CADEL KF

Camilla Åkrans

2008-12-10T17:24:00.001-08:00

Roger Deckker

2008-12-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

Marcel van der Vlugt & Timothy Barnes

2008-12-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

Marcel van der Vlugt

Timothy Barnes

A Christmas Jeer

2008-11-29T06:54:00.001-08:00

Granted we are going through tough economical times, and really that does sound like the prerequisite phrase of the year, but I certainly think now, more than any other time is prime territory to stress the humanist elements of this time of year. I've heard too many stories on the news this week, and especially will now that Black Friday is over about how this month long home stretch to the holiday season is a microcosm for the recession we have embarked upon. What a perfect time to teach children a bit of humility, and the true meaning of the holidays. Now it certainly might be easy for me to say, for I am in that strange period of my life where I am old enough not to be devastated by a thin Christmas Tree present pile but yet too young to have a family of my own. I am 22 and I can certainly say I've had my share of plunderous as well as slightly disappointing Christmases, such as the year my big ticket request was the Daytona 500 Speedway race set. The commercials ran on television constantly during my cartoons, it was one of those race sets that had the supercharger, and the cars would come tearing out onto the track, I asked for it and asked for it, and put it on my lists to santa and to mom. One day during the holidays my mom came home with a box from layaway somewhere, and brought the items into her room, and then put the empty box back onto the big freezer box we had. It was an unremarkable brown box but for the simple printed words "Daytona 500 Speedway". So of course there could be no other explanation, on Christmas morning I'd have supercharged race cars flying off the track, hitting me in the knuckles, making me cry and never once considering putting the toy away. Well December 25th rolled around and there would be no Daytona 500 Speedway, like I had said, it was just a box they put her items in. I cant remember whether I made a big deal out of it, and I can't imagine i really did, though I've never let her live it down. My mother raised me to be a very appreciative son, I suppose I had my moments but for the most part I understood what was within my mothers limits and not to make her feel bad if she couldn't afford something for me, because now I now know how much she stretches her money. I am glad I was able to stay humble, I lived in a very affluent community, and I suppose at times felt a little jealous that my schoolmates got so much during the holidays, but my mother made Christmas equally as much about love, as material, and I believe that it is that spirit that's been lost. Everyone is worried about what's going to happen with consumer spending this month, whether the retail stores will put up even close to the same sorts of numbers as they'd hope, or even put up last year, parents are worried they cant afford certain big ticket items on their families list, as if they have some sort of material obligation to uphold. Sure, commend the marketing departments of all these retail giants for years for the two pronged obligation and 'child's wildest dreams come true' norm for holiday shopping, and pitting neighbors and peers against one another to make higher profits, but it certainly takes away from children's socio-economic awareness and sense of obligation to community and love for family. It's a perfect opportunity to teach them a bit about family budgeting and humility. I think families around the country talk about how this is a time of giving, yet really only refer to the gifts they are purchasing for friends and family, the retail stores want to make them feel like real altruists for doing that, that the smiles of their children are the only ones that matter, where in reality there are a large number of people who cant even provide for themselves during the holidays. It's time for parents to stop getting teary eyed watching stories about philanthropist terminally ill children and start actually making a difference, and breeding a culture of multifaceted holiday spirit in their own households. I think one problem people have is that they see these vast examples of philanthropy and feel as if the small things that they could contribute aren't good enough, yet another example of 'how to be' keeping people from stepping up. Yet when in reality spending a Saturday with their kids wrapping presents for underprivileged children and making cards and crafts like my mother and I did every year is an example of something small that can be done. I think it's time for parents to teach their children that every gift, every comfort, every skill, every passion and opportunity comes with responsibilities to somehow share that with someone. I have always felt that if one has a wealth of knowledge and a passion for something, than its their responsibility to breed that in someone else, thats why I coach soccer; the sport did so much for me that I felt so compelled to be a positive influence in a child's life so they too could get a large amount out of it. The same is true for holiday spirit. Instead of raising children that feel the only holiday obligations are for their parents to spoil them, raise children gracious of their gifts, appreciative of their friends and family, who strive to make a positive impact on those who might not be so lucky. Maybe then the struggling economy might not be the big story, rather the booming economy of good deeds.

French Vogue Calendar 2009

2008-11-29T06:53:00.000-08:00

I cant really say I'm a huge Terry Richardson fan, but I am most certainly a fan of most anything coming out of my homeland. There is certainly a distinct difference between fashion magazines in the US and in europe, especially in regard to the totally different Playboy France. These great images are very refreshing in that they are pinup work that doesn't look like the awful myspace celebrity pinup work you keep seeing in the states with overweight, decent looking girls with the same rockabilly haircut as all the other girls, who know they couldn't model in any other context, in totally mass produced bullshit a la Alvarado. These images are legitimately sexy, without at all containing that corny pinup/hot girl calendar thing. Id like to get my hands on these. Well... the calendar too!

Spill (working title)

2008-11-24T04:08:00.001-08:00

[to be continuously updated, piece in working, to be filmed in 2009]

Meditations on Old hollywood theme, Modern style b&w silent film. starring Belinda Bryant, Cary James, and Ariana.

vision: a film noir modern obsessively details oriented silent film about old hollywood. film might be shot in colour and converted to B&W with very careful tuning in final cut and other video software but certainly not overdone. B&W will have really rich tones and a focus on negative space and baroque styling. as much as possble characters might be cast along almost indescernable dark background elements or 50mm f1.2 bokeh. lighting will be dramatic and sharp but not too harsh (a high contrast styling will be applied but not at the loss of any grade, the whites and blacks will stand out immensely but chiaroscuro is important). all dialogue and sounds will be cut out, and whatever speech is written into the script will actually be said on set, but will be expressed with black screens with words, such as in old black and white silent film. actors will not be doing the overly dramatic body language and puppetlike behaviour, rather very natural and realist. the whole film will likely take course over the course of a few days or a week. scenes will be very short, almost snippits, and after certain peices of dialogue, when the screen comes back from the black text screens the scene will change completely, maybe just in that it would go from a wide room shot to a close in details shot, or maybe to a completely different time of day in a different setting. black screens will also indicate days of the week. most likely the film will take place over the course of a week starting on a monday and ending on a sunday. depending on the goal for the length of the film, each day will last from a few seconds to a few minutes, even as much as ten. there will be at least one day that will be extremely short, possibly only 5-10 seconds with no dialogue and maybe even no action (ex. wednesday scene ends, thursday screen shows, scene shows details of an empty apartment, hangars missing from the closet, the bedclothes sloppily put together, the phone off the hook, a dripping faucet, certain uncomfortable elements that show evidence of abandonment of the space in a hurry, end scene, friday screen shows, giza and kayla on the road in a car.)

