MTA website says: right now, my subway line is still not working, and neither is the bus I need as an alternative. Wish me luck.

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In keeping with the snowy theme, that’s another photo of Goddess Angie and Jypsie Nahmana in the snow during my trip to Ohio in February.

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Finally, I'm thinking of switching my blog over to Wordpress to avoid people being put off by the annoying warning page that people have to deal with here and to publish my photos full size if I so desire.

With that in mind, today I created a blog account at Wordpress and posted this entry over there. It's all very rudimentary now as I need to figure the whole thing out, but please take a look here and let me know what you think:

http://figuresofgrace.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/snowbound-blues/

Thanks.

Solstice Bells

2010-12-22T22:47:00.006-05:00

“Now is the solstice of the year,
Winter is the glad song that you hear.
Seven maids move in seven time.
Have the lads up ready in a line.

Ring out these bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.”

- Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull (“Ring Out, Solstice Bells”)

Those words begin one of my favorite songs from the Jethro Tull album “Songs From The Wood.” As the winter solstice took place this week and winter officially began (I know – try telling that to the folks in Minnesota), I thought I’d quote that line to celebrate the season.

What a solstice it was, too! A lunar eclipse, a full moon and the winter solstice all in one day, the likes of which hadn’t happened in over 450 years. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay up to watch the eclipse around 2:30 a.m. here in New York (having to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready for work will do that), but the moon did look spectacular when I saw it the following evening and the morning after that.

So, let us rejoice in the season. Sure, the days may get colder, but the hours of daylight will be getting longer, too, day after day, until day equals night (equal night = "equinox") on the vernal equinox in March and then on to the summer solstice in June.

Winter brings snow, too, and without it, how can photographers create images such as this one here, showing Goddess Angie, bravely sacrificing the warmth of a studio to help create some outdoor art during my trip to Ohio in February of this year. Thanks again, Angie!

(To hear the song by Jethro Tull, click here. Turning on your computer's speakers is highly recommended.)

A Busy Couple of Weeks

2010-12-16T21:17:00.015-05:00

Hi again, everyone.

Yes, I know. I haven’t posted anything for a while. I had actually planned to make a posting this past weekend titled “A Busy Week,” but unfortunately some more problems cropped up with my new computer and I’ve had to spend several hours on the phone with tech support people in India, the Philippines and – would you believe it? – the United States (!) trying to get the problems sorted out.

As of now, they are still not all worked out, but they are to the extent that I can take a few days off from conversing with people on the other side of the world. More on this later.

The action began a couple of weeks ago when I made a weekend trip to Las Vegas to visit family. As has become the norm for a Vegas visit, I got together with my good friend Terrell “Big T” Neasley for breakfast on Saturday morning. After I downed my pancakes and he finished his eggs benedict, we drove on over to a camera store where Terrell and some of his buddies like to hang out on Saturday mornings. That’s a photo of Big T in the store at the top.

I returned to New York on Monday, December 6, but as it was a late afternoon departure from Las Vegas, my plane didn’t get into JFK until around 12:45 a.m., I didn’t get home until around 2:00 and I didn’t get to bed until around 3:00. If that weren’t bad enough, it was up at 5:30 a.m. to head into work as usual.

There wasn’t much time to rest after work, either, as that Tuesday evening was the annual benefit photo auction for Friends Without a Border, which I wrote about last time. This is always a nice event to attend, helping to raise money for a childrens’ hospital in Cambodia. The difference this year was that one of my own photos was being auctioned off, so I was happy to contribute in another way.

So how did my photo do? Well, it sold for $200 to a woman who told me that she really liked it a great deal, but quite honestly I was hoping that it would go for a bit more. Still, $200 can buy a lot of medicine to help the needy, so I am happy that it sold for what it did. Hopefully I’ll be able to contribute another print next year.

Here are some photos from the event.

Some of the volunteers

That's my photo at the top. Note that somebody had placed a bid and then crossed it out!

My friend Omar

The gorgeous photo by Lillian Bassman that I wish I could have afforded

Yours truly with the buyer of my photo

At the end of last week, on Friday, I decided to go after work to the holiday party being held at the New York Academy of Art in TriBeCa. I wanted to get some dinner first, so I used it as an opportunity to finally eat at a place called the Square Diner (even though it’s on a roughly triangular shaped piece of land) a couple of blocks from the school. There are plenty of diners in New York, but I've wanted to try this one as it seems to be one of the few railroad car style diners left in the city, so it was an interesting visit. (The food was decent, too.)

Here are a few photos.

After dinner it was off to the art school, where the event was held in the main gallery on the ground floor. The walls were covered with small, relatively inexpensive artworks for sale to benefit the school, and there were a lot of wonderful paintings, prints and drawings. Among the people I met and spoke with were John Cichowski, who runs the school’s continuing education department (perhaps I’ll sign up for a figure drawing class one day when I have time) and an art student named Lisa Benson, whose website can be seen here and blog here.

There was art being created, too, as several artists were making drawings and paintings of the models who occupied the center of the room – several young guys covered in a glittery covering, wearing nothing but white undershorts and white angel wings. (It would be great if they could have some female angels dressed that way next year, but somehow I don’t think that will happen!)

Again, some photos.

Art for sale

A gorgeous mezzotint

Another interesting print

John Cichowski

Nudes can be nice, too!

Lisa Benson

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As to my computer problems, where shall I begin??? Come to think of it, I’ve probably posted enough for one day, so I’ll hold off until my next post to deal with that. Perhaps I’ll even be able to get something resolved between now and then.

Before I end, though, here’s a You Tube link that every American citizen should watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7q5F2u1I_Q&feature=related

Stay tuned and stay warm.

Friends Without a Border Benefit Auction

2010-12-03T06:45:00.005-05:00

Sorry for the delay in writing, everyone. I'm afraid that things have piled up around here so I've been busy trying to get out from under. There was also a death in my family recently that has required me to divert much of my attention to family matters.

Today's entry is a quickie, but an important one. Next Tuesday, December 7, Friends Without a Border will hold its annual photography auction in New York. The proceeds go to support a hospital for children in Siem Reap, near the famous ruins of Angkor, in Cambodia. This is a cause I have supported over the years by purchasing a number of photos from the auction, and I'm pleased to announce that one of my own photographs will be auctioned this year as part of the fundraiser.

My photo included is the one shown here, "Archer in Competition, Nikko, Japan, 2005." This photo was also on the cover of the first volume of books published by the f-eleven group, and the purchase of my photo also includes a copy of that book, too.

To find out more about the auction and to register to bid, please click here. This is a very worthy cause and I hope readers will consider contributing. My photo can be seen here, in the fourth row, second from the right.

B&W Magazine

2010-11-23T20:19:00.007-05:00

I received the new issue of B&W magazine in the mail a few days ago. This is the Single Image Contest issue that includes one of my photos, “Nude, Prince Edward Island, 2006,” that won a Bronze Award. My photo is on page 51 and can be seen above. You can see the cover below.

The issue, #80, is also available now in bookstores and on newsstands for those of you who may want to purchase a copy or just take a look.

That’s the good news. Now the bad: my photo was placed in the wrong category. The image was created as an in-camera double exposure on film, but it won third prize in the category called Digital Conceptualization. That’s right: digital! I work hard to use film and make prints in a darkroom, and pride myself on the fact that I don’t do digital, but now people will see my photo and think that it was something that I doctored up in the computer, rather than being a product of creative vision on location. That’s a real disappointment for me.

So, I wrote the following message to the magazine’s staff yesterday morning:

“Dear B&W:

I recently received my copy of issue #80, the special Single Image Contest Awards issue. As you had notified me, one of my photographs was given a Bronze Award (on page 51), and I want to thank you again for selecting my image out of the many that were submitted. I feel honored.

However, I am also writing to inform you of my great disappointment in seeing that my photo was placed in the wrong category, Digital Conceptualization. While I agree that the image is conceptual in nature, it is definitely not digital. Rather, it was made as an in-camera double exposure – something that I conceived in my mind with forethought while on location and not something that I assembled on a computer screen afterwards.

Actually, I take pride in the fact that I still use film which I develop myself and that I still make silver prints in a darkroom. The only digital work I do is to make straight scans from negatives to post on the web and to submit to competitions and publications such as yours. It is therefore quite upsetting that readers of B&W will see my photo and think that the image was something that was doctored up in a computer, which is something I would never do.

What is perhaps even more unsettling is that someone would simply assume that a photographic image is the result of digital computer manipulation without considering the alternatives or even trying to find out. Is this what photography has come to? When a fine publication such as B&W does so, it’s even worse.

You say in the contest prospectus that it makes no difference if an image was made via film or digital capture. If that is so, why only have a category for Digital Conceptualization? Why not have one for Analog (Film) Conceptualization as well? Think of the fine work that Jerry Uelsmann has done over the years using film and multiple enlargers. Think of the photographs that have been created in a darkroom using sandwiched negatives. Think of the work such as mine that were done as multiple exposures in the camera. All of these are conceptual in nature, yet none of them fall into the category of Digital Conceptualization. Is it fair that they should be excluded or wrongly labeled?

Perhaps a better solution is this: create a category that is simply called “Conceptual.” This way, it would encompass everything. Of course, people might still look at a film image and believe it was done digitally, but I much prefer that ambiguity to having somebody told outright that a photograph is the result of digital manipulation when in fact it is not.

Again, I want to tell you how pleased I am that my image was given a Bronze Award and I thank you for doing so. I just believe that your way of categorizing images could be improved and I hope you will consider what I have written. “

I wasn’t sure if I would get a response, but in fact I got two. One was from the staff of the magazine that handles the competition, and they thanked me for writing and for making suggestions for change. They wrote that they have also been thinking about the same things.

The other response was a phone call from Henry Rasmussen, the original publisher and editor of B&W magazine and now the person in charge of judging the magazine’s competitions. He left a message while I was out yesterday, but I called him back today and we had a nice discussion on the topic.

He apologized for the error and admitted that he could have been more diligent in determining the method by which my photo was made. As a film and darkroom user, I told him of my belief that for any category that is reserved for digital only, there should be one just for film users, too.

In the end, he told me that changes should be made that will hopefully prevent this type of error from happening again, so although I’m disappointed that my photo was put in the wrong category this time, I can at least have some satisfaction in knowing that I’ve helped to correct things for the future. As with my photo being selected for an award and getting published, I am happy about that.

(Now if only the producers of “Dancing With the Stars” will listen to my suggestions and come up with a system that will prevent someone like Bristol Palin from ever making it to the finals again. Until they do, I am not planning to watch.)

Calendar 2011

2010-11-14T13:15:00.006-05:00

I’ve just finished putting together and publishing my art nude calendar for 2011. I made calendars for 2008 and 2009, but I never got around to making one for 2010. Now, the calendar is back.

Please click here to take a look. Click on the preview link to see a full preview. The photos – 12 months plus the cover – measure 8.5 x 11 inches and are in glorious black and white.

The price of the calendar is $17.95, but I was able to order one at 30% off with the code EARLYBIRD305. You may be able to do so, too, but the offer expires tomorrow, November 15. For more information, click here.

The new calendar includes a selection of photos from outdoor, indoor and studio settings. The models depicted include Carlotta Champagne (cover), Candace Nirvana, Liz Ashley, Kat Love and Sarah Ellis.

Bronze

2010-11-11T13:16:00.006-05:00

I found out a couple of weeks ago that one of my photos has received a Bronze Award (third place) in the upcoming Single Images competition issue of B&W magazine. The issue, B&W #80, should be available on newsstands and bookstores the first week of December.

According to the message I received from the magazine, 555 photographers entered a total of 3,395 photos in the competition. It said that 15 people received Bronze Awards (one for each category, I believe) so with the Gold and Silver awards, that’s 45 images getting awards – or about 1.3 percent of the total number entered. I’m happy.

The initial message didn’t say which image was selected, but after inquiring, I was told that it’s "Nude, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 2006,” which should be the photo at the top here – an in-camera double exposure of Rachel.

I’ll let people know when the issue is available.
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Today is Veteran’s Day here in the United States. As it happens, yesterday would have been my father’s 87th birthday if he were still with us. My dad fought in World War II as a paratrooper in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He used to fly in gliders, which he told me were given the nickname “flying coffins.”

A number of years back he gave me one of his glider wing pins, which you can see here. I’m just upset that his Eisenhower jacket that used to hang in my closet when I lived with my parents somehow got lost when my folks moved out of New York. I can’t imagine him wanting to get rid of it, but I have no idea where it is now.

Anyway, I salute all of the veterans – from WWII and earlier to the most recent – plus those men and women still in uniform, for risking all to protect us all. Thank you.

The Photo Review Auction

2010-11-05T00:47:00.007-04:00

The annual Photo Review benefit photography auction is taking place tomorrow night, November 6, in central Philadelphia. You can get more information about it here.

As I have been doing for quite a few years, I am once again donating some photos to the auction.

One of them is the image at the top – a photo a of model made in a motel room in Los Angeles County in 2007. My unofficial name for it is “Banned by Kodak,” because Kodak refused to print up a book I put together because this photo was in it. (Apparently, Kodak cannot tell the difference between someone covering up her naughty bit, which is what she was doing, and some “touching herself,” which is what Kodak assumed she was doing).

As it happens, somebody liked the photo enough to buy it outright in the pre-auction, but I have decided to donate another print of the same image. You can bid on it here on the Photo Review website (ignore the “Sold” sign) or here on the Live Auctioneers site.

The other photo I’m donating is the one seen above here, that was taken on my first trip to Japan in 2004. It depicts an offering box (for people to throw donation money into) at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. I happened to return to this same spot on my trip to Japan earlier this year and I saw “no photography” signs posted there. I just wonder if the signs are relatively new or if I missed them in 2004 and did something I wasn’t supposed to.

You can bid on this photo here and here. If you’re in the Philadelphia on Saturday, you can come on down the auction, too.

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In other news, I’m really upset about the results of the voting on Tuesday night. No, I’m not referring to the political, governmental elections (though I’m not happy about those, either). I’m talking about “Dancing With The Stars.” Can somebody please tell me why the hell Bristol Palin is still on? As I’ve written before, she should never have been on in the first place . (I guess we can blame the “liberal media” for her being on, right?)

Anybody who’s watched her plodding across the dance floor can tell that she should have been eliminated weeks ago. She wasn’t, but much better dancers like Audrina and Rick Fox have been sent packing instead. As one of the judges said, there is no justice in this.

I guess that if someone like Bristol Palin can be voted in to stay on the show, anything is possible – and that is a scary thought.

That scary thought came to life on Tuesday with the political elections. Well, now that the Republicans have a bigger voice in things, let’s see if they’ll put up or shut up. Will they try to do what’s best for the people of this country and try to work with the Democrats (and, of course, vice versa) or will they be obstructionist and do what’s best for themselves? So far, it does not look good for us as a nation.

I’ll just finish off my thoughts about the Republicans by saying that they’re a bunch of hypocrites. They say they want to reduce federal spending and the federal deficit, but why weren’t they saying these things when the Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress took the budget surplus that Bill Clinton had given us and turned it into a huge deficit? I guess that when Republicans spend the taxpayers’ dollars such things don’t matter. (After all, it was Dick Cheney who said that the deficit is “meaningless.”)

They say they have a better way to fix the health care system, so why didn’t they try to implement it when they controlled the White House and Congress for six years? (Oh, yes, I remember now. They were too busy giving big tax breaks to wealthy people and trying to privatize Social Security to have time to make life better for the millions of Americans without health insurance. I guess that if you make less than a six figure income you just don’t rate in the Republicans’ financial playbook, do you?)

Enough said on this subject for now.

"f-eleven, volume 3"

2010-11-01T00:10:00.015-04:00

The latest volume of photographs published by the f-eleven group, to which I belong, has just been released. As with the first two volumes, a number of my photos are included in this volume, as well. I'm posting two of those photos here, but by all means, take a look at the book yourself on the Blurb website, where you can order a copy. Information can be found by clicking here, and a full preview of the book can be seen here.

Proceeds from each book sold will go to benefit the The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, I’d suggest that you do so now in order to take advantage of a 25% discount currently being offered by Blurb. Hurry, though, as this discount offer ends on November 2 – tomorrow! The discount code to use is BOOKIFY. I used this code to purchase my copy of the book and it works.

About the book itself, here is a list of contributors and the type of work included:

Brooks Ayola (nude portraits)
Ralph Barker ( fine art landscape + still life )
Matthew Cherry ( fine art )
Sita Mae Edwards ( fine art nude )
April-lea Hutchinson ( nude portraits )
Leo Lam ( editorial fashion )
Dave Levingston ( fine art nude )
Clay Lipsky ( portraits )
Frank Love ( street / documentary work )
Brooke Lynne ( fine art nude )
Ken Mierzwa ( fine art nude)
Trish Noble ( portraits )
Dave Rudin ( fine art nude )
Ward Shortridge ( portraits )
Wolf189 ( editorial fashion + erotic portraits )

As with the first two books, this volume was also edited by my friend, Wolf189.

The back cover

Boo!

2010-10-31T11:00:00.014-04:00

Okay, folks. Today is Halloween – a day for ghosts and goblins, witches and werewolves, spooks and spiders, and, of course, the pumpkin pie and the Great Pumpkin.

It’s also the day for me to post a spooky photo or two, so here are this year's entries. For those who are wondering, that’s Revielle photographed earlier this year as Madame Skullface.

Somehow, I don’t think you’ll find anybody going around trick or treating today looking quite like that, so enjoy the photos.

Here are a few other Halloween oldies of mine, too.

Have a safe day, everyone. Watch out for shaving cream and flying eggs. Here in New York we’re having the great Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. One of these days I may try to photograph it, but as today is Sunday, I’m just planning to stay home to try to catch up on work here.

Pennsavania (or: Where Am I?)

2010-10-25T20:10:00.003-04:00

I’ve had a busy weekend, most of the busyness being done on Saturday when I made a day trip to Pennsylvania (or as the locals there call it, Pennsavania). It was basically intended as a visit to family I have in Lancaster (pronounced LAN-cas-ter, not Lan-CAS-ter), but it had some photographic components added to it, too.

My first stop was in Langhorne, PA, north of Philadelphia, where I paid a visit to my friend Stephen Perloff, the editor of the non-profit photo publication, the Photo Review. On the way there, I got lost, missing a right turn after I got off the highway and ending up back on the highway, but I managed to figure out where I had to go.

I normally donate a couple of my prints to the Photo Review’s annual benefit auction in Philadelphia (on November 6 this year; more on that later), so I stopped by to give Stephen my two prints. One of those prints will not be auctioned off in Philadelphia this year, as I was told that someone down in the great state of Texas already bought it in the pre-auction sale – for $500! (More on that in an upcoming post, too.)

From there I made it to my family in Lancaster without incident, and I enjoyed my visit. My next stop was to pay a visit to the photographer Bill Earle, who lives about an hour’s drive east of Lancaster. After a big traffic backup due to a broken down car on the road, my trip to Bill went smoothly – until I got lost again by getting off the highway an exit too soon! Riding around and around, I ended up on the main street of the local town, not really knowing where I was going. When I saw a parking lot I could pull into, I did so and gave Bill a call. Fortunately, I was right by a major intersection, and Bill gave me directions to get to his place, which I was able to do, despite it getting dark, making the street signs very hard to read.

Anyway, I had never met Bill before, and he turned out to be a fine host. After going out to dinner at a nice local restaurant, we returned to Bill’s house where he showed me some of his prints (including lith prints) and he looked through a box of my own prints that I’d brought with me. Afterwards, I ended up trading one of my prints for one of his, which I’m glad to have in my collection.

Overall, it was a nice visit, and a rare chance for me to talk with someone else seriously about photography and darkroom printing – something I rarely get to do here at home in New York.

The adventure continued, though, on the way back home, when I got lost yet another time! As it was about 10:45 pm when I left to return home, it was too dark for me to glance at my hand drawn map to check where I should be going. (I always draw up an easy to read map when driving in an unfamiliar area and I have nobody with me to read directions to me.)

This time, I missed the exit that would have lead me to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, probably because I had gotten the route numbers confused, and was really thoroughly lost, driving around in the dark wondering where the hell I was going. I did finally get to the turnpike, but not before stopping to ask for directions not once but twice, and did continue on to New Jersey and then New York. (As I told someone today, I was never before so happy to see New Jersey!)

In the end, I got home around 1:30 a.m., having driven a total of 350 miles, but I came away with an even greater realization: I really need to get a GPS.

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In other news, I’ve spent some time lately writing about and writing to models. I got an e-mail recently with the subject line “nude girls !” that I, at first, thought was a spam message. It wasn’t. Instead, it was from a well known photographer of the nude who I’ve known for a number of years. He wrote to say that he’ll be coming to New York and asked that I suggest some models that he might want to photograph.

