A Tale of the Fluffy Undead

Hurrah! It’s Halloween! Apparently this is a huge event for Americans (I’ve no idea why) but I’m afraid that the UK’s version of Halloween is fairly low-key in comparison. We’d rather pull out all the stops for Guy Fawkes night on 5th November instead. Nothing like a good torching of a famous terrorist to liven up those dull winter nights.

Anyhoo, since it’s supposed to be a spooky week, I thought I’d share a suitably creepy story. Now y’all please remember that I’m no storyteller so please make allowances:

When I was a young lass, I used to live in the south of England in a seventeenth century Grade II listed New Forest townhouse which had a thatched roof, low ceilings and wonky whitewashed walls that were stuffed with straw for insulation purposes. Of course the house was haunted - all the best British houses are, you know.

The resident ghost was a male Quaker, about 5 ft 10 inches in height with big pale eyes and a solemn face. He was stylishly attired in a black suit with a wide brimmed hat, although he displayed a slightly transparent appearance at times. I was six years old when I first saw him. He used to visit me in the middle of the night and stand by the side of my bed, just looking at me. Of course, you had the usual paranormal scenario – the room turned deathly cold and there was a strange damp smell in the air. Alas no ectoplasm though. (I guess we ghostbusters can't have everything.)

The first time I saw Mr Q I was pretty freaked out. I remember calling out to my mother: “Mummy, Mummy, there’s a strange man in my room!”

My mother was unpeturbed. She just called back, “Don’t worry dear! Go back to sleep. He’ll go away soon.”

No she didn’t get out of bed and come check on me. It was no big deal. Mr Q the Ghost was a regular visitor in our house, so much so that he was accepted as normal. After a while I just learned to go back to sleep after his visits. Mind you he only appeared to women, and for quite a while my father and brother thought all the ladies in the house had gone totally wacko. My mother saw him quite often, as did my sister-in-law who was dating my brother at the time. The poor girl was so freaked out that she refused to visit again after a couple of months of nightly visitations. Clearly she didn’t have a very strong constitution.

When I was a bit older I nagged my parents to investigate Mr Q. I figured there must be a reason why he was still around. After researching the history of the house, it turned out that these particular Quakers had buried their dead under the floorboards because that was the done thing in those days. The ghostly Quaker dude in question had lost his wife and daughter to cholera, and we concluded that he only appeared to women because he missed them so much and was looking for them. Poor guy had never recovered from their loss.

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Poor old Mr Q was feeling a bit below par actually

So the answer to your burning questions are: (1) Yes, it’s a true story (2) No I’m not crazy, or rather, I probably AM crazy but at least I’m crazy with a strong constitution, and (3) Yes, I’ve either stayed in or lived in several haunted houses in my lifetime, and thus have many more dubious stories to tell over the next few years. You have been suitably warned.

Happy Halloween!

The Art of Hyprocrisy

“Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo”
Ambrose Bierce

This post is dedicated to lovers of mature cheddar and blatant hypocrisy.

I’ve decided to start lying about my age on MM and other modeling forums. No I’m not suffering from gerontophobia (fear of getting old) and 90% of the time I forget that I’m classified as geriatric in the modelling world now that I’ve turned forty, at least until someone reminds me, which photographers do, rather too often.

“Uh-oh!” you’re now saying. “Someone’s called Lin ‘an old model.’ Run for cover, quick!”

Long term readers will now correctly anticipate the inevitable rant about how incredibly annoyed I get when I am referred to as a “mature” model (What am I? A piece of mouldy cheese?) or when yet another a photographer tells me that “beauty is ageless” (yes I do realise Mr Toggie that you’re trying to be nice but clearly you have an I.Q. equal to your age, because frankly I can’t think of a more condescending thing to say to any woman.)

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Why is it that our industry deems models to be “over the hill” by the time they’re twenty-five? Why does youth and beauty in the photographic world usually equate to the 18-25 age group? And why are the majority of photographers ageist (present readers excepted of course) even though I’m sure they don’t think they are, and I know they’re really just trying to be nice?

Forget the crap you read in magazines. FORTY IS YOUNG. I’m not dead and buried yet – spend too much time in the modeling world and you’ll end up feeling like photographers want to exhume your body every time they ask to shoot you, or worse, they treat you as if you’re only modeling because either a) you’re in the throes of a mid-life crisis yourself, or b) you’re clearly a bit deranged but worthy of study “for the art, you know” but God forbid they pay you for a shoot…just be grateful for what you can get at your age.

Whoa!!! Deep, regular breaths…breathe in, breathe out…calm thoughts, Lin…calm…

Now hang on a minute, perhaps I’m being a wee bit hasty here?

Aren’t I just as guilty of ageism as everyone else? If I'm not remotely ageist then why do I stereotype "older" men as being sexier and more attractive than their younger counterparts? Oh yes I do, you know. Not that I have anything against younger men of course (my hunky young window cleaner bears an uncanny resemblance to John Cusack, and what teenage girl’s knees didn’t wobble precariously after seeing him in Say Anything?) but I’m first-and-foremost attracted to experience, wisdom and silver beards, all of which are primarily found in “mature” cheese-loving individuals of …um…a slightly older persuasion (unless said beards are caused by stress of course…and hello dearest Rich, please do stop tweezering your grey hairs 'cos I really do adore them.)

