bw black and white nude dim light
2008/07/31
2008/07/30
2008/07/29
Cerrando circulos
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=sbkWXZmZpHo&feature=related
...Blue velvet...
Modelo: María
Todos los derechos reservados ©®
Wash me clean
I went to River Front Park last night. On the park grounds is an enormous underground/tower fountain where many of Spokane's street kids come to cool off during hot summer days. Two girls known as "Daggers" and "Spaz" ran full throttle into the fountain's torrential smash, and for the next instant or two, all goth garb was quickly forgotten.
I love this picture because, yeah. . .street kids are playing in a torrid downpour of chlorine infested water. . .but just look at her! Spaz looks as if she's being washed from any dirt of life she's learned thus far. Yep, they're a couple of "hardened" street rats. I must tell you though, these girls couldn't be any sweeter.
I/You/Me/We/Us must be willing to peer beyond thinly constructed facades of blackened and baggy clothing. When we are willing, upside down face painted crosses or street names no longer exist. In choosing to, all of us have the opportunity to stumble upon a delightfully different world. It's a land filled with silly humor and kindness. Daggers (on the right) wore her black ski cap the entire time. Even the pressure of monsoon~like rain didn't make her cap budge a bit. As Daggers and Spaz sauntered (out) from under crazy rages of water, their synchronized smiles flashed while giggling over the others soaked~to~the~core~goth~garb.
Both girls excude child-like qualities. Their goodness hasn't been side-swiped by insidiously invisible thieves nor have their hearts been disengaged through emotional gorilla warfare. Spaz and Daggers haven't given up on being loved, you can tell by their demeanor.
My hope for Spaz and Daggers is that they treasure such contagious authenticity. I pray both girls fight bravely, keeping it tooth and nail.
2008/07/27
...Your Eyes Are Getting Heavy Now....
A Nepali Saddhu with a hypnotizing stare...
© 2007 David Kerkhoff. All rights reserved.
7/19/08
7/19/08
this morning I woke from a dream.
In the dream it’s night and i’m walking in a sort
Of undefined high prairie landscape.
And though i can’t see him, i can feel the presence of
A man that’s walking with me on my right side.
And i’m complaining to this presence that
i’m angry with god - i’m angry because god wants me
To do with my life things that i don’t want to do – I’m angry
Because god Wants me to be ways that i don’t want to be. And the presence says to me that i have it wrong, that i don’t
understand - that god only wants me to do what
i truly want to do in my truest deepest heart.
And then i’m alone and i spread my arms
And i begin to turn in circles and all the stars in the sky
Begin to revolve and move with me – and my turning creates
A great wind and as i’m turning faster and faster the stars begin
To streak and Blend together into a sky turned to light and i’m spinning
So fast that i begin to come apart and dissolve and become
A part of the Light
And then there’s a jolt and I wake up to one of my cats
Sitting on my chest wanting breakfast - and in my truest deepest heart
I want a cup of coffee and a cigarette
Vera (BW)
Copyright 2005-2008 AlexEdg AllEdges (www.alledges.com).
Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 (Nikon).
Date: 24.07.2007
lease, see bigger. Flickr has somehow altered the contrast in the medium size image (the one you see here). As you might know, when Flickr scales the images you upload down into different sizes, it applies some kind of sharpening. If the image contains a lot of fine detail, as is the case, it ends up looking more contrasted than one might have intented. It also makes images look grainier. If you want to see an example take a look at this. Or maybe (probably) I'm just being fussy.
En español: Bla bla bla. Soy un quisquilloso.
Steve
My dreadlocked friend... he really likes this picture.
The Sigma 30mm really is damn sharp! (taken at f/2)
2008/07/23
Question for Mr Richrd Dawkins
Dear Mr Richard Dawkins,
I ahve discovered you trough the "God delusion" where you tackle issues that have been puzzling me over years and I was so happy to see that i am not alone in my dilemas and beliefs (or the lack of it), :).
