#Damon Baker i love you for what you do you have no idea | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sparkles-oflight · 3 months

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Kamila

Hi wrote this during the afternoon when I decided to steal @anxious-witch 's flower post information (thank you for the proof-reading :D) then Kris said something about therapy and all hell went loose (I did. I went insane).

Synopsis: Damon Baker asked Kris to be his model as he saw something that captivated him and he wanted to explore that raw side mixed in with beauty...

Disclaimer: Please think of these as characters and not the actual people. I don’t encourage anyone to send this to any of the actual JO members nor do I encourage people to force any type of relationship between anyone.

Damon couldn't contain his excitement... Kris was about to work with him. Alone. They would be alone in this room having a photo session.

Kris’ presence captured him...A young gorgeous Slovenian man with such beauty and personality made him melt.

He was so happy... and in love.

- Hey, man. - his model walked in - How are you doing?

- Hello, Kris. - he hugged him - I'm doing great. How are you today?

- I am little nervous. - Damon held his hand.

- I thought you had done photoshoots before. Sit here. - He took Kris to a nearby chair.

- And I have. - Kris took his jacket - But only as part of the band or with my family.

- I see. - Damon took his jacket off and set it aside - Well, lucky for you to have me as your first photographer. I'm a professional, you know.

Kris smiled. And oh God did Damon love that smile.

- Here's what we are going to do.

Damon proceeded to explain the whole project idea, which Kris was totally on board with. Damon wanted to explore Kris' raw side and beauty. He wanted to see how he would look in shades of grey and how his eyes would pop up...

- Oh, make-up too? - Kris said as he closed his eyes.

- Shades of gold for you, love. - Damon used his fingers to spread the eyeshadows on his lids - Gold, for a little sunray like you.

- I don't know why people see me as a sunray honestly.

- Because... - he pondered for a while and then he grabbed a nearby flower he had prepared for the shoot - Do you see this flower? Do you know its name?

- I don't know a lot about flowers - Kris said after softly opening his eyes.

- Ranunculus.

- A what?

- Ranunculus. It represents... - he put it behind Kris' ear - Charm and attraction.

Damon softly smiled as he saw how nicely it fit his subject.

- That's you.

Kris was a bit flustered. Charm and attraction, really? He certainly didn’t see himself like that.

- Oh, we got flowers yesterday.

- Really?

- Well...not exactly. They were for someone named Kamila and the Uber waited for about 15 minutes for someone to pick them up. I ended up taking them in so that the driver wouldn't have problems at work.

- Like the kind soul you are.

Kris and Damon took some pictures with the flower and Damon was impressed by Kris' awareness of the camera. Sure, he was surrounded by them a lot, but a photo shoot is different from a concert.

- Wait, let me fix your hair. - Damon said after he removed the headband from Kris.

He loved the sensation of touching Kris' hair as the younger looked at him straight in the eyes. Kris was just waiting for Damon to be done, but every time Damon looked at his eyes, he felt inspired by their piercing stare.

- Has anyone ever told you are beautiful?

- Yes. - he chuckled - I'm told quite often. Especially on social media.

- And how do you feel about it?

- Sometimes, I believe it's not true.

- Really? And why only sometimes?

Kris went silent.

- I don't like social media much.

- To me it's like my little journal. - he snapped a shot - It helps me document my healing journey. Could you please lift your chin a little bit.

- Uh... - Kris did as he was told - I guess you could call it a journal. - And Damon captured each moment Kris stopped - I guess that’s where all my professional journey is at. But...

He stopped talking again.

- Do you want to take a break? I mean, we are almost done, the last thing I want to do with you involves water.

- I guess I could use a break. - He said with a pout.

- Do you want to drink water?

- Yes, please.

Damon grabbed a bottle he brought and noticed Kris on his phone. His expression changed so quickly. He was smiling again.

Damon was curious and looked over Kris' shoulder. He was on social media.

- So, you say you hate social media, but you can't live without it? - Damon held his waist with one arm and gave him the bottle with the other.

- Thanks. I don't hate it, I just don't like it much. Social media reminds me of my progress and lets me talk to my friends. I just don't understand people's obsession with me. Almost no one knows me.

- And who knows you?

Kris drank some water. Damon took the hint.

- You don't want to talk about it, I get it.

- Damon... - he sighed - I really like you and I would love to get to know you more, but-

- Well, I would love to know you. No "buts". The only one I'll take is yours- Damon winked - Are we ready?

Kris nodded. Damon took him back to the workplace and set up the camera on the tripod.

- I need you to stay a bit closer to the camera.

- I was never asked to be so close to one.

- First time for everything, dear. - Damon, got a chair and climbed it. - The camera will record in 4K and 100fps then I'll go frame by frame and find out where you look best.

- That will take too long!

- Don't worry. I'm a professional. I look at pretty people all the time - he smiled - I'm going to drop some water on you. Small moves and if you want me to stop, just tell me.

- Okay.

Kris behaved so well for someone being bathed with some cold water, half naked on London's winter. Damon had the radiator on, but it was still quite chilly.

He loved seeing Kris' legs exposed and with the body hair up. Chills, a raw sensation. Exactly what Damon looked for.

- And that's a wrap. - he threw him a towel.

- A shame the make-up was ruined - he smiled as he cleaned his eyes.

- Trust me, nothing was ruined, darling. Art doesn’t do such a thing.

Kris started taking off the wet clothes and using the towel to clean himself up.

- How did it feel having your first individual photoshoot?

- Nice honestly... I’m always behind someone’s shadow. – he awkwardly pondered - Having someone’s attention all to me is just...liberating.

Damon looked at him as he dressed up, but he had to know more.

- Kris, can I ask you a question?

- Yeah.

- Who were you talking to earlier? I'm sorry if that's an intrusive question.

- Oh, I was texting Bojan.

That name...Damon adores Bojan, but the way Kris' eyes lit up when he said his name revealed everything: Bojan doesn't want to have the chance to know Kris - he already knows him. And he loves it.

- The guys are doing a Livestream of them cooking and I wished them good luck.

- I see... Are they that bad?

- Help me, I've been eating out most days they can only cook mashed potatoes.

- Haha! - Damon loved this boy's humor - I'll take you out someday.

- Thank you. Guess I have to go now. - he was finally dressed up - I have to take care of some passport things.

- I understand. Goodbye, then.

- Bye! I would love to do this again!

Kris started leaving but Damon had to call out for him once more.

- Ka-! - Damon stopped himself.

- Uh? - he turned around - What did you say?

- Ah...Kris - he got closer and kissed him on the cheek - I hope you have everything you ever wish for.

- Uh... okay? - Kris smiled softly, but was confused as Damon held his hands - Thanks?

- Tell Bojan he's the luckiest man in the world to have you.

- Thanks, I wil- wait, what? - Kris was astounded by how easy he was to read.

- Go take care of your passport because it's quite late right now. - He turned Kris around and slapped his ass - BYE, KRIS!

Kris laughed as he left and waved to Damon.

"I hope he treats you right, Kamila".

♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩

This is a BoKris fic disguised as a Damon and Kris fic

MASTER POST | Recommended next: Traces of kisses behind closed doors

#joker out #joker out fanfic #fanfics #fanfic #kris gustin #kris guštin #damon baker #bokris

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betsypaige22 · 4 years

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This is such a great interview....god, I miss Bobby. I’ve posted this because otherwise you need to be a subscriber...

I have to be honest, picturing Bobby doing this particular yoga pose makes me need to take a cold shower, lol. The part about his kids asking if he’s going to leave them is heartbreaking ....😭😭. I do love that he’s still baking...

************************

Every Sunday morning the actor Robert Carlyle grabs his mat and heads off for a session of “restorative yoga” in the Canadian port city of Vancouver, where he lives. There is one particular pose — called a “chest-opener”; you lie back, arms supported by bolsters, and release stress and feelings through the abdomen — that has produced remarkable results.

“You hold the pose for up to nine minutes and it releases emotions,” he says. “Out of nowhere I remembered this old lady leading me through the streets of Drumchapel in Glasgow when I was about seven years old, to go to see some wrestling. I hadn’t remembered her since I was a kid. I just lay there crying.”

Carlyle was brought up by his father, Joe, after his mother, Elizabeth, walked out to be with another man when he was four. His father was a painter and decorator, and the pair lived an itinerant existence around the UK in communes, shared houses and even tents. They lived in almost 100 homes. The old woman was his grandmother, Jean, who stepped in to help sometimes.

“That’s what set me off,” Carlyle says. “The realisation that this old woman was my dad’s mum, born in 1895 and survivor of two world wars. And here she was in her seventies, looking out for me when my dad was struggling to get to work.”

Carlyle left school at 16 and followed his father into painting and decorating. Aged 22, he discovered acting and, without formal training, appeared in The Hard Man, Tom McGrath’s play about the notorious Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle. After this he was encouraged to enrol at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).

In the early 1990s he made a name for himself in the ITV detective series Cracker, as well as playing Begbie, the charismatic psycho in the screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting. Carlyle was lauded as a raw talent able to articulate a new “dirty realism”, although it was his role in the 1997 stripper comedy The Full Monty and as James Bond’s ex-KGB nemesis Renard in the 1999 film The World is Not Enough that catapulted him to international stardom.

“I went through a stage of being very angry about my mother, and that helped to fuel some of those roles,” he says. “As for Begbie in Trainspotting, that was partly me and partly the odd genuine psycho I had encountered in Glasgow.”

At the height of his fame in the 1990s Carlyle was at the centre of Cool Britannia and simultaneously friends with Damon Albarn from Blur and Noel Gallagher, then in Oasis (Carlyle appeared in the video for the single Little By Little). Tony Blair even recommended him for an OBE in the 1998 new year’s honours list. And yet, while at drama school Carlyle feared he might never get work because he wasn’t “posh”.

