Fluffytek Art Blog

All Good Things

2010-03-08T08:26:00.012Z

Remember a few weeks back when I reported that Blogger was no longer going to support FTP, and that we would have to either switch the blog to a new format or else stop blogging altogether? Well, after spending a long time chewing (and chewing again) over our options, we’ve reluctantly decided to face reality and close this blog.

I know many of you are going to be upset by this decision (and so am I, believe me) but I’m afraid that it has to happen for many reasons, most of which boil down to the fact that the filmmaking side of things is growing steadily. This is all good of course, but the reality is that we will be working in schools soon and so the risk of others (including the authorities) discovering our Fluffy identities is now starting to outweigh the immense pleasure we get from posting here. Let’s face it folks, I can’t really be a children’s film producer when I’m writing about nude art and plastering myself nekkid all over the internet. The two are somewhat mutually exclusive! Yes I could possibly turn this into a private “restricted” blog – but Rich has very sensibly reminded me that he can’t go back to nude photography any time soon, and that we can’t recycle the old photos forever. How can I run a nude photography blog without nude photos?! Time for me to get real!

Now before everyone thinks that I'm quitting the nude bloggie world, please let me remind you that I’ll still be reading and commenting on all your usual photographic art blogs, so you definitely haven’t seen the last of me! This is a great community of artists and I’m not intending to leave it, even if I can only participate by writing long waffly comments on other folks’ blogs (don’t say I didn’t warn you!) As my workload allows, I’m also toying with the idea of writing more, um...pot-stirring stuff elsewhere. Let’s face it folks, I do love a good argument and as we all know, I can’t stay away from blogging for long, otherwise I get really cranky. So if and when Rich sets me up a shiny new blog (probably after a change in our Government) then I will let everyone know by email, I promise.

We have been blogging on Fluffytek for four years now, and I can honestly say that these have been some of the best years of our lives. We have made some fantastic life-long friends and learned a great deal, not only about photography and art, but also about the nature of friendship and loyalty. And that is all because of you, our close-knit little community, which has welcomed us, fought for us and looked after us for so long. A heartfelt “thank you” to each and every one of you. We love you folks!

PirateMaiden 568

Pirate Maiden

Listening to the Voices

2010-03-04T11:07:00.020Z

After four years on here, I’m of the opinion that most folks know me pretty well. However, just for fun, I thought I would add some useless trivia about myself for those few who might be interested. So here are six things you never knew about me and probably never wanted to...

1) My favourite novel of all time is Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. (Lord of the Rings is pretty cool too.)

2) My favourite movie is The Thomas Crown Affair (the remake.) Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) is my icon – the woman I wish I could be. In fact, I reckon I’m most of the way there already *cough* I just need her clothes budget. (Aside: If anyone knows the recipe for the green gloop she drinks for breakfast every day, please can they send it to me, ‘ cos I’ve been searching for it for years....thank you SO much....)

3) Best photography movie: Guinevere (thanks to Stephen for recommending this one.) If you haven’t watched it, then make sure you do one day. Although it's not a fantastically made movie (and the ending is cringeworthy) it will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about around 75% of nude photographers (the other 25% are the ones I’m still talking to.) Honestly, I couldn’t add anything else – it’s all in here – a full photographer’s psychoanalysis in a film. Not an entirely pretty snapshot, but more accurate and insightful than most non-photographic people will ever know. Yes it really IS like that – in my experience anyway (and you can interpret that however you want.)

4) I have three rescue cats: Princess Sophie and two kittens called Leo and Custard. Although I’m a veteran at cat ownership, the kittens were certainly a bit of a challenge, even for me. They were feral and had been beaten and shut in a shed with no lighting and a dog that attacked them. As a result they were terrified of humans and attacked anyone who went near them. No-one else could cope with them so...over to us to try and sort them out. (We specialise in hissing, spitting, unwanted cats.) It took four months of patience, bribery and unrelenting gentleness before they started to trust us enough to come near us. They are curled up on my lap as I type this. In fact, it’s a miracle I can reach the keyboard at all, I have so many cats on me. Success!

5) Real food is incredibly important to me. Some of you know this already of course, but few realise just how fanatical I am about it. The hardest thing in the world for me to do is to keep my mouth shut when friends complain to me about their maladies that could be greatly improved (or better) by simply changing what they shove in their mouths. I just don’t understand why people eat processed food, I really don’t. I try not to talk about it anymore to anyone because I always wind up being really offensive. Always. It’s not a good trait, I’m afraid.

6) I am a crap photographer. No matter how hard I try (oh, for over twenty years now) I still suck. I can study photographic theory until I’m blue in the face, but we all know that taking a really “good” photograph involves a lot more than theory. You knew about my lack of photographic ability already. I’ve never made a secret of it.

However, what you might not know is that I have aspired to be an artist (the painting kind, not the writing kind), oh, since forever. Once upon a time (in my teens) I wasn’t bad at it either. In fact I was a straight A art student, but my parents forced me to stop studying it “and learn something useful instead, something that will make decent money.” (Hence my career in law/accountancy and my preoccupation with $$$, I’m guessing. Parents, eh? Don’t-cha just love ‘em?!)

Well enough already. For nearly thirty years now, there has been a tiny voice at the back of my mind, nagging me to stop looking at pretty pictures and get off my fat, insecure ass and make some real ones myself. I was the mistress of prevarication, always finding excuse after excuse. Frankly, I never thought I was good enough. But the voice in my head has become louder and louder until recently it started to REALLY YELL at me that I was running out of time and I’d better bloody well get on with it. So finally, finally, I’m going to listen to the tiny voice and actually try. Now, I don’t aspire to be really good. “Passable” would be just dandy. Really I’m just trying it “to see if I can.” This is a new hobby for me, a new adventure. So wish me luck - and before you ask, I'm far too shy to ever show my efforts here. But here's my blubbery ass instead:

Smiling is Not Art

2010-03-01T09:12:00.013Z

No smiling please - we're artists

Instead of me blathering on about the High Art Nude photography today, I’m going to ask you – my trusty readers - to enlighten me for a change (this is a cunning plan to get you folks to do all the hard work!)

I was talking to an artist acquaintance of mine recently (a portrait painter not a photographer) and he was talking about the difficulties involved in pleasing clients. In particular, one of the most common complaints from his clients is that he always refuses to paint them smiling. “You can’t smile in a portrait,” he said. “It’s trite. Smiles are only for photos.”

“Nope, not true,” said I. “Models can’t smile in fine art photographs either. We usually have to look sultry or stay expressionless, and that’s if we even get to show our faces at all.”

Iveta 1016

Iveta - with very standard "fine art nude" expression

And it’s true. It’s rare that I see a fine art photographic print (whether portrait or figure nude) where the model is smiling. That’s not always the case of course, but mostly. I’m not including outtakes either – yes I know that your models have immense fun and that shoots are always hoots, but let’s face it guys, how many prints do you actually SELL of happy, giggling models?

And what I want to know is why is it that fine art photography is so devoid of humour? Now I'm not daft (well, not normally!) and I do know that it’s all supposed to be about lighting, form and shadow but what the hell is wrong with interjecting a bit of positive emotion into the image? Would a happy model affect the lighting? Would showing the model’s face – actually smiling - make the image less erotic, less psychologically deep, less atmospheric, less ANYTHING in fact? I think not. What’s wrong with a bit of happiness now and again? Why does showing the photographic subject displaying (positive) emotion mean that it is not commercially viable Art? Why does emotionless anonymity sell and joyous expression not? Do collectors really prefer to hang faceless bodies on their walls? (Please note that I’m not being deliberately provocative here - well maybe just a little, but I really do want to know.)

Maybe I should start a “Happy Nudes” campaign? At least it would reflect the truth of making art – that it is indeed a heckuva lot of fun.

Iveta 998

Why does smiling change the genre?

P.S. If you would like to see a stunning fine art nude photo that really does make me smile with delight, see Michael V’s latest shot here. Isn’t she radiant?

Dear Mr Cosmos...

2010-02-24T12:58:00.011Z

AlexisSummers 937

Alexis and the pouffe cushion

It’s coming up to THAT time of year again – you know, the most important part where I work my big fat ass off and make some money for a change. The newspapers tell us that technically we are out of recession, but I’m not buying it and nor is anyone else who I have talked to recently. Most folks I know (in all business spheres) are still making horrible losses and this will be a “make or break” year for them, as it will be for us too. But enough doom and gloom...we are well down the road towards “Plan B” (I didn’t marry a VFX genius for nothing) and let’s just wait and see where it leads us.

