I loved pushing your buttons.

I was born at an interesting time, but aren't we all?  My mom sent me into the world a few months before Neil Armstrong did his "giant leap."  I became self aware in the mid seventies and came of age in the eighties.  During that time, especially 1975 to around 1983 I became fascinated with buttons (the pushing type, not the holding your shirt closed type) for they represented technology and the manifestation of my imagination.

I forgot about this obsession until a few nights ago when I was using my iPhone.  After entering terms for a Google search in it, I realized its touchscreen did not have the satisfaction of feeling the physical responsive reply of a button actually being depressed or feeling the click.  That night I couldn't sleep because a flood of button memories came rushing in and I had to think about why the actual act of pushing buttons used to be my heart crying out for technology (and all its possibilities) that did not exist yet in my personal life.  I also realized just how few buttons existed in my life back then.  They mainly turned on or off things or made things manually open, close or shift.

Computers were just starting to be used in major systems, such as space flight when I was born.  By the early nineties, our cars had computers much more powerful than those that were on the Apollo spaceships.  At the same time as the early Apollo missions, the television show Star Trek (1966-1969) accentuated the major role of a central computer that regulated the ship, kept a huge database of information, was used for navigation, medical diagnosis, making food, and a multitude of other applications. 

I remember the first time I watched Star Trek I was amazed by all the buttons.  They did so many things.  Sulu could fire the phasers, Scotty could maintain the engines, Dr. McCoy could diagnosis patients by twisting a dial, moving slider and pushing a button.  After seeing that I wanted to push every button around, especially if it made something happen using electricity.

During the Christmas break of 1975, we moved into a new home in Billings, Montana and I soon found every new-to-me  button in the house.  The doorbell gave immediate satisfaction but became boring after a few repetitive pushes.   The two buttons on the stove vent hood turned on the fan or the light.  I liked those, one was red and the other was black.  We had a new box fan that used push buttons to select the speeds. The only other buttons around my life were the ones on the car's AM radio that changed the stations.  I would sometimes sit in the car in our driveway and push the buttons to watch the needle bounce around the radio dial.  In my mind I was flying a space ship though and these buttons were controlling everything important.

My obsession with controlling technology and pushing buttons went crazy in June 1977.  My mom took me to see Star Wars.  Along with all the aspects of it that an 8 year old boy could become obsessed with (my first crush was for Princess Leia), I loved all the damn buttons.  The spaceships and fighters had them, the Death Star was full of buttons that could operate trash compactors or destroy planets.  Even Darth Vader had them on his chest which kept him alive.  My favorite button though was the one and only button on the light saber.  I truly understood Obi Wan Kenobi's words of wisdom about this powerful weapon as he gave  Luke Skywalker his father's light saber.  This simple elegant weapon only needed one button to do the bidding of the user.

Obi-Wan: "I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did."
Luke: "What is it?"
Obi-Wan: "Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon... for a more civilized age."

God, I wanted a light saber.  

Robot Chicken Star Wars 3 - Clip 2 from Revolver Entertainment on Vimeo.

Around that time more buttons began appearing at home.  I can remember going to the store with my dad to buy our first calculator and distinctly recall its $80 price tag.  It had red LED numbers and could only perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and nothing else.  It was magic to me.  It was our first computer.  It was TECHNOLOGY.

My mom was so excited for it.  She took care of the family checkbook and finances and always did the math on scratch paper.  This technology saved her hours of work over the course of a year.   On the other hand, I grew bored of its mathematical uses and soon used it as part of a cardboard spaceship cockpit which had many cardboard buttons, but the calculator became the ships computer.  I remember how stiff the buttons were and could sense the click from it both through auditory and tactical feedback. 

After that we got a stereo record player with more buttons, followed by a Kleenex box shaped tape recorder.  More buttons that actually did things were entering my life.  With all of this I was not satiated, my friends had microwave ovens and push button phones that I coveted.  Each time I got to push one of these buttons and tactically feel a response back and and an action as a response, I felt the power of technologies changing our lives.

In 1980 I got my first handheld electronic game, football.  After that I started to slowly lose my fascination with buttons.  Two major things came into my life about then that made me put my button fetish away.