Now he has come full circle because he is about to play the fictional British prime minister Robert Sutherland in the new six-part Sky drama series Cobra. “Before I opened the script, I actually thought it was about a snake,” he says. “That’s what living away from home does to you.”

Cobra in fact refers to the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, the government’s crisis centre where national emergencies from terrorist attacks to natural disasters are handled. In this case the threat comes from a geomagnetic storm resulting from a solar flare that is threatening the worldwide electrical infrastructure. Kettles stop boiling. Cities go dark. Planes drop from the sky.

Carlyle is rigorous in his preparation for roles. When cast as a bus driver in Ken Loach’s 1996 film Carla’s Song he qualified as one. “For a working-class guy from Glasgow, being a prime minister was always going to be challenging,” he says. “I listened to tapes of posh Scottish MPs like [the former foreign secretary] Sir Malcolm Rifkind. He’ll sound like a Scot most of the time, but there are certain turns of phrase when you think, ‘Are you sure this guy is for real?’”

Keen-eyed viewers will have seen Carlyle in the BBC’s adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds as the “potentially gay” astronomer Ogilvy. But perhaps only true aficionados will have spotted him as John Lennon in the Beatles tribute film Yesterday. He appeared as a counterfactual, 78-year-old Lennon enjoying his dotage in a bungalow by the sea. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr approved, but Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono wasn’t happy. “She didn’t like the idea of people seeing John get old, which I understand, but [the director] Danny Boyle argued that John is revered public property,” Carlyle says.

Carlyle wouldn’t accept a credit for the role. “That felt like too much. The chance to play a hero was enough. I don’t think it hurts to occasionally do things for love.”

Lennon’s relationship with his mother, Julia, was fractured too of course, and after a turbulent adolescence and having reached the top of his professional game, Carlyle came to yearn for a family. “I could go anywhere and have anything. [The 1990s] were an extraordinary time. But even then, I was quite a shy person, and I wanted kids and a home and a wife. Every day I am thankful that I found the most fantastic woman to do that with.”

Carlyle met his wife, the make-up artist Anastasia Shirley, while working on Cracker, and they have three children: Ava, 17, Harvey, 15, and Pearce, 13. After ten years in Vancouver, where Carlyle was making the US series Once Upon a Time, his children consider themselves Canadian. Sometimes they ask about his upbringing, an era referred to as his “black and white years”. “‘Dad, tell us about the black and white years,’ they say. It’s pretty heavy telling children about your mother leaving because they look frightened and say, ‘Are you going to bugger off as well?’ When I’ve reassured them, they just look sad. So I say to them, ‘Don’t be sad for me, I got all the love I ever needed. I don’t feel angry or aggrieved. It was her that missed out.’”

Carlyle’s father died of a heart attack in 2006, and in an attempt to work through his grief Carlyle embarked on a tour of the homes they shared together. “That tour was about confirming I had lived that life,” he says. “I’ve been honoured at Buckingham Palace. I’ve done a Bond movie. But I’ve also slept rough with my old man under Brighton pier. It can mess with your head. Going back reminded me where I’m from. I sat in the car weeping.”

For now the family remain in Canada while the children complete their schooling. At weekends he takes them to football, bakes bread (Carlyle taught himself after discovering that Lennon was an accomplished home baker) and the family sometimes go for walks in a local forest.

He celebrated New Year’s Eve in Scotland with his old friend Robert del Naja from Massive Attack and, sooner or later, the family will return for good. It’s striking that Carlyle has not lost his accent. “You don’t lose the accent unless you want to,” he says with a smile. “I love our life in Canada. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people. But I only have to do a couple of yoga poses to know I’ve got a lot of Britain still inside of me.”

All episodes of Cobra are available from January 17 on Sky One and NOW TV

ROBERT CARLYLE’S PERFECT WEEKEND

Trainspotting or stamp collecting?

Neither — football

Independence or unity?

Unity and collaboration, always

Glasgow or Sheffield?

Glasgow

Green juice for breakfast or the full monty?

Full monty

Night in or night out?

Night in

Last film you saw?

Joker

Country walk or personal trainer?

Country walk

How many unread emails in your inbox?

Around 2,000

What’s your signature dish?

Pasta

I couldn’t get through my weekend without . . .

Football

#robert carlyle

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pinchtheprincess · 4 years

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Carlyle wouldn’t accept a credit for the role. “That felt like too much. The chance to play a hero was enough. I don’t think it hurts to occasionally do things for love.”

All episodes of Cobra are available from January 17 on Sky One and NOW TV

ROBERT CARLYLE’S PERFECT WEEKEND

Trainspotting or stamp collecting?

Neither — football

Independence or unity?

Unity and collaboration, always

Glasgow or Sheffield?

Glasgow

Green juice for breakfast or the full monty?

Full monty

Night in or night out?

Night in

Last film you saw?

Joker

Country walk or personal trainer?

Country walk

How many unread emails in your inbox?

Around 2,000

What’s your signature dish?

Pasta

I couldn’t get through my weekend without . . .

Football

#robert carlyle #rc interviews #yoga #vancouver #family #rc photoshoots #GODS HE LOOKS SO GOOD #love that jacket

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years

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~ will you let me deceive you ~ (fandom cravings search)

greetings be careful who you trust, the devil was once an angel. ~ lowercase is purely for aesthetic purposes

~ feel free to call me deviation, dev, d, or lexi

~ i am a 22 year old female, meaning that i'd prefer to rp with people 18+ not only to be closer in age to me but also because my rps can venture into dark topics

~ central standard time

~ you can expect an average of four responses a week although i strive to daily respond, if possible.

~ my replies range from 400 - 4000 words, and i try to mirror my partner

~ third person, present tense although i will rp with people who write past tense (to each his own)

~ doubling is required for all fandom roleplays to keep everything fair. please do not contact me, asking if i can just play who you would like.

~ sucker for ooc chat although it is not required what I want in a partner (yes, we like to break the rules, but these aren't meant to be broken) it is not a shame to be deceived; but it is to stay in the deception 1| activity is fairly important to me because if i go two-three weeks without a response, i will likely lose interest which I don’t want to do! i would prefer if my partners could get me, at least, two responses a week.

2| because i am literate, i am looking for partners of the same! i would prefer, at least, two hearty paragraphs per response, although i am more than happy to receive more. would you like to basically create a book with me? i'm totally down!

3| please help me build our universe, and our story. i don’t want to do it all by myself. i want to make sure that we both enjoy it.

4| please don’t godmod my characters, and no mary sues or anything like that! nobody is perfect or without weakness. we love originality!

5| please be able to write in third person because first person makes it a bit weird for me, and way more personal than i'd like to go. i write in present tense myself although i am more than welcoming to those who write past tense.

6| i am ghost friendly, just please let me know if you decide to drop the rp, if you can, so i don’t find myself waiting for a response that will never come.

7| please let me know if you will be unable to respond for a week or longer, just so that I am aware and don’t think you have dropped the rp.

8| this isn’t a rule, but a preference. i love to get to know my rp partners, so ooc chatter is always welcome!

9| please have a good grasp on grammar and spelling. no text talk.

10| be willing to double if you decide to do canon x oc just so that it makes it fair to everyone.

11| please do NOT (see the caps) just send me a message, asking whether or not I’m still looking, or giving a measly sentence about yourself. i would prefer if you would tell me about your writing style, what you want to write with me, etc. give me something to go off of! let me see who you are!

12| i will rp smut, but it needs to be apart of the story and not overtaking it

fandoms belief is the deception you play upon yourself now, let's move on to the fun part, and what i'm sure you guys are waiting on... the fandoms! because of all of the television i watch (is that a bad thing...?) i have fandoms all over the place that i'd love to rp! unless it is crossed out then i am still looking to do it, so feel free to contact me about it! i will have the fandoms divided up and under each, i will include characters i'm willing to play, and who i'd like to play against. again, just a reminder that doubling is mandatory although it doesn't have to stop there. i'm down to double/triple/quadruple, whatever you want. i also am down for au's and using the universe but using ours ocs. just shoot me ideas of what you want. tv shows we often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others 1| arrow i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: oliver)

2| flash i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: barry)

3| vampire diaries i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except enzo, kai, vicki, april, kol) (characters i'm looking for: kol, damon, elijah, klaus)

4| glee i'm completely caught up with this show! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: noah (puck), Jesse, brody, jake, ryder)

5| game of thrones i'm currently in season six of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except gregor, eddard, sandor, oberyn, brienne, melisandre, jorah,) (characters i'm looking for: gendry, ramsey, joffrey, khal drogo, jaime)

6| pretty little liars i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: wren, alex, ezra)

7| outlander i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jamie)

8| 13 reasons why i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except hannah baker, tony, sheri, skye) (characters i'm looking for: bryce, zach, tyler)

9| elite i'm currently caught up with this television show (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except valerio, fernando, christian, marina, omar) (characters i'm looking for: polo, ander, guzman)

10| shadowhunters i'm currently caught up with this show and have read the books! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except lucian, jonathan) (characters i'm looking for: jace, magnus, sebastian)

11| the fosters i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: brandon) movies it is more tolerable to be refused than deceived 1| mcu (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except strange, peter parker, peter quill, thanos, ant man)

(characters i'm looking for: tony stark, thor, loki, steve rodgers, clint barton, bruce banner) 2| after (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hardin, jace)

3| twilight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except emmett, james, sam) (characters i'm looking for: seth, embry, paul)

4| matched (not a movie, technically, but it is in my heart) (characters i'm willing to play: ky, xander) (characters i'm looking for: ky, xander)

5| divergent (only the first one) (characters i'm willing to play: al) (characters i'm looking for: four, eric, peter)

6| the host (characters i'm willing to play: jared, ian) (characters i'm looking for: jared, ian)