During the next month my priorities are – in order of importance - my young daughter (who is undergoing a rather intense course of therapy for her speech problems that requires my daily input), my teenage sons (traumatic exams pending), a fair few 60+ hour work weeks (no choice about that – we have to eat), one new web site to write copy for, one script to write, thirty-two short films to watch and write reviews for, not to mention two blogs to run – oh and I’m sure I have a husband around somewhere too – if only I could remember where I put him....

I guess this is a heart-felt plea to Mr Cosmos to give me more time – no, scrap that – more time whilst earning a decent income! (Be careful what you wish for – wishes have to be very specific, you know, as Mr Cosmos has a nasty tendency towards interpreting to the letter-of-the-wish.) At the moment, I find that time is more precious than gold or jewels (although I’m rather partial to the odd chunky emerald if the aforementioned Mr Cosmos is feeling generous.)

What I really need is a rich sugar daddy to pay all my bills and whisk me away to a log cabin somewhere (anywhere, just as long as it has an internet connection) so that I can finish the web site, write a winning script and be inspired about all those wretched film reviews (not that the films are wretched – in fact they are rather good – it’s just the sheer number of them, you know?) plus write up several-draft-posts-that-I-have-started for this wonderful blog, that are simply too offensive to be published in their current state and need to be heavily revised so that they are in an American-friendly-format, (you Yanks require delicate phrasing and a great deal of tact – I have learned this the hard way over the last four years!), revised again, typed up and uploaded.

(That last sentence was a grammatical disaster zone - sorry!)

But can I find the time for my beloved writing? I cannot. Real life keeps getting in the way.

So, dear Mr Cosmos, please find me the time to write...write like I really, truly want to...and to get paid handsomely for it..?!! I’ll be terribly, awfully grateful...

Thanx. Much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Yr. Fluffy Writer.

AlexisSummers 977

I've never worn that belt again since this...

Warts and All

2010-02-21T08:40:00.015Z

“If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”

Kahlil Gibran

I first started writing a diary when I was thirteen years old and I had a crush on my English teacher. I bought a tiny diary which I filled with pages and pages of passion, drama and hormonal angst which is fairly typical of moody teenagers everywhere. Everything was important in those days – my heart would be broken simply if he ignored me or worse, if he criticised my (pretty appalling) girly teenage writing. The crush lasted for several years. The poor bloke, I wonder if he ever knew how many journals I filled writing about him. On the other hand – he was the one who made me realise I wanted to be a writer one day, so I certainly owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

I kept a diary for many years. Many teenage girls keep them, mainly as somewhere that they can let off steam in private, a therapy to work through private thoughts that cannot be shared anywhere else. “Dear Diary...” is a way of expressing “the real you” that you cannot show your Mum or Dad. Diaries are secret things and the whole point of them is that you should always tell the truth. They must be as explicit as possible – how else can you purge what you really feel unless you are totally honest with yourself? Your diary is your soul. It is who you are.

syd_aj 861

Many moons ago we were having some pretty extensive building work done on our house and I was horrified to find that one of our building contractors (who had a crush on me) had gone through my private hidden belongings and had helped himself to a volume-or-three of my diaries. I only found out when his mates started quoting me the gory details of my (at the time, rather adventurous) sex life. To say I was horrified, shocked and appalled would be the understatement of the decade. I stopped writing a diary on that very day and I’ve never kept once since. Nowadays of course, I blog instead, albeit not to the same intimate and explicit levels (which is a relief all round, I’m sure.) After that episode I actually feel more comfortable sharing my life on a public forum with a bunch of people I have never met than I do actually keeping my thoughts in a locked (but physical and therefore covetable) journal.

Unlike some bloggers, I really try very hard not to have a blogging persona. It is important to me to be myself here as much as possible. What you see is what you get. I write pretty much the way I used to in my diaries, minus the intimate stuff. The trouble is with bloggie personas, if you play an online role that isn’t really “you” then when you eventually meet your bloggie friends in person, they then find that they don’t really know you at all, and then you get found out. Like my diaries, I always feel that it is important to tell it like it is, warts and all, and I am invariably drawn to bloggers who do the same (and you all know who you are.)

Blogging does no good unless you are brutally honest about yourself. It is important to tell the truth, for the sake of yourself and your readers. If you conceal your real life and your thoughts, if you invent an online persona of who you would like to be, if you exaggerate and fabricate your life, then you are lying to yourself and your readers. In such cases your blog will ultimately fail because it will not be a true record of who you are and how you feel. It will not be your sanctuary, your therapy – instead it will be a fraud to the highest possible degree.

After four years of blogging, if I have any advice to offer potential bloggers, it is this:

Assume all your secrets will be found out one day. Always write with this in mind. And tell the truth. Always. No exceptions.

I guess I learned that lesson the hard way.

syd_aj 866

Steamy images are of Syd and AJ

Persistence and Resistance

2010-02-17T07:20:00.003Z

Alas, I am swamped with work so I'm afraid that our regular Wednesday post has been derailed somewhat. I detest repeating myself, but on the basis that anything is better than nothing, here's a book review that I wrote not long ago that was destined for publication elsewhere. Apologies for the blip in service.

Because I am a finance director (by day), I read a large number of business blogs. In particular, I am a huge fan of Seth Godin, probably the world’s best marketing blogger. If you ever hope to make any decent income at all from this strange vocation that we call "photography" then do make sure that you check him out ASAP. I swear to you that that reading his books will change the way you think about marketing and selling your work. His sound business advice applies equally well regardless of your chosen profession - yep, including and especially your photographic career.

In his new book Linchpin, Seth makes an extremely persuasive argument that our attitude to our work and whether or not we make a go of our business project depends on how well we can resist our amygdala.

The amygdala is a lizard shaped piece of your brain, located near the brain stem. It determines your feelings of fear, depression, rage and even your sex drive. When you feel threatened or scared of failure, when you hear that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you will never be a truly successful photographer (because there are too many others doing-the-same-thing-but-better and so there's no point in trying) or when you feel despondent or down and keep putting off finishing your potential new book/DVD/web site, when you keep delaying submitting your photographs to magazines or shows because you think you'll never get anywhere, then that’s your amygdala talking. As Seth says, “the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.....so it rises up in rage and fear and shuts you down.”

And so your amygdala resists, so much so that you find excuses for not pushing forward your project. You prevaricate, you feel blue, you doubt that your ideas will ever work and as a result you stall and nothing ever gets done. But as Seth says, if you want to achieve your goal, if you want to push forward and make your plans reality, if you want to be truly successful, then you have to fight and defeat your lizard! How do you do this? By recognising that what is stopping you finishing the project-of-your-dreams is merely your amydgala at work. You must stop finding excuses, quash your self-doubts, push aside your fears and your dawdling and realise that your photography is more important than your insecurities. Willpower is your only solution when faced with the mighty lizard. Push, push, push through your blocks. Ignore the distractions of your mind and just keep on going until your work is finished.

And when you have fought your lizard and won, when you have finally finished your book or launched your new photography business or submitted your photographs for publication, only then will you have vanquished your demons, only then can you sit back proudly and say, “I did it. I really did it!”

And that’s what makes a truly successful photographer rather than a mediocre one.

Right, time to go slay my lizard! See you all at the weekend....

other 1325

Grrr!

Women in Advertising: A Teenager's View

2010-02-14T07:04:00.003Z

Guest Post by Oldest Son

Our oldest son (still a young teenager) writes some great essays. I'd love to say that he gets it from me, but alas, he surpassed his mother's abilities years ago. Anyhoo, he kindly gave me permission to share his treatise with the Fluffy Readers. (I have published it "as is" without corrections or amendments.) Yes I know you may well disagree with much of the content, but it makes an interesting snapshot of how a typical modern British teenager views how women are portrayed in the media and the effect the celeb culture has had on teenagers today.