The first were the early Radio Shack computers we got at school.  They started to represent technology because they could actually do the things that I imagined and dreamed of during my playtime with the old buttons around me.  I no longer had to pretend a calculator controlled my space ship.  I could use a real computer to do computer things.  Maybe part of this change also came from entering my adolescence and the fading away of imagination and play and the beginning of early adulthood.  Play was for kids.  Computers were for real.

This growing older also brought the second thing to change me, puberty.  Playing with toys, no matter how cool, took a distant backseat to the primal and novel feelings and urges that started pushing through my body and taking no prisoners.  I regressed from the development of technology in a way and started to grow into my primal sexual male self. 

Since those early computer days, these machines became part of my daily life  and were tools more than imaginative play escapes (until the internet came along, but that is a different story).   I used a typewriter when I entered college to write my papers.  I had a 280 PC by the end of that degree to print out my papers.  That computer was a tool and not much more.

The touch screen has taken over in so many electronics in the past decade.  The iPhone, iPad, and even the automated checkout counter at my local grocery store use touchscreens.  I love the speed and simplicity of these machines and the elastic capabilities that can completely change the use of the device by simply opening a different screen and using something new.  While I use these devices everyday, I am starting to miss those simple, early technological devices that had tactile physical responses from being pressed.  I miss the simplicity of one button controlling one thing.  Maybe that is one reason I love my Nikon dSLR over my iPhone and point and shoot digital cameras.  I push the shutter release and can feel it sink into the camera body and then both feel and hear the shutter release and reset allowing the light from the image to be recorded.  One motion, one action, one function. To paraphrase Obi Wan - An elegant technology... for a more civilized age."
 

A bit out of touch.

Katie - 071411

I hate it when real life takes away from living.  I've been absent for a bit and will be for a bit more.  My day time job has become a 12-15 hour workday, 6 days a week slog due  to a worldwide project due to go live in late September.  I am hoping my portion will start slowing down in two weeks.

I highly recommend you visit the Magnum photo site for these two series.  Both are amazing.

Cowboys
Women Artists

Future focus... or not

Rain (via lensbaby) - 062711

I first heard about it from a photographer friend on Facebook.  Another friend asked me about it over the weekend.  Today I read an article about it at Slate.com.  It is being touted as the biggest evolutionary jump in photography since... the beginning of photography.  It is called Lytro and soon you wont have to focus on whatever you photograph.

Looking about isn't a techie-gadget blog, but some things catch my eye and Lytro is one of them.  In current digital and film cameras, the photographer composes the shot, focuses, and shoots.  The depth of field is regulated by the aperture and determines how deep the focus goes into the scene.  Inside the camera, the image is captured on a single plane of film or sensor.  Lytro is a completely different way of doing that.  The photographer composes the shot and pushes the button.  No focus or depth-of-field to worry about.

Lytro does its magic by taking multiple images at the same instant.  When you download the photo package to your computer, the software lets you decide what is in focus and what isn't.  This works really well when your image has details in multiple layers of depth.  This technology can also work for 3D images as well.  You can watch the silly video below or play with some Lytro photos at this site.  It is fun.



Some professional photographers feel threatened by this.  All those years of study and thousands of pictures learning how to master depth of field, special focus, and technique are useless because this camera takes care of that.  Now everyone can take a photo and have the power to adjust the focus after it is shot.  Amateurs are going to think they are pros because of these new powers.  As a professional photographer, I am not worried.  I believe this is good for the art.

First, my digital camera is a 13mp full frame camera that creates large RAW files of a single image that I focused to the way I want it.  The Lytro will create a photo that has the same focus, but its resolution will not be as high.  This makes the Lytro more of an amateur camera with users not expecting to make large prints of fine detail.

Second, my choice of focus and depth is important, but regardless of whether it is film or digital, most of the work occurs in post processing.  I touch up the photo (But not overly so.  I hate waxy-skinned perfection), dodge and burn, adjust saturation, crop, and perform other bits of my magic on the image.  The focus was only the beginning to making it a finished image.  I enjoy having that control over the process.  I doubt amateurs will do much more than select focus, maybe de-saturate it and call it good.  It will not be a refined and finished image.

Third, the old adage, "The tide raises all boats." is true for photography.  By improving the quality of amateur photographers shots, it will force the pros to improve as well.  I know I always have room to improve my craft and art.  I welcome the challenge.

