Macees Weblog

I made some Pix in the last couple of weeks – please tell me if you like them:

{Angesagte pinke Bikinis mit Triangel-Trägern im Online Shop ordern

Claudia Schiffer has been attacked for offending black people after posing on a magazine cover made up as a black woman. The 39-year-old German supermodel wore black foundation and an afro-style wig in the photograph taken by fashion designer and photographer Karl Lagerfeld.

Lagerfeld had Schiffer made up as a black women in one of six photographs he took while putting together an advertising campaign for the vintage champagne Dom Perignon. The photos were published by German fashion magazine Stern Fotografie when it celebrated its 60th anniversary.

Accusations against Schiffer and Lagerfeld followed from Shevelle Rhule, the fashion editor of a London black lifestyle magazine, Pride. Ms Rhule said:

“It shows poor taste and it's offensive. There are not enough women of colour featured in mainstream magazines. This just suggests you can counteract the problem by using white models. I don't believe they deliberately set out to offend. They obviously see it as being arty and feel that they are pushing boundaries. But clearly no thought has been given to the history behind what they have done and the comparisons it draws with minstrel shows.”

To which I would reply: 'Shevelle, lighten up'. Her comment is the kind that perpetuates raw nerves about race and creates a path of spikey eggshells for people, black and white, to walk on. Society doesn't need race relations zealots, quangocrats or Pride fashion editors lecturing designers (or filmmakers or writers or rap singers…) on what they can or can't do. It's small-minded. Already an online magazine has responded to the photos with conformist knee-jerk political correctness by saying one of the other photos, of Schiffer as an Asian, is “just wrong”, scolding that Lagerfeld should have used more than one model in the interests of racial diversity.

Fashion, like fiction and film and other creative industries, should be free to play with any images it chooses. Did Ms Rhule also take offence at white French actor Gerard Depardieu recently playing mixed-race Alexander Dumas (using black make-up)? Or Eddie Murphy impersonating a white (jewish) person? Or black British actor Adrian Lester who played the white Danish prince, Hamlet? Or the black actor, David Oyelowo, who played white English king Henry VI?

Would she criticise images of Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones dressed up as women? How about pantomime dames, women actors dressed as men, Eddie Izzard in frock and lipstick, comedians pretending to be children…?

As soon as you get into determining whether blacks can play whites and women can play men but not the other way round, you're proscribing the creative process and engaging in censorship. Clamping down on the arts in that way (even commercial arts like advertising) is as restricting as squashing free speech.

As for Rhule's comment that Lagerfeld and Schiffer were suggesting the photograph of a 'black' Schiffer would substitute for using black models in mainstream magazines – that's just plain foolish. Rhule then seems to have chucked minstrels into the discussion just for shock value.

In fact the photo was one of a series of six in which Lagerfeld was playing with Schiffer's image. Another showed her as a secretary, a third as an Asian woman. In a fourth she was dressed and made up as eighteenth century French queen, Marie Antoinette and in a fifth she was androgynous. The fashion shoot theme was fantasy and imagination. Lagerfeld wanted to play with Schiffer's face and Shiffer's image. He didn't want to use other models. He wasn't trying to portraying racial diversity – he was portraying imaginary Claudia Schiffers. And has every right to.

A spokesman for Lagerfeld responded to Rhule's criticism, saying she was taking them out of context: “The images were designed to reflect different men's fantasies. The pictures were not intended to offend, they were done very creatively and are some of Karl Lagerfeld's favourite images of Claudia. People should not jump to conclusions.”

Yet there are many people with vested interests in Britain and other liberal democracies who make a good living from jumping to conclusions and playing the race card in cases which can only trivialise genuine instances of racism. Political correctness about race and ethnicity has battened onto society like a barnacle on a boat. It would be a democratic step forward if those who have a professional interest in taking offence at 'racism' and other -isms would pick their battles more wisely.

It would also be good if the race relations industry ditched the term “people of colour”. What is it supposed to indicate?! What colour? Black? Dark brown? Sienna? All those and more? Does it imply that white people – with their variously pink, peachy, creamy, olive-toned, ugly red, bluey-white, brown or orangey skin – have no colour? Why aren't whites called “people of non-colour” then? Or “people of no-colour”?