a possible theme for this film is the two women make acquaintence with a young man, he is invited to their place fo a night of conversation, drugs, drinking, smoking ciggarettes and implied sex with the more dominant girl. an accident happens and he dies possibly an overdose, which happens after the dominant girl has sex with him, she does and comes out to spend some time with her roommate while he sleeps, she goes back into bed wiht him and he is already dead. something like that, the next day they fight over what to do with him the submissive charcter wants to call the cops, the dominant character demands they bury him, they have to take him out to the country side somewhere and bury him, they return to their apartment, they anxiously wait, they recieve a suspicious phone call and when they answer it noone says a thing (screen would read some hints at certain points, and at this point youd see a non quoted text making mention of 'soft breathing on the line, no words') the girls get spooked, abandon the apartment that night, the next day is just showing the abandonment and th next day they are still on the road, indicative of them being more than a full day away from where they lived. one of the girls had been more dominant in the arguement and planning to take the man to the countryside and sees the other as a vulnerabiity to her safety, that its possible she may rat her out. a cleverly done subtle scene happens to indicate she kills the other girl. would have to think this one out but it could possibly start that second to last day with the two of them in their hiding place, likely a motel, having the two of them sitting, the weaker one obviously has been weeping, and says something to subtley indicate that she feels extreme guilt, the dominant girl says something to indicate her apathy towards the situation, towards his death and their fleeing, after a few of the dialogue screens cut to a shot much later of her sleeping really well and the other. more moral girl sitting up restlessly in bed watching some sort of television show, some details shots from around the motel happen for a while kind of showing some negative space, the shot comes back to the television on snow as the moral girl slips into sleep. sunday screen text, cut to a scene of the dominant girl driving the car by herself smoking a ciggarette, a quick shot of blood stained white gloves, a bit more negative space driving, possibly a dialogue scene of her singing something, then cut to her at the bar in a diner eating like nothing happened and saying something to the waitress. the waitress spills milk from a glass, and apologizes to the dominant girl. (not sure if this would drop on her or just near her, but enough to make a disturbance to her and warrant an apology), the dominant girl says something to the extent of "mistakes happen" which would ironically refer back to the original accident with the acquaintence. she would say this rather apathetically, she would almost not react to the spilled milk, as if it didnt affect her. the idea here is that she doesnt cry over spilled milk, or even spilled blood, even over her best friends'. she has essentially the same reaction when they find the boy dead, when they bury him, when her friend is overcome with guilt, when shes in the car after murdering her, and when the milk is spilled. the last image is of the milk slowly spilling out and crawling across the bar table.

stylistic note: in The General (1927) it seems as if none of the dialogue is subtitled, so it might be interesting to play around with some dialogue sections not being subtitled at all, some of the non vital portions, the viewer would be lef to wonder what was said, though the vital portions of conversations, especially the big arguement the two girls have about what to do with the body would be expressed.

MONDAY (introductory scene, details survey, obvious show of friendship)

TUESDAY (meeting acquaintence boy, fun night of boose, smokes and conversations)

starting with apartment scene: cary is somewhat lounging on the couch, there is a table, and another single seat, hes sitting, smoking (and logistic note here, if none of them actually smoke, look into figuring out how to fabricate it, or at least smart editing so that they never actually puff them, but that they are lit). the smoke will be a nice aesthetic device along with black backgrounds, watching the swirling and random usage, take a lot of material of the smoke, play with it being blown into, and use them well edited as detail shots and somewhat of filler. belinda and ariana come into the room with some bread, some wine and glasses, ariana sits in the single seat and belinda sits rather close to cary and pours him a glass of wine. belinda is generally going to be a very seductive, sexy character in general. not overly so, but to the point where shes certainly got sex appeal. for a minute of time in the film they are talking, drinking, smoking, enjoying themselves, as the scenes cut back and forth, belinda and cary get a bit more affectionate, until she starts playing with his hair, and kisses his cheek. she whispers something to him, and cary smirks a bit, she goes off into the bedroom and he says something to ariana, and heads in there to meet her. ariana lights up another cigarette and slouches a bit. the scene cuts into the bedroom, where belinda is leading him to the bed, holding his hand, turns around, kisses him, tugs at his belt, sits down on the bedside and starts kissing him. the scene goes back into the livingroom, highligting some of the things ariana is doing in sheer boredom. soon the scene goes back to the bedroom, (if possible) belinda is topless, and cary is under the sheets, he has a plate with some cocaine on it, he takes a line, hands it to belinda and she puts it down, kneels over to do some lines, giggles at him, and then puts a shirt or a bra on and leaves the room, telling him she will be back in a few minutes. cary does some more lines, belinda goes out to talk with ariana, they talk a bit, sitting on the couch wiht one another, some time passes, and they have fallen asleep. belinda wakes up, tries not to disturb ariana, and goes back into the room. end.

WEDNESDAY (accidental death overnight, body found, fight, improper burial)

the scene opens with very bright white styling, the sheets are all white, white curtains with a high amount of light coming into the room. the objects and the characters clothing from the night before and whatever might remain ontheir bodies is mostly white and gray (this is important so tuesdays styling needs to depict this for continuity) it is almost over exposed. this is a large contrast to the completely dark scene endign tuesday night. the dominant character wakes, only wearing bottoms and puts her shirt on, rolls over back into bed, this portion is shot from above the bed, hopefully directly above it, and the male character hasnt moved, and is somewhat obscured by something, he is hunched over to the side of the bed, somewhat propped up with a pillow. a makeup artist is going to powder him so he is ghostly white, like a dead person might look, hes going to be directed to be very stiff. the dominant girl leands in towards him, touching his shoulder, rubbing him, nuzzling in to kiss him and wraps her arm around him. a few detail shots happen, and from above the bed you see her lean back a bit, as he is not very receptive to her snuggle attempt, and the pillow is pulled out from under him and he rolls lifelessly into the bed on his back, she finds it slightly odd, props herself up to look at him and realizes somethings wrong, she touches his face, feels for his pulse and runs out of the room, she doesnt scream or anything, she kind of just gets up, takes a look back at him and somewaht hurriedly leaves the room. the camera starts to zoom into him a bit, the scene stays with the overhead view of the bed, cuts in one time to portrait his lifeless face, and highlight the colour of his face in comparison to thie white sheets, and pillow (its possible to edit this to be lower contrast and saturaion to match the colours up a bit), then back to the overhead view and from the bottom of the screen the two characters come into the room hurried, then a dialogue part takes up the screen and the viewpoint changes to a more natural third person view from one side.

the submissive character discovers a bit of foam down the edge of his cheek and onto the bed, its inferred the boy had a seisure, and if the viewers paying attention they will note that he had been alone for a while in the bed. it seems as if the dominant character went to bed with him and slept with him after he died all night long. the submissive girl begins to panic (the dominant girl only really elevates her mood when arguing with the girl, but never really shows any signs of remorse, fright, shock or compassion to any situation,). they begin to argue, and this is the second larger peice of dialogue in the peice. only the vital parts of the conversation are put on screen. the arguement is inferred to be about what to do with him. the submissive girl makes a case for callign the authorities, and the dominant girl insists they bury him, burn him, something. as stated before, very few dialogue screens appear. the submissive girl says "911?" the dominant girl yells at her a bit, the submissive girl says "but what if..." is cut off with more dominant speaking, and she says "earth or fire?" or "shovels or gasoline?" in refernce to whether they should bury or burn the body. some detail shots ensue and when the scene comes back to the room view the bed is stripped, down to the mattress. and in the very next visual, its sundown, they are in the car driving out to the countryside.

THURSDAY (tense day, phone call, flee)

FRIDAY (abandoned house short scene)

SATURDAY (two driving scene, guilt overcoming moral girl, negative space late night scene in hotel)

SUNDAY (driving away after muder, final diner scene)

Reclusive

2008-11-24T04:07:00.000-08:00

[to be continuously updated, piece in working, to be filmed in 2009]

speaking with Samantha Cinnes about a photograph that she took.
'a theme on reclusive behaviours.'

a quick stylistic note
since this is going to be a theme thats largely voyeuristic, the filmer is not a known entity, it in no way dictates her actions and she never makes eye contact, she never reacts to anything its doing and she never has somewhat of a reserved personality while in private around the filmer. the photography is a study of her space as much as it is of her personality, she is not always the focus of the photography, she is in an enviornment. there are many shots of objects, of light, in shadows, beams of light on walls, reflections off televisions and other surfaces, the way it graces her body, ect. of some interesting things,things relevant to her reclusive behaviour, of some really mundane things, offcolour tones on her walls, scratches and imperfections on surfaces, stains, things of that matter. but generally she is not the focus unless otherwise noted.