One of those models I suggested is the gorgeous Julie Maximova, who I photographed in February of last year. I also want to work with her again, so this was an opportune time for me to write to her. I also decided to scan a few more photos of her from our photo session. You can see one of them at the top here. (As I said, she is gorgeous.)

Online Again

2010-10-20T20:32:00.004-04:00

The internet connection on my computer is working again. As I wrote last time, Verizon did send me a new router that arrived yesterday via UPS – but it arrived at my home address, when I was I was not at home, instead of being sent to my work address, where I had specifically asked them to send it. Still, even though they did the wrong thing, it ultimately turned out to be the right thing for me.

As it happens, I got my internet connection working again without the help of a new router. The problem turned out to be my firewall program. For some reason, when I turned the computer on, the firewall somehow set itself to blocking all internet traffic. How I do not know. I just know that I didn’t do it. When I changed the setting, things returned to normal. Ordinarily I turn off web traffic when I won’t be using the internet for a while, but I do so with a different setting than the one that was causing the problem, so I never thought to look there initially.

At any rate, had Verizon sent the router to me at work, I would have had to carry it home on the subway, open up the box, remove the return shipping label (for the old router), tape it to the box and then take it to a UPS Store to send it back. By sending it to me at home where it could not be delivered, I just called up UPS and asked them to send it back to Verizon – much easier than having to send it back myself.
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Otherwise, I’ve been busy developing film. I think I developed about 20 rolls in the past week and a half. I’ve even finished developing all of the film from my trip to Ohio – in February! It will be a while until I get to the film from my trip to Ohio in August, as I first have to finish developing the film of a couple of models I worked with in the spring, plus most of the film from my trip to Japan in May.

The picture at the top is from that February trip. The great majority of the film I shot then was done in my friend Dave Levingston’s studio, but one day we went out with a couple of models so I could do photos in the snow for an hour. The weather the rest of the time that I was there was good for photos – an overcast yielding nice, even light, but the day that we went out in the snow, the lighting turned out to be horrible – that is to say, bright and sunny.

It was tough going photographing in a forest with that kind of light, but here’s one example of what I saw when I pushed the shutter button. The scene may look tranquil, but I’m sure that the models weren’t feeling very tranquil at that moment, so I give my thanks again to Goddess Angie and Jypsie Nahmana for agreeing to freeze their asses off just so I could get some photos of nude models in the snow – something I had never done before and (for all I know) I may never do again.

Offline

2010-10-16T20:58:00.005-04:00

Hello again, everyone.

Yes, I am still around, despite my not having posted anything for a couple of weeks. One of the reasons for this is that I haven't had any new photos to post for some time. While I have been photographing, I haven't developed much film for quite a while - until last weekend. Even though I've been feeling lousy for the past week and a half (all congested, now taking medication for it), I decided to finally get to work, and began last weekend with film that I shot way back in February of this year.

Although I developed 14 rolls in total (with more to hopefully follow tomorrow), I haven't scanned any yet. Still, that's not the reason why there's no photo with this post. Instead, it's because my computer has lost its internet connectivity. I turned it on yesterday, couldn't connect to the web, rebooted a few times to no effect, so I called my internet provider, Verizon. After speaking with someone for quite a while, he concluded that the problem lies with either the router, the cable connecting the router to the computer or the computer itself. I do hope that it's not the latter.

Verizon is sending me a new router and cable that will hopefully arrive on Tuesday. Hopefully that will straighten things out. For now, my only web access is with my iPod Touch, and that's what I'm writing with now. (Thankfully, the wifi from the router is still working, though the signal has dropped out a few times.) If things work out well, you'll hopefully see a posting here with a photo next week. If it doesn't - well, we'll see.

A Day in New York

2010-10-03T23:05:00.010-04:00

Yes, people, I am still alive and kicking. My apologies once again for not having posted anything for awhile, but I’ve been busy. As I mentioned last time, I had trouble getting a new webcam to work. Well, I finally got it working – after spending time online with support from HP (not much help there) and about two hours on the phone with someone from Logitech (who actually did help me to get it working, although the Logitech drivers still cannot be installed and something is still wrong).

Then I spent time working on editing and submitting photos for another book project I’m part of. (I hope to give you more information about that in a few weeks, but for now, you can see one of the photos I submitted at the top.) Finally, I got to work matting a bunch of photos, including two which I’ll be donating to a benefit auction next month. (More on that later, too.)

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Now that the summer is over, the autumn fine arts season is into the swing of things. I decided to celebrate that – and what may have been the last day in New York to walk around without a jacket for some time – by going to visit some galleries in Manhattan. I ended up spending most of my time, though, at Sotheby’s auction house on the Upper East Side, where the preview exhibition for the upcoming photography auction is on display. As I like to tell people, these auction previews are great places to view great photography – and it’s free. I’m just sorry that I didn’t have time to see the previews at Christie’s in Rockefeller Center and at Philips over in Chelsea.

The main reason I went to Sotheby’s, though, was to see the preview exhibit of the items for the sale in the upcoming George Eastman House benefit auction. The Eastman House is one of the world’s great photography museums and a lot of wonderful photos are up for sale – and well as a number of books and Herb Ritts’ Mamiya RZ67 camera. The live auction of the more expensive works takes place tomorrow (Monday) night, but the more affordable works are being sold in an online auction ending Thursday.

If you’re interested, you can get more information here and here.

Here are some photos from the preview:

Herb Ritts' Mamiya RZ 67 camera with 220 film back

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Finally, I thought I heard on the radio that Grand Central Station would be once again displaying huge, banner sized photographs in its main hallway this weekend. Some of you may remember these bright, huge, colorful photographs that were put up as advertisements by Kodak. If they were being put up on display again, I had to go see them, so I made sure I ended my day there. What a disappointment to find that not one banner photo was to be found, so I guess I heard incorrectly.

Still, Grand Central Station is Grand Central Station, and it is one of the great public spaces of New York – even without a huge banner photo hung up in it. So, I decided to take a few photos, all the same. Here's one.

In The Desert With “Big T”

2010-09-22T23:24:00.010-04:00

I wrote last time about my recent trip to Las Vegas and how I photographed a new model and had dinner with another one. Today, as promised, I’m writing about my visits with my good friend, Terrell “Big T” Neasley.

I go to Las Vegas primarily to visit family that I have in the area, but in the past few years, I’ve added Terrell to my visiting list as we’ve become friends. This trip was no exception. In fact, we were able to get together twice.

The first time we just met for breakfast, as usual, but also did something else – we then went to see “Avatar” in 3D at a movie theater. It was the first time that I’d seen the film and the first of the recent 3D films that I’ve seen that way. It was long but entertaining.

While waiting for the film to begin, we were talking about different things, many of a photographic nature, and I mentioned that I really didn’t know of too many locations to photograph nudes in the Las Vegas area. As we both had the time, Terrell was kind enough to take me to one of the locations he likes to use for photos out in red rock country.

We met again the following weekend, again beginning with breakfast. Terrell had actually written to a number of local models to ask if we could set up a photo shoot, but it was at too short a notice (my fault, as I’d originally thought of us doing something else), so again, Terrell took me out to some of his favorite photo spots. One was a dry lake bed in the Las Vegas area where I had actually photographed a model back in 2003. The other place he took me was in another part of red rock country, which really is spectacular.

So, I just want once again say thanks to “Big T" for being so kind as to share these spots with me. Perhaps one day I’ll actually shoot some photos at them.

You can see some more of the photos from our adventures below.

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Remember how my electronic devices like the television set, computer and MP3 player went haywire on me earlier this year and had to be replaced? Well, the year isn’t over yet, as I’ve had more troubles.

First there was my iPod Touch, which I bought to replace the old MP3 player. I was downloading the new iTunes 10 software and for some reason it failed to install properly. I figured that I’d just use the previous iTunes, but unfortunately, it totally screwed up the iPod. It had to be restored, but then the restoration failed and the thing just became frozen. I couldn’t even shut the damn thing off. All that was visible was the Apple logo and nothing else, pretty much.

Finally, it did shut down, and when I turned it on again, after recharging it a bit, it asked to be connected to iTunes via my computer. This I did, and it was indeed working again, but it had been wiped clean and everything had to be reloaded. I was nearly late for work one day as I waited for a download/synch to finish before I could unplug it and head off to the office.

That story was the good news. The bad is that I finally signed up for Skype but have not been able to get a webcam working. I bought one on Monday, loaded the software and connected the webcam to a USB port. The result? The computer didn’t recognize the camera. It’s as though it didn’t exist.

Well, I figured that maybe the camera was a lemon, but as it was made by a reputable company, I decided to return it today for credit and bought another one of the same model. Can you guess what happened when I plugged in the new one? Exactly – the same thing as happened last time!

This time I contacted HP online and had a chat with one of their tech people. The result? He could find nothing wrong with my system and everything seems to be working fine on it. I checked the spec requirements on the box and my computer more than meets them.
So, I am just left to scratch my head and feel frustrated because I have no idea why the damn thing won’t work. I guess I’ll bring this one back and try another type, then cross my fingers.
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Finally, I’ve got another reason to be upset – “Dancing With the Stars,” which began its new fall season this week. First off, why the hell is Bristol Palin on? What did she do to deserve being called “a star”? Having a kid at 18? Having a mother who couldn’t even finish her first term as governor of an underpopulated state? At least someone like Chelsea Clinton is more accomplished than a Bristol Palin.

Still, that’s not my main gripe. It’s that David Hasselhoff was eliminated in this, the first week of competition. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a huge fan of “the Hoff” or anything like that. It’s just that his dance partner, Kym Johnson, is my favorite of all the pro dancers on the show. She’s a knockout with a fantastic bod and she certainly knows how to shake it to maximum effect. Sadly, for some reason, she was not on in the spring season of the show this year – and now that I was looking forward to seeing her week after week for a while this time, she gets booted off with her partner in Week One. @##$%%&!!!!!!!

On a positive note, Carlos Santana was really great playing “Oye Como Va” to begin the results show, and Kym was one of the pros who, together with the music, were super hot. I think I’ll have to watch it again on the DVR. (I'm not sure about the rest of the season.)

Viva Las Vegas!

2010-09-14T21:40:00.013-04:00

Hello again, everyone. Yes, it has been a couple of weeks since I last made a posting here. That’s because I was away for about a week and a half visiting family in Las Vegas. I had wanted to make a post the day before I left, and had even thought of pre-scheduling some things to post while I was away, but I was just too busy getting ready and doing other stuff to do any of it.

Still, I am back home now, and though I’ve still got a lot to do tonight, I figured that I ought to take some time to do a posting for a change.

I normally try to photograph a model or two when I spend time in Vegas, and this time was no exception. I had two photo shoots planned, but only one actually happened. That was with a new model named Fiona Flowers, and you can see a couple of photos of her here. Getting behind that rock column in the top photo was her idea, I must admit, but I asked her to raise her arms as they’re seen here, so the image was a collaborative effort.

My second photo session was to be with Kelsey Dylan (aka Kelsey Zimmerman, or “Zimmy”), who I had photographed just last month in Ohio, as detailed in my last post. As it happened, Kelsey’s travels out west brought her to Las Vegas when I was there, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to work with her again, this time out in the desert.

Sadly, she and her travelling companion got into town behind schedule, which caused a conflict with our planned day and time, forcing us to regrettably call the session off. While she was available a couple of days later, I unfortunately was not at that time.

Time did at least permit me the chance to meet Kelsey for dinner one night, so I took advantage of that and was at least able to see her and chat for a while. You can see a couple of photos of her here at dinner.

A big part of the trip, I must mention, was getting together not once but twice with my good friend, Terrell “Big T” Neasley, who lives in Las Vegas. I always look forward to seeing him when I travel out there, and I’ll write more about our adventures next time.

Until then, be well, everyone.

O-hi-o

2010-08-27T04:00:00.005-04:00

I made a trip to Ohio last week to visit my good friend Dave Levingston. I had been there several times before, but what was different about this trip was that I drove there, rather than going by air. I think this was the longest distance I’ve ever driven in a single day – about 630 miles, done in nearly 12 hours – topping my previous long drive from Brunswick, Maine to Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Sadly, this trip originated as a happy one but ended up being bittersweet. My primary reason for going was to see the six photos of mine that were put up on display at an art gallery close to where Dave lives. I had visited the gallery quite a few times on earlier visits, and when I was there six months ago, I brought along a bunch of 11x14 fiber prints with me, to show to Rob, the gallery owner. He selected six of them that he liked, which he later matted, framed and put up on the wall. It was those that I was going to see.

Tragically, Rob passed away from cancer just a few weeks ago and his family closed the gallery. So, rather than going to see the photos on display, I instead went to pick them up to take them home.

Still, it was a positive trip overall, with both the company of a good friend and the opportunity to photograph some nudes in different locations. One model I worked with was Kelsey Dylan (who I like to call “Kelsey Zimmerman,” or “Zimmy,” for short), who had stayed with me here in New York the week before I left and accompanied me on the long drive out to Ohio, her home state. We had been taking turns choosing songs to play on my iPod, but when we crossed the border from Pennsylvania into Ohio, we stopped what we were listening to and put on an appropriate song for the occasion by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:

“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in O-hi-o.”

I had never worked with Kelsey before, and Dave was good enough to take me to a couple of beautiful locations that he had used previously. The day before I photographed her, Dave did a studio session with her, during which time I went out on location to photograph Revielle, who I had worked with in Dave’s studio on my previous visit in February. I worked with Kelsey the following day.

Last Thursday, August 19, was a special day for me as I celebrated my 15th anniversary of photographing nudes. (See my previous blog post to read about that.) So, I went out with Dave and model Jypsie Nahmana to do a 15th anniversary photo shoot. I had photographed Jypsie, along with another model, at the very same location in February. The big difference was that there was snow covering everything and it was freezing cold back then. This time, thankfully, the temperature was a bit warmer and more conducive to being nude outdoors.

All of my serious photos from these sessions were made with medium format black & white film, but I did make a few quick snapshots of the models with my little pocket digital camera, which you can see here. I was going to put one of the nudes at the top, but I’ve decided to dedicate this post to Dave L to thank him for his hospitality in allowing me to stay with him for several days and for taking me out to a few beautiful spots for photography.

Therefore, you’re seeing the face of "The Beard" (as some of us like to call Dave) at the top. He had asked me to take a few photos of him at his studio as he wanted some new portraits, and as he was wearing a black shirt, I asked him to stand in front of a black background to try to achieve the ‘floating head’ look. I think I succeeded here, with the aid of some burning in with Photoshop, to reach that. He’s illuminated by some of the very nice window light that his studio gets.

The other photo of Dave shows him standing on a rock with a waterfall in the background, during our outing with Kelsey. As I have noted before elsewhere, Dave is the photographer who invented the genre of photographing naked chicks on rocks, so I think it only appropriate that he be photographed on a rock himself. (Thankfully he’s not nude. Trust me on this one.)

Revielle

Kelsey Dylan

Jypsie Nahmana

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In other news, I’m thinking of doing something this weekend that I haven’t done for months: develop film. Come back next week to find out.

15 Years

2010-08-19T04:00:00.000-04:00

Today, August 19, 2010, is the 15th anniversary of my very first nude photo session.

It was at a workshop in Woodstock, New York. Though it happened 15 years ago, the story actually begins about five years earlier. That was when I made the decision to attend graduate business school part time while I worked full time, as I saw the limitations inherent in my job at the time.

I always considered myself more of an arts and humanities kind of person, and I still do. As an undergraduate at NYU, I double majored in Near Eastern Languages and Classical Civilization. At the Yale Graduate School, I got an M. Phil. in Near Eastern studies, with a specialization in Egyptology. Despite that, I was willing to bite the bullet and attend graduate business school just to get a better job.

Back to NYU I went, this time for business studies. For four years, including the summer semesters, I went to work during the day and did school work at night and on weekends. There really wasn’t time for much else. The only time off from school was a few weeks of intersession in December and January, plus the month of August.

I majored in Finance, with NYU’s Finance program being among the top ten in the country, and its part time program being rated #1. Despite having an M.B.A. from a top program like that, I never was able to find a new job. A year of going through on-campus recruiting, followed by a few more years of looking, proved fruitless. It seems that when all of your work experience is in the public sector (like mine was) and you try to go into private industry, nobody gives a shit about you.

So, after four years of hard work and after spending about $19,000 of my own money on tuition (supplemented by a scholarship that covered about 55% of the full tuition cost), I was still stuck where I was before I started. To put it mildly, I had had enough. After four years of doing what I felt I NEEDED to do (and going nowhere with it), I felt that it was finally time to do what I WANTED to do!

That thing was photography. Most of my photography up to that point had been 35mm color slide work that I did when I was on vacation. A lot of people who had seen them thought that they looked to be of professional quality, so I decided to give stock photography a try as a way to perhaps pay for some of my travel costs.

The first thing I did was to buy a Fuji 6x7 medium format rangefinder camera, as I’d read that medium format is better for stock photos than 35mm. I had planned to get a 6x4.5 SLR system, but I just fell in love with those big 6x7 color transparencies and couldn’t imagine getting anything smaller. So, I got a Pentax 67 system instead.

Like my attempt at finding a new job, the stock photography idea went nowhere. (Does anybody see a pattern here?) After taking a couple of years worth of travel photos to some agencies, I was told that my photos were good enough, but I just didn’t have enough of them. In the stock game, apparently, quantity counts, and with just a few weeks a year to devote to photography, I couldn’t meet that count. While I could provide a few hundred, they wanted a few thousand.

So, how did I start with nudes? In the fall of 1994 –shortly after getting my M.B.A. – I went to the annual photo equipment show at the Javits Center here in New York. One of the exhibitors was the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and I saw that they offered weekend workshops in the summer. I figured that this might also be a way to get back into photography, as Woodstock is a few hours drive from me, and I thought it might be a good excuse to get out of the city for a few days.

The first figure workshop I attended began 15 years ago from today. I have written before that my first “keeper” was the eighth frame of film on my first roll of film that day – not too bad for a beginner. It’s the second picture here – the one with the girl with the bobbed haircut, leaning forward and looking off to the right – and I’ve posted it online before. You can see some other photos from that first weekend, too.

What I have never posted before, and never even scanned until now, is the very first photo on that first roll of film. You can see it at the top here, the one of the legs. Not the best photo I’ve ever made - upon scanning, I saw that it's not even focused properly! - but hey, we all have to start somewhere.

My art nude photography may have ended there were it not for some other people I met at Woodstock. I became friends with another workshop attendee who was staying at my small hotel in town, and he invited me to join him and a couple of other photographers who were planning to photograph a couple of models the following weekend at a nearby location. I accepted.

Later in the year, through these people, I was able to attend a one day, invitation only workshop with three models at a Victorian era house in Troy, New York. With their encouragement, and with my photos continuing to improve – not to mention my enjoying what I was doing – I decided to stay with it.

Fifteen years later, I am still staying with it. Sure, photographing models can seem repetitive at times, but I am always searching for that elusive “great” image among the good ones, trying to bring some beauty to the world. That - and the friendship of people like Dave Levingston, Terrell Neasley, Bill Ballard and Unbearable Lightness - is what keeps me going.

To celebrate and highlight these last 15 years, here’s a portfolio of images covering that period – one photo for each calendar year that I’ve been photographing nudes and highlighting some of the places where I’ve done it. Enjoy.

Untitled Nude, 1995

Untitled Nude, 1996

New Mexico Nude, 1997

Nude, Tuscany, 1998

Untitled Nude, 1999

Nude, Big Sur, 2000

Nude, Provence, 2001

Untitled Nude, 2002

Nude, Nevada, 2003

Nude, Scotland, 2004

Nude, Ohio, 2005

Nude, Prince Edward Island, 2006

Nude, Michigan, 2007

Nude, Joshua Tree, 2008

Nude, Oregon, 2009

Studio Nude, 2010

Onlookers

2010-08-16T06:00:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, you look at a photo and you just don’t think too much of it. Then, when you have the chance to look at it again, you think better of it.

Such is the case with this photo here. I took the photo in a small town in northern Vietnam called Phutho. It was just a stop on the way from Sapa in the hills down to Hanoi in 2006.

I guess I liked the photo enough to scan it, though typically I do that only seeing the negative without a contact sheet. (The scan, in effect, allows me to see it as a positive.) Even though I scanned it, I must have not thought of it enough to prepare it for web posting.

Lately, though, I’ve been going through my scanned images in preparation for making postings to the new website that I’m working on. Looking at this image, perhaps more carefully than I did before, I realized that I liked it more than I did previously. It still shows an older woman with a hat and a wrapper around her head.

