On The Ancient Art of Fighting Woolly Mammoths

It’s that time of the year again. Hurrah for Christmas! Joy to the world! Yes it’s the winter week when we eat, feast and celebrate years of (mainly pagan) mythology, not just the usual turkey, Christmas Pud and Queen's speech traditions, but each family has its own individual Christmas rituals, and woe betide anyone who breaks them!

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So the next couple of days will be spent in a frenzy of preparation and cooking, with (unfortunately) a great deal less time for more artistic pursuits. I swear I’d rather be bumming around drinking tea and writing deep and meaningless arty drivel, but alas, we mothers do not get that option. For us, the next few days are about one thing only. Stress.

Like turkeys to the slaughter we women take on the immeasurable pressure of The Family Christmas, where we attempt to control strung-out, sleep deprived hyperactive children, whilst simultaneously trying to pacify cantankerous visiting relatives who are in search of perfect cuisine and deep and meaningful emotional contact with those family members whom they spend most of the year avoiding. It’s that time of festive cheer when years of in-law feuding surface at the Christmas dinner table, and the air is so thick with tension and emotional blackmail that you could cut it with your butter knife. Plus the fact that we’re all experiencing money worries because of that nasty recession, simply cranks those tension levels up that extra notch, resulting in a truly overdone family bird.

When you’ve got kids, opting out of Christmas is definitely not an option, nor would we want to in all honesty, although when the gravy is burning, the pudding’s soggy and the turkey is a walking disaster (I cooked it upside down last year – shows you how much sherry I’d had, huh?)

So what do we do in times of stress? Well since our genes have barely changed in the last ten thousand years, we humans react pretty much the same as our stone-age ancestors did when confronted with an angry woolly mammoth. Our adrenaline kicks in, we get stressed, and our bodies go into “fight or flight” syndrome. Since running away is sadly not an option (like the poor turkey, there is no escaping our fate) the remaining option is fighting. Like cornered animals, our natural instinct is to escape by any means necessary, using any natural weapons at our disposal, and for modern humanoids that would mean arguing our way out. Small wonder there are so many marital break-ups in January, eh?

Now you might think that a better option would be to ferment yourself in any and all available alcohol as a means of escape. Indeed, numerous studies have found that stress dramatically increases alcohol consumption in animals (and I can personally vouch for this), but unfortunately all that yummy Christmassy booze simply makes the problem much worse because alcohol further stimulates the hormone adrenaline, and makes you want to fight even more.

So if you find yourself getting all hot and bothered this Christmas week, please remember that it’s not your fault. It’s your body doing what it does best and tackling that big, scary woolly mammoth the best way you know how.

And if you DO get the chance to escape at any point, then may I humbly recommend you grab any available camera, head for the hills and indulge in a spot of soothing photographic therapy. This strategy works – I promise. How do I know? Because that’s how I fought my own Mammuthus primigenius last year, and won.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

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Claire-Louisa, fingering her bobbles

Are you having a holly, jolly Christmas?

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

Dr. Seuss

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Christmas - Fluffytek style!

Today is our local town's Grand Switch-on of Ye Olde Christmas Lights. Our favourite coffee shop will be open (hurrah!) and all the stores are already twinkly, sparkly and advertising their latest festive goodies with which to tempt you into spending your mega-bucks (which you haven’t got) on garish-but-useless prezzies for your loved ones (which they don’t want.) As our dear Grinch said, “The avarice never ends! "I want golf clubs. I want diamonds. I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored and sell it to make glue. Look, I don't wanna make waves, but this whole Christmas season is stupid, stupid, stupid!”

Whoops! Did I let my distinctly unfestive cynicism get the better of me there? No, no, I assure you, here at Fluffytek, we really do love Christmas. Passionately! Yes I really promise we do. It’s just that…erm…well you’ll appreciate we’re sort of in a teensy little world recession and we’re experiencing…erm…a few small cash flow issues ourselves. Just a small spot of bother you understand…nothing serious, and let’s face it, we’re all in the same boat. So how are we going to prepare for this most momentous feast day of the year? How can we as a nation join together and spread the happy Yuletide message of worldwide joy and rebirth to our friends and loved ones?

OMG, the coffers are bare. We’re doomed. DOOMED, I TELL YOU!

Now, let’s be honest, it’s going to be a bit of a thrifty credit-crunched Christmas, but please don’t let that out you off. As the Grinch said, Christmas isn’t about stuff, it’s a feeling inside. Instead of a meaningless wallow in materiality and commercialisation, let’s break with tradition. Let’s engage our puzzlers and get inventive. Let’s do something that really means something. After all, you don’t need money to be happy, you don’t have to spend thousands on your credit card to pass on the festive spirit that you ought to be feeling but definitely aren’t. So what to do?