MORNING
"i think it would be fun to do some longer films with you, serious concept stuff with a lot of filming in old parts of montreal. the older more historical parts with cobblestones. theyd be sexy and intense and strange."
sexy in that they are somewhat erotic at some times but not explicit, innocent almost, very higly fashionable and mysterious, intense in that the lighting would always be peircing and the visuals would be carefully planned out and gorgeous, intense in that some of the motion would be erratic and some of the facial expression would be very strong. strange in that noone really knows what this girl is up to, or whether she has some sort of problem, whether shes on drugs, whether she is affected in some way, but really she is just a strange little recluse.

"i actually really like the picture of you on your bed moving in different positions id love to do a part like that with minimal lighting coming in."
with almost the same setup she has in the photo but more of a believable sleep situation, with a larger window with blackout shades somewhat off frame we could manipulate to let in whatever amount of light we wanted to, to somewhat fabricate some of the stages of the light coming in and then go back in editing and rate each section and place it where it needs to be. the light would be extremely carefully placed and shed be posed in the most appropriate ways to let the light fall on her just so.

"see when i see things like that i start thinking about the motion between those poses, the light and the rolling around. id want to do a scene very very early in the morning before the sun comes up, kind of like a fake time lapse,"
in that it would be very short snippits of motion between the time of the most dark and most light in a natural progression. a time lapse would be more fast foward whereas this sort of look would be realtime but sped up in that it would be missing sections. it would jump from position to position, from grade of light to grade of light until it was early morning.

"and you rolling around in bed, kicking your legs, having a hard time sleeping, waking and sitting up, laying back down, and the light increases and increases as the morning comes in and illuminates you very carefully by our design, and then off with your day."
the scene would start with the darkest light we could muster an image with, as high an ISO as we could, grainy and likely muddy, but almost as much like natural eye night vision when eyes adjust, even contemplate if possible the idea of making it completely black there for a few seconds and fading into the first images so eyes are adjusting to the scene, as the scene progresses more and more exposure is coming in, maybe upping the ISO would help, then starting to allow the very early prerise sun to come in, then carefully monitoring the morning light coming in through cracks in the shade, gracing her body just exactly how we want it to. taking advantage of the light rising until its fully light in the room and then working with various levels of blinds open and shut to fabricate more scenes of this situation and editing them in where they look best. the entire scene itself would be short short snippits of differing length, differing perspectives and angles. shots from: almost exactly the perspective of the pictures shown, from her chest up over her face, down looking just on her eyes and cheeks, down looking just on her legs, her feet, her hands on the mattress, differing focuses with sometimes the focus being on the wall with a very fast peice of glass, wth her body very blurred, just her hair sprawled out over the mattress. end.

PREAFTERNOON
right after the bed scene ends there would be somewhat of a survey in the morning light of some of the other areas of the house, these would be very quietly scored, with no motion at all as far as objects are concerned, you could somewhat hear her moving around in the next room or coming in towards that room but she would not be there yet. things would be very meticulously placed in the house in these rooms, very much posing questions of the viewer about this girls lifestyle. we know shes erratic and had a hard time keeping postions in bed, but she has clutter, notes erratically written on small peice of paper and napkins, books open, half eaten foods, fruits, magazines stacked up, but its somewhat apparent she didnt have company persay, she made all this mess that night staying up late doing all the things she was doing. from what you could gather the girl doesnt have that selfconscious element of mothers when company is frequently over, not that the place is a complete war-zone, or that there is any dangerous mold growing anywhere, she knows where everything is but its all strewn about as if shes got noone to impress. the shots would be isolated, not very quick, but several seconds of differing intervals of these 'still-lives' of the objects in the room.
this part is somewhart inspired by the scene in 'marie antoinette' on one of the last indulgent nights, when there are shots of cake, jewlery strewn about, clothing, things like that in a really quiet moment in the morning light.
some of the shots would be stationary and others would be a little more handheld and shaky, but this part of it would be rather breif. samantha would enter from directors behind, coming quickly and abruptly across the frame, she makes no recognition of the director whatsoever, she is alone and this is somewhat of a voyeuristic peice. goes about her morning routine with not a moments thought about her appearance. she has serious bedhead, but in a really endearing way, she is wearing the same basic outfit shes got on in the pictures though its probably more like a long teeshirt and panties with high socks, or some kind of nightgown, whichever works the best, her socks are not at all uniform, one is up properly and the other is rolled slightliy and loose at the calf, just barely covering the kneecap. one part of her top is off her shoulder and she has last nights makeup rubbed about on her face. she has a couple cuts, possibly a taped guaze on her leg, who knows where that came from.
the motion and switching between image and image slows down a bit here and she is having breakfast and the shots are mainyl wide angle, an she isnt the subject neccesarily. she might be well off to the side of the frame, as if only just an object in the frame. you see her somewhat off frame eating her breakfast, looking at the paper, looking like shes somewhat in a hurry though she doesnt exactly have anywhere to go. she continues to ruffle through the paper, shes one of these people that licks her fingers to turn the pages, flicks the paper with her hands to flatten it out, folds the paper when shes reading, she drinks coffee, eats fruit salads, the camera sneaks in from time to time for detail shots, really really shallow depths of feild across the news paper, across her lips as the fruits go in, then some more normally depth shots of her fingers manupulating the newspaper at each movement, in flipping the pages out, in licking the finger to turn, in folding it, in holding it, in tracing under words to read. those parts will be more segmented. she will be wearing a certain colour of nailpolish thats chipped a bit that coordinates well to pop off her fingers and the grays and blacks of the newspaper, and off the boring bokeh in the backgrounds.
she heads back to the bedroom to get dressed, and there are some miscellaneous shots of the materials she used to make her breakfast. canteloupe rinds, discared strawberry leafs, grape stem bunches with a few grapes left, coffee grounds in a filter spent and soaked, an open sugar bowl, traces of sugar on a non white counter, wet spoons, an open cabinet. and then up close on her hands again in her room as she finishes getting dressed. this would be a very carefully planned part isolating the hands as they move about, following them mostly back of the hand side as they grab a button up top, unfolding it, unbuttoning it, in whatever way they would be when putting it on and then buttoning it up and fixing it, then shuffling through her hair, all the while the polish would be a focal point. a big sidenote here is that the rest of the house would be very well lit and hopefully quite white in appearance, totally open and exposed windows and supplimentary light, whereas the bedroom was very dark, and only well used curtained window light and thin scrims from supplimentary light are used. the sequence continues but it somewhat choppy as not all angles and elements of the hand usage is possible. for instance when the hands are in the sleeves of the shirt the focus would be on the exposed hand and then jump to the cuff to see the other hand coming out. focus would always be on at least one hand until the sequence is complete.
she then finishes her getting ready in a less pretentious way, expidites it, the view here is more wideangle again and shes off to the edge of the frame pulling her pants on view from behind and her butt slides into the back of the pants, and she heads out of the room. the next part is filmed from the very other side of the well lit room with her coming out of her room towards the viewer, passing and then the door slams off frame. end.