What really appeals to me now are the two onlookers in the background. Just look at the face of the man (her husband?) standing back there. I mean, his face is positively beaming with pride that I have selected the woman as a subject to photograph. The smiling young woman adds a nice touch to the image, too.

Perhaps that’s one reason why I like going to southeast Asia. People there often seem generally flattered to be photographed, at times becoming the point of conversation for the people around them.

It makes me think about something written by a noted landscape photographer who likes to work in Japan. In that country, he wrote, nobody ever hassles him about taking photographs – unlike in the United States, where some folks have threatened to blow his head off if he didn't pack up his camera and leave.

Through A Glass (Brightly)

2010-08-12T23:27:00.005-04:00

Untitled Nude, 2002, #5

Here’s one of my more unusual nudes. Here’s the story behind it:

In the summer of 2002, I received a phone call from a photographer who I had met at a workshop a couple of years or so earlier. He lived in New Jersey, and told me that a model would be coming over to his apartment to work with him, and he asked me if I’d want to work with her, too. I don’t think I had anything planned for the day, so I said yes. He told me that I should get to him around the middle of the afternoon, after he’d had a chance to photograph her himself for a while.

Fine. I did as he asked and arrived mid-afternoon. It was a very hot day, but for some reason, my friend did not have the air conditioning on at all in his place. I worked with the model for a while in the heat, and then I decided that we should move into a room of the apartment that was pretty much completely bare and empty. I think it had carpeting, but not a stick of furniture or decoration.

Being as hot as it was, I really needed to drink some water, so I asked my friend for a glass. Before I took a drink, something gave me the idea to try photographing the model through the glass. I think I got a small table from another room and placed the glass on the table. I was set.

Looking back over the negatives today, I saw that my initial photos were of the glass pretty much filling the frame of the image. Then, I obviously decided to recompose the image, including just the top half of the glass with the model visible out-of-focus in the background.

As you can see, the model is not only visible out-of-focus in the back, but her midsection can also be seen in the water, yielding a double image of sorts which I like.

After this, I moved back and photographed the model standing next to the table with her hand on or near the glass on the table, but none of those were as interesting as the one you see here.

By the way, my friend did eventually turn on the A/C when I mentioned how hot is was. Why he didn't do it earlier I wasn't quite sure.

Censorship for the Eyes – AND the Ears

2010-08-04T23:01:00.006-04:00

I’m going to step out of my normal routine of posting photos of mine, sometimes with an explanation of how I made it, in favor of writing about something else: censorship.

I’ve been thinking this over today, and it seems to be that perhaps there are two types of censorship. One of those is where a particular type of expression is clearly and plainly prohibited. For example, in the Soviet Union, taking photos of soldiers on duty was prohibited. You may not agree with it, but at least you know exactly what the rule is. The line not to be crossed is clearly drawn.

Then there’s the type of censorship that’s harder to get a handle on. These are the types of prohibitions where the lines not to be crossed are not so clearly drawn, due to vague wording (sometimes intentionly so) of the rules.

In these cases, the question then becomes, “Where do I put that line in practice?” A lot of that depends on what the penalty is for crossing the line. In the case of Federal regulation 2257A (I wrote about it last year here and here), which is supposed to be about combating child pornography but is so vaguely worded that it can also include the work of legitimate artists among its banned works, the penalty is being labeled as a ‘sex offender’ and spending up to five years in the Federal pen.

Given that, can you blame artists for staying very clear not of the where the line actually is, but rather, where they imagine it to be?

I found out recently that this type of censorship extends beyond the visual arts. Earlier this week, while listening to the radio, I heard the Pink Floyd song “Money,” from the great album “Dark Side of the Moon.” One of the lines in the song is

“Money, it’s a hit,
don’t give me that goody good bullshit.”

Well, on this occasion, as on earlier recent occasions, the work “bullshit” was broadcast as “bull___.”

I decided that enough was enough, so I went to the station’s website and wrote this message:

I recently heard you play the Pink Floyd song "Money."
Instead of the line "don't give me that goody good bullshit,"
I heard "don't give me that goody good bull____."

This is the standard way you play this song now. Why? Is
the government forcing you to do this, or is it the work of
some corporate bluenoses? I certainly don't think it was Pink Floyd’s idea.

So, let me suggest this: please DO NOT play this song at all
if you cannot play it properly. The same goes for "Who Are
You" by The Who and "Jet Airliner" by the Steve Miller Band.

I would rather not hear a song at all than hear a butchered
or censored version.

Otherwise, I may have to stop listening altogether.

The very next day, I received this reply from the station’s program director:

Dave,

You and me both! Allow me to explain.

We almost never played edited versions of songs in the past. But a couple of years ago, thanks mainly to Janet Jackson's boob, the powers that be in this country decided that a random swear word in a song on a radio station was just too terrible for the general public to hear. They raised the potential fine for such an utterance from $27,500 to over $300,000! Now our company's corporate bigwigs pretty much left us alone on this issue in the old days. Well when it was raised to the current level of $325,000, they decided (and I can't really blame them) that the risk wasn't worth it and we were forced to remove the words or the songs altogether.

We've actually done the edits ourselves to try and keep as much of the original song intact as we can. It sucks. We hate it as much as you do. However, none of us have an extra 300K in our pockets to pay the fine ourselves which is what would happen if we ever did get nailed. My only suggestion would be to write your representatives in Congress and tell them how ridiculous this is. "Who the F*** are you?" is hardly going to bring down our great nation...

I hope that explains it. Thanks for writing and for listening!

Well, I guess that explained it! I answered him with this:

Thank you for your kind response. I appreciate your doing so.

Yes, I can understand why management would not want to chance risking a $325K fine. Like you said, though, the whole idea is really ridiculous. Still, I would rather you not play a great like that if it needs to be butchered for the government's sake.

On that note, things are really getting out of hand in this country. I'm a fine art photographer, and one of my subjects is the fine art nude. Last year, the government instituted a new regulation (a parting shot from the Bush administration) that could have you sent to prison and labeled as a child pornographer/sex offender for failure to maintain identification documents and make them available 20 hours a week for government inspection, even if the youngest person you photograph is 60 years old!

Hopefully, one day, people in this country will grow up instead of acting childishly - and forcing everybody else to act the same way.

Have a good day.

His response, then, was:

Wow! That's just ridiculous. I had no idea. Kind of goes with the places that proof everybody for alcohol, even if they are bald or grey and wrinkled and there with their grandkids!

We did debate long and hard about whether or not to play the edits and it wasn't a decision we made lightly. Ultimately we felt that everyone knows what goes in those places anyway so your mind almost "fills in the blank". If the Mona Lisa had a smudge in the corner we'd still want to look at it!

Thanks again for your input and here's hoping we can all get over ourselves in this country! Take care.

So there you go. Our tax dollars at work, protecting the foundations of our great American society by prohibiting random swear words on the radio. What makes it all the more ridiculous is that you can simply go to cable TV (and satellite radio?) to hear all of the foul language (and see all the nudity) you want.

The photo at the top, by the way, was something I shot at the Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, Japan, in 2005. It’s the famous carving of the three monkeys in the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” poses. I guess you can figure out why I chose to post it today.

Reflection

2010-07-29T21:00:00.003-04:00

Reflection, 1995

Things are rolling along here in Figures of GraceLand pretty much as before, where preparing my new website for launch by the middle of next month is the top priority.

Today’s photo is one of those that I recently scanned from the negative during the process. It’s unusual for me in that it’s not a travel image and it’s not a nude, either. It was made, in reality, at a nude workshop way back in 1995, but I chose to do it not as a nude.

My title for the work, as you can see, is “Reflection.” The obvious reason is that the photo was made in a mirror – you can see more than one reflection of the model , in fact – but I’ve always thought that she had a rather reflective look on her face.

The blurry thing on the left, I’m pretty sure, is a portrait bust like the one of Beethoven reflected on the right, though photographed very close to the camera. It’s not a reflection, but is out of focus as the camera was focused not on it but on the reflection of the girl in the mirror. I had thought that it actually was the same bust as the one of Ludwig van, but I can’t seem to work out the spatial distribution of such things.

Waiting for the Bird

2010-07-25T21:46:00.005-04:00

Pigeon and the Salute, Venice, 2009

Most of my photography work this past week has been confined to resizing scans from negatives for posting on my new website. I allowed myself to leave my computer yesterday, when I drove to Pennsylvania and back to visit a photography dealer friend to see a bunch of his latest acquisitions plus other photos of interest. I liked a lot of them so who knows – maybe I’ll buy one of them one day.

For now, though, trying to save money and work on the new website has priority. The negatives that I’ve scanned recently have been those that I’ve printed as fiber prints, the great majority of them being printed in 2003 or earlier. While I may have stopped printing for half a dozen years, I didn’t stop taking photos, so I’ve also got a lot of unprinted photos to post on the new site, too.

The photo at the top is one of those. Made during my trip to Venice, Italy, last year, it shows a silhouetted pigeon with the domes of the famous church, Santa Maria della Salute, in the background on the left.

This photo reminds me a little of the famous photo, “Fondamenta Nuove, Venice, 1959,” by the late, great French photographer Willy Ronis (also seen here) as both show a silhouetted figure together with some more normally exposed content.

Getting back to my photo, this photo was definitely not a grab-shot. I saw the structure that the pigeon was walking on, together with the church in the background. I knew that I wanted to get the pigeon as a silhouette (perhaps with the Ronis photo in mind), but it had to be a full body profile, at the right spot and facing to the right to complete the composition I was thinking of.

As you can imagine, a pigeon is hardly the kind of creature to do exactly what a photographer wishes, so I stood there for several minutes, camera at the ready, waiting for the pigeon to move the right way. I think I’d thought of giving up and moving on when it didn’t happen, but I felt that the resulting image I had in mind would be worth waiting a bit longer for.

So I did, and so did the bird eventually move into the place I had hoped for, facing the right way. I don’t think it stayed that way for long, but all it took was one push of the button atop the camera. Then the wait was worth it.

Stomach Out

2010-07-19T10:57:00.006-04:00

New Mexico Nude, 1998, #31

Recently, in a comment on a blog post made by my friend Dave Levingston, someone questioned why models told to hold their stomachs in for photos, rather than letting them hang out naturally. If photographs of the nude are created to celebrate the beauty of the natural human form, she reasoned, then why photograph that form in an unnatural state and, as some do, Photoshop them so much that they look unreal? (You can read what she wrote in the comments section here.)

Dave responded to the comments, which you can read (sequentially) here, here and here. Brooke Lynne, one of the models depicted in Dave’s photos, wrote a response (here) on her blog, too.
Well, before either of them wrote anything, I responded to Dave's request for other readers to respond. This is what I wrote:

"First, let me say that not all photographers Photoshopbrush their models. I use something called film, and the only digits I use to manipulate the looks of my prints are my fingers.

"Now, as I am a photographer and not a model, I cannot answer from a model’s point of view why she would do the ‘stomach in, chest out’ bit for photos. I can only say why I try to suck in my gut when I’m in a photo: because I think I’ll look better that way, because in our society, thinner is perceived as looking better.

"Therefore, I can only imagine that models may think the same thing, but also that such a pose would result in a more classical looking body line (which, I suppose, is another way of saying the same thing).

"The truth is, though, that not all models do this. I’ve recently been scanning a lot of negatives of the nude figure work I did in New Mexico. One of those photos – an image that Dave L had told me he likes and wanted to see a print of – depicts the torso of a thin young woman in profile. Rather than being flat as a board, her abdomen has a nice outward bend to it. Obviously she did not try to suck it in, which in this particular image is a good thing. Perhaps in other images it may not be so. "

I happened to call Dave L on the phone a few days ago to talk about a few things, including this discussion. After I finished speaking with him, I returned to scanning negatives to get my new website up and running.

As coincidence would have it, the very next negative that I scanned was the one that I wrote about in my comment! It’s the one in my post here. As you can see, this particular model was not holding her stomach in, and as I wrote, I think the photo looks much better as it is than if her stomach were as flat as a board.

By the way, being thin and having a good tan may be a sign of beauty and well being now, but it wasn’t always that way. In ancient Egypt, for instance, upper class women had pale skin, because having a tan meant that you had to work outside in the fields – not the work of the higher class. Similarly, being thin was a sign of not having an excess of food to eat. Having a gut meant that you were wealthy enough to have enough food to get fat on.

I guess that was in the days before junk food and supersizing.

Bastille

2010-07-14T20:18:00.003-04:00

Today, July 14, is Bastille Day – France’s version of Independence Day, I guess. So, in keeping with the day, here’s a photo of a beautiful French girl photographed in the south of France in the summer of 2001. The location is the quarry at Les Baux, near Arles in Provence.

Otherwise, I am still busy scanning all of the negatives that I’ve printed up as 11x14 and/or 16x20 fiber prints. I think that by now I’ve reached the half way point. Hopefully, with a big effort this coming weekend, I’ll get to most of them.

I’ve also decided to work on yet another website, as I’m not happy with some important aspects of the current one. Time’s a major factor here, as I want my website to be ready by the time the issue of B&W magazine with my ad hits the streets at the end of next month.

In The Palm of Her Hand

2010-07-09T02:00:00.004-04:00

Here’s another photo of Amber in Joshua Tree National Park. The photo was made not long after I made the photos of Amber with Candace Nirvana that I displayed two postings ago.

By the time I made this photo it was getting pretty dark out. As I recall, these photos were the last ones I did for the day and I then had to get out my flashlight to help illuminate the way back to the car.

Consequently, being that dark, it was very difficult to focus properly with any certainty. I could have increased the odds by stopping down the lens to a smaller aperture, yielding greater depth of field and getting more in focus, but that would have increased the shutter speed beyond the point at which Amber could hold still.

Of course, as you can see, I was trying to do more than just get a sharp focus. I was also trying to maneuver Amber’s hand so that she appeared to be holding the moon in her palm. This also wasn’t easy, as she couldn’t see what I was seeing and I had to shout out directions to her for moving her hand – a little bit up, more the left, etc.

The photo is not perfect. I had tried to get Amber to move her hand so that the moon is more in the middle of her palm rather than by the heel, but it had taken a lot of effort to get it to this point and with the sky rapidly getting darker, I didn’t want to wait any longer.

Not only was I not sure if I got it in focus (and I may not know for certain until I try to make a large print), I was also upset at myself after we had finished and were heading back.

Why? Instead of only using a long, late day exposure that would show Amber normally as in daylight, I should have also made an exposure for the moon. That would be a normal, sunny day exposure as the moon is, of course, lit by sunlight. Amber’s figure would have been underexposed, yielding a silhouette, but the moon would be properly exposed and showing details.

Looking at the photo now, I don’t know if I missed that much by not exposing for the moon. After all, the moon is fairly small in the image, so any details might be lost except in a very large print.

As it is, if Amber is out of focus, I may have no choice but to print it down to a silhouette, anyway. The difference is that the overexposed moon, as you can see, is a glowing sphere – and perhaps that’s not a bad thing, after all. ******************************************************************************

I’ve added another blog to my blog list at the right – that of Bill Ballard, a photographer based in Savannah, Georgia. I’ve followed Bill’s blog for a while and finally decided to put him on the list.

As it happens, I also spoke with Bill on the phone this week. He commented on my last blog entry, as he’s done from time to time, so I decided to take a look at his website, which I hadn’t seen for a while. Noticing a phone number on his contact page, I decided to try calling to thank him for his interest in my blog and perhaps find out more about his photography.

Needless to say, phoning somebody out of the blue can be a risky proposition. I once called a woman who I had corresponded with on a photography forum in order to talk photography – something that I don’t get much of an opportunity to do, to be honest. Well, it was clear before very long that that conversation would go nowhere fast.

Still, I let the dice roll and dialed Bill’s number. Fortunately, things went much better this time, and I think we spent close to an hour on the phone. Bill does some good art nude photography, I think, and I invite you to follow his blog along with the others on the list.

Decisions, Decisions...

2010-07-05T17:47:00.004-04:00

Untitled, 1997, #2

This past week has been a busy one as far as things photographic go.

Now that I’ve started printing photographs again, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to actually try to do something with them. For the most part, the only one who gets to see my prints is me, so I want to see if I can change that.

Of course, it would be nice if I can convince some people to open up their wallets to buy some of these prints. Not that I expect to really make any money on my photography, but it would be nice to get a little something back to help offset some of my photographic costs. To that end, I’ve decided to place an ad in an upcoming issue of B&W magazine. The ad copy and photos had to be submitted last week, so I spent a fair amount of time getting those things ready. There’s no guarantee that anybody will bite, but I’ve got to at least try. I’ll let everyone know when the issue with the ad has been released.

The day after that material was due was the postmark date for entering B&W magazine’s single image competition. I haven’t entered any of the magazines competitions in the past few years, so I thought I’d give it a try this time. Again, this is an effort to raise my profile, get some work published and added to my resume. I submitted more than I might have in another year to increase my chances, both nudes and travel photos – with the nudes only comprising about one-quarter of the photos. There’s only one category for nudes, but the travel work can fall under different categories, which I figure gives me more of a chance.

One effect of placing an ad is that I really need to get my new website up to speed if people are going to start looking there. I haven’t worked on the site in quite some time, but I’ve been preparing to do so by beginning to scan all of the negatives from which I’ve made exhibition prints. A good number of these will be posted on the website. Many of these I’d scanned before. The difference is that now I’ve got the title of each image recorded with the scan, enabling me to properly identify each image on the website.

I had to stay home on Saturday as I was waiting for a package from FedEx (which actually showed up, unlike past attempts), so I decided to begin doing the scans then. As the packaged didn’t arrive until around 3:45 pm, I had plenty of time for scanning and managed to scan a total of 40. I did a bunch more today, bringing the total up to 56. I’ve got plenty more to go through, but at least I’ve made a good start. You can see one of these newly scanned images at the top here.

Still, perhaps the biggest event was getting back into the darkroom yesterday after an absence of nearly three months. I want to try printing at least once a month – twice if I can manage it – but holidays, my trip to Japan, visitors staying over and other things just got in the way until now.

My intention was to make prints from three negatives, but as it turned out, I only had enough time and paper to print two – and one of those will probably need to be printed again as I’m not really happy with the results.

I still consider myself to be at a stage where I’m getting re-acquainted with darkroom work. There are two basic things, as I see it, to be relearned. One is the routine: the physical act of getting things set up, the manner in which to do things- and making sure I have enough paper as well as chemicals. (Fortunately, by the time I used my last piece of photo paper, it was time to call it quits, anyway.)

The other thing to get up to speed with is much more complicated. That’s what I call “seeing in the darkroom.” This involves the decision-making process: does a print need more or less contrast? Does it need any dodging and burning? Should it be darker or lighter? The most important question in this regard seems to be: when is enough enough?

Deciding that the final method for printing a negative has been reached is critical, as I typically make several more prints that way, being the final print. The problem here is that I have to forget that I have more negatives that I want to print and concentrate on the one at hand, taking a good look at it to be sure that I’m really happy with it.

That didn’t happen yesterday. In making my first print – a photo from Thailand – I was obviously thinking of the other negatives I wanted to print and not paying proper attention. I thought that I had made a good print and printed up two more, but upon later reflection I realized that it really needs more work.

It’s kind of like a shortstop who sees a ground ball being hit his way. Anxious to get a double play, rather than making sure to get one out, he hurries his actions and ends up booting the ball, getting nobody out. That isn’t totally the case of what happened yesterday, as I am happy with the second print – one of my nudes of Carlotta in Nevada – though it did take a lot of work and five tries before I finally got it right. Fortunately, I didn’t boot that one – and I hope to get back to the Thailand photo next time.

Still, I’m beginning to understand what Ansel Adams meant when he said that he’d be happy if he only made a dozen good prints in one year.

“I Don’t Be-lieve It!”

2010-06-28T22:08:00.015-04:00

Readers of this blog may know that I’m a big fan of the British science fiction show “Doctor Who.” The lead character, the Doctor – a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey - is one of my two heroes of British television. The other, an old chap by the name of Victor Meldrew, is the main character in the hilarious Britcom “One Foot in the Grave.”

Victor is forced into retirement when he’s replaced by a machine and he is now at war with the world. One of his favorite phrases, which he utters (rather frequently) upon encountering something mind boggling, is “I don’t be-lieve it!”

Well, I’ve written all of that to preface the fact that I recently had a mind boggling, “I don’t be-lieve it!” kind of moment myself. In reviewing the photos that I’ve posted here on the blog this year, I saw that I’ve posted just one – one! – outdoor nude photo up to this point. Pretty much half-way finished with the year and just one outdoor nude – and that was done five months ago. Conversely, I’ve posted a bunch indoor nudes, most or all studio work.

