As the name of my website vaguely implies, I enjoy this style of “semi-abstract” photography – shallow depth of field, the odd colors of mixed artificial light, blurs. I haven't been doing nearly enough of it lately, but one night in Las Vegas I went on a bit of a spree: these are all within a few frames of each other on a Portra 400nc roll.
One of the ironic pleasures of photography that digital has taken away is the experience of “getting your pictures back,” of first seeing your pictures days, weeks, or even months after shooting them.
I had a partially-shot roll of Porta 400vc sitting here for months, until I finally shot the rest of it and processed it, and thus I am treated to a “winter” image at the start of summer.
This is from way back in January, at Rockefeller Center's skating rink in New York City. So, while we're all complaining about the heat, we can remember the alternative and decide it beats being cold.
I'm a huge fan of the Andrews Sisters. I know, I'm too young, they're before my time, blah blah. Whatever. They rocked.
So, who decided it was okay to put their Hollywood Boulevard star next to frigging Donald Duck and a statue of Mickey Mouse? Is it some kind of joke that Donald Duck, a fictional character, even has a star?
This is more Portra 800, which continues to impress.
•••
It always seems like a good idea, when I finish a roll of film and pull it out of the camera, to write on it a note so I know what's on that roll. I keep a Sharpie in my bag and everything. Of course, I never actually do it. When I shoot traditional black-and-white film I do make a note of how I intend to process the film, but with color film I just toss it in the bag without bothering. Every time.
So, don't put much meaning on the order in which I post pictures. All I have to go on when deciding which rolls to develop is the type of film, so beyond that, they're getting processed in essentially random order.
I hate these guys.
If you've ever walked the Las Vegas Strip, you know them. They stand in long lines, handing out stripper cards, the little advertising cards with pictures of girls and a phone number, promising “girls direct to you,” entertainment right in your hotel room.
As you pass, one by one, relentlessly, they each offer a card. They skillfully stick the card in your face without touching, and they don't say anything to get attention: instead, they slap their stripper cards together to make noise, the technique that has earned them the name “porn slappers.”
There must be hundreds of porn slappers. By midnight, the Strip is littered with stripper cards; of course, it's not the slappers doing the littering, it's the tourists who take cards, look at them, and then throw them on the ground without even looking for a trash can.
But enough of them don't throw them away to keep the porn slappers, and their employers, in business – by falling for a big scam. Contrary to popular misconception, prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, and the whole of Clark County.
If they were offering, so openly, what they want you to think they're offering, they wouldn't last long. They're stripper cards, not hooker cards: the only reason anyone infers anything else is the misconception that prostitution is legal here. There are always enough Vegas newbies to keep it going.
The authorities have tried to stop the porn slappers, but the 9th Circuit Court struck down the ban on First Amendment grounds, so we're stuck with them for a while. Apparently the slappers make less than minimum wage, and many are illegal immigrants.
They're less annoying than the time-share guys and club promoters, though, which is something.
Okay, I'm a guy, so naturally I point my camera at sights such as this.
I wrote about this great development of Las Vegas casinos getting dancers before, and even posted a video. Here are some more nice shots, this time from Planet Hollywood. I don't typically go to Planet Hollywood, but, well, yeah. I'm told, though, that the games they run in this area of the casino are not necessarily run with the most favorable odds, so if you gamble, choose your table carefully.
This is more Portra 800 film, which I'm quite liking. It's fast enough to shoot under this kind of light with a fast lens with some care to avoid motion blur.
For some reason, mannequins in store windows at night are interesting subjects for me. Sometimes I have to resist the urge to overdo it with the mannequin shots. I'm not the only one: there's a whole Flickr group for pictures of store mannequins.
These are actual Hollywood Boulevard mannequins, far from my usual Manhattan stomping grounds, so I guess that makes them special.
They're also on the first roll of Portra 800 that I've shot. I'm quite impressed with this film; it's far better than the high-speed color negative film I remember from back in the day.
I have to say something about the whole Abby Sunderland thing. Abby, 16, saw her attempt to circumnavigate the Earth alone in a sailboat end prematurely when a storm in the Indian Ocean broke her boat's mast, leaving her stranded 2,000 miles from both Australia and Africa.
