The Friday Fluffy And Her Flying Familiar

(Try saying that after two pints of pear cider)

Dear Fluffy Reader,

We interrupt your relaxing and peaceful week of browsing high-art piccies of luscious nekkid fluffies with an important life-enriching, furry-feline-update.

As you all know I’m a cat-a-holic. My moggies are my muses. If I had a penny for the number of times I’ve been called “mad old cat lady” I’d be a rich woman (actually I suppose I am Rich’s woman, but that’s not what I meant and you know it.) Obnoxious local kids used to call me “an evil twisted witch who lives in that big creepy house with hundreds of cats” so at least I’ve graduated to old and mad nowadays. Personally I feel that’s progress.

Currently I’m reduced to a single feline familiar, due to one recent road tragedy and three age-related declines (my last three beloved kittens were all supposed to only last 3 weeks and ended up living 18 years – not a bad lifespan for kittens that were dumped in a bin liner at the back of a supermarket. Some people don't deserve animals, you know?) Anyway, where was I? Well, I’m really missing my furry friends, so I’m looking for a new cat, or more correctly, I’m waiting for one or more to find me, because as we all know, clever cats choose their owners not the other way around.

My future felines will be ideally suited to me; they will be unique, of superior intelligence, probably unwanted, definitely unusual, obviously special. So I was truly delighted to read in the news yesterday about the sudden phenomenon of The Winged Cat. I always thought they were a hoax, but apparently not. These incredible creatures have been labelled freaks of nature in their native China, but apparently there are increasing occurrences of them, caused by a combination of the weather, genetic abnormalities and extreme stress caused by too much sex with too many females (and let that be a lesson to all you studly guys out there – too much sex with fluffies gives you wings.)

Cool Photoshop job, nifty superglue or the genuine article?

Wooo-eee! I jus’ gotta get me one o’ those!

That cat is living art I tell you. Just think of the infinite photo-shoots you could have with that little beauty…I can see it now…The New Fluffytek Photographic Series: Nekkid Chix And My Flying Cat…now that’s my type of photography…cool…

Now who was it who that said blogs about cats couldn’t be interesting, hmm?

Please note that no cats were harmed during the making of this post. Fluffytek fully endorses responsible cat-ownership and we abide by the over-riding principle that cats are for life, not just for cheap photo-opportunities. Thank you for your attention. Do enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Yours sincerely,

The Mad Old Cat Lady.

Meow

(Sorry about the light post folks –it’s my week off. More serious photographic stuff next week I promise.)

Censorship Rules!

A few housekeeping points today, in no particular order:

There appears to be a new trend whereby nude photographic blogs are being reported to Google for adult content, with the result that a content warning is slapped on their sites. Our friends Jimmy D and D. Brian Nelson are the latest to fall foul of zealous cyber-prudes who are on a mission to clean up Blogger. Not nice, but a symptom of the new wave of morality sweeping the bloggie world. If you host your blog on the Blogger servers, beware. This could happen to you sooner than you think.

Talking of nasty people, there are increasing numbers of bloggie trolls around at the moment. Some unidentified folks out there think they have a right to be offensive and personally attack an artist’s work. Whilst we’re in favour of freedom of speech, and Lord knows everyone is entitled to their own opinion and to express constructive criticism (which should be helpful rather than rude), I’m getting so bloody tired of nasty anonymous commentors that I’m declaring a New Totalitarian State over this blog.

Call it censorship, call it restricting your freedom of speech, call it Refusal of Service, call it living in the UK too long, I don’t care. Just as you have a right to form your own opinions, it’s our blog and we have a right not to read emails or publish comments which are aggressive and mean. I can’t stand impoliteness, especially from unidentified people who are too cowardly to identify their own work. Life’s too short (mine is anyway.) We don’t need this spiteful crap, and Lord knows there’s been too much of it around recently.
Bloggie trolls, begone!

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Mr Tiddles the Troll spent rather far too much time browsing nekkid chix online

Lastly, it’s roughly ten days until my kids go back to school. I have three completely new school uniforms to adjust, name-tag and get ready, which means I have 102 items to sew and glue. Cue large amounts of liquid refreshment and loud rock music (I can’t sew without them) and (alas) no internet at all until it’s done. I’m going under and I’m not coming out until the fat lady sings. Or something along those lines. Oh the joys of motherhood :-)

Gone for tea. Back soon.

Reality, Fiction and Different Ways Of Seeing

“Photography is the inventory of mortality... photographs show people as being so irrefutably there.”

Susan Sontag, On Photography

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Ifat

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Our latest model shows off her impressive Blowfish lip job

Have a look at the above two photographs. Similar pose, similar lighting, but very different art-forms. Or are they? Without doubt photographers will prefer the photograph, and the CGI artists will prefer the render. But what’s the difference?

