Vanity Thought Out, Planned and Executed

Recently, I got a message from a friend of mine who is the photo editor for a Brazilian magazine that some of my work has been featured in. Seems as though they are doing a feature on "self portraits" from photographers and she asked for one from me - two actually. One per page in a two-page feature. I'm honored, given who she knows and who she has undoubtedly asked as well.

I had a shoot set up tonight with my beautiful friend and wonderful model Natsuko as part of my "I'm only working with people I know and like and have a connection with and if we don't get anything worth a good god damn, then at least we'll have fun, get to catch up and have a great Thai dinner" series.

So I decided to shoot a self-portrait with her included. It's sort of a faux shoot, since the reason I shot the shots I shot was for the self portrait, but hell, Natsuko and I were gonna shoot something anyway and it might as well be this. We'll both be in the magazine and that's cool.

So I did. Some digital as tests, which came out pretty good and a roll of 120 Tri-X in the Mamiya for the real deal - maybe. What this means is that I had to learn and master the self-timers on both cameras and boy, did Natsuko and I have a time. Both are set at 8 seconds - the Mamiya hardwired and the Nikon not-so-much, as Natsuko pointed out, but I refused to go into any menu settings and change it. These were the rules - you have 8 seconds until WHAP!

I found that (big surprise) I got bored at about 6 seconds and would lose my intended pose. This would make Natsuko laugh or genuflect or whatever and due to my "disorder" the shots were trash. But those were the rules!

Changing shit in MENU just pisses me off anyway.

My friend at the Brazilian magazine would like TWO shots, so I gotta do another one. Ideas are rattling around, but damn, I was proud of myself to pull at least one out of thin air.

Here's the first digital...

By the way - the new Sony 32" TV kicks ass. And no, I can't speak or read a word of Portuguese. And - was our boy Bush on a roll today or what? Explain the logic of describing the Dalai Lama as a man of peace and then invoking "World War III" regarding Iran all in the same day. Maybe Colbert/Colbert 2008 can save us...

People make me tired.