Behold!!! Let me present to you…

~~ The Anti-Christmas ~~

~ Christmas gifts for all, as designed by your talented loving children ~

No, no, hear me out. It will really work, I tell you!
Let’s open the Fluffy sweatshop and get cracking! Only four weeks to go. Gotta get movin’…

The kids were a bit disconcerted at first, then they refused point blank, but when tempted with the enticing thought of lumps of coal in their stockings, they’re now really getting into the swing of it! They’ve finished the painting-by-numbers Christmas cards already, so now it’s onto the gifts. For the kids’ friends we’ve got a plentiful supply of dazzling genu-ine collector’s moon rock from outer-space (aka aforementioned coal with a liberal sprinkling of glue and my daughter’s silver glitter.) A truly unique gift! As for the in-laws, I’m sure my Father-in-law will appreciate a 40inch glossy Chistmassy print of the luscious Claire Louisa on his bedroom wall (see above - although his wife might not be quite so keen) and my younger son (the budding chef, if you recall) has decided to bottle up his latest Hot Mango Chutney concoction and give that to his Granny (a surprisingly spicy vintage, it can also be used to strip wallpaper if you don’t fancy slapping it in your sandwiches and dissolving your tongue. I think Granny will love it. No really, she will.)

So…that’s Christmas sorted then?

Alas we have one unsolved dilemma: The Christmas Tree. I’m not like Dave…I have no desire to go chop down one of my own poor innocent pretty little fir trees and implant it in our lounge. Besides all the needles will fall off, and BTW did I forget to mention that I’m allergic to pine trees? So for folks like myself, cheap plastic imitations rule O.K. If we can’t do real, then let’s fake it all the way...

But what sort of tree should I get? What sort of tree is so unbelievably realistic that it reflects the true spirit of Christmas 2008? What tree can possibly reflect the unbelievable hardship, anguish and downright gloominess that we’ve all been subjected to in this annus horriblis?

Perfect! I have it! Let me present to all you devoted Christmas lovers out there…

The Anti-Christmas Tree, as sold by our very own upmarket John Lewis Department store.

This groovy little festive number really does it for me, although I can’t figure out if this “must have” item is a stroke of marketing genius or evil genius.

Not only is it black (thus reflecting our global mood of festive misery and gloom) but it is also clearly designed for posh, upmarket, devil-worshipping bankers everywhere because it is...wait for it...upside down!

Alas, only the British could dream up something as crazy as this.



Good Heavens, whatever next? Satan’s baubles?

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 Dyslexic Photographer

Dyslexics are treated like Mushrooms. Keep them in the dark and feed them bull.
William Ford (UK photographer.)

When Rich was a boy, he wasn’t like other kids. The teachers thought he was lazy and stupid, the kids bullied him, and he was passed over for sitting proper “O” levels at sixteen because he was in the bottom stream at school. He was advised to do manual labour when he left school, as he was told he was unsuitable for anything else.

Throughout his childhood, his parents lamented their misfortune of having a “stupid son” and repeatedly yelled at him because they thought he was thick. He had an utterly miserable upbringing as far as I can tell, and it wasn’t until he was at college at the age of seventeen, that an English teacher thought that it was rather peculiar that he couldn’t spell at all, considering that both his grammar and his reading abilities were excellent. She decided to pursue the matter further and he was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia. Needless to say he didn’t end up as a bricklayer. He went on to achieve a degree in physics and ended up with his own computer software company.

Dyslexia is usually defined as the result of cognitive problems in the processing of the phonological parts of language. It is thought to be a problem with the left side of the brain where language is not processed in the correct sequence, meaning that understanding and interpreting sequences of symbols are harder than normal. Dyslexia comes in many different guises, although in Rich’s case it is simple vowel-blindness. He can read perfectly well, but he is unable to place vowels in the correct sequence.

In the field of art, it is a lesser known fact that dyslexics are natural creatives. They have a better understanding of two and three dimensional form, and their appreciation for colour, tone, and texture is much greater than the rest of us. The dyslexic artist has an advantage because his brain is wired differently. He can visualise his art before reaching for the camera or the paintbrush, his imagination is greater than ordinary mortals and he is a natural innovator. With practice and determination , this innate talent can result in some unique and amazing art. Consider Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and of course our very own photographers David Bailey and Ansel Adams. Some of the greatest artists in history can attribute part of their creative genius to their gift of dyslexia.