AFTERNOON
the shots now start outdoors. hopefully a cobblestone roadway would be easily located and the filming would start in an open patch of it, heading off somewhere unknown. hopefully the cobblestone roadway would be multicoloured, beige, brown varying grays, sepia, copper, clay. the camera is not too far off the ground scanning the ground sections fluidly, moving forward, handheld but isolating and from the same angle the whole way. diagonally to the extent that the cobblestones are not moving in straight lines, it is panning maybe 15-20 degrees off center. her shoes enter the frame somewhat walking along with the cobbles, she seems hurried, the frame pans up a bit to include her legs, then her waist and eventually angling up to showing her back and her hair flowing, shes a bit offcenter and then the view comes back a bit slightly, she moves forward away from the camera and then it switches to her side. a few more of these hurried closeup shots across her face, then transitioning into actually showing the enviornment.
shes heading through a commercial kind of area, and the shots here are going to have to be very well planned out, it always seems that in these 'placing the subject' shots its all street signs, store signs, cars, conventional devices you seem to find in every film that requires this. these types of shots should be more unconventionall but would still place the subject. focus is on detail. as these parts come to an end she comes walking through the last placing shot and the camera starts to follow her. when she gets close to where shes going the frame abruptly goes off to her in some public building as secluded as she can get, very much avoiding people in her surroundings.

Andreas Kock

2008-11-24T04:06:00.002-08:00

Annika Aschberg + Ewa-Marie Rundquist

2008-11-24T04:06:00.001-08:00

Annika Ashberg

Ewa-Marie Rundquist

John Scarisbrick + Magnus Magnusson

2008-11-24T04:05:00.003-08:00

John Scarisbrick

Magnus Magnusson

Editorial roundup 4

2008-11-24T04:05:00.001-08:00

Just as a general note about the Editorial Round up section I have done four times in the past few days, the frequency of which is due to a large repository of photographs ive found over the past few months and wanted to share right away. The Round up will be a weekly segment from now on. It will be a fun review of some great work in editorial photography, mostly fashion related. I hope you will enjoy it.

Editorial roundup 3

2008-11-24T04:03:00.001-08:00

Hans van Brakel for James Magazine
Another example of the sort of studio work i actually enjoy. Granted I feel it could have been more stimulating in a real environment, and that i have a feeling its not a film print, but photoshopped to look like one (I can't really talk, I'm also guilty of a bit of fake polaroiding myself) but the hair is awesome, the wardrobe is very cool, it gives off a really future of sex appeal kind of thing. This is a good example of the sort of sexy work I enjoy, where its fashion oriented, instead of it just being a lot of skin and the outfit being an afterthought. Also, her skintone is lovely.

I can not locate the artist for this print, but its definitely worth the post. Like my friend was saying 'whats that girl whos obviously 11-12 doing wearing heels and a mini?'. I personally think that that is cute. I really enjoy the casting and the wardrobe for this shot, its got a really nice colour relationship, with the whites, skintones, blacks, salmon, powder blue and hints of gold and tan. I havent exactly figured out what the point of it is, but maybe thats the point in itself, and I enjoy when things arent totally spelled out. I love the marching band helmets, I really want one. the only gripe i have about this photograph is the really tall dirty blond girl, that instead of looking somewhat shocked, looks like shes mid-yawn.

Irina Garvich for Austrian Fashion Guide
This is some pretty great styling, although the concept isn't that neat. I can't be too picky about this, i really enjoy the model.

Jonas Bresnan for Tush Magazine

editorial roundup 2

2008-11-22T17:55:00.001-08:00

Elizabeth Toll for Bon Magazine
this really simple, yet classic/futuristic hybrid is really intriguing. Geometry, diagonals, facial structure and really smart wardrobe selections. the colour relationships are really crisp, nothing looks better than tan/sand/khaki on creme white and blue/green. The models have a classic look and are good selections. I like this sort of concept because its unlike some things I've seen, but not without too great of effort.

Alexandra Kinga Fekete for Kulturspiegel
These are another cool example of colour relationships and interesting posing. I think that the somewhat manniquinesque posing has been done a lot but I think this is certainly a victory in terms of the fact that the wardrobe and the makeup/hair was selected quite well, a lot of times a randomly styled model is passed off as a doll and it doesnt work.

Alfred Saerchinger

Andrea Herzog for Marie Claire

Anja Frers for Annabelle
I have never really been one for studio shoots, I think that not only are on-location works more challenging but a lot more versatile, I don't see why photographers shoot in the studio. However, good concepts do come out of these sorts of works from time to time. I enjoy the wardrobe selections, the smart use of lighting, and the fun atmosphere. General rule with studio work, if the viewer doesn't think the activities look like something they'd like to be involved in, or wouldn't have fun hanging out with you doing that, than don't pursue it.

Anja Frers for Zink
I like this series, its simple, yet somewhat surrealist. The model selection is perfect, she has this otherwordly, fantasy look about her and it just fits. I really enjoy projects that have a slight element of something, but it does not dominate the concept.

Anna Rosa Krau for Tush

Annemarieke van Drimmelen for Glamour

Blink Imaging

Christos Karantzolas
I like these few images, I wasn't too thrilled with the entirety of the set, but these images have really interesting styling, neat use of light, design and a somewhat of a mysterious element.

Claudia Scholtan for Tush Magazine
I think that the styling in this image is a real winner. the almost completely monochromatic colour scheme with accents of blue and purple is really cool. It certainly helps that the model looks almost animalistic in her poses, I really like her gloves in the last shot, the snoot lit face in the second shot (a snoot is a tube type of lighting device that directs light to a small locale, somewhat like using your water hose on the power wash or stream mode as opposed the the normal shower mode, its more directive as opposed to a spray). I also really enjoy the first shot, with the very light salmon, pink sand and hints of blue in the hair and frill at the top of her leg.

Costas Avgolous for Elle
I am mainly focusing on the 1st and 4th frames in these two sets; i have to say i really enjoy the colour schemes in the first, the yellow flowering bushes, along with the navy blue outfit and the hints of goldenrod in her headwrap. And in the fourth, I can't express enough how much i enjoy a classy woman in a mans suit, and her ability to remain feminine. Honestly i feel as if the shot could do without the guy, but otherwise her hairstyle, youthful face and charm really carry the image and make it very endearing.

Daniel Jackson for Acne Paper
I think these are fantastic, very much kind of the Eugenio Recuenco style Rembrandt inspired portraiture, however a bit more subtle. I have always been a fan of Recuenco, but I think some of his work can be too fantasy based and too over the top and strange. If thats what hes going for, fine, but I feel as if these pieces here are more true to the inspired works. The tweed outfits have a very modern feel to them, so its not a complete homage or replica of elder pieces, and the nude is a prime example of the sort of non-oversexualized nude work that I really appreciate. Not to say there is anything wrong with sexy, but I think that theres a more sophisticated way to do it, and a way in which a womans natural nude aesthetic value is not compromised just for simple pleasure.

Quentin Shih for Dior and Contemporary Chinese Arts
This is fucking cool. That's all I have to say.

Margaretha Olschewski

2008-11-22T17:21:00.000-08:00

Editorial roundup

2008-11-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

Alexandra Kinga Fekete for Booklet

Elizabeth Toll for Maxi

these are really classic, meticulously styled homages to what I would interpret as Victorian era or modern Amish lifestyle, however although there is a somewhat 'Americana' feel, they still strike me as a touch European, Nordic or northwestern European. The flowering water grasses with white puffs really draw the eye and play along with the grass greens and reflected blues and cloud grays with a touch of black to tie everything in. in the second the posing and capture are very tranquil while still being adventurous, and the dark crimson of the boat tie everything in.