7| disney (special plot, shh, it's a secret. message me if you're interested) asian dramas it is amazing how complete the delusion that beauty is goodness 1| crash landing on you (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: junghyuk, seung-joon, kwang-beom)

2| boys over flowers (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jun-pyo)

3| i need romance 1/2/3 (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: sung-hyun, seok-hyun, joo wan)

4| heirs/inheritors (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: kim tan, choi young-do)

5| good morning call (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hisashi uehara, daichi shinozaki) anime time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them 1| devil’s line (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: anzai)

2| vampire knight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: zero, kaname)

3| amnesia (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: toma, shin, kent, ikki)

4| dragon ball z (characters i'm willing to play: goten, gohan, krillin, android 17, yamcha) (characters i'm looking for: trunks, vegeta)

5| kuzu no honkai (scum's wish) (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: mugi) cartoons life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted 1| teen titans (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: robin)

2| young justice (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: superboy)

3| adventure time (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except ice king, lsp) (characters i'm looking for: marshal lee)

4| avatar: the last airbender/legend of korra (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except toph) (characters i'm looking for: zuko, bolin, mako, iroh (younger)) last words deception may give us what we want for the present, but it will always take it away, in the end thank you for reading through to the end of my thread, and i do hope that you found something you liked. just a reminder that all fandoms can be changed to use ocs or au's, i'm very open to those kinds of things! in addition, if you would like to contact me about a fandom, please send a message as opposed to posting on this thread (so i can keep it clean). i am only looking for a few partners, but i'd love to hear from as many of you as possible! thank you lovelies!

contact me

feel free to email me ([email protected]) to talk about rping with me!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #messenger #marvel rp #avengers rp #tvd rp #smut rp #mcu rp #dc rp #submission

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herakaleemhnd1photo · 5 years

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Clean White Ideas

I liked this image due to its subtlety. I can tell from the eyes that this has been lit by a snoot and the shadows were later filled in by a reflector. I think the framing is strong as this seems like it has been shot from just below the eye level and makes the subject appear powerful and not to mention the head tilt and the facial expression which help build this image. I will try to emulate something similar and photograph someone with glasses as I think they are a nice touch to this image.

Image by Seth Lowe

I believe this was lit by a beauty dish which was placed to the top right side of the model. I was drawn to this image due to its sharpness and clarity which I think makes this image really pop out. I would also like to create something as simple and yet strong at the same time like this. I will have to shoot someone with really textured hair and a beard to achieve this.

Image by Philippe Wiget

Silhouettes are my favourite to shoot and I will be shooting something along the lines of this image. I don’t think I will shoot this with a hat however I may change my mind as I try different things. I will probably go with a pose that involves a hand and is a little close up on the side profile. This is also very easy to shoot as you do not need any frontal light, just a background lit to get a clean white background.

Image by Soli Art

This is one of my favourite images from Damon Baker. I absolutely admire the contrast within this image. The pitch black hair and the dark lips against the white background is sublime. I am not sure what the lighting source used here is but I think it may be a snoot or a beauty dish. I would like to shoot this using a soft-box and in post production I will add contrast to make it similar.

Image by Damon Baker

Again, this is one of my all time favourite image. I love the contrast between black and white and would like to re-create this. I will need my models to wear all black and so I can make this work. I think a soft-box was used here because the light seems diffused here. I practiced shooting this in class however it is very difficult as I could not seem to get both models in focus. I still need to experiment more until I can get this shot perfectly.

Image by Richard Avedon

#cleanwhite

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go-redgirl · 5 years

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Diahann Carroll, Pioneering Actress on ‘Julia’ and 'Dynasty,’ Dies at 84

She also landed an historic Tony Award, plus an Oscar nomination for her performance in 'Claudine.'

Diahann Carroll, the captivating singer and actress who came from the Bronx to win a Tony Award, receive an Oscar nomination and make television history with her turns on Julia and Dynasty, has died Friday. She was 84.

Carroll died at her home in Los Angeles after a long bout with cancer, her daughter, producer-journalist Suzanne Kay, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Carroll was known as a Las Vegas and nightclub performer and for her performances on Broadway and in the Hollywood musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess when she was approached by an NBC executive to star as Julia Baker, a widowed nurse raising a young son, on the comedy Julia.

She didn't want to do it. "I really didn't believe that this was a show that was going to work," she said in a 1998 chat for the website The Interviews: An Oral History of Television. "I thought it was something that was going to leave someone's consciousness in a very short period of time. I thought, 'Let them go elsewhere.' "

However, when Carroll learned that Hal Kanter, the veteran screenwriter who created the show, thought she was too glamorous for the part, she was determined to change his mind. She altered her hairstyle and mastered the pilot script, quickly convincing him that she was the right woman.

Carroll thus became the first African-American female to star in a non-stereotypical role in her own primetime network series. (Several actresses portrayed a maid on ABC's Beulah in the early 1950s.)

Baker, whose husband had died in Vietnam, worked for a doctor (Lloyd Nolan) at an aerospace company; she was educated and outspoken, and she dated men (including characters played by Fred Williamson, Paul Winfield and Don Marshall) who were successful, too.

"We were saying to the country, 'We're going to present a very upper middle-class black woman raising her child, and her major concentration is not going to be about suffering in the ghetto,' " Carroll noted.

"Many people were incensed about that. They felt that [African Americans] didn't have that many opportunities on television or in film to present our plight as the underdog … they felt the [real-world] suffering was much too acute to be so trivial as to present a middle-class woman who is dealing with the business of being a nurse.

"But we were of the opinion that what we were doing was important, and we never left that point of view … even though some of that criticism of course was valid. We were of a mind that this was a different show. We were allowed to have this show."

Julia, which premiered in September 1968, finished No. 7 in the ratings in the first of its three seasons, and Carroll received an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for her work.

As the sultry fashionista Dominique Deveraux — the first prominently featured African-American character on a primetime soap opera — Carroll played a much edgier character for three seasons on ABC's Dynasty and its spinoff The Colbys, delightfully dueling with fellow diva Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins).

While recuperating after starring on Broadway in Agnes of God, Carroll had found herself digging Dynasty — "Isn't this the biggest hoot?" she said — and lobbied producer Aaron Spelling for a role on his series.

"They've done everything [on the show]. They've done incest, homosexuality, murder. I think they're slowly inching their way toward interracial," she recalled in a 1984 piece for People magazine. "I want to be wealthy and ruthless … I want to be the first black bitch on television."

Carroll made perhaps her biggest mark on the big screen with her scrappy title-role performance in Claudine (1974), playing a Harlem woman on welfare who raises six children on her own and falls for a garbage collector (James Earl Jones).

The part was originally given to her dear friend, Diana Sands. But when Sands (who had played Julia Baker's cousin on several episodes of Julia) was stricken with cancer, she suggested Carroll take her place.

"The producers said, 'How can she do this role? No one would believe she could do it," Carroll said. "I remember the headline in the paper: 'Would you believe Jackie Onassis as a welfare mother?' … The very coupling of the name Jackie Onassis and Diahann Carroll is very interesting, if you think about it. There question was, how do we make anyone believe that she has [six] children? And to be nominated for an Academy Award, to do that, it was the best, the best."

Carol Diahann Johnson was born in Fordham Hospital in the Bronx on July 17, 1935. Her father, John, was a subway conductor when she was young, and her mother, Mabel, a nurse. She won a scholarship to the High School of Music & Art, where Billy Dee Williams was a classmate.

At 15, she began to model clothing for black-audience magazines like Ebony,Tan and Jett. Her dad disapproved at first, then began to reconsider when she told him she had earned $600 for a session.

Her parents drove her to Philadelphia on many weekends so she could be a contestant on the TV talent show Teen Club, hosted by bandleader Paul Whiteman. And then she won several times on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program, where she first billed herself as Diahann Carroll.

After enrolling at NYU to study psychology, she appeared on the Dennis James-hosted ABC talent show Chance of a Lifetime in 1953 and won for several weeks. One of her rewards was a regular engagement to perform at the famed Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan.

Christine Jorgensen taught her how to "carry" herself onstage, she said, and she moved in with her manager, training and rehearsing every day. She soon was singing in the Persian Room at New York's Plaza Hotel and at other hotspots including Ciro's, The Mocambo and The Cloister in Hollywood, The Black Orchid in Chicago and L'Olympia in Paris.

She soon dropped out of college to pursue performing full-time and was brought to Los Angeles to audition for Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954), landing the role of Myrt opposite the likes of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge.

At the end of 1954, she made her Broadway debut as the young star of the Truman Capote-Harold Arlen musical House of Flowers. Walter Kerr in The New York Herald Tribune called her "a plaintive and extraordinarily appealing ingenue."

She was cast to play Clara in Preminger and Rouben Mamoulian's movie adaptation of Porgy and Bess (1959), but her voice was considered too low for her character's Summertime number, so another singer dubbed for her.

She met Sidney Poitier on that film, thus beginning what she described as a "very turbulent" nine-year romance with him. (Carroll then had first non-singing movie role, playing a schoolteacher opposite Poitier, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in 1961's Paris Blues).

She would become renowned for her phrasing, partially a result of her studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

In 1963, she earned the first of her four career Emmy noms for portraying a teacher yet again on ABC's gritty Naked City.

Richard Rodgers spotted her during one of her frequent singing appearances on Jack Paar's Tonight Show and decided to compose a Broadway musical for her. After scrapping the idea to have her portray an Asian in 1958's Flower Drum Song, he wrote 1962's No Strings, a love story revolving around an African-American fashion model (Carroll) and a nebbish white novelist (Richard Kiley).

His first effort following the death of longtime collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II, it brought Carroll rave reviews and a Tony Award, the first given to a black woman for best actress in a lead role of a musical.

Soon after hosting a CBS summer replacement variety show in 1976, she retired from show business and moved to Oakland. Landing the role of Dominique — the half-sister of John Forsythe's Blake Carrington — in 1984 put her back on the map in Hollywood.