00’s:

Nowadays, women are no longer represented as slaves of the kitchen, or their husbands. Their power is now held within their bodies. Beautiful women who endorse today’s products have such a great lifestyle and are so beautiful, most girls and young women want to look and be as good as them, no matter the cost. This is not a good thing. The youth of today are influenced by the thin and beautiful women in the media. Constantly, the girls of our youth are trying to follow these role models of how to be beautiful, when they can’t reach the impossible standards of the women. Because of new technology such as Photoshop, you can get such photorealistic images and after effects; how will women be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy? This gives birth to many psychological problems teenage girls must face such as anorexia, bulimia, etc.

This shows how much power women hold in advertising nowadays. Do they really need to gain powers by effectively selling their bodies? Maybe. They have already earned power and independence after events such as the contraception pill, able to now choose if they wanted children or not. They could finally deviate away from the paths of their husbands, and become their own, free women. But is this what women want to be seen as? After reading some comments from supermodels after looking at Photoshop adverts of themselves, they said that they looked like plastic Barbie dolls afterwards. It may be that it is not the models who choose to look like this in adverts, but the advertisers.

Consider this magazine advertisement. The way her hand is brushing her lip down makes her look like she is lusting for the person looking at the advert. She exposes herself an awful lot, but really, the shoes that the image is advertising aren’t being emphasised in the ad at all, only the woman who is endorsing them. It is very different from the old adverts, because the end product is not obvious until you read the ad’s writing. The black and white background makes the ad seem classical and stylish, and the woman too. This makes it seem like the product should be bought because it will make your life a lot more stylish.

The problem is, to me, she really doesn’t look that bright; she is a blonde Barbie doll. She gets her power through her body, which she has exposed a great deal. This really shows how women have got their power over the decades.

Again, in this ad, the pregnant woman exposes her body, even more than the ad beforehand.

‘Non-alcoholic Nova Schin’ makes this drink ideal for any woman, those who are beautiful, or are planning to have a child, both of which this woman is.

The woman here looks fairly educated, but still gets her power through her body. She looks more intellectual compared to the last ad, mainly because of her hair. Today’s stereotype makes blonde women appear less intellectual than those of other hair colours. The colossal glass she is holding makes the drink seem not only more masculine but also kind of healthy for the woman. As I have said earlier, her skin is completely perfect, as is her body. Women believe that if they buy the product, they will look like the perfect woman. When this doesn’t work, they go to great lengths to try to look as perfect. This can sometimes go too far. So is trying to be like an advert worth all the trouble when the products don't actually make the womens' lives any more like the fantasy?

70’s:

It seems that in this decade, women were in the perfect position to start attacking men, and glamourising women. ‘Perfect’ is used a lot in the 1970’s magazine culture; the advertisers presented the world with the perfect women who use their products. There were also a greater number of more masculine adverts for women in this period, such as the Michelob beer advert. Advertisers chose to embrace the independent march of angry women, probably afraid they would be caught in the blast if they didn’t. (An example of the advertising campaign for independent women was the Women Against Pornography or WAP movement, which was said to combat the demeaning of women.)

This decade showed the world that women were not ordinary, housewife women, but as good as the men; they could go out, get a job and live by themselves if they wanted to.

The wrath of the women started to die down after the 1970’s, as we will see, but they will still hold an iron grasp within the adverts.

90’s:

By this time, much of womens' advertising had moved to the television, so advertisers could make their products move! What fun! Women were watching an awful lot of television, since many popular programs were in full bloom, such as the American soaps or Coronation Street, which feature strong independent women, which I’m sure many women would love to see. They like to see either a better fantasy lifestyle, in which they can hope for, or a worse lifestyle to compare to theirs, and think what a better life they have.

This is an important decade (as is any other), otherwise known as the ‘Golden Years.’ The perfect woman of the 90’s was a woman who could manage a dynamic and well paying job, whilst looking after the husband and children at home. With the money (lots of), she would go out and buy luxury goods, such as perfume, and designer clothes which also became a big hit, and were available for everyone. It showed the woman’s wealth if she went around wearing these.

Technology also rocketed as companies experimented with different appliances. Soon, there was a piece of equipment for every household job that needed doing. Dishwasher, rice steamer, hoovers, you name it, it was there. The more appliances you had, the more independent the woman you were.

A huge part of the new decade was being thin. Advertisers created the image of a thin woman; it was an icon of being feminine. If you weren’t thin, you weren’t as female as the other people who were. Many women who were overweight were not as successful as those who were slim.

With new technology such as Photoshop, it became easier than Airbrush to make the perfect women in advertising. And so the women became thinner and thinner and more fantastical.

Consider the woman in the advert above. Shiny designer clothes show her fantastic wealth, style and superiority compared to the dull rest of the world. A slim and passionate shape shows her feminine side and her clothes and stance are powerful. The man is dazzled by her power, and she puts her hand to him to push him away, to show him who is boss. The only exposed part of her body is her chest and her face, the two parts that the man most looks at.

It strikes me as a puzzle that women spend the money to look like models in magazines in the hope they will be more attractive to men, whilst the men aren’t interested in women's magazine ads in any way. It’s a sort of vicious circle.

Conclusion:

Over the last 40 years, the advertisers have attempted to objectify women, and have succeeded. They have made women more obsessed about their weight and appearance, rather than allowing women to like themselves for who they are.

The ads have taken power away from women, not given it to them. The more women wish they were someone else, they can’t accept themselves for who they really are.

Women must rise above the adverts and love themselves for their personality, rather than aspire for a fictional ideal that doesn’t exist apart from in a glossy magazine ad.

Online Exhibitions: The Wave of the Future?

2010-02-10T11:15:00.015Z

One idea that is really taking off over here is the online art exhibition.

Of course anyone can stage an online exhibition, although the better ones are presented by specialist art galleries who usually offer a physical exhibition as well as running an online one at the same time, thus creating better publicity and more chance of paintings or photographs being sold.

However, increasingly galleries are choosing to bypass the physical exhibition (where you can go visit the gallery itself) and go straight for the full online exhibition only. Of course, the main reason for doing this is money. Costs for online exhibitions are minimal as web site software is often free and internet connection fees are very low, plus there is a huge potential for easy online marketing (Facebook, Twitter, blogs and art web sites.) Artists are also usually very willing to allow their work to be exhibited online as part of a wider collection. Not only do they need the increased publicity of their work being shown online, but they also need sales – any way they can get them.

PirateMaiden 578

The viewer benefits tremendously from online exhibitions – no longer do I have to travel to central London to see a prestigious exhibition of cat paintings (yes I did say “cat” – it’s not all about nudes you know, I like furry things too.) Instead I can see a selection of online art, perhaps buy a piece that takes my fancy and I can rest assured that it will be shipped safely to me when the exhibition ends. All without leaving the comfort of my sofa! Plus, if I register with the online gallery displaying the work, I qualify for a discount voucher and they can send me cat-art news updates so I can stay in touch with any future exhibitions that they may present.

Now a lot of photographers and artists are going to say that the trend towards exhibiting everything online will push galleries out of business, but IMO I think it is a valuable marketing tool that could help them survive a rough financial period. It is also the wave of the future. Like it or not, one day all galleries will be expected to exhibit online - the punters will expect it.

However, I do concede that looking at a painting or photograph online is not the same as physically seeing it in an exhibition. A piece of art loses a lot of its emotional impact when you see it online (only) rather than physically being in a gallery, spending time drinking in the full size painting or photograph and really "seeing" it in the way that the original artist meant it to be viewed. Plus there is more detail in the original painting or print, the lighting is superior, it looks better mounted and framed, and so on....

So how do galleries make the best of both worlds – the online and the physical? Well, why not combine both? Exhibit the collection of art online, as well as making the original art available to visit in person for those that are interested enough? IMO, the combination of online and physical really works. Online exhibitions are a way of marketing art to potentially millions of people who would never otherwise have known about it. The chance for artists to sell their work goes up dramatically. Seeing a stunning piece of art online makes me MORE likely to want to go see it in person too, kind of like seeing a great movie trailer makes me want to go see “the real deal” at the cinema.

So the U.K. online art community is finally going mainsteam. The rise of social networking and online media is revolutionising the way that art will be shown, marketed and sold in the future.

The question is, what effect will it have on the future of exhibitions? Will the rise of online art encourage more people to get “the art bug” and buy an artist’s work? Will it make art collectors of us all? Will it tempt more people to go find their favourite paintings in real physical galleries because they have seen a taster online? And most importantly, will it make both artists and galleries more money?

