Fire in the hole!

Yes, I did it and I did it early. No more swan song or hissy fits. Squeeze the handle, pull the pin and toss. Various Inc trumpeting its acquisition by Penthouse. Well the biggest sucker here is Penthouse - hope they've got a lot of roses because they sure bought one huge pile of shit - at least IMAO. But I said I would put no more good money after bad and I meant it. All those blogs - tears in rain. A few of my friends are still active - some are on here. Sorry to those who did not pay enough attention to posts to get contact details - but then you may never read this. My name lives on HornyMatches and Collarme. Any similar name appearing on TLA is not me - unless you hear otherwise on here. Then there is alt_sps on Yahoo and Sir PS on Yahoo! 360

Santa Monica Pier 12.07.07

Capturing the moment

A couple of young women (most likely on a date?) embarrassed at being serenaded by the Mexican Mariachi singers at Mariasol on the end of Santa Monica pier. Happy to have their picture taken, but they left without leaving me with a means of getting it to them. (Not bad for a phone cam!) Photo taken by one of the two Englishmen* getting progressively pissed (wrecked) sat next to them.

Now the international challenge - if you know a girl who lives in, or is visiting, Santa Monica and may be one of the two in the photo time to send her to this site. Suggest this request goes out to the lesbian and bi community, and apologies if they are just friends.

I will happily send a full size unblocked version to either or both (and transfer copyright). How will I know if it is one of the two? - I suggested something (not at all rude) which they did not follow up on - only they can know!!

*Sworn national duty - we were drinking till 02.45 the next day when the Viceroy kicks out!

Cheerleaders

Save the Cheerleader, save the world!
Well sod that- in fact screw the world, sod (bugger) the Cheerleader - in the physical sense that is.
Yeah some strange things float my boat and Cheerleaders are one of them.
Every year my job takes me to Florida in the spring - bitch of a job, but someone has got to do it, hey?
And every spring in Florida there is a big Cheerleader competition. So I find myself in a nice hotel that is wall-to-wall with Cheerleaders and Cheerleader moms. Which for a Brit is interesting. Notwithstanding that many of the Cheerleaders are as young as my daughter so do no even make jailbait age. And that their idea of fun of an evening is riding up and down in the lifts (elevators) and thus pissing off the other guests who might actually need the lifts to go somewhere. But there are Cheerleaders of 'legal' age and it is from sharing hot tubs (!!!) from these that I now know more about Cheerleading.
Such as there are two kinds. Now I thought that Cheerleaders led the cheer at sporting events - and waved pom-poms and flashed their knickers in the process. Half right. Yep, that is one of form of cheerleading. There is another kind.

This second kind is like high intensity formation acrobatic dance; it is this form I now know more about - thanks to actually buying an entrance band from a tout I got in to see one of their competitions. Which is pretty awesome (US sic, UK sick). Imagine a three minute routine; it goes by in a blur of flashing strobes and high tempo music where bodies fling themselves in from all directions before arranging themselves into a perilous human pyramid. The smallest, lightest and most dentally refined girl gets to perch right at the top for two seconds before the whole lot collapses to the whooping and applause greeting a successful routine. There is no doubting the skill of the top teams. There is no missing the stoutness of some of the girls on the bottom layer.
My idea(l) of Cheerleaders has always been the one of the pom-pom waving bimbos. I don't know what does it -the short skirts, the tight costumes, the pert arses (asses) - err, come to think of it I know exactly what does it. Yes, I hanker after a Cheerleader. Over 15 yoa please. Which kind of points me in the direction of the US pro (American) football cheerleading squads. Where interestingly I find many of the girls are part way through degrees - so they are bonkable AND smart.
So there it is. Like so many warm blooded losers across the world I have this (not so) secret ambition to spend some quality time peeling a Cheerleader out of her* costume before doing rude things with and to her. How sad can you get?

*I know, there are male Cheerleaders - don't even go there.
P.S. I know that Hayden Panetierre is not a real cheerleader she is an actress, but she can come round my house anytime, providing she brings the costume ;)

dee three

Bokeh - an anglicized version of the Japanese word 'Boke' altered to aid correct English pronunciation. 'Boke' means fuzzy, simple, or, as an insult, senile. Boke, and laterly Bokeh, have been appropriated by photographers to refer to the out of focus elements of a photograph. See wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh for a detailed explanation.