Older guys are sexier, no doubt about it. Not only do they usually share my rather cynical attitude to life, but they invariably treat me as an equal, not a fossil, they never condescend to tell me I’m “still a pretty young thing,” and they do make me feel like I’ve got a brain rather than a pair of (saggy) breasts. Don’t get me wrong, men in their forties are great, but in the last couple of years I’ve realised that they’re often way too stressed out working or busy having mid-life crises and chasing twenty-year old totty to take much notice of women of their own age.

Older men have done the ego trip thing and come out the other side a better person. They are invariably battle-hardened, don’t take themselves too seriously, and more importantly they know a heck of a lot more about everything, which means I can learn a heck of a lot from them. To me at least, good conversation, wit and wisdom are far sexier than a guy’s firm and rippling young muscles or his mighty schlong.

Am I sounding ageist and offensive yet? Good. Now you know how it feels on MM, every single day.

Maybe I really am getting old, because it seems to me that chemistry between two people isn’t really about physical appearances, it’s about the mind connection. Brains will always be sexier than brawn. Sorry, but it’s true. Real beauty is in the mind, not the body, and because the mind improves with age like a fine wine or that maturing piece of cheese, then I guess that, my friends, is why I’m drawn to men older than myself, and why I am fundamentally as guilty of ageism as the very photographers I criticised in the first place.

I’m very good at the art of hypocrisy though, even if I do say so myself.

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Images are of Syd

Just another grey Sunday afternoon...

C’mon, admit it. With all the doom and gloom around at the moment, with all this talk of “the skies are falling” and nothing to look forward to except bad weather and a long, torturous recession, most folks will be feeling grumpy, miserable and exceedingly depressed. Time to batten down the hatches, quit photography and stay inside, feel sorry for yourself and wish you were dead.

Oh sod that! Here at Fluffytek we have decided to banish the winter blues by celebrating the living!

Specifically The Living Dead!

Yes siree, not only is it Halloween week, it’s also World Zombie Day and all over the world this weekend our undead bruthas and sistas are rising up to moan and shamble in the name of world hunga…

Time to get off yer cute zombie asses and celebrate Global Zombie Love!

It’s at times like this when you realise that it doesn’t matter if or when you die, because you know that YOU WILL LIVE AGAIN!

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Fine Art Zombies

(Credits: Many thanks to my long-suffering sons for the humongous amount of time spent in Make Up.)

Masters of Kokoro

Before photography……there was budō.

Rich and I met 23 years ago in a dojo. We were inseparable from the very first minute I stuck my foot in his groin and flipped him over my head by his balls. I guess he liked my forthright personality and my…er…strong feet.

Anyhoo, we continued our studies of all things violent for many years thereafter, primarily judo and later moving onwards and upwards to karate and then aikido (think Steven Seagal in a very bad mood) and I only stopped ten years ago because I was expressly forbidden from contact sports after my head was carved up (my neurologist opinioned that break-falling on concrete wouldn’t be good for a woman with bits of her skull missing.) There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss it.

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Clayre McKinnen

Martial arts are much more than fighting, hence the word budō which describes the Japanese philosophy and way of life. Aikido in particular encompasses not only physical but also spiritual and moral dimensions with a focus on self-improvement and personal enlightenment. It’s not all about beating the crap out of big scary guys, you know (although that certainly has its fun moments.)

In many ways Japanese martial arts are not so different from fine art nude photography. Many of the Japanese principles and philosophies overlap and permeate our own arty world. For example much of martial arts involves learning different poses. Putting ones body into a particular position or stance is thought to both discipline the mind and be a very good preparation of what is to follow. In many ways this is similar to fine art figure modeling where models often have to hold a pose for an extended length of time and remain absolutely still for as long as necessary. I don’t know about others, but when I pose I automatically fall into a state of calm mental focus, my mind is quiet, I am immersed in the moment and I am aware only of myself and the instructions of the photographer. It’s exactly the same as when I was in the dojo all those years ago.

Our training also explains why Rich is drawn to fine art nude photography, because that is the way he thinks. He has done martial arts all his life which means that his outlook on life is very calm and disciplined, and so his photography reflects the Japanese emphasis on form, on seeing the self from the outside. The studio in many ways is similar to the dojo, simple, unadorned, without distraction, so that the only focus is on the subject. The model poses are a form of kata, moving purposely, slowly, with focus and self-awareness, not unlike a kind of ritual. Pure precision, grace and mental readiness are emphasized. The whole message is not about the passions and emotions of an individual (portrait-style), it is on that single moment of mental quietness which is found within martial arts, not dissimilar to Zen Buddism which concentrates on the enlightened moment achieved when the intellect is emptied.

Now perhaps you see why Rich photographs the way he does? This is who he is and how he thinks. His creative vision will always strongly mirror his lifetime of being trained in the psychology of Kokoro-gamae. In Japanese "Kokoro" has a diffuse but beautiful meaning which can be translated as "heart," "spirit," "soul" or “mind.” In martial arts, Kokoro-gamae is therefore the posture of the heart and mind. It is “the intention and resolve produced by the heart, processed by the mind, and revealed in one's appearance, behavior, speech, and action.” It defines who we are.