Ian Derry for Milk

I have to say, I love Milk magazine, its a french language children's mode publication. I have always loved well dressed children, whether it be by their own personal choice, or their parents doing. Nothing is cuter than little kids with a few baby teeth missing in Dior ads. The magazine also has a bit of substance to it, with articles on parenting tips, dealing with children with learning disabilities, interior design and product reviews for children's rooms and things of the like, its not at all like American parenting magazines that teach mothers how to make jack-o-lantern cupcakes. I know ill be a subscriber to magazines like this when I have children.

Jimmy Backius for Tush

Jorgen Brennicke for Booklet

Kourtney Ross "Schloß Lanke" for Booklet

I really like these really well lit portraits at German castle Schloß Lanke. I most enjoy the first and last shots in which the male character is individually lit, it is not harsh or wildly obvious which I appreciate. The colours are well chosen, the girl is beautiful, and it does have a very antiquated feel while still maintaining modern tactics, which i think its a victory for the idea of blending eras. I don't at all enjoy homage pieces that are too far vintage, or too far modern, its a delicate balance to be able to properly represent inspiration from elder periods yet remain modern. My favourite part, and i always look for this, is that there aren't any distracting elements, the backgrounds and framing and cropping are well done, I really dislike when they are done poorly because it takes the focus away from the entire concept, like for instance when less experienced or discerning photographers take portraits in urban settings and somehow don't see the ugly car sitting way in the background. the only gripe I have is the 'light pole' in the second image on the very far left, but its balanced with another on the right side, and its not protruding out of any ones skull.

Kristian Schuller for 125
I am not sure if these are all done as extensive photoshop of individual pieces put into one, in which case, big applause, or whether they are all mannequins that were built with these facial expressions, in which case, big big applause, or whether its mannequins with photoshopped on faces of a model, in which case, applause. either way its done, i really enjoy the seamless nature of it. too many "here's me 500 times" pictures that some photographers are doing are really sloppily done.

Leo Krumbacher for Tush

I sometimes really like simple black and whites, but of course I like a bit of creativity involved, Ive never been too high on film/capture aesthetic quality carrying an image, as is the case with many B&W lovers' misjudgement of true creative value. The line quality and light values, and colour are really well ranged and deep, the skin tone is pristine and the models' facial structure is next to perfect. My favourite part though, is the hairstyle, and how the sharp, well defined comb lines play with the gentle striping in the garment.

Margaretha Olschewski for Grazia

Excuse me for almost using the same exact descriptions for this, and the Kourtney Ross "Schloß Lanke" for Booklet but again i really enjoy when something has somewhat of an homage to a certain period or lifestyle, yet is thoroughly modern in its execution. These really inherently remind me of Titanic era, or general mass immigration era but really have done a great job of fusing modern fashion with the class and elegance of the woman of old. I feel as if there was an obvious play to some of the baroque portraits in the second image of the first grouping, with her alabaster skin, striking natural makeup job and her hood/head covering. its classy and yet quite sexy at the same time, her clavicle, the flat portion of her chest and delicate shoulder structure along with her long thin neck and well chosen necklace piece is ultimate femininity. the picture to the left is undoubtedly erotic and yet completely respectful, something I appreciate as one who doesn't appreciate the "nude for nudes sake" style of work. And the bottom two images are really smartly coloured, the door, the rope tie offs, the Deutsche flag, and other orange/yellow, red and black elements that tie in perfectly with the flag. I really enjoy that she's not shes not part of that colour scheme, rather part of the image.

Oliver Rossi for J'N'C
What can i really say about these that Isn't so obvious, and I haven't said already about two other sets? Nothing much, I think you can see a trend developing here as far as my taste. What i can say is that i really think this is a very successful use of a rather bland colour pallet, and that i really enjoy the use of light peeking through.

Simone Kostian for Gioia Italy

Sven Jacobsen for Converse

Inequity

2008-11-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

I am not the foremost authority on legislation, religion or the gay experience, but I can say that I find the recent developments in California to be quite disheartening. I can latch onto the common phrase of 'I had many gay friends in high school' which is true, my class had a very accepting reception towards a large number of our peers who were openly gay, including teachers and staff members. But it was much more than that, the entire city was diverse. Newton, Massachusetts had a resounding cultural spectrum. Its really one of the only places i can think of that has a whole neighborhood of Italians, a huge Jewish population, which graduated a class representing over 100 nations, had the states best deaf education program, great programs for mentally and physically handicapped students, and the states best ESL program, that was just chock-full-of foreign students, and yes... we had a bit of a problem with some Russian mob activity, but that's beside the point. It was so diverse that my Varsity soccer team included players from Iran, England, Barbados, Kenya, France, Mexico, Norway and Japan. It had class diversity, ethnic diversity and the aforementioned close knit open gay population. Because of this situation, it was impossible not to have friends of glaringly different characteristics than yourself. I supposed I felt the whole world was like that, it was what I knew. I am not one to protect the reputation of any place I've ever traveled to, but I spent a year in college initially in Richmond, Virginia, and I was completely shocked at the utter racial social segregation. There is one point in the city where if you cross the road, you are in the 'black' part of town, cross back the other way and you are in the 'white' part of town. I hate to come off as dramatic, but you'd have to see it to believe it. These social separations manifested themselves in my schoolmates as well. I can't testify that this is an absolute truth, but from how things appeared to me, all the ethnic groups at that particular college (and mind you, it was one of the nations most diverse) only really associated with one another. So to me this was very odd. At my high school our common denominator was our attendance of that school, whereas in college, race, comfort, shallow belonging was most important, and the sad thing is that I cant recall any black friends I had during that entire year.

I suppose that all of that kind of sets the table for one to suspect that I don't necessarily think I terms of categories. Am I really an exceptional case? In California, Proposition 8 passed, banning gay marriage, and possibly resending thousands of marriages and unions that had taken place before the ballot measure passed. Now I can't also claim I am the authority on demographics and pre-election polling, but from the response of my peers during October, in status messages, bulletins, away messages, anything you can possibly think of on the Internet where one has the capability to express opinion, the feeling was mutual; No on prop 8. I can't tell you one case before the ballot voting of anyone I knew, and trust me, I know a lot of people, saying they wee voting Yes on prop 8, only one person afterward. Now maybe this has to do with a certain hesitation to be pinned as a bigot for making public statements like that, but I have a feeling I have some sort of reasonable cause to say that young people get it, that whether or not any of the questions about homosexuality, or gay marriage matter, the issue is civil rights, and equality, and being a first class citizen. Many might not know the extent of the rights denied gay couples by virtue of their not being allowed to marry. Many think its about health care benefits, and about being able to adopt, and being able to be next of kin, well its a lot more vast than that, there are 1100 rights allot ed to married couples, gay couples can not receive these seemingly inalienable rights. Now this isn't the same issue as the Boston Tea Party, but isn't a group of people who contribute over 700 billion dollars annually to the economy not being fully protected, or having the same rights as any other group of people a lot like taxation without representation?