She told the show's writers: "The most important thing to remember is write for a white male, and you'll have the character. Don't try to write for what you think I am. Write for a white man who wants to be wealthy and powerful. And that's the way we found Dominique Deveraux."

More recently, Carroll had recurring roles as Jasmine Guy's mother on NBC's A Different World, as Isaiah Washington's mom on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and as a Park Avenue widow on USA's White Collar. She also appeared in such films as Eve's Bayou (1997) and on stage as Norman Desmond in a musical version of Sunset Blvd.

She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2011.

Carroll recorded several albums during her career and wrote the memoirs Diahann, published in 1986, and The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, Mothering and Other Things I Learned Along the Way, in 2008.

She was married four times: to Monte Kay, a manager and a casting consultant on House of Flowers; to Freddie Glusman, a Las Vegas clothier (that union lasted just a few weeks); to magazine editor Robert DeLeon (he died in an auto accident in 1977); and to singer Vic Damone (from 1987 until their 1996 divorce). She also had a three-year romance with talk-show host David Frost.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include her grandchildren, August and Sydney.

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.

________________________________________________

OPINION: May Diahann Carroll rest in peace! She was a great actress for many years.🙏

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 7/30/21 - JUNGLE CRUISE, THE GREEN KNIGHT, STILLWATER, NINE DAYS, THE BOY BEHIND THE DOOR and More!

Well, this is going to be the most interesting weekend of the summer. Don’t believe me?

What would you say if I told you we have three wide releases this week, one a mega-studio movie that cost hundreds of millions with two huge box office stars, taking on two smaller indies -- one with a big star, the other something more artsy with an actor who should be a bigger star? That’s what we’re looking at this week, since Disney has a movie, taking on two of the smaller studios with what are likely to be strong, well-reviewed movies that (fingers crossed) we’ll still be talking about at the end of the year when it comes to awards.

One thing that I feel I need to point out before continuing is that we’re starting to see a potential third or fourth wave of COVID, this time the Delta variant, slowly creeping up, and while I don’t think theaters will completely shut down as they did last March, I do wonder whether capacity will be lowered again to prevent the spread by allowing for more social distancing inside movie theaters.

Normally, I would start with the Disney movie -- which I really liked -- but I actually want to start with one of the smaller movies, because Thomas McCarthy’s STILLWATER (Focus Features), starring Matt Damon, is this week’s “Chosen One,” and honestly, it needs a lot more support and love than the other wide releases this week.

In the movie, Matt Damon plays Bill Baker, an out-of-work oil rig worker from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who flies to Marseilles, France where his estranged daughter Alison (Abigail Breslin) has been imprisoned for four years, accused of killing her roommate and lover. Once there, Bill learns from Alison that there might be more evidence that could prove her innocence, but when her legal team refuses to look into it, he instead tries to find anyone that can help him free his daughter. Along the way, he meets French actress Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her eight-year-old daughter Maya (Lilou Sauvaud), and they become fast friends and then roommates, helping Bill whenever they can.

I have to be honest that I went into Stillwater knowing very little about it, including the general plot, and I honestly didn’t even know that most of it took place in France -- 95% of it, in fact. Another thing I didn’t know in advance was that it was co-written by Thomas Bidegain, who has been working extensively with the brilliant Jacques Audiard in recent years on films like Rust and Bone, A Prophet and Dheepan. Just thinking of that combination of McCarthy with Bidegain is reason enough to give Stillwater the benefit of the doubt, but it also proves to be quite a sympatico combination of skills, since both writers have long had a proven knack for creating emotional character dramas.

As much as the overarching story involving Bill’s daughter and him trying to find the person who was really responsible for her roommate’s murder -- and yes, It’s hard not to think of the Amanda Knox case while watching the movie -- I ended up enjoying how Bill’s relationship with Virginie and especially Maya played out much more. That said, Damon’s performance is fantastic, and so is that of Abigail Breslin, who we really haven’t seen in this kind of dramatic adult role before, at least not that I have seen. Damon and Breslin’s scenes together are probably some of the film’s strongest, to the point where once it gets back into him catching the real killer, it certainly adds another layer but maybe one that maybe isn’t as interesting.

The one negative I have to say about Stillwater is about how the marketing spends so much time focusing on the thriller and crime aspects of the movie and fails to illustrate what makes the film so wonderful -- which is the character arc Bill goes through by spending time with Virginie and Maya, who bring so much to his life he would never have found in Oklahoma. That was really the biggest takeaway for me, and why I enjoyed the movie enough to make it “Chosen One.” Like so many of McCarthy’s great earlier films like The Station Agent and The Visitor, he has a way of creating compelling drama by bringing people from different backgrounds together.

On the other hand, if you’re unwilling to give a Red State working man like Damon’s character a chance, maybe Stillwater won’t be for you, but if you’re willing to learn about people that are different than yourself, put into situations in which you might never be, then it’s just the right cure for those who want something more grounded and authentic during the summer.

Personally, I’m convinced Stillwater will be one of the Top 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees this year, and I’ve already had people wanting to bet against me, thinking I’m wrong,, but I honestly think that once others see this film and allow themselves to appreciate the story and character-work done by McCarthy and his small cast, the film will find many fans. Maybe that won’t happen right away in theaters, but it’s likely to be on VOD in a month or so and then awards screeners later this year will help remind people and find new recruits.

As far as the box office prospects of McCarthy’s latest, I’m not really sure it can open with more than $5 million even with Matt Damon’s face plastered everywhere, because it just doesn’t seem like the type of movie that should get an immediate wide release vs. a slower roll-out.

The biggest movie of the weekend and by far the widest release into over 4,000 theaters is Disney’s JUNGLE CRUISE (Walt Disney Pictures), teaming Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt -- Blunt having led one of the second biggest female-led movies of 2021 so far after Black Widow -- and putting them into a fantasy-adventure based on the Disney World (or Land?) theme park ride. This is an idea that worked well for Disney’s 2003 action-adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and its sequels, but maybe not so well for movies like The Country Bears. The fact is that theme park rides based on hit movies work great, but trying to create a hit movie out of a theme park, it just isn’t done, and for a very good reason.

If nothing else, this one stars Dwayne Johnson, who has been absent from theaters for quite some time, having bailed on the “Fast Saga” franchise for his own 2019 spin-off with Jason Statham, Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw. That made about $173 million domestically and another $586 million overseas, but Johnson’s last movie was 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level, which made $300 million domestically and another $483.3 million overseas. Not all of Johnson’s movies have done so well -- Baywatch and Skyscaper both bombed domestically -- but Johnson is clearly an A-list star who just needs the right vehicle. Jungle Cruise may be just that, because it combines the type of action and humor that are Johnson’s strong suits with the family draw of something like the Jumanji movies but then also adds the Disney namebrand, which has led to many huge blockbusters.

It certainly won’t hurt that his on-screen foil Emily Blunt is coming off her hit A Quiet Place Part II, which continues to move her into the realm of beloved A-lister ala Julia Roberts and others. In between the Quiet Place sequel and the original movie in 2018 (which grossed $335 million worldwide), Blunt starred as the title character in Mary Poppins Returns for Disney, which made even more than the first Quiet Place worldwide, but it firmly placed her in the Disney realm that makes her a perfect co-star for Johnson. She previously starred in the Disney musical, Into the Woods, which also did very well, but it clearly has put Blunt into a category that should make a draw on a similar level as Johnson but more for women and girls.

Since the original Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl will be the benchmark for how Disney is hoping Jungle Cruise might perform -- keeping in mind that we’re still in the COVID pandemic and the fact that Jungle Cruise is available to buy for $29.99 on Disney+ Premier Access starting Friday -- we have to remember that the first “Pirates” was looked at rather cynically, so when it opened with $46.6 million in July 2003, that was thought of as a huge boon for the Disney property. It ended up grossing $300 million in the U.S. alone, which showed a huge amount of word-of-mouth and repeat viewing, which I personally feel Jungle Cruise

Unfortunately, we do have to take into account both COVID and the ability for families to see the movie on Disney+ for $30 vs. the $100+ it usually costs to take a small family to the movies, especially with kids under 12 still not being vaccinated. In normal times, I could maybe see Jungle Cruise opening with $40 to 50 million or more, but these aren’t normal times, and some of the factors mentioned above might keep it down around the $30 million mark, give or take.

I reviewed Jungle Cruise over at Below the Line, incidentally.

Next up is David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT (A24), starring Dev Patel, which is a fairly faithful adaptation of the “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” Arthurian legend poem written by “Anonymous,” and it’s a grand sweeping epic in the vein of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, although it’s a far more R-rated affair. It stars Dev Patel, Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, Barry Keoughan, and Joel Edgerton as well as others, and it’s a movie that’s likely to be talked about by many over the next couple weeks.

It’s an interesting new film from the filmmaker who has done small indies like Ain’t Them Body Saints and big studio movies like Pete’s Dragon (and the upcoming Peter Pan and Wendy), and mid-sized movies like A Ghost Story and The Old Man and the Gun in between. He’s reteaming with Ghost Story distributor A24 who knows the best way to attract the cinephile Millennial audience (aka #FilmTwitter) that would appreciate The Green Knight. They’ve done particularly well with horror and genre films from the likes of Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) and Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse). So far, A24’s top-grossing film is the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems with around $50 million. That starred Adam Sandler, who is a much bigger star than anyone in The Green Knight, but Heredity’s $13 million opening, or more likely, Midsommar’s $10.9 million five-day would be a better barometer for Lowery’s latest.

You can read my review of The Green Knight here, but I fully expect others reviews to be just as favorable and glowing, along with the excitement by #FilmTwitter to see this movie after it was delayed over a year. In many ways, A24 has created a niche for this type of film with Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, and this will probably be effective counter-programming against a mainstream studio movie like Jungle Cruise. The fact that this won’t be available on streaming or On Demand should help it bring in between $7 and 10 million this weekend, as the amazing visuals and marketing for the film should make it the first choice for those between 20 and 40 of both genders.