IMO, kokoro is one of the most important principles in photography. The Masters of Photography might not have known what it was called, but they knew instinctively how to use it and how important it was.

To most of you reading this, photography is not about snapping pictures. It is our way of life. A truly successful photograph speaks not just from capturing a moment in time, but also from capturing the heart. Only if the photographer reflects what is within him, how he thinks, understands and feels, can the photograph be truly successful. As with kokoro, the heart and mind must be as one. When photography is truly at its best, it touches the soul, because it comes from the soul.

May we all be Masters of Kokoro one day.

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Roswell Ivory

On the importance of sensor cleaning

When I turned on the news this morning, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world was one again ending. Global markets and house prices were falling faster than a meteor, unemployment and public spending were rising just as quickly in the opposite direction, and clearly it’s the end of civilisation as we know it.

*Sigh*

I packaged up my daughter and drove her to school.

It was an utterly absolutely fabulous morning. Blue skies, crisp autumnal air, falling leaves everywhere. Simply beautiful. Suddenly all the doom and gloom seemed utterly irrelevant. The air seemed crisper, clearer and everything seemed so different. It was like a change in the wind, and I could smell it as tangibly as if it were clearly visible in front of me. It felt like I’d suddenly side-stepped into a parallel universe where everything seemed the same, but I knew it wasn’t. Reality just seemed different (then again, it could be my tumour slooshing around, who knows?)

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Of course the bloggie commenters in my last post were right. Photographers are generally wiser than the rest of us. Those who spend a lifetime observing others tend to have better perspective than ordinary mortals. Who needs psychotherapy when you’ve got a camera, huh?

Despite my previous doom-fest about money (which is what I’m trained to do, after all), my non-official opinion is that money is pretty meaningless. Bet you’d never thought you’d hear an accountant say that, eh? But it’s true. To me, money is just another form of energy which flows around in endless circles. The way we choose to make, spend and invest this energy is a direct reflection of who we are and how we think about life.

Most of the folks reading this are photographic creatives in some shape or form: photographers, models, writers, artists, and so forth. This generally means that unless you’re a money-focussed marketing guru like Damien Hirst, you will probably hold the opinion that photography and art largely stand outside the financial and political world. Creativity offers escape from the falling skies by losing the artist in his own imagination, thereby offering the key to a highly effective strategy for coping with the worldly crap going on around us. Spending your energies by practising your art not only affirms who you are as a person and how you want to live your life, but it also offers the best possible therapy for all your woes. With every click of the shutter you give meaning to all this craziness, you rise above the small stuff and affirm belief in the beauty of the world.

(Caution: Dodgy photographic metaphor alert! All sensible, intelligent, sane readers please abandon ship and come back tomorrow.)

When you spend every waking moment immersed in the photographic universe, all your energies are spent crafting the Big Picture, the one lifetime shot that defines you as a person. As with all photographs though, the problem is that the Big Picture often doesn’t turn out as well as the image you originally visualised in your head, perhaps because of lack of knowledge but mostly because of external influences that have compromised your vision.

Recessions, politics and even who wins the next election are all just background noise in your photograph. Noise, dirt and dust are facts of life in photography. They are always there, distorting the overall clarity of the image. How well you minimise those distortions depends on the type and quality of your imaging sensor, as well as how well you keep it clean. Novice photographers are usually nervous about cleaning their camera's sensor. Yet it’s not as hard as you imagine, especially if you have an inbuilt self cleaning sensor unit which does it automatically for you.

Alas I don’t have the ability to self-clean yet, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, I’m focussing on my big picture by spending all my energies as wisely as possible.

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Althaia

(Yeah, I really do write some total tosh you know. It’s a constant wonder to me that anyone reads it. Still, one woman’s lunacy is another man’s wisdom I guess. Or not, as the case may be.)

Profit from Passion?

"A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all."
Quark, Deep Space Nine, 1997.

Rich has officially given up the idea of ever making any decent money out of nude photography. And by “decent” I mean at least breaking even. With the onset of a major recession, few collectors will have the spare cash to buy prints, and the private portfolio market has dried up too. Yes he still continues to be published here and there but he doesn’t get paid for it. Of course being featured elsewhere on the net or in varying printed works is always a nice ego boost but it usually doesn’t result in financial recompense.

Magazines, blogs and web sites are invariably working on a negative budget so however much they’d like to, there’s no way they can pay the original artist. Indeed if those talented original artists did demand a significant payment then they’d never be published at all. Nowadays there are so many other digital photographers who are dying to show their work for free just for the kudos factor, why do magazines need to pay when it’s easier to pander to the millions of free wannabes out there?

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In the modern digital age, being published is more about ego stroking than money. However mere kudos doesn’t feed your family. Those who are full-time photographic artists will find it nigh on impossible to make any money out of shooting nudes. This is not because they’re bad photographers, far from it, but I would argue that the freelance nude photography market is now pretty much dead, if indeed it was ever alive to start with. Thanks to cheap digital technology, so many folks now do it that the market is saturated, and unfortunately there is only a limited market for selling pictures of naked women to both the general public and to magazines.