This may not seem very earth shaking, were it not for the fact that I definitely prefer to photograph nudes outdoors than in some studio. Outdoors to me is the default setting for photographing nudes, and I will only work in a studio when the weather is too cold to photograph a model outside or I don’t have an outdoor location. Unfortunately, living in New York City, the weather is too cold for outdoor work most of the year and even when it isn’t, I don’t know of any locations here that are interesting and afford any kind of privacy for nude work. (I am really not partial to what I call the “hit and run” school of photography, especially as I often need to use a tripod that takes a long time to set up.)

Thinking back over the past year and a half, the only outdoor nude photos I’ve done were an hour spent photographing two models out in the snow under horrendous lighting conditions in Ohio this February (two and a half rolls of film, and two still need to be developed) and the two day workshop I attended on the Oregon coast last year. That’s pretty much it. Otherwise, I’ve been stuck inside a studio – mostly the one I set up in my living room that’s pretty restrictive.

This won’t solve my problem of how to photograph outdoor nudes in the future, but as far as the blog here is concerned, I still have plenty of film from the great outdoors that has yet to be scanned and/or posted. I just need to find the time to scan and edit them. The photos you’re seeing here, made two years ago at Joshua Tree National Park in California, are among that horde and were recently scanned. The two models are Amber Gangi and Candace Nirvana (or, as I like to think of them, “the Bobsey twins” of the art nude modeling world).

Hopefully, it won’t take me another five months to post some outdoor nudes.

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Gilot Speaks

I’ve written in the recent past that I’ve seen a bunch of different Picasso exhibits at galleries and museums here in the New York area. Even in Japan, at an open air art museum in Hakone, I saw a lot of Picasso works at a pavilion dedicated solely to them. Then, I attended one more Picasso event yesterday that should be the culmination of them.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there was a series of three lectures about Picasso, followed by a film showing the artist at work. I didn’t find the first lecture, about Picasso as a poet, to be terribly interesting. His poetry, which he began writing in 1935 – in Spanish, then in French, and then again in Spanish - is rather convoluted to say the least, though I suppose that does say something about him.

The third lecture, mostly about the collecting of Picasso works in the United States, was much more interesting. The greatest surprise was to hear that two people who were very pivotal in bringing Picasso to America were Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen! Yes, that’s right. Stieglitz and Steichen – a couple of photographers!

I knew that Stieglitz, with his Gallery 291 in New York, tried to get photography accepted as an art form. What I did not know was that in 1911 – two years before the famous Armory show – Stieglitz mounted a show of over 80 Picasso works at his gallery in an effort to bring new art to America. Steichen’s role was as Stieglitz’s lookout in Paris for things of interest on the continent.

Stieglitz even tried to convince the trustees of the Met to buy the entire collection, but of course the trustees balked at that idea. He did, however, buy an important cubist drawing of a nude woman for himself, and that drawing was later donated to the Met by Stieglitz’s widow, Georgia O’Keefe.

Still, the most interesting speaker was the second one, Francoise Gilot. A well regarded artist in her own right, she is nonetheless perhaps best known as Picasso’s mistress from 1944 and to 1953 and as the mother of Paloma and Claude Picasso. (You can see her here cavorting on the beach with Picasso in a famous photo by Robert Capa.)

When I saw this event listed on the Met’s calendar several months ago, I knew that I wanted to go. I was thinking of staying home as I hurt my back a week ago and it was still bothering me, but I didn’t want to use that as an excuse for laziness. It was worth the effort of going just to hear this lecture alone.

I thought she’d talk about her life with Picasso, but instead she gave us an illustrated overview of Picasso’s artistic output, speaking as the artist that she is and punctuated with anecdotes that only a person with her relationship to Picasso could give. Some of the most interesting comments, not surprisingly, were about paintings that Picasso made of her. In one of those paintings she’s seen in profile, and standing as she was at the podium in profile to my view, I could see that years later she’s still identifiable as the woman in the painting.

You can click on the photos with the projected artwork to see them much larger. She is depicted in both paintings. The painting of her as a flower, she said, was inspired by Henri Matisse. When Picasso introduced her to Matisse, after convincing her not to go to see work by Pierre Bonnard – an artist whose work she still loves – Matisse said he wanted to depict her with a blue body and leaf green hair. I guess he didn’t do it, but Picasso evidently did!

Just to finish up, the film was Henri-George Clouzot’s 1955 film, “The Mystery of Picasso.” I thought it would be a documentary about Picasso at work. What it showed, in fact, was the process of Picasso creating pictures, filming a translucent ‘canvas’ from behind while Picasso worked on it with markers and inks. Fascinating stuff, but perhaps best seen on video with the ability to take breaks between the pictures, as seeing it all at one sitting can be a bit much.

Of Maiko and Geiko (Not Men)

2010-06-24T23:41:00.007-04:00

The geisha is probably one of the best known symbols of Japan here in the western world. A painted woman who is the gateway to illicit and forbidden pleasures.

If that’s what most westerners think, then most westerners are wrong. Geisha are not prostitutes. Rather, they are women who are highly trained and skilled in the traditional Japanese arts of music, song and dance. They are also pretty rare, as I’ve read that there are estimated to be no more than 1,000 of them in all Japan.

On my three trips to Japan, including the one last month, I have only seen them in Kyoto, the former imperial capital. In the Kyoto dialect, they are called “geiko,” not “geisha.” There are also two types: “geiko,” who are full-fledged at their craft, while the newer, younger performers are called “maiko.”

I am certainly no expert on the subject, but having done some reading and gone on a walking tour in Kyoto, I have learned three basic ways to distinguish the two when seeing them on the street (if I’m lucky enough to see any, that is.)

A geiko wears a fairly short ‘obi’ (sash) on her back, while that of a maiko is much longer. I think a maiko’s kimono also has longer sleeves.

A geiko wears a wig, while maiko wax their hair and usually seem to have some kind of ornamentation hanging from it.

The back of a geiko’s neck is fully painted white, while a maiko has two flesh colored (that is, unpainted) points left on the back of her neck.

In Kyoto, the only place where I had seen any geiko or maiko going about their business of walking from one engagement to another has been Gion, the old entertainment district. On my first night in Kyoto this year, I walked about half an hour from my hotel to Hanami-koji, a cobblestone street which is probably the most famous in Gion, both sides of it being lined with teahouses where geiko and maiko perform (though as I read somewhere, people don’t there to drink only tea!)

I happened to get there at the right moment, as a geiko and two maiko were just leaving one of the most famous teahouses on their way to one around the corner. Sometimes one can go to this area and not make any spottings, so I was fortunate to see three together on my first night in town.

That night, I also met an Australian photographer with a big SLR who told me he had published a book of geiko/maiko photos, so I jokingly called him a geiko paparazzo. I’ve read that tourists and others getting in the way of these women just to photograph them can be a problem (as they normally don’t stop for photos), so I kept a respectful distance and managed to get one decent photo, which can be seen at the top. Note the long sash and the ornamented hair, so it’s obvious that this girl is a maiko.

Later on, further down the street, with nobody else around, I saw a geiko dressed in a beautiful white kimono silently walk in my direction before making a right turn into a tea house. I didn’t even think of trying to get a photo. It was just a beautiful sight to see.

I made three more visits to Hanami-koji and Gion. The next time was with a woman from our tour who wanted to go there, so I acted as her tour guide. We did not see any geiko or maiko in Gion. A night later, on the rainy night that I went out photographing with my tripod, I finished up my rounds with a visit to Hanami-koji. I didn’t take any photos there, but I did see a group of three maiko silently walk by coming from a side street. Again, I just watched.

The last visit, though, was a big one. After having a nice dinner on our final night of the tour, our guide took us on a little walking tour of Gion. Starting with Hanami-koji, we spotted a geiko walking up the street toward us. I managed to get a photo (the second photo from the top here.)
Then, on Shinbashi-dori, another lovely street in the area, we saw a geiko (right, in the third photo) and a maiko (left) coming up the street! Again, as you can seek, a got a photo, though this one wasn’t easy, as I’d taken a spot directly in their path for the photo and had to jump out of the way at the last moment.

Finally, across the Kamogawa river from Gion, in a very narrow pedestrian-only street called Pontocho, we saw another maiko go wizzing by. I had never seen a geiko or maiko outside of Gion before, but I had seen a maiko hurrying around a corner to disappear down Pontocho, her obi flying like a cape behind her, on my first night in Kyoto this year. On this final night, however, I was able to get a photo (fourth from the top), and you can see that it looks rather like an action shot.

Incidentally, for those who may be wondering, seeing a geiko or maiko on the street may be a hit or miss proposition, but it’s still easier to see one that way than to attend a performance at a tea house. Being a guest at such an event costs hundreds of dollars, and even if you have the money, you’ve still got to know somebody. This is a world of referrals , and to be invited to see a geiko or maiko perform, you’d most likely need a letter of introduction from someone who is already known and on good terms with the management of each locale.

Behind The Mask - And Through It

2010-06-20T12:08:00.015-04:00

About a week and a half back, I posted (here) a photo of Nettie R. Harris wearing one of the masks that I bought in Venice. Here, as promised, is the follow-up.

That photo was a straightforward image of Nettie with the mask. I’m posting another one like that today but with a wider view. (See below.) The image at the top was made the same day. She’s also wearing a mask. Like the other image, this mask is white on the right side (left side as seen by the viewer), but the left side appears to be mostly transparent. Is it transparent? Is it a different mask?

The answer to both questions is ‘no.’ Nettie was wearing the same mask. I just tried to do something a little more creative – in this case, by employing the double exposure technique.

For those unfortunate digiheads out there who know absolutely nothing about using film, here’s a little primer. When using black and white negative film, objects on film will appear the opposite way that they do in reality. (That’s why they’re called ‘negatives.’)

Therefore, something which is very bright to our eyes will appear very dark on the negative film. Something which is moderately bright will appear moderately dark. These differences in gradations of light , composed of silver halide particles, are the source of different tones in an image.

So, if something that’s bright white (like the white side of the mask) will appear very dark and black on the negative, then the black side of the mask will appear very white on the film. Right???

Wrong! The only thing that appears on a negative are different grades of black. The brighter the object, the denser the black will be. If there is no brightness at all, as in dark black (which is not a color, but represents the absence of any color), that part of the negative will have no silver halide particles formed on it. As the film base is clear, so too will that part of the negative be clear.

I knew from this that the white side of the mask would appear dark on the film, while the black side would be clear. As the white side would be dark, I knew that nothing would be added to it by exposing the negative a second time. It would be so dark that it really couldn’t get any darker.

The black side of the mask, on the other hand, would be clear on the negative. Anything on that part of the negative during a second exposure would be recorded and seen, as there’d be nothing there previously to block it.

With a photo like this, everything in both exposures must be exactly the same with the exception of the mask being there. I made sure the camera was securely locked in position on the tripod. I asked Nettie to lie down on the floor, as it would be impossible for anyone to keep perfercty still while standing. The first exposure was made with her wearing the mask. Then I re-set the shutter without advancing the film, removed the mask and made the second exposure. I used half of the normal exposure time for each exposure, as the two together would add up to one normal exposure.

Of course, even though I knew the photographic theory that I’ve just related, I really had no idea how the picture would look until I developed the film and saw the actual image. I think it looks pretty good. Everything in the theory seems to have proven true.

Still, I have to give a lot of credit to Nettie. While it may be fairly simple to remain motionless while lying on the ground, keeping one’s eyes from moving is not so easy – and I think she did a great job of it.

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Speaking of black & white negative film, I recently bought a print from a benefit auction that was raising money for Doctors Without Borders' relief effort in Haiti. Of the approximately 145 mostly contemporary photographs in the auction, only about half a dozen were silver gelatin prints. Granted, most of the photos were color images. Stil, to me, this shows a pretty sad state of affairs for photography, as we've entered an era when the idea of a photograph being a hand crafted fine art object is a thing of the past.

As I have said before and will state again, as a collector, I will never buy a digital print, no matter how much I may like the image. The print that I bought is one of those half dozen silver prints - but the image does date from a dozen years ago when film was still dominant.

St. Merrique

2010-06-15T23:23:00.007-04:00

I wrote last time that I would be having a model staying with me for a few days. That model was the lovely St. Merrique.

She spent several days modeling here in New York, and on her final morning here I worked with her for a few hours in my studio set-up. You can see a couple of the snapshots I made with my pocket digital camera during the session, plus one of Merrique made when we went out to eat a Chinese-run Japanese restaurant one night.

Things went reasonably well during the studio session, though there was one constant annoyance (which we both found annoying) that I hope to write about in an upcoming post.

Still, in addition to the problem mentioned above, I’m wondering how much longer I can go on photographing in my living room as I did this time. As you can see, I’m still working with masks as props – this time once again with the masks I bought in Venice last year – but I just get the feeling that I’m taking the same photo of a model standing there in front of the background, over and over again.

How much longer can I continue doing that???

Behind The Mask

2010-06-10T04:00:00.001-04:00

My posting tonight will be a quick one. The photo here depicts a young woman wearing one of the papier mache masks that I bought last year in Venice, Italy. The woman behind the mask is Nettie R. Harris.

I’ve found in working with this mask that it can take on different characteristics depending upon how I set up my studio lights. Sometimes I would move the lights off to the side, which would leave inky black voids where the eyes are, lending an air of mystery to the image. Here, though, I made the lighting more frontal so that Nettie’s beautiful eyes could clearly be seen.

I’m hoping to make a follow-up posting to today’s entry next week.

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Otherwise, I’ve got another visitor staying with me this week. This time my guest is a model. I won’t say who she is until I’ve photographed her (planned for this coming weekend) and have a photo or two to post, but for now I’ll just say that she’s beautiful and that she’s a cover girl.

Stay tuned.

Revielle and Ophidian

2010-06-07T14:07:00.008-04:00

I spent most of last weeking trying to adjust back to New York time following my recent return home form Japan. I’ve heard it said that one requires one day for each hour of change in time zones to return to normal, so as Japan is 13 hours ahead of New York, I’ve still got a few days left.

That, of course, is in addition to finding room where to put all of the stuff that I bought in Japan, most of which is still stacked up in a pile on the floor here. (Maybe this week.)

I was hoping to do some film developing this weekend. I think I’ve got about 30 rolls to do, dating back to my trip to Ohio in February. That didn’t happen. I woke up late yesterday and didn’t feel like doing much of anything, and that’s pretty much what I did, though I did pull myself together for several hours late in the afternoon, during which time I filed away the 13 rolls of film from Ohio that had been developed but not yet put into pages. (So, the day wasn’t a complete waste.)

All but part of the last roll were photos that I made of models Ophidian Marie and Revielle in my friend Dave Levingston’s new studio in Dayton. I scanned a couple of those photos today and I’m posting them here.

At the top is an image of Revielle from the very beginning of our session. She seems to have adopted the frequent pose of Harry Carey, the old time actor. (John Wayne used the same pose at the end of “The Searchers” as a tribute to Carey.)

Attired in black and white stripes is Ophidian Marie. It may look similar, but no, she is not wearing a tallis.
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I watched a couple of movies on blu-ray this weekend. The first was “Speed,” the action film with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. I’d been planning to watch it sometime soon, but I watched it this weekend as a tribute to Dennis Hopper, the actor who died recently and played the bad guy in the film. Some of you may not be aware of it, but Hopper was also a serious photographer and artist. You can read a story about him and his photography by clicking here.

Then last night I watched the Coen brothers’ film “Fargo.” I had never seen it before, and it was very well made, I thought, beginning with the great musical score by Carter Burwell. Most of the action takes place in Minnesota. One scene takes place in a restaurant, and the place where it was filmed looked a lot like some of the restaurants in Ohio that Dave L took me to in February. Is this what a generic Midwestern restaurant looks like?

Of course, I have never been to Minnesota itself, so maybe one day I’ll have to pay a visit to find out if people there really do talk like the folks in the movie – yaa???

Japan 2010

2010-05-31T00:19:00.003-04:00

I just returned home a few days ago from a 12 day trip to Japan. No, I didn’t do any blogging from there as I have on my other recent trips. This was my third trip to Japan – the first two having been in 2004 and 2005 – but the first on a tour and the first with my mom coming along.

I went with her on a tour of Hong Kong and Thailand five years ago, so I told her I would take her someplace else this year and Japan was the choice as she’d never been there and as I had recommended it. I figured that a tour would be easier all around for such a visit, and things went pretty well. Finding time to blog was not a priority, but now that I’m back, I can write about it a bit.

Most of the places the tour visited I’d been to before – Tokyo, Kanazawa and Kyoto – but we also visited the Hakone region, which offers some beautiful views of Mount Fuji, which I had never seen before. I was also lucky to see it this time, as the mountain is notorious for being shrouded in clouds most of the time, but when we were there that famous conical top was clearly visible, though the cloudy backdrop didn’t allow it to stand out as much as it would on a clear day. (Still, no real complaints from me.)

You can see one of my photos of Fuji-san, as the Japanese call it (never Fuji-yama!), made with my new Canon S90 pocket digital camera. At the top here is one of my favorite photos from the trip – a plant in a window on a beautiful street in Kyoto called Shinbashi-dori.

I even went back the following night with my Pentax 67 camera and a tripod to photograph it with black & white film – even though it was pouring rain. (As I explained to people, photographing at night can be difficult and photographing in the rain can be difficult, but photographing at night in the rain can be very difficult indeed!) Regarding film, in the 12 days I only shot 13 rolls of 220 BW film – much less than usual on a trip to a place like Japan – but the trip was more about being with my mother and taking her to someplace new.

Still, on those 13 rolls, I think there are some good images. One day, when the film is all developed – whenever that will be – I’ll scan some and post them here. In the meantime, I’ll be posting some photos from the new pocket camera. I also have loads of film to still scan from my earlier trips to Japan. Stay tuned.

Japanese Curves

2010-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00

I've started printing photos again recently, and while I plan to continue printing nudes, I really want to get started printing a lot of my travel photos. Before I stopped printing regularly in 2003, I had printed mostly nudes with some occasional photos of Europe thrown into the mix.

However, I started travelling to Asia regularly in 2004, so all of those photos are pretty much waiting to be printed. Here's one that I like that I want to print.

I made this image in the mountainous town of Matsumoto in Japan. I went there on a day trip, and what a difference a few hours can make. Tokyo is a huge metropolis of concrete and steel, but going just a few hours by train took me a quiet town of cool, fresh mountain air.

The main reason I went was to see the beautiful castle there, but there are many beautiful temples, as well, and I took this photo of a garden with a curvy pavement there. When I look at it, the paved section almost looks like the shape of a nude woman, with the curve of her hip in the foreground and the outline of her shoulder beyond.

I'll let you know when I've printed it - but who knows when that will be.

Arctica

2010-05-18T01:00:00.003-04:00

Just a quick posting today to stay in touch with the bloggie world out there. My time these days has been mostly taken up with entertaining my visitor, but I wanted to find a few minutes to post something.

I haven't had much time lately for scanning, so I'm presenting another photo of Arctica from our recent session. As before, the image was made with my new Canon S90 pocket digital camera. (My film from the session will be developed when it will be developed.)

Arctica is wearing one of the masks that I bought on my trip to Venice last year. It makes me think of Batgirl for some reason. The mask also deposited a bunch of little sparkles on her face. I think she's still getting a kick out of it.

Yes, I Am Still Here

2010-05-12T21:36:00.009-04:00

Hello again, everyone.

Yes, it has been several weeks since I’ve written anything here. It was just a matter of being busy, running around trying to do a lot (mostly seeing art) and preparing for the arrival of a visitor who’s staying with me now.

One of the other things I did was to photograph a model named Arctica (above). She has a slim fashion model kind of figure, so I guess my photos will look closer to fashion imagery than to the glamour type that one might get with a curvier model. I won’t know, of course, until I develop the film (whenever that will be), but for now, here’s one of the snapshots I made with my new Canon S90 digital camera.

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I wrote last time about seeing the Picasso exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Well, as it turned out, it was just the first of five Picasso exhibits that I’ve seen since then. The first, as I said, was the Met show – and I even went back to see it a second time the following weekend. (As it happened, I went to the Met three weekends in a row – something I can’t recall ever having done before.)

I next went to see a show of about 200 prints by Picasso at the Marlborough Gallery on West 57 Street (which I would also see twice), followed by the exhibit of Picasso’s at the John Szoke gallery on the same block. The fourth Picasso exhibition was the one at the Museum of Modern Art, which I saw this past Friday night (along with the naked people in the Marina Abramovic performance art retrospective) before I headed on over to the Metropolitan Opera to see my final opera of the season – Rossini’s “Armida.”

