A bicycle has a recognizable form – two wheels, couple of bars in between. A child would draw one like this:

Yet, if you ask a child what a bicycle does, at a certain age, their face will light up as they recall their last bicycle ride (or fall, if they did) and they will respond with something like “WHEEEEEEEE!”

If you ask that child what their body looks like, you’d get a pretty serious look for a little bit, and then something like this:

And then, if you ask them what their body does, you’d probably get an imitation of a rude noise. Oh well, can’t win them all, right?

We focus so much on what FORM our bodies take and ignore their FUNCTION.

What about haiku celebrating body’s function?

Summer turns to fall
Like leaves, hair fades to white
I talk with salmon

????

Yesterday, April 15th, was Tax Day here in the U.S., which means lots of lucky people will get refunds of over-paid taxes.

Whether you’re one of them or not, what would you spend an unexpected windfall on? Say … $50? How about $500?

(And, this is a reading meme, so by rights the answer should be book-related, but hey, feel free to go wild and splurge on anything you like.)

Oh, that’s an easy question. Not book related, but I already spent my over-paid taxes on a new camera. I wanted to replace the old camera before it failed, so now I have two, one new camera and the old one as a backup.

This makes me a very happy photographer. I just need to find more things to shoot with my new camera!

Last Friday, one of my pictures appeared in the weekly entertainment supplement to our local paper. Kitte and I had done this photo shoot last summer to generate some promotional pictures for her DJ act (can you really call anything Kitte does an act? She’s one of the most completely true-to-herself people I know!) No photo credit, but to be fair, none of the other artists featured in the same article had credits for their photos, either, so I don’t feel bad.

The same evening, I shot 66 pictures of the holiday party put on by our officemates, McKenzie River Trust. Some of my pictures appear on their website – one currently on the front page as news, the rest filed under “past events”. I’m excited that my work is finally being shown in sites and prints outside of my own!!

It’s an interesting idea, trying to determine MB type from chunks of writing. A fun meme, perhaps, but probably shouldn’t be expected to be accurate.

Eugene’s Strobist group went out on Saturday to do our October photo shoot, themed Halloween and held in the Eugene Masonic Cemetery. We had a BLAST, although it felt like only about half of the photographers scheduled showed up and as usual, some people had to cut out early to attend other commitments.

I haven’t blogged much since summer. August started out with one of my co-workers being called out of the office for a week and a half for a family emergency, so we were unexpectedly short-staffed and things were crazy for a bit. Once that cleared up, things stayed pretty crazy working on stuff until mid-September. I’m behind on my photo editing because of it, as well as not having posted much lately.

Things have calmed down now (knock on wood!) and I’m ready to come back to some of the projects that got put off while I was putting out fires. I’m seeing a lot of difference just in the photos I was getting in June and July and the ones I’ve gotten in the last couple of weeks, and it can’t all be due to having cleaned my camera sensor.

So, the door is open – there’s a couple of people I’ve promised shoots to, and I’ll be contacting them soon to see if they’re still interested. I’m looking for indoor locations to work in the winter, fun locations where they might let a couple of people in with a camera. And for people who want to play dress-up and be photographed and for food to shoot.

Normally, this is yet another ploy by white folks to reduce the number of brown babies running about, and as such, makes me want to spit to rinse the words I just typed off of my fingers.

But this time, I thought to my li’l ol’ self…. geez, I’ve been trying to suggest for years that someone tie my tubes off so I can stop taking these damn pills every day. Doctors always mumble something incoherent about my insurance and maybe an IUD instead*, before writing me another prescription for birth control pills. Clearly all I needed to do in the first place was to lose my job, move to Texas, and go on welfare to receive the medical treatment I keep asking for.

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*Don’t get me wrong, my GYN is the awesomest doctor I’ve ever seen. It makes me sad sometimes that all she has to do to be made of awesome in the current medical world is to simply READ my chart before walking into the room and ask me something that proves that she remembers who I am.

Lately, I was directed to this blog (NSFW!!!) to do some reading along similar lines.

My personal opinion: the focus of my art is not to turn me into in a sex object. I fully understand that for some people I am just that, just because of the mere fact that I’m naked in an image. But still, that’s the viewers interpretation, and I have no control over that. It’s just not my objective when creating an image or embarking on a photographic project.
As far as the term “M*LF” is concerned, and more particularly, being type cast for a “M*LF glamour shoot”, we now move the purpose of the image to solely that: creating an image with the purpose of becoming sexually desired by the viewer. I find that very offensive to be put in that position as a model who does not pursue adult work. Especially after I clearly stated my objective to them: creating fine art images. Needless to say: I’m not filling out the application.
From Women of Avalon

Wow. So that’s what they mean by a “girl crush.” *grin* Well spoken and thoughtful, and it expresses my own thoughts almost eerily.

There are days when I wish I knew more feminist photographers and models so we could discuss these things. Sadly, I know all of five other female photographers, and to my knowledge, none of them are as explicitly feminist as I am. And the men, less so.

I digress. Hauling the train of thought back to the station…..

I’m really not interested in photographing nude women just for the sake of them being undressed. By which, I mean, that I have no interest, no intention, of creating images whose sole purpose is to objectify the model, depersonize her, make it less about the photographer and the model, and more about the desires of the photo’s viewer. I have no objection to fine art nudes or boudoir pictures, where the intent is to make the model feel sexy and desirable.

I’m slowly moving in the direction of wanting to know something about my models, wanting to talk with them about what they want to see in themselves. And then try to bring that out. I want it to be a process that we both participate in, not one where I as the photographer requests a pose and the model merely gives it or the model directs her own poses completely apart from what I’d like to shoot. I think this is moving towards being respectful and aware. I want it to be about what *I* want and about what the model wants, not about what some nameless, faceless patriarchy says is attractive.

I have now shot 10,000 photos with my camera. I’ve only had it a little less than a year and a half. May the next year(s) be captured on pixel!

In the last couple of months, there’s been several things about my hobby that have tweaked my nerves one way or another. First, there was the shoot in May where I walked away with all of 11 pictures – and most of those were set-up test shots – because once the models arrived, I was uncomfortable with the amount of playing to the “male gaze” going on.

June was better – everyone seemed to have fun, and the models, although dressed to appeal, weren’t groping and hanging off of each other like they were auditioning for “Girls Gone Wild”.

Somewhere in between, it started to dawn on me what was making me uncomfortable and the reasons behind it.

See, out of the usual groups of photographers, I’m often the only woman, and almost always the only feminist – and the only one educated in this area of media theory.

Take this image, for example. (click on it to access larger view). As a photographer, I looked at it and offered the feedback that the image, the pose, the choice of background…. suggest strong, independent, uncaring what the viewer thinks. And yet, that obvious nipple detracts from it *as an image*. Plus, it’s something that most women might find embarrassing. It would be very easy in post-processing to photoshop it out or minimize, and I really think it would make a stronger picture.

The response from Bob, the photographer, addressed the second half of that concern – the model saw the picture before it was published and was ok with it. And since he’s the photographer and presumably knows what his intention with the picture was, he has no obligation to respond to me on the first point.

What got me was the next commenter, HUBCAM, who said

“I think we’re all the better for it.”

What an ignorant and privileged thing to say! It sounds to me as though he is saying that what he wants, appreciates, and enjoys is more important than what the person in the image is comfortable with and even more important than the image being a stronger image with a consistent “story”.

I’m rather glad I don’t know who this person is, because I’d be twice as offended if we’d met. Shame on you HUBCAM, for putting your puriescent preferences ahead of art and human dignity.