Finally, I have to add that most amateurs don't consider composition of the image.  They don't often think of how a certain shadow, texture, color, or expression will work with the overall photo.  They take snaps of their friends at parties and put them up on Facebook.  I know this sounds elitist on my part, but I've earned a right to differentiate my work from the masses.  That is what separates it from amateur stuff.  Lytro is going to change how we photograph things, but it want necessarily make every photo art.  It is the artist that does that.


Video Note - This video is from a memorial concert for George Harrison.  It is great to see the Clapton, Starr, and other great musicians having fun singing this song.  George's son Dhani looks like a young version of his dad.

Evolution in Art

Young Spartans, 1860- Edgar Degas

“If the classical body is a representation of man’s baseness, then the evolutionary body is a return of that which has been repressed. And if the classical nude represents pure form, intellect, rationality… … then the evolutionary body figures the subject as hopelessly bound to his corporeality “ - Martha Lucy – Reading the Animal in Degas’s Young Spartans [1].

What a difference a few centuries makes in the Western art world. Up through the Baroque period, artists were experimenting with ways to portray the human form, whether lofty and noble, mortal and liminal, or debased and low down. Even with all these varied ways of showing the levels of humanity, there was usually a respectful acknowledgment, or at least nod, to the church and religion. Then along came Darwin and his The Origin of the Species positing the theory of evolution. Artists, academics, and other influential groups starting to represent scientific principles that were contrary to church dogma.

In Edgar Degas’s painting, Young Spartans, there are three groups of people. In foreground left, a group of bare breasted women tauntingly and challengingly face toward a group of men. On the right side a group of nude young men face toward the women, sizing up their potential adversaries/mates and stretching as if readying for competition or a fight. Between the two groups stand clothed characters in the background, observing the upcoming competition/courtship.

In Lucy’s article, the author proposes the characters on both sides, but especially the young males represent Degas’ intentional use of evolutionary theory to mock the historic classical artistic values honoring the perfection of the human physique. The group of men is shown in all different poses that could represent the major steps of evolution, from crawling on all fours to a limber, classical body.

While writing about this, Lucy uses multiple times the term “atavistic” which comes term “atavism”. Atavism is “tendency to revert to ancestral type.”[2] This “tendency” to show traits of our ancestors is evident in the development of the human fetus. The developing fetus will grow through stages where it has a tail, has similar structures to non-vertebrates and then lower vertebrates until it becomes a recognizable human form. The atavistic growth is evident in Degas’ rendering of the men going from ground crawlers to upright males. This willingness of purposefully including evolutionary elements into the artwork is not a subtle subversive message aimed at religion, but an obvious attack on the principles that humans are stationary beings near to perfection and modeled after God. Instead of using a religious theme to promote the propaganda of the church, Degas is potentially using his painting to promote the ideas of science and evolution. This anti-church act may have resulted in his death a century or two earlier, but must have been more acceptable as science and its disciplines were being accepted by the academic and higher levels of society and culture during this period of Degas’ art life.



1. "Reading the Animal in Degas's Young Spartans" by Martha Lucy - Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide - a journal of nineteenth-century visual culture.

2. Altavism – Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
 

A f*#$*@g website

Jacqui and Truck - 060811

I have a goal to build a website this month, or at least get it going.  So many things to consider: commercial sales of prints? blog? how many photos? how many portfolios? which photos? how personal? artist's statement? links to others? do I offer portrait services? colors? fonts? logos? aaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Not the worst things in the world to worry about.

I need one to showcase my art.  Many people ask to see it and I need to share it more.  The next question is which photos?  Nudes, erotics, landscapes, editorial, conceptual, travel, portraits... I could keep going.  I will only put up the best of my stuff regardless of genre.

Ok.  This is a boring post.  The picture of Jacqui is good though.

Ecstacy and Death - tough acts to follow

Carmen waiting for her lover, Jacinto - Movie still from The Devil's Backbone

We watched Guillermo del Toro's * El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone)  last weekend (Del Toro also directed Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies).  Two of the repeating elements del Toro focused on were the acts of ecstasy and death.   In one, the couple is finishing there tryst, in three other scenes, three main characters die in drawn out sequences that make you feel part of each moment.  The acting in these pivotal, emotional and powerful scenes was some of the best I've seen.  Each conveyed their message whether it be love, lust, regret, loss, coming fate, or all of the these.   I wonder, how hard it is to act out these two moments?


