Post No. 300

Well the weekend issue was partially resolved. It seems that the Hogwarts father concerned didn’t tell his wife about our photographic leanings for some strange reason I can’t quite fathom (but I’m guessing we have gained another viewer – welcome dear bloggie reader!) Plus we appear to have been forgiven as my son has now been invited to a party there next weekend.

Rich is going to put our real names on the Fluffytek site, but will embed them in a graphic so Google can’t index them. Of course this doesn’t solve the problem completely, as we're certainly traceable if you try, but nevertheless it solves the problem temporarily, and all’s well that ends well.

End of drama for this month.

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Here's Lou-Lou.

Great heavens, I've just realised this is our 300th post.

Secret Pornographers

Well, it’s finally happened.

After saying we never would, after declaring we were immensely proud of our artistic work, we’ve now called it quits and removed our names from our web site.

From now on Rich will be known by his online nickname Mr Fluffy, and I’ll just be Lin. There goes my potential aspirations as an art writer/critic of nude photographic art, and bye bye Rich making a name for himself in serious figure study photography. Farewell to him ever being featured in the prestigious Photographer’s Gallery in London, or ever getting any sort of exhibition. All that goodwill and reputation built up over the last few years? It’s gone. Erased from our web site and online profiles, just like that.

To all you other models and photographers who use pseudonyms out there, rather than your real names: you were right, we were wrong. Clearly we were just being hopelessly naïve.

Now we’ve sacrificed our artistic pride and our honesty and we’ve gone to ground. Reality bites. Nude photography, no matter how artistic we try to make it, will be our dirty little secret. Sod creative art, from now on we’ll just be dirty photographic pornographers, guy (and girl) with camera, hiding our true nature by day and shooting thrill-seeking-dirty-piccies by night.

The reason?

The latest trend amongst the Hogwarts mummies and daddies, before they let their beloved little darlings come around to play with our sons, is to Google the name of the parents. We are being checked out to make sure we are “suitable” before other kids are being allowed to be friends with ours. Apparently we are very "unsuitable."

Shit.

How do you choose between your kids and your artistic identity?

If we sound bitter, it’s because we are.

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A highly unsuitable image, which matches my highly unsuitable mood.

Neurogenesis

This is a mind-expanding post. Literally.

I’ve been feeling a bit blue recently, I admit. However I’m not one to pop happy-pills at the first sign of trouble, largely because in every single person I’ve known who has taken them, even after a couple of weeks, they still don’t seem to do any good.

Anti-depressants have become increasingly popular in the west in recent years. Prozac is one of the most popular of the new drugs and is estimated to be used by one million people in the UK alone. It is perceived to be a miracle cure for depression, but it has also been heavily criticised as being ineffective.

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Depression has always been thought to be due to a lack of the brain chemical serotonin. Up until recently, I also thought this was the case. Anti-depressants are supposed to work because they flood the brain with serotonin, and yet doctors will readily admit that often nothing happens and the patient remains depressed. Weeks pass by drearily, the patient remains miserable, and eventually, after several months, the Prozac finally works and he starts to feel better.

What I haven’t been able to understand is: Why the delay? Why don’t you feel instantly better when you take happy pills? It’s what they’re supposed to do, after all. So depression can’t be caused by something as simple as a serotonin imbalance can it?

Well after many of my scientific-reading sessions in various scented bubble-baths, it turns out that my instincts were right. It’s not as simple as that.

Ronald Duman, a leading Yale psychiatrist, has discovered that antidepressants work not because of the serotonin (which has nothing to do with it) but instead because Prozac triggers an increase in production of a class of proteins known as trophic factors. These trophic factors make your brain neurons grow. Depression, on the other hand, is like a drought for neurons. In short, if you suffer from clinical depression, your brain neurons have probably stopped growing. Duman found that prolonged bouts of stress, or damage like radiation (yay! That’s me!) caused neurons to stop reproducing. After many years of research, he also discovered that Prozac (and other similar anti-depressants) increased neurogenesis over time in the hippocampus by up to 75%.

The truly interesting thing about this new field of neurogenesis is that finally there is hope for people suffering from brain disorders caused by the death of dopamine-producing neurons such as Parkinson’s disease. Early-stage research in this area has produced spectacular results, although it will doubtless be many years before diseases such as Parkinson’s and dementia actually have a cure. But it’s a start.