PirateMaiden 568

Images are of Pirate Maiden

For those U.K. readers who are interested, a specialist online gallery will shortly be holding its first exhibition devoted to contemporary figurative art. All the artwork will be for sale and can be previewed on the web site. The exhibition is called “Real” and will be both online and physical i.e. you like the online version you can then go see it “for real” at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in London between 19-21st March.

Mirror, mirror on the wall....

2010-02-06T13:49:00.013Z

... who is the best photographer of them all?

I don’t know about you folks but I go through phases where I get a crush on a particular photographer’s work. I see a certain image and that’s it, I’m off...I saturate myself in that artist’s photography, spend endless hours working out the lighting techniques, read all of his (it's usually a guy, but not always) books/interviews/portfolios, I try and work out the reason WHY he was moved to take the image in the first place. I want to know everything about the artist, the man behind the camera...yup, it’s a full-on crushed-out obsession. I’m sure I would stalk the poor guy if given the remotest chance.

Currently I am infatuated with André Kertész:

other2010 1598

Actually he's dead, so I can't stalk him. But his photography (both his Distorted Nudes and his reportage work) just blows my mind. He was obsessed with capturing “the right moment –the moment when something changes into something else” and the result of this obsession is photography that is original, atmospheric, witty. Every image tells a story, conveys emotion and tells me about the man behind the lens (who is just as fascinating as the images he produces, if not more so.) To me, he is the best at what he does. However, for most of you, his work probably doesn’t rate as particularly significant, which just goes to show how split opinion can be when labelling something “the best.”

As much as everyone would like to believe that pure objectivity can exist when judging photographs, personal preferences always play a part. Art is subjective. It’s that simple. Sure, between most photographers there is a common consensus, a broad recognition of quality (or lack thereof) but comparative selection usually asks us to look deeper into our own view of art, and one person’s opinion is never exactly the same as another’s.

So why look for an answer to “who is the best photographer?” when you know there is no right answer?

Well mostly because it’s fun. Arguing about the pros and cons of our favourite photographers is a pastime that all photographers and models enjoy, so having a debate can only be a good thing. Rich and I spent endless hours over cappuccinos arguing, discussing, reviewing, debating a particular artist's style – our opinions are usually direct opposites and always will be, but it is immense fun trying to change each others’ minds.

But even more than that, making a choice as to your favourite photographer, finding “the one” who influences your work more than any other, is your opportunity to convey something of yourself. If you choose Photographer X or Y as the best photographer since sliced bread then this is a clear way for you to express yourself and your photographic style, taste and vision. It lets me know who you are as an artist and as a person, as well as telling me where you are aiming for in the future. It’s a glimpse of “the real you.”

For example, my choice of André Kertész as my favourite photographer lets you know how much I love witty photographers who create innovative, quirky, intelligent art that makes me think outside the box. It tells you that Kertész’s view on life is mine too. He thinks as I do: "Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see."

other2010 1597

So simply by learning about my obsession du jour, my unequivocal opinion that Kertész is the absolute BEST photographer in the world (for this month, anyway) this gives you a glimpse into who I really am as a person. Because yes, I am exactly like that – a slightly distorted, weird kind of girl who thinks rather too deeply about everything and is fascinated with what makes people tick.

So now you’ve heard mine. Let’s hear yours...who is your best photographer, and why?

March 26th: Blogging D-Day

2010-02-03T10:55:00.022Z

Sincerest thanks to everyone for leaving me in peace for a while. I'm feeling much better now - enough to get back to a normal routine anyway.

However yesterday we received a less-than-welcome notification from Blogger that they will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26th of this year. They blamed the decision on "too many engineering resources" required to support FTP sites and said "We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users."

No kidding!

Word has it that the reason Google are doing this is nothing to do with cost and more about censorship. As you all know, we host our own blog on our own server, but we use the freely-available Blogger code for the blog publishing part, which allows all you lovely folks to use your Blogger accounts to leave comments etc. So not only can we remain part of the thriving Blogger community, but by publishing the blog via FTP this means that all our precious photographs are kept on our own servers, not Google's. We can therefore design our own groovy blog graphics (instead of Blogger's grotty standard templates) plus of course, we don't have to have a "content warning" header slapped in front of our blog (like most of you do.)

Basically Google doesn't have any control over what we can publish or how we publish it. We really like it that way. And I quote our resident photographer: "Hell will freeze over before I host our blog on Google servers. They have enough control over us as it is...this is just to increase their control and censorship of the internet. No bloody way! I'd rather close our blog first!"

(And before I get tons of comments from happy photographic bloggers who tell me that they host their blogs on Google servers and they don't mind one little bit, I must warn you in advance that we have absolutely no intention of going down this route. We deal with internet security as part of our day job. Bearing in mind what we know, please trust me when I say that letting Google host all our intellectual property is NOT an option.)

So we have until 26th March to decide what to do.

Perhaps it's time to put our resident computer geek to work on designing our own blogging code?

(Poor lad! As if he doesn't have enough to do already!)

LouLou2 667

Lou Lou

2010-01-30T16:03:00.009Z

Just a short note to say I’m taking a little time off from posting here.

So far, in the last ten days, one of my friends has had a heart attack, another collapsed and died on Thursday and today I received news that one of my oldest and dearest friends has end-stage cancer and only has a few short weeks to live.

I am in pieces at this end. All of this is overwhelming me right now and I need time and space to process what is happening.

So no comments or emails please – I know you are all silently offering sympathy and I really appreciate that. I’ll be back in a wee while.

In the meantime, here's one of Rich's recent CG art pieces to keep you going.

cgi 1596

"2010"

Waiting for Sunshine

2010-01-28T14:05:00.027Z

Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it
(Claude Monet)

The middle of winter isn’t the most inspiring time of the year is it? Here in the drab, flat eastern lands of England Rich and I literally drag ourselves through the days at this time of year. We get up in the pitch black, stick our heads in the coffee pot, rush through breakfast, deliver the boys to the train station (where the poor souls embark on the long and tedious journey to Hogwarts), then come home, get my daughter up and fed (still dark) and off to her local village school, and just as dawn is breaking Rich and I arrive at our local coffee shop where...you guessed it...we immerse ourselves in yet more coffee and a half-hour chat about photography and filmmaking (it's our daily date - we depend on it for our sanity.) Then it’s off to work, where we sit in artificial light all day (it’s overcast outside – we’re not missing much) and then we repeat the whole thing again but in reverse. By the time the boys get home at about 6 p.m. it's pitch black again.

na 57

I do not feel that caffeine addiction is an appropriate way to combat the inevitable gloom brought on by short days and lack of vitamin D. It’s all too easy to lose oneself in desk work and forget about getting outside in actual daylight. But such understandable behaviour is seriously bad news, especially for artists. Studies have established that there is a very close relationship between creativity and depression. Many artists are prone to extreme mood swings and recurring depression due to the highly emotional content of their craft. This applies to photographers (such as Diane Arbus) just as much as it does to writers (Foster-Wallace), painters (Van Gogh) and other artistic mediums. As Eric Maisel said, “The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression.”

How do we avoid The Beast? Well I religiously take a vitamin D compound and fish oil supplements every day and I eat carefully balanced nutritious food (no processed food in this house) but even that can only do so much. At this time of year our bodies slow and want to sleep more and I find it difficult to fight against that. Constantly defying one’s circadian rhythms has long term consequences on mood regardless of what you eat and how healthy your brain chemistry is.

So what else can we do? Well, daylight bulbs and light boxes can help. So can getting outdoors whenever possible. Try to get at east fifteen to thirty minutes of sunlight every day. If you are a photographer, consider shooting some landscapes (winter weather provides endless opportunities for glorious winter photography.) If you can’t do this then take some time to create. Book a shoot with a nude – creating art with a beautiful naked woman can’t fail to lift the spirits and boost serotonin levels. If you can combine both (like our dear Mr Levingston) then that would be ideal! No wonder he seems so happy!

But for those of us who cannot do either of these things, what is really important is distraction. Above all, try not to draw inwards into yourself. Make your brain think about creating something, ANYTHING. It doesn’t matter if the end product is not particularly good - the objective isn’t to produce an outstanding piece of art (although it’s nice if you do) but rather to stop yourself being consumed by your inner demons. Suggestions include (but not limited to) visualisation (day-dreams and fantasies are good for you), planning your work for the rest of year, study the work of a new (uplifting) photographer, ask a friend to set you a new challenge or suggest a new project to work on (thank you my dear friend Z.)

