Now you’re naked

Hung up to dry

dripping red roses

in a house full of flies.

A few variations:

Furthermore, we are going to call this place “Sólo Desayuno!” It will be staffed  by trained Hispanic cooks only and only cooking heart stopping American breakfast food. I don’t give a shit if these guys are legal or not, they can cook like insane maniacs. For that alone we should knock down all border fences and welcome them in to cook me something to eat.

In celebration of this grand idea, I decided that I should get started today. I think the idea happened upon me while I was not sleeping all night long. The dog must have a bladder the size of a pea or maybe he just thought there would be something magical out in the back yard… every 30 minutes or so. At 4:00 I decided enough was enough. I kicked the dog out, took a shower and began to work on my master plan for a kick ass breakfast. First, I would have to listen to a couple of follow up speeches from a couple of GOP candidates after yesterday’s primary. I was a little worried that my stomach would have turned by the end and I would no longer have any interest in eating for a few days. As this was not the case, I continued on. My stomach was only mildly irritated. I think it is sort of like building up an immunity to some poison by taking the poison in little doses over time. I was used to hearing their bullshit by now.

I was going to write this a couple of different ways. One as an artsy fartsy foodie kind of post using terms like savory and tantalizing and the other as I would normally write it – all smart assy. Perhaps to save time, I’ll do both in one.

Breakfast!

Ahh! There’s nothing like a hearty breakfast to start your day. Even if your day started at four-fucking-O’clock because your dog had to pee… again. To start a scrumptious and savory meal like this, you first need to clean up after the people that left a mess in your sink  earlier in the morning. Yes, it is much easier to just leave stuff in the sink than stick it in the unfilled dishwasher not more than 24 inches to your immediate left. Once that task is done, you hunt for some ingredients. Eggs, cheese, onions, celery and why not that leftover steak from last night? We’ll make an omelet thing.

After using a fine culinary instrument to dice and slice your goods, you should prepare coffee and throw some bacon in the pan. Even if you don’t drink coffee or eat bacon, the fragrant aroma will tell everyone in the house that someone’s in the kitchen and they better stay the fuck out.

Crack your eggs and stir them up in some old Tupperware measuring thing. If you do not have one, some bowl will probably do just fine.

Once the bacon is done, drain that grease and then sizzle up the leftover steak, celery and onions. Go ahead and make your breakfast a little zestier with a generous dollop of Salsa.

By now, your coffee should be ready. I also recommend warming your breakfast plates in the oven at 170 degrees. You can also keep your bacon warm at the same time. Amazing.

Add to this some toast and a couple slices of orange and there you go.

A delicious breakfast that will keep you going in the cold Wisconsin winter for a few hours while you blow snow. The real question here is… was this just a device to use my giant cock cup joke? Probably.

Another quick shot and how I did it. No biggie…

But, in Georgetown, SC tomorrow… 72 and rainy. I won’t be there, I’ll still be digging out and paying my parking fine for the dead truck. People there will vote in the South Carolina primary.

Which candidate will win? We are down to four… Gingrich, Santorum, Romney and Paul. Herman Cain aka Stephen Tyrone Colbert if you want to count him as well. I have no inside info. The only info I have is what rattles around in my own head. My head really started rattling when I watched the recent debate.

Prior to the debate, ABC started to release clips about an interview with Newt’s #2 wife which would be aired later in the evening. The stories about how much of a douchebag Newt has been with his women in nothing new. The story starts in 1962 when 19 year old Newt marries his 26 year old first wife.

In the opening of the debate, CNN’s John King asked Newt about these allegations. Newt’s answer reminded me of something else. Whenever one of the grandkids gets worked up and emotional about something, we often try to deflect their attention to something else. Newt did the same damned thing. He turned on King and lambasted him for asking such a question and called it a despicable act. This got Newt 2, count them, TWO standing ovations. Standing ovations. What? Yeah. The crowd of Republicans attending the debate gave him a standing ovation. He never really did answer the question other than to say that friends from that time could back him up to say he had not asked for an open marriage while he was banging mistress and current wife #3.

Now hold on a sec. Here’s a guy who we all know has not been mister monogamous for a good number of years. He’s also a guy who tells you how important the sanctity of marriage is. He’s also a guy who in an interview on CBN stated that the reasons for this were that he loved his country so much and was working so hard that he DID do some things that were not right. He knew it and did it anyway. Luckily for Newt, there was an easy out. Newt’s God forgives everyone. Perhaps does not understand (Newt’s words) but does forgive. Let’s back this up and go for the real reason… it was not his love of country, it was his love for cunt. Yeah, I said it… the C word. The other C word is probably Cash. With enough of one C word, you can get some of the other C word. In the end, you ask forgiveness.

Now let’s take a look at something else here. He had friends from that time who can back him up. How does that work? Were those people in on whatever intimate conversation he was having with wife #2? “Marianne, I’d like to keep banging Callista during our marriage. She does not seem to mind and I figured I’d clue you in since you were mistress #2 (at least officially). Bob from across the street, would you like to weigh in on this?”

So, am I the only one who thought this was weird? The weird part is not the fact that he was doing what he has been doing for the last 50 years. The weird part is that a whole room full of moral majority marriage values Republicans got up and gave Newt two standing ovations for not answering a question and instead, turned it around to make the media AND President Obama take the blame for the despicable act of asking Newt to comment on the topic.