If I sound slightly obsessed with this subject, it’s because neurogenesis is fascinating. It explains who we are, and why we act and think the way we do. Our life character, our personalities are directly determined by the number of neurons we had as kids, and our long-term ability to create new ones.

Professor Elizabeth Gould has found that our brain structure is directly influenced by our surroundings. If you expose an animal (or person) to stressful conditions or a deprived environment, then the brain stops producing new neurons and begins to starve. If a child was exposed to stressful situations when he was in the womb, or even as a baby (such as poverty, deprivation, being apart from his mother) then this early trauma has life-long implications. When he grows up he will produce less new brain neurons because his brain is trained to concentrate on survival, rather than creating new cells for the future. He never had a chance. Because of his rough life when he was a kid, his brain will literally be limited for the rest of his life.

As Gould says, “Poverty and stress aren’t just a sociological idea. They are an anatomy.” She concludes that despair is caused by the early loss of the brain’s plasticity and it’s inability to constantly repair itself.

The good news for me is that it’s not going to be too hard for me to kick-start my poor little radiated neurons into action again. If you think about it, the brain is just a muscle. The more you feed and exercise it, the more it grows. Gould’s work has demonstrated just how easy it is to train the brain to heal itself, to get those stressed-out neurons stimulated again. You can grow new brain cells, but you need to work at it in the same way as when you go down the gym. If you give your brain good nutrition, vitamins, an enriched environment, puzzles, intellectual stimulation, studying and learning, then those little neurons will be kick-started into repairing themselves in no time.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to suck some algae and pump some logic puzzles.

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If you're still awake after all of this, then congrats! You are the proud owner of one shiny new neuron. Now who says that cruising nekkid chix online isn't good for you?!

All images are of Claire-Louisa.

The Grain Principle

“Today I want a grainy picture,” I demanded Rich in true prima-donna style, this morning over breakfast.

He shot me an alarmed “Oh God, Lin’s acting psycho” look.

“I don’t do grain,” he said. “You know that. I don’t shoot film anyway.”

“Well, can’t you add it afterwards?” I retorted.

He looked both horrified and rather offended. The very same look which he gave me yesterday when I asked him to scrape up something smelly and unsavoury from the carpet.

I should perhaps now explain that we’re rather opposed on The Grain Principle.

Rich really dislikes grain. Many moons ago, I remember he used a very low grain film and still used to complain bitterly about the lack of detail in the print. When digital came along he was over the moon. He likes pictures to look incredibly smooth and ultra-sharp. He doesn't like noise and grain, and he's passionate about pixels, the more the merrier. He wants the captured image to look the way he sees it with his eyes and he prefers complete control over the photograph. I can understand this. After all, he’s a scientist so naturally he likes exactness, precision and perfection. He says that if you need grain to make the photograph work, then it’s a waste of time. “Grain is not a mood-enhancer. It is an artefact of the chemical process.”

In complete contrast, over time I’ve learned to love grain, and I disagree with Rich in that I really do think it adds mood. A certain look, a certain style. It has a sexy, arty flavour which is unique and rather cool. Rich understands this, but he says it’s just not to his personal taste. He also thinks that the reason the general public like grainy or noisy photos nowadays is because they think the images were shot on film, and somehow this is perceived as being more professional and artistic. With the growth of digital, he believes grain is being marginalized, which is why it is doubly trendy for art and fashion photography (UK Vogue often has so much grain that you can hardly see the clothes, but the images sure look uber-cool.)

With the cessation of Polaroid, Rich now reckons that in five years time, film will only be used by hobbyists and those that have a dedicated interest in shooting film. He tells me that nowadays nearly all the high-end professional photographers shoot digitally. Digital photography is the future. Film and grain are ancient history. You can fight it all you want, but that’s the truth. So why cling to the past?

All this makes for a very persuasive argument over morning coffee of course, but it doesn’t solve my desire for a grainy portrait, no matter how prehistoric the concept may be.

So I look a leaf out of my four year old daughter’s book, and decided to be a diva. “I don't care. I wanna look grainy. I want a photograph, as is, no photoshop at all, just the real me, but grainy.

He gave me a slightly despairing look. “You won’t like it, you know. You’re feeling tired, radiated, really ill. It’s not going to make you look as sexy as you'd like, and then you'll blame me.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to look sexy, I just want a portrait of me as I really am. A snapshot in time, a record of this point in my life. I know it’s going to be un-pretty. And I don’t care if I don’t like it. I’ve just got to do it.”