I'm already sick of hearing all the criticism of her parents, the talk about how at 16 she shouldn't have been out there, and especially about the cost of the rescue operation. She didn't do anything wrong; she didn't make some silly juvenile mistake for the grownups to clean up. A storm broke her mast.
But it's all over the news, and all over the internet: what kind of parents would allow a 16-year-old to do something like this? As if the mast were broken by the sheer force of her age alone. As if waiting a couple years would make a difference; would the storms see that she's 18 now, and stay away? Isabelle Autissier was over 35 years old when she needed to be rescued from the Indian Ocean during a solo circumnavigation attempt; was she too young as well? And yet, Abby's parents are taking criticism for failing to crush their daughter's dream.
Some jackass at the Los Angeles Times writes that, were it his daughter, he would “lock her in her room, chain her to a tree or slip sleeping pills into her oatmeal.” And we're supposed to think he's a good parent? I think we need to alert the authorities about his idea of parenting. I bet he would, however, give his teenager the keys to the car, putting her in more danger than Abby was ever in, and risking the lives of everyone else on the road as well.
I bet he would send his daughter off to college, where she has a one in four chance of being raped. What kind of irresponsible parent puts his daughter into a position where she stands a one in four chance of being raped?
But putting an experienced sailor on a boat to pursue her dream, well, no, that just won't do.
Abby's adventure was surely dangerous, as she knew better than most when she set sail in her specially-equipped boat, Wild Eyes. But I don't think the danger is really what upsets so many people. The real problem is that they dared to stray outside what we're taught we're supposed to do: Stay in school, go to college so you can get a job where you spend all your time sitting in an office never doing anything that matters, waste most of your money buying a house and waste the rest filling the house with crap you don't really need, ensuring you remain dependent on that soul-sucking job, the one you were made to choose before you had the experience to really know what you'd want to be doing ten or twenty years in the future. Have a couple kids so you can pay it forward by discouraging their dreams too.
They say she should be in school. Why? I'm long enough out of high school to have some objectivity, and I can report that it was a waste of four years, a miserable experience during which I learned a bunch of lies that had to be unlearned in college, and a few other things I could have picked up any number of other ways. You don't think sailing around the world is educational? Is sitting in math class secretly texting her friends going to prepare her for life better than that?
People are afraid of things that are unfamiliar or different. Abby's parents aren't. They're not the problem here. Her brother sailed around the world solo, successfully, at 17: where was the outrage then?
For the people going on about the cost of her rescue, suggesting that her parents should receive the bill: excuse me, but this is why I pay taxes. Tell you what, sunshine, next time you're in trouble, don't call 911. Why should we pay to help you? When your kid is in a car accident, shall we send you the bill for everyone who came to help?
At 16, Abby has already done something cooler than anything you've done in your entire life. She's an inspiration. Maybe that's what bothers people; maybe they're jealous. Abby dared to live, and her parents dared to let her.
I hope she tries again.
In my last post, I showed you my favorite pictures from the Tax Day Tea Party event. This is my favorite person I met there. He was sitting off in the corner, near the park entrance, with his big sign: “9/11 Was An Inside Job.”
I spoke with him at length. He was the sanest, most rational person I met that day. I know, it sounds odd to describe a 9/11 Truther as sane and rational, but hear me out. I was, after all, in the middle of a crowd of teabaggers.
The difference between the teabaggers and the Truthers isn't so much what they believe. His theory – that the 9/11 attacks were arranged by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – is straight out of “24,” and I don't believe it. It's not, though, as crazy as the Tea Party nonsense. He's not shouting about things anyone with a few minutes at a computer can disprove; he's quietly trying to spread the word about something based on extrapolating from fact. The 9/11 attacks were the best thing that happened to the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney is evil, so it's a tempting story.
I don't know what makes people latch on to ideas like this. The real war crimes of the Bush Administration are being ignored, so it's unlikely that anyone will ever investigate a far-fetched claim like this to disprove it, and he will go on believing it forever. What I do know is that, in a sea of teabaggers, he is an island of sanity. And a hell of a nice guy.
Teabaggers are stupid: this is what I confirmed by attending a Tea Party event on Tax Day in Las Vegas, which I previously wrote about here and here.