If you want to make money from your work then the main thing to ask yourself is “If I were a mainstream magazine editor or gallery owner, would I publish or exhibit these pictures?” If you’re totally honest with yourself, then the answer would mostly be no. Nudes have limited saleability because they usually don’t fit into the editorial policy of various magazines, and most galleries avoid exhibiting nudes because in this overly moralistic modern age, the public often object. Regarding private collectors, the sale possibilities are significantly reduced because it’s difficult to hang nude photos on your wall without the wife getting pretty pissed, oh and BTW, did I mention the recession? As for photographic grants from arts agencies and the like, forget it. You’ll never get sponsorship for shooting nekkid chix. You’re a social outcast for heaven’s sake.

IMHO, no matter how good your photography is, if you primarily shoot nudes as your main discipline, you are highly unlikely to ever make it as a world class master of any type of photography because your reputation will have been permanently tarnished. Yes, I realise that this is a highly controversial thing to say, but the art world is not what it once was. Cheap modern technology and the internet have seen to that, not to mention the new wave of politically correct morality that appears to be sweeping the western world. Would the photographic greats (e.g. Newton, Mapplethorpe, Weston) have achieved fortune and glory nowadays? I seriously doubt it. No matter how good a photographer is, no matter how unique his style (and make no mistake there are those on our blog roll on the right there who are very, very good) then the only chance they would have of “making it” is to abandon the controversial naked stuff, delete it from their ports, and shoot pure fashion and portraits instead, and even then it’s doubtful if they could pay the bills unless they have humungous budgets to support their shoots. Would Mert and Marcus be so successful if they primarily shot nudes? (Yes I know they do feature nude work, but that’s only because they are now so worshipped in the advertising industry and fashion world that they have a certain latitude to experiment with nekkid celebs, who are bound to sell magazines precisely because they’re famous.)

I guess what I’m saying is that a successful career in art isn’t about raw talent or passion. It’s about who you know, how well you network your contacts, whether or not you obsess about selling yourself (forget your work, I’m sure it’s excellent, but really you need to be Mr Schmooze or you stand no hope) and whether or not you are prepared to do what you need to do in order to achieve both photographic glory and most importantly, MONEY.

There is no merit in starving to death or not having enough dosh to pay your bills or buy more paper to print your pictures. You may only want to concentrate on photographing nudes but you can’t let this one style govern your work exclusively unless you’re a dilettante and make your main living elsewhere. It’s all very well if nude photography is your life’s guiding force (join the other millions of digital photographers out there) but nude art photography has now become so commonplace and so associated with tacky porn that its reputation has been seriously degraded. Even if you are as good as Newton (and frankly, many of you are) you are unlikely to find your work supports you financially in this modern internet age. So unless you are prepared to shoot to order, be friends with the right people and produce the type of images that your buddy clients want to purchase (even if that means moving genres) then frankly my dear, you’re not worth a damn.

Passion for nudes doesn’t pay. Adapt or starve. It’s your choice.

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Images are of Pirate Maiden

Seagulls, Sand, Sex, and Surveillance

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment...it was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.”
George Orwell, 1984

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A British couple were jailed in Dubai yesterday for having sex on a beach after an all-you-can-drink champagne brunch. Not quite the done thing to do in public when living in a strict Muslim country, methinks.

In complete contrast, a UK Police Review report "Guidance on Policing Public Sex Environments" published new guidelines this week recommending that the police turn a blind eye to couples having sex in public. Considering there are copious numbers of CCTV cameras on pretty much every cliff top and beach in the UK, I now have a vivid vision of the police officer at the station regularly drooling over his nightly dose of beach-porn videos on the surveillance cameras whilst sipping on a nice, steaming cuppa Tetley tea.

“Calling Constable Smith…Come in? Report. Report. How’s the surveillance shift tonight Winston?”

“Good to hear from you Superintendent O’Brien! It’s pretty quiet here Sir. Nowt to see apart from camera twelve. Justa couple of birds on the beach...”

“Birds? Well, I’m glad they’re proving stimulating, Constable. I know the nightshift can be a rather dull affair.”

“Cor, woooweee, Super! Looky at that 'un …I didn’t know they could do it as fast as that. Lordy that’ll make a heckuva mess in a minute.”

“Is a seagull fouling the lens, Constable?”

“Nah, Super, but I can report it’s really hammerin’ away down there … blimey it’s a speedy bugger, an’ such flexibility too, I didn’t think it was capable of such maneuvers…I wonder how it does that? Maybe I should go look-see.”

“Is it really worth investigating further Constable? After all, it’s only a bird. What interest can it possibly be?”

“Yeah Boss, but you should see its chest…I’ve never seen one that big. It’s just not normal.”

“Speckled or grey, Constable?”

“Difficult to tell from this angle, guvnor, although I can see a nice flush on its breast…”

“I didn’t know you were such an ornithologist, Constable?”

“Ah, funny you should mention that Super, it’s a new hobby I’ve taken up just this week. It’s bloody amazin’ what you can see on all these little cameras. Ya learn somethin’ new every day in this job. A new growth experience for me, Boss. In fact it’s very useful practical trainin’, if ya know what I mean?”

“Good, Winston, very good. I’m very glad to hear you’re finding your job satisfying.”