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So here it is.

He was wrong. I love it.

Yes I know it’s not real grain. It’s post-processed digitally added noise, and it will make all you purist film photographers out there shudder. Nevertheless, I don’t think it came out too badly at all. No fancy studio posing, no sexiness, no Photoshop. Just me on my favourite sofa. It’s who I am. And it’s probably the only photograph you’re ever going to see of my floppy old boobs, so make the most of it.

Subject Before Technique

Thanks to all of you for your encouragement regarding my picking up a camera. The verdict is unanimous. I should go for it!

It sounds so simple doesn’t it? Pick up a camera and just start shooting. But I’m not the type of person to do that willy-nilly. I read extensively about photography of course, and the more I read, the more complicated it seems to be. Not the nuts and bolts of taking a shot of course. Any person with any moderate degree of intelligence can learn basic composition, exposure and how to work a camera. But there’s a heck of a difference between learning how to do that, and actually being a real photographer.

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To a complete novice like me, it seems that the first thing you need, before you even contemplate picking up a camera, is to have some idea of what you want to photograph. You can’t go round just photographing random places, objects or people and call yourself an artist. O.K. so many people do, but I’m talking about real photographers. You know, the ones that create photographs that actually mean something.

So my initial opinion is that I have to choose my subject matter first. And according to most learned photographic philosophy books I’ve read, it has to be something that I am both highly interested in and feel passionately about. Bland records of anything and everything don’t produce meaningful images. As photographer David Hurn said, "The photographer must have intense curiosity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures."

Technique, the how of producing a photograph, must come second to the subject matter. Your fascination, enthusiasm and passion for the subject of your choice are what makes a good photograph. O.K. technique is important too, but I propose it is not as important as the way you feel about what you are photographing. If you photograph a random image, which does not at least capture your basic curiosity, then there’s no way you are ever going to produce a meaningful image that will move either you or your viewers. The most vital component of the image is missing. Why is more important than how.

I’d rather look at a poorly composed snapshot taken by a mother of her kids, than a sterile expressionless “arty” Vogue fashion shot any day. The first reflects an intense emotional connection, a visual response to the world, the second is empty.

But that’s just me. And I might be way off track here, so please correct me if you think I’m talking complete nonsense.

Sadly for you lot, I don’t feel remotely curious or passionate about photographing naked women. However I do have an obsession with cats. I’d love to be able to take a decent portrait of my pussies. Not a snapshot. No, I mean a truly meaningful, good kitty portrait. One which pleases me at least, even if it leaves you reaching for the puke bag. (Brooks Jensen thinks cat photos are universally trite. To that I say: Art is subjective. Clearly you are not a cat lover. And BTW your cat probably hates you.)

Thus, due to my passion for all things feline, combined with a reasonable level of intelligence, extensive study of the craft of photography, and then after twenty years hard slog, I can therefore logically conclude with reasonable certainty that if I am still alive in 2028, I will probably be a moderately competent cat photographer.

Yay! Genu-Ine photographic ambition! As Bill Bradley once said, “Ambition is the path of success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

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Images are of Clayre McKinnen.

From this discussion we therefore conclude that Rich’s photographic curiosity is aroused by pretty women, preferably nekkid pretty women. Nothing wrong with that. In fact we both share a passion for pussies. The only difference is that mine is furry. (Not mine personally, you understand, the subject pussy, I mean. Although in the interests of political correctness I should state categorically for the record that both bald and furry pussies of both genres are equally welcome, as are partially waxed felines and kitties with landing strips. Don’t wanna offend the photographic subjects, now do we?)

Pop Art and Tarts

My oldest son, our very own budding Salvador Dali, has just completed a highly detailed portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. He was originally instructed to reproduce a B+W sketch of the above image. Now personally I think portraits are really difficult stuff, especially for a kid. It took three weeks solid to complete and I think it is pretty darn good, although everyone reckons it looks like his Dad, rather than ol’ Vince. (Does this mean Rich looks like Van Gogh? Scary.)

Anyway, it’s a great piece of art for a kid, but his Hogwarts Art Professor has now told him that she intends to heavily crop it, and has also instructed him to haphazardly colour it in very vibrant colours a-la-Pop-Art. Kind of Vincent Van Gogh becomes Andy Warhol.