Well, I’m entirely new to this CGI thingy, but I’ll have a bash at analysing the two.

The photograph captured the mood and expression of the model in a split second in time. Click. Instant art. On the other hand, the CGI image took three days to get the pose and lighting right and for Rich to create the base image, and then an additional day to render the whole thing, and it’s not even rendered to the highest resolution either. To render this to the best quality that Rich could do it, it would take about forty hours on a quad processor server. At this point, photographers would say, “Why bother? Just take the damn photo instead.”

Because I’ve lived and breathed photography for a couple of years now, my natural bias is towards a photograph being superior to a render. No matter how good the CGI image is, I can always tell the difference. Reality triumphs fiction every time. To me, photographs are real, alive, exact, they record the moment and they capture the mood and emotion of the model in a way that a render never could. The reality of a photograph is, IMO, what makes it such a powerful art-form compared to CGI. However that’s just my uneducated opinion. Rich would just say that the reasons for looking at both are different. They have different objectives. Just because I prefer a photograph doesn’t make it superior, it just means that both types of art communicate a different message and in a different way. Each requires a different way to see.

With a photograph the viewer can imagine himself in the same room as a gorgeous nekkid chick. She’s a real woman, tangible, mortal, he can fantasise about her, admire her as a person rather than an inanimate object. She is shown in the best possible light, the photograph emphasises her beauty and form, and most importantly the image is very personal. In the case of a portrait nude, a photograph would convey emotion, and it would create an emotional response from the viewer. This emphasis on capturing reality is why photography is so darn powerful. A photograph goes way beyond a simple recording device – it communicates both emotion and truth captured in a single moment in time.

None of that reality happens with CGI. The model is quite obviously a work of fiction. It’s more like a painting, a surreal representation that conveys an entirely different message. You don’t fantasise about being with a CGI chick. Instead you might note that the image resembles a real photograph (apart from the lips - clearly they are not of this world), but it is still always “close but not quite.” That doesn’t mean you can’t be moved by a nude render of course. Believe me I’ve seen some CGI erotica that has made me incredibly horny, but I wouldn’t fantasise about being with a character in a render because it’s not real. Instead I would fantasise about being in that scenario myself. My imagination extrapolates and creates the story. How would I feel if it were me doing that?

CGI is in its infancy at the moment. But what happens in the future? I’ve seen how fast this technology is developing, and I’m telling you that after a couple of years (probably less) of Rich practising and developing CGI erotica, the skill, technology and genre will develop to such an extent that you, the viewer, simply won’t be able to tell if the model is real or virtual. Already there are talented photographic artists who use both photographs and rendering to create powerful artistic images, which don’t classify as either photographs or CGI, but a combination of both art-forms. Photoshop was just the start. Every month new software is being developed which will allow artists to further blur the lines between the two. One day, not too far from now, your brain simply won’t recognise that it isn’t a real person in the image, and you will respond to it as you would to a photograph. This bending of reality has major implications for the future of both photography and painting, as well as movies and other mixed media.

Because Rich is such a mischievous soul, it’s his aim to practise both photography and CGI, but to confuse the two. He intends to continue with his photography for the next few years (hurrah! I’m happy again!) but he also wants to become so darn good at CGI that you fantasise about the render as you would a real woman. With time, (a lot of) effort and technology, he believes that her features will eventually be so realistic that you will barely be able to tell the difference. He wants to blur reality and fiction, combine the two and use both camera and computer as tools to manipulate reality.

A bold claim of course, and he has a long way to go. Let’s see if he can pull it off. Knowing Rich I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the experiment as much as we’re going to.

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Images are of Ifat. One and Three are real (just checking.)

An Overdose Of Ice-cream

Please excuse the dodgy ice-cream metaphors. This was written late at night after a coffee-chocolate ice-cream bender, courtesy of my ten-year-old-son’s supreme cooking skills. From this we conclude that too much ice-cream and sleep deprivation make me rant incoherently.

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It turns out that Rich’s disillusionment with studio nudes didn’t happen until he joined Deviant Art. Do you remember back to the Scott Church workshop where he walked in and was horrified to discover that everyone else looked exactly the same as him? Well DA had a similar effect on him. Of course he was well aware that his style of fine art studio photography wasn’t unique by any means, but he really didn’t realise just how very common it had become in the last couple of years. Finding hundreds of photographers shooting images with incredibly similar composition and lighting was a profoundly dispiriting experience.

Ansel Adams once said that you’re not a photographer until you’ve made 10,000 negatives. In Ansel’s time this would have taken twenty years to shoot and develop. Nowadays many photographers achieve that in less than six months. There are literally millions of “fine art photographers” out there. Digital photography has now become so cheap, automatic cameras are so easy to use and the quality has become so high that photographic art is now within reach of the common man. Up until now I had always applauded the digital revolution and I argued passionately for the new digital democracy which meant that anyone could have a go at art, even complete beginners like me if I felt like it. I loved looking at the millions of cool fine art images online. I felt that the genre was infinite and that there was room for everyone. Yes indeedy, I was the champion of the millions of wannabe fine art photographers…until now, until it hurt the one photographer I really care about.

