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larsbjorge-blog · 4 years

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This Is Me, Tagged

Okay, get comfy – I got tagged twice, by talented Flickrites Mysi Anne and Sina respectively, so I’ve decided to do two sets of sixteen. The first set is mostly photography-related, and the second set is more personal. I tend to fill these things out thoroughly, so there’s a lot to read here, but since the internet gives most people the attention span of a flea on meth, I put some extra cleavage on display for those who feel the text is tl;dr. I hope you enjoy one or the other, or both. —–

1. My favourite photographer in recent years is Nuri Bilge Ceylan. It was his work that made me believe it was possible to photograph Turkey in the way that I wanted to. I was sick to death of tourist-bait pictures of whirling dervishes, hookah bars, and belly dancers, because Turkey isn’t about any of those things.

2. If you asked me to name ten other photographers whose work turns me on, most of the names would be people whose work I discovered on Flickr. You don’t have to be famous to rock me.

3. I chuckle at equipment snobs and their strutting and posturing about what snazzy gear you "must" have and what techniques you "must" use, because for all their official know-how, 95% of the time their oh-so-technically-perfect shots leave me bored. Although I like buying new equipment as much as the next person, it’s certainly not required to take good pictures. There’s a person in my Flickr contacts who takes the most amazing photos with his mobile phone, and another who rocks my world with his Lomo. Some people never get it through their heads that it’s not about the camera. In the industry we call this "having more money than sense."

4. I also laugh at people who think that digital post-processing isn’t part of photography, or is "cheating." What, you think film photographers of the past didn’t post-process? Please, do your homework – half an hour of research on the web will wipe out that little fantasy. The great majority of tools in Photoshop are just computer adaptations of manual darkroom techniques that have been widely used for many decades by just about every photographer of note. I’m not saying it’s necessary to process the hell out of every photo you take, but refusing to use all the tools available to you because of some weird misinformed pride seems silly to me.

5. I have this strange skill for remembering exactly where I was standing when I took any given photo, even if I took it 20 years ago in a place I only visited for a day. This has made geotagging a lot easier.

6. If post-processing fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, I’d probably lose my interest in digital photography pretty quickly. If I’m out shooting and it’s going really well, my chief thought is always, I can’t wait to get home and play around with these.

7. On the other hand, I almost never post-process film shots, because most of my film cameras are ones that are known for their specific effects (Soviet cameras and so forth), and I don’t feel the need to mess with that. I will fix cracks and damage in old prints, unless the damage makes the photo more awesome, which it often does.

8. Go ahead, gasp in horror if you want… I don’t really like B&W photography, except in cases of faux-vintage or actual old photographs. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate the beauty of B&W photos or the talent that goes into making them, and a few of my favourite photographers do shoot primarily in B&W, but when people post a B&W and a colour version of the same photo, I always like the colour one better. I hear people say how they think B&W tells a more dramatic story, but I just don’t see that at all.

9. I don’t keep multiple versions of the same photo. I find it unnecessary, and potentially confusing, as I only ever process a photo one time, and then I’m done with it forever. I trash both my raw files and my PSDs when I’m certain have the final version of the photo. I have never, ever felt the desire to rehash old, stale raw files that have already been done. I always take a fresh supply of new shots if I want something to work on.

10. I have a huge offline library of both digital and film photos from years past. This year I’m going to work on getting them all up on Flickr.

11. My eyes are black, and although I think they look nice in real life, in photos they tend to look like lumps of coal shoved in my eye sockets. So I almost always level them up in post. I also enjoy playing around with the colour of them – I don’t think making eyes green or blue in a photo is any different than people wearing coloured contacts for fun certain days of the week. This is one of the few photos where my eyes are completely natural, because I thought the lumps of coal thing worked well in that particular shot.

12. Some photographers get arrested for the photography itself… I’m more likely to get arrested for associated breaking and entering. If I see a place that I want to get to to take photos, I get like a pit bull about it, and regardless of locks or restricted access, it’s very unlikely that you’ll convince me not to break in there. I’ll just politely agree with you that it’s a bad idea, and then I’ll wait until you fall asleep and I’ll sneak out. I’ll be back before you wake up, with a memory card full of awesome. Or, you’ll get woken by a phone call and have to come bail me out. Whichever.

13. I don’t wear makeup except on very special occasions, so if you see makeup on me in a photo, you can be 100% sure it was post-processed. I can’t stand having all that chemical gunk on my face, but I do think it looks nice, especially in pictures.

14. I love it when my female friends e-mail me a snapshot of themselves and ask me to "please fix it up." I don’t think photos of women (or any other subject) always have to be about concrete reality – a little fantasy is nice sometimes. The women I associate with are smart enough not to compare themselves to an edited photo, or even to want to look like that in real life. We can teach young girls those same values without having to resort to censorship. It’s good for kids to see and learn the difference between fact and fiction, and to appreciate the merits of both. If we start banning things, they won’t get the opportunity to learn to distinguish.