Photographers tend to favour bokeh that mimics the appearance of out-of-focus elements in our own vision. Ironically, because of the rapid manner in which our own eyes quickly refocus it is normally only possible to 'see' human bokeh in extreme close-up, or if you are short or longsighted.

Bokeh can be used to dramatic effect to isolate the subject of a photograph from the background (and/or foreground) - so called 'selective focus'. At least it used to be, because with modern digital cameras it is harder to actually render elements of the scene out-of-focus. Two factors make this so -
1. Many, in fact most, digital cameras have imaging sensors that have smaller areas than their film predecessors.
2. Many lenses for digital cameras have smaller maximum apertures than their film lens predecessors.

Now the depth of field, that is the volume in front of the lens in which objects appear to be within acceptable focus, is dependent on three things: the range to the subject in focus, the focal length of the lens, and the lens aperture.

Range affects depth of field in a reciprocal manner - the closer the subject is to the lens the shallower the depth of field for any given aperture.

The focal length of the lens determines the angle of coverage of the lens - a long focal length covers a narrower angle than a shorter one.

Aperture is normally perceived as the photographer's tool for controlling depth of field - a small aperture yields a larger depth of field, and a large one the reverse. Beyond a certain point a decreasing aperture will actually decrease apparent sharpness, but this is because the effects of diffraction start to dominate the recorded signal.

The aperture, of course, is also one of the three primary means for governing image exposure, the others being shutter speed and film, or its electronic equivalent, sensitivity (I am neglecting filters for the moment).

Now let us say we are going to shoot a full length portrait at typical distance from the subject say 10ft/3m. We are going to use a conventional 35 mm film camera with a 50 mm lens. We want sufficient depth of field that our subject, striking a dramatic pose, is all in focus, but that the garden behind them is rendered in dramatic blur. So we chose an wide-ish aperture of f/4.0. Let us use a circle of confusion criterion, COC=1/(1300/d), where d is image diagonal in mm, to determine acceptable focus in the final print. Off to do some sums. At this distance, with these settings, our depth of field would extend from approximately 2.5m to 3.6m in front of the camera.

Let us switch to a digital camera, specifically the Nikon D200 (my digital camera). In order to match the angle of view of our film camera we must use a focal length of 33mm. This is because the DX format sensor of the D200 is smaller than a 35mm film frame. With all other conditions being the same the depth of field now extends from approximately 2.4m to 4m. In other words our depth of field has extended by 0.5m. Or, to put it another way, to match our 35mm camera in depth of field we would have to open up to f/2.8. Which is okay except that many of the DX format lenses made for the D200 and its ilk don't go as wide as f/2.8.

Now couple to this to the fact that a smaller sensor means a smaller pentaprism and a smaller viewfinder view and you can see that DX format digital cameras and similar from Canon, Olympus etc. have some drawbacks. They have some benefits also - the 'magnifier' effect on the focal length means sports and wildlife photographers are happy.

For me the D200 is a mixed bag. It has a grid in the viewfinder, but I struggle to find and maintain horizons in the titchy viewfinder. Which means I am frequently rotating and cropping post capture. Its pictures are good - very good - the colours appear true and there are plenty of options to tune them. Resolution matches all but the very, very finest 35mm film. Exposure noise (grain) at the equivalent of ISO1600 is no worse than a 1600ASA print film in the mid-1980s. Build quality is close to my old F5. And I love digital - I take more pictures and I can check them in the field.

So what would be my perfect camera? It would be digital, but with a bigger viewfinder (maybe even an electronic level?). Its high ISO performance could match late 90's film (or even better it). And build quality would equal (or better) my F5. And I'd still like to be able to use my 18-200 VR zoom when I want to travel light.

Nikon, I'm gonna cite you in the inevitable divorce papers.