Essentially, this week’s Top 10 should look something like this...

1. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $32 million N/A

2. The Green Knight (A24) - $8.7 million N/A

3. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $6.5 million -44%

4. Old (Universal) - $6 million -64%

5. Snake Eyes (Paramount/MGM/Skydance) - $6 million -56%

6. Stillwater (Focus Features) - $4.8 million N/A

7. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $4.5 million -53%

8. F9: The Fast Saga (Universal) - $2.5 million -48%

9. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $1.6 million -54%

10. The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal/DreamWorks Animation) - $1.6 million -44%

Opening in limited theaters in New York and L.A. on Friday before a wider release on August 6 is Edson Oda’s NINE DAYS (Sony Pictures Classics), a movie that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival way back in January 2020 to rave reviews across the board, but has to find a renewed push now that it’s finally coming out in theaters. It stars Winston Duke (US, Black Panther) as Will, an enigmatic individual who watches people’s lives on a wall of monitors but who also has the power to test individuals hoping to be the next to get a life. Yeah, it’s a pretty enigmatic and metaphysical idea for a film, but Edo’s script is great, and he’s put together quite an amazing ensemble cast around Duke, including Benedict Wong (from Doctor Strange) and Zazie Beetz, but we also see the likes of Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgard and Arianna Ortiz playing very different characters we’ve seen from them before.

I don’t want to go too deep into detail about what happens in this highly metaphysical existential film, but essentially Duke’s character is putting a group of “souls” (for lack of a better term) through their paces in order to be allowed to have a life. The different things they’re asked to do, including watching those aforementioned monitors, makes it hard to really stay completely absorbed in the story, mainly because you might not know what you’re watching. But Duke is great while Wong is very amusing, and Beetz’s character Emma is great as a nut that Will has a particularly difficulty cracking. (In some ways, the movie reminded me of a far more grown-up Soul.)

There’s also Will’s obsession with a violin prodigy whose life he has been observing for a number of decades that makes it hard to understand what we’re watching. But there are many nice moments, plus a few that just seem like an acting exercise, and that intriguing storytelling style is embellished by a beautiful score by Antonio Pinto, which beautifully complements the visuals created by Oda and his cinematographer, Wyatt Garfield.

Nine Days certainly won’t be for everyone -- it’s slow and kind of contemplative and deliberately enigmatic; I’m certainly not sure I fully got it -- but it’s still an intriguing movie because filmmaker Edson Oda has such a unique storytelling style, which in some ways, makes this feel more like a movie we might get from A24 or NEON than Sony Pictures Classics. (I’ll discuss the film’s box office prospects next week as Sony Classics gives another movie a far-too-wide expansion following a platform release.)

This week’s Shudder release is THE BOY BEHIND THE DOOR (Shudder), the second movie by filmmakers David Charbonier and Justin Powell after The Djinn, their first movie, which was released earlier this year. Got all that? (The Boy Behind the Door actually played Fantastic Fest last September but is just finally hitting Shudder on Thursday after playing a bunch of festivals, including, most recently, the Tribeca Film Festival.)

The movie stars Lonnie Chavis as 12-year-old Bobby, whose best friend Kevin (Ezra Dewey, who starred in The Djinn) has been kidnapped and locked up in a house, so Bobby tries to rescue him, having to fight off a couple adults (pedophiles, in fact) while hiding in the house and trying to escape himself.

I really wanted to like The Boy Behind the Door more, because I did enjoy what the duo did in The Djinn and Dewey pretty much carried that movie. I’m not sure that Chavis does as good a job carrying this one, which is odd since the filmmakers already had experience getting good performances from a younger actor.

What’s surprising is that this is debuting on Shudder, because it isn’t particularly scary. It does have a lot of violence, and it’s quite brutal and grueling at times, if that’s your sort of thing, but I don’t even think the writing is particularly good compared to The Djinn.

The Boy Behind the Door offers an interesting one-location thriller, but it’s very tough to watch kids being put into and through some of these situations, so it kept from being able to fully like or love the movie, let alone recommend it. But if you have Shudder, it’ll be on there, so there’s no reason not to watch it. I’ve certainly seen worse. (How’s that for a recommendation?)

Dan (Dirty Grandpa) Mazer’s THE EXCHANGE (Quiver Distribution), written by Tim Long (The Simpsons) stars Ed Oxenbould from The Visit, Justin Hartley from This Is Us, and Avan Jogia from Zombieland: Double Tap. Oxenbould plays Tim, a socially awkward teen who decides to order a “mail order best friend,” but instead of getting a sophisticated exchange from France, he gets Jogia’s chain-smoking sex-obssessed Stéphane, who becomes a hero of Tim’s community. Hartley plays the school’s gym teacher, Barry. This is a fairly bland high-concept indie comedy that treads on Napoleon Dynamite territory without really being particularly funny. I will give props to Music Supervisor Nick Angel, who managed to get some awesome period songs for the score, but otherwise, I really don't have much to say about this one.

Joshua Leonard and Jess Weizler co-wrote and star in Leonard's new movie, FULLY REALIZED HUMANS (Gravitas Ventures). They play Elliot and Jackie, a couple who have been trying to have a baby but don’t want to screw up their kids the way their parents screwed them up. In order to become the perfect parents, they’ll have to rediscover themselves.

Opening at the IFC Center in New York this Friday and at the Laemmle in L.A. on August 6 is THE EVENING HOUR (Strand Releasing), Braden King’s Appalachian drama based on Carter Sickels’ novel, which follows Cole Freeman (Philip Ettinger), who is caring for the old and infirm in the community while selling painkillers to local addicts. When his old friend Terry Rose (Cosmo Jarvis) returns to town with new plans that threatens to unbalance Cole’s lifestyle. Cole also has to deal with the return of his other (Lili Taylor) and conflict with a real drug dealer (Marc Menchaca). The film also stars Stacy Martin, Kerry Bishé… and my good friend, Susan McPhail (in a very small role, though).

Other movies I just didn’t have time to get to include:

A DARK FOE (Vertical) LORELEI (Vertical) MASQUERADE (Shout! Studios) MIDNIGHT IN THE SWITCHGRASS (Lionsgate) RIDE THE EAGLE (Decal) SABARA (MTV Documentary Films)TWIST (Lionsgate)

Next week, James Gunn’s THE SUICIDE SQUAD!

#The Weekend Warrior #Movies #Reviews #Jungle Cruise #Stillwater #The Green Knight #nine Days

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gamerzcourt · 6 years

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Nier, Psychonauts, And Other Devs Discuss What Games They Admire MostNier, Psychonauts, And Other Devs Discuss What Games They Admire Mostvideo games

New Post has been published on http://www.gamerzcourt.com/nier-psychonauts-and-other-devs-discuss-what-games-they-admire-mostnier-psychonauts-and-other-devs-discuss-what-games-they-admire-mostvideo-games/

Nier, Psychonauts, And Other Devs Discuss What Games They Admire MostNier, Psychonauts, And Other Devs Discuss What Games They Admire Mostvideo games

These past few years have yielded an amazing roster of games that we personally love. With so many fantastic experiences out there, we began to grow curious over what games developers particularly enjoy. During our time spent at this year’s GDC, we had the opportunity to interview a wide variety of game developers and key figures in the industry, so we decided to ask what current game they find inspiring and admire the most, and why.

As you’ll see from the responses below, the games each developer adores might not come as a surprise to you, especially if you’re familiar with their work or tastes. Others had some surprising picks that you probably wouldn’t expect. What current games do you admire the most? Let us know in the comments below. And be sure to check out feature detailing the 25 best games you might’ve not heard of that we saw at GDC 2018.

Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, Directors of Cuphead

Jared Moldenhauer (left) and Chad Moldenhauer (right)

Jared Moldenhauer: I have a library of 100+ games that I’m working towards currently. But one of the earlier games that I chose and found very rewarding was Hollow Knight. It’s an interesting and challenging Metroidvania. And the visuals and the universe that they created, and the feeling within all the characters; I was happy playing every minute of it.

Chad Moldenhauer: I recently started and really enjoy The Witness. I was looking forward to that for a long time!

Yoshinori Terasawa, Danganronpa Series Producer

Yoshinori Terasawa: I love the Persona series. I adore the sense of personality that those games have. I really like how cool and stylish they are.

Rami Ismail, Producer of Nuclear Throne

Rami Ismail: So many games have really sparked me. Games that really stand out to me are Engare and Farsh, by Mahdi Bahrami, both games based on this Iranian heritage. I was very impressed by This War of Mine, which gives a unique perspective on war. Just seeing that tremendous shift in perspective translated into a game that is so powerful and poignant, that reminds me that there is so much more out there.

Tom Kaczmarczyk, Producer of Superhot

Tom Kaczmarczyk: Our game director [Piotr Iwanicki] who actually came up with the idea, he often cites an indie flash game called, Time4Cat, as one of the inspirations, because it did have the same sort of time automation mechanic. For me, I love Hotline Miami because of its action sequences. A lot of what we pick up come from action movies, and from the way people design cinematic experiences where you fall into a certain archetype of a situation, and you immediately understand what’s going on.

Tim Schafer, Founder of Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend)

Tim Schafer

Tim Schafer: Lately, a game that really made a big effect on me–it sounds really cliché–but Breath of the Wild was a huge thing. I just loved it. Everyone loves something different about games, there’s no one game that’s perfect for everybody, but it made me realize that my number one thing is exploration. I’m constantly exploring and surprised and I just love it and I play it all the time. I also love Loot Rascals, which is a great roguelike, and I’ve recently been playing Persona 5, which is just amazing. Amazing style and tone, it’s so polished.