We are a bunch of fucking retards. (I mean no offense to the mentally challenged out there or people who enjoy fucking.)(Ok, probably too late as I used the C , F and R words in this post.)

   Once in a while you’ll see those really cool looking shots of something being shattered or splattered and the image is frozen, showing all the bits and pieces sort of stuck in mid air. Awesome. To do this you need to bone up on high speed photography and things like sound sensors and the like.

As usual, things occur to me after I have some failure or accident or make a mess. In this case, I recently accidentally broke a small Christmas ornament. As I was looking at the mess on the floor, I realized that it looked somewhat like these images… only it was flat on the floor. This got me thinking, which usually means I’m about to make another mess. After having done this myself, I can now tell you that I’ve discovered a way for you to not make a mess (well, not much of a mess) and get a shot similar to high speed shattered glass in about 2 or 3 shots.

You need a strobe or speedlight, a couple of colored glass ornaments that did not belong to your Grandmother and are family heirlooms. Go to your local dollar store and find this stuff marked way down. You need a piece of clear sticky contact paper and a method to hold it up. You’ll also need your tripod and perhaps a shutter release.

Here is what you are going to get:

Take your contact paper and lay it on a table. Remove the backing and leave the clear material on the table, sticky side up. Put on some thick gloves. Take one of your ornaments and hold it in your gloved hand. Use the end of something hard like a screwdriver to tap the ornament as if you are cracking an egg. Once it breaks, crush the remainder in your gloved hand and let the shards fall onto the upturned sticky side of the contact paper. Now, do this again with a different colored ornament.

Carefully pick up the contact paper by the corners and let what does not stick fall into a wastebasket. What you have left is what you are going to shoot. Make some kind of stand to hold the clear contact paper up, position your lights and camera on a tripod and have at it.

Images like this can be used as is or for components of other images if you are building an image in Photoshop. Good luck.

Tiffany came to the studio on Sunday to try out some new rope.

For some time I’ve been amazed, bothered and troubled from time to time at some of the “workshop” offerings in my general area. As a fan of pin-ups and scantily clad women, I can certainly understand the interest in participating in one which offers the chance to take pictures of the previously mentioned. You can arrange to participate in such an event where a model is available as the object of your lens. You book a block of time, arrive no earlier than 15 minutes prior to that time and have the opportunity to shoot that model. You pay by the hour. I can only assume that an arrangement has been made by parties involved that would compensate both the model and the person who has made this all possible.

My question has always been “what did you learn?” Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the opportunity to shoot some scantily clad individual was all that was expected. You get to see a live and in person scantily clad individual and take pictures of said individual. Perhaps the result is not important. What if it was important? What if you went to one of these things expecting to not only come out of it with quality images or images that are of a quality better than you were taking prior to you going to the workshop? What if you even had a better understanding of why the picture turned out the way it did or how you could plan a shot to have an image turn out a certain way? Did you get this from your workshop?

Recently, I’ve been attempting to shoot simple things in a simple manner. Past posts show crap I had laying around. I had questions of whether or not I could take random crap and shoot it in an interesting manner with very low tech stuff. Other than the camera, which I am able to manipulate using manual settings, everything else was stupid stuff, trial and error and some careful planning.

Today, Sarah came down for a mini mini workshop to shoot just this kind of stuff. She has a Canon 30d. She did bring a couple of props to shoot that have meaning to her (a recent trip to Croatia) but other than that it was only her camera, some parchment paper, some white typing paper, a tripod with a wired shutter release and a 60 watt bulb. All this was on the top of the table in the middle of the room.

We did not use the flash option on the strobe. The only light shining though the paper was the 60 watt bulb.

Sarah’s prop plus some editing:

So… that’s about it for the mini mini workshop. My hope with this kind of stuff is that if nothing else, it encourages people to try things. Go ahead and fail and then try again. You can take random crap that means something to you and shoot it like a pro without having to invest like a pro. Read a few camera magazines. Practice. If you’d like to sign up for the next mini mini workshop, let me know.

Oh… and what do I get out of practicing? Well, taking pictures of random crap does help me determine lighting and where to reflect light. Using small items on the top of a table in my spare time helps when I have an actual scantily clad individual to actually shoot in the actual studio…

I suppose I should see if the snow blower will start. Damn winter.

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More cheesy cheapo studio work…

The result:

How it was shot:

Other random artsy fartsy stuff…

This could have been better, sharper. The point of it is that other than a camera and a tripod and a little fiddling around, you can probably shoot stuff like this without having to invest in a crapload of nifty stuff. This was done inside under whatever a combination of ambient light from outside, the fluorescent lighting I have in here when the lights are turned on and a stupid little LED flashlight. In fact, I don’t think I used the LED light for this particular shot. What I did want to do here is show that the next time you start thinking you need a better studio set up to sell your crap on Ebay, think again. Assuming that most cameras have a timer, you can probably pull this one off. You might also check to see if either your lens or your camera has a “macro” setting.

Here is the entire studio:

If you look closely (top photo) you can see the difference in red from the surface and the background. Due to the shallow depth of field, the line tends to blend together. You can experiment with reflected light using a piece of paper to bounce light back into your object/subject. That’s it. Have fun.