They, of course, would react with the usual “What, you think we're stupid because we believe in yada yada yada just because you don't agree?” No, I don't. I think they're stupid because they're stupid. I've no problem with conservatives; I have a problem with people whose entire position is based on lies, lies that could be trivially disproven by a ten-year-old with a computer. I have a problem with them when they refuse to listen to the facts, when they continue to insist, despite all evidence, that Fox News reports the truth.
These people have created a toxic environment in our public discussion, an environment where a politician can say something on television that is empirically, factually incorrect, and when challenged on it by the interviewer, say, “Well, that‘s fine. You and I can have a disagreement about that.” (J.D. Hayworth, running for Senate in Arizona.)
The bank bailout (which, it should be remembered, was a Bush Administration measure) was “more like a trillion dollar black hole” only if a black hole sucks stuff in and then spits it back out with interest. While stabilizing the economy and preventing a depression.
This sign is also adorned with the gratuitous Founding Father quotes the teabaggers love to abuse, trying to appropriate some legitimacy for themselves.
This fellow was entirely too proud of the “clever” discovery that OBAMA can spell out “One Big-Ass Mistake, America.”
But I think the shirt on the left is the most amusing: “Educated Fox News Fan.” I mean, is there such a thing? Can there be? Wouldn't an education help someone see through the lies and the preconceived narrative?
Kenneth Wegner is running for Congress in Nevada's 1st District, which includes most of Las Vegas. Mr. Wegner is not a recent Tea Party invention: he has run for this seat and won the Republican primary twice before.
The 1st District seat has been held by Democrat Shelley Berkley since 1999. Barack Obama took the district by 64% in 2008; Kerry by 57% in 2004; and Gore by 56% in 2000. John Ensign did hold the seat for a while before running for Senate, but the bottom line is that this is not a competitive race and Mr. Wegner is unlikely to win.
This campaign sign is ridiculous: “Put America back to work, Balance the budget, Become energy independent.” That's a list of goals, not plans. If I say “World peace, end crime, eliminate disease,” will you vote for me?
Judging from his website, though, Mr. Wegner isn't completely crazy. By Republican Congressional standards, not very crazy at all (consider Michele Bachmann). I wonder if he's a decent guy stuck in the unfortunate position of needing to pander to the lunatic fringe. In the unlikely event that he ever wins, I wonder if he will stick to his stated support for a two-term limit for members of Congress. The Nevada primary is tomorrow. UPDATE: Mr. Wegner won the primary.
I spoke to this guy at length. He's not very bright: “Jail me for no health care? Change it back!”
Um, no. No one is going to be jailed for not getting health insurance, nor for refusing to pay the fine. It makes a good Fox News sound bite, but it's an outright lie, as the text of the law would tell him if he bothered to look it up.
He also said that he is registered to vote as a Democrat, because when Obama comes to collect up all the guns, they're going to start with Republicans, and he'll have advance warning so he can escape to the hills.
Since becoming president, Obama has done exactly one thing with regard to gun rights: sign a bill expanding gun rights. While it's true that some of his statements prior to running for president are troubling, he hasn't shown any interest at all in pursuing them, nor has Congress shown any interest in going along with him on it.
Remember, back in April, when a bunch of loonies had “armed march” protests where they got as close to Washington, DC as legally possible while openly carrying weapons? They had their little demonstration on National Park Service land, and the only reason it was legal was that Obama made it legal. Before, under the Republicans, their protest would have been illegal. These idiots had an anti-Obama protest in support of gun rights that was only legal because Obama signed a bill expanding their gun rights.
This is the kind of idiocy that bothers me about these people.
This sign doesn't even make sense. I guess the point is supposed to be that global warming is so ridiculous that we shouldn't be surprised if Tipper Gore wants to blame it on rock music.
Younger people might not be familiar with the Tipper reference or the PMRC, but they certainly are familiar with the Parental Advisory stickers that resulted from that whole fiasco.
Note also the tea bags inexplicably hanging from the sign.
The message of this nice fellow's (courageous) costume is that taxes are so high, he can't even afford clothes to wear.
His taxes, of course, are lower than they have been at any point in his lifetime, thanks to Obama's unprecedented tax cuts – but he's not going to let facts get in the way of a good costume. Presumably under Bush and the Republicans his taxes were so high that he couldn't even afford the barrel outfit and thus couldn't leave home to protest without being arrested.