Finally, I had enough time available to drive across the George Washington Bridge to Englewood, New Jersey, to see the show of Picasso prints at the Midday Gallery. I guess it’s just a time for Picasso in and around town right now, and there’s more coming. On June 27, the Met Museum will host a series of lectures (followed by a film) about Picasso. One of the scheduled speakers is Francoise Gilot, Picasso’s former lover. I will try to be there.

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Another Picasso event I attended was a lecture by Lucien Clergue about the artist at the Throckmorton Gallery. Lucien is one of the pioneers of art nude photography and I’ve known him since 1995, when I attended one of my first figure workshops with him. He was also a friend of Picasso from the 1950’s until the artist’s passing in 1973, and his talk shed some light on the artist’s personality (though obviously not all sides of it).

While the photos exhibited at the gallery included some photos of Picasso, the vast majority were art nudes. They were well worth seeing. (You can see an online version of the exhibition by clicking here .)

On a final note about Lucien Clergue and Picasso, I bought a copy of Lucien’s book, “Picasso Mon Ami” from Lucien when I visited his home town of Arles, France back in 1996. I was there to attend the annual photo festival, the Rencontres International de la Photographie – an even that Lucien helped to found. I made an appointment to visit Lucien in his office, and on the way I stopped into a bookstore where I saw the Picasso book for sale for about $60.

I told this to Lucien, and he said that he could sell me a copy for $40. I told him that I would have liked to have had it, but I said (quite truthfully) that my suitcase was already very full and very heavy.

“So what,” he responded. “You sit on it, you squeeze it in!”

I bought the book, which he signed for me. I’m glad I got it - and yes, I was able to squeeze it in!

Waiting Game, or: Three Trips to "The Met"

2010-04-26T14:55:00.052-04:00

Pablo Picasso

Vallauris Exposition, 1956

I’m sitting here at home today waiting for somebody from the phone company to arrive. That’s because I’m switching my telephone, cable TV and internet service from the cable company to the phone company. The primary reason for this is that the cable company does not carry BBC America, a station that I want to have that includes “Doctor Who” and other good shows, while the phone company does have it (though sadly not in HD, which other providers not in this area do have it in).

For the same price that I’m paying now, I’ll also be getting more stations like Showtime, a DVR so I can record programs if I’m out (I recorded “Dancing With the Stars” on my VCR last week and it looked horrible on my big new HD set), and a wireless router so I can use my new iPod to check messages and look up stuff on the web if the computer is turned off, and which would allow visitors to use wi-fi on their laptops instead of having to use my computer.

All this will only be possible, however, if they can find a place to put the big new box they have to install to connect the fiber optic cable to the system here. We’ll see.
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I did something recently that I haven’t done for years. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on consecutive weekends.

Last weekend, I went to the Met to see the exhibit of drawings by Agnolo Bronzino, one of my favorite Italian artists. I’d seen some of his classic paintings in Italy last year, and I didn’t want to miss this exhibit of his works – the way that I’d recently missed the show of all the photographic prints from Robert Frank’s classic book, “The Americans.”

Bronzino was certainly a great artist, though as I recall, all of these drawings were just preparatory works for paintings and not finished works of art in themselves. Nonetheless, seeing a drawing of something often has a more intimate and personal feel to it than a painting – especially a larger painting. Here are a few works seen in the show:

Head of a Smiling Young Woman, 1542-43

Head of a Young Man, 1550-55

Seated Male Nude, 1565-69

While I saw the Bronzino show on its final weekend, I went this past Saturday – two days ago – to see the new Picasso exhibit during a preview for members of the museum. If what I attended was just a preview for members, I can imagine that when the exhibit opens to the general public tomorrow it will be quite packed.

The Met joined the Picasso collecting game rather late, but according to what was posted there, it now holds the second largest collection of Picasso works in the United States – second only to the Museum of Modern Art here in New York.

This exhibition displays every work by Picasso that the museum holds. Organized chronologically, it offers the viewer a look at the wide variety of Pablo Picasso’s artistic output - from his early days (when he made a self-portrait showing himself with lots of hair on his head), through cubism, classicism, his work with linoleum cut prints, and finally to a large room filled with prints – etchings and aquatints - from his famous ‘347’ series of 1968 (some of them quite sexually graphic and explicit).

Here are some of the works on display that I found of interest, presented in chronological order:

Yo (self-portrait), 1900

Jardin de Paris, 1901

Woman in Green, 1901

Seated Harlequin, 1901

Blind Man's Meal, 1903

Frugal Repast, 1904

This etching was the first important print in Picasso's long and prolific career as a printmaker.

Standing Nude, 1907-08

The Farmer's Wife, 1908

Standing Female Nude, 1910

Three Bathers by the Shore, 1920

Head of a Woman, 1922

Three Bathers, 1923

Woman in White, 1923

Head of a Woman, 1927

The label for this one says it looks like a depiction of a scary, angry woman - but I kind of think it looks like Dino the Dinosaur. (Well, the top part, anyway.)

The Dreamer, 1932

Sculptor at Rest II, 1933

I absolutely LOVE this image! The lines are just so gorgeous, as is the sense of peace and tranquility. If I could take home but one work of art from this exhibition, without a doubt this would be the one.

Sculptor at Rest IV, 1933

Like the artwork above it, this etching is one of 100 prints belonging to the Suite Vollard, a series of prints made by Picasso from 1930 to 1937 and considered the most important of his career.

Blind Minotaur Led by a Girl Through the Night, 1934

Reading at a Table, 1934

Seated Nude, 1943

David and Bathsheba, 1947

Bacchanal with a Flute Player, 1955

Bulls in Vallauris, 1955

Bacchanal, 1959

Like the prints above and below, this is a linoleum cut.

Jacqueline Leaning on Her Elbows, 1959

Jacqueline in a Straw Hat, 1962

Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer, 1968

Bust of a Dead Painter Crowned by the Academy, 1968
This and the following prints belong to the '347 Suite,' a series of 347 prints that Picasso prepared during about half a year in 1968.

Woman on a Roman Chariot, 1968

Elongated Man with Two Women Telling Tales of an Old Clown and a Young Girl, 1968

Celestine Presenting Her Two Pensioners to Two Clients, 1968
Some of these prints are definitely on the raunchy side, especially those from the 'Celestine' series, such as this one. I'd seen some of these before and had thought of these as Picasso's 'dirty old man' series, but some of the others on display - such as those in his 'Raphael and La Fornarina' series - are even more graphic.

Faun and Bacchante with Battle of Fauns in the Distance, 1968

Raphael and La Fornarina XXIII, 1968

Raphael and La Fornarina XIX, 1968

The Pope appears to be enjoying the proceedings, both here and below.

Raphael and La Fornarina XX, 1968

As somebody has written about Picasso (here):

"Whereas the brushstrokes of Picasso’s paintings of the period are the largest of his life and the depictions are similarly among the sparest of his long career, the prints in contradistinction involve as fine a line as ever. Picasso seems to have been saying through these prints that even as a nonagenarian he still had a razor-sharp gaze and steady hand—if his paintings tended toward abstraction, it was by choice and not as a product of his old age. His advancing age did of course take its toll in other ways. But although his virility is believed to have waned a decade prior to his death, clearly his mind delightfully remained in the gutter!"

So, that's it - a brief overview of the exhibit. I cannot think of another artist who created works so stylistically different from each other over the years, but can at the same time be seen as the work of one hand. If you are in or will be in New York during the run of the show, April 27 – August 1, do try to pay a visit. I know that I’m planning to see it again. (If, on the other hand, you happen to live in rural Minnesota, perhaps it’s best to stay away.)******************************************************************************

Between my two visits to the Met, I made a visit to the other “Met” – the Metropolitan Opera. I went to see Richard Wagner’s opera, “Der Fliegende Hollaender” (The Flying Dutchman). This was part of my subscription at the Met, and though I am by no means a fan of German opera, I had wanted to see this one as I’d heard good things about it and I liked the overture.

Well, I did like the overture. I also liked the opera’s last five minutes, which were pretty dramatic. The opening chorus of Act III was pretty good, too. Unfortunately, I thought that just about everything else was pretty much a waste. (At least, the parts for which I was able to stay awake.) Just singers droning on and on with hardly any melody.

Wagner did write some beautiful music (even though he was a rat bastard as a human being), but most of that good music is hidden away between hours and hours of singers just standing there droning on and on – seemingly forever. (Somebody’s once described going to a Wagner opera as such: you sit there for three hours; then you look at your watch and you see that it’s only been twenty minutes.) Fortunately, this opera only ran for about two hours and twenty minutes – without any intermission – so I guess it could have been worse.

While I don’t care for German opera for the most part, I do love the Italian stuff, and I finish off my subscription in a couple of weeks with Rossini’s not-often performed “Armida.” I hope to like this one.

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Oh, before I forget: the man from the phone company arrived about 10 a.m. and is still working as I write this around 3:45 p.m. I don’t know when he’ll be done – so I guess I’m still waiting!

(Several hours later)

Well, the waiting is over. The main installer had to leave to go someplace else, so another guy came by to finish the job. Everything seems to work, but I still have a lot to figure out about the new system. Hopefully it won't take too long.

Long time gone; AND, "f - eleven, volume 2"

2010-04-16T00:36:00.003-04:00

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted anything here. I had planned to make a post a week ago – on my birthday – but the day before I discovered that my website had vanished. You may have read about this in a recent blog post by my friend Dave Levingston. As Dave wrote, his website as well as mine (and a bunch of others, I suspect) just disappeared overnight. They had been hosted by a friend of ours in Germany, but we haven’t heard from him for quite a while so I guess it was just a matter of time.

The bad thing about this is that I don’t have a finished website now. The good news is that it’s lit a fire under my ass and finally got me back to working on my new website, which is hosted by GoDaddy. I’ve been paying for it for over a year, and have done quite a bit of work on it, but it wasn’t ready to go live yet. I needed to come up with something interesting for the home page, and I needed to upload more photos to even out the number of photos in each gallery.

Well, I’ve spent a lot of time this past week going over the design program, both on my own and on the phone with GoDaddy’s people. That’s the reason why I haven’t made a posting here for so long.

One major difference that has been made since I last worked on the site is the style of the photo galleries. With the old method, each thumbnail image was in a square box that had white space around the image – on the sides for a vertical image, above and below for a horizontal – to fill the empty space in the square. I hated the way the way that looked. To make it look better, I created a gray square to match the gray of the web page. Then I would overlay each photo on the gray square and merge them together. This created an uploadable image that was a square to fill the square thumbnail box, with the gray around the image matching the gray of the page to look smooth.

As you can imagine, doing this for every single photo was a real pain in the ass. Then, when someone clicked on a thumbnail, a new window would open.

Well, things have changed – for the better. The thumbnails, as far as I can tell now, are no longer in a square box. They’re just thumbnails on the page. Therefore, I no longer have to go to the trouble to create my own squares and overlay the image on it. Great. When a thumbnail is clicked, instead of a new window opening with the image in another square (as before), the full size image is displayed against a black background with the title of the image below it.

The only bad thing is that for advancing or reversing through the images, the icons for doing that are overlaid over the title. Having arrows to the right and left of the image would be much better as they wouldn’t block the title. You can also do a slideshow of the images now, but unfortunately, they’re done with hard transitions. A nice dissolve from one image to the next would be much better. Still, overall, it’s an improvement from the old way.

However, having said this, I also have to say that the galleries created the old way are still presented the old way. This means that I will have uninstall all of those images (with the gray squares) and reload them the new way. Not the most difficult thing to do, but tedious and time consuming.

If you want to see for yourself, you can take a peek and maybe let me know what you think. The primary URL, http://www.figuresofgrace.com/, is still waiting to be transferred over from Yahoo. However, you can see the new site as it is now at http://www.figuresofgrace.net/ . All of the galleries, with the exception of Vietnam in the Travel section, were uploaded the old way. Only Vietnam is done by the new method. Take a look at each, click on a thumbnail and see the difference.

Another thing I really need to do – and have been wanting to do – is to add unique titles for each photo, especially as I do hope to try marketing my photos a bit more seriously. This shouldn’t be a problem for my travel photos, but for nudes it’s another story. I just name each photo by the location and by the year of the image, with a unique number added based on the order in which I print the photos (ex., “Nude, Tuscany, 1998, #3”).

Well, for photos that I haven’t yet printed but want to post, I don’t yet have a print order. This should be an easy one to solve, as I’ll just assign numbers ahead of time and try to stick to them in printing - unless someone wants to buy one on a print to order basis and that image gets printed out of order. (It should only happen!) Of course, the number would still remain the same.
What will be more work is for the prints that I’ve already made. Yes, in my printing notebooks I have the title of each image next to the negative’s inventory number, but I don’t have a photo to go along with that in my notes. Therefore, I basically need to scan the negative of every photo that I’ve printed (over 200) so I can match them up with their respective titles – and that WILL be a lot of work!
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I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, and most of you have probably read about it already, but the “f – eleven” photography group to which I belong has recently published a second volume of photographs by its members. (The cover is shown above.) My photos included are images of Venice, all from last year, and nudes wearing masks.

One of my photos from Japan was on the cover of the first volume, but the cover honors this time go to Ward Shortridge for his photo of Japanese butoh dancers in Oregon, I believe.

All proceeds from the book are going to benefit autism research. For more information, please click here. To see a full preview, click here.

Misery

2010-04-04T20:37:00.004-04:00

The parade of bad electronic news continues. First my television set broke down in January. Then my computer had all kinds of problems, which forced me to try reinstalling Windows, which made things even worse for the most part. Then my MP3 player seems to have gotten fried when I tried to recharge it. My pocket digital camera also needs to be replaced as it’s been acting really screwy for quite some time.

So, first the good news. The new TV set seems to be working fine. The new computer that I’m writing on now also seems to be in good shape. Now the bad news.

I bought a new stereo/surround sound receiver with HDMI connections to go with the new TV. I thought the new unit was working fine, until I noticed that I was hearing static coming out of the right surround speaker. I know that the problem is with the receiver, because when I wired the right surround speaker to left surround output and the left surround speaker to the right surround output, the static sound followed with the right surround output to the left surround speaker. That pretty much proves that the output on the receiver - not the speaker - is the problem, meaning that I’ll have to take the thing in for service. Wonderful.

Then there’s my new iPod Touch. For one thing, I already got a small scratch on the screen. It probably happened when I put it in a little bag with the earphones that came with it. Luckily the scratch is on the end and not in the middle, and probably won’t be too noticeable to someone who doesn’t know about it. (If I meet any of you, dear readers, and I show you photos on my iPod, please forget that you read this.)

Still, that’s not really what I want about regarding the iPod. The thing does play okay, I must admit, and for a long time, too. I had it running off its internal battery for about six hours when I was printing photos last weekend and it seemed to use only about ten percent of the battery power, if I can trust the little battery icon on it.

That would make it good for listening to in the car when on long trips. (It would even be good for shorter trips, as I wouldn’t have to decide which CDs to bring along with me.) I actually got that idea from my friend Dave Levingston, who was playing his iPod in his truck the whole time we rode from Ohio to Chicago and back. I just had to get the required attachments to have it play through the car’s stereo system.

I planned to first use it Monday of last week, when I had to pick up some passengers and then make the long drive to my cousin in New Jersey for the holiday dinner (and then drive back, of course). A perfect opportunity to listen to a variety of music for several hours without having to change CDs, I thought.

As not to have to rely on iPod’s internal battery, I got another power cable with the adapter to plug it into the car’s cigarette lighter. When I got down to my car, I plugged it in and the iPod powered up. Excellent. Next was to plug in the audio adapter that I had bought, which connects the iPod to the car stereo via the cassette player.

I put the thing into the cassette drive and the music from the iPod started playing. Excellent – for about thirty seconds. Then the music stopped – and started – and stopped – and started – and stopped…. Eventually, the cassette player ejected the adapter. I tried it again several times, pressed the ‘Tape’ button, but the same thing happened every time. Great! Yet another electronic device that doesn’t work.

I had no time to go back up to get some CDs to play, but fortunately I had left in the car a couple of CDs I’d put together containing the Beatles first four albums plus their singles from the early days. At least I had something to listen to for the long drive.

Before returning the defective adapter, I decided to go to my car after work a few days later to try it again, but to also see if the cassette player was working properly. I was going to take with an old cassette plus the adapter, but after speaking with someone at my office, I decided to bring my portable CD player, too. My co-worker, who’s into music in a really big way, told me that he’s experienced problems with those adapters using iPod and other MPs players, but said that they work fine with regular CDs. Dave L had no problems playing his iPod, but I thought I’d give it a try, anyway.

So, back to the car I went. The first thing I tried was playing the cassette, which played perfectly for several minutes, indicating that the cassette player is not defective. Then I tried the CD player to see if it would work connected with the adapter. I happened to bring with the CD with the Beatles first two albums to play, so I connected it up, put the adapter in the tape player, and on came the first song from the album, “I Saw Her Standing There.”

It looked like my co-worker was right, that CD players played fine with the adapter. I thought that for about thirty seconds, anyway, after which the music stopped – and started – and stopped – and started – and stopped… (you get the idea) before the adapter was ejected. So, I guess it was the adapter after all that was the problem and not the iPod.

Still, I thought I’d try putting the adapter in just one more time with the CD player, but for the sake of something different, I skipped on to the second song on that Beatles album. What was the name of that song that (temporarily) came on next?

“Misery.”

How appropriate, I thought.

(If anybody out there has any advice to offer regarding this, please let me know.)

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At the top, a photo of Alison from 2004.

Three Negatives

2010-03-30T21:24:00.005-04:00

I made prints from three negatives in my darkroom set-up on Sunday. This followed making prints from two negatives two weeks ago. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue printing at an average rate of once a month, though I may try to do it twice a month if I have the time and if I feel like doing so.

The three negatives that I printed were from those images that I submitted into a photo competition recently. I’ve now made prints of all five photos that I entered, so that if I’m fortunate to have any chosen for the exhibition, I’ll be ready to provide them.

Still, things could have gone better. First off, I should have gone to bed earlier the night before so I could have gotten up earlier and started earlier – and not felt so tired. Then, when I finished making my third good print from the first negative, I looked over the print and decided that one corner was too bright and needed to be burned in (that is, darkened). So, I took those first three prints, tore them all into pieces and angrily shoved the pieces into the trash. The lesson: look over the print carefully the first time and not after you’ve made three of them.

The print of the third negative (see a scan of the negative above) also required a lot of burning in to even out the tonality of the image, but in the end, it was worth the extra time and effort.
Overall, I was satisfied with the results. All of these pictures were nudes, so maybe I’ll try printing up some of my travel images from Asia next time.

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I wrote last time about how I spoke with some of the dealers and gallery people at the recent AIPAD photography show. What I didn’t mention was that I also spoke with the photographer Kenro Izu. Kenro is the founder of the organization Friends Without a Border, which built and continues to support the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia.

I told Kenro about the book project that I was involved in that is donating all profits from book sales to Friends Without a Border, and he was happy to hear about our support. The group that put the book together, f-eleven, will soon be releasing a second volume to benefit a different charity, so I thought it would be an opportune time to remind people of the first volume, which is still for sale. You can see the cover here (with one of my photos on it), see a full preview and get more information by clicking here.

AIPAD: The Photography Show

2010-03-23T21:17:00.016-04:00

Hello again, my friends out there in bloggie land. Yes, it has been over a week since I wrote. I had decided not to write until after I attended the event of which I am about to write. However, my new iPod Touch arrived this weekend, and since then I’ve been taking the time to copy music for it and, of course, try to figure out just how it works. (I’m copying CDs as this write this, too.)

So, let’s get down to business.

The annual New York show of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) is something that I have come to look forward to each year. I attended my first AIPAD show quite a few years ago when it was held on two floors of the New York Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan. I didn’t go to buy, but rather just to look at the many fine examples of original photographic prints, dating from the 19th century to more recent years. I can remember how my head was spinning when I left, having seen so many prints.

In subsequent years, I bought some inexpensive prints for my collection, but then, for some reason, I stopped attending. The event eventually moved to a new location – the Park Avenue Armory on Manhattan’s east side – and last year I finally went back to attending the show.

I have begun to take my collecting of photography more seriously over the past few years, but at a show like AIPAD, I must say, the vast majority of prints are beyond my affordability. Still, I have managed to find some things now and then that fall within my budgetary limits, with an occasional splurge.

I do have to say that there is definitely a difference in attending an event like this when you are a potential buyer rather than just a looker. As a looker – well, price really doesn’t matter much because you’re not planning to take anything home. On the other hand, when you are on the lookout for something, it stings a bit more when you see something you really love but you see that it’s out of reach.

