Photographer and lighting expert Bobbi Lane becomes my subject at an instructor pool party as part of our Gulf Photo Plus workshop team. Dubai will be my subject for the the next month. Redheads rock!
By the way, this was also a test for the new Fuji X100S….seems good..files unreal
I knew it was only a matter of time before beautiful women in bikinis showed up..even in Dubai.
Im assuming she teaches rich dentists with S2’s how to write cheques.
Looking forward to seeing how you see Dubai.
R.I.P Hugo Chavez.
John, my recently retired dentist, and my new dentist are both keen photographers who ask photo questions while digging in my mouth. My old dentist would tell me often how much he envied me and if he had to do it over, he’d be a photographer. Of course he’s now retired with lots of money while I’m still a poor working stiff trying to make a buck.
I’ve always adored red-heads. My beautiful wife. http://www.pbase.com/glafleur/image/133707197/large
Gordon. I think you may have missed my point somewhat.
No, got your point John, just a comment on how many dentists like making photos, and can afford pricy gear.
John Gladdy…
Nice to see you round here once again :)! How’s your health? Have you been shooting photos lately?
Yup, there’s money in them there molars, boys and girls, and don’t you ever forget it.
And you’re not talkin’ about the tooth fairy..
David, interested in your take on the new X100S. Seems to address the quirks of the old one. I love my old one, but would spring for the new one if they have fixed the slow start-up and shutter lag.
HELLO ALL
sorry for my absence amigos …a combo of teaching and jet lag and simply very little time..but now i am free…let me get caught up on emails etc and back here soonest..have lots of info for all of you…i am a fish out of water with this crowd and in this town…but hey, always something to learn….
cheers, david
David,
Glad to see Dubai is treating you well….keep those pics coming!
Looking forward to reading the info
Hair, a very special substance…
That hair is really something Herlinde Koelbl would envy!
Yo,
Just wanted to let you know the first of my series of e-books is available at the iBookstore on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/same-same/id599404005
There are about 8 other e-books in the pipeline…
That first e-book is called ‘Same Same’… The second one , ‘Royal Silence’, is available here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/royal-silence/id601716441
Redheads do indeed rock. I’m not sure what it is, but red hair has always been a weakness for me. Is it the color itself? That it is so rare? Is it the skin that usually comes with it? I don’t know. The first redhead I ever fell in love with was a girl named Janet Fitch. We were in the same second grade class together. All these years later, I still don’t know what is so special about their wiles.
INTERVIEWER
Almost without exception writers we’ve interviewed over the years admit they cannot write under the influence of booze or drugs—or at the least what they’ve done has to be rewritten in the cool of the day. What’s your comment about this?
HUNTER THOMPSON
They lie. Or maybe you’ve been interviewing a very narrow spectrum of writers. It’s like saying, “Almost without exception women we’ve interviewed over the years swear that they never indulge in sodomy”—without saying that you did all your interviews in a nunnery. Did you interview Coleridge? Did you interview Poe? Or Scott Fitzgerald? Or Mark Twain? Or Fred Exley? Did Faulkner tell you that what he was drinking all the time was really iced tea, not whiskey? Please. Who the fuck do you think wrote the Book of Revelation? A bunch of stone-sober clerics?
À chacun son goût. Without burdening you all with my own ‘Little Iodine’ stories, I will only say that when all the young women in Japan started dyeing their gorgeous raven black hair a dirty red, I knew it was time to leave. Those of you who like redheads and their skin are welcome to them, but I’d take either of the Tavares sisters over any redhead that ever walked the face of the earth.
“They lie.”
No, they don’t. Writing is just grinding the stuff out, word after word, for however long it takes to get out of your system. Coleridge didn’t write Kubla Khan until after he came out of his opium stupor, Faulkner usually drank after his writing for the day was over, and Kerouac spent more time editing and revising On The Road than the book’s legend allows. Maybe Thompson could write while completely stoned out of his gourd, but that makes him the exception that proves the rule, not an example of the rule.
Akaky…
It’s nice to hear your refutation and I admit I wanted read something akin to your words.