I have just read your "Selfish gene", I wish I had read it earlier , but hey, i am from Kosovo, i.e. ex-Yugoslavia and we were busy ensuring the survival of our genes as good vehicles that we are (there is no irony here just fyi, :) ).
There are so many things that go through my mind while I read everything that you wrote, but one thing is really puzzling me heavily. That is the question of "Do genes learn?" and moreover, "Are they able to pass on what they learned (that is if they did) to the next generations?".
You see, the more I think about it, the more convinced I get that evolution with genes that would not be capable of learning would be much different from the one that we are experiencing and going through. While i am not trying to dispute the "survival of the stablest" or "survival of the fittest" I somehow have a problem to accept that that is the only premise on which life as we know it on earth has evolved. If you ask me for deductive reasoning I could describe it as follows. We see insects that have the shape and colors of the leaves common in their habitat and explain this with the fact that these are the survivors and all other related species of those insects that have mutated to some other shape must have been exterminated by predators. But the question that I have is, how do mutations "know" which shape to try to imitate. Why are there no mutations of insects developing a shape of the human ear for example. The fact that the mutations happen in the direction of approximation to the shape of the leave seems more to me more than genetic gambling over millions of years having as end result organisms or vehicles that imitate one another in shape and color so as to cheat the predators. I just saw on a TV documentary how some leaves develop on their leavs an extension that looks like insects eggs with the aim that no insects drop their eggs on them i.e. the insects will think that some other insect has dropped eggs and that there will be not enogh food for their baby if there is someone there already. Now, how did that plant come (by chance) to develop a shape that is exactly in shape and color like the insects eggs. Why did it not develop various shapes (one of which could by mere chance be similar to a human ear) so that we could see that all those wrong shapes are going extinct i.e. not surviving. Of course this latter statement is an oversimplification of my idea but I hope you do understand my dilema and what I am hinting to. I think I could use half of your own examples of evolution and survival of the stablest and use them (by chosing the right deduction steps) to argue that genes do learn and that this knowledge is passed on to the next generation. But let us not full ourselves, this learning is in quantity and pace zillions times smaller and slower than the 'cultural learning" that we humans gain and pass on through our culture and "memes".
Ah, talking about memes, yes, if genes are so good in survival that they have come up with very complicated and sophisticated survival machines such as ourselves or insects, why should they not be able to use those machines to perceive the world through those very machines and use those perceptions to design a better machine in the next cycle using memes (or maybe memes using genes) i.e. every time the genes go back to the drawing board (to use your beautiful analogy) they simply "say", - Ok, in the previous cycle (life) x, y and z went well while X, Y and Z went wrong. Let us do modifications a, b and c and see whether X,Y and Z work better in the next cycle. And since we are not very sure about the external factors that will influence our survival machine, let us do more instances of modified vehicles (i.e. more children) and those that are stablest (or fittest) will survive (if not all). Thus, the better the genes are in predictions of the external factors that will influence their survival machines the better their chances for survival. Which, we could conclude, makes the "learning" attribute of the genes as important as the ability to replicate. I think first came the replication, which lead to the pre-medieval soup as you call it. But in order for this soup to evolve to "survival machines", there must have been a molecule that (by chance - or maybe not) started to "remember" what went wrong in the previous replicating cycle in terms of survival and tries to remedy this in the next replicating cycle. Of course this is one possible scenario. Everything further to this in evolution is a matter of replication, remembering, learning, modifying (mutating) the design for replication in the next cycle (life) using the learned material - and all in the name of surviving as a gene for as long as it gets. This is of course the gene's perspective, and if we accept your theory of existence of memes, than genes use memes in order to better themselves in surviving. However, from the perspective of memes, they might be using genes (who are so good in spreading through their survival machines/vehicles) to spread as far as possible throughout universe if you want. I hope the latter statement is not taken as exaggerated, at the end of the day, e humans are sending radio signals to potential extraterrestrials in universe. Even if there are no other intelligent being to capture them, the memes are being spread. And that is the ultimate purpose of both genes and memes - to spread as far as possible in time-space.