This year things stung a bit more. Having seen my television set, computer and MP3 player break down in short succession, with my digital camera also on the blink and all of them needing to be replaced – well,I’m afraid there really wasn’t much left in the till for buying art.

Perhaps that’s one reason why I only attended this past Thursday and Friday after work. I usually go on Saturday for a full day to see as much as I can – and last year I went Thursday through Sunday – but this time it was just two days, though those two weeknights were not as crowded as it usually gets on a weekend. (I also needed to take my car for a good ride, as the battery had become depleted through lack of use and needed to be recharged., which I did on Saturday.)

In the end, I did take home a couple of inexpensive prints from the Czech Center of Photography, and I saw a lower priced print from an American dealer that I may be able to get later in the year if I can actually save some money. All that aside, I spent some time looking at beautiful photography and talking with people from the fine art photography world. There are worse ways to pass the hours.

Here are some photos I made at the show of some photos I admired and dealers I spoke with. My comments are below them.

Dealer Alex Novak of Vintage Works from Pennsylvania, standing in front of a print by Arthur Tress, an artist he represents.

Some classic prints at Alex's booth, including the iconic "Satyric Dancer" by Andre Kertesz on the left.

One of my favorite prints in Alex's inventory, a photo taken on the Paris metro, I believe, by Brassai.

Alex mentioned my blog coverage of last year's event in his newsletter, and he also sent me a free pass for this year's event (as I had purchased a print from him in the past), so I told him that I'd feature him on the blog. Here he's holding a 19th century print of the Step Pyramid of King Djoser at Sakkara in Egypt. This was the first pyramid built by the ancient Egyptians, around the 27th century BCE.

The lovely and charming Mel Etherton of the Etherton Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. I happened to mention that I missed the chance to hear Robert Frank speaking a few months ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I had a ticket to see Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" at the opera (the "other" Met) that night. It turns out that she's an opera lover, too, so we had a lot to talk about other than photography. She was impressed by my tales of being on stage with Pavarotti at the Met.

That's a Joel-Peter Witkin print on the left at Etherton - proof that he can make a photo that doesn't turn one's stomach. This one, as you can see, is quite lovely, actually.

Some more prints at Etherton, by Flor Garduno (left) and Helmut Newton (right).

I usually prefer black & white fine art photography over that in color, but this fashion photo by Norman Parkinson certainly caught my attention.

The men from Prague: Jiri (right) and his assistant of the Czech Center of Photography.

A beautiful nude by Irving Penn.

Burt Finger from the Photographs Do Not Bend (PDNB) Gallery in Dallas, Texas.

A Gallery for Fine Photography, from New Orleans, had this very large print by Helmut Newton on display. It certainly looked impressive. Even a small Newton print is beyond my budget, but I can always dream about winning the lottery and getting something like this. (It would look great above my sofa.)

Something by Sally Mann, if I recall correctly, as is the photo at the top.

A couple of large prints of some New York landmarks.

So, that's it for this year's AIPAD show. This is by no means an exhaustive review of the event, but rather the show as seen from my point of view. If you're interested and want to find out more, view the blog of DLK Collection - a serious collector - by clicking here.

Darkness at Three

2010-03-15T21:50:00.002-04:00

It was a long time since I’d printed any photos – nearly three months – so I thought that yesterday would be a good day to break that streak. In addition to wanting to finally print again in general, I had recently entered some photos into a competition and wanted to print up my submitted images on the odd chance that something might actually be selected for the show.

Things were against me from the start, as Saturday night was when we had to move our clocks forward an hour, meaning that I’d basically wake up an hour late yesterday. (Yes, I know. We all woke up an hour late, but this is my story.) I also didn’t feel like setting my alarm, so I woke up even later than I normally would on a printing day.

Then I had to get everything set up. By the time I was ready, it was lunch time. So, I had a quick bite to eat and then got down to printing.

Well, I would have gotten down to printing, except for one thing – the timer connected to my enlarger was broken. When it was set to the print position, instead of the lamp being off and going on for the set time when I pressed the proper button, the reverse held true. The enlarger’s lamp was on the whole time, and would turn off for the prescribed time when I pushed the button!

“What the @#%&*!!!,” I thought to myself. “Now this, too?!” After my television set, computer, MP3 player and digital camera all suffered problems requiring replacement, did my enlarger’s timer really have to join the club, too?

Let’s not forget that I hadn’t printed for three months, I’m all set up and ready to go – and then I’m stuck. I felt like I was all dressed up with no place to go. Still, I wondered if it might be a wrong button accidentally pushed, so I pushed a lot of the buttons seeing if anything would change, but it didn’t. I ended calling up a friend who’s a photographer, and he thought it odd that it would work in reverse. Not working at all, yes – but working backwards did seem really odd to him.

Well, it seemed odd to me, too, so before throwing in the towel and putting everything away, I told myself that I’d try just one more time to get it working properly. Guess what? It worked! For some reason, there is a button on the timer that has the lamp on except for when the timer is activated. I have absolutely no reason why such a thing is necessary, but it’s there, and I now know to be wary of it. As I still consider myself to be in the ‘trying to get back to normal’ mode as far as printing is concerned, I wonder what other pitfalls await me.

By this time, it was around 3 p.m., so I set out to make some good fiber prints from just two negatives rather than the hoped for three, and that’s just what I did. The competition is being held by a gallery in Manhattan’s East Village, with the topic being beds. So, the two I printed were of a model on a bed in a California motel room.

One of them is the photo that I have called “Banned by Kodak,” as Kodak refused to print it in a book of nudes I had put together in 2007 because they felt it was too racy. (You can read my blog postings about it here and here.) Well, if it got Kodak’s attention, then maybe it’ll get the juror’s attention, too – and as it’s the East Village and not Rochester, hopefully it will be looked upon favorably. I’ll try to make prints of the other three submitted photos in a couple of weeks.

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At the top is a photo I made a few years ago in the old studio of my friend Dave Levingston. The model is _G_. I photographed her last month in Dave’s new studio, but as I haven’t developed that film yet, here’s an oldie for you.

New Studio. Not Mine.

2010-03-10T21:21:00.008-05:00

I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently developing film from my trip to Ohio last month. So far, I’ve gotten about two-thirds of the way through it, though I probably won’t be able to finish the rest for a few weeks. So far the results look pretty good, and I thank my good friend Dave Levingston once again for allowing me to use his new studio.

Here’s one of the images that I made in that studio, with the face of model Revielle hidden behind a mask that she brought with her. This photo was made with natural afternoon light coming into the studio through its large windows.

Part of the time that I was photographing in the studio, Dave L was working hard to repair the broken cyclorama that’s on one wall of the studio. I’m glad that he’s finally finished the repair and can now finally enjoy the fruit of his efforts. To read about Dave’s efforts there, see his blog here.

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I just want to remind people that "f - eleven," a book that I and many other fine photographers participated in compiling, is still available for purchase through Blurb. (That's one of my photos on the cover, too.)

All proceeds will go to Friends Without a Border, a non-profit organization that supports the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia. To get more information about the book and to see a full preview, click here.

A Newer ‘Puter

2010-03-04T21:40:00.002-05:00

I’m sitting here now, writing from my new computer. Yes, my life is returning somewhat to normal now, though I do have a lot of catching up to do with things that got backed up due to my lack of a proper ‘puter.

I got the new machine last Friday and hooked it up over the weekend. I was concerned that there could be major compatibility issues between my software and the new Windows 7 operating system (my old computer having XP), so I took a philosophical deep breath when I tried to install the first program, Pentax’s ACDSee photo browser. The software loaded and installed without a problem.

Then I tried installing Photoshop Elements. More precisely, Photoshop Elements 2.0, which is a pretty old version of the program. That also installed without a problem. Next was the software for my scanner – also no problem. So, things were going well. Then I hit a snag.

I tried to load the drivers for my printer, an Epson Stylus Photo 820, but I got a message saying that the software was incompatible. Oh, well. I’d been planning to get a new printer anyway. Then I mentioned it to someone I know, and he suggested that I go to Microsoft’s Windows 7 page to look it up. According to that, no downloads were needed. So I thought, “What the heck” and tried to print something. It worked! So, I can hold off on getting a new printer if I want.

The only problem I can discern is that I don’t know how much ink I have, as this printer uses one color cartridge and the new printing page has the indicator for multiple color cartridges. I’m also trying to figure out how to get the computer to give me a page preview for each thing I want to print as my old machine did.

Finally, I did hit an impass. When I tried to install my Roxio program for burning and editing CDs and DVDs, etc., it refused to load. The software is just too old for Windows 7. So, I have to get something new. I was thinking of getting the new Roxio Creator 2010, but according to an online review from a major publication, the software automatically deletes the audio for video files that one wants to use to make DVDs or Blu-rays, for some strange reason. That is not what I want – though I wonder if I misunderstand the review and there’s a way to get around that. I wish there’s a way I can find out for sure short of buying the thing. (I’ve had problems synching the audio with the video on my earlier Roxio programs, but it’s hard to imagine that they’ve tried to solve the problem by simply doing away with the audio!)

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Last night, I tried to scan some negatives with the new machine for the first time. You can see one of the resulting images at the top – a photograph of shadows on a foot bridge over a canal in Venice, made on my visit there last year.

Expect to see more.

Tear Jerkers

2010-02-25T19:30:00.002-05:00

I got the subscription brochure for next season at the Metropolitan Opera in the mail a couple of days ago. It looks like they've got quite a few things I've never seen before lined up: Verdi's "Don Carlo" with Roberto Alagna, Rossini's not often seen"Le Comte Ory" with Juan Diego Florez, Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" with the gorgeous Danielle de Niese, Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" with the lovely Anna Netrebko, Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride" with Placido Domingo, Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande" with conductor Simon Rattle making his Met debut, Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades" with the beautiful Karita Mattila, Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" with my favorite singer, Angela Gheorghiu, and celebrating the 100th anniversary of its world premiere at the Met, Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West." (Then there's John Adams' "Nixon in China,' which I'll have to think about.)

Of course, there are some that I have seen before but would happily see again, such as "Tosca" and "Boris Godunov" (NOT "Badenov"!).

Still, there are several months left to this season, and last night I went to see "La Boheme." It's unusual for me to go to the Met on a Wednesday night as I get home very late (I usually go on Friday, when I can sleep late the next day), but I had traded a subscription ticket for a Richard Strauss opera (not one of my favorite opera composers) for the Puccini gem and no Fridays were available.

Last night's "Boheme" starred the beautiful Russian soprano Anna Netrebko - one of opera's hottest commidities right now - as Mimi, and she was very effective as the tragic heroine. This is one of those operas that people have seen over and over again and keep going, and seeing it each time with a different cast helps to keep it interesting. Piotr Beczala was her lover, Rodolfo, with Nicole Cabell as Musetta. The ending is, of course, a tear jerker, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the house who had to pull a hanky out at the end. (In fact, I am certain, as I saw the man sitting next to me do the same. Unfortunately, he was also a heavy breather, so throughtout much of the opera I had to listen to his pulmonary functions in operation.)

This was a "Boheme" to remember, but the most memorable performance, for me, was when I worked at the Met as a supernumerary (i.e. extra) and appeared one night in Act 2 as one of the soldiers that march down the steps and across the stage at the end. What was most memorable to me were Acts 3 and 4, after I was done with being on stage.

A friend of mine had asked me to get an autograph from the tenor, Ramon Vargas, so I just sat on a chair in the wings, watching and waiting for the show to end. (I wasn't supposed to do that, but I asked one of the regulars there and he told me I should be okay.) So, I sat there offstage, all by myself, with an occasional stagehand going by. I could only see a sliver of the audience in the front rows from where I was sitting, so it was almost as though the singers were performing for me alone and nobody else. It was one of those instances that almost seems transcendent, and when Vargas cried out "Mimi!" upon his lover's death and the music swelled, I got chills just running up and down my spine.

I doubt that I will ever experience a "Boheme" like that again - but I do feel blessed that it happened even once.

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"La Boheme" is a tear jerker by design, but sometimes circumstances conspire to achieve the same effect without intention.

Like many, I've been watching the winter Olympics on TV, including the figure skating. Four years ago, at the winter games in Torino, Italy, I absolutely loved watching the Japanese figure skater Shizuka Arakawa, who deservedly won the gold medal. She was a true "figure of grace."

So, I've been wondering upon whom to confer the "figure of grace" award for this year's Olympics. On Tuesday night, I watched the women's figure skating short program, and there were a lot of impressive performances, such as those by the American Mirai Nagasu, Asada Mao from Japan and of course, the Korean Kim Yu-na. Still, while the athleticism was there as well as a lot of showmanship, that sense of grace and elegance that Arakawa brought just seemed missing.

I did see a great deal of elegance in the gold medal winners for Ice Dancing, the Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. While I was hoping that the Americans, Meryl Davis and Charlie White would win (I think Davis has a very interesting face), I have to admit that the Canadians outdid them. (The programs they skated may have something to do with it. The Americans' skated a melodramatic program set to Webber's "Phantom of the Opera," while the Canadians skated a beautiful program set to a symphony by Gustav Mahler.)

Then I saw Joannie Rochette. If you don't know the story by now, this Canadian girl's mother died a few days before she herself had to skate. (If I understand correctly, it was unexpectedly, from a heart attack.) Everybody in the arena knew this, of course, and being a Canadian in Vancouver, she was given a rousing ovation. Then she skated. Beautifully. When it was over, she stood there in the middle of the rink on the verge of tears.

I was not on the verge of tears - as the tears had begun to cascade from both eyes minutes before. I think it was the most emotional thing I had ever seen on television - not just from a sporting event, but anything. Even Scott Hamilton, one of the announcers, had trouble speaking because he was so choked up. It sounded like the other announcers were in the same condition, and I doubt that there was a dry eye in the house. (I described it on the phone to my aunt today, and even she began to cry.)

So, the 2010 "Figure of Grace" award goes to Joannie Rochette from Canada, for performing at such a high level and so beautifully under such difficult circumstances. The silver medalist at the world championships last year, she finished third in the short program Tuesday night. I hope she'll do well in the long program tonight and will be able to stand up on the podium at the end.

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At the top, a photo of Carlotta that I have surprisingly been able to upload from my computer.

****!!!!!!

2010-02-25T16:08:00.005-05:00

I spent today writing a long, long post that I had not yet finished. My computer could only open Blogger in what appeared to be a skeletal 'safe mode.' I tried saving it as I went, and copied it to the clipboard, too, in case that didn't work.

Then the window suddenly closed. When I was able to log back into Blogger here just now, in the normal mode, I went to edit and finish the post. Nothing was saved. Then I tried to paste it in from the clipboard. There was nothing there to paste.

Perhaps life was better before computers and the internet. (Or, at least, it's better with a properly working computer, unlike the piece of **** that I've got in front of me now.)

The River's Edge

2010-02-22T20:54:00.004-05:00

I am writing once again from the comfort of my home and from the uncomfort of my own problematic computer. (More on that next time.) I returned home last night after a week spent visiting my friend Dave Levingston, and I want to thank Dave and his lovely wife Emily for the hospitality they showed me during my visit.

Dave and I visited Chicago for a couple of days, then returned to Ohio where I photographed some models, both in and out of the studio. For the last full day of my visit, I accompanied Dave up to the River's Edge Gallery in Wyandotte, Michigan. The occasion was the "meet the artists" reception for the Secret's Revealed exhibition, a show in which a couple of Dave's photographs are included.

(Wyandotte is located south of Detroit and seems like a nice town, and as it's located a short distance across the water from Canada, with Canada clearly visible, I guess the residents of the town are all experts on Canadian affairs.)

The gallery is spread over three floors, and upon arrival we proceeded up to the second floor, where the exhibition is being held. Dave and I walked around trying to find his art works on wall, without success. Then we headed back toward the stairs, and I heard Dave say "Duh!!!" Sure enough, there they were - Dave's photos - on the wall right by the stairs! We'd passed them by without even bothering to look on the wall there. You can see Dave in the photo below, repeating the pose from his self-portrait at the bottom, with one of his beautiful art nude photos above it.

Afterwards, I walked around a bit, speaking with some of the visitors, artists and the hostesses working the event. I was most pleased, though, to meet some of the other photographers with work in the show whose work I had seen online. One of these was local photographer Jim Young, who can be seen below standing next to his print in the show.

The other was Joe Crachiola, one of the voices behind the blog, What We Saw Today. I had seen Joe's name among the list of photographers in the show and had hoped that he would attend, but as he has recently moved from Detroit down to New Orleans, his attendance seemed unlikely. Nonetheless, all of a sudden he appeared at the top of the stairs and was greeted warmly by those who knew him. I did get the chance to speak with him briefly, but not nearly enough to ask him about his move to New Orleans and his life in photography. I hope that I will have that opportunity some time in the future.

Still, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the person I was most happy to see was Iris Dassault. Iris is a model and a photographer, and an all-around beautiful, talented, charming and intelligent woman. I had photographed Iris a few years ago and had not seen her since that time, and it was wonderful to catch up with her and talk about the things we've done in the past few years. I told her that she was the first (and so far, only) model that I've photographed who made dinner for ME afterwards - as it's usually the other way around. I hope I have the chance to work with her again before too long.

Overall then, it was a very nice evening at the gallery, and you can see a few more photos below.

Hostess

Dave L, hostess, yours truly, Iris Dassault

Iris and her photo

Jim Young and Iris

Joe Crachiola

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Art Nudes
Well, as I'm writing this from my computer at home, which - as I've written recently - cannot connect to the disc drives where my photos are stored, you may wonder why photos are appearing with this posting. The photos are here because I edited, saved and then posted them to the blog here on Dave L's computer in Ohio yesterday morning. Now that I'm at home, don't expect to see any more photos here until I get my new computer.

For now, though, given the lack of new photos that I'll be able to show you for a while, I've decided to post one photo (below) taken with my pocket digital camera during the nude photo sessions I did in Dave L's studio. The model is Revielle. I hope to post more in a few weeks, but for the time being, this is it.

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A Sad Day

It was with great sadness today that I read the latest posting on Univers d'Artistes by Chris St. James. Basically, Chris wrote that he is losing his battle with multiple sclerosis and is bringing the blog to a close.

Though I had never met Chris in person or even spoke with him on the phone, I did think of him as a friend through our correspondence and limited collaboration on Univers d'Artistes. Chris was kind enough to write some features about me and my work, and often posted examples of my art nude photography.

When Chris was unable to continue with the blog due to his undergoing medical treatment, he entrusted the care of Univers d'Artistes to Iris Dassault and me, giving us the password and allowing us to update it as best as we could. (It's a bit ironic, then, that I met Iris a couple of nights ago, as I've described above, and talked about those days.)

I was really frightened then that Chris would be unable to continue with the blog at all, and that he hoped that Iris and I would fill his shoes - something I knew that I could never do (and I suspect Iris could not do, either).

The two of us made occasional posts to keep things going, but I was thrilled when Chris returned - mostly for the fact that the condition of his health was well enough to allow him to do so.

Eventually, Unbearable Lightness joined up and took a major role, and I tried to continue helping in whatever small way I could, but I think Chris always remained the heart and soul of Univer d'Artistes.

Now, it all seems to have come to an end. Looking back, I have to say that all of the art nude photographers whose work Chris helped bring to light and to a wider audience owe Chris a debt of gratitude, as he truly loved the art nude genre. We should all wish him peace and comfort in whatever time he has left.

At times like this, I guess I'm like everybody else in being at a loss for what to say, so I will just say this:

Rest easy, mon ami. Your spirit and energy will be remembered by those you touched. May your soul go gently into the night.

Chicago, Part 2

2010-02-19T20:00:00.000-05:00

I'm still here in Ohio visiting with my good friend, Mr. Dave Levingston. There's plenty of snow here - the most snow this area has had in the past 30 years - and it's cold outside to go with it, but I am having a good time here.

Today I'm going to write briefly about the second day of our visit to Chicago. While day one was devoted to seeing the "Femme Divine" exhibit (see my last posting),day two was devoted primarily to visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. I had never been to Chicago before, and I'd had a list of three things that I wanted to do there: go to the Art Institute, see a performance at the Lyric Opera and see a baseball game at Wrigley Field. Well, the only Lyric Opera performance that happened when I was there was the same night as the gallery reception, so obviously I couldn't go. As the baseball season doesn't begin until April, I couldn't see the Cubbies play at Wrigley, either (though I did see the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue).

Still, one out of three isn't too bad, and if seeing the art works in the Art Institute is the only thing one does on a visit to Chicago, then it was a good visit.