Call me naïve but the scale of the problem simply didn’t hit me until very recently. In my selfish desire for more, more, more fantastic nude photos, I didn’t really stop to think just what effect it would have on long established photographers who had made their lives from creating art. I just didn’t realise how the sheer glut of images would weigh down the spirit and suck the artist’s soul dry. No photographer wants to be a pack animal. Each budding artist wants to create something personal and unique, but how is that possible in this modern saturated digital photographic world?

Now there are those amongst you who will say, “Don’t worry about volume. Good images will stand out from the dross.” But wait a minute. Let’s say there are about a million wannabe fine art photographers at any one time (a very conservative estimate by today’s standards.) Even if half of those million fine art photographers have the technical expertise, the passion and the creative vision to produce reasonably good artistic photographs, then you suddenly have half a million reasonably good photographers on the scene, all jostling to pimp their art, all greedy to be noticed. How does Rich (or any photographer) fight back the torrent of ever-improving images? How does he make his work stand out from the 499,999 others? It simply isn’t enough any more to say that the cream will always rise to the top. Technology has resulted in a global dairy overdose, and I can honestly say that in this house we’re beginning to suffer from a very strong lactose intolerance.

Finding out that you’re not remotely unique, that despite your best efforts you’re still the same as thousands of others, has been a real wake up call for a developing photographer like Rich. I would desperately love it if he would keep shooting studio nudes, and it may be that he decides to do so, but I also realise that he may need to tread a new path. He needs to find his own style, his own new flavour of ice-cream so to speak. Discovering a new take on the thousands of flavours already out there isn’t as easy as going out and buying a new tub from Ben & Jerry’s, it’s going to take a lot of thought. But as his creamy old muse, you can be sure that I’ll be giving Rich all the encouragement that I can, whilst also acknowledging that he needs space to think before he can rediscover his mojo, before he can start to taste fun again.

I often refer to photography as my faith. To be honest this isn’t too far from the truth. I am probably deluding myself but I would like to believe that quantity still doesn’t beget quality in this new digital world. The volume of images might be off the scale in the face of the fine art tsunami, but there are still very few truly unique photographs which really pack a profound emotional punch, which genuinely move a viewer with their message – such aesthetic flavours of art remain as elusive and difficult to create as they have always been.

In my opinion, striving to discover your own unique photographic flavour should in itself be reason enough to keep on shooting.

Don’t photograph to compete or compare yourself with others.

Do it because it’s who you are.

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Images are of Syd and A.J.

Click

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Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Wow! It’s…it’s…it’s…a grain silo.

Soooo...is this Rich’s new artistic direction? Is this, in fact, photographic perfection? Is the true meaning of photographic fine art located within its stylish yet minimalist walls? (O.K. so only regular Lenswork Readers will get that joke.) I dunno. Somehow I feel this fabulous photograph lacks a certain something. Like, maybe, a nekkid chick…I’m jus’ sayin’…

Anyhoo, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know we have recovered both our common sense and good humour today. Thanks to those who took the trouble to contact me on and off blog. Supportive friends are always appreciated, and JimmyD's magnificent comment in particular is worth an entire post in itself.

Back to normal nude ‘n’ rude blogging shortly. In the meantime I’m recovering from the perpetual drama of the last few days by indulging in a bit of retail therapy, by treating myself to a new winter outfit, with Rich’s credit card, of course. So, here’s my online shopping basket of my favourite Italian Designer (for US readers remember £1= $1.8646 USD.) Please note we’re on a very tight budget here, so I was exceedingly restrained…very considerate of me, don’t you think?

1. Italian Soft Cotton Shirt £65. Add to basket.
2. Weekend Tweed Cropped Trousers in soft aubergine £85. Add to basket.
3. Silk and Cashmere Blend V-neck Sweater £195. Add to basket.
4. Suede Round Toe Long Boots (also in soft aubergine) £189. Add to basket.
5. Pair Carina Pearl Drop Earrings £45 x 2 (I have 2 holes in each ear, floozy that I am.) Add to basket.
6. Lucia Bangle £59. Add to basket.
And finally…the finishing touch…
7.Toscane Shearling Coat £1350. You betcha ass I'll Add to basket.

Finished!
Click on Checkout.
Grand Total £2033 (USD $3790.73) (Cough.)
Shipping: Free! (Woo hoo! Now that makes it a bargain in my book)…
Enter Credit card Details…Click.
Finger hovers over “Click to Finish Transaction” button.