“Oh yeah Boss! I can vouch I’m totally, utterly satisfied. In fact I reckon all officers would benefit from this sorta on-the-job learnin’…”

“An innovating new training regime you mean? Gosh yes, Constable. What a jolly spiffing idea! Let’s mention it at tomorrow’s Ingsoc Divisional meeting. Make it so! A full report on my desk by 9 a.m. please. Do make it detailed, won’t you?”

“I’ll make it truly graphic, Boss, I promise…”

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I last had sex on Bournemouth beach in 1984 (oh the irony!) It was 1.30 a.m. on a warm moonlit night after a rowdy beach party. There were big, foamy white waves and no cameras. It took weeks to get the sand out. Those were the days, eh?

Damn, I feel old.

St Gordon, The Prince Of Darkness And The Cycle of Doom

Yes I know I said I wouldn’t blog about economics again, but I swear I was asked to. But it’s the very last time. No I really mean it. Honest, guv.

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I’m sitting here on the sofa, covered by a mountain of financial articles and my laptop. I am furious. That NY Times article on Gordon Brown by Paul Krugman really got to me, and I can guarantee that I’m not alone in my opinion.

This is Week One of The Brave New World. How are we all feeling? Happy? Relieved? Now that all the countries followed St Gordon’s lead, our banks have been nationalised, the world has been saved from certain destruction, and we can all just forget about the last ghastly year and go back to our nice, comfy little happy place of borrowing and spending and buying houses. All hail Mr Brown! Such swift determined action! Such incredible leadership! Surely he deserves a medal.

The very same Gordon Brown was nearly ousted as Prime Minster last month for being a dithering, weak leader. He narrowly avoided being kicked out by his own cabinet, and it seemed certain that his career was over. The financial debacle followed a year of continuous poor judgement on practically everything: whether to hold a general election, changing fiscal rules to suit his own statistics, stealing policies from other political parties and claiming them as his own (he does this constantly) and failure to help the British people in times of dire need and natural disaster. He has been hailed as the worst PM the UK has had. Ever. When dear Gordon was Chancellor of the Exchequer he borrowed and spent so much that the national debt accelerated to over £1.35 trillion, and through his love of debt, he encouraged ordinary people to do the same. Borrow and spend! Support your national economy! Gordon was adopting the same philosophy as Greenspan, only worse. The British racked up so much debt on credit cards and loans that the total borrowed exceeded the entire value of the economy. Up until recently the economic situation had become so bad and the public hated Gordon so much that he was pretty much finished.

So what happened? Considering St Gordon nearly lost his job a month ago, that’s one heck of a turnaround. The truth is that Gordon may be a weak leader, but he’s a great schemer. In essence he is Machiavelli, a devious political plotter. The lightening fast image change has been largely due to one man: Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s best friend and the arch-enemy of Gordon Brown. Nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness” in the UK, the EU trade commissioner was twice forced to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet under scandalous circumstances, and the fallout was so severe that less than two months ago Mandelson was heard to drip venom from every pore when speaking about his nemesis. Despite their differences, Gordon was clever enough and desperate enough to realize that he was in dire need of a quick solution to the banking collapse, and he decided to end the feud with his enemy and rehire him. The price? £1m and a peerage. Genius doesn’t come cheap nowadays.

The new Lord Mandelson has unrivalled experience in global trade, incredible contacts and is well known as someone who gets things done fast. His reputation is well deserved because he’s certainly reinvented Gordon as the consummate leader in less than three weeks. Now that’s fast work! IMO, Gordon owes his nemesis a heck of a lot more than £1m.

So is the financial crisis now at an end? In one sense, yes. St Gordon will no longer let banks go bust, so the banking crisis is pretty much over I think. But for the rest of us ordinary mortals, the price of everything continues to rise, our taxes are widely predicted to increase (gotta pay for those banks somehow) and we are already in recession. Contrary to popular belief, those of our banks which were nationalized earlier this year have not relaxed their lending criteria as they were told to, there are still less mortgages available than ever, and food, fuel and energy costs continue to rise exponentially. Think more debt, more interest, more repayments and more companies going bust. And this is just the beginning.

If the markets had been allowed to do their job and simply crash then everyone would have saved more, spent less and slowly paid off their debts. The markets would then have stagnated for a while and reset themselves, and living standards would have adjusted to a new lower level. Capitalism would have continued as normal.

However this won’t happen now. Because the normal rules of the markets have been blocked, investing will now be increasingly difficult and it is unclear what will happen to the normal market cycle. By meddling with the markets, by succumbing to a fear of another depression and hiking up our national debts, all St Gordon has done is perpetuate the very same problems that caused the crisis in the first place. There is now simply too much debt, and no matter how much new money is printed and injected into the economy, all that will happen is that the debt pile will be devalued in real terms as the economy grows through inflation.

Ultimately this bold new rescue plan will only make matters much worse. In the UK, the latest £37 billion part nationalisation of the leading banks will push public sector debt above 100 per cent of GDP for the first time in half a century. Inflation rose to 5.2% today.

Britain is not saving the world. It is ruining it.

May our children’s children forgive us.

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Images are of Iveta. She's a lot better looking than Gordon. (You can trust me on this.)