I think if we would develop this further, we could even conclude that there is no such a thing as a gene in reality or a meme. To use the analogy of the space-time term, we could maybe in reality only speak about meme-genes as an inseparable thing. It seems to me that most fundamental things in nature have such dual nature, like the light e.g. it is corpuscular and a wave at the same time, space it seems is inseparable from time and vice versa. It could be very possible that genes without memes can not have a real meaning (and vice versa) and that this is an inseparable term trapped in an eternal marriage.
The next question I would ask is then, what came first, memes or genes, or did they come to be in existence at the same time.
Oh, I need to think about survival now, have some dinner, my genes are asking and my memes are acting
Sincerely looking for your reply to this dilemma. Regardless of your response, remaining a big fan of yours.
ps
I have created a group in flickr for artistic photographs where only those accepted by all art juror - members remain. I think it is a nice modest model of evolution. Only those that are"accepted" or stable survive (btw not necessarily the best pictures posted to the pool), there is no collective conscience of the group, but individual members are learning - though very slowly and with a lot of frustration what survives and what not.
www.flickr.com/groups/bwart/pool/page4/
This is where people post, and what you see are those pictures that survive. But th members that post are not blind, they do look once in a while what is surviving from their pictures nd compare with other surivors and than try to adapt their style to be liked by everyone. Note that some very, very talented photographers tried the game and left very frustrated because they were not ready to adapt and change and they found the fact that some people may not like their art as horrifying.
with best regards
pps
I am posting this letter also in my personal blog just for the sake of record,
blackandwhiteart.blogspot.com/
--
--------------------------------------------------
Merkur Beqiri
best regards
Wrist Style - Hunted Project
With all my respects for these poor stolen souls.
© Todos los derechos reservados.
© All rights reserved.
road
Model:isabella
Agenzia:Elite
MakeUp & Hair: Marisa
Stylist:Marianna (for AMICA)
Photo & postproduction:Me
Children of Iceland
The 'Perlan', Oskjuhlio, Reykjavik, Iceland
We went for a walk to 'The Perlan' - a feature of the Reykjavik skyline which had for decades been used to store hot water, now it is used as an exhibtion space and restaurant. Outside on the top the architecture felt like something from another world - for me then it summerises the whole of icelands landscape - amazing!
Made the front page of Explore 6th September, thanks all!
2008/07/22
Single Rock II
30 second exposure, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri. The white structure in the upper right third of the photo is Bagnall Dam, which dams the Osage River, forming the Lake.
cat's life #3
Aladino travelling by train.
Ilford DELTA PRO 3200 film + Nikon F70 + Tokina ATX-PRO 28-70 f:2.8 // Minolta DIMAGE IV scanner
Some Rights Reserved for non commercial use, All Rights Reserved for commercial use: Lorenzo Cuppini
The owner of this image is Lorenzo Cuppini. This image was published under a
Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works" License. This image can not be modified and must always indicate its author name. Lorenzo Cuppini must be interested in case of use of publication. Any different use must be considered a copyright abuse. The original high definition master of this image is owned by the author of the work.
2008/07/21
2008/07/20
Hold on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lVIYNd5lOo&feature=related
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lVIYNd5lOo&feature=related
...
Part of Nomadic peoples and Favorites
Dedicated to Pierre, a friend and a young talented photographer.
2008/07/19
2008/07/18
y empapada en llanto ella juró que esperaría
miles de lunas pasaron
y siempre ella estaba en el muelle
esperando
Muchas tardes se anidaron
se anidaron en su pelo
y en sus labios
Llevaba el mismo vestido
y por si el volviera no se fuera a equivocar
los cangrejos le mordían
su ropaje, su tristesa y su ilusión
y el tiempo se escurrió
y sus ojos se le llenaron de amaneceres
y del mar se enamoró
y su cuerpo se enraizó
en el muelle
Su cabello se blanqueó
pero ningún barco a su amor le devolvía
y en el pueblo le decían
le decían la loca del muelle de San Blas
y una tarde de abril
la intentaron trasladar al manicomio
nadie la pudo arrancar
Y del mar nunca, jamás la separaron
2008/07/17
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