Rich: Would you like a cup of tea my dear? Yes? Ah, I see you’re online again. So what photographs are you browsing now?

Me: Oh nothing darling. Just doing a bit of shopping...

Him (very suspiciously): What sort of shopping?

Me: Oh a new weekend outfit to dazzle you with dearest. You’ll like it, I promise…

Him: Let’s see then….HOLY CRAP!!! Don’t you bloody DARE buy that! Do you REALISE just how MUCH studio equipment that would buy???! No bloody way, Lady!

Me: Aha! So you’re not quite finished with studio stuff yet then? Gotcha!

Him: Humph!

Me: Click…

Me: Oops.

Anyone know a good divorce lawyer? Anyone? Anyone at all?

An obscure body in the S-K system

Part One: Lin

Zogi: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling Dale Arden, to be your Empress of the Hour?
Emperor Ming: Of the hour, yes.
Zogi: Do you promise to use her as you will?
Ming: Certainly!
Zogi: Not to blast her into space? [Ming glares at Zogi]
Zogi: Uh, until such time as you grow weary of her.
Ming: I do.
Dale: I do NOT!

Flash Gordon (1980)

Lin: I’m upset. Rich and I have had a row. Like all couples we have our moments, but this must mark as one of the weirdest rows that a normal, average, everyday couple has had. Why am I blogging about this publically? Well, this blog is supposed to chart our photographic journey together, the downs as well as the ups. I’ve always felt that others might be able to benefit from the story, others might simply find it entertaining, plus it’s a record for us when we look back in a year’s time and mark a turning point in Fluffytek.

So what’s this all about? Well, Rich is fed up with shooting studio nudes. He tells me that if he continues to shoot studio nudes, it will just be for me and the blog, not for him. He’s says that he’s finishing off his current commitments (two more shoots in the next month or so) but after that he’s going to photograph other stuff, you know…non-naked stuff. If nudes pop along occasionally, he says he won’t turn them away, but from now on things will be different. He wants to create images of other things (he’s not sure what exactly) but he says he’s done with photographing nekkid chix for a while.

I’ve been racking my brains to try and figure out if I’m responsible for this? O.K. My Darth shot was pretty bad, yes, but I don’t think it’s enough to put any photographer off the entire genre! And just because I personally wanted to model some non-explicit stuff for a while, that wouldn’t be enough to do it surely? It’s not as if I want to stop him shooting nekkid chix…quite the opposite. I always encourage him to shoot more, more, more, not less. I love and support his erotica. It totally rocks. And he’s just starting to get published, to get the recognition in the genre that he deserves. Why quit now just when he’s getting really good?

Weird. Scary. I don’t like change.

Just when you think you know someone and you think they’re blissfully happy, they go and turn everything upside down again. That’s artists for you, I guess.

To my knowledge I’m the only woman I’ve ever known who had a blue fit because her partner doesn’t want to photograph nekkid chix any more. It should be the other way round, surely?

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Cheeky Lee

Part Two: Rich

The Emperor Ming the Merciless: Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?

Flash Gordon (1980)

Rich: Lin is upset. I’ve decided to cut back on nude photography for a while. Truth be told, I’m not particularly fed up with photography or with photographing gorgeous nude women, it’s just that I want to separate the two for a bit.

I never started nude photography for the social aspect, and I certainly didn’t do it because I wanted to be in the same room as a naked woman. I decided on studio photography not only as a way of studying lighting, but also as a way of realising the pictures in my head (I hesitate to use the term creative vision, but you know what I mean.) I have a pretty vivid imagination, and the camera was an excellent way of making those pictures as real as I could get.

I will admit that I’m a bit jaded with studio photography. Once upon a time, not so long ago, only a few UK photographers did the studio nude genre with this type of lighting. Now this style has been dissected, studied, reverse-engineered and everyone’s doing it. It is no longer unique because every man and his mother does it. Look on Deviant Art and you’ll see hundreds of these every week. They’re all the same.

But it’s much more than the inevitable matter of it’s all been done before. Whereas some photographers live for the process of photographing a subject, the camera has always been just a tool for me. I don’t live for the process I’m afraid. I live for the image, the end result. To me it doesn’t matter if the picture in my head is painted with a brush, shot on camera or generated on a computer, as long as the finished image is what I feel it should be.

Just recently I’ve found that the camera can’t accurately express what’s in my imagination. The tool isn’t right and I’m left with a half-finished picture. Don’t get me wrong, photography has taught me exactly what I wanted it to: lighting, composition, form. I can do the above type of shots with my eyes closed, but I’ve learned to do the basics well and now I need more. It’s time to move on, and the only way I can really create the finished image that I want to create is via CGI. I’ve been experimenting with this relatively new tool for a while now, but last year the technology simply wasn’t advanced enough for what I wanted to do. However in the last few months there have been several new tools released which are the next generation in rendering, and they’re pretty cool, almost photographic quality, and the flexibility is now there such that I can finally do what I want to do.