My son (who loathes Pop Art) is utterly horrified. “She can’t crop it. It’s not meant to be cropped. I didn’t draw it that way. And she can’t make me convert it to colour. That wouldn’t be art. It’s meant to be Black and White. It’s my art. She can‘t ruin it. I refuse!”

Oh dear. More art politics. That’s all I need.

Modifying a piece of art might be normal in a teaching context, but is it fair, bearing in mind how many hours (about fifty) it took to complete this portrait? Is it acceptable for an artist (even a young one) to have his creative vision cropped and the style completely changed according to the ever-changing whim of the person who commissioned the art-piece? Damned if I know the answer. All I know is that the topic of art has become horribly complicated in our house nowadays.

My son also casually mentioned tonight that one of his paintings has been exhibited in the city cathedral for the last week or so.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I squeaked excitedly. “WOW! This is HUGE!”
He shot me that slightly embarrassed “Oh God you’re being impossible Mother” look that only teenage sons can give and said impassively, “I knew you’d react like that.”

“How am I supposed to react?” I said, confused.

“I dunno. But it’s no big deal. Really it‘s not. Anyway, I forgot.”

Hmm. I honestly wonder how overly proud mothers are supposed to cope with moody hormonal teenage sons. Jumping up and down like an over-excited rabbit on wacky-backy apparently is not acceptable behaviour for a Hogwarts mother. I must be quiet, dignified, a Lady Who Lunches. I must remain casual and cool at all times. Above all, I MUST NOT BE EMBARRESSING. Oh dear. Clearly I have blown it big-time.

Teenagers are aliens. If anyone knows how to handle them can they please let me know?

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This is not Rich-a-la-Vince (who is stashed at school, awaiting death-by-cropping.)

It is a tart.

It was baked by my remarkably extrovert nine-year-old son (a complete polar opposite of his older brother) who wants to be a VERY FAMOUS T.V. CHEF when he grows up. This little lemon meringue tart took him 3 hours to prepare. Perfectionism runs in the family.

(BTW, I'm not going to eat it. It’s so darn pretty that I'm just gonna look at it.)

The Makeover

Welcome to the new look of Fluffytek.

I've spent the last week reworking the website, creating new graphics and layouts, sorting through the images and updating the galleries. Lots of work and lots of changes; it's a completely new site.

The gallery now has expanding images, just like the pages from the blog. For those of you who are curious, you can't do the expanding blog images thing without hosting the blog on your own website.

It was all finished off yesterday and all that remained were the changes to the blogger templates to make everything look coherent. So I spent yesterday afternoon editing the template in blogger and when it was finished, I saved the changes without publishing so that when I did this post all the updates would go through at once, and hay presto the new shiny Fluffytek site would be announced.

You can imagine how annoyed I was to get up this morning and find that blogger had published the changes anyway. Thus some of you had a preview of the new look but with all the links broken, and the page still embedded in a frame. So it looked ghastly and broken. Sorry about that.

So I took the whole site down!

And now it's back up.

You can navigate the site from the links at the top. You can keep up with what we are doing with twitter. We have one twitter account for Fluffytek and we will prefix Lin's twitters with L: and my twitters with R: so you know who is saying what.

So:
Do you like the new site?
Is it not awesomely good looking?
Is Twitter a good idea?
Do you want to hear our insane ramblings?

Please take a look around and let us know what you think.

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This is Ivory Flame launching herself as well as the new Fluffytek website.

The Absence of Self

“There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me but I had it surgically removed.”
Peter Sellers

No doubt some of you will be wondering why our blogging has been minimal in the past few weeks. It hasn’t all been over-work-related. I’ve been feeling slightly below par recently. This is totally unlike me, as I‘m usually an incredibly balanced and sensible person (It’s true, and you can all just stop laughing now, otherwise I‘ll thump you.). However there’s no doubt that strange things have been happening, courtesy of my expanding/shrinking/currently-in-its-death-throes-tumour.

I was warned of course that there would be lasting side effects of the treatment, But being warned about something isn’t the same as living it. The effects are really kicking in now. Vertigo, pain, nausea, chronic itchy head (I nearly shaved my head yesterday out of sheer desperation.) And my personality is changing on a daily basis, depending on what part of my brain the tumour is pressing today. Rich is an absolute saint for putting up with me, I can tell you that. For example I woke up yesterday as an atheist, for no reason at all (Rich calls it enlightenment and takes it as a good sign!)