But what if you can’t create? Well, I’ve certainly had times when anxiety, worry and the good ol’ winter blues would keep me from being able to write. I used to get so low that my brain went round in circles and I felt that everything I created was crap. The solution? Grit, willpower, bloody mindedness, call it whatever you like, but it all comes down to the same thing. Force yourself to move, both physically and mentally.

Ultimately YOU are the only person who can lift yourself out of your funk. There is no other way. As for me, I still worry too much and get depressed at this time of year, but I just don't let it stop me. I'm just learning to move it to one side and get on with my work.

Lynx 167

Lynx in Pink - I needed a shot of bright colour today

Eleven Words

2010-01-25T15:56:00.007Z

If it’s worth copying, it’s worth protecting.

Most photographers know a fair bit about copyright law. Regarding the copyright of images, the law varies according to whichever country you live in, so I’m not going to cover that again in this post because quite frankly it is a complete minefield. Suffice to say, don’t copy other people’s photographs unless you have either asked the photographer first, or unless the image is listed as being under Creative Commons (and even then you should check which type of Creative Commons licence is permitted : Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivative Works or Share Alike.)

The situation gets even more complicated regarding copyright of the written word. Most folks realise that they may not copy large chunks from other publications, even if they credit the source and even if the information is “publically available” such as published in a newspaper or online. But how much can you copy before there is a breach of copyright? Here the law gets much hazier as there is no set limit for this in Europe. However, last summer a Danish firm called Infopaq was taken to court by a Danish newspaper body over its copying and reproduction of news articles. The case went all the way to the European Court of Justice who looked at this and held that copying and reproducing only eleven words of a news article would be a breach of copyright under EU law. (For those of you who are interested in reading the ruling – probably only Stephen – you can find it here. The moral of the story? Any copied extract, no matter how short it is, could be covered by copyright.

So if you’re intending to write about someone else’s work, whether it be in a newspaper article, book, blog post, forum, whatever, then be careful that you don’t inadvertently reproduce more than eleven words, otherwise you will be breaking the law.

However, as with a photograph, you can’t copyright an idea. So if your conscience permits (alas, mine does not - dratted ethics!) feel free to nick the idea but tread very carefully about how you express it.

Eleven words are all it takes.

HoneyB 1118

HoneyB

The Little Finger

2010-01-22T12:19:00.013Z

“Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Oscar Wilde

Last week Rich was asked to run a photography course. He gets requests like this from time to time and although he likes being asked (good for the ego and all that) he always politely declines. Much to my dismay, about eighteen months ago he made a conscious decision to stop teaching at the local camera clubs and not to run any more local workshops. I do understand that his refusal is based on principle and as his partner it is important to be supportive of one’s spouse, but the trouble is that I’m a bean-counter by trade and therefore my priorities are somewhat different to those of real (starving) artists. I just see that we have bills to pay....and in such circumstances I think that money should come before principles. Mostly. (No I can't believe I said that either - but I really do have a lot of bills you know.) Needless to say the photographer of the house disagrees - rather strongly, if I'm being honest.

ClayreMcKinnen 614

Now I know a huge number of you folks are accomplished photographers who have received formal training from courses and indeed many of you run your own workshops too, so I definitely don’t want to upset any of you. There are a large number of eager photography students out there who glean a huge amount of knowledge from workshops and courses and I am of the opinion that a good teacher can bring on a student’s photography in leaps and bounds. I’ve discussed all of this with Rich and in fact he went on several workshops himself in the early days of taking up digital photography again. So why is he so vehemently against them now? Why won’t he assist in replenishing our sadly depleted coffers by responding to the demand for his tuition services?

The problem is that Rich thinks that after you’ve been taught the basics of how to use a camera, then courses do more harm than good. He tells me “Cartier-Bresson never believed in them, and neither do I.” He refers of course to Cartier-Bresson’s opinion that learning photography is simply “teaching how to use your little finger, that’s all.”

Rich thinks that once you have mastered the basics of photography, then no amount of courses will help. In fact they can do the exact opposite. Some courses waffle on about the history of photography, some (particularly fine-art courses) concentrate on developing style over substance and some teach Photoshop at the expense of shooting the image right in the first place (i.e. on camera.) He believes that a good photographer only becomes such by learning how to “see” the subject, and he says that this type of learning cannot be taught by any course. Seeing comes from within and it only comes with (a lot of) practice. He also thinks that courses take away the fun of discovering how to do it yourself. As he often says to me, “If you want to be a photographer, just pick up a camera and shoot. And keep doing it over and over, forever. It’s that simple.”

Maybe Rich and Cartier-Bresson are right. All these courses can be discouraging; they teach you how to photograph like everyone else rather than developing your own style. Photography should be a burning need from within to shoot, an art of capturing something hitherto unseen and expressing it in the way that you uniquely perceive it. Your images should be inspiring, uplifting, the essence of who you are. No course can teach you that. So why not keep photography simple? Why take overcomplicated historical and technical courses which take you off on tangents and distract you from learning what you really need to know about photography – that which is within yourself?

Perhaps all you really do need is your little finger.

(The problem being, of course, that little fingers don't pay the bills.)

ClayreMcKinnen 621

Our model today is the lovely Clayre McKinnen

Kudos...

2010-01-19T08:19:00.022Z

...to our very own "Power Blogger" Stephen Haynes who is featured extensively in the latest issue of Carrie Leigh's Nude. Very cool, Stephen! It's good too know all your hard work fighting for photographers' rights is being recognised at last (and it won't exactly be bad for your book promotion either!) Also congrats to Michael Barnes who is also another featured blogger in the article, I believe.

As I have a birthday coming up in a few weeks time, I will be putting this issue of Carrie Leigh on my birthday list (v. handy that there is a pre-order discount too) and whilst I'm at it I might very well ask Rich to buy me the new f-eleven book too, which features quite a few of our favourite photographic friends including D. Brian Nelson, the wonderful Mr Levingston and my beloved Darcy.

Congrats to all!

Oh I do love photography books and magazines - especially when our friends are in them!

Leroy And The Lube

2010-01-16T12:49:00.018Z

Readers, you will appreciate that we are normally highly conservative parents and whereas we encourage frank and open discussion with our offspring about life, the universe and everything, this precise topic of conversation has never before arisen between parents and teenagers, and is bewilderingly new to us.

Picture if you will our sitting room on a quiet Friday evening, around 9.30 p.m. My daughter had gone to bed a lot earlier and Rich, the two boys and I were having a quiet, cosy catch-up chat in front of a crackling log fire. I’d had a nice long bubble bath and we were all cuddled up in our dressing gowns and slippers. My younger son (aged 11) was wrapped in a fleece throw and had dozed off on the sofa. Yep, it was a really warm, fuzzy, family moment. Life was good.

“How was school today?” I asked my 14-year-old son, sleepily.

“You know, it wasn’t bad at all,” he commented. “We had PSHE today – I normally go to sleep during the lesson, but today it was different. It was about Advanced Sex.”

I sat up a bit straighter. “Advanced Sex? What the hell is that? How can they teach you about advanced sex? Not even I know what that is.”

“That’s because you’re both too old to have sex any more,” commented my balshy teenager with a big grin on his face.

"Oy!" said his father.

“What is Advanced Sex?” I interrupted hastily. “What exactly are they teaching you at that school?”

“Well, it all began with Leroy,” said my son, pulling up his blanket and snuggling down in his chair.

“Who is Leroy?” asked his Dad.

“Leroy is my PSHE teacher’s knobbly dildo,” he announced, totally unfazed.

I sat bolt upright, rigid with shock.

“What the hell is your PSHE teacher doing demonstrating knobbly dildos?” I gasped, a tone of hysteria creeping into my voice.

“And what the hell are we spending all that school-fee money on?” added his father.

My son continued, unpeturbed. “Mrs M has been showing us about how to put a condom on Leroy, and where to put the lube.”

“What’s l-oob?” asked my younger son, sleepily.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be asleep,” said his Dad.

“Lube is what you put over the condom to make it juicy,” lectured my older son in an authoritative voice. “You know about condoms, right?”

“Yep....we put them on bananas in PSHE last term,” said his younger brother, now completely awake.