But why CGI? Well, because I’ve always been a computer geek, it’s probably inevitable that I return to using the computer as my paintbrush. Not only is it a heck of a lot of fun learning something new, but it’s the only way I can create the images that really reflect my imagination. Lin needn’t worry. In due course there will still be lots of nekkid chix on the blog, but eventually some of them might be the cyber-chix rather than real ones. I’m not giving up photography, but I need to step back a little and wait for photography to tell me what it wants me to do. In the meantime, CGI is my new toy, and I’m looking forward to playing with it.

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It's a nude Jim, but not as we know it

Six Random Things Game

Yes, yes I know this seems horribly familiar, and you’re quite correct. I’ve blogged on this before. However Saintz tagged me, and since Lela’s brave enough to do it twice, I guess that means I have to.

Being a narcissist, I’ve been waffling on about myself for so many years now that you really know practically everything about my sordid little life already, but I’ve been racking my brains and come up with a few things you really didn’t want to know:

1. When I write, I try to subscribe to The 24 Hour Rule. Basically this means I normally wait at least 24 hours before I actually publish a post. I’ve found this to be a valuable safeguard over the last couple of years, usually because I mostly write total garbage (usually after too much Chardonnay, it has to be said) and when I look at my draft the following day, I often change it completely or delete it altogether, depending on its quality control levels (unfortunately the quality is inversely proportional to the volume of alcohol consumed!) Please note I did not subscribe to this rule in either this post or my last (with hindsight I really regret posting yesterday. See, the rule works.)

2. I have twenty-two clocks (not including computer clocks) in my house (thanks to my younger son for counting them all.) Guess I have time issues, huh?

3. My cat left me three mouse skulls and various unidentified bloody entrails on the carpet when I got up, bleary-eyed, to make tea first thing this morning. Yes I know it’s a sign of undying love for one’s mistress (we all have our own unique ways of expressing our feelings after all), but it’s actually quite scary. You never quite know what you’re going to find of a morning.

4. Unfortunately I never ever stay in bed, naked, until noon (you’ve no idea how much I’d like to though.) I get up with raging insomnia at 3.30 and usually blog or talk to whomsoever of you folks is around also with raging insomnia at 3.30, or who is on U.S. time and hasn’t gone to bed yet. Do email me at 3.30. I’m usually around, watching the clock mostly.

5. When I was a kid I had webbed toes on my right foot. Of course I was teased mercilessly at school. Fish feet, freak, mutant, just what you’d expect from kids I guess. So I got a pair of scissors and cut out the webbing. A miracle I didn’t get blood poisoning really. It was at that point in my life that I realized I had a high pain threshold.

6. I also collect slutty purple underpants. Strange, gross and more than you needed to know...

I can guess what you’re thinking now. TOO MUCH DETAIL (believe me you don’t wanna see the other two I didn’t post.)

Still, looking on the bright side, hopefully that’s the last time I’ll get tagged for a while. And no, I’m not tagging anyone, except possibly my cat (she deserves it.)

The question I do want to ask, however, is Why Did The Rule Shrink From Ten to Six?

Where did the other four rules go???

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Iveta

May The Force Be With You

No really profound words today folks. I’m busy being a yummy mummy as my kids have their friends to stay and I have a house full of hormonal teenage boys. They’re cute kids…very polite and respectful, but boy do they eat. The male herd mentality has taken over the house, everything smells kind of strange (why do teenagers never wash when they’re away from home?) and I’m having to barricade our bedroom door (this being the only part of the house where nude photographs are displayed, if you recall.) As far as I can gather, last night they stayed up until 4 a.m. talking about computer games, horror movies and chix, and as a result I’m feeding zombies today.

Only another day of this to go, and then they all migrate to some other willing victim for the rest of the week, and I get my house back. Until then Rich and I are hiding in the studio next door. Not much to do in the studio, other than par-tay…so time to put some funky disco music on, feel that vibe, get in the groove, shake my booty, feel the force…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the highest form of art…Disco Dancing Darth Vader…

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No-one suspected that Darth was secretly a woman

Oh dear. This really is a frightful post.
I need a beer. So do you after this photo, I’m guessing.

The Harshest Critic

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It sometimes strikes me that I'm a really dreadful photographer’s wife.

Over the last few years I have talked to and corresponded with many partners of nude photographers. Some are inherently hostile to their spouse’s photographic leanings of course, some have given up and either ignore their partner’s work completely or even elect for the divorce court. However occasionally I come across rare women who have instead decided on an alternative approach and are universally admiring of their hubbies. They never criticise, they never comment other than to express adoration, largely because they love and respect their partners’ art and rather than upset the applecart, they prefer instead to simply stay out of the way and keep their private opinions to themselves. They accept that he knows more about his art, because he is the photographer. His nude photography is his thang and they feel that they should tolerate, accept and recognise his work as the best art on the planet and definitely never, ever challenge it because The Photographer is God, and it doesn’t bode well for your harmonious relationship if you challenge a deity.