15. If you gave me a $1,000 gift certificate from my local camera shop, I’d buy an old-skool original Lensbaby, a Sigma 10-20mm, and the new Nikkor fiddy (the 1.4 – G, not D).

16. If you sent me on a slow trip around the world and told me I could only take one camera and one lens, I’d be perfectly happy with my D40 and the 18-200mm VR. I don’t need anything fancier than that for traveling, and I sure as hell don’t need anything heavier or larger.

—-

1. Photography is something I enjoy doing, but I’m not a particularly visual person. Music is who I am. I made my debut as a professional pianist at the age of 9, and as a professional singer at the age of 14. My major in university was music composition, and the second time I went to uni I did a degree in recording arts with a specialty in critical aural analysis.

2. I’m left-handed, but I don’t write in that weird, contorted, hand-twisted-backwards way that most left-handers do. I write like a normal person, just with my left hand instead of my right.

3. You wouldn’t know it from my public presence on the internet, but my language habits in everyday life would make a sailor blush. You know how Debra in Dexter talks? Yeah, pretty much like that. I always laugh at that antiquated line about how people who swear a lot do so to cover up for a poor vocabulary. That’s a crock – believe me, I know plenty of words, and I know how to use them correctly. Many of them begin with C or F, so what?

4. I’m going to be 36 this month, and I think I’m better-looking and more attractive now than I have ever been.

5. Five years ago at this time I weighed 265 pounds. Don’t ask me for the magic secret, because you already know there isn’t one. If there were, everyone would have done it by now, and there would never be any fat people in the world.

6. I’ve traveled to four continents, and lived on three of them.

7. I’m compulsively goal-oriented, and one of my goals for 2009 is to buy a new outfit every month, as I haven’t had any new clothes at all in almost five years. The ensemble you see in the photo is my outfit for January.

8. A few years ago I tore my ulnar collateral ligament, and was told that without surgery I would never regain the use of my thumb. I decided to trust my gut feeling instead of the doctor, and didn’t have the surgery. My hand is fine now, and aside from some minor twinges in humid weather, I can’t tell the difference between the hand that was injured and the one that wasn’t.

9. I have the kind of hair that makes people want to punch me. I get it cut once a year (I’m almost due for my yearly salon visit), I wash it twice a week, and I don’t even own any styling products or tools. The last time I used a brush or comb was sometime during the Reagan administration. I don’t even comb it after I wash it. It just doesn’t tangle, and it looks however it looks straight out of bed. Some days it’s mostly straight, and other days it’s quite wavy. I never do anything to it in Photoshop aside from the occasional colour change for fun. What you see in the above photo is 100% natural.

10. I don’t think I’d ever have elective cosmetic surgery, but if you held a gun to my head and forced me to have something done, I’d get my lips plumped. It’s kind of a strange thing to say, because every time I plump them up in Photoshop, I think it looks stupid and I undo it. But when I look in the mirror, I think I wouldn’t mind if they were just a little more… robust.

11. I find cooking soul-destroyingly boring, not to mention a gigantic hassle. I avoid it whenever possible.

12. I’m a winter girl all the way. I absolutely do not see the appeal of summer, unless you have a fetish for sweat or stinky people. Or unless you live in a place where the summers are reasonable, like England. I did love summer in England – it’s one of the things I really miss about living there.

13. I’ve lived a stone’s throw from the beach for almost five years, and I’ve been down there maybe twice. I’m more into swimming pools – sticky salt hair and a crack full of sand just isn’t my idea of a good time, sorry. I do like going to the beach to take pictures, though.

14. I have a raging sweet tooth that cannot be tamed. When I come to your country, the first thing I want to see is the array of desserts your people have to offer me. So far, Italy has been the most spectacular in this respect, though it should be mentioned that I have not yet visited India, where I understand they start by making normal desserts for mortals and then soak them in syrup. Win.

15. I’m not into politics whatsoever, but it’s nice that the Obama administration is the first government that hasn’t implied I’m a filthy un-American traitor for choosing to live somewhere else. In fact, Obama’s web site has a whole section devoted to Americans abroad, and I was shocked to discover that they weren’t just talking about soldiers or people who were sent away to work for American companies. They mean everyone abroad, including me.

16. That said, if I were forced to go "back where I came from," I’d more likely go back to Europe than the United States. I don’t feel that preference shows any indication of a diminished love for the US. I’m just enjoying living on this half of the planet, that’s all. I don’t have any hate for the other half.

2009.187

Posted by Melissa Maples on 2009-02-03 15:24:39

Tagged: , antalya , turkey , türkiye , asia , 安塔利亚 , 土耳其 , 亚洲 , nikon , d40 , ニコン , 尼康 , nikkor , af-s , 18-200mm , f/3.5-5.6g , 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6g , vr , 1:1 , square , me , melissa , maples , self-portrait , woman , brunette , brown , window , long hair , brown hair , cleavage

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