But here's where things got interesting. The Mormon Church stepped in and raised over $20 million to get the word out on Yes for prop 8, for obvious reasons. This is an organization that Isn't taxed which engages in not only more questionable marriage practices, but essentially enslaves and medically neglects their members, and effectively inbreeds. Now maybe that last part explains why this group of people are so afraid of gays, but otherwise it just doesn't make much sense that a a group like this not only is allowed to bypass any semblance of church and state separation by raising funds to swing votes, but that they just don't see the glaring contradictions. I don't know much about the book of Mormon at all, but I am imagining it has the same sorts of 'rules' that today are antiquated and haven't been part of our law for a century. For instance, the bible, and even our constitution did not recognize blacks as being equals, in fact they were recognized as being only a fraction of the value and worth of a white man. Blacks had extremely limited rights, as did women, we all know this, blacks weren't even allowed to marry, interracial marriages were banned as well. Today, as I had already stated, things aren't equal and socially Utopian as wed hope for, but things have more than turned around for blacks, no more slavery, voting rights, the right to marry anyone of the opposite sex of any background that they please, its even gone as well as having a black man in the White House. it has certainly turned around for blacks, who according to the bible, and most likely the book of Mormon, are slaves, are possessions and shouldn't be afforded the same rights as white men. Doesn't it seem a little odd that christian groups aren't actively trying to take the rights away from blacks, the same way they are with gays? It sounds absurd to consider that maybe Mormon groups should sign petitions to bar blacks from marrying, voting, running for political office or any other number of things that in scripture, they shouldn't be doing, the backlash to these sorts of proposals would be astounding, far beyond the idea of bigotry, but somehow its not the same when referring to stripping the rights of gays? Why exactly is there an untouchable status in regard to racial minority rights, but yet homophobia seems to be a perfectly acceptable form of bigotry? If religious groups strive to protect the sanctity of marriage, and use scripture to justify law, than shouldn't they also put blacks back another 300 years in the process? Like I had said before, I would really accept this a bit more had it not come from the Mormons. They believe in polygamy, brainwashing, slavery, marriage and sexual acts with girls as young as 10, and they want to act as if they have the high moral ground over homosexuals, its just illogical.

The nice part about this whole story is that the California state supreme court may very well hold hearings in this case, and repeal Prop 8 under grounds that its blatant minority discrimination, and that it opens doors to a whole number of sets of legislation proposed, even as seemingly ridiculous as racial marriage laws. The fact of the matter is, its about time for contributing members of society to be treated as equals, just like the first line of our constitution says, and regardless of what ones sexual orientation or preference is. I think we all know everyone has different tendencies in the bedroom, different sets of turn-ons, attractions, fetishes, things that in the most basic and animistic ways make us happy. The big thing here is that, these things are none of others' business, so why when someone sleeps with, and loves someone of their own gender is that such an odd thing? If gays cant marry, based Solly in a public lack of comfort with their sexual preferences, than maybe awkward little men who have fetishes for big big women shouldn't be allowed to marry them either.

Photographs

2008-11-21T02:33:00.000-08:00

Michael Stonis

Manu Coillot

Francis A Willey

Andrew Kuykendall

Rush V

Fotorat

Dan Lippet

Ira Bordo

Canon 5D Mark II

2008-11-21T02:32:00.000-08:00

Although this is a pretty awful photograph I wanted to show a pretty accurate depiction of the setup ill have most often, the Canon 5D Mark II with an EF 50mm 1.2L. This is really one of the only non promotional pictures i can find of the new model and it doesnt include some crappy package lens. Anyway, this is THE camera, the successor to the wildy popular 5D. I had been planning to purchase a 5D at a pretty decent, discounted price, but I wanted to wait a bit, because i had heard a lot of rumors about the 5D being succeeded by a new version, that canon was planning to rethink the cameras at that range, to make the new 5D a more professional camera, and create a new model more for 'prosumers'. So the rumor had been that there would be a cheaper version of a 5D, and then a more professional 2D or 3D, and the projections for that camera had mainly been in the 13-16MP range, which i wasnt highly excited by. Granted the camera i use right now is far inferior to that projection, but nothing about 17 would have inticed me to put down the big bucks for a brand new camera model, especially if it were going to be only really some retooling and a minor bump in resolution. Well when i read the press release and the initial reviews of the new 5D Mark II, I didnt bother to even figure out what the asking price was, I wanted it, bad. It turns out the camera body is 2,600, about 6-800 more than i would have paid for my 5D body so its extremely affordable in my mind. The Canon 5D Mark II shoots at a resolution of 21MP, an 8MP improvement, has an ISO range from 50-25000 with state of the art noise reduction at high levels (better than Nikon's D3). it shoots 1080p HD video, which, to clear up somewhat of a misconception, is not the only camera on the market shooting HD, the Nikon D90 does as well, but fails to notify the consumer on their prideful advertisements that the D90 shoots a pathetic 720p HD, whereas the 5DMII shoots 1080p which is the highest industry standard 50% larger resolution than the D90. There is really no comparison between the two cameras, so I wont get into a full on review of both, I just definitely wanted to clear up a discrepancy. So with this advance in SLR technology, which frankly im enthralled they both decided to forgo lesser quality video and jump straight into HD, these SLR cameras now have the capability to bring the world famous canon lens optic quality to digital video. and now for the SLR impaired user upgrading from say, a canon powershot to a 5D (dont ask me why anyone would do that), the HD video capture allows for 'live mode' to be utilized during photo shooting. The live image shows up on the huge, gorgeous display LCD.

This is ultimately exciting to me because of course I am a photography student, but I have always had a resounding interest in film, and cinematography in the back of my mind. This will facilitate versatile creatives like myself, or documentary and journalist photographers to branch out into a new format. Now granted film has been around almost as long as photography itself. The Daguerrotype came about in 1826, and shortly after, inventions like the Zoopraxiscope in 1867 bringing motion pictures into relevance, so film is certainly not a new format, however, since the advent of digital camcorders, nothing has broken ground quite like the HD video capable Canon SLR. I can not attest to the quality of canon video lenses, like that on any of their digital camcorders, but i can certainly be safe in betting that the canon camera lenses, which have been in part in developement since 1933, are pristine beings, and have very few rivals, although id love to get my hands on anything Leica. Digital camcorders have always had picture capture functions, but never at 21 MP with the versatility of a high end professional SLR. Point and click cameras have long had video, but nothing like 1080p HD, and now here comes along not only a camera to blend the best of both worlds, but to do it with the worlds best and largest range of lenses. So where will photographers and cinematographers take this? Well I for example want to start making incredibly well designed films, and obviously taking a lot of photographs during the whole process. I am quite looking forward to this.

Hollow Points

2008-11-21T01:12:00.000-08:00

Once in a while I plan to do somewhat of a bullet list of things I am enjoying a lot lately, with no particular format or theme. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.