Dave L and I didn't go to the Institute alone, however, as we were joined by my friend, the photographer Ted Preuss. Ted lives in Chicago and makes beautiful platinum print photographs, in case you're not familiar with him. (If you are not, then you should be. See some of his work here.) That's Dave L with the beard in the photo and Ted next to him.

Regarding the Art Institute, the only painting that I could think of that's in the collection there - and the one art work that I thought of when I thought of that museum - was George Seurat's pointilist masterpiece, "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte." That painting was indeed there, and it was a thrill to finally see it. (It's actually much larger than I had thought it to be.)

Seurat - "Sunday on La Grande Jatte"

Still, a great museum like the Art Institute holds many more masterpieces, and it was great to see those, as well. Some of those were Grant Wood's "American Gothic," Edward Hopper's iconic "Nighthawks" (though without Marilyn and James Dean), Picasso's Blue Period "Guitarist," Van Gogh's "My Bedroom," and a couple of Surrealist nude paintings by the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux. Additional works that caught my eye were paintings by Rembrandt, Diego Rivera, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann and Henri Matisse, plus some by artists I was unfamiliar with. A welcome surprise was one of my favorite Italian paintings, "The Lute Player" by Orazio Gentileschi, that was on display in a special exhibition.

Van Gogh

Grant Wood - "American Gothic"

Gentileschi's "Lute Player" (detail)

"Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper

Delvaux (detail)

Without question, however, the one art work I was most happy to see for the first time was Marc Chagall's "White Crucifixion," showing a crucified Jesus but depicting him as the Jew that he was. What's remarkable about this painting - and what I had never noticed before in book reproductions - are all of the small scenes that Chagall painted around the central figure. Wonderful scenes, though many of them are tragic in nature. As I was there in front of it, and as photos were allowed without flash, I made over twenty photos - mostly details - of this great work.

Chagall

After we left the museum, Dave, Ted and I walked up Michigan Avenue, paying visits to the silvery, curvy, high reflective "Bean" sculpture (see photo at top) and the giant sculpture of "American Gothic," the latter across the street from the aforementioned Wrigley Building.

Then, Ted took us to his home and his new studio, where he showed us examples of his marvelous platinum prints. For dinner that night, Dave and I walked a few blocks from our hotel to The Green Door Tavern, a former speakeasy, housed in one of the few wooden commercial buildings built following the great Chicago fire of 1871. (Such new buildings were outlawed shortly after it was built.)

The next day, Monday, Dave and I rode back to his home here in Ohio, much of it through falling snow. We saw plenty of vehicles ditched on the side of the rode, including one very large truck that had flipped over onto its side. Since then, I've been photographing models in Dave's new studio, among other things. I'll write more about that next time.

Before that, Dave and I will be riding up on Saturday to Detroit to attend a reception at the River's Edge Gallery for a show that includes some of Dave's photos. If you're in the Detroit area, please come on down to see us. You can read more about the event here.

Chicago

2010-02-17T18:35:00.014-05:00

Hi, everyone.

Those of you who've been following my blog will know that my computer has been undergoing serious problems and that I've been unable to upload photos here to the blog. Well, if you're seeing photos here with this posting, it's not because the computer's been repaired or replaced.

It's because I'm here in Ohio visiting my good friend, the photographer Dave Levingston.

He was kind enough to invite me to stay with him for a week and to do some photography in his new studio. I have been doing the latter, working with models in the studio both yesterday and today (with more to come), but for now I'm writing about the trip to Chicago that Dave and I made this past weekend.

I had never been to Chicago before, so this trip was something of a treat - the chance to visit one of the country's great cities. At the top you can see a photo I made of the Chicago skyline from inside the Art Institute, a place that I'll write about next time.

This trip, though, was not a random visit as Dave and I went to attend the opening reception of the "Femme Divine" exhibit of art nude and erotica at the Gallery Provocateur.

Besides seeing the beautiful artworks on display, I also had the opportunity to meet some of the people who I'd met online or whose works I had seen but had never met in person before. Among these were D.L. Wood, Unbearable Lightness, Lela Rae and Nad Iskodas. Here are some of the photos I made at the event.

D.L Wood and Dave Levingston

Gallery founder Veronika Kotlajic

Lela Rae and Unbearable Lightness

Unbearable Lightness and friend

Lela Rae with yours truly

Dave Levingston

Model Jennifer and D.L. Wood

Lela Rae

I'll write more about Chicago and my time here in Ohio in upcoming posts. For now, I'll mention that Dave L and I will be riding up to Detroit this coming Saturday to attend a reception at the River's Edge Gallery that evening for a show in which Dave has some of his work included. For more information, see his blog entry about it here.

Update

2010-02-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update here on my computer situation. It has not changed since last time, with the only thing working being internet access, and that subject to the windows disappearing without notice. I had regretted trying to reinstall Windows, as before I was still able to do more things despite the many problems, but at the end I had no web access and now I do, so it is better now in a way.

The only difference is that now I have decided to buy a new computer to replace this five year old one. It's just a matter of when, where and (naturally) how much.

Now something new to report: another piece of electronic gear has decided to head south. This time it's my 4 GB MP3 player. I charged it up a couple of days ago, and since the battery had been pretty well depleted, I let it charge for about a day. When I unplugged it, the initial screen came up on the unit but I couldn't get past it. Eventually, when I unplugged it, the whole thing was dead. I don't think it's just the battery that's fried, though, as when I plug in the A/C connection, I get the initial screen but cannot get past it.

I had been thinking of upgrading to an iPod Touch to have greater capacity and wi-fi access to the web when I'm traveling (plus other stuff), but I had considered putting it off until next year due to my unexpected expenses now. It looks like I'll have to get one this year now.

Finally, to add insult to injury, I slipped on some ice here in New York this afternoon and came down hard on my left hip, elbow and shoulder. Just what I needed (but is that more like "adding injury to insult"?). At least I've got an interesting weekend and next week planned, so hopefully things will get better.

Stay warm, everyone.

When It Rains....

2010-02-07T12:03:00.007-05:00

"Everything is broken"
- Robert Allen Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan)

When last I wrote, some time ago now, it was to say that I had been inactive here on the blog because my television set had broken down and that I was spending my time upgrading to a new audio/video system.

Well, now I have more news to report: this time it's my computer. Yes, the box here had been having all kinds of problems. I'd click on the Favorites icon and all of the open windows would close. Sometimes I couldn't get the firewall program to open up. Sometimes I couldn't get the virus scan to start. When it did finally get going, it found an infected file and deleted it.

Then I lost all internet access. I called my provider to check on it, and I was told that the problem was on my end.

Throughout it all, my computer would just shut down without warning and give me the "blue screen of death" (as one tech guy called it).

So, it seemed that drastic action was required and I took it. I tried to reinstall Windows from the disc I'd gotten with the computer. The fact that Dell gave absolutely no documentation with the disc didn't help, but I thought I could just pop the disc into the drive and it would go from there.

Needless to say, it wasn't that easy. First, it took me an hour to figure out how to get the computer to boot from the disc. The main problem was the question about partitioning the drive. The program recommended that I don't do the reinstallation on the C: drive as important information there could be lost, so I went with a newly created J: drive, which wasn't very large.

The program also kept asking me to put in the disc for XP Service Pack 2, which I don't have, but I figured I would just continue and download those files online.

Well, after two days, Windows finally was reinstalled. Unfortunately, things are worse than they were before. Parts of Windows are missing, and because the J: drive is so small and almost full, there's not enough room to download the XP Service Pack 3 (the latest).

Even worse is that the two disc drives don't work because they don't have the drivers installed - and all attempts to download them online have failed. About the only thing that does work is the internet connection, and even that is iffy at best, as it can close down without warning at any time.

After all this, the computer still sometimes shuts down without warning and give me the dreaded blue screen of death! Obviously, this computer needs a major overhaul (just what I need - something else to spend money on), so until that is accomplished, don't expect to see much from me here.

To add to the gloom, when I went down to check the mail yesterday, I met a man in the lobby who told me that a woman in the next building who I was friends with had died recently. She was the neighbor who I had asked to accept the Fed Ex package that I wrote about last month.

Then, when I finally was able to check my e-mail here, I saw that I had a message via Facebook from one of the models who I had met and photographed at the workshop I attended in Colorado in 2008. She wrote to say that one of the other photographers there - a man from Michigan who I had become friends with - has cancer and doesn't have much time left.

I guess Zimmy was right.

At least the new TV works well, so I can watch the Super Bowl today. I'll be rooting for the Saints.

(By the way, if you don't see a photo at the top, it's because the computer cannot connect to my external drive where my photos are stored. If you do see one - well, then it can!)

Still Alive

2010-01-27T20:24:00.003-05:00

Yes, it’s been a few weeks since I posted anything here on the blog, so I’m writing something tonight to let people know that I am indeed still alive. However, I have not worked on my photography for a few weeks.

Why? Well, while I may still be alive, my old television set no longer is. I had noticed some problems with it a few weeks ago, as I had to press the on/off switch (both on the set itself and on the remote) several times to get the set to turn on. Then, the set refused to turn on at all.

So, since then, I’ve spent most of my time working on getting a new set and some new audio/video gear to keep up with the change. Everything is pretty much in place now, though I’m still having a problem getting to the audio to synch properly with the video.

Before this happened, as you may recall, I was spending most of my time on the phone with FedEx trying to figure out a way to get my package to me. (It did finally arrive, I’m happy to report.)

I am intending to do some photo work tonight, as I plan to file some negatives from my trip to Italy into pages while listening to the president’s State of the Union speech. Tomorrow night, though, it’ll probably be back to Blu-ray to check out the system.

Next time, hopefully, I’ll write about some of the things I plan to do (or at least, hope to do) in 2010.

For now, at the top, here’s a photo I made in Oregon last year.

Fed Up with Fed Ex

2010-01-10T22:08:00.006-05:00

Hi again, everyone. A happy and healthy new year to all of my readers out there.

Yes, I know. It’s been a week and a half since my last posting. I had planned to write earlier regarding my plans for 2010, but I’ve been spending a lot of my time on the phone regarding a particular matter – and that’s what I’m writing about now.

You may remember that in November I wrote a story about my attending the Print Fair at the Park Avenue Armory. As it happens, I decided to purchase a very nice drawing by an artist that I was unfamiliar with but who I later found out was fairly well known as a printmaker and instructor.

The drawing needed to be rematted to fit one of the frames that I have, so the dealer took it back to Ohio to do the work. It was sent out to me on December 15, 2009. The shipping company was Federal Express. Today is January 10, 2010. I have still not received the package – and therein lies my tale……….

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As I said, the package was sent out on December 15. When I got home from work on Thursday, December 17, I saw a note from FedEx stuck to the inside front door of my building indicating that they’d tried to deliver it but that I wasn’t home. The same thing happened on Friday, the 18th.

“Okay,” I thought. “FedEx delivers on Saturday, so I’ll just wait home for the delivery.” I even called up Friday night to tell FedEx that I’d be home waiting for it. Well, guess what? I checked the tracking on the FedEx website, which said that the package had been put on the truck that morning for delivery. Excellent. For the next part of the story, here’s what I wrote in an e-mail to the dealer in Ohio on December 29:

“I kept listening for my intercom bell to ring (and it makes a loud sound). Around 12:45 pm, I checked the website again, and I saw that a Delivery Exception [a failed delivery attempt] was listed at 12:29 pm - even though I never heard my bell ring! I called up FedEx to tell them this, but was told that the driver would not return that day. When I went down later to get my mail, I did not see any FedEx tag on the door - so as far as I can tell, the driver never even attempted to deliver it!!!

"I ended up speaking that week with a FedEx supervisor in Virginia named W___, and she has been trying to resolve the case. I said that I will not go down to pick it up, as I already waited at home and they (FedEx) never even showed up. I said that the package cannot be sent to my office as it's too large to carry home. I was told that they would not be delivering this past Saturday (the day after Christmas), either.

"Still, even though I shouldn't have to go to FedEx to wait on line and get it, I thought that maybe I would do so just to finally get it over with, as the FedEx center I've always gone to is about a 15 to 20 minute drive from where I live. So, I called up on Saturday (after I had come back from the post office where I had to pick up some packages) and spoke with a woman at FedEx's Kansas call center. She told me that the FedEx center was closed that day for pick-up as well as delivery.

"However, while I was on that call, I got a message from W___ in Virginia (left on my voice mail) telling me that the center would be open that day! So, I called back W___, left a message, and spoke with her about half an hour later when she called me back. She told me that some centers were open for pick-up, but that the call center operators did not know which.

"Okay, I thought, maybe I will go get it even though it's a nasty, rainy, windy day and I've been out already and I still have to do the laundry. So, I asked W___ to confirm that the package is at the FedEx center on East 108 Street in Brooklyn (that's the one by me) and she said no, that it's on Morgan Avenue.

"Morgan Avenue? I told her that I don't even know where that is in Brooklyn. Then she started to give me directions, and my fears were confirmed when I looked it up on Mapquest - that Morgan Avenue is in Williamsburg, clear on the other side of Brooklyn from where I live and a round trip, probably, of two hours or more.

"Well, I still had to do the laundry, so I said that there's no way I was going to drive there then. (It turns out the FedEx center near me is for express delivery, but Morgan Avenue is for ground, which is how mine was sent.)

"W___ said she'd call the center and request weekday delivery after 6 pm (which is when I get home from work), but she called back to say that they could not guarantee that. So, as it is now, they are supposed to deliver it again on Saturday. Let's see. (I will put up a sign on the door downstairs indicating that I'm home and that the driver should not leave without delivering it. Let's see.)”

Well, readers, I was next told that the package would be delivered on Saturday, January 2. I got up early that day and taped a sign to the inside front door of my building indicating that I was home. Still, I was not happy when I checked the web tracking and saw that it had not been listed as being put on the truck. I called FedEx and spoke with a fellow who called the local center and said that even though it was not tracked as such, the package was indeed put on the truck and would be delivered, probably between 12 noon and 1 pm.

Twelve noon and one pm? I waited at home from eight in the morning until eight at night and FedEx never showed up! I was really pissed at this point. Still, I decided to try something different. I asked a woman I know in the next building if she would stay home on Wednesday to accept the package for me, and she said she would do so. I gave her information to FedEx on Monday, January 4, asking that the package be delivered to her on Wednesday, the 6th.

On Tuesday, I got an e-mail from the dealer confirming this, but when I checked the FedEx tracking Tuesday evening, it said that the package was being sent back to the dealer in Ohio – because I was unresponsive! Jee, I was only calling FedEx nearly every day and they kept failing to deliver it!!!

Still, someone at FedEx told me that the package might still be delivered to my neighbor the following day. I asked that they call her around 10 am on Wednesday to let her know whether or not she should wait around for it. At 11 am on Wednesday morning, I called my neighbor, who told me that FedEx never called. Needless to say, it was not delivered. (My neighbor finally did get a call after 4 pm telling her that it would not be delivered!)

Then I got a message from the dealer telling me that the package was indeed being sent back, but that they’d return it to New York right away – and on FedEx’s dime, because of all of FedEx’s screw-ups. W___ at FedEx told me to tell the dealer to mark down Saturday delivery, as otherwise they might try to deliver it on Monday instead. This I did, and the dealer wrote back to confirm that they sent it out Thursday, January 7, via two-day express with a Saturday delivery requested. They attached a copy of the air bill, too.

Well, guess what? I checked the online tracking for the new delivery on Thursday evening, and even though it was listed as two-day delivery, the date of delivery was given as January 11 - which is Monday!

So, I called and spoke with a gentleman in W___'s office who told me that packages cannot be delivered on Saturday unless they are sent Overnight Priority! I then looked over the airbill and saw that Two Day Express Package service (which was checked) will deliver Thursday packages on Monday unless Saturday delivery is selected (which also was checked). Still, the man I spoke with told me that it can only be delivered on Saturday if Overnight shipping is selected - regardless of what the airbill might say!

He then tried to call the center to try to change it but he said it was closed and wouldn't know until the next day. Then, around 10 pm, someone else from FedEx called. She said that two day deliveries can be made on Saturdays if desired (despite what the man had told me), but she wasn’t sure if my package would be delivered on Saturday (yesterday).

So, just in case, I once again got up early on Saturday – the third Saturday out of four that I had waited for this one package to be delivered – and put a note on the front door of the building saying that I was home. Naturally, as you can surmise, ‘twas all for nought. W___ finally called that morning to say that the package was still in transit someplace in New Jersey. Apparently the person checking in the package in Ohio just happened to miss seeing or scanning the box that was checked for Saturday delivery.

So, just how incompetent can a company be? I mean, FedEx is really pushing incompetency to the limits here. First, they say they tried to deliver it on a Saturday but apparently never did. Then they told me that it was on a truck to be delivered another Saturday but it never was – even though they were reminded of it by someone else in the company. Next, the package was sent back to Ohio when it should never have been. Finally, when it was sent back to New York, the fact that Saturday delivery was selected was very conveniently missed.

The only good thing I can say about FedEx in this whole affair is that the company has been consistent!

As it stands now, I was told that they’ll try to deliver it tomorrow after I get home from work – even if they have to hire a private courier to do so if none of their own people are available. We shall see.

(By the way, Dave S – how’s the 67 doing???)
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For those who were expecting to read something photographic in nature, all is not lost. Last week, in my role as an Art Editor of Univers d’Artistes, I posted a story about some of my favorite art nude image (pictures included) on that blog. You can see it by clicking here.

In that piece, I happen to mention a certain musical number that was recorded by John Coltrane. You can see him performing that particular piece on YouTube by clicking here.
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At the top, "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. You can guess why.

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Next time, hopefully, I’ll write about my plans for the upcoming year. Until then, be well and stay tuned.

2009: What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

2009-12-31T23:30:00.046-05:00

So, here we are. Just minutes from midnight and the beginning of a new year - the final year of the first decade of the 21st century and the Third Millenium.

I definitely have plans for that new year, but before I write about them (next time), I’ll finish off this year with my annual recap.

January and February

The year began with the threat of the sword of Damocles hanging over photographers and artists who work with the nude figure in the United States: federal regulation 2257A, which would exact severe criminal penalties on such artists who would not follow rules regarding record-keeping that are difficult, if not impossible, to follow. I wrote a blog posting about it back then. (If you haven’t read it, you can see it here .)

I really didn’t do much photographically in January, but things began picking up in February, first with catching up on developing a big backlog of film (which I seem to have in perpetuity). The big event, though, was when the beautiful Julie Maximova came to my home studio for a photo session of several hours. These were the first photos I’d shot in three months, and though my lighting set-up could have been better, it was still a worthwhile effort. I hope that I can work with Julie again in 2010.

March and April

March was a good month for looking at photos. First, I went to an exhibit of Edward Steichen’s fashion work from the 1920’s and 1930’s at the International Center of Photography – one of my favorite exhibits of the year. The month ended with my attending – for all four days – the annual AIPAD photography dealer’s show at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. This show is a great place to see lots of photographs in one place (and all for sale, too!), and anyone with a serious interest in art photography should try to attend some time.

The bad news was that the Damocles’ sword of 2257A was strung up to hang over photographers and artists on March 19. I guess it remains to be seen how the government will try to enforce it. For the time being, right now, the Free Speech Coalition has filed a lawsuit to have this law declared unconstitutional – and I certainly do wish they succeed!

As for April, I guess the biggest news for me was that I turned 50. Thinking about it now, it seems like ages ago rather than a span of less than eight months.

May

The biggest event of May for me was a trip to Las Vegas and to Oregon. I went to Vegas to visit family, but I also met my friend Terrell Neasley one night, along with local model Melissa. We went for dinner and then went to see the new Star Trek movie. I did not like the film (which is “Star Trek” in name only) and Terrell did not like the fact that we had to sit in third row and look almost straight up at the screen.

In Oregon, I met up with my friend, the photographer Steve Anchell, in the state’s capital, Salem. Then I drove to Lincoln City on the coast where I spent a few days at Steve’s “Nude at Westwind” weekend workshop. You can see one of the first photos that I’ve scanned from the workshop here.

As it turned out, it would be the only time that I photographed outdoor nudes in all of 2009. I hadn’t planned it that way, but that’s just the way it happened.

June

Italy and Germany. That’s where I went in June.

In Italy, I spent 17 days surrounded by some of the best art, architecture and food in the world. I stayed in Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan, and also made a day trip to Lucca in Tuscany. This was my first trip to bella Italia in 11 years, but my first to Rome, Florence and Venice in 19. (Hopefully I will return again much sooner.)

I had never visited Milan before, and capped off my trip to Italy by seeing Verdi’s great opera “Aida” at Milan’s La Scala opera house on my final night there.

Here you can see two photos of Rome that I recently scanned, showing both the old (above, at the top) and new sides of The Eternal City.