The Language Of Grey

“The photographer's palette is a thousand shades of gray.”
H.E. Clark

My oldest son is learning basic photography at senior school. He’s being taught to experiment with both colour and black and white. So far he doesn’t like his colour photos much. “Colour,” he said, “just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t matter if I draw something or photograph it, the result is the same. Pictures are simpler, more beautiful in black and white.”

Weird huh? Now that I think about it, he’s probably right, but up until now, I must admit I’d always thought the exact opposite. I’d always associated beauty first and foremost with colour. Think about the millions of photos out there of beautiful sunsets or fantastic mountain scenes. Our brains’ perceptions of colour come with a hard-wired set of emotional responses. Green, for example is associated with lush nature and evokes a calming response, blue evokes a feeling of coolness and space, orange means warmth. But what emotion is associated with grey? In a black and white image there is no such pre-programmed psychological response. It’s more like a documentary where you, the viewer, looks in on the depicted mountain scene from the outside. You recognise the B+W photograph as an art-piece, a representation. Now contrast this with the same mountain photograph in colour, and you will suddenly see it very differently. Your brain will bring the scene alive in your mind and your imagination will instantly transport you to that mountain, you will feel the beautiful blue of the sky and the green grass surround you as if you were really there. So unlike a vibrant colour photograph, a B+W image creates a very definite psychological distance between the viewer and the image.

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But is a B+W photograph simpler? Hmm. Yes…and no. A B+W image is simple and sophisticated at the same time. You have to study it, work at it in order to feel a reaction. There’s no instant automatic response of “ooh, that’s a pretty sunset!” Instead you have to think about the inner message within the image. There’s certainly a huge amount of mood and emotion to be had within the B+W image, but you have to engage your intellect before you feel it. You have to first understand and interpret all the different nuances that make up the hundreds of shades of grey.

Black and white photographs are subtler, more elegant, more alluring, they are an intelligent conversation rather than instant gratification. In the current digital age with millions of colour photos everywhere you look, they stand out easily in a sea of colour images. They ooze class, style, and evoke a sense of timelessness. They look older (even though they might have been taken only an hour ago) because early photography was exclusively B+W so there is an association with endurance and agelessness. Plus there’s also the element of permanence. B+W photos are thought to last longer before fading. O.K. with modern photographic technology that’s no longer true but photographers think they do, so they have a more lasting feel to them.

Many modern photographers argue that precisely because B+W photographs are designed to look old, they are therefore outdated, obsolete, even trite. Fine art photographers are often accused of wallowing in nostalgia, even faking their work to appear artistic simply because it is in B+W. “It’s easy to produce an arty photo of beauty,” the critics sneer. “Just snap a gorgeous woman and convert it to B+W, and hey presto, you have instant art!”

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Lady Lynx

However, for all this perceived simplicity, I would argue that good B+W photographs are actually harder to produce. How do you communicate the message of your image by using grey? Which emotion fits which part of the tonal range? You can’t just snap away blindly, hoping for the best. It takes skill and forethought to communicate in the language of grey. You’re not just recording a scene “as is.” You’re creating a mood, an ambience, a style. In that split second before you press the shutter, you have to imagine what an image is going to look like finished and printed, so as to judge how to use the light as a tool to capture that perfect shade of grey and thus capture the precise emotion you were looking for.

Yikes! Sounds complicated? That’s because it is. As a B+W photographer you have to be a highly talented clairvoyant. You have to see the future before it happens, which takes an immense amount of skill and forethought. When done successfully, the results can evoke a very powerful emotional reaction, and IMO that’s what makes B+W photography such an incredible artistic medium.

Am I making any sense here?

Well obviously not, because after reading this my son rolled his eyes and gave me one of his “Mother’s off on one of her arty-farty-ramblings again” looks.

“O.K. Smarty-pants,” I snapped. “Why do you prefer B+W over colour then?”

“Maybe I’ve just been living with you too long,” he replied tartly.

Is it me, or are teenagers getting bolshier nowadays?

Play Misty For Me

I had my first ever experience with writer’s block this weekend. A terrible affliction, not unlike being constipated. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write anything, the words just got stuck.

Bearing in mind the crappy week we’ve had in the financial world, I desperately wanted to write something humorous, uplifting, something to warm the cockles of pickled bloggie hearts (and doesn’t that conjure up a lovely warm ‘n’ fuzzy image on this fine Sunday morning?) But no. The blank Word doc stared back at me. I had nothing. My brain was as dry as last week’s beef roast.

So what do you do if your inspiration has left the building?
Why, you do anything you can think of to get your creative juices flowing again. Whatever it takes: reading the Financial Times (actually that’s probably the most depressing thing I can thing of at the moment, so scrap that idea) coffee, baking cakes, cats (no, not baked…I like 'em fresh ‘n’ furry) or maybe even playing blues guitar (exceedingly badly) in the fog whilst the autumn leaves fall around you…weird therapy, but it works. I like fog.

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Pretty garden, huh?

And yeah, I kept my clothes on for a change. Bummer, eh? Don’t worry, it won’t last. Probably.

The Charity Essay

A couple of days ago I was invited to a yummy mummy (YM) coffee morning. As per usual, most of the talk was about dinner parties and the latest volunteer work that the mothers were undertaking. Most of the YM’s in our social circle either work part time or are stay-at-home mothers, and they dedicate huge chunks of their time to voluntary projects such as save the local woodland, save the otter, art for trees and so forth (no I’m not kidding about any of those.)