So if I follow their example, clearly I should be more adoring of Rich. I should always tell him his photos are wonderful and if I ever think otherwise, then I should keep those doubts to myself. But since when have I ever been sycophantic? Since when have I ever pandered to anyone’s ego? I’m not that type of person, and frankly, he deserves more.

Rich will tell you that I am a terrible partner, photographically speaking. “Who the hell wants to live with a critic?” he frequently says. He’s right of course. I give him a pretty hard time, you know. If he crops something badly, I pick fault. If his lighting is a bit off, I never let it go. If he shoots a photograph which is lacking in “mood,” I say “jeez, what happened?” I am not a nice person I’m afraid (I keep saying that and yet you still come back to read this stuff.) You should feel sorry for the poor bloke. I am the harshest critic a guy could have, and yet he gets to live with me 24 hours a day, and miraculously he still pays attention to what I say.

Now you all know I’m passionate about photography. It’s my life. And of course Rich is a really good studio photographer, no question about that, and naturally I love his work (I have good taste.) However if you just express endless adoration for someone’s photographs without any constructive commentary, just “love-love” and telling him that he’s wonderful without any input other than “Darling, you are such a Photographic Sex God,” how is this beneficial? How does it make his art grow? If all you do is suck up to your other half, your very own dedicated photographer, then you are doing him no favours at all. You are simply feeding his ego, in which case you are doing him a disservice.

As his partner, you’re supposed to be his muse - it’s your job. Get off your cute, cellulite-ridden ass (which he loves and respects more than any other, otherwise he’d never have agreed to spend his life with you) and do something useful. Criticize. Challenge (tactfully - you gotta live with the guy, after all.) Be as honest as you can be, because otherwise how else can you possibly help him? O.K. So you’re not a photographer. That doesn’t mean you can’t see. Just because you are only an occasional model (if you’re not then you should be), and just because you don’t pick up a camera yourself, doesn’t mean that you’re devoid of insight, that you should just let his ego run unrestricted. You have more access to his art than any other person on the planet. He trusts and respects you. Use that privilege to inspire him, to help him grow as an artist.

Now you might think “why should I intervene? He has plenty of other models telling him he’s fabulous. His ego is already supersized to the size of a Double Whopper with extra cheese. What the hell does he need me for?” And yes indeedy, these laydeez are young and gorgeous and they do tell him rather too often just how cute he is and how much they adore his work (how else will they get him to photograph them?) But it’s just the power of the camera talking. It doesn’t mean anything.

You are the one he loves (otherwise he wouldn’t be with you) and he values your opinion above all others. Instead of feeling threatened by his photography, you should embrace it. Love his awesome talent, yes, but use your years of artistic experience to critique it. After all this time being with him, you know nearly as much about him as he does (probably more), plus you have the benefit of being able to take a step back and really look at his work objectively and constructively. He’ll listen, believe me. Yours is the opinion that matters most in the world to him, he will love you more for taking an interest in his work, plus the quality of his art will leap forwards as a result of your honesty. For what else is love if it’s not expressing the Truth?

Trust me ladies, this is a win-win scenario. You are the ones who hold the power here.

As his muse, it is your duty to use it wisely.

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Pirate Maiden

And before you wind up feeling really sorry for Rich having to put up with an ogress like me, let me tell you that our relationship is based on total equality and mutual truth. Oh yes it is. Namely I visited the nether regions of hell before this post met his exacting standards. Criticism is a double-edged sword. Dammit.

The White Chicken

A non-photographic, irrational contemplation of the meaning of life as we really don’t know it.

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Messages From The Great Beyond

As I was brought up at a strict catholic school, I was always taught that the Giant Marshmallow Man in the Sky (GMMITS) always answered your questions/wishes/ prayers/whatever, but not necessarily in the way you thought He would. To any question you put out to the Cosmos, you would always get a reply in the form of a message, an occurrence or a practical sign if you like, because GMMITS is a practical kinda guy.

Of course I’ve grown out of Catholicism, thank Heavens, but the old habit of watching for messages from the Cosmos still remains, despite my newfound religion of cynicism and cold hard logic. I just can’t help looking. Years of catholic indoctrination and programming don’t just vanish you know. I do try to ignore it, but occasionally there are a series of coincidences so ridiculous that I do start to wonder if there is really Something Out There which is trying to talk to me.

Mathematicians and physicists are adept at finding patterns behind seemingly random events, and research has found that there are many connections between apparently random coincidences befalling mice, men, and other mammals. Of course the beauty of statistics is that you can prove a correlation between anything if you try hard enough, so the jury is still out as to whether there is such a thing as co-incidence, or if instead the universe is all connected and there is something more metaphysical at work.