Viva Radio a great Internet radio player owned by American Apparel and based in Brooklyn. Users can either listen online in a browser, or download a flash based desktop application. Various DJs and contributors have their own stations, which air live on certain nights during hourly shows, or are archived and available to be listened to at any time. Radio is streamed and all track information is available. This is one of the largest and diverse collections of music available in radio form, and is something I love to listen to to discover music I haven't heard or just to enjoy while working on projects or getting ready for bed.
Viva Radio
Mode Depesche a magazine from Köln, Germany, published by Heimat-Keoln specifically devoted to photography, fashion and a lack of convention or firm advertising of any sort. each issue contains the work of 4-5 different teams of photographers and industry teams in sections and showcases great, experimental, fashionable work, and generally include poster size prints of a few selected photographs from the magazine, which are a really nice treat.. A little back story here, I have kind of gone on a bit of a quest for test issues of magazines that interest me. I sent a couple hundred E-mails to magazines from around the world, mostly in Europe in the themes of design, fashion, photography and the like, expressing my possible interest in subscribing and hope for a free trial issue. I have received close to 20 so far, I am not so sure many more will come, but Mode Depesche was certainly one of my favourites.
Mode Depesche
Adidas Tunit F50.9 Soccer Cleats Adidas have pretty much made all my dreams come true. I have always been a loyal Nike cleat wearer, but have always been disillusioned with the idea of spending 200 dollars on a pair, being stuck with the same colour, knowing if any part of the pair breaks, from the studs, the upper, the seams, then it would be time to buy a new pair. With the Tunit system, players have complete control over all the parts, and purchase interchangeable studs for different ground situations (hard, soft, firm), a chassis (essentially the support and firm element underneath the foot inside the shoe), sock liner inserts, and my personal favourite part, the upper, which has holes in the bottom, come in dozens of different designs and colours (including every team participating in the 2008 European cup). When all the pieces come together to make a pair of cleats, and each part is easily replaceable, the conservative spender will feel much better about replacing parts and not just the entire shoe, and for 25-80 dollars a piece, the various uppers allow the fashion forward, individualist footballer an array of options to match home and away uniforms, different teams, or just make a statement with the brightest, best looking cleats on the pitch. I will definitely be buying a set with 3-4 different uppers.
Adidas Soccer
Taboo for Firefox A really innovative and useful new take on bookmarking, and one of the only reasons I don't like safari (for not having it). I am not so sure id use firefox at all if it were not for Taboo. With two small buttons on the navigational menu, bookmark a page, and view all the bookmarks. When the bookmark, or 'Taboo' button is pressed, a screenshot and link information for the current page is taken and stored, no need to edit names, place in specific folders, or provide any further information. Use the open button and see the Taboos you've saved in thumbnail form, hover over any to see a larger version of the screenshot, click on it and travel to the page. What is really useful about this is that Taboo remembers what portion of the screen you were on when saving a Taboo, so if you are busy reading an article, and need to go, or restart, and need to read the rest later and want to pick up where you left off, no problem. I really enjoy using this when I am surfing blogs, looking at design portfolios and other really resourceful sites. It allows me to quickly judge whether or not id enjoy reading further into a site, saving it for later, and going on to other pages on my cyclical adventures. It is especially helpful to those visual learners who remember layouts and images better than URLs, blog names or artists names to reference a web page. this is a very highly recommended tool, its a free plug in, so try it today! Safari, please make something like this!
Taboo
Canon 5D Mark II I can not say enough about the new professional upgrade to the wildly popular Canon 5D digital SLR. My affection for it's lore is so strong that this part of this post is just a preface to the next post that will be completely dedicated towards it. Forget what you keep hearing about the Nikon D90 which is being deceivingly advertised as being 'the first Digital SLR to shoot HD video'. Its true, to an extent. Just in case you don't know, HD comes in different resolutions, and 1080p is the industry peak, when one purchases a HDTV they look for 1080p, because if its something like 960, or lower, its much poorer quality. The Nikon D90 shoots 720p HD, which is far inferior to the image quality and resolution of the full 1080p HD video shot on Canon's 5D Mark II, not to mention that the Canon shoots 21MP as opposed to only 12.3 for the Nikon. The Nikon's ISO range is only 100-6400, whereas the Canon ranges from 50-25000. Granted the Nikon is about half the price of the Canon, but believe me, if you are serious about photography and cinematography in one camera, and you require the up most image quality, your choice is utterly clear. Much more to come in my next post, completely devoted to my future wife, the Canon 5D Mark II.
Canon 5D Mark II

A second place trophy.

2008-11-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

Let me please preface this by stating that I am in no way endorsing Blackberry, or the Storm, my undying and completely justified love affair with Apple products keeps me from considering any other device, especially in competition with the IPhone 3G, anywhere near equal, so don't take this is a sign of any level of interest on my part.

In some very recent developments a new 'apple killer' came on the market, the BlackBerry Storm. I am not going to get into serious technical details here, because they aren't worth mentioning, for instance the blackberry's modest 1GB storage capacity (as compared to the 8GB & 16GB iPhone models), and its location on the sprint network (yuck), but i do intend to talk about my all time favourite characteristic of anything; design! I also should make mention that I am not going to even consider discussing that TMobile phone that recently came out, nor will I mention its name, mainly because I cant figure out what its name is. I will say this for the aforementioned 'iPhone Killer', I think its one of the least attractive things I've seen in years. its screen graphics remind me of some Palm Pilot I had in 1998, it looks like it's made out of Easter egg plastic, and I really feel bad for parents purchasing it for their children in lieu of an iPhone this Christmas; their crying children will be justified brats. That's enough of that.

The Blackberry Storm is reasonably sexy, and although its not an iPhone little brother (more like that poser kid down the street that kind of dressed like the cool kids but could never talk the talk), it certainly would make some lesser discerning, and very blackberry faithful Sprint contract holders reconsider hefty cancellation fees to switch to at&t, and certainly feel a bit better about their choices. Blackberry finally dropped the horrid qwerty button design, for however small or slim or neat looking blackberry made them, they were still there. There looks to be only 4 buttons on the front, which is a serious improvement over all those keys from the past, allowing them to make the screens larger and the experience more interactive, and of course make it a bit easier for those with giant thumbs to operate. I really like that, because unlike the approach of the Tmobile phone, I think people really do enjoy typing and navigating on screens. Although i should say, Apple still wins with its one button design. I don't see why Blackberry insisted on putting four buttons when they could have put the unnecessary three (excluding the on/off hang up) buttons into the interface like Apple did, or even considered having no buttons at all. I hear that the phone 'clicks' when buttons are pressed, gimmick. From the picture, the Icons look decent, a little bland in comparison with the iPhone, but not awful. I feel as if the materials make the phone look a little cheap, and fragile, as opposed to the godly glass front and smooth aluminum backing that all looks like one piece. I am a big proponent of complicated design made to look like its all one piece, as referenced in my last post on Barack Obama's design team. The storm looks from the front to have 9-10 pieces, its not completely seamless, although its made obvious improvements over the 'key for every function imaginable' design from previous phones. One thing I most definitely should mention about the promotion for this device is that its quite a bit deceiving of Blackberry to run commercials where the phone is sitting upside down, and someone goes to pick it up and you get just a glance, really making some serious hype, and buzz, and then for Blackberry to release anything less than a serious iPhone competitor, in fact they really released what looks to be a very inferior product. Tisk tisk. My assessment, to compare the Storm to the iPhone would be best served by making reference to the comparison of the Zune to the iPod (of any model), and I'd definitely say that the Blackberry storm will have much more relevance than the Zune in comparison to their Apple counterparts, but definitely a very distant second place trophy.

Design we can believe in.

2008-11-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

First of all, for the sake of public partisanship, let me state how enthralled I am about the election, not only for purposes of my politics, and for the future of our nation, but from the standpoint of a discerning aesthete; most certainly the highly superiour designed campaign won. In just about everything, Barack Obama's campaign design team took the lead in making politics out of the realm of lethargic, dusty speeches and issues that only really apply to our parents, to the forefront of young peoples' interest. Not to say that the campaign 'made politics sexy' because I feel as if that would have been a bit gimmickey, much like the whole Sarah Palin thing, but that the campaign had a stylish, design first, new, handsome look that showed a representation of a better more attractive future. I can not really recall at any point during the long, arduous season a time in which I wasn't impressed with Obama materials. Especially in regard to the website. I believe that a well designed, aesthetically charming web design keeps the visitor clicking links, spending more time and discovering, aside from ease of use and functionality, this is a huge factor in visit time for a website, and for said site to be in regard to a candidate for president, this is a victory in itself.