I've only had one credible acting experience, as Francis Nurse in Arthur Miller's The Crucible in a high school production.  My part was small, but important.  It didn't really push my acting abilities though.  Even though I am not a thespian, I appreciate good acting.  What I saw from all the actors in The Devil's Backbone, I have to stand up and applaud.  In my opinion, two of the toughest performances to pull off were the long death scenes and the sex scene.


SPOILER ALERT - I am going to go into details about who dies... and orgasms in this movie.

The sex scene is between the middle-aged teacher/headmistress Carmen and her former student (and antagonist) Jacinto.  The scene opens with them at the climax of their intimacy, him on top her.  Both of their faces show they are in different places, yet still physically bound together at the hips.  Her expression shows the pleasures of the moment, yet the loneliness that she is with a sexual surrogate that she does not love.  Her love is for the much older Dr. Casares who recites his love poetry to her through the wall in the mornings.  Her regret and ecstasy combine into a moment of acting that tells more stories than a heart can bear.  


Jacinto's orgasm shows his temporary pleasure and his thoughts on how he is doing this to gain access to a key Carmen holds that unlocks the orphanage's safe containing what little money and gold it holds.  He is using sex as a means to an end.  Once again, the moment is complex for both characters.

Carmen's death - Movie still from The Devil's Backbone

There are three long death scenes showing the transition from living to death, the act of dieing.  The first is of Carmen dieing in Dr. Casares' arms from her wounds sustained from the explosion of Jacinto's bomb he used to remove the safe from the wall.  You can tell from Dr. Casares' initial reaction that he knows her wounds are fatal, yet he tries to mend her with delicate and loving ministrations.  She tries to tell him she loves him, but he tells her to listen to one more poem.  He shares his last poem for her, telling of how through death, their love pulls them closer together.  You can see her life slowly leaving her through each line he recites as he lovingly caresses her head.  Carmen fights to stay alive to hear the poem, but dies before the last line is finished. 

In the second major death scene, Dr. Casares sits in a chair overlooking the orphanage's entrance holding a shot gun.  He is there to defend the children from Jacinto's return to  steal the safe and kill all the boys.  Dr. Casares is bleeding from his wounds inflicted from the same explosion that took Carmen.  He is now deaf in one ear and is wearing out.  One of the boys, Jaime,  is in the room with him keeping an eye out.  You see the boy doing things to prepare as Casares looks out the window.  At one point you see Jaime notice the sound of flies buzzing about and looks at the doctor.  A fly flits about Carsares' open mouth as another lands on a cut on his head.  At that moment, Jaime knows the gentle doctor died.  It is a quiet death, but so well acted as the life quietly bled out of him.


In the third notable death scene, Conchita, a young beautiful woman who helps out at the school and was Jacinto's lover and fiance, is walking toward the distant neighboring town to get help after the explosion.  She runs into Jacinto who is returning to the school to get the safe and kill the rest of the boys.  Jacinto gets out of his truck and walks to her as his two thugs watch on.  He puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her to apologize and join him.  She tells him she is not afraid of him anymore.  He offers one more time and she responds the same.  He holds her close as they stand in the road.  You don't see anything more than his arm move, but you know he has just stabbed her in her side by her flinch and reaction in her eyes.  In the next half minute, you see all the emotion, pain, and sorrow of life in her eyes and face.  No words are said as he holds her and her life slowly fades out.  Jacinto is hurt by his killing her.  


All three of the deaths show so well that transition to death.  Each actor lets you know when the "lights out" moment occurs.  Each death moved me in different ways, as did the sex scene. 


Enough has been written on the connection between sex and death.  There is a French term for the orgasm, le petit mort.
According to wikipedia, la petit mort is...

La petite mort, French for "the little death", is a metaphor for orgasm.

More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm, or a short period of melancholy or transcendence, as a result of the expenditure of the "life force".

What I ask again is, how do actors prepare to act out these two moments and convey the reality of it?  I know that method actors may emphasize the point of making it feel like it has never happened before to make it feel real.  Other actors may look at references from literature, art, and music to reenact the death and orgasm. 