I think quote echoes David’s wise words on style…
“I think the story compels its own style to a great extent, that the writer don’t need to bother too much about style. If he’s bothering about style, then he’s going to write precious emptiness–not necessarily nonsense…it’ll be quite beautiful and quite pleasing to the ear, but there won’t be much content in it.”
William Faulkner
Paul, what Thompson was saying is ridiculous on the face of it. Think about it for a second: writing is not Abstract Expressionism, where you can fling paint on a canvas wherever you want to and then call the result art. Writing is the vast and messy thing we call language boiled down onto a piece of paper. It takes work to do that, work and concentration, and you can’t concentrate on what you are working on if your mind is addled with dope or if you are in the drink taken, as my mother would put it. It simply isn’t possible. I write at night when it’s quiet and there are no distractions, and because it’s quiet and there are no distractions I can think about what I am saying and what I am trying to say, and how do I do both well. I can’t write when there are people talking in the other rooms or if there are kids outside playing noisily or if I’m feeling ill, which happens more than I would like anymore, I’m afraid. That’s just me, but I assume the same is probably true of other people as well. Writing a simple logical sentence that conveys a complete and coherent thought is hard enough to do when you are absolutely stone cold sober; it is impossible to do when you’ve got a load on. I would bet any amount of money that Thompson wrote all sorts of things while he was stoned, but before he submitted the stuff for publication he went through it word for word while he was stone cold sober and the parts that made no sense got edited out before anyone ever saw them. The sort of romantic bullshit you read about writers dashing off masterpieces in a state of mental white heat or in a opium/alcohol/other chemical daze and never going back to correct a word is just that: romantic bullshit. You can’t write if you are not thinking straight; it simply isn’t possible.
Style is nice, but not entirely necessary, especially if you have something to say. You only have to look at the life and career of Theodore Dreiser to see that.
wow..Sidney bringing out some smiles in Rio..Thanks for the kindness (and the unexpected compliment. we took as a big flattering one ) hug and kiss from the Tavares sisters
You all would be better off personally and the world would be a better place if you’d learn to get past racist type bullshit and judge people primarily by the content of their character. Sydney may have made brazil and Roberta feel good but it comes at the cost of insulting other people, Kerry, for example
On my first night at the Loft, David took us to a nearby place to eat roast pig and when the discussion turned briefly to me and the fact I live in Alaska and have done a fair amount of work in the Arctic, he began telling his own Arctic stories, including a very chilling one about how he almost got killed when the landing gear of the plane he was flying in got ripped off by a mountain top on approach to Anaktuvuk Pass.
I am in Anaktuvuk Pass right now and I just put up a post which begins with a couple of pictures of on approach to the village, perhaps even at the spot where David’s near-death occurred, along David’s story as I remember it. So, for my weekly check in, I post the link to that post:
http://www.logbookwasilla.com/logbookwasilla/2013/3/9/anaktuvuk-pass-the-approach-where-david-alan-harvey-almost-l.html
And, as to the immediate comments above, I must note that by her picture I would deem Roberta to be as beautiful as any woman I have ever seen. By all she has written, I would say her mind and soul are equally beautiful. Decades ago, I myself, married a beautiful, dark-skinned, raven-haired woman of 100 percent Native American blood.
Yet, the first love of my life had flaming red hair and the very kind of skin Sidney would seem to despise. She was beautiful. She was gorgeous. I agree with Mike. There is no need to denigrate and insult those of one race as a way to praise those of another.
And a great example of how not to write is that second post of mine above. Unless you’re writing agitprop, then repeating the same phrases over and over again is a good sign that you have nothing to say in the first place and that you ought to just shut the hell up before you embarrass yourself. Words to the wise, and I should have followed my own advice.
Sorry, Bill, but I looked at your Anaktuvuk pictures for one second and then came back. All of those pictures have snow in them and the last thing I want to look at these days is more goddam snow.
I suppose I should add my two cents to the brewing controversy over redheads here…of course, if I kept the two cents to myself I would be two cents richer, given that I don’t have a dog in this fight.
Akaky, perhaps I should have stayed out of this fight, too, as forum fights generally do nothing but waste time and aggravate, but I do think the larger point Mike was trying to make was not about redheads, but racist expression in whatever form. I suspect this is a fight everyone has a dog in.