Jason Roberts, Director of Gorogoa

Jason Roberts: In 2017, I was a big fan of Inside and Night in the Woods; those were big games for me. I’m big on tone, mood, atmosphere. These are important to me. And I love those games. And I also, this year, I think Florence and any game from Annapurna are just very carefully, precisely created with tone and atmosphere. That’s what I value.

Dean Ayala, Hearthstone Senior Game Designer + Dave Kozack, Hearthstone Lead Narrative Designer

Dean Ayala: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It’s a roguelike released back in 1997. A lot of the Hearthstone design team plays it. It’s super old-school.

Dave Kozack: It has been in continuous development; it’s one of those community projects. That’s why the name, Stone Soup. But we played a lot of rogue-likes while we were working on Dungeon Run, and that was one of our favorites. It’s just something we keep coming back to as a team. It’s a lot of fun.

Ian Dallas, Creative Director of What Remains Of Edith Finch

Ian Dallas

Ian Dallas: For me, the last game that affected me emotionally in a strong way was Universal Paperclips. A game about clicking on buttons and manufacturing paperclips that I just found myself lost in for 8 hours. It was really like a troubling emotional experience, and it’s amazing that it comes out of just text on a webpage. It reaffirms the power of video games and the way that they can teach you things about yourself and about the world that you couldn’t really internalize in any other way.

Chelsea Hash, Technical Artist of What Remains Of Edith Finch

Chelsea Hash: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Their commitment to the multimedia format and drawing from different rendering styles to support their vision was something that I was glad to be able to experience, something that was willing to think outside the box.

Damon Baker, Nintendo Publisher and Developer Relations

Damon Baker: I can’t choose one game. It is like choosing my favorite child! There are so many different types of experiences. Most recently I am working my way through Night in the Woods. I haven’t been able to play that previously, and having a lot of flights lately has given me more flexibility to get through a lot of indie content. Of course, I totally enjoyed Celeste. I vowed not to use assist mode on that game at all and beat it; but it took me 1800 deaths or something to get through it, but it was a beautiful game.

Matt Thornson, Director of Celeste

Matt Thornson: I’ve been really enjoying my time with Into the Breach. It’s amazing!

Victor Kislyi, Wargaming CEO (World of Tanks)

Victor Kislyi: Civilization. All of them, because I started playing from Civ I. Now, believe it or not, before playing World of Tanks last night I was playing Civilization and I was playing on the plane on my way here. Civ 6 is amazing, and it was my MBA. I’m a physicist by education but, playing Civilization, all those layers, economy, exploration, politics, military, science, religion–your brain is trained to juggle those multiple layers like almost instantly, or at least very, very correctly. And, that’s a good analogy with business, people, finance, media, failures, exploration, etc., etc. I think Civilization, as a concept, as a game, actually, is more valuable to humanity than Mona Lisa.

Yoko Taro, Director of Nier: Automata

Yoko Taro: I think that Grand Theft Auto IV and Super Mario Bros. are two big games that influenced me when making Nier. But with games from the past–not modern games–I felt more freedom or challenge as a player. Let’s say we have a black background with a white dot on it and let’s call it the space. I feel like that really creates freedom, especially in terms freedom of imagination, and challenging the dev team to create a world without really being able to express that world visually. In that sense, I feel that in the past, game developers were trying to create a new frontier. They were trying to expand the world, expand the universe of gaming industry.

Yoko Taro (left) and Takahira Taura (right)

Now that the game industry has matured pretty much now, a lot of people actually go for a more safe game. They try to make all the consumers happy with that one game. I think that that actually limits to what they can do and I feel that no one is really trying to expand that arena or expand that world anymore. I am a little bit sad about that.

Takahisa Taura, Designer Of Nier: Automata + Metal Gear Rising

Takahisa Taura: When The Witcher 3 came out, we all played it and had fun with it, but we also looked at it to see what would we do if we created a game like this. We were using The Witcher 3 as a learning experience on how to create an RPG. I think that’s where it all started. Well, that’s where we came from, so it wasn’t too difficult of a task to create a JRPG.”

GameSpot News

#Admire #devs #Discuss #Games #MostNier #Mostvideo #Nier #Psychonauts #They

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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From the Strategist: The Best Bartending Guides and Cocktail Books, According to Bartenders

Learn cocktail fundamentals, techniques, and history with these books, from the Strategist

The way you learn how to make craft cocktails isn’t by drinking a lot of them (though that experience doesn’t necessarily hurt). You need to memorize recipes, learn how different liquors are made, and even understand a bit of chemistry — that’s why most serious bartenders and booze connoisseurs are well-read folks, with libraries full of bartending guides and cocktail books that they still reference, even after years of experience under their belts.

To help you fill your own home with the best cocktail books for every type of drinker, we asked 18 experts — including bartenders, beverage directors, and cocktail-book authors — to share what’s on their shelves, from the classic guides that taught them the fundamentals to the modern books that help them get creative. As always, each title on this list has been recommended by at least two experts.

Best historical cocktail book

“Imbibe! Updated and Revised Edition” by David Wondrich

According to Kitty Amann, the co-author of Drinking Like Ladies and a brand ambassador for whiskey brand Uncle Nearest, this is a “must-read for anyone who likes cocktails and history.” She looks at Imbibe! like a textbook: “I learn something new each time I go back to it.” Both Holly Booth and Josh Novaski, co-lead bartenders at Utah-based High West Saloon, say that the book features “great storytelling and historical references to American craft cocktail creation.” New York City–based bartender and beverage consultant Lucinda Sterling says that it has “great stories and recipes,” and Jägermeister brand-meister Willy Shine and H. Joseph Ehrmann, the co-founder of Fresh Victor cocktail mixers and the owner of San Francisco’s Elixir, are also big fans. Alongside its included 100 recipes for cocktails, the author — who won a James Beard Award for this book in 2007 — includes detailed historical notes contextualizing each drink and providing a compelling portrait of Jerry Thomas, who is widely considered the father of the American bar.

Best fundamental cocktail book

“The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender” by Dale DeGroff

For learning about basic techniques, four of our experts recommend Dale DeGroff’s The Craft of the Cocktail. Craig Joseph, the bar manager at Ty Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel New York, calls it his “all-time favorite cocktail book,” adding that it’s “the only book every bartender, beginner or pro, needs in their life.” Jim Kearns, the beverage director and a partner at New York City’s the Happiest Hour, adds, “It has a lot of valuable information in it, as well as recipes, so it’s a good one to check out.” And Gareth Evans, the global brand ambassador for Absolut Elyx, told us that “DeGroff is rightly credited with the resurgence of fresh fruit and juice in modern cocktails, after the dark days of the ’70s and ’80s when sour mix and layered disco drinks reigned supreme.” Echoing Joseph, Evans says this is “a must-have for any aspiring bartender” for its “refreshing (pun intended) take on how to mix up simple, balanced drinks.” Ehrmann also recommends this title, and told us that DeGroff has a new edition coming out in the fall.

Best Tiki-style cocktail book

“TIKI: Modern Tropical Cocktails” by Shannon Mustipher

Four of our experts also raved about this recent collection of recipes from Shannon Mustipher, whom Kenneth McCoy, the chief creative officer of New York City–based bar The Rum House, calls “one of the coolest and most knowledgeable women in bartending.” According to Jon Dubin, a senior brand manager for Knappogue Castle Irish Whiskey, this is a “must-have” for your bookshelf or bar cart. Damon Boelte of Brooklyn-based Grand Army Bar says that it is “one of the most comprehensive and streamlined books about Tiki cocktails” out right now. And Amann told us that while she used to find Tiki-style cocktails “intriguing but intimidating,” this book full of “recipes, photos, engaging drink histories, and descriptive rum tasting notes” made them far more approachable.

Best book for learning how to create unique cocktail recipes of your own

“The Cocktail Codex” by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald & David Kaplan

In our list of essential gear for a home bar, Evans called this “one of the most invaluable cocktail books ever released,” as well as a “treasure trove like no other.” The Cocktail Codex includes explainers of six “root recipes” that the authors say serve as templates for all cocktails: the old-fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, whisky highball, and flip. According to Booth and Novaski, the James Beard Award–winning book “provides a road map to building” those and other cocktails because the “structure of the book breaks down drinks into their basic categories.” Evans adds that “it lays out a wide spectrum of techniques, flavor pairings, and spirits knowledge that really speak to the professional mixologist as effectively as the casual home bartender.” In addition to photography, the book utilizes easy-to-read infographics and charts to help illustrate the components of the different drinks and give you the tools you need to improvise and create your own recipes.

Best book for improving bartending technique

“The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique” by Jeffrey Morgenthaler

“This was the one book I would always have kicking around the office, and it was the unofficial training manual for bartenders and barbacks alike,” says bartender Gareth Howells, a North American brand ambassador for Dewar’s. Howells adds that he “learned a huge amount from this when I first started bartending, and it really helped me refine various aspects of my processes.” Novaski agrees and says it is “great for educating people on technique and what bar tools they need and why.” According to Sterling, “This book is able to present basic facts in a funny and simple way, allowing a first-time or at-home bartender to learn the basics, and impress.”

Best science-based cocktail book

“Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail” by Dave Arnold

Amanda Swanson, a tequila sommelier and the beverage director of Tribeca’s Anejo, recommends Liquid Intelligence for more experienced bartenders because “it covers the nitty-gritty chemistry of cocktails from the shape of the cubes of ice and the size of the bubbles in Champagne to the science of perfect dilution.” Ehrmann agrees that it’s a good choice if you want to get into the more “scientific” aspects of cocktails. “Once you think you know everything about how long to stir, shake or muddle, Arnold throws you a curveball,” adds Sterling.

