*sigh*

It's the fall again. It's cold. It's windy. I'm working constantly. It's a shame a career isn't a thing you can curl up with at night.

I don't think ordinary people will ever get how hard it is to be a model. For regular "unphotographed" people of the world. Modeling will forever be about smiling, looking pretty and then somehow making tons of money. 

Wouldn't that be great if it were really the truth? 

The truth is that modeling is hard work. It's very hard work in a million different ways you never thought possible. It's hardly about just smiling and being pretty. It's about being able to control your body, control your moods and personality. It's about having physical stamina, endurance, and patience. It's also about having unshakable confidence, extrodinary luck and openmindedness about the world. Being smart isn't always a requisit, but it certainlly helps. Succesfull models speak multiple languages and are well versed in popular culture. A succesfull model is a hyper-social animal. Her/his talent is a keen understanding of people and peoples hopes/dreams/perceptions of the world. 

It's much more than just a smile and pretty face. It's 4am call times, hours in makeup, being naked in sub-zero tempertures. It's being back at the airport before you've even had a chance to figure out where it is that you've been. Lots of travel, and then suddenly- no travel at all. It's a life in constant flux. When you do castings, it's a seperate job interview 20 times a day. Every day but when you're working.  

To make it, to trully make it, you need so many things. In the end of course, what you really need is luck and endurance. You need the endurance to hold in there, to keep going when it seems to all be for nothing. You need the luck to make it. Because the truth is, you can be patient, work hard, and it will come. But it also might never come either. 

If you have the luck, then you just need the endurance. You need to be able to endure the industry, endure the work, endure the pressure, and endure the success. It's not enough to just 'want it' to make it. It's much, much more than that. You need to want it. Need it and sacrifice for it. But it's also more than as well. To make it, you also need to *understand it*. 

And thats what I'm here to do. The rest is up to you.

Digital is wonderful. It's a great medium, it's a great format, it's a great tool and a great technology. I am however, none-the-less, consitently frustrated with the lack of uniformity and consistency of the color. Color balance is a tricky thing, and on digital, it's tough to nail it juuusssstttt right. There are a few photographers I know who shoot high-contrast, very puncy, colorfull images. For them, they don't seem to notice the difference in color. POW! It's saturated. It looks great, and that's their style- so it's fine. But I don't shoot as often extremely punchy images. I like my colors more natural, less saturated. Perhaps it's how I see the world. (?) But for me, color balance is a pain the behind. Seriously. I hate greenish hues creeping into the shadows. I hate skin that goes a little to much to red. I want my colors balance, toned, and even. For that though, it's profiles and profiles. Calibration upon calibration. Grey card, color card, white balance. I've gotten to the point where it frustrates  me to shoot in environements where the enviroment itself will color the shots. 

Yes I do notice these things.

I notice the return (the bounce back of light off an object) off nearly everything. Carpets color the shadows from below. Celiengs color the hair from above. The worse hidden color-bounce? Styrofoam. I don't think most people notice, but not all styrofoam bounces light the same. I find most absorb more blue than red. (Or less red then blue) There is definitly a strange color cast to reflected styrofoam. But most people don't get this. They don't notice it. But I do. I even get frustrated at the color of softboxes, silvery-stuff and beauty dishes. I'm so picky about color it makes me want to shoot black and white!!!!

Now it's my mission to save, save, save, save, and switch to a broncolor light system. The flashes can guarentee the temperture you are shooting at. Their accesories are balanced perfectly. It's expensive- yes. But if you want to be the best, you can only use the best.

Despite the conspicious absence of any black people, I must say I've always liked the Mary Tyler Moore show. Yeah. Wholesome. The whole baised portrayl of american society aside of course. Just look at her dance! 

More Mac Madness.

Okay this might seem silly to post about, but I'm constantly impresed about how much more 'integrated' my life has been getting after learning how to use this Mac. For example, today I reformated my ipod to automatically sync with my contact list and Calandar, meaning all my contacts and my appointments are now, each morning, on my 'pod so that as I walk down to the studio I can merly scroll through my list of things I need to do. Very, very, nice.

To bad there isn't a Mac PDA though. Hmmm...

I am just testing a new widget for the mac that enables posting directly to your Blogger.com. That's about as newsworthy as this little item gets. IE: not very.

RealBeauty - An issue of prespective?

I recently took a look at the new video for Dove's "RealBeauty" campaign. After watching it I decided to craft a response that they may or may not post on their forum, so I decided to post it here so you can read it. I'd like to note that they open the video mentioning 'extreme' dieting as a distortion of prespective, yet the video they show has nothing to deal with 'dieting' or the 'slimness' of models. None-the-less, I get their point.

>>>>

I am a professional fashion and beauty photographer and as working professional 'on the inside' I have to say that the problem is more complicated and nuanced than most people think. It's not simply that magazines are pressuring women into looking 'perfect', but it’s a mix of marketing, self-esteem, Photoshop and reality, all together.