I also visited my sister and niece in Berlin for a week. Among the photographic highlights were an exhibition of photos by the Italian fashion photographer Paolo Roversi at a local gallery, plus a visit to the Helmut Newton Foundation, which had an exhibit celebrating the anniversary of his humongous book, Sumo.

July

The highlight of July was when I photographed model Erin in my studio set-up. Among the props that I used were some papier mache masks that I had bought in Venice in June.

I still haven’t developed any of that film yet (though I hope to do so this weekend), so here’s one of my digital snapshots from the session.

August

I saw another great exhibit of fashion photography at the ICP, this time by Richard Avedon.

Still, the highlights were visits to New York by two friends. First, Dave Levingston (pictured, right) visited New York and stayed with me for a few days early in the month. The main highlight was a day trip up to Woodstock, New York, to attend an illustrated lecture by Mary Ellen Mark. It was worth the four hour-plus drive up to Woodstock – much of that time spent sitting motionless in traffic. We also visited a gallery in Woodstock whose owners do good art nude work, and one of them took us in the back and showed us a lot of prints. Dave and I also went to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan one day, but sadly the photo galleries were closed for installation.

A little later, my friend Terrell Neasley (or “Big T,” as I call him) made a trip here from Las Vegas to visit New York for the first time. I think he was impressed and wants to return some time. (Maybe next time he’ll bring a camera.)

You can see Terrell in the photo on the left here at a restaurant where we dined at the South Street Seaport. That's yours truly on the right, our beautiful hostess on the left, and in the middle, looking like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, is Big T himself.

Not to be left out, I also began printing photos in my darkroom for the first time in three years. These early efforts were a little problematic, but things would improve later.

September

The best thing about September was that I took the week of Labor Day off from work and somehow managed to develop fifty (50!) rolls of medium format film in that time. It really is amazing just how much one can accomplish when one does not have to do things like going into work.

At the end of the month, my studio was graced by the presence of the model called Muse.

October

As I mentioned before, the Free Speech Coalition has filed a lawsuit against Federal regulation 2257A and this is the month that it was announced. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was waiting for something like this to happen. In fact, my friend Dave Levingston is one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Early in the month, I attended the “Take Home A Nude” art auction of the New York Academy of Art. I went home with a couple of inexpensive drawings. I also made my last photographs of the year when Nettie R. Harris worked with me in my studio and stayed with me for a few days. (Any one who’s worked with Nettie will understand me when I say that it was an experience like no other.)

The second half of the month, though, saw my life turn topsy turvy due to a family visit and I had to spend weeks trying to get things back to normal again. (Still, for family, one endures.)

November

This was a big month for art, beginning with my first ever visit to the IFPDA Print fair at the Park Avenue Armory. This is very much like the AIPAD photo dealers show, except that these dealers and galleries were displaying etchings, lithographs, mezzotints and the like.

Then I went one night to see the Modernism show, also at the Armory, and met actor Michael Richards (Kramer from “Seinfeld”) there.

Lastly, I made my annual trip to Philadephia to attend the Photo Review benefit auction and came home with a couple of prints.

At the end of the month, I posted a photo which proved to be controversial, to say the least. I’ll try to follow up on that topic some time soon.

December

The month began with my final benefit auction of the year – this one to raise money for Friends Without A Border, a non-profit organization that supports the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia. As I did the year before, I came home with a couple of relatively affordable prints.

I also made another short trip to Las Vegas. I met Terrell again for breakfast at our usual haunt – a pancake restaurant – but this time we were joined by Wolf, who we had never met before. A good time was had by all as we talked about photography and other stuff.

Regarding my own photography, I had my final darkroom session of the year, printing photos from four Holga negatives. Let’s hope I can continue to print on a regular basis – perhaps once a month.

I also had a scare when the external computer disc drive on which I store my photos refused to work, but thankfully I got that problem solved by putting it in a new housing. I got a totally new, much larger drive, too.

Finally, 2009 ended on a high note. For the past two years, I put together a calendar or two of art nudes for people to purchase. I have not had the time to compile a 2010 calendar, but I was happy to be a contributor to the newly released book, “f – eleven,” that was edited by the aforementioned Wolf.

I wrote about this book last time, and if you haven’t had a time to take a look at the preview on Blurb, I wish you would. Just click here. There are ten pages devoted to me and my photography (both nudes and travel), plus two more of my photos – including the cover. The book has some great work in it by the other contributors, including Wolf and Dave Levingston.

And remember, all proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to Friends Without A Border, which I just wrote about.
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So, that’s it. A year condensed into a few pages. Once again, it’s amazing to look over my postings from throughout the year to see how much (and how little) I did. I didn’t do that much outdoor nude photography, for example. In fact, I think this is the first year when I’ve actually shot more film of models in my studio than I have outdoors – and I prefer to photograph outdoors.

Before I forget, I have to say that the close of 2009 was a bit less interesting than that of previous years without the Golden Fluffies to look forward to. Thank you’s again to Lin and Rich for putting them together in the past.

Now, I will finish just by wishing everybody out there in bloggie land a happy and a healthy new year and a prosperous 2010. May we all be back again this time next year.

f - eleven: The Book

2009-12-25T12:22:00.016-05:00

Several weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a new book project that would include photographic work by a group of people that I’ve met online. The editor, coordinator and brains behind the project is Wolf189.

Well, the book is now available for purchase on Blurb, and you can see a preview and buy a copy by clicking here. Its title is “f-eleven,” and do please take a look. Every single page of the book is available for viewing, and I think you’ll like what you’ll see. The book contains over 260 images by 20 photographers over its 160 pages.

I think you’ll also agree with me that Wolf did a terrific job in putting everything together and laying it out. With such a diverse group of contributors, there are a variety of styles: portraits, erotica, landscapes, travel, fashion, documentary and (of course) art nudes, plus more. So, as I’ve said, do take a look.

I also need to say that when I first saw the book online, I was surprised – though pleased! – to see that one of my photos was chosen for the cover. Thanks again, Wolfman! (I’ll write more about this image below.)

For those who are interested in purchasing a copy, you should know that proceeds from sales will be contributed to the charity Friends Without a Border, which supports the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia. You may remember that I wrote about this organization and its annual benefit photography auction a few weeks ago (here - second half), so I’m glad that my nomination of this group as beneficiary was accepted by the book’s other contributors.

Interested people should also know that Blurb currently has some promotional codes that will give $10 off for each order (one time use) made through the end of the year. The codes are:

Orders from the US (using US $): GREATGIFT

Orders from UK (using UK £): GREATGIFT2

Orders from EU (using EU €): GREATGIFT3

Orders from AU (using AUD $): GREATGIFT4

*Offer valid through December 31, 2009 (11:59 p.m. PST).

About the cover photo

I made the photo on the book’s cover in May 2005 in Nikko, Japan. The story behind this one was truly a case of “if life deals you lemons, make lemonade.” Here it is:

Nikko is a beautiful, peaceful place. It is best known as the location of the Toshogu Shrine, which is the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of shoguns who ruled over Japan for several hundred years.

One weekend each May, there is a two-day festival to honor the shogun. On my last trip to Japan, I was fortunate to be there during that weekend, so I made two daytrips from Tokyo to see and, of course, photograph it.

One of the events of the first day was an archery competition. Archers dressed up in full old time regalia would ride fast on horseback along a track and shoot arrows at wooden targets along the course.

I managed to find a spot along the middle of the course with a clear view. The problems that I had to deal with were 1) that there was no way that I could manually maintain focus on a horse and rider traveling at full gallop from my left to my right, and 2) even if I could, the overcast sky and the shade from the trees forced me to use a shutter speed much too slow to capture any action sharply.

So, given these lemons that had been dealt to me, I decided to make lemonade. I used a show shutter speed (probably 1/15 of a second) to do the old “pan and blur” technique. For those who are unfamiliar with this, one follows the camera along with a moving object using a slow shutter speed. The intention is to keep the moving object relatively sharp in the image, while the background gets blurred.

I took a number of photographs like this that day (you can see another one below), and these were probably the most anxiously awaited during my developing of the film back at home. Fortunately, the idea worked, and I managed to get several images that I think are good. The one you’re seeing here (above) is the one I consider to be the best of the bunch.

I know now that at least one person other than me likes it…LOL

Back in the Dark

2009-12-23T22:08:00.005-05:00

I printed some more photos this past Sunday. I hadn’t realized it, but it had been nearly four months since I last printed, in my attempt to get printing again on a regular basis.

This time I used a different paper – Ilford Multigrade IV Fiber. I think it worked well for me. Previously I’d had trouble getting as high a contrast as I wanted, but this time I had to even lower the contrast from the average setting for a few prints. Overall, things went very well, I’d say.

I decided to print only negatives made with my cheap, plastic Holga camera. That’s because I’ve submitted some photos to the Soho Photo Gallery for its annual Krappy Kamera competition, and I want to have the exhibition prints already made in case any are selected. Next time, I’ll try to print some “sharp” pictures, probably from my travels in Asia.

All of the four that I printed Sunday are nudes. Two of them were made at Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 2006. The other two were done at Joshua Tree in California last year. I’m posting the two Canadian photos here today.

I also realize that I need to get a new printer for my computer here at home. The competition I just mentioned is asking for work prints – not photos on CD – for judging.

Ordinarily, I would have made the prints on my printer here using files scanned from the negatives. That I could not do, as everything my printer prints basically has a black smudge running down the middle – and that’s not something I want on my photos.

To get the photos I needed, I had to take the files on an SD card to a pharmacy near my office and use one of the photo machines there to order prints for about $20. I do not want to have to do that again.

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Finally, happy holidays, everyone!!!

Relief

2009-12-17T22:01:00.010-05:00

I went today to the big computer store near my office to try to get some things to remedy my current computer dilemmas. One of the problems is that the hard drive on my computer and the external drive I’ve been using are pretty much filled up to capacity with data, so with that in mind, I bought a newer and larger external drive. The old one can hold 200 gigabytes. The new one has a capacity of one terabyte – five times more than the old one.

Of course, the problem with the old external drive is that is wasn’t working any more, so I also bought an inexpensive housing, hoping that transferring the disc drive would get it healthy again. I’m glad to report that it did. I wasn’t going to try it tonight, not wanting to hurry, but then I thought “oh heck” and went and did it, after all.

It was a fairly quick process, and after I connected the USB and power cables, I thought a little prayer and flipped the power switch. The blue light came on almost immediately, and shortly thereafter my computer recognized a new drive. Naturally, I was thrilled – even more so when I opened my photo browser and saw for sure that everything looked okay.

Then I connected the new external drive, got it up and running, and began the process of transferring data from the old to the new drive. I began by copying over the photos from my current digital camera – pictures that I had not backed up previously and were therefore the most at risk from the drive failure. Those photos include the ones I made in Italy earlier this year, and here are three images of Venice from among the salvaged items.
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Here’s a news story I came across today involving models and photography. It reports that an ad for Olay cosmetics has been banned in the UK. Why? The star model depicted, Twiggy – now 59 years old – looks very good for her age. Too good, in fact. While Twiggy claims that Olay is the reason why her eyes look so good, the company admitted to some “minor retouching.” As the story says, rather than the cream being her secret, “instead it's a skilled computer technician, which is something you just can't bottle and sell for $23.89.”

I guess enough people in Britain knew a certain amount of fraud when they saw it. You can read the full story here.
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Finally, I saw the Metropolitan’s Opera controversial new production of Tosca on PBS last night. I thought it was pretty good, overall - though it was odd seeing the Nordic blonde soprano Karita Mattila as an Italian brunette. The design of the church in Act I was not nearly as sumptuous as the church that the Met used when I appeared as an extra in that opera – and absolutely nothing at all like the real church in Rome where the action is set. The set for Scarpia’s apartment in Act II was pretty impressive, though the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo in Act III was pretty spare, although there’s no real reason for opulence there. (You can see photos of the actual locations on my earlier blog posting - here.)

The story is set during the time of the Napoleonic wars, an era of European history I really don’t know much about. The hero of the story, the painter Mario Cavarodossi supports one side politically, while the evil police chief Scarpia sides with the other. As we tend to think of Napoleon these days as a dictator, I used to think that Scarpia supported Napoleon, though in fact the opposite was true. Scarpia was a royalist, and Mario saw Napoleon as a liberator.

I guess he wasn’t the only one originally thought that way. One such real life person was Ludwig van Beethoven. He too saw Bonaparte as a liberator, and even dedicated his Third Symphony – the “Eroica” – to him, writing the words “Intitolato Bonaparte” on the manuscript’s title page. However, when Beethoven later found out that Napoleon was throwing people into dungeons, he became so enraged that he crossed out his dedication with such force that he practically tore a hole in the page.

I also read the Beethoven was even thinking of destroying the entire symphony. Thank goodness that he didn’t.

Not Much New

2009-12-15T20:40:00.004-05:00

Not much has happened with me photographically of late. I had hoped to report that I’d gotten a new external drive on which to store my images, but that hasn’t happened yet. Neither have I gotten a new case to try to get my non-working external drive working.

I’d actually planned to try to get one or both today, but I ended up doing something else. I’ll try again in a couple of days, as tomorrow I hope to get some photographic paper for printing.

The little good news to report is that I began filing negatives again a couple of weeks ago, though since that time I haven’t done any. I guess I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with end-of-the-year stuff, so hopefully that will pass in a few weeks. Of course, I still have a fair amount of film still to develop, going back to my trip to Italy in June.

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I looked over the images on my C: drive and found this one that I don’t remember having posted before. The two backsides were photographed in Manhattan five years ago. That particular photo shoot came very close to being ruined as my tripod lurched and fell on the subway heading into Manhattan and the ballhead was nearly broken. As it was, it was very stiff, and I had to ask one of the models to hold onto the camera every time I wanted to change the camera position, as I needed both of my hands to try to wrench the ballhead free from the locked position.

(Actually, now I do seem to remember having posted it before. Sorry.)

Various

2009-12-11T00:28:00.006-05:00

I’ve got a few things to write about tonight.

First, I want to thank everyone who wrote to support me in the recent debate regarding a photo that I included here two posts ago. What began as a little exercise in multiple exposure technique to try to create something surreal turned into a Frankenstein’s monster. Some liked it, some thought it was misunderstood, some wanted it destroyed.

I even thank those people who wrote in with viewpoints different from mine – though I would have preferred that their tone would have been different. Thanks to my friend Dave Levingston for writing a blog entry (here) supporting my right to create such an image and in support of artistic freedom in general.

As most of you probably know, I did eventually remove the photo in question. This was because the model sent me a polite message asking – not demanding – if I would do so. That was the reason, and not the rantings and ravings of those who disagreed with my creating the image. I am much more likely to respond positively to the quiet voice of reason than to angry shouting, and that was the case here.

I’m planning to write another entry touching on the topic of that image and the principles of artistic freedom involved.
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Meanwhile, I’ve got a much bigger and serious problem to deal with that is potentially very serious. The external hard drive where I store my photos doesn’t work. I flip the power switch and nothing happens. The light doesn’t even go on – which has me hoping and praying that it’s a problem with the power supply and not with the drive itself. This was the internal drive on my old computer, which I turned into an external drive with a kit that I purchased. I’m hoping that getting a new kit will get the drive working again.

If not – well, I recently began backing up the drive to DVD, beginning with the images from my older digital cameras. I also was relieved to see tonight that my digital photos from Tibet, Laos and Cambodia (made in 2007 and 2008) were backed up to the C: drive of my current computer. Unfortunately, the drive was too full to allow backup of this year’s photos, and as I hadn’t gotten around to copying them to DVD, the non-working disc drive is the only place where they can be found. (Film can be scanned again, of course, but would be a huge undertaking.)

So, I’ll try to get it working again next week. I’m planning to buy a new, much larger external drive, too, while I’m at it.
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It was a cold, blustery, very windy night here in New York this (Thursday) evening, but it didn’t stop me from getting around to some art events. First, I made a short stop at the New York Academy of Art’s “Deck the Walls” party. This was an event where a lot of low priced works of art were on display and for sale to benefit the school. I saw one piece that I really liked – a beautiful mezzotint showing some shadowy figures on the street - and as it was at the lowest price level, I debated whether or not to go for it . When somebody else got it, the question became moot.

You can see it in the photo here, along with a photo of some topless young Santas (or Santa's helpers?) who were posing for artists there. (There were also some drawings for sale of some traditional looking Santas, except that they were nude. They reminded me a bit of Dave S. Well, maybe more than a bit.)

From there I went up to Staley-Wise gallery to attend the opening night for a show of photos by the German fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth, a former model who’s known now for her very sexy photos of young women. The exhibit is to highlight the publication of her latest book, Fraulein. An advance copy of the book was there and the photos are indeed delicious. The book is big and heavy – but so is the price. As it’s a signed limited edition, it costs $700, I believe. I’d love to add it to my collection, but at that price – well, I don’t think I have to say any more. She did sign my copy of her earlier, normal priced book, “Revenge.”

In the photo of the three women here, Ms. von Unwerth is the woman in the middle. You can also see a couple of pages from the book, along with the cover and the cover model, Sarabeth, who was there tonight..
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I haven’t done this for a while, so let me welcome a few more new followers to the blog: Jeep, Anna, Unbearable Lightness, Artistas Plasticos, DPX-Scott Edwards and znesic. I cannot promise more controversry as happened recently, but I will try to post some good photos.

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Finally, the painting at the top is Judith Beheading Holofernes by the great baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Carravaggio. (I guess the name Michelangelo was already taken by another artist.) I saw the original painting in Rome this year at the Museo d’Arte Antica, and it is a masterpiece.

Tofuku-ji

2009-12-02T00:56:00.007-05:00

The elevators in the building where I work all have small data panels in them. These panels display some of the latest news headlines, sports results, entertainment news, stock market reports and so on. They also list the exchange rate of the dollar against the euro, British pound and Japanese yen.

Now that we’re into December, it’s time that I start thinking seriously about where to go traveling next year, and a return to Japan is high on the list. Nonetheless, it’s unlikely that it’ll happen. I’ve been keeping an eye on the dollar-yen exchange rate and its not good – for American travelers, anyway. When I went to Japan in 2004, I think the rate was about 106 yen to the dollar. Even then that wasn’t a lot of yen for the greenback. Now, the dollar buys only about 86 yen.

All other things being equal, then, a trip to Japan now costs about 20 percent more than it did then. Unless the dollar makes a miraculous recovery (and nobody is holding their breath), it looks like Japan – expensive at any time - will have to wait.

Still, I do have plenty of film of Japan to go through. Of the three and a half weeks I spent in Japan in 2004 and 2005, I’ve only really scanned just a few days worth and have not made any prints at all – so I’ve got plenty to hold me over until I can get back.

Here now are a couple of photos that I scanned some time ago but that I don’t think I’ve posted before. They were made at one of my favorites in Japan, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto called Tofuku-ji. When we hear the word “temple” here in the U.S., I think most people think of a single building like a church or a synagogue. In Japan, though, Buddhist temples can be very large complexes with many buildings and a great deal of greenery. Tofuku-ji is one such place, and it is a gorgeous, very peaceful place to spend some time. I look forward to going back – whenever that will be.
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Tonight (Tueday) I went to another benefit auction, this time selling photographs to benefit an organization called Friends Without A Border. The autumn seems to be benefit auction season. In October, I went to the one held by the New York Academy of Art. Last month it was the one for the Photo Review – and there are plenty more, too, like those for the Aperture Foundation and the Camera Club of New York. What these all seem to share in common is that they raise money to benefit arts organizations.

Tonight’s auction is different, in that it raises money to support the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Supporting the arts is certainly a good thing, but if there were only one auction I’d buy from, it would be this one. I visited Cambodia last year and saw for myself the poverty and poor conditions that people live in. As I’ve said before about southeast Asia, the worst slum apartment in New York City is like a palace compared to how where many people live over there.

Naturally, quality medical care is something that many (or most) people have no access to. When I was in Cambodia, our guide told us that long lines of mothers with their children are formed in the wee hours of the morning outside another hospital, just to try to get in – so evidently a children’s hospital is sorely needed.

I had told myself that I would limit myself to just one (not too expensive) picture to take home, as I’ve spent a lot this year and need to start saving for next year. It looked toward the end of the silent auction that I would be the winning bidder on one photo, but thinking back to what I had seen, I decided at the last minute to get a second one with low bidding on it. It’s true that I also got it because I really liked the print, but as one of the speakers there said, buying something from this auction really does make one feel good inside.

Way way way out of my price range, the most expensive photo of the night was Irving Penn’s “Dahomey Children” (seen here) from 1967. It sold for $18,000 – which will hopefully buy a lot of medical supplies.