View allAll Photos Tagged Teasing
Jesus Nick, you get hotter and sexier every day.
Bite your lip again Nick, and I will bite it for you next time ;D
No but seriously...
Strobist Info: one light source - SB800 on umbrella placed on the right and triggered in CLS. set the shutter speed to slow shutter to expose the background
Despite the cloud cover, there was a sneaky sharp blast of orange on the horizon at the end of daylight today.
Breasts and bra with image manipulation on a person I used to date, but even though it was a bit of revenge, I didn't want to use the actual person, since that wouldn't be fair. I did not intend to make it a provocative picture but to give some one something to think about the roles we play. Which is what I said in the post, which if I had known or could find some directions. I have done virtually everything wrong. By the way, the pic was sent to me with my request.
Edinburgh, Scotland, February 2008.
I'm finding the nature of street photography in Scotland, and probably the UK as a whole, to be a very different prospect to in China. Though there is the change in photographer-subject dynamic due to being a native among my own culture, not having the "foreigner" role - look how many of American Photography's "greats" have been foreigners or immigrants - to distract from my "man with camera" role, much of the difference in exeprience results simply from the nature of the streets themselves being different. We might call the streets public space, but that implies the public feel a sense of ownership and belonging on them. In China, the streets are an extension of the living room, people live there, they put down newspapers and fall asleep, they set up market stalls, they sit and chat or take part in illegal gambling. In Scotland people rarely linger. Instead they scurry home from work with shopping bags and wait for buses and don't allow themselves to relax until they are safely indoors again.
Why the differences ? There are several I can think of, one being that China is more crowded, the towns and cities more densely packed, another is the lack of decent urban spaces at the planning level (some cities such as Dalian are much better than others). Then there's the higher level of car ownership of developed nations, and not forgetting Scotland's frequently wet and windy weather, and finally the system of land ownership, rather than in China where land is rented from the government on 99 year lease, your land - if unlike me you are wealthy enough to own some - really is yours, and only yours, forever.
Another factor may be the apparent lack of distinction in terms of space and time. In contrast to Scots, living in a society traditionally moulded by biblical judgements of "good and evil", who work then play, eat then talk, are either inside or outside, in public or in private, and blind screaming drunk or very very sober, Chinese society seems unable or unwilling to keep to such fixed boundaries. Perhaps it's an effect of the flexibility needed to cope with a society undergoing so many rapid transitions. Everything is transient, apart from the government. Life just wanders casually among these states of being until the "need to be formal" presents itself, upon which everyone metaphorically stands to attention as if standing before the emperor himself. Or perhaps, it's because of the government's current immobility, with its monopoly on providing and withdrawing space and time, what little extra there is, floating around unused, can twist and bend as it pleases. Without it's own responsibility, it has the freedom to do so.
The main implication of Scotland having a comparative lack of people in public is that opportunities for shots present themselves with much less regularity. So much so that your eyes get rusty between shots, it's too easy to slip out of "the zone". Sure, shopping centres and train stations - places where cameras of the non-surveillance varitety are frowned upon - are lively and crowded, but outdoors, there just aren't many places where people are in any great density, and the same could be said for interesting available light sources. True, there are always special events, street carnivals etc, but that seems somehow contrived. True, I'm also yet to explore the old facination with the seaside towns their kitsch, as epitomised by Martin Parr's work, but in the middle of winter, that's not an option that holds much promise right now, and yes, I haven't really properly explored the potential of bigger cities like Glasgow or London yet. All the same, from what I've experienced so far though I do suspect that to get good photographs in the UK, it will require long-term commitment to a subject, getting to know a place and letting a place get to know you. My old tactic of wandering around a new district without much prior planning and always seeming to coming back with something is not going to be productive here.
But enough of that for now, I'm flying back to China in two weeks...