Black and white are just words. They're quick and easy terms to use for those who want or need to indicate skin colour and they're neutral. People (like Ms Rhule perhaps) who want to take offence at one (and not the other) always will. But they're misguided. Countering racism is always worth doing. But cranking up and maintaining raw nerves unnecessarily does no-one any good. It just increases division between black and white and injects a zealous, scolding tone into debate which would benefit from more freedom, less 'sensitivity' and – in a case like the Schiffer/Lagerfeld photos – a bit of playfulness.

Here’s a few behind the scenes photos featuring Taylor Lautner on the set of the upcoming Lionsgate film “Abduction” by director John Singleton (2 Fast 2 Furious, FOur Brothers) and starring Taylor Lautner (Twilight, Valentine’s Day, New Moon), Maria Bello (Grown Ups, St. Vincent, The Yellow Handkerchief), Jason Isaacs (Batman: Under the Red Hood, Pleading Guilty), Alfred Molina (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and Sigourney Weaver (Ghostbusters III, Avatar).

Synopsis: A thriller centered on a young man who sets out to uncover the truth about his life after finding his baby photo on a missing persons website.

Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and more from “Abduction” and Taylor Lautner.

This year’s selection of rice paddy art has begun to crop up in fields across Japan.

Rice paddy art in Inakadate (Aomori prefecture)

Two historical figures — the legendary warrior-monk Benkei (left) and the warrior Ushiwakamaru, a.k.a. Minamoto no Yoshitsune (right) — have emerged in a pair of fields in the Aomori prefecture town of Inakadate. For nearly 20 years, the town has prided itself as home to Japan’s finest rice crop art, which is created by carefully arranging different colors of rice plants in the field.

Benkei (left) and Ushiwakamaru (right)

Benkei

Ushiwakamaru

Ushiwakamaru in late June

View of Ushiwakamaru at ground level

Ushiwakamaru

Benkei

View of Benkei at ground level

+ Video of Inakadate rice paddy art (filmed in late June)

* * * * *

Here are a few more works of rice paddy art from other parts of Japan.

Animals in Asahikawa (Hokkaido)

Animals in Asahikawa (Hokkaido)

Samurai Keiji Maeda in Yonezawa (Yamagata prefecture)

View from top of Keiji Maeda’s head

Princess Okaiko, a local folklore figure, in the town of Shirataka (Yamagata prefecture)

Rice paddy art at Denpark in Anjo (Aichi prefecture)

Rice paddy art at Sakakibara onsen (Mie prefecture)

Ducks near Fukushimagata Lagoon Water Park (Niigata prefecture)

Ground level view of ducks near Fukushimagata Lagoon Water Park (Niigata prefecture)

Ducks near Fukushimagata Lagoon Water Park (Niigata prefecture)

Buddhist sword dancer and Anpanman in the Mizusawa area (Iwate prefecture)

Anpanman in the Mizusawa area (Iwate prefecture)

More:
- Rice paddy art, 2009
- Time-lapse video of rice paddy art, 2008
- Rice paddy art harvest, 2007
- Rice paddy art, 2007

from: Shaylynns Weblog

I made new Pictures in the last months – please tell me if you think they are good:

{Zähne selber bleachen – Tipps

There are a few of factors you should consider when choosing a photographer. Experience, references, portfolio and equipment are four key notes I would base my decision on.

Looking for a wedding photographer who has the most experience is not always the best choice. Though you do not want to hire somebody who appears to have very little experience, you may want to meet with potential photographers, looking through their portfolio and even asking for references! This will give you an idea what he or she is capable of. When you see a photographer's portfolio, generally you will see the photographers best work. You need a photographer who is not ashamed to show you what their good and bad shots look like, keep in mind that no photographer is perfect and no photographer always gets the shot. Your wedding is only going to happen once, so you want to make sure that you will be get the absolute best when it comes to your pictures.

Though equipment does not equal a great photographer you may want to consider what kind of equipment they use. You would not want your photographer showing up Kodak disposable camera's and expect good quality?? Generally speaking a photographer is going use an SLR camera it could be 35mm or it could digital, they will have accessories like lenses and flashes, tripods and screens. These are tools to make your pictures look amazing and help the photographer achieve the best they can. Don't be afraid to ask questions, any good photographer would expect you too. Find out why your photographer uses certain equipment that he or she does and what it will do for your photographs.

The last thing that was mentioned before is portfolio and references that the photographer should provide. These are so important tools for you as a consumer to know exactly what you are buying. I provide a link to my blog, a link to my web page just for clients who inquire to hire me, if I meet with them I further let them look through my latest works on my lap top portfolio and give them email addresses of clients who are okay with speaking to other people about me and my work. Being a photographer for the last 6 years has been amazing and the trade is all about keeping up and learning more. You need to know that your photographer is going to do an amazing job, though years of experience are great don't mistake that for quality.

