Well, I’m a little sad to see that Vivitar has gone the way of the dodo bird. I credit Vivitar with giving me the first tantalizing taste of studio lighting. I started out with one ancient Vivitar 280 flash that my uncle gave me. Using a weird little proprietary hotshoe adapter, I hooked it up to the hot shoe on my 3 megapixel Epson point and shoot camera. For several months, I had lots of fun experimenting with this combination. That’s how I was able to get photos like my scary “Water Boy” image, which inexplicably I had initially called “Water Jesus.”

Anyway, I subsequently purchased a couple more Vivitar 280 flashes, and slave triggers to set them off. I bought some umbrellas and light stands to hold them up. I was off to the races with studio light. I still use these flashes on occassion. I like them because I can control the flash duration using the Vivitar varipower adapter. They can be used outdoors where my studio strobes can not follow.

It seems that the Vivitar name has been sold off to another company. That means that there will probably still be Vivitar products, but I doubt the good old 280 will be available in the future. Goodbye Vivitar. I’ll miss you!

Here’s the latest new thing. It’s a camera made from the skull of a 13 year-old girl. It couldn’t make this stuff up, folks. Expect to see photos from this thing in the top favs of dA any minute now.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but I’ve been taking Chinese lessons. So far, I’ve had five lessons. I’ve hired a tutor to teach me once per week for an hour. At first, I was wondering if an hour would be enough, but by the end of each lesson, my head feels like it’s going to explode because it’s filled with new words and phrases. Many of them, I forget before the next week, but it’s gradually getting easier to remember. My teacher is great. She’s very enthusiastic and happy and patient, which I think is a perfect combination for teaching language.

I’ve always really respected the ability of people to learn English and just plunge into Canada with it. I don’t know how successful I’d be if I had to do the same in China. I guess I’d learn, but it wouldn’t be easy. So far, Chinese grammar seems reasonably easy, but there are certain things that are different from English. For instance, some words that I would think of as adjectives can also be used as verbs. The word “very” is an example of this. Saying “I’m very cold” translates directly to “I very cold” in Chinese. Also, there are no verb tenses. You indicate when something is happening by adding a word like “today” or “tomorrow” to the sentence. It explains why a Chinese person speaking English might say something like, “I very cold yesterday.” It also explains why my Chinese teacher gave me a funny look when I said in Chinese, “I am very cold.” Yea.

The most challenging thing by far in Chinese is the tonal system. Each syllable can be said in any of four tones. There’s high tone, falling tone, dipping tone, and rising tone. If you get the wrong tone matched to the word, the word means something completely unrelated and different. Getting the tones right is the difference between being understood, and talking complete gibberish. I had this problem in China. People’s ears were extremely unforgiving to incorrect tones, and they didn’t even seem to be able to guess what I was saying based on the sound of the word, aside from the tone. It was frustrating while I was there, but I understand now that it has to be this way, since there are only around 400 possible syllables in Chinese, compared to 12,000 in English. The tones are the only way to distinguish one word from another, so Chinese ears are highly tuned to them. Here’s a video that gives you some examples of words and tones.

Good times.

Anyway, I’m enjoying my CSL experience. I’m looking forward to going back to China with my new knowledge too. Just give me a few more lessons first though…

I subscribed to American Photo, Photo Life and GQ yesterday. I was on a bit of a binge. All of these provide me with inspiration for style and imagery. OK I can speak for American Photo and GQ, but I’ve never seen Photo Life. Apparently it’s Canadian. I’m looking forward to seeing them, after the promised 4-8 weeks of waiting before my first issues arrive…

Laura and I have been talking about re-doing classic and iconic images combining my photography with her own artistic ideas and mythology of the inner world. One of them that we’ve been planning was Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, which is as iconic as they come.  Anyway, after much discussion and planning, it all came together yesterday. We decided not to try to re-create all the framing around the figure, because it was going to be distracting, and just concentrate on the figure herself.

Considering how many things could have gone wrong with this shoot, everything came together just perfectly. The temperature, the slight clouds diffusing the sun, the perfect amount of wind, the color of the water–it all just worked.

The cones are elements of Laura’s own art, so including them was essential to this image. It’s a good thing they made a great stand-in for the giant clamshell.

The shoot progressed after that with the giant white bird, which is another character from Laura’s art. We shot a number of photos before hitting just the right combination and actions to create this dynamic image.

I shot both images using my new 24-70mm lens. After a brief initial period of discomfort with the focal length range, I have quickly warmed to this lens. It’s simply a pleasure to explore this chunk of perspective that I have been missing from my vision for several years. I didn’t even realize I was missing it. During this shoot, the only equipment I brought was the camera with 24-70mm lens attached, and the 70-200mm lens in my bag. As it turned out, I never even took the 70-200mm out of the bag. The new lens just felt right.

Anyway, we’re delighted by how these photos turned out. There are more to come too…