So where is this pointless ramble going? Well, about two months ago a white chicken suddenly appeared in our garden, seemingly out of nowhere. We often get visiting pheasants, pigeons, moles and the odd hedgehog, but never chickens. I didn’t encourage our new visitor (I didn’t want a new pet) but she came back day after day, suddenly appearing in the drive outside the office. She would stand outside our office window, staring inwards and fixing me with an penetrating, unwavering gaze. It was really creepy.

I started to have nightmares about being chased by mutant killer chickens, and our kids, telepathically sensing a rare chink in the parental armour, exploited this moment of weakness to the full, and started leaving plastic white chickens in my bed, pinning white chicken pictures on my fridge and putting white chicken backdrops on my computer. They called it The Cosmic White Chicken, Harbinger of Doom. Kids can be really mean.

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See what I have to put up with?

Anyway, I refused to crack under all the fowl pressure (sorry) and ignored the sodding thing. It gave up eventually and left. But then the strangest things started happening. White chickens started popping up everywhere, on the news, in magazine adverts, stuffed in our local museum, on a white chicken carousel ride, on the internet whilst browsing real estate and sausages (not together, although living in a sausage town would be kinda cool.)

The final straw came when I dropped into the local cathedral (purely for coffee and bread pudding you understand, which I have to say were awesome…these Christians really know how to lure the punters) and there was a new religious tableau of a giant everlasting Torture Candle (very strange candle covered in barbed wire, in memory of world torture victims apparently) surrounded by…you guessed it…white chickens. They were everywhere, painted on either side of the altar, plus embroidered on tapestries all over the chapel. What did it mean? The Dean was unsurprisingly unavailable to explain White Chicken Religious Art to a middle-aged loon with small kids in tow, so I asked the next best authority, the coffee shop ladies, who were more forthcoming as it was they who had fed coffee and bread pudding to the artist whilst he painted them. They thought that the chickens might be a coat of arms, but the message was supposed to symbolise hope for the future, the triumph of good over evil. Or maybe the guy just had a thing about bread pudding and chickens, who knows?

So I went home boggled, confused and more than a little freaked out. Was this a manifestation of my subconscious or was Something Out There trying to send me a profound message? Were all these coincidences just random cosmic garbage? Had I been drinking too much hallucinogenic cathedral coffee? Or was I myself The Cosmic White Chicken, Harbinger Of Doom? What did it all MEAN???

The very next morning, after three weeks absence, my white chicken came back to visit. She strutted up the drive, and tottering behind her were six little newborn baby chicks, frail, tiny, and wobbling unsteadily after their mother. She stopped outside the office window, puffed out her chest proudly and fixed me with her beady stare. I could swear she winked at me.

I got the message.

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Photograph by Rich of course. Scary Cosmic White Chicken graphics courtesy of oldest son, using Gary's Mod.

Michelle, Alexis and Susan

Congrats to Rich being featured on Michelle 7 this month, for his photographs of the lovely Alexis on the pouffe cushion. Yes, yes I know folks have mixed opinions about Michelle 7 (and thank you Mr S for your frank and honest opinion…don’t hold back now, ya hear?! Better out than in, as they say) but I’m so darn proud of Rich when he’s featured anywhere. Michelle 7 is no exception.

On a slightly less contentious note, I’m delighted to say I’ve finally finished reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography.

"Heavy" doesn't remotely begin to describe it. If Art and Fear was the photographic equivalent of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (jump off a cliff and you'll find your inner artist) then On Photography is more like a compacted version of Introduction to Metaphysics (the cliff is irrelevant -"art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.") This book was so darned difficult that I read it three times just to make sure I understood it, dictionary clutched in my hot little paw because some of the words were beyond the comprehension of my pea-sized brain. In fact some of the words were beyond the Oxford English Dictionary too, so I didn’t feel quite such an idiot, and I could only glean their obscure arty meaning by sending my ten year old son on a laborious language hunt in the bowels of several internet dictionaries (it’s good for him.)

Rich says I’ve been hell to live with whilst I’ve been reading Sontag.
“God, you’re not reading that bloody book again are you?” has become an oft used phrase in our house over the last few months.

Truth be told, it really is a brilliant book. If you read it (and you should), it will expand your mind (mine was slightly reluctant to expand though…probably due to it recently being basted in garlic butter and deep-fried) and it will turn the way you think about photography on its head. It is a masterpiece…Susan wrote every single day, eight hours a day for five long years, in order to finish it. She wrote, she re-wrote and she re-wrote again. The result is a tour de force. No wonder she’s heralded as one of the greatest American intellectual thinkers of all time. The only problem is that our dear late Sue was not a happy lady. I don’t think the words “happy,” “fun” or “joy” were mentioned in that book, not once, so in my (admittedly very simple) opinion, she has excluded a consideration of one of the most fundamental reasons why people photograph: Because it makes them happy.