Best book on punch-based cocktails

“Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl” by Dave Wondrich

In addition to Imbibe!, Wondrich also wrote Punch, which charts the punch bowl’s history alongside ideas to create your own bowl-based cocktail. Shine says a deep dive into both Imbibe! and Punch is “essential to the serious bar professional” or anyone “who is looking to further their knowledge of the history of where our incredible profession comes from.” Ehrmann also recommended both of Wondrich’s titles, calling them “definitive historical books” for bartending.

Best book for mixology nerds

“Meehan’s Bartender Manual” by Jim Meehan

“If you want to geek out a little more (and most cocktail lovers do), Meehan’s Manual includes in-depth sections on spirits, behind-the-scenes sections with distilleries and producers, as well as guides to classic and contemporary cocktails,” explains Jacob Briars, a global advocacy director of Bacardi Limited. “It’s a beautiful book, inside and out,” seconds McCoy.

Most fun to read historical cocktail book

“The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or, Around the World With Jigger, Beaker and Flask” by Charles Henry Baker

“Like many bartenders, I love Charles H. Baker’s A Gentleman’s Companion: Around the World With Jigger, Beaker, and Flask,” says Briars. Baker was a writer for Esquire and Gourmet who traveled the world in the 1930s, “writing down recipes on cocktail napkins as he encountered them,” Briars explains. While Briars notes that some of the included recipes are often terrible, “meaning modern bartenders have had to tweak them to make them palatable,” he says it’s still a “great travelogue.” Jane Danger, the beverage director of New York City–based tiki cocktail bar Mother of Pearl and the author of The Bourbon Bartender, calls the book “an inspiration” for both writing and drink-making. “I feel the story behind the cocktail needs to be as good as the drink,” she notes, and this text fulfills both requirements.

Best book on the production of spirits

“The Drunken Botanist” by Amy Stewart

According to Nate Fishman, a bartender at Liquor Lab and a brand ambassador for Santera Tequila, this book “gives you the understanding of cocktails and spirits through gardening and horticulture,” which makes “pairing and creating cocktails” at home much more accessible. Swanson says Stewart “delves into every spirit before it was a spirit: the sugar canes of rum, the rice grains of sake, and the agave of tequila and mezcal, of course,” so it adds an additional “element of understanding” to your drinks.

Best book on contemporary cocktail-making

“Death & Co.: Modern Classic Cocktails” by Nick Fauchald & David Kaplan

“If a beginning bartender wants to learn technique and amazing recipes, Death & Co. is always my go-to cocktail book,” says Swanson. Published in 2014, the book’s authors (who also wrote The Cocktail Codex) are the team behind the cocktail bar of the same name, which now has locations in Denver and Los Angeles in addition to its flagship in New York City. Unlike The Cocktail Codex, this book focuses more on recipes and includes 500 of their favorite cocktails, many of which have been featured on their menu. Cara Maldonado, the beverage director at the Four Seasons Hotel New York, is also a fan of this book, telling us she keeps a copy on her bar cart.

Best encyclopedic cocktail book

“The Joy of Mixology” by Gary Regan

Both Ehrmann and Booth call The Joy of Mixology a “classic,” with more than 350 “simple and easy” recipes to thumb through. Regan groups this encyclopedia of cocktails into families based on the balance of ingredients, not by the base spirit, so you can master dozens of recipes quickly, and then learn how to create your own takes on the classics.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3dtYtvX https://ift.tt/3fYAMO1

Learn cocktail fundamentals, techniques, and history with these books, from the Strategist

Best historical cocktail book

“Imbibe! Updated and Revised Edition” by David Wondrich

Best fundamental cocktail book

“The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender” by Dale DeGroff

Best Tiki-style cocktail book

“TIKI: Modern Tropical Cocktails” by Shannon Mustipher

Best book for learning how to create unique cocktail recipes of your own

“The Cocktail Codex” by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald & David Kaplan

Best book for improving bartending technique

“The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique” by Jeffrey Morgenthaler

Best science-based cocktail book

“Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail” by Dave Arnold

Best book on punch-based cocktails

“Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl” by Dave Wondrich

Best book for mixology nerds

“Meehan’s Bartender Manual” by Jim Meehan

Most fun to read historical cocktail book

“The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or, Around the World With Jigger, Beaker and Flask” by Charles Henry Baker

Best book on the production of spirits

“The Drunken Botanist” by Amy Stewart

Best book on contemporary cocktail-making

“Death & Co.: Modern Classic Cocktails” by Nick Fauchald & David Kaplan

Best encyclopedic cocktail book

“The Joy of Mixology” by Gary Regan

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3dtYtvX via Blogger https://ift.tt/37Yc65f

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junker-town · 4 years

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7 winners and 5 losers from Day 1 of the NFL Draft

Isaiah Simmons, Jeff Okudah, and Jedrick Wills Jr. heard their names during Round 1 of the 2020 NFL Draft.

Things went great for the Dolphins, Tom Brady, and Ohio State. Not everyone was so lucky, though

The first round of the first-ever teleconferenced NFL Draft is over. Tragically, it was short on unmuted phone lines, random dog interruptions, and pick-disrupting technical difficulties. In fact, it was pretty much just a normal draft, only without Roger Goodell getting pummeled by 300-pound defensive tackles and their excessive hugs.

While the true results of this year’s opening day at the draft won’t be understood for more than a decade, the first 32 picks were able to earn knee-jerk reactions. The Dolphins got to see their rebuild take root with a QB-OT combination that will hopefully carry them into the future. Across the division, Bill Belichick played his cards so close to his vest he opted out of Thursday entirely.

The Packers got a new quarterback to play behind one they still owe more than $120 million. The Jaguars killed the trade leverage of one of their few remaining stars. The city of Columbus, Ohio, got to see a whole bunch of former residents make the leap to football’s biggest stage.

Who were Thursday night’s biggest winners and losers? We’ve got a few ideas, some of which won’t be completely proven wrong over the next five years.

Winner: Tua Tagovailoa and the Miami Dolphins

Tua Tagovailoa was the smart choice. Though it looked like the Dolphins may trade up for an offensive lineman or opt for Justin Herbert, those pre-draft rumors turned out to be a smokescreen. Miami has its franchise quarterback, and it’s the guy who lit up the SEC over three sometimes-healthy years.

The same guy who looks good in a suit, even in his family’s swank-ass living room:

Tua's suit pic.twitter.com/cJspF4DxGY

— SB Nation (@SBNation) April 24, 2020

The Dolphins were able to get their cornerstone tackle 13 picks later. Austin Jackson isn’t just a great pass blocker, he’s a tremendous human being who put off his dreams in order to save his sister’s life. He’s a raw talent, but he’s got the potential to be an All-Pro with the right development.

That wasn’t all! They turned the 26th pick — one acquired from the Texans in exchange for Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills — into the 30th pick and a fourth-rounder through a deal with the Packers. That pick turned out to be speedster corner Noah Igbinoghene, who will team up with Byron Jones and Xavien Howard in one of the NFL’s most terrifying secondaries.

The Dolphins needed A LOT of talent to speed up their turnaround. They got three possible future stars and the chance to add more all in the course of a few hours Thursday.

Loser: Patriots fans

New England was set to make only its second draft pick inside the top 23 since 2012 after flopping out of the Wild Card Round of the playoffs. But instead of selecting a potential quarterback of the future, Bill Belichick decided to defer to Friday. He shipped the Patriots’ first-round pick to the Chargers for their 37th and 71st overall selections.

The move recharges the team’s Day 2 draft pool and gives the Patriots more low-cost ammunition to refill a roster that’s been picked apart in free agency. Per Adam Schefter, Belichick is confident the player he wanted at No. 23 will be available at No. 37, which would effectively give the club a free third-rounder.

That’s good! But if you’re a Pats fan who came into Thursday night waiting for some semblance of local sports news or a glimpse into the team’s future, well ... at least you got to see Belichick’s wicker collection:

Bill Belichick’s draft room, via ABC pic.twitter.com/Sw0FKOJqkS

— Jeff Howe (@jeffphowe) April 24, 2020

Winner: Ohio State

Joe Burrow. Chase Young. Jeff Okudah. What do the top three picks in this year’s draft have in common? They all, at one point, played for Ohio State.

Consider for a second the Buckeyes’ 2017 roster. It not only had Burrow, Young, and Okudah, but also another first-round pick in this class, Damon Arnette, and several first-round picks from other years, including Nick Bosa, Dwayne Haskins, Billy Price, and Denzel Ward. And probable future first-round picks like Shaun Wade and Wyatt Davis. And way more NFL players (Jerome Baker, Sam Hubbard, Terry McLaurin, etc) than that.

It’s no wonder OSU alums are already coming up with a new nickname for the program, when DBU no longer does it justice:

Nah we might as well just say NFL U ! I’m sayin that from now on Sunday Night Intros ! Lol https://t.co/fcqxFZM8OE

— Bradley Roby (@BradRoby_1) April 24, 2020

Round 1 ended up being a pretty good recruiting tool for Ohio State head coach Ryan Day:

If either one of my Kids decide to chose Football for their Career I’m definitely sending them to OHIO STATE!!!

— Kendrick Perkins (@KendrickPerkins) April 24, 2020

Not that he needs much help these days.

Loser: Yannick Ngakoue

The Jaguars pass rusher is very publicly angling to get out of Jacksonville. While he was given the franchise tag by the team back in March, Ngakoue has taken to Twitter to express his desire for a trade. He’s even got into public spats with Jaguars executive Tony Khan about it.

Just trade me . I don’t need the speech

— Yannick Ngakoue (@YannickNgakoue) April 20, 2020

However, the first round of the draft was nothing but bad news for Ngakoue. It showed there continues to be no worthwhile trade market for his services — something Jaguars GM Dave Caldwell confirmed later in the night — and the team added another pass rusher to the mix by picking K’Lavon Chaisson.