For one, the Dove video here illustrates the power of lighting, makeup, photography and Photoshop in the transformation of the woman depicted. But it is also misleading to suggest that all of what has been done counts as a 'distortion'. There is no photographic medium that can be considered 100% truthful. All pictures look the way they do as a combination of lighting, camera lens, angle and film/filter type. An extraordinary amount of 'distortion' for an image takes place before even any makeup is applied. Just as the model here looks 'less than dramatic' when compared to the final version, I assure you it would have been possible to create just as dramatic and beautiful (although different) portrait of the model without any of the 'computer magic' or even makeup.

That aside, yes, there is an extraordinary amount of 'Photoshop' that goes into magazine covers, advertisements, etc... But this isn't absolutely always the case. There are indeed women out there who do in fact look perfect. It's quite popular to call extremely thin models anorexic, but it ignores the truth that there are indeed many women who are naturally extremely thin. Most people also don't know that many of these models that they think are anorexic are also very young. These days’ girls start working at 14, generally before the onset of puberty and while their bodies may have already grown a fair bit (in height) they have yet to develop (hence lack of hips, breasts or other 'womanly' characteristics).

The truth is that the perception of women through magazines and fashion is a mix of truths and distortions. There are real women who have the bodies that magazines adore. This is true. What is also true is that the women, who have bodies that don't exactly conform to what has become the norm, get photoshopped. Sometimes, they get photoshopped A GREAT DEAL. True.

I would argue however, the problem is not from the magazine/fashion side of the issue, but rather the consumers. If 'real women' sold magazines, they would be on all the covers. Unfortunately women do not buy products that depict pictures of 'real women'. This is true. Women purchase products that show idealized versions of often-unattainable beauty. Take note: nearly all advertisements for mascara feature an image where the eyelashes have been DRAWN ON with Photoshop. Despite the obviousness of the computer manipulation women will continue to choose the product featuring the obvious falsification over the product that depicts real-life results. What about hair dye products? Almost no one has a head of hair THAT thick. Almost no one has hair that combs out to be THAT shiny and perfect. Yet women continue to support the very products that seem to offer something they can never have.

The real issue is why women seem to pursue their own negative reinforcement of their beauty. Everyone knows the magazine covers are photoshopped. Even kids. Yet it doesn't stop them from starving themselves. We live in a society where women teach themselves that their only redeeming characteristic, their only positive contribution to society, is their body. But this isn't the fault of the fashion world. We aren't a group of uber-thin elitists who sit around plotting the our next mass-bulimia inducing photoshoot. In fact we are ourselves normal people. As many over weight as trim. The industry is also surprisingly varied, with plenty of products aimed towards, "real women" with "real figures". You don't see the egalitarian and encompassing nature of the fashion world because you (yes you, the reader) as a consumer choose NOT to accept an image of yourselves as an accurate reflection. There are plenty of magazines dedicated to 'larger figures' that promote the use of real women in their fashion editorials and plenty of companies that use real women for their advertisements. Even more surprisingly for people is that many companies that produce products for 'unattainable' lifestyles also produce products for 'real people'. The market gives people what they want. And people want thin, photoshopped, altered, distorted, images of themselves. Unfortunately.

I want to also mention the importance of 'casting'. Casting is the process by which a magazine or company selects the individuals they will use as models to represent their product. Even products that use 'real women' as models have a lengthy casting process by which they look at hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people before making a selection. Casting really well for a model is just as 'distorting' for women’s image of beauty as is Photoshop. If you look long or hard enough you will always be able to find someone who matches your idea of beauty. Just because a women is 'more real' doesn't mean her beauty is any more or less 'attainable' than that of a 'supermodel'.

To illustrate my point, an advertisement in a magazine can depict either a really tall, super skinny, large breasted perfect haired supermodel, or a beautiful 'real woman'. Just because the 'real woman' model does not seem to be really tall or super skinny, does not mean her beauty is somehow 'more attainable' to the average magazine reader than that of the supermodel. This does not logically follow. Beauty is an intangible thing that no one can definitely define, yet everyone intrinsically recognizes. A beautiful 'real woman' can be just as threatening to ones self esteem as a beautiful 'supermodel'. The same women that feel inadequate when looking at a magazine cover feel inadequate standing next to a 'regular woman' they find also be very beautiful. Self-esteem is a matter of ones own perspective.

Anyway, I do acknowledge that there is a growing problem, but I urge people to be sure to consider the problem from a variety of perspectives. For example, fashion models are skinner today than they have ever been before. Yet the consumers today are also far more overweight than they have ever been before, with obesity fast becoming the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. Is there a possible connection? As people get 'larger' do they idealize even thinner and thinner people?

It's not just a question of wanting to be the girl on the magazine cover. It's more a question of what do we want to see when we look in the mirror, and what are the reasons we think that is who we should be.