“What do you do?” I was asked by the head charity YM henchwoman who was dressed head-to-toe in gold chains and Burberry, and who is always terribly busy dedicating all of her “free time” to “worthy causes.”

“I work,” I replied.

“Oh not that sort of work. Other work, I mean. Who do you support?”

“Myself and my family,” I retorted. “If someone comes to our door collecting for charity then I don’t donate.” You could have heard a pin drop. Guess that’s the last invitation I get to a coffee morning for a while.

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I don’t know about in America, but over here in our horribly middle-class social circle, it is de rigeur to boast about how many worthy causes you support. You are supposed to do school fundraisers, church fundraisers, local community fundraisers and anything else that’s deemed a good cause because it is your moral obligation to do so. You’re not part of “the in-crowd” unless you’re ignoring your family and spending serious amounts of time saving the local otter instead. It’s literally a competition to see who can give most, both in terms of time and money.

Unfortunately this hive of supposed generosity is all about personal egos and social pecking orders and much less to do with the individual causes concerned. Most people donate to charity in order to feel good about themselves, to “give something back” in return for having a comfortable standard of living, to appear selfless in their own minds and especially in the eyes of others. A British bishop once confessed that he worried when a volunteer or charitable donor appeared utterly selfless: “Unless I can identify that they are getting back something in return” he said, “be that status, recognition, inner peace or whatever, then I know they won’t be staying for long. Human beings simply must have a payback.”

But is it right that you should pay a monetary debt for leading a privileged life? Is giving to charity critical to a libertarian’s moral principles? I agree that it’s wrong to be greedy, and yes indeedy if no-one gave to charities then millions would starve, but I fundamentally object to being emotionally blackmailed to donate (be it time or money) because charity organisers choose to play on the very human characteristics of guilt and altruism.

Charitable giving results in a form of what economists call “rent exhaustion”: the more you give, the harder they try. However much you give to these people – it’s never enough. There will always be a need for more, more, more. If someone knocked on your door today collecting for Christian Aid, then you would probably find $5 to give them simply because you don't want them to think badly of you. Similarly, instead of watching TV tonight, you could also be out fundraising, saving your local forest, collecting door-to-door yourself and making other people feel guilty about parting with their non-existent money to assuage their guilt. There is always an opportunity to make more money instead of spending time with your family. But you don't, and it’s right that you don’t. You know that your family would rather have you at home, and that you need that extra $5 right now because you have bills to pay.

If capitalism is the best way for society to flourish, why is charity necessary? At what point does you giving $5 more for starving people in third world countries become equivalent to government donations? When you and a friend make it $10, or when you and 280 million people you’ve never met make it $5 billion? Surely it makes more sense to lobby your governments and force them to donate instead, as they should be doing in the first place? Why does society have to rely on the global personal blackmail machine in order to save lives? Why should we use guilt as a weapon to beg struggling middle-class families for money? Shouldn’t it be a personal choice as to whether you decide to donate or not? And even if you assume that each person has a moral obligation to give something back to the poor and needy, then shouldn’t it be up to the individual to decide if, how or when he donates? Why should charity be all about feeding egos not feeding the millions who need it?

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By now you’ll all be shocked out of your chairs and be thinking that I’m a horrible greedy, selfish person. Just to reassure you, that’s not actually true.

There is a way to give back without emotional blackmail, there is a way to help others who really need it.

Recognise the emotional manipulation which is going on here and actively choose to opt out. If you are going to give, then pick the poor people who are expecting it least. Pick a favourite charity and donate to it, but do it quietly. There’s no need to tell anyone, and if you just can’t afford it, then do not under any circumstances feel bad that you can’t. Your family is the most important donation you can make (in both time and money) and let’s not forget that charity starts at home. As for volunteering, if you have a cause you love then by all means go for it, but don’t do it just to prove you’re more noble than your peers. It’s not about you or what others think, it’s about less fortunate people who are genuinely in need of your help.

We’ve been approached by door-step charity collectors hundreds of times. We always decline to donate. They frown, they usually get annoyed but very occasionally some of them take the time to ask us why? We quietly explain that we do donate when we can through our day-job business and that we simply can’t afford to donate any more. They always shake our hands and leave with a smile.

It’s not about ego.

Your deeds are as tall as you are.

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All images are of Ifat.

Boom, Bust and The Seven Cows

Various friends have written to me regarding the recent financial turbulence and have asked me for my view on what I think will happen. Well, sorry guys, I’m no prophet. No-one can see the future.

Right?

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, "In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows came up—scrawny and very ugly and lean. I had never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt. The lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came up first. But even after they ate them, no one could tell that they had done so; they looked just as ugly as before. Then I woke up."

Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, "The dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years; it is one and the same dream. The seven lean, ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind: They are seven years of famine."

Genesis 41 - Pharaoh's Dreams

Previous empirical analyses of U.S. stock index prices show overwhelming evidence of a seven-year wave in the stock market that is part of the overall economic cycle. This cycle is synchronized with the widely known Kondratiev wave that is thought to be fifty to sixty years in duration. The economic cycle runs through four main stages on about a seven year cycle. It goes boom, bust, stagnant, recovery and then repeats ad infinitum.