Nowadays Rich views his dyslexia as both a blessing and a curse. He finds it very annoying, and he is occasionally prone to the odd bout of frustration and low self-esteem. And I really have to push him to write blog posts – he finds writing incredibly difficult. He also still carries some of the emotional wounds of his childhood, particularly that “stupid” chip on his shoulder, and it is indeed a brave soul who dares to point out to him that he has made a spelling mistake.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is his experience with dyslexia which has given him his bloody-minded determination never to give up, to prove himself no matter what. You have no idea how much I admire this remarkable man who has achieved so much, considering what he went through when he was a kid.

Dyslexia has shaped the man he is today, and I am absolutely certain that it will continue to influence both his career and his art in the future.



Claire Louisa last year. Shortly after this shoot, she married, bought a BMW and quit modelling.

Doomed

Well, the unthinkable has happened.

One of my local female friends has discovered the blog. This was due to a silly error on my part – I sent her a rushed email from my modelling account, rather than my personal one. A simple click of the wrong button, and life has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Although she knows I model, to say this blog is outside of her personal comfort zone is a colossal understatement.

Damn and blast my incompetence! I want to delete the blog right now. Rich won’t let me.

Shit.

Just when I thought life couldn’t get much worse.

Big ramifications, folks.

HUGE.



On a happier note, this is a piccie of Claire Louisa, lookin’ fluffy.

The Student and the Master

I wrote this a while ago, about a lesson which was very personal to me. Only had the guts to post it now.



Outstanding artists are often prodigies. My son is a potential example of this. Because he lives and breathes his art scholarship, he is spending most of his spare time in the art room, ably assisted and advised by the super-tea-drinking Hogwarts art teacher. She sees more of him than I do at the moment. This is inevitable, and he is producing some amazing work as a result.

But not all relationships between student and master are as healthy as this one. Sometimes, the teacher may become attached to the student, particularly where the student is grown up and the age-gap is smaller. Because the two spend so much time together, locked in a common passion for art, in some cases the relationship may develop a more emotional and mental dimension.

The student of course worships the master, is in awe of him and wants to suck as much as knowledge as possible from his idol. The teacher must hold that awe in trust, see it for what it is, and use it carefully as a way of nourishing and encouraging the student. Being an artist or photographer, and usually a pretty good one, the teacher can use his own influence, personal knowledge and experience as a method of successfully teaching his pupil.

As a method of teaching, this is very necessary. The greatest gift a teacher can offer a student is his experience of his own life as a working photographer or artist. Teaching art is not just about teaching technique. It is about imparting personal life’s experiences, views and even emotions about the teacher’s life as an artist. Through his own experience, the teacher can encourage the student to not only learn the raw craft, but also how to overcome that student’s insecurities, fears and how to nourish that grain of creativity that will make that student the best that he or she can ever be. As a result, master and student develop a unique bond, a relationship and intellectual intimacy which is part artistic, and part personal. This closeness is inevitable, especially with a prodigy. The teacher recognises a special gift in the student, and concentrates on developing that potential into something partly shaped by the student, but largely steered by the teacher. The student’s finished art will therefore reflect both his own views, personality and ideas, and also those of his teacher.

But what happens when that grain of potential is successfully nourished into something amazing? What happens when the student has learned all he or she can possibly learn from the teacher? What happens when the student surpasses the master? Outgrows him? Does the master pat the prodigy on the back and wave him “Farewell. Go with God my son. Go forth into the world and produce amazing art!”

Well, if the teacher is a good one, that’s exactly what should happen. But what if the teacher has crossed the professional line and has become attached to the student? What if their relationship is “special?”

In such circumstances, the teacher may not be able to let go of the relationship. He needs the student, he needs to feel that the student still needs him, adores him, can still learn from him. He needs that “awe”. But the awe is gone forever. The student is now a successful artist in his or her own right, and is grateful for the tuition of course, but now wants to explore his own creative vision, by himself. There is nothing more that can be learned from the teacher.

The teacher resents this, is jealous of the student’s success, feels rejected , and in some (unfortunate) cases, I have seen the master copy the student’s work, steal the student’s ideas and claim them as his own. The teacher may be feeling abandoned, vulnerable and empty of inspiration. He feels that the student’s work is amazing, innovative and partly his own anyway, because his artistic vision was taught to and reflected through his student, and they may well have come up with the ideas through conversations they have had together in the past. So because he helped inspire the student’s art, the teacher feels he can therefore use the student’s ideas, because the vision belongs to both of them. The teacher cannot let go of his prodigy.

