romance

This is an out-take from a job. It's sort of a nice backdrop of prague.

mistakes in lovely lighting

This was a mistake. A mis=synch. Only one flash fully recycles and fires, the one to the right fires at only perhaps an 8th full. The left is still empty. The result? This. It's one of those beautiful mistakes that you learn a a great deal from. Deep shadows but even lighting. It's pictures like this that you look at, and although not perfect, you instantly know are full of potential.

all of this

Death seems to be all around all of this. I suppose it's just the age. Vaclav Chochola passed away last week. A remeberance is being held on Wednesday for him at Sv. Vaclav church downtown on wednesday at 17:00. I'm heading out of town so I won't make it, but I admire his work very much so I wish I was around. He was big from the 40's to the 70's and one of the greats of Czechoslovak photographers. Great work.

On tuesday evening a remeberance is being held for Jakub Zeman, my dear friend who I speak of often. It's at Divadlo Na Pradle on tuesday at 8.

To Marcel, who's girlfriend lost her best friend in an accident on saturday, take care.

And although time seems to close things up in a silent way, Mauro- I'm sorry I can't remeber what it was you said you wanted when you died. I know it was something, but I can't see what anymore.


The picture above is me and Jakub roasting a model with a reflector.

another cover

So I got another cover. This time of quite a big magazine here in Czech. The honor however, is somewhat dubious- as I didn't actually know I got the cover. No one told me, and I didn't even know that they had my pictures. But there it was, on the newstand. Looking at me. Of course I bought one, and the model is quite suprised as well. Looks like I'll be having to make a few phone calls.

Film

the truth

You need to listen to this:

http://www.thislife.org/

How dare my FEDERAL government.

I buried my friend today. I went with his parents and his friends and familly. He was cremated and placed beneath a tree and a simple headstone. It was cloudy and then it rained and rained and rained. There is nothing but silence and the sounds of the wind and the drops of water.

Magazine Cover

Here's my recent cover.

Country

What on earth have you done to my beautiful country?

Version of this-

What version of this is our life? When your goal becomes to impersonate beauty, what version do you save as authentic to your own life? For the viewer, photographs tell stories. They are images that tell us something. They communicate ideas, hopes, emotions, dreams.

But when your job becomes faking these things. Creating these things. What version of it is your own? When are photographs a reflection of yourself or pure artifice? Even worse, what happens when you become so skilled at creation, that you can no longer tell what is authentic around you? What do these images say? What 'life' is here? What am I communicating?

What is above is a snippet of vapor. These shots do not exist before and they do not exist after. The relationship the viewer has between the woman and the idea she expresses is fake. She is looking, at you (the viewer) through me, my lens, my eyes. There is a relationship here, yet there is not.

Tender moments like this, a morning, a beautiful girl, bedsheets, the tanness of skin. These are things that us boys dream of. We dream of girls that roll around naked in bedsheets beckoning us backwards into love. But as real as it seems, it is not.

Faking everything is easy. Remembering what makes the authentic valuable- is hard. Eventually you create versions of reality as habit. You do it without thinking and this artifice, this engine of visual vapor works you, more and more. Until your life becomes no different than your pictures. And your pictures become no different than your dreams. And your dreams become no different from a day at work and a carefully choreographed version of what someone else's life might be, if their life was a beautiful as their dreams.

Like the sunshine

I'm getting into beauty photography more and more. I like the uber-control aspect of the lighting and the setup. There is something inherently enjoyable about controlling the lighting so precisely. Here's a few tests that I've made recently.

One of the tricks about beauty photography though, is to know when enough is enough. I mean for the photoshopping. Stuff like this is seriously photoshop intensive work and sometimes you forget that pores are actually natural and you don't NEED to airbrush every single one off. That's of course the magic, the trick is to airbrush them all off without them looking like they are all airbrushed off. :-)

Ahoj Jano!

One of the models that I work with often is Jana and last week she left off to America to spend a year in Naples New York for Highschool. So she's officially taken a break from modeling to spend a year as an exchange student. Personally I can't imagine what it must be like to be a working fashion model in Europe and then just move to a small US town to be a highschool student. Whoa. You know, come to think of it- I can't imagine what it must be like for this girls. Most of them are around 15-20 years old, and for the girls still in highschool I can only imagine that they have the bizzare experince of _being_ the people on the covers of magazines they read. Heck, even Karolina Kurkova is my age and she's a billionare (in Czech Crowns, still alot of money). That must be crazy. I've talked to Jana about it and she told me she never tells anyone she knows that she's a model. Anyway, here's wishing the best of luck for Jana in America.

Perseverance

There are mornings when you wake up, and you feel at peace. There are a million things you know that you have to do. But yet, you are a well rested and calm.

I am a sentimental person and my memories scar me as much as my dreams. I am on my way to somewhere. I can't say that I know what it is, but I can see clearly now all that it isn't, pulling back away from like the landscape from the rear car of a train.

Where am I headed in all this? What is the purpose that I seek. My life feels like an endless journey forward. Like tripping through sunsets and falling through days. I pursue something, but what that something is, isn't clear. I'm not seeking enjoyment, rather just happiness.

Before, when I was younger, this process was alienating. It was as if the sounds of the future obscured what were my relationships in the present. It was waves, breaking on the surf that pulled me forward and out of the moment.

I feel now, self actualized. As though this is the start of that path that sweeps you out and away. The waves have been replaced by a silence of emotion and image. Before I stood on the caboose, watching the landscape of my everything, pull out from beneath me. Now though, I turn away from all that. Who we were, is but a feeling laced with the love of who we wanted to become. You and everything are me, and the beauty of your vastness beckons me to turn away. To look ahead. To feel ahead. To dream ahead.

Before us, is an eternity of moments. We are sadness, perseverance, hope, and love. We are destiny and failure and toil and blood and sacrifice. We are pain, and pain, and pain.

But when we let go- we are weightless. We are faith, and we are light and we are beautiful. We acquiesce. We are the dreams set in motion by the benevolence of a vast universe and every breath that slips from our pale lips rises, to join the rest like stars. Pinpricks of beauty that spot the universe and illuminate everything.

Frown