Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Rob C on November 25, 2011, 09:29:34 am
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It's my practice to cheer for the bull.
I notice that even in the small bars many of the local guys turn their backs to the killing on tv and ogle the barmaid instead. Quite rightly so, in many cases.
Rob C
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It's the PIGS that are of most concern in your part of the world, Rob.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.
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It's the PIGS that are of most concern in your part of the world, Rob.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.
But are they worth a hill of beans?
Rob C
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My house in San Miguel is right across the street from a circa 19th Century bull ring. Mostly used now for wedding receptions. But, I've been to a couple of fights here. Not my thing, and I doubt that I'll go to any more. I always find myself rooting for the bull.
Back in 2004 I did a piece on attending a bull fight in Seville (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/death.shtml) and the shit never stopped for months. So even though I've done some very interesting bull fight photographs since, I never publish them here anymore.