This is an example of an unhealthy relationship. One that has strayed beyond student and professional teacher. All too often, it results in resentment, a complete destruction of the intimate relationship between the two, and a severance of the emotional bond they once had.

Although this is immensely sad and tragic, it happens all the time.

Such is the nature of relationship between art and passion, master and prodigy.

Because artists are human too.



The images are of Claire Louisa.

How do we get more comments?

I frequent about fifteen of my favourite blogs every day (any more than that and I end up getting no work done at all). Some are photography blogs, some are nutrition blogs and some are anti-cancer blogs. A good smattering of all my interests.

I always read the comments on these blogs – they say as much about the personality of the blogger as the blog entry itself. Comments build community and friendship between the blogger and readers. If you follow the links from commentators (and most bloggers always do) you find out what type of person reads your bloggie ramblings, plus you discover many hidden internet gems – many commentators have outstanding blogs in their own rights. Through getting to know your regular commentators, over time they become valued friends.

Of course, blog comments give you valuable feedback on your writing and photography. You learn what style of blog entry will trigger a comment, and which ones are guaranteed to trigger nothing but a deathly internet silence. With some of our posts, you can practically smell the waves of boredom and/or disapproval coming off the computer screen.

For example, if we blog about general contentious photographic issues, such as photographic laws, pornography, or make some amazingly arrogant (and usually incorrect) observations about the psychology of a photographer, then we are guaranteed comments. The more contentious the issue, the more comments, providing our opinions are argued relatively eloquently, and we're not being total idiots.

Comments are essential to blog writers – they let us know that people are reading (and hopefully liking) the writing style. They give valuable wisdom too. Who needs a therapist when you have hundreds of people regularly reading your blog every day? If I blog about a personal emotional issue, I am lucky enough to guarantee that some kind soul out there will express their opinion, impart their knowledge, offer support, or more often than not, tell me I’m a complete idiot, and need to think again.

The type of images you post are also critical to the number of comments you receive. A blog is target-audience dependent. Readers of this particular blog want to see nudes (although many will tolerate my attempts at fetish, if only for the humour value). They want to look at the nekkid chicks, and because we deliberately put the image at the bottom of the post, we make sure than they have to work for their boobie-fix by reading our waffle before they reach their reward, the eye—candy at the end.

If we post some of Richard’s other photography at the end of a post, such as a landscape, or an animal, no matter HOW GOOD the writing, there will usually be one comment at the most. The reader is subconsciously annoyed because he has read through all our drivel, and he didn't even get his yummy carrot as reward. So nudes it is, I guess. And of course they have to be women. I can only imagine the deathly silence we would get if we posted a nude image of a man (apart from the readers who are female models – yey girls, let’s get some man-flesh to ogle!)

People who leave comments here are mostly photographers. This gives the false impression that all the readers are photographers, and I know for a fact that this is not the case. Many models read this, but they lurk rather than post comments, or email me their opinion instead. I am guessing that this is because they are shy.

Often the off-blog emails that we receive are more frequent than the on-blog comments. Many readers email us instead of commenting, because they do not want others to know they read a nude blog, or because they don’t want to let others know their opinion, or because they have internal political issues with other regular commentators. We have between five and ten regular readers who would rather email us with their comments rather than posting a public response on the blog. Not that we mind, but sometimes the blog does give the impression that because there are too few comments, that not many people are reading it. This is not the case, thank God.

If I blogged about diet, nutrition and cabbages, then I’d probably get between 10 to 20 comments a day. . I know one anti-cancer blog that gets between 25 and 85 comments every single day (I’m madly jealous! But it’s well deserved as she is an awesome writer) Of course, if I blogged about nutrition, I’d go slowly insane from boredom, but these blogs get more comments because a) The commentators are mostly women, and women post more than men, and b) because cabbages are not secretive, hidden, or remotely pornographic in nature, then it’s safe for the lurkers to post.
The bigger blogs, with 10+ comments a day, also have word verification turned off. So if we also did this, we’d certainly increase the comment quota too, but then we’d spend half our day being spammed into extinction, so we’re reluctant to take that step.

In the end, I guess it really doesn’t matter how many comments you get, it only matters that people keep coming back, day after day. There must be some reason they like it, other than the chix…

Congratulations for making it to the end of this long and immensely boring post.

Here’s your carrot:



Claire Louisa. Rich was one of the last photographers to shoot her before she retired from nude modelling.