Anyway, 'nuff said about Susan. I feel like a dried out shrivelled old husk after reading that book three times (or maybe I’ve been looking in the mirror too much.) I have many, many more photography books to read, but alas I’m philosophied-out, so I’m following the recommendation of a good friend, getting a life and reading Erma Bombeck instead.

I predict less grumpy photographic rants and more insane rambling for a while. Who wants to be lucid anyway? As our dear Sue said, "Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics."

Quite.

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Alexis and the Pouffee Cushion

Panem et circenses

Panem et circenses, "bread and circus" games, were the only remaining cares of Roman plebs who had long given up their political freedom. Bread was distributed amongst the poor people but everybody liked the circus games. This strategy was an efficient political instrument in the hands of the Emperors to keep the population peaceful, and at the same time giving the citizens the opportunity to voice themselves via the popular entertainment channels of gladiators, exotic animals, chariot races and sports competitions.

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Recently I came across one of those new fangled CCTV cameras with loudspeakers attached, which barked at me when I got out of my car. It warned me VERY LOUDLY to remove all valuables and lock my car because there were thieves operating in the town that day. Well one assumes that if they were watching me, then they’d watch the thieves too (and apprehend them) so why the need to make me jump out of my skin with fright? A friendly warning from Big Brother, or something more sinister? It was at that moment that it really hit me just how far we had come along the road to totalitarianism.

The US, the UK, China and Russia are "endemic surveillance societies," according to a study last year. The 2007 International Privacy Ranking gave Britain the "black" or "endemic" ranking for the second year in a row. The US fell to the bottom rung for the first time due to increasing government surveillance and decreasing federal oversight.

As I have blogged many times before, the UK is now a totalitarian state. The UK had long been on the razor’s edge between liberty and tyranny and in recent years it has tipped over the edge into an anti-utopia. Through the development of legislation, the media and sophisticated technology, the Government now controls nearly every part of our lives. They tell us how to live, what to do and how to think, all in the interests of national security of course. Citizens are not seen as freedom loving individuals with rights of their own, they are not even seen as citizens. Instead we are all now “consumers.” The Government just have to keep us happy with panem et circenses (bread and circuses) and nobody lifts a finger just as long as they can veg in front of their fave t.v. soap and pig out on pizza. Let's face it, most people don't care whether they are watched by the State because they believe they have "nothing to hide." Who cares if you’re caught on camera an average of 300 times every day? It’s all for your own good right?

Nowadays, cameras aren’t just instruments used to create fabulous images, they are also tools of oppression. Nowhere is this more evident than in China, another surveillance society and the first totalitarian state. In China photography is seen differently than in the western world, less of an expressive art form and more of a way of recording things. Because of the omnipotent role of the State in every aspect of Chinese life, their culture developed differently to ours and the development of cameras was never equated with creating or expressing the character of an individual, or exploring aesthetic views of reality. Forms of artistic expression were originally discouraged because the State was the only one allowed to dictate the development of “freedom of thought.” The role of the camera in Chinese society was to objectify, rather than in our capitalist society, where right from when the camera was first invented, individual artistic freedom was encouraged and the role of the camera rapidly developed beyond a simple recording device into a subjective tool for creating art.

So it will be interesting to see how the current social change will affect the development of photography in the new totalitarian countries like the UK, and eventually the US. How will the photographic surveillance change the way we think about cameras, and what will it mean for the future of photography? As Sontag observed, “any social change is replaced by a change in images.” How will the transformation from freedom-loving capitalist society, where our whole culture is based on images and where art is a subjective form of self expression limited only by one's imagination, translate into a totalitarian state, where cameras are seen as tools of the state, whether to protect or oppress, depending on your point of view?

I would argue that society’s view of the camera is starting to change already, as is evident in the new hostility to street photography, which is still legal (so far) but is increasingly viewed with aggression by the general public. As in Orwell’s vision, citizens are starting to turn against each other. Nowadays, people carrying cameras are viewed as suspicious and street photographers are treated as potential pervs. Society considers it perfectly acceptable for the government to use cameras to watch people, but definitely not O.K. for the general public to use cameras for the same purpose. What does this mean for the future of photography, I wonder? And what will happen to us, the photographic art community?

But not to worry, Comrades! Cheer up! No need for sad faces! Our Government has our best interests at heart you know, and it wants to protect you from those fearsome terrorists who are attacking your precious freedom.

And what better way to stop terrorism than to eliminate "freedom" in the first place? Simple, sensible and effective. And coming soon to a town near you.

Think about that the next time you are pigging out on pizza in front of the telly.

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Images are of Ifat