The economy last hit rock bottom in November 2001. Despite the amazing global economic expansion since then, seven years later (give or take a month or so) here we are again.

According to the economic theorists, this would now put the recovery at around 2015, which by sheer coincidence (?) is what Suze Orman (whom Stephen called the “seer of seers”) predicted in an unguarded moment.

Seven good cows, seven bad.

Who says the Bible can’t predict the future, eh?

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Amy

And that’s the last I’m saying about money matters for a while. Many of you will no doubt be relieved to hear it.

(BTW, in case anyone is wondering, no I'm not religious.)

The Secret

This one’s for Chris.

You all know Monsieur St. James of course. The author of the leading blog Univers d’Artistes, he is at the centre of our nude photographic community and inspires us on a daily basis with his tireless dedication to showing us the very best that the nude photographic world has to offer. By sharing with us fantastic interviews, articles and most importantly the work of different photographic artists, Chris has created something unique and wonderful. But the real reason I’m mentioning him here is because he is probably one of the wisest men you’ll ever come across. Why? Because he has realised something which not many folks figure out: just how effective art can be as a healing tool.

A recent study at the Università degli Studi di Bari in Italy showed that when a group of people were asked to contemplate a series of paintings, their pain was found to be a third less intense when they were looking at beautiful artistic imagery. This has actually been known in the UK for some time. In another study by Dr Lee Elliot Major, research director at the Sutton Trust, it was demonstrated that paintings in hospitals really do help patients, both in terms of longevity and recovery times. I guess we are lucky here in the UK that our National Health Service thought that this research was important enough to actually do something about it as part of its national healthcare policy.



When I visited St Bart’s Hospital in London earlier this year, I noticed William Hogarth’s painting Pool of Bethesda (above) still hanging on the grand staircase, and even my local hospital (a shining beacon in free local healthcare) has a whole section of the hospital dedicated to the best and the brightest in the art world. As well as having its own art gallery, the entire corridor (which runs the entire length of the hospital and is nearly half a mile end to end) is covered in beautiful paintings donated by both talented patients and well known artists. Like many others, I have spent hours there drinking in the fantastic art (O.K. I admit the coffee there is pretty good too!)

Such exhibitions never fail to lift patients, to inspire them, to give them hope. The opportunity to enjoy something creative offers not only a distraction from physical discomforts and endless medical procedures, but it also gives focus and the invitation to participate in something more fundamental, more important than these crappy bodies we are trapped in. Through studying art, patients get to engage in something outside themselves, something more spiritual, and through this participation, so begins the healing process. The body may remain broken and in pain, but the mind, the soul, is growing, expanding in the presence of beauty, reaching for the eternal.

When my body is giving me hell, when I’m feeling pretty darn awful, what do I do? I go look at the finest that the photographic art world has to offer, and that would of course be the work of all you photographers reading this. If I appear to be getting overly sentimental, then do excuse me. Maybe the healing power of art is something you have to experience on a personal level before you realise its potential. But Chris and I, and thousands more like us, we know The Secret:

Art heals the spirit, which in turn heals the body.

And that makes you, the photographers and artists out there reading this, more valuable to us than you could ever know.

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Ivory Flame

A week in the life of…

This week has been fairly typical.

In no particular order we’ve had:

1. A model digitally alter and publish one of Rich’s (kick ass) photos of her, despite knowing she was breaking the terms of her modelling agreement, despite being expressly forbidden to modify the photograph and after she had asked Rich never to publish it (and no, he still hasn’t.)

2. Rich was called a GWC by a second model who was asking for a shoot, plus I was called a perv who liked her husband to spend time feeling up other women, all because I politely pointed out that it is our policy not to let models’ photographer-boyfriends act as chaperones (largely because they invariably rip off Rich’s work, although I didn’t say that.) The photographer-boyfriend then proceeded to spam us, constantly asking for bookings with lurid descriptions of how his girlfriend played with herself. Did he think that insulting us would somehow result in us gagging for a shoot with his girlfriend? What kind of gentleman makes his living by selling his lady in that way? The mind boggles.

3. After putting up a fairly innocent picture of myself blogging nude a week or so ago, I have been asked how many times a week I have sex with my husband, asked to describe in detail varying intimate parts of my anatomy, two photographers have sent me explicit photographs of themselves naked, and one photographer has tried to trace where I live and where my kids go to school.

And do you know what?

THIS IS A NORMAL WEEK.

At what point did we accept this as typical behaviour? At what point did we learn to accept this at all?

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The utterly fabulous Alexis Summers

Lastly, despite not putting our real surnames anywhere on this web site but thanks to Google’s sooper-dooper new search algorithms which detail everything about you including your inside leg measurement, this blog has now been discovered by some of our day-job resellers. I’m now getting lots of flirty emails with kisses attached. Not quite the marketing tactic I had in mind, but hey, times are hard and we must take what publicity we can get. I’ve decided I don’t particularly care as long as they keep buying our software.

*****Welcome, day-job resellers!*****

We love you! Please visit more often! Pretty please? I promise to put my photos back up?!!! (Actually thinking about it, maybe sales will increase if I delete them all. Whatever works, you know?)