“Oh dear God,” I muttered faintly. (It had suddenly become clear to me why the household banana consumption had dropped dramatically in the last couple of months. I worry about potassium deficiency, you know.)

“We are not having this conversation,” said their father, firmly.

They ignored him. “What does l-oob feel like?” asked my younger son.

“I don’t know,” said my older son. “Mrs M wouldn’t let us try it until next lesson. She had strawberry and peach flavour though.”

“WE ARE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION!” thundered their father.

“Why do you need different flavours?” queried my younger son, thoughtfully. “I just don’t understand. Why would anyone need different flavours for condoms? They don’t go anywhere near...unless...”

There was a long silent pause. My older son, suddenly realising just how much trouble he was in, looked at the ceiling and said nothing. We, their parents, were speechless.

“Unless...unless....OH MY GOD!!!! THAT’S COMPETELY DISGUSTING!!! I NEVER WANT TO GROW UP! NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!”

other2010 1594

The morals of the story?

1.Your kids may seem like they are fast asleep, but really they are wide awake and their little ears are listening intently to every word you say.

2. The syllabus of modern British education apparently includes advanced sex lessons involving dildos called Leroy and a treatise on the ten different flavours of vaginal lubricant.

3. Kids really DO know more than their parents.

4. My son was right. We really ARE too old for advanced sex.

2020

2010-01-14T11:23:00.011Z

Wow! Where did the last two weeks go? We're already half-way through the first month of the new year and I'm still catching up at work from the Christmas computer problems. Still, the snow is melting at last and we’ve finally managed to shuttle all three children back to their respective schools (which were largely shut until now due to the weather – yeah, I know, a few inches of snow and the entire country grinds to a halt!)

Despite our computer problems and considering the day-job business turned its toes up for a couple of weeks, I nevertheless feel that the Christmas hols went pretty well. Rich and I refused point blank to put Christmas on credit, so like most folks this year we were on a very tight budget. The kids were surprisingly happy with less – in fact they pitched in with cooking and other preparations and made it probably our best Christmas Day ever. My younger son (budding chef) spent literally days preparing exotic culinary gifts and my older son (Hogwarts artist) worked v. hard to give his mother what she desires more than anything else – his art.

Rich and I were teenagers in the 80’s, the era of materialism. Happiness was measured by success, power and money. In our early twenties, we worked hard and played hard – and yet what did we end up with at the end of the day? Not much apart from debt and exhaustion to be honest (although I fondly recall some rather splendid gold-plated bath taps in our first apartment some twenty years ago – yes, in retrospect I was clearly insane, but image was all in those days.)

ifat 1083

Thankfully the current generation of teenagers are learning very different lessons. Not only do they know that debt is bad, but more importantly they are learning a completely different concept of wealth. Due to the combination of global recession and the new digital age, today’s youth will have completely different priorities in life when they reach adulthood in a few years time. A lot of this has to do with being happy with less of course (family incomes are not what they once were) but also our teenagers have completely different priorities now than we did twenty-five years ago.

Because our kids are growing up in the modern internet age, they are used to having all the information of the world at their fingertips – for free. To the modern teenager, money is no longer the currency of happiness. The pursuit of knowledge is far more important. Rather than showing off their latest designer trainers, they are more interested at the latest free games they can get on Facebook or the latest free apps they can get on Garry’s Mod. Obvious displays of wealth are thought vulgar (nowadays middle-class kids look down on designer labels – kids who show off are derided as “chavs” – the ultimate put-down!) Instead of displays of status, intelligence is seen as the ultimate aspiration. The age of the Computer Geek is here! Instead of the acquisition of goods, kids seek the acquisition of culture and knowledge. They are adept traders in the Digital Economy, which is not based on money but instead on exchange of knowledge, freely shared amongst close-knit communities online.

Indeed it is the exponential growth in online communities which has produced the biggest change in our children over the last five years or so. Our teenagers have become phenomenal global communicators. They talk, build relationships, create, play, share free videos and photos online, they trade information and experiences, and although practically no money changes hands (most online games, widgets and so forth are either free or incredibly cheap) I would argue that teenagers of today are learning how to be happy from sources other than the ones measured by the $ Dollar sign.

What happens when those same teenagers grow into adults and they are the ones who run our countries? How will they shape our laws, our communities, our civilization? When intelligence, technology, community and culture are the new currencies and people are measured not by what possessions they have or by how much they earn, but instead by what knowledge they can give to each other, what will the world be like then, circa 2020?

I, for one, am greatly looking forward to their brave new world. Chances are that the world will be a better place in ten years time. A world based on truth, openness and sharing with new friends, rather than merely taking for oneself.

A very belated Happy New Year to you all!

ifat 1092

Images are of Ifat

The Dark Ages

2010-01-10T10:15:00.020Z

Woo hoo! A real genu-INE internet connection again! Ah, heavenly!

As you will all have figured by now, my couple of days away from the net for the purpose of moving our day-job servers turned into nearly two weeks of being cut off from practically everything cyber-related. Not only did our main firewall go up in smoke, but so did the back-up firewall. Yeesh...that’s what happens when you live in ye olde rural Englande with flaky power and the worst winter for twenty-five years. Running off generator power for ages didn’t do our computer network much good either. There was smoke, there was sizzling, there were wires everywhere, there was a great deal of swearing. Needless to say, I stayed out of the way as much as possible, other than to supply endless caffeine and occasional cheesecake (was on Yuletide cheesecake binge – don’t ask!)

Landscape 1590

View from my office window

I apologise for not leaving comments on all your blogs. I managed to keep up with most of you through my trusty Blackberry (my sole link to cyberspace) but Blackberry servers really do not like Blogger very much and for some unidentified reason I could not view several of my favourite blogs, most notably Dr L's and Mr Swanson's. (V. frustrating!)

Being cut-off from one’s cyber-community was actually harder than I figured it would be. That’s not a gripe, incidentally, merely a comment on how completely dependent on the internet modern man (or this modern yummy mummy in particular) has become. My kids took it harder than I did. “It’s like living in the ruddy Dark Ages!” grumbled my oldest son. “I can’t take it any more!” howled my younger son. “I want my Boogie-Beebies back!” moaned my five year old daughter.

Locked up in a snow-bound house with no computers and three exceedingly tetchy children who couldn’t play with their (online based) Christmas pressies – well, it hasn’t exactly been a picnic, I can tell you that much. I suggested board games as entertainment – which earned me derisive snorts. I threw them outside to play in the snow, but you can only do that for so long before their blue-ish complexion and incessant scraping at the windows to come in really wears you down. In the end the boys played ye olde Warhammer game which resulted in loud arguments and fighting for days on end, so I wore ear plugs and huddled under a furry blanket with my daughter, my Blackberry (my sole connection to the outside world – sorry TV doesn’t count as it’s all reality shows and Government propaganda) and a box of chocolate brazils, and we browsed Boogie Beebies together on a very tiny screen. I have no idea where Rich went but I didn’t see him for several weeks other than to periodically shove coffee/cheesecake under the office door. But he has performed his customary miracle and it all seems to be fixed now, so fingers crossed that it stays that way!

Lessons learned during long cyber-exile:

This family is far too addicted to the internet for socialising/information/news/games/shopping/life as we know it. Clearly we must give up our reliance on cyberspace to fulfill all our needs, eschew all things technological and go live on a remote hill in Sardinia and herd goats. I read a book on it once (really) and was assured by many long-lived Sardinian goat-herders that such a simple way of life, free from the trappings of modern technology, really IS the key to longevity, happiness and ultimate enlightenment. AND they have cheesecake in Sardinia! Hey, this could actually work!

(Just as long as I can take along my Blackberry, though. After all, we modern yummy mummies need our daily dose of fruity goodness.)

L-von-B 5

Yr. Author avec aforementioned furry blankie

Offthenet

2009-12-29T18:23:00.011Z

Just quick note to mention that Fluffytek will be unavailable/down/gone/kaput for the next two days due to network maintenance. Basically we have to move our day-job servers, which is no small task and will involve high drama, severe stress and a great deal of bad language.

How I will survive without internet access for two days is anyone’s guess. I would imagine that I will get a lot of writing done – the old fashioned way, you know, with an actual PEN.

All being well, normal service will be restored sometime on New Year’s Eve.

