Frantisek

This is one of frantisek that I retouched before I got home. It looks great on this little LCD screen, but there's no way I could have retouched like this on this machine.

being home

So, having not worked on a laptop computer for sometime I totally forgot how nearly impossibe it is to try and get any serious photo-editing work done on one. I'm sitting here looking at the monitor thinking, "is this color correct? Why the heck does this look all pixelated and why can't I get any decent contrast in anything?". I almost feel as though I'm working in 24k color. Needless to say this is kinda poising a significant problem as I had originally intended to get some real work done while at home (Read: fix this website) but now every time I boot up Photoshop I just get disgusted and opt to watch MTV.

As this realization has begun to dawn on me, so has the fact that I overestimated how much time I should spend in the states by about three weeks. I'm now desperatly trying to book a flight out after new years. Screw getting new pages in the passport, the plane is to play dumb, let them stamp the backpage a few more times and deal with it at the embassy. Cross my fingers.

Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Airports and Internet and Holiday Model parties

Somehow I can't help but think that in some ways the internet has being going backwards. Remeber the days, back in the oh-so-good 90's (Bill Clinton, 56.6k modems, overnight IPO wealth) when virtually everything on the internet was free? Like free as in you don't have to pay for it with money? Well I guess those days are long gone. And instead I'm stuck here in Heathrow airport for the next three hours paying 7 pounds for a lousy slow T-mobil connection that stops working after three hours regardless of whether you use it or not.

Anyway, the planes come in and out and at least I have the internet to keep me company. People tend to complain about traveing durring the holiday season. "It's hectic" "Frustrating" "Uncomfortable" "Stressfull". I tend to dissagree. I personally love airports. All types. (Except Chicago Midway) And when booking flights I do my best to negotiate my way through a different airport for my layover each time. The key for traveling, especially for the holidays, is just to give yourself enough time for everything. Personally I generally expect problems. I think I'm delayed, have a layover, cancelled, switched, etc... probably about 80% of the time. Since I don't mind long layovers I meerly take an early flight in and book the last flight out. If you do by chance get in earlier than you expected, you can always ask to fly standby on anything earlier.

So enough about that. Point is: I love airports and airports love me.

Otherwise last night I packed my bags at 3am after coming back from a model agency party that I stayed a bit too long at. Theres something enchanting about agency parties where everyone is somehow involved in 'the business'. It's a cool feeling to be around people who know what your talking about and where the most craziest of stories are fun 'typical day at work' type banter. It's good to be around people who don't think your crazy for being so into something so flighty and trite as fashion and modeling often can be.

I went last night with Hanka, who is back in town from London for the holidays. London is cool. Very cool. Like, super-cool.

Passport

Well, it's finally happened. My passport is full. I got back into the country the other night and the custom people at the border were like, "You need a new passport" and wouldn't stamp it because there was no space left.

So I now have to apply for extra pages to be added to my passport. It's actually a process that you can have done. The other option is to simply get a new passport and at the same time apply for a "frequent traveler" Passport which is substantially thicker than normal passports.

Anyway, I don't feel like getting a new passport yet. The new ones have fancy embedded electronic technology that gives me hives. Besides, for the most part my passport is the only souvenir I keep of the place I've been.

Neat Retouching site

Here is a neat little site aimed at showing young women that it's impossible for them to compare themselves to woman that are portrayed on the covers of magazine due to the exhausting amount of retouching that goes into production stuff like that. They do a nice job of covering a small portion of the things that us photographer or DTP or Photoshoppers do to make the perfect, just a little bit even more perfect. You should check it out, but bear in mind they are really only scratching the surface of what we (the collective we sense) might do in post production. Link

Confession

I'll make a confession. Because I work so much, I am rarely home. And because I am rarely home the time I am home I generally spend working. As a result my 'home' pretty much falls to peices. Catastrophic mess.

Recentlly though I got a cleaning woman who comes once a week and sees me through these times of bustle. As noxtious as the idea of a cleaning person handling ones own mess might be to some people, I assure my detractors it's about the most blissfully wonderful service you just might ever pay for. To leave behind at your flat an absolute wasteland of mess and return in the evening to a haven of cleanliness and order; is fantastic. There is nothing more wonderful than a clean flat that you didn't lose a saturday cleaning yourself. Folded clothes, washed bathrooms, cleaned dishes, mopped floors, even (drum roll) long-lost sock pairs being re-match and bundled together!!!!!!!! It's pure heaven for a messy boy like myself. So I just had to confess. That's my dirty, dirty, dirty, pleasure. Having someone make me clean.

There is a downside though. My cleaning woman organizes EVERYTHING. This is nice, but it means I must adjust and adapt to her organization system. She decides where everything goes and just have to get use to it. A very small price to pay. It's like having your very own hotel room, at home!

I might die from cuteness.

I don't normally post links of other peoples blogs, but this one is so incredible I simply must. Cute Overload.

Japanese

Frantisek (the model) is one of the best models in the entire republic.

Also

This is a good one from the theater set also.

Build your own lens

Honestly this effect isn't sooo hard to emulate in photoshop. The blurring I mean. The depth of field (if you notice it- shot on aps size sensor with 6x7 lens) isn't possible at all. For this though I built my own lens adaptor for my D2X using a Pentax 6x7 lens. Then I shift it around a bit so I can have fun. Personally I think I'd really enjoy a swing camera so I could do this sort of stuff normally. The model is Adela, who doubles as my assistant.

okay okay

So once I get going it's hard to stop. I always thought I might as well hit another while I was in the same mood, that way I can ensure I keep the same color going on.

Theater

Okay, So I couldn't really wait to retouch at least one of the shots. Whew it takes alot of work! Here you go, yummy!

Theater

Today I was fooling around with some friends in a theater and I shot what easily might end up being some of the most beautifull stuff I've shot yet. This is just a quick pic. It's so good that I won't even bother retouching it until I have enough time to do it properly.

Fashion and Food

So the other week the skyscraper shoot didn't work out because of a nightmare logistical situation. Fortunatly it *should* happen next week. So look forward to some interesting images the week after.

In place of my massive shoot I ended up shooting fashion-y type food stuff. Yum. It was relatively fun with the exception of the male model who never smiled and my makeup artist swore was on drugs. Here is a shot.

Me Wallpaper

Hey, I'm available as a part of the Havana Club desktop wallpapers for your computer.
here and here.

me in studio

This was from today. Just testing the light.

The world through stock photography

I shoot a lot of stock photography. As a result I am mainlined into the world of fast turnover cutting edge photography. I would say that the most surprising aspect of being so close to stock photography is that stock offers you a far better prespective of this modern world and current events than probably any other media outlet you could find. Take the iraq war for example. If you check out www.corbis.com and do a search for iraq you find hundreds of pictures from the front lines, behind the lines, and even the other sides of the lines. It's everything. You want Tom Cruise in china? They have that. The stock people are the people the media GET there media from. Us stock photographers are the people who CREATE, FIND, SHOOT that which you are fed later on. To get an idea of what the world looks like before your newspaper or magazine decides how it should look, you should browse the stock collections. You'll be surprised what you find.