Reflection on one's career.

As Marilyn Monroe once said, "A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night."

Mac and the art of being a neat-freak.

Switching to mac has had a a really curious effect upon me. That is, I am much more 'neat' and 'organized' in terms of how I handle my digital work. Everything must be in it's place. No more cluttering the desktop with images. If I don't need it, I delete it. If I need it, I save it on an external disk and then delete it. My folder file names have grown to become descriptive scentences. Everything must be organized, and at the end of the day- it all needs to come off my hard disk to be permanently stored on external medium.

It's also meant that in any of my down time, (especially the evenings) I have taken to perusing over my old work. Cataloging, organizing. I have alot of great old stuff that I have forgotten about that I want to put together. Some day I might want to make a book and it's important to keep the old stuff.

Mac and the heavy integration of all the software helps to make organizing a bit easyier. iPhoto handles the jpegs, (fun snaps, behind the scenes stuff) Adobe lightroom handles the Raw files. I'm thinking about switching to lightroom, but it's expensive and at the moment, lightroom is free. That's incentive. We would hope metadate would be universal, but as yet - it's not. But thats fine. For now I need to figure out a system I can work with. Something I can live with. And go on from there.

salar de uyuni, bolivia

Note to self: must visit salar de uyuni, bolivia before I die.

Autumn's Here

I'm listening to Hawksley Workman's "autumn's here" and nothing could be more appropriate. Autumn is indeed here. The leaves are falling all around and everywhere. It's lovely, but the prospect of winter is not one that I take with enthusiasm. I live alone so winter means for me lots more time shut-up-by-myself in my apartment. A kinda lonely prospect.

I've been trying to think of ways to get OUT more often so as to ensure through this winter I maintain some sort of socia life. Last winter I think I nearly withered away in my apartment infront of monitor with only the warmth of the internet to keep me going.

Yeah.

That's not happening again. What I wish is that I could take off, go to south africa or something and hang out where it's warm. I've been feeling young again for awhile and I'm really in a mood to see the world again. I remeber for along time my wander lust had nearly entierly dissapeared, but now, now I feel it simmering deep, deep, deep down in my heart.

I'm getting used to using a MAC and I love it. I can't believe I was working on a PC all those years. Honestly, if your reading this and you have a chance- SWITCH. I promise you it's worth it. It will be a little inconveinet at first, but then once you get going with it you won't understand how you managed to get along on a PC all those years. I must also say that I feel more productive on the mac as well. I've got all my numbers in the address book and my mail and my calandar. So convenient! I'm really loving it.

I still need to work out how to organize all my photos- but you know. Step by step.

I think companies are going about Digital Photo management in all the wrong way. I understand that dealing with so many photos is a CPU intensive task, but they've got it all wrong. Data such as photographs is so intensive and comes in such volume that we need a new computer architecture to handle it. What we need is smart storage units. We need for our hard drives to catalogue our data for us. Not the computer. The computer has better things to be doing. The harddrives should have some sort of hard wired firmware to keep track of data. Or they should simply get even faster. What would be optimal is if everything could just be kept in RAM type memory so we wouldn't have to be slowed down by the bottleneck that exists between our awesome processors and enormous hard drives.

Craig McDean stole my idea. (NOT)

Craig McDean stole my idea. Well, not really because I have never met him, nor have I ever had any communication with him. Nor is there any possible way he knew what I was thinking.

Regardless, McDean (who is super famous in the photography world) shot an awesome beauty editorial for the october W issue with girls just in colored gell plastic. I've been planning something like that for like three weeks now too, collecting all the plastic that I need for it and bam! Here I see it in W though, and now I'm like, "well there goes that!"

Take a look: here.

spelling

Ever notice what an absolutly terrible speller I am? I certianlly have. And although I have thus far taken it in stride, reading through my post myself proves to be more than just a little embarassing. For I am highly educated. Trully! I'm just a bad speller. (and always have been). I swear if google could implement gmail style spell checking for blogger.com I would use it. Thus far though, blogger.com spell check is slow and frustrating. To the point where, as you can see, almost nothing I write is correctly spelled.


I know.

I'll try harder.

Exciting times

This is an exciting time. I can really feel it. I've gotten alot of new stuff done that not only really pushes my portfolio forward, but really pushes me forward as a creative individual. The important thing about learning your limits is that it's the only way you can learn to surpase them. New york was an awesome oppertunity just to steep myself in the totally different 'ether' that makes up the american cultural scene. With this new fashion/style/cultural sense, I can go back to infusing my work with the essense that I felt I gotten close to losing.

Newstands

So I'm going through enditing like crazy to get quite a few editorials ready for the newstands next month. (Yay!) In a really cool twist my agent managed to get a really edgy story I shot in new york published in a Slovak Magazine. I'm really very impressed because I thought this story would be way over the top for almost anyone. Just goes to show how progressive those slovaks are!!

Here's a taste.