See you then...

cgi-amy 1260

Amy in CG - needs a wee bit more ambient occlusion if you ask me

I’m a Blogger Not a Writer

2009-12-26T13:23:00.027Z

How was your Christmas? Good, I hope. Ours was most definitely a "Big family Christmas" starting with three days cooking flat-out and culminating in a gigantic turkey with all the trimmings and the biggest, booziest Christmas pudding you have ever seen. I have a motto with my cooking: Quantity Before Quality, so my measure of a successful Christmas is if, by the end of the afternoon, my guests are lying moaning on the living room floor begging for mercy.

other 1589

My mammoth pudding must have been extra-effective this year as my visitors were rolling around on the carpet clutching their stomachs by a record half-past three. Woo hoo! Success! So I was sitting quietly, sipping chamomile tea and congratulating myself on a highly successful mission-accomplished of incapacitating my nearest and dearest, when the conversation turned to more cerebral matters.

“How’s the art going?” I enquired of my father-in-law. Although he is an extremely talented painter, he has had artist’s block for the last ten years and despite being desperate to paint, he can’t seem to manage to actually pick up the brush. So I have taken to nagging him on occasion, purely in the interests of artistic encouragement you understand (I can’t bear to see wasted creativity – it drives me nuts – and he really is very, very good.)

He glared at me. “I’ll start painting when you actually become a writer,” he retorted.

“I AM writing, I said. “You know I write a blog.” (referring to our other businessey blog you understand – he doesn’t know about this one and long may it remain that way.) “Have you been reading my blog articles?”

“That doesn’t count,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Blogging is not writing. I mean, actual writing, you know – like printed on paper.”

“So you’re telling me that I’m not a writer, even if I have readers all over the world reading my stuff, tons more than would ever read a book if I wrote one?”

“Look Lin, it’s not real writing,” he explained to me patiently. “It’s not on paper, and you haven’t been published. You’re not a writer unless you write a book and I can hold it in my hand.”

KateT 19

I think this pose from Katy T sums up rather nicely what happened next. I hit the roof.

“WHY does paper matter? Don’t you KNOW that printed newspapers and books are in terminal decline? Most people don’t buy very many books nowadays, publishers are struggling like hell and most of them aren’t taking on any new writers. If you want to get your work read, then you need to use online media: Blogs, Twitter, Forums, e-books, online newspapers and so on. That’s where the future of publishing is.”

“I’m sorry Lin, he said, shaking his head sadly, “but it doesn’t count. Writing a blog is not writing and no amount of you thinking it is will ever change that. You need to write a REAL book if you want to be a writer.”

“When did you last buy a book?” I retorted.

“Oh I don’t read books,” he said. “I only ever read online stuff nowadays.”

It’s revenge for my pudding, I just know it is.

Happy Longest Night!

2009-12-21T13:56:00.017Z

Tonight is The Winter Solstice, the day when most pagans celebrate the beginning of winter. And why on earth not celebrate tonight? Let’s face it folks, there is a genuine reason that Christians celebrate their own winter festival this week, and it has very little to do with Baby Jesus and everything to do with our pagan history. So for those few (non-Christian) readers who are curious, my Yuletide post this year is to do with the ever-fabulous God, Odin.

Santa = Odin in party mode.

Here he is – what a hunk, eh? Bet you didn’t know that our everyday modern day Santa is in fact, Odin himself. Sure he’s projected over two thousand years into the future and given a wee bit of a makeover, but it’s still Odin.

Still don’t believe me? Well, to trace the metamorphosis of Odin-into-Santa let’s go way back to the 8th century, when Britain was conquered by the Vikings (of which both Rich and our luscious Mr S are descendents – oh I do love Vikings –so truthful, so strong, so sexy and then there’s the whole beard thingy! Mmm...) Anyhoo, the Saxons had a tradition of welcoming King Frost (otherwise known as Father Time) every winter. When the Vikings invaded they brought their god Odin, father of the Gods and terribly old (thought to be born around 90BC although the exact date is slightly hazy) who had twelve characters which eventually evolved to become our twelve months of the year. The character for December was called Jul (from which we get “Yuletide.”) On longest night the Vikings believed that Odin would come to earth on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. He was disguised in a long blue cloak and he would secretly join groups around their fire, listening in to see if they were happy. Then he would leave a gift of food (usually bread) at the home of the poor people.

With the Norman invasion came the well-known story of St Nicolas (who wore the red robes of a bishop and was also famous for his kindness to children and generosity to the poor), which provided a much-needed shot of Christianity to merge with the Viking and Saxon religions. Thus Odin was Christian-ized and, with a spot of great marketing from our friends the Americans, eventually evolved into the happy, plump Santa-Claus (“Claus” is diminutive for Nicolas) that we know and love today.

So how did the Christmas festival get moved to the 25th December? Well –Christians please look away now - the 25th December was not, in fact Jesus’ birthday but was adopted as such as a politically neat way to unify all the religions and create harmony. This particular date was “natalis solis invicti” (the Roman "birth of the unconquered sun") plus Dionysus the Greek God’s birthday and also that of the Egyptian God Osiris and Mithra (the Iranian "Sun of Righteousness") and since the 21st and 25th December were only a few days apart, it was thought to be politically and religiously advantageous to move Jesus’ birthday to the 25th, thus merging several religions into one.

So the real Christmas story is essentially about the unification of all religion over the last few thousand years into two predominantly mythical Gods: Jesus (Christian) and Santa (pagan.)

And that was the highly-condensed story of how the mighty Odin-the-Allfather became a jolly, rosy-cheeked modern icon, synonymous with Christmas. His legacy lives on after thousands of years and his purpose is essentially the same now as it was then. He keeps people happy at the darkest, most miserable time of year.

So raise a glass to Odin tonight – this Longest Night- and remember the true origins of Christmas.

Happy Yuletide to each and every one of you!

The Perturbation

2009-12-18T12:57:00.015Z

"Perturbation"

- Variation in a designated orbit, as of a planet, that results from the influence of one or more external bodies.
- a secondary influence on a system that causes it to deviate slightly
- activity that is a malfunction, intrusion, or interruption
- an act of disorder

Once upon a time, in a beautiful but remote part of Eastern England, there lived a crazy middle-aged, middle-class cat lady. Besides a love of unwanted spitting kittens, the cat lady spent most of her time getting stressed out by her job. Oh yes, the all-consuming important JOB...you see, the cat lady used to be SOMEONE – a yummy mummy with a taste for rebellion, a hot-shot finance director, a fast-track career-hungry accounting mogul who deftly juggled betwixt sixty hour weeks, three beautiful and hyper-intelligent kids, a tall, dark, handsome, super-clever geeky photographer-husband and (to keep her sane) a fine art photography blog which she enjoyed writing very much.

Organisation was the key to the smooth running of the cat-lady’s little empire. Complex time management skills and efficient scheduling were essential to ensure control. Indeed she ran everything so perfectly that there was even time for a spot of relaxing. Such rare and precious moments snatched to herself would involve a spot of shopping, gardening or maybe even writing about her passion for black and white nude photography – with the help of a generously sized glass of chardonnay to aid in the relaxation process.

Life was full, rich, complete and a heckuva lot of fun.

Of course a life as perfect as his was simply inviting disaster. In the mad cat lady’s case it was a triple whammy. Not only did the cat lady experience a loss of her ability to write (thanks to neurological damage caused by radiation treatment for an annoyingly persistent brain tumour) but this unfortunate and most untimely event also coincided with The Recession. Whammy Part Deux resulted in catastrophic effects on the cat lady’s (until now) highly successful day-job company that she had spent so long building with her super-clever-geeky husband.

Tough decisions were made: the expensive fine art photography hobby had to go, as did any other unnecessary expenses (such as the home-help, shopping, fine dining, the chardonnay and anything else which constituted “fun.”) The cat lady struggled to cope with hugely increased work hours (fighting to save the business), looking after her stressed-out kids, chronic back pain, plus maintaining a large and expensive house whilst simultaneously fighting the overwhelming fatigue which comes with fallout from having one’s brain nuked. Moreover, because she was unable to string more than a couple of sentences together on paper, she could not write, and this inability to be able to pour out her creative side slowly drove her into a deep and dark depression.

And then came the icing on the cake. The night before the cat lady and her geeky photographer husband were about to sell their beautiful-but-expensive-to-run country home, start over and buy a modest hovel, their house decided to subside. Huge cracks appeared in the walls – the south-west wing had literally tilted overnight, thus rendering it utterly unsaleable. They were stuck.