Sell your photos online

Spectacle

Okay I did not see my usual ration of television on Saturday evening. Nor did I consume my usual amount of alcohol. No, I was out in the cold with a couple of thousand dollars of camera equipment pointing skyward in order to catch the lunar eclipse. Not the first lunar eclipse I have witnessed, but a very good one 'seeing' wise.

I have also been lucky enough to see a total solar eclipse (France, 1999) - an altogether more frantic affair especially if you are attempting to photo-document it. If you are lucky enough to catch a solar eclipse take a tip - either do not be the photographer or take a moment, mid-totality, to lift your eye from the viewfinder and look around - to see the sky dark above you, but light toward the horizons - see the blackness of the hole in the middle of the sun's disc like a polo mint (or lifesaver) in the sky. Witness the confused behavior of birds and other animals. Sometimes photographers can become too detached - don't get so obsessed with recording that you were there that you actually might as well not have been.

But back to Saturday's eclipse. It was decidedly more leasurely than France. Totality lasted over an hour - the image you see here is the mean of a 'stack' of four successive images taken just after the start of totality.

The moon moves quite fast, especially in the viewfinder of a camera attached to a 1m Maksutov Cassegrain. I lack the fancy electronics to track the moon automatically, and the reduction of light during totality and hence slow shutter speed, mean the actual image of the moon cannot be as sharp as the Mak could manage. A series of relatively short images means the moon does not get too smeared - however the higher sensivity required (ISO Equivalent 320 - uncooled Nikon DSLR) means noticeable noise. Averaging the images together goes someway to reducing this noise and bringing out both lunar surface features and the incredible colours easily visible to the naked eye.

So here it is - for those of unfortunate enough to live the wrong side of the world (this time) or who needed their beauty sleep. Enjoy.

A MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE ON TIME TRAVEL

So are you an electronic archeologist? Have you uncovered this message after hundreds of years of it being lost in electronic limbo. Have you succeeded in deciphering this ancient English dialect? Well done! Pleased to greet you. If mankind, or whatever replaced it, has conquered time travel I would love to say hi in person.

The Accidental Racist

Racism has been big news in the UK recently. People all over the world, but particularly the Indian sub-continent, getting upset over the perceived racist behavior of Jade Goody.

My own opinion, gleaned from the few editted low lights I have seen, is that Ms Goody's behavior was probably not, on balance, overtly racist. Not that I condone her behavior - she appeared to be an ignorant, vindictive bully. She is a member of a substrata of society these days termed 'chav' - a group of individuals perhaps best recognised by their propensity to wallow in their own ignorance - as if stupidity and foul manners are qualities in which one can take pride.

The racist slur though, is altogether more serious. One can be stupid and ignorant - in fact, barring a few world leading professors and autistic savantes, we all to some extent must be. To be a racist though is bad. At least a conscious racist.

But how many of us are unconscious racists? Accidently excluding from our lives people not in our own racial category.

I like to think of myself as 'colour blind' - not literally, but in the metaphorical sense that race is not an issue to me. Indeed, on the face of it, my life would seem to reflect this - my best friend for 35 years and counting is a different skin tone to me. I went to university in a highly multi-cultural city. I had neighbours of Indian and Pakistani descent - I could choose to eat Indian, Chinese, or Caribbean food of an evening. I never thought anything less of the people around me because of their skin tone - in fact it rarely registered.

But these days I see young black men on the streets of London, speaking an almost unintelligible dialect, behaving in an assertive and aggressive fashion, and I resent their presence. They do not belong in my England. Maybe this is an excusable reaction - it is their behavior and their alien communication that marks them out; their skin colour is incidental to my unease although it maybe the very reason they feel the need to behave in this 'unBritish' manner as an assertion of their own identity.

But maybe more telling is my friend network in that other place. No blacks, no asians! I partly redeem myself with one Hispanic and one Irish (do Leipreachán count?). Now I did not set out with a deliberate policy - this is just the current manefestation of two and half years of churn. But maybe it is telling all the same. Not that I will be introducing positive discrimination - two wrongs do not make a right.

P.S. Appology to Ms Goody - I have made a crude attempt in the image at altering her racial origin to the Indian subcontinent. I believe in fact that she is half Afro-carribean.