Lets take a look at the website for Barack Obama as of Nov. 20th, post victory.
(PS, i really dislike the way that blogspot uploads content and then makes you save it on your desktop and doesn't give you full control over the HTML of images, so I'm just tagging all of this stuff in)

This is the front page, and I will go over a bit of the other content involved, but this is obviously a good starting point. One thing i really appreciate in a web design is when links, buttons and pulldown menus have a bit of 'build into the design' look. Meaning that the parts all create one whole, that essentially the entire table looks like a poster, instead of it being a bunch of individual parts standing alone and making some sort of mosaic of pieces. From top to bottom, especially from the first images of the candidates, and the campaign seal, to the bottom of the graphic with the 'Change Can Happen' portion, that entire section could very easily be one piece of graphic, as opposed to looking like however many parts all the links, images, text, etc. could be, (i counted 24 different elements). There are several well done gradient 3d style red buttons, the pulldown menus at the top look built into the design. the only complaint I have is that the pulldown menus might look a bit better with a bit of transparency, so one would never loose sight of the candidates underneath, but maybe a lack of browser universality caused this. My absolute favourite part of the design of the whole site is the constant use of white to blue graphics used on almost all the site elements, with hints of red. The overall art direction is much more focused on the Blue Democrat theme than the overkill Red, White and Blue, apple pie, baseball, hot dogs, cowboys and blond girls America themes. The hints of red are always really nice, and are used to draw attention to logos, links and information. Its very smart eye direction. Overall i really loved looking at Barack Obamas website throughout.

For reference, this is what his opponents current website looks like:

Needless to say its in no way as attractive as President Elect Obama's design. It very much shows the kind of "puke of 1,000 parts" kind of design.The really strange top banner with four different elements, the campaign symbol, portraits, background crowd sort of image and the slogan piece all look glued together like a 10 year old's collage project, very pitifully done. (where for reference, the top banner section on Baracks page has a much greater sense of fusion and resembles one image as opposed to several poorly photoshopped elements). The portrait of Sarah Palin which I always found to be really unflattering. the awfully obtrusive "find your polling place" banner that actually looks like it might be a banner advertisement from Myspace where you might kill ducks or pinch bimbos booties for an Xbox 360. The really fat, bold fonts were really poor choices and it makes me think that the McCain design team were really catering the design towards elderly voters (why are they using the Internet?). The boxes on the left side with their 5-10px white borders are horrendous, but not as bad as the "create your own piece of the web on AOL" style buttons scattered everywhere. If you will notice, take a look back at Baracks page for a minute, and then look at Johns page, the glaring difference is in the colour scheme. Barack keeps a tight red white-to-black and blue scheme with Blue being an overall colouring, and Red being a eye catching navigational device. Whereas Johns most eye catching colours are... Green and Yellow? I wasn't aware those were part of the flag, unless you count the Don't Tread On Me snake, who had a bit of yellow to him. Also, am i crazy or is the background colour for the page not blue... but blue-green? And do take note that in the video background, the American flag is not only hung vertically, but if rotated to the right to be horizontal, would be upside down. oops. Its just very scattered and its possible to use these designs as a microcosm for the actual campaigns themselves, one of them being the new, fresh, clean, somewhat sexy, innovative, hopeful design of tomorrow, and the other being the same old website you've seen for some soccer mom selling cookies and cute custom designed Tupperware. And obviously, any instance of John McCains face on anything cant possibly be aesthetically pleasing.

Its just really sad that I am seriously having a hard time figuring out which site design is better, McCain or Nader. Sadly i think Ralph Nader might have won here.

Just for the sake of being fair, here's one piece of Obama campaign material that I'm put off by.

This is a Virginia state Dem's button. Mark Warner is a former Governor of Virginia and won the Senate seat easily, in fact he was the first projected Senate win on CNN, its very possible he could run for President in a few cycles. that being said, I really enjoy all of these joint imagery, flawlessly templated democrat support materials, but what really put me off about this is that whoever put these together couldn't have been the same who created the great copy, graphics and art direction because they would have caught the glaring white balance inequities between the two candidates portraits. For your information, and as in short terms as i can explain, white balance refers to the colour temperatures of light, Barack Obama's portrait was taken outside, whereas Mark Warner's was taken inside, you can tell because the overall tinge is red, whereas Baracks color balance is more true to what he looks like. This is so simple to fix, either pick a picture in the same sort of light, or just adjust the color balance on Mark's portrait to match. But that's just me being immensely neurotic, but otherwise, most of the joint candidate materials i saw really went in line with the overall art direction, and McCains materials were really awful.

Speaking of specific materials, here are some things I really like. These are in the People section of Barack Obamas website, and are links to more information about the candidates view for advocacy for specific groups, the following are my personal favourites, Women, Sportsmen, Small business owners, LGBT, Children, Jews, Environmentalists, and GOP.

The Obama for Women symbol is not the most creative, but was certainly pulled off in a classy manner. The Obama for Sportsmen logo is really well done and my favourite of them all, the elk horns and duck conveniently sitting on the line across the background as if in water, the slight rippling reflection below, and the really smartly designed O logo with the darker colour fish in the middle really pops, its gorgeous. The small business design is a nice knew tilted take on the O. The LGBT design is neat and with the exception of the slightly corny rainbow at the top corners, is smartly done. The Obama for Children logo is awfully cute and i would not at all be shocked if a child actually drew it. The Obama for Jews design is also fantastic, mainly because of my affection for non English typography and symbol characters, Hebrew is a really great looking language. For Enviornmentalists is really clean and pops quite nicely, and is an actual appropriate use of green and yellow (unlike his opponents attempt), and finally the qualm i have about the GOP support symbol is that its not blue in the background like the rest, but its a really gutsy and overly clever adaptation of the logo, and mind you without really incorporating the actual GOP elephant design. I must say the O logo had been adapted in many ways elsewhere, but the majority of the Obama team's innovations and customizations of his logo were clean and well designed.

And the last piece of material here is a press pass:

A lot of complicated design elements are on Obama's page, in his logos, in banners, buttons and whatnot, really marking somewhat of an innovation away from simple copy, simple text and colour, and a few stars, which has always been the norm, especially in regard to McCain's boring line and star posters and symbols. However with some pieces, such as this press pass, simplicity is most definitely fun as well. To sum things up, I think if there is a demographic group of politically apathetic design geeks, they'd most certainly punch or touch their vote for Mr. Barack Obama.

I certainly hope you enjoyed my first blog entry, more to come! feel free to comment.

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2008-11-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hi I am Cadel, this is a blog about various things, mostly related to design and the arts, but also with some politics, issues, music, humour and miscellaneous topics popping in on a whim. Just for a bit of background, I'm Boston raised, California bound, specifically to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Ca for photography and film studies. I am currently 22 years of age, I am sure that at some point in march you will be obnoxiously reminded of a change of that statistic. I don't have a really concise format for this blog yet, but I suppose it will take shape in a month or two. I welcome any of you to comment, ask questions or participate in any way. Enjoy yourselves and remember to never loose passion, even if its just for taking breaths.