Be informed. Know what you are buying. Good Luck

“Photography is an art for lazy people.” So said Robert Frank, the celebrated Swiss photographer, to Allen Ginsberg, the celebrated New Jersey poet, as they gathered in a Lower East Side flat to make a movie. Frank was at the height of his fame after publishing his monumental collection of photographs, “The Americans,” but had newly re-imagined himself as a beatnik and filmmaker. Also assembled in that apartment were Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and an ensemble cast of hangers-on, lovers, admirers, and jazzmen, ready to conceive another erratic self-portrait.

The film that emerged from that afternoon in 1959 was called “Pull My Daisy,” and though it fell for ages into obscurity, it was reissued in 2008 as the first volume of “Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works,” a beautifully packaged DVD set from Steidl. (Volumes 4, 5 and 6 will go on sale in October.) Narrated by Kerouac in a bluesy ad-lib and built around the wistful tale of a bishop and a railway brakemen, “Pull My Daisy” skitters and crashes around the room like a bad ballerina. But at its end, it collapses at our feet as a beautifully drugged-up and dreamed-out elucidation of our almighty American bards.

After all, we could always bet on the Beats to be their own best biographers. Though they’ve certainly left us an intriguing catalog of written work to document their lives and times, Frank’s film adds an invigorating dimension. But Frank wasn’t the only one pointing a lens on the Beats. Even as Frank was turning away from still photography, Ginsberg was crossing from one end of his remarkable life to the other with a camera in hand, and the images he assembled have been superbly organized into an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (through Sept. 6), accompanied by a glossy volume from Prestel.

The simultaneous resurfacing of Frank’s films and Ginsberg’s photographs gives us a chance to shine the curious light of our decade onto a bewildering moment in American art. Pulling their grimy slice of the old Atomic Age into our confused new millennium, these works stir up the smoky Bowery, hold a lantern to the San Francisco fogs, and re-enchant an exhausted Beat cosmos for a new moment.

We see William Burroughs and Paul Bowles frowning in sun-bleached Morocco; Bob Dylan draped in an overcoat in Tompkins Square Park; and Gary Snyder wearing a monk’s traveling garments in a Kyoto garden. We see Jack Kerouac, young and vital, howling in the Manhattan streets; he reappears later as a drunken and bloated shut-in, just short of death and a long way from the open road.

And since Ginsberg was a great voyager, so we become as well. We travel to Dakar and Leningrad, to sun-filled Parisian dormer windows, to the rooftops of Benares and Marrakech, and to James Joyce’s snowy Zurich grave. Ginsberg’s elaborate, handwritten captions, occasionally composed with Dylan’s help, narrate these scenes in the poet’s characteristically long, Whitmanesque lines, while a spontaneity of prose straight out of a Kerouac all-nighter yanks the images along like an eager pet.

The captions themselves, executed as later-life, retrospective afterthoughts, act as concentrated poem-documentaries and leave us with a welcome first-person perspective of Ginsberg’s peculiar element. When the project is taken as a whole, it seems to serve Ginsberg’s poetry almost as well as William Blake’s prints did for his own verse: as a necessary and lovely companion-opus that springs with new life from the spirit of the writings themselves.

Oddly, Ginsberg’s photographs sat for decades in closets and drawers, then in the tombs of a Columbia University archive. But when scholars finally descended on them with their lamps and spectacles, they found something magnificent. With his secondhand Kodak Retina, the poet had surreptitiously illustrated not only his energetic generation, but his own oeuvre, leaving behind a catalog of images to reawaken the euphoric thesis that he’d scribbled across the arch of his lifetime: namely, that sex and poetry and the “cosmic vibrations” of youth and life are way, way awesome.

I look at hundreds of images each week. Many of them are beautiful and noteworthy, but a few stick in my mind. Often, the ones I remember don’t have an obvious use in our publications or on our website, but they are visually dynamic nonetheless. This image by Miguel Samper is a good example. Miguel has traveled for us to Colombia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Haiti. His work's been a staple in our photo library since 2007.

This photograph is from Afghanistan in 2008. The woman’s hurried gait is exaggerated by the camera’s motion and I can’t help but wonder what’s on her mind and where she’s going with such purpose and concentration.

from: Presleys Weblog