Body and Spirit

The issue of nude art photography concerns me, both as a person and as editor of DOMAI, a site with tasteful nude photos. In answer to an article on British Journal of Photography's site, I wrote to the editor:

Hello Ms. Smyth,

Thanks for the nice piece online about the Nude.
(Saunders' piece is not online, is it? I did not get the mag yet.)

I am a little sad to see the old chestnut being dragged out, the one about "nude art objectifies women". I really thought we had grown beyond that.

For one thing: what does it do to men then? I notice for instance in films and on TV, at least as much male skin as female. We don't hear any wails about this, and well we shouldn't.

For another thing, art or pictures does not objectify women, people do. And if they are dumb enough to do it, they will dang well do it whether they see any nude art or not.

As humans we are both spirit and body. We should celebrate both.

My first haiku

hai·ku
n., pl. haiku also -kus.
1. A Japanese lyric verse form
having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and
five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect
of nature or the seasons.
2. A poem written in this form.
---

A rose, simply red
standing in the morning light
Thorns, petals, beauty

Photographer, you?

Hi,
I don't want to drown this blog in photography-related postings, I want it to be pretty broad. So if you would like me to put me on my personal mailing list for people interested in the art and technology of photography, please send me a mail.
[The picture above is from Bjorn Rorslett's great site. Is this a beautiful lens or what?]

Abelardo Morell photography

I want to recommend to you Abelardo Morell's photography.
I bought his newest book, a retrospective by title of his name, and it is just beautiful.
His photos are fresh, honest, finely tuned, and totally unpretentious.
He is also versatile, he does not just have one shtick, like many of the best artists do.
He is also sometimes funny, see for instance his "Motion Study of Wooden Manikins".

Church

I've decided to experiment with making this blog half-way a photo blog. Maybe I'll do an exclusive photo blog, I dunno. They seem really popular, traffic-wise.
Anyway, this is a recent photo of a local church. One of the few I take these days which seemed to improve by being made into monochrome.

A common virus

Did you know that Herpes is the most common virus after the common cold?
And that it is not really an SMD?
The interesting Susie Bright tells it.

Windowsill Daydreaming

Photo by Minor White, 1958.
(Click for bigger image.)
You oughter see it in high rez though, this is Art.

Mike on my dream camera

"Great minds think a lot" or however it goes...
Mike Johnston has written an article which echoes most of what I wrote myself recently about my dream street camera.
It would be such a beautiful and useful thing, and it could totally be done with today's technology. Come on, camera makers, do us a solid! :)

Saturday Night Again...

OK, it's Saturday night again, and I'm sitting home again.
Thank god!
When I was much younger, I used to be a tiny bit envious of two kinds of people: those who have a formal education, and those who go out in the weekend.
Now, I am not at all.
On the first one: I know more and I earn far more than most of those people, so what's to worry.
On the second one: going to a smelly pub and getting my ears ruined with noise and my brains cells murdered with booze and coke? I don't think so.
I mean, even if you limit it to an economical viewpoint: look at the cost! Even in the cheap end of town, that is easily a few hundred dollars per month. If you save that up, you'll be a millionaire in a couple of decades, even doing nothing more. Not to mention you will have retained much more brain power, and you might even have used the time saved to educate yourself a little, no? Or just get your sleep, too little sleep is rampant these days, and it is not healthy.
Me, I'm really happy with my "unglamorous" life. :)

Passion is overrated

[UPDATE to this post: OK, probably passion is good. If you aren't killed by your own emotions. Actually I am making great progress in handling mine, with a process called EFT. Warmly recommended if you ever feel over-emotional.]

All the world admires passion. We love the passionate revolutionary, the passionate artist, the passionate lover.

Lemme tell you, I've had passion out the wazoo all my life, and I am getting rid of it as fast as I can. It has given me nothing but ulcer, headaches, and high blood pressure. Not to mention insomnia.

Passion is not your drive. Passion is a parasite. Passion is interference on your radio. Passion makes you upset over all kinds of things that you can't change, not to mention all kinds of things that don't matter. Passion makes you hurt inside if something fails. Passion is just turbulence in the river of your progress.

What I want is serenity. That I know what I do, and I just do it, no bullshit. I have no use for getting all riled up about it.

Sorry if that got a little passionate, I am working on that. :)
(And making good progress, actually. More later.)

UPDATE: I am getting some protests on this one. Perhaps I am mixing up two different definitions of passion:
1: Strong enthusiasm and interest for something.
2: A powerful emotion, such as grief, joy, hatred, or anger.

The first one is obviously helpful, the second one I believe is not. At least not when it is not under control.
I think though that the two are related. You'll notice that top sports stars often have terrible tempers, for instance.
Maybe the ideal is to have a lot of the first kind, and moderate amounts of the second kind.

The Serenity Prayer

One of the most famous prayers in the world is also one of the wisest:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

... if I were to add one thing to that, it might be: and wisdom to see where my efforts are best spent.

Airplane photos

Even though I consider warfare a ridiculous waste* of human imagination, sweat, and money, I nevertheless have to admire these cool photos by Joe McNally.
Here is the story of how they were made. The frontier of digital photography. (The camera was a Nikon D1x. That is now replaced with the D2x which has over twice the resolution.)

*Most people think so. Or do they? If they really did, would we still have war? I notice that most boys play war with relish, and most men love war movies, and a good fight. Is there a connection?