I complimented him on his courage for coming out dressed like this, and he replied that he'd been dressing this way every day since Obama took office. Those lower taxes are just awful, I know.
The iconic image of the poor man so burdened by taxes that he can't afford clothes and must cover himself with a barrel, originating in the early 20th century in political cartoons by Will B. Johnstone, may be unfamiliar to the younger generations, but that's not the target audience for the Tea Party.
These are my favorite pictures from the Tax Day Tea Party event. For the photographers: all were shot on Kodak BW400CN chromogenic black-and-white film, with a fixed-length 35mm f/2.0 lens on a Nikon F100. This was the first roll of BW400CN I've ever shot, and I'm quite pleased with the results. I processed it myself.
Way back on Tax Day, I attended a Tea Party event at Sunset Park in Las Vegas. When I posted about it at the time, I included snapshots I took with my point-and-shoot digital camera.
I also had a real camera with me, of course, and I'm now (gradually) developing my film, so it's time for more Tea Party fun.
Technical details for the photographers: the shots in this post were made on Portra 160nc, with a fixed 35mm f/2.0 lens on a Nikon F100. The F100 can pass for a high-end digital SLR if people don't look too closely, so I was often taken as a member of the press. Quick tip: acting like you belong goes a long way.
In what I assume was an attempt not to preach only to the choir, a number of teabaggers lined up at the side of the street to get the attention of passing motorists. Many of the signs were quite inexplicable, so a lot of motorists were probably left wondering what these people wanted. The sign in this shot, for example, is an advertisement for a website, not a political statement.
It was clear being among the teabaggers that, as one might guess, they aren't a smart bunch, so their message was unlikely to be clear in any event. Even if it were, the Tea Party platform is based on lies, outright fabrications of the kind Fox News likes to spread. They have nothing valid to say, but they're saying it loudly.
These folks worship Ronald Reagan. They don't know much about history, so they think Reagan was a shining example of everything they believe in, mostly simplistic assumptions based on sound bites like the famous “government is the problem” quote.
The myth of Reagan is more attractive than the truth of Reagan, and I suspect the teabaggers wouldn't really want to know the answer to the question “What would Reagan do?” He was a conservative, to be sure, but a teabagger he was not.
It's not clear which part of the “change” this woman would like to see changed back. Is it the lower taxes that suck? The stabilized economy? The largest infrastructure investment since the Interstate Highway Act? Winding down the war in Iraq? Having a black guy in the White House? She's not very specific.
As an aside, I've had people tell me that I ought not to be calling these people “teabaggers” any more, that even if the name was their idea in the first place, the joke is over now and it's just name-calling at this point. Those people obviously haven't seen this video and the comments on that page. Or these T-shirts.
This guy felt that the best way to get the attention of motorists was to go out in the middle of the busy city street. If you're familiar with Las Vegas, you know what kind of street this is: six lanes of 45mph Vegas traffic.
There were several “real” press photographers on site, all trying to get a shot of this guy, so I was proud to be the first to realize that getting the shot meant going out into the middle of the road with him. The others followed my example, only they probably got paid to do it, so I guess they get the last laugh.
The punchline in this idiotic cartoon: “Anytime you see ‘bailout’ you should expect to get creamed.”
I guess it's true – if by “creamed” you mean “paid back with interest.” Seriously, don't these people even realize you need to change the talking points when they're proven incorrect?
Here's someone who apparently wants to abolish the presidency completely. Or, you know, something. I'm not sure they really know what they want.
I've saved my favorite pictures from this event for my next post, coming soon. Until then, watch out for teabaggers, they're scary folks.
Some of the rhetoric is the standard “Throw The Bums Out” stuff. Harry Reid is not only the Senate Majority Leader for the Democrats, he's a senator from Nevada, so he received plenty of attention in that regard.
But look at the sign on the right in this picture. It calls out three “bums” to “throw out”: Harry Reid, Shelley Berkeley (D-NV-1), and Dina Titus (D-NV-3), Democrats all. They apparently don't want to dump Republican Representative Lee Terry from Nevada's 2nd District, nor even Republican Senator John Ensign, despite his ethical and possibly legal entanglements.
The real message: “Throw the Democratic bums out.”