Dee's suicide - Battlestar Galactica

I recently watched the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica for a second time.   In one episode of the final season, Dee commits suicide by shooting herself in the head.  There was almost no lead up to the moment.  She is standing by her locker, putting away her stuff, looks in the mirror and shoots herself.  The whole moment lasted five seconds, at most.  So much of death portrayed in tv and movies shows the suddenness (and often violence) of the event, yet rarely shows the emotions and depth of what each character and the victim(s) experience.  Maybe this is due to challenge of conveying such a deep moment.  


The ability to act out sexual ecstasy and death so vividly and emotionally has to be two of the greatest acting challenges.  These challenges not only comes from the emotional/mental demands of the moment, but also the deeply personal and unique experience we all have during ecstasy and death.  I admire film makers willing to show the power of these moments and the actors creating them.


*Note: I highly recommend this period piece that tells of a orphaned boys school set during the Spanish civil war.

Put a nude on it.

Porcelain Figurine - 050111

I recently saw an episode of the IFC sketch show Portlandia.  One sketch is based on those cheesy decoration/arts and crafts shows (think of low budget Martha Stewart) where the two main characters paint birds on everything to spruce them up (at bottom).  I laughed at it so hard and started thinking of photography.  After perusing a few websites, I found I could switch out the "bird" for nude.  Put a nude on it.

I've read articles about the nude photo cliches (gas masks, railroad tracks, hand bras, angel wings, etc.) and thought more about where the nude model was photographed than what she was wearing or doing.  Put a nude on it.

There is a rock - put a nude on it.  Hey, is that a railroad track - put a nude on it.  OOOOO, a crashing wave, put a nude on it.  You get my point.

I am not disparaging all scenic nude art, just much of the copycat/uninspired versions of it.  Why did you put a nude there?  (Even that questions is a clue to the answer.)  It all depends on the intent of the artist.  Is the nude an integral element of the photo, or did you just put a nude on it?

My photographer friend Griffin both models and photographs nudes in urban/suburban settings outside of churches, police stations, etc.  He creates his "guerrilla" nudes to make a statement about sexuality and transgressing the social norms of public/religious institutions of the politically conservative California town he lives in.  His nudes are an integral part of the photo.  Both the nude and the other elements need each other to complete the image and the series.  He isn't simply putting a nude on it.

Going to the other extreme of put a nude on it is the cultural icon of the little silver lady on the mud flap.  I am sure you have passed an 18 wheeler with these little ladies on them.  There really is no significance or purpose for putting the anatomically impossible lady on the mud flap.   She is little more than decoration.  It is this intent of using a nude as decoration then that separates an artistic nude from put a nude on it.

I was going to use a few of my own photos to illustrate my point.  I am guilty of having put a nude on it, but I am not going to show those for two reasons.  First, I respect the models too much to put one of those up.  Second, those images were all parts of sessions that yielded good stuff and I redacted them from the final group for that reason, they were weak photos.  As a photographer, I need to continually strive to show my best work, not just the kind-of good stuff.

*A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view. - Sophia Loren

California Delta Fence - 041211

If you didn't grow up in agriculture/livestock regions, you may not know the main purpose of barbwire fences.  You would think they are there to keep predators away from your livestock. That is a part of it.  The main purpose of barbwire fences is to keep your livestock in a controlled area and prevent them from running away, getting hit by a vehicle, or mingling with your neighbors herd.   The invention of barbwire transformed the West from wild openness to closed agriculture empires.

Joshua Tree National Park - 041211

There are so many barbwire fences in our lives - things meant to keep us in.  Seat belts, social norms, sidewalks (to keep us from wandering into the streets), offices, cubicles, etc.  Our houses are our places to live our lives without intruding into the public.  I can get naked, dress, eat, read, watch tv, view porn, make love, scratch, belch, go to the bathroom, yell, listen to music, and do my personal stuff at home without it escaping into the world. 

I am neither a fence builder nor a fence wrecker.  We need them for safety and privacy.  They also hinder us from exploring out of bounds -  like kids learning to use crayons in coloring book and told "stay in the lines".  Barbwire is designed to scratch and cut both ways... those trying to get in and those trying to get out.  Nobody ever straddles or sits on barbwire fence due to indecisiveness due to the rusty barbs.  Either you are in or out.  The question becomes, when is it right to get out?