I’ve absolutely no idea what has happened to “the real me.” She’s long gone. I’m a floating voter at the moment. I’ve nearly deleted the blog at least 21 times last week (that’s three times a day.) Now don’t you go feeling sympathy for me, 'cos that will only make me mad. And I’ll probably delete this post anyway, but assuming I decide to leave it up or you catch it via RSS feeds, this is by way of explanation as to what’s happening in The Fluffytek Photographic World. Oh and Rich worked 82 hours last week. The man is superhuman. He really is.

Anyhoo, I’m not feeling despondent about all of this, and I do know I’ll get past all the side effects, but in the meantime, you can anticipate wacky personality changes on my part, and no doubt the bloggie-style and contents will fluctuate accordingly.

For example, I’ve been tempted to pick up a camera recently. Very strongly tempted. Resistance to this foolish notion is not aided by the fact that Rich has offered me his old Canon 350D. Not that I want to shoot female nudes though. No worries there (I’m not that crazy. Yet.) But sometimes I really do get tempted to view life from the other side of the lens. T’would be interesting, and rather therapeutic, methinks. Plus it would provide answers to the constant questions I inevitably ask “How do they do that? What lighting do they use? How is a photograph produced?” (Rather than the viewer’s/writer’s perspective of why?) Hmm. We shall see. I really would make a terrible photographer you know.

Right, off to my lime-and-lemon-grass-flavoured-bubble-bath. If I don’t decide to go to the dark side and take up photography or full-time writing, I might alternatively pursue a new and exciting career inbreeding Norwegian Forest cats, or even start a company selling exotic-flavoured-bubble-bath. Plus we could get some really good photos of bubblicious models (with said Norwegian Forest Cats) soaking in a giant steamy foamy tub. Cliché. Cliché. Predictable glamour photography, I know. Rich is shuddering at the thought.

Anyway, who gives a damn if a photograph’s been done many times before, as long as it smells nice?

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Pirate Maiden. I've no idea if she smells nice, but very probably.

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Who is the Mystery Model?

This is Rich’s favourite model from the Scott Church workshop last weekend.

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Unbelievably Rich has forgotten her name (hey I thought I was the one with the memory problems?) and she left early so they couldn’t exchange contact details. So if anyone reading this knows who she is, please let us know!

Incidentally Rich has a bit of a thing about Christina Ricci, to whom our lovely mystery lady bears more than a passing resemblance, so I’m not entirely surprised he was rather taken with her. That’s polite British lingo for:

Yay! I’ve finally found a model that our dear photographer has a crush on! O.K. so it’s not much of a crush, but seriously , I was starting to worry that he’s seen so many scantily clad laydeez that he was becoming immune to the charms of beautiful women. It’s only healthy to sometimes be attracted to whom you’re photographing, you know.

What’s the point of being a photographer if beauty doesn’t move you?

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The ravishing-Christina-Ricci-lookalike-mystery-model-with-the-sultry-steamy-pout. She doesn't do nudes incidentally, so don't get your hopes up.

Kiss my shiny latex ass

To those who actually noticed, apologies for being off-blog for a wee while.

Life has been better. Rich is working through the nights on the day-job software (and I miss him!) plus my head is really playing up and I am wackeroo with PMS. Gah! Get me to the nearest pub. I need alcohol and it’s only 1 p.m.

I'm swamped with day-job work too. It’s our busiest two weeks of the year, so I’m refraining from cruising the blogs (boo hoo!) or posting again until the stress eases off a bit. Lots going on behind the scenes photographically. And I mean lots. Some good, some not so good, some which I definitely can’t post here because it’s too photographically political (now that’s got you wondering eh?)

However Rich did find time at some ungodly hour of the night last night to put in a new groovy feature to the bloggie images, so when you click on them, they swoosh larger, rather than pop up.

Yes I know I’ve posted this image before but it has the dual purpose of accurately describing our week, plus also illustrates the feature perfectly.

Click on my ass and you’ll see what I mean.

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Ass gets bigger.
Click again.
Ass gets smaller.
Click.
Ass gets bigger…
Etc, etc.

Kinda hypnotic after a while. Or it will put you off your breakfast. Either works for me.