Ngakoue is backed into a corner now. He can follow the Le’Veon Bell path and sit out the entire 2020 season, but that’d cost him the $17.8 million he’d make from the franchise tag. The Jaguars could trade Ngakoue, but they certainly don’t have to either. With Chaisson and Josh Allen on the roster, Jacksonville can feel OK with whatever route it chooses.

Even though the Jaguars already had most of the leverage, picking Chaisson gave them just a little bit more. Ngakoue’s chances at getting out of Duval any time soon looker slimmer than ever.

Winner: Kliff Kingsbury

The Arizona Cardinals needed a little bit of help all over their defense. So they got a player who can do a little bit of everything. Isaiah Simmons was projected to go as high as the No. 3 pick, but his brief slide down the draft board paired him up with an innovative head coach who’ll be receptive to his freewheeling, play-almost-anywhere skills.

And we do mean play almost anywhere:

good god pic.twitter.com/tD1OkganXw

— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) April 24, 2020

Even better news for Kingsbury is that he can scheme up plays for Simmons, all from the comfort of his Parasite home:

what does Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury look like he does for a living pic.twitter.com/ODEl8ic3dX

— SB Nation (@SBNation) April 24, 2020

Loser: The Panthers’ draft reasoning

Simmons, the Clemson linebacker/safety/corner/etc, was still on the board when the defense-needy Panthers made their selection at No. 7 overall. The fact they chose Auburn defensive tackle Derrick Brown over him wasn’t especially eye-opening on its own, considering what a talent Brown is.

Carolina’s reported reasoning behind the pick, however, was:

The Panthers liked Clemson LB Isaiah Simmons a lot at No. 7 and he was the best pure athlete on the board, but they felt he was a better fit for a veteran team because of his ability to play so many positions. So they went with Auburn DT Derrick Brown,... https://t.co/Wfu6yhMSgv

— David Newton (@DNewtonespn) April 24, 2020

Ah. So Simmons was too athletic and versatile for the Panthers. Got it.

Winner: Tom Brady

Brady’s week started with the addition of a recently un-retired Rob Gronkowski. Then the Buccaneers reiterated their commitment to keeping their new QB happy by trading up one spot to pick up a tackle who could be the best blocker to emerge from this year’s rookie crop.

Tampa Bay gave up a fourth-round pick to move from No. 14 to No. 13 and select Iowa hoss Tristan Wirfs, the reigning Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year. Wirfs was widely regarded as a top-10 pick this spring, but his slight fall made him too tempting for the Bucs to pass up. Now he’ll go from protecting Nate Stanley to keeping a six-time Super Bowl winner upright.

Loser: Aaron Rodgers

Coming into the 2020 draft, Rodgers was eager to point out how cool it would be for his Packers to add some receiving help in a draft loaded with wideout talent.

Aaron Rodgers on @PatMcAfeeShow: "We haven't picked a skill player in the first round in 15 years, so that would be kind of cool." Rodgers says whoever the pick is, he'll track down his phone number and welcome him to the team tonight — if the Packers don't trade out.

— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) April 24, 2020

It looked like Green Bay was going to fulfill those expectations when it traded up to No. 26. Then the franchise selected ... Utah State quarterback Jordan Love. Instead of getting a first-round wide receiver or tight end to lighten Davante Adams’ load, Rodgers got the player who the Packers will groom to be his successor.

We’re sure he’s fine with that.

Winner (mostly): Javon Kinlaw

Kinlaw has big shoes to fill. His landing spot at No. 14 was made possible by the Niners’ willingness to ship DeForest Buckner — another first-round pass-rushing interior lineman, who has 19.5 sacks in just the past two years — to the Colts.

But Kinlaw is also capable of becoming an All-Pro for the 49ers. He was a wrecking ball in the middle of the field for South Carolina and should start immediately in the NFL. The presence of pass rushers like Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead, and Dee Ford should limit the number of double teams he sees as a rookie.

On that note, here’s Kinlaw’s dad impersonating every QB who has to face the 49ers’ defensive line this coming season:

Javon Kinlaw's dad's reaction to his son getting drafted pic.twitter.com/f6amsidFbj

— ESPN (@espn) April 24, 2020

Loser: The trade market

There was a lot of handwringing about the effect a fully virtual NFL Draft could have on teams’ ability to trade. The league even considered adding an extra time option if GMs were working on finalizing a trade. Maybe that’s why John Lynch of the 49ers had three phones at his draft day set up.

Teams worked ahead of time to make sure that they could get trades done.

More than ever, teams will try to work out trades before the NFL Draft begins just in case. To that point: The #Lions have been engaged with multiple teams on potentially trading out of the No. 3 spot, sources say. Things have heated up over the last 24 hours.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) April 23, 2020

So why was there just one trade in the first 20 picks and none in the top 10? There weren’t any technical difficulties that kept deals from happening. It seems like teams were content to patiently wait for the prospects they coveted to slide their way — which is fine, but kinda boring.

Winner: Mock drafts

Well, it wasn’t the most wronger year after all. Despite warnings that mock drafters were way off this year, they weren’t at all. It was actually one of the most accurate first rounds for mocks in a while.

Five of the first six selections were the most popular choice in mock drafts. The only exception was the Giants taking Andrew Thomas instead of a different offensive tackle. While there were a few relative surprises — like cornerback Damon Arnette to the Raiders with the 19th pick and linebacker Jordyn Brooks sneaking into the first round to the Seahawks at 27th overall — no pick came completely out of left field.

Even those two picks by the Raiders and Seahawks addressed needs that were expected to be priorities. It’s time to give the draft prognosticators a round of applause for their 2020 performance.

Winner: The Browns’ Super Bowl chances

There was little doubt the Browns would draft a tackle in the first round. It was just a matter of which one. Still, it was a little surprising they took Jedrick Wills, who’s only played right tackle, when they just signed Jack Conklin in free agency.

Wherever he lines up, though, Wills is ready to play right away, which is what Cleveland (and Baker Mayfield) needs most of all. And that has former Browns stalwart Joe Thomas pumped as hell:

@JWills73 @Browns #NFLDraft2020 #NFLDraft #Super Bowl https://t.co/EOhgAkO4pJ pic.twitter.com/FbJe1HELRe

— Joe Thomas (@joethomas73) April 24, 2020

That’s it, we’re ready to believe this is the Browns’ year.

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jade-brooks-photography · 4 years

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Photographer Research: Damon Baker

29th November // Week One

Who is Damon Baker?

Damon Baker is a 28 year old photographer from England. He took the career path in Fashion Photography back in 2008 when he was only 18, when he left England for New York City to peruse this career. He never had any intention to be a photographer, he took photos and posted them on social media and used the internet to his advantage to get his name recognized. Now he takes photos of A-list celebrities for Magazines such as; Marie - Claire, Attitude, L’Officiel, and Glamour. He has also shot for Fashion Companies such as; Burberry, Emporio Armani, and River Island.

Celebrities He’s Photographed;

Rita Ora

Jared Leto

Brooklyn Beckham

Cole Spouse

Kj Apa

Elle Fanning

Bella Thorne

... and many more

His Technique:

Baker is a Fashion Photographer, but he also specializes in portraiture, using both black and white, and vibrant colours in his shoots. From what I've see he mostly shoots in studios with artificial lighting, but he does occasionally use outside locations for specific shoots.

Samples of his Photos; (Studio shoots)

What I like about this image is that straight away you notice the strong contrast between the top, the background and the shadows. The contrast in this image is quite strong, but not Albert Watson strong, I like that this image is quite faded and grainy, it gives it an old/aged look to it that I think works really well. It almost looks as if It was shot on a film camera but that might be the look and style he was going for. I also like the frame of the shot, im a big fan of mid shots, if shot properly they can be really effective in advertising for example, so your eye is straight away drawn to the jacket. Id like to use this photo as an influence piece and attempt to capture something similar with similar editing in the studio and see how it compares and if its ass effective as Baker’s.

This image is also shot in a studio, what caught my eye about this image is the combination of tones of brown. Brown is seen as a boring colour, but this photo just manages to show that it can be a very powerful colour when put with other browns. I love the idea of the wet hair look, I want to attempt to do my own shoot with the wet look hair to see how effective it looks but for more of a portraiture project. This photo to me feels as if its for a water proof make up advert, this is because with the wet hair and the perfectly done make up gives me as an audience member a make up advert vibe. I also like that you can see shadows in the background for the studio set because they’re giving a strange pattern which catches my eye and draws it to the image more.

Landscape Shoots;

I really like this this photo, I love the angle its been shot at as you can see the fence in focus but from this point of view you can see it disappear both behind the model and going into a blur. To me this makes the image very eye catching, because in a coloured photo yous usually have a colour that draws your attention to the image, but in black and white as ive found from the previous projects this term, you need to find something like a pattern that brings that photo out more than just the model, and I think that fence has done really well in doing so. The photo being blurred in the background has also brought line definition to the models face. As he’s standing with a side profile, the blur defines his face outline very clearly. This image, unlike the previous black and white studio image, has a very clean, sharp look to it where as the other looked grainy. This clear, crisp look to the image works well as it has such a high and strong contrast, bringing out his features, such as his eyes and hair and in the fence. Another thing about this image is the clothing attire, he’s dressed in a glowing clean white top, which going with the contrast of the image, again brings out the dark tones of both him and his surroundings.

This image is Fashion, mixed with Street Photography. These types of shoots are great when advertising a whole outfit. This is because it helps the audience imagine themselves wearing the products in an outside location, which would help them decide if they may or may not want to by said products. This is one of the only full body shots hes taken that I could find, again hes made the background blurred, which makes the model stand out more, and the clothes the model is wearinf is mostly blacks, this makes them stand out more as the background, even in a blur, is much more colourful compared to the attire, bringing out the model more and bringing in the full audiences attention.

Damon Baker Instagram Page;

https://www.instagram.com/damon_baker/?hl=en

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