What was the cat lady to do? Despite her best efforts to maintain absolute control over what was happening around her and despite her increasingly futile efforts to keep everything in her world the same as before, she could rapidly feel everything slipping away from her. Her beautiful orderly life was over. All that lay ahead of her was danger, fear, The Unknown. She had lost control.

As the wisdom goes, it is only when you reach rock bottom that you learn how to haul yourself out of the abyss. So the mad old cat lady and her geeky photographer-husband picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and decided to fight as never before. They literally glued the house and their lives back together.

The cat lady decided that she couldn’t live without writing and very slowly trained her overly-fried-brain to write again. Although she was ecstatically happy to be able to create again, that still left the problem of Whammy Part Deux. So the cat-lady decided to devote every waking moment to studying marketing, and the geeky photographer-husband decided to utilize his super-high-I.Q. and learn new skills in CG and VFX-land, and together they started a new second day-job business to help with the recession-pressure. They still have a long way to go of course, but no-one ever claimed that the road to recovery would be easy.

No perturbation is worthwhile unless you learn from it. And what this yummy-mummy learned is that all those crappy self-help books that she burnt years ago actually contained a grain of truth after all. She learned that control is an illusion and that in order to really live, you have to let go of the absolute and embrace chaos. And that life is not after all strictly black or white, but is instead infinitely more fun when you live in the shades of grey in between.

The geeky photographer husband had been telling her that for years of course, but he always was a bit of a smart-ass...

PirateMaiden 543

Pirate Maiden

Censorship: The Photographer’s Ultimate Marketing Tool

2009-12-15T12:57:00.023Z

Whilst I’ve been away, Stephen has done a splendid job of fighting the good fight against U.K. State oppression of photographers’ rights (keep going, Stephen!) I owe him a debt of gratitude for his extensive coverage of the whole British censorship issue. And he’s absolutely spot-on of course. There is no doubt at all that this is a very bad time to be a photographer in Britain.

For those few international photographers who still desire to travel to this green and pleasant land, you take your life into your own hands (or at least risk being arrested) when you start photographing train stations, shopping centres, chip shops, famous monuments such as St Paul’s Cathedral or anything in fact which our police deem might potentially be a terrorist threat, as per the exceedingly vague powers bestowed on them by Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. This time last year you may recall my rants on this very topic, and how outraged and scared Rich and I were that our rights had been squashed this way. The woolly wording of Dangerous Pictures Act also meant that we had to be very careful about what we might accidentally stumble across online, and we were scared to take our cameras to photograph the cities in case we were stopped and our cameras seized by over-zealous community police officers. Things got so bad for a while that I even deleted our blog posts which ranted against the Government, for fear that our blog was being monitored (which turned to be true.)

It is now approximately a year later.

What has changed? Well, on the surface, not much. The country is still obsessed with political correctness. Erotic photographic art is still forbidden if it is “extreme pornography,” “obscene” or even politically incorrect (e.g. the photograph of the young Brooke Shields at the Tate Modern.) And we still have to be extremely careful about what we might accidentally click on when browsing online. The police still continue to treat ordinary street photographers as terrorists, they are still stopping photographers from photographing public places, plus the monitoring of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other electronic mediums for suspicious activity has actually become more extensive rather than less. In theory we are in a much worse position than we were a year ago.

But although some things have stayed the same, photographers’ attitudes have changed. Such behaviour by the police has gone way beyond scary or sinister – it has become positively surreal. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that folks don’t care about State oppression any more – quite the opposite in fact, but constant exposure to all of this, day in, day out, leads to contempt (for the government), rebellion and above all, embarrassment. Yes indeed, our politicians are numpties. The very idea that photographers could be furthering terrorism by photographing St Paul's Cathedral is totally ludicrous. Terrorists can use the internet, Google Street View or their camera-phones – they sure as hell don’t use SLR’s. Truly our police are the laughing stock of the world, and boy, are we ashamed of this. What the hell must photographers outside the U.K. think of us? You guys must think that the British authorities have gone completely crackers which – let’s face it - isn’t too far from the truth as far as this particular law is concerned.

Landscape 1130

St Pauls, as shot from the Tate - this photograph is FORBIDDEN!

And so we quietly and defiantly bide our time until the next General Election, when we can boot out Big Brother and vote in a new government which (hopefully) might be a bit more sensible than the current lot. In the meantime, being censored has become somewhat a badge of honour, a way of telling the current regime that it can stick its false morality where the sun doesn’t shine. Indeed, censorship is marking photographic art MORE appealing and certainly more exciting! There is nothing quite as glamorous as something which may be breaking the law. The allure of danger and rebellion makes those banned photographs the ultimate “must have” collector’s item.

What a colossal miscalculation by the State! All the current censorship laws have done is to restore power to the people. Far from towing the line and doing as they are told, photographers are shooting more, not less, and they pushing the boundaries of their art even further. Why? Well, those photographs which have been banned are increasingly sought after online and their value has risen tenfold.

Wanna boost the collectors’ value of your photographs? Come to Britain! Photograph here – sure you might piss off the police, but hell, you’ll make a fortune. Let’s face it folks, nothing is as sexy as forbidden.

“The tougher the ban on a book, the higher its price and the more eager the curiosity. So the more copies are sold, and the more the book is read.”

Denis Diderot

Thanx!

2009-12-15T12:31:00.006Z

Just a quick note to thank all you fantastic folks for your warm welcome back.

We are overwhelmed! Thanks to those of you who have sent emails and recommendations for improving the security and search issues of our site, thanks to friend Stephen for spreading the word on his most excellent blog, and finally special 'merci à nos amis' Chris and Dr L of Univers d'Artistes for their wonderful article telling everyone about our new links. Thank you for your support and for not giving up on us!

KateT 17

Katy T, our first model all those years ago

Insanabile cacoëthes scribendi

2009-12-12T10:55:00.016Z

An incurable passion to write

(Satires)

Greetings folks and welcome to our new home!

Yes we know it’s been five long months since we last posted, and you have our profuse apologies for the lengthy absence. Huge thanks go to those of our friends who never gave up on us coming back, particularly to Michael, Dr L, Stephen, Dave and Z who have been incredibly supportive and we owe them all big-time.

Much has changed in our world (and more about that next time) but the most important thing is I’ve really missed writing here. Not a day went by when I didn’t think of Fluffytek. Over the last few years it has been our creative home, and for much of the last five months that I’ve been away, I’ve felt rootless, homeless, lost. As any writer, artist or photographer will tell you, not creating is ghastly. It’s like cutting off part of yourself. You need to invent new things in order to live. Creativity = life. No wonder I’ve felt so rough.

Anyway, news in brief:

Medical-wise (I’m sure no one is interested but I’m telling you anyway) it turns out that the low point of my ultra-zap was eighteen months after treatment, which kinda explains the brain freeze of five months ago and my subsequent meltdown. ‘Nuff said about the health issues – all you need to know is that Rich was a veritable saint and I’m recovered now.

In case anyone is wondering what the hell happened to our family filmmaking venture, yes it is very much alive and kicking. For obvious reasons I can't link to it from here, but if anyone is vaguely interested in watching our little film-short or reading our VFX blog, please email me and I'll gladly send you the link. The new VFX blog has a more remote and professional slant – not surprising as VFX is intended to be our day-job at some point in the future, so it’s effectively a biz-blog. Although it’s fun writing there, we do miss somewhere to relax and appreciate fine art, somewhere to be “just us.” We miss Fluffytek.

I still adore photography – it’s a drug, a consuming passion, my life. I must be the only wife in living memory who loves and absolutely requires her husband to photograph naked women. How screwed up does that make me?

The bottom line? I couldn’t move on. I have no idea of this is a failing or not. Frankly I don’t care. So I will continue to write here as and when time allows. We probably don’t have very many readers left by now, but that doesn’t matter either. I write for myself, for Rich and our photographic bloggie friends.

I always have.

And that’s exactly the way it should be.

Iveta 1011

Iveta

Final reminder:
Our new web site is http://www.fluffytek2.com
Our new blog address is http://www.fluffytek2.com/blog/default.html
New RSS feed: http://www.fluffytek2.com/blog/atom.xml

Please update your bookmarks, as the old site will be wiped next week. Thanx!