I am quite fine with the fact the snow drove you away from my post. This world is just too big and varied for any one person to experience much of it, anyway, either first hand or vicariously.
I like your comments about alcohol and writing. I don’t think anyone who is truly drunk can write, period – and I am pretty sure that included Hunter S. Thompson – although drunk writers have undoubtedly put down many notes of vision they have later reworked into masterpieces. Would they have ever penned the kernels to build the masterpieces upon had they not first done so drunk?
Anyway, as part of my campaign to bring my own addiction – the internet – under control, I have limited myself to these one day a week visits. I think today I have probably already typed too much into this dialogue for my own good. I can come back as many times as I want between now and midnight, but maybe I will stop right here, right now, until next Saturday.
Maybe not. By midnight, AST, I will know. By this time tomorrow, it will be ADT so that those in this part of the world, where the glorious time of 24 hour daylight rapidly approaches, can gain yet another hour of daylight.
Now I am going to go take a long walk in the cold air, which well may be colder than any air you have been in all winter, yet is notably warmer than one would expect it to be.
Maybe I was a bit harsh. Still, it’s a good idea to remember we’re essentially speaking in public and it is bad form to tell people you find them unattractive. Best to share those thoughts in private.
Speaking of snow, we had a snow day here in beautiful Brooklyn. I’d been waiting for just that kind of atmosphere and took a long walk. When I first looked at the photos I was despondent at how poorly I’d captured the colors, so processed them in black and white, hoping to salvage something from my efforts. Took another look the next day and saw how to approach them. Another example, to my mind anyway, how much easier, in general, black and white is vs color.
Mike, I have been feeling a little bad about this one, too. I wish I had used a word other than “racist,” as I am reasonably confident Sydney is not a racist. Better yet, you made the point perfectly well and I would have done best to have followed Akaky’s example and just let your words make the point.
I felt bad enough that even though yesterday is past, and with it my weekly window to visit and post on burn, that I add this to my comment.
…this *apology” to my comment…
MW…
I hate snow until it suddenly arrives! :)
Nice photos. How many K did you dial in to get your colour balance?
Paul, what are K? I very lightly used some filters from Power Retouche, Equalize Lumenescence for the more contrasty photos with lots of sky. They have an excellent contrast tool as well. Their color toolkit is pretty much similar to what you can do with NIK software for B&W.
K is kelvin for the unit of measurement of absolute colour temperature. I was wondering what colour temperature you had chosen because I noticed the photos looked pretty “warm” for a snowy cold winter day.
It’s a surprisingly warm light here, even on a wet, grey day, and the way that camera captures light and my initial raw processing tends to be a little heavy on the cyan, so it’s not unusual for me to desaturate the cyans a bit and increase the contrast between the complimentary colors in order to bring out the reality (as I see it, of course) of the Brooklyn street scene on a wet, cloudy day. People use similar strategies with black and white with no controversy whatsoever, the result being a more abstract image that highlights interesting details in a scene that would otherwise be lost in the muck. I don’t see that as changing reality; much more as discovering it and perhaps guiding the viewer to discover it as well. I’m not making red or green or yellow or blue into different colors. I make them more distinct from the rgb murk. Coincidentally, the picture of the red-haired young woman in the green pool above is doing the same thing, albeit much more so.
MW…
I’ve got nothing against the “warm look”, quite the contrary I asked the question because I actually want to imitate the look.
MW/Paul; Snow? We’re in the middle of the worst drought in 50-years down here. Here’s three from the weekend camping trip. Making the most of the Indian summer while it lasts… :-)
Still using the little V1 almost constantly now; hardly ever touch the dslr!
https://picasaweb.google.com/115095641233118226708/TangarakauRiver?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNL7o8_qsprwRg&feat=directlink
Ross, nice pics. Different look than what I normally see from you. Wish I was there.
Panos, nice place. Camera movement makes me a little seasick though. You might consider investing in a steadicam.
Bill, I’m late on this, but fantastic work with the trapper in the Brooks range. What an incredible adventure. Great photos and well-written story. Thanks.
MW; I find that using such a small cam is actually changing my style. I shoot more, because I have it with me all the time and it also “loosens” you up. Because the metering and focus is so fast and reliable (better than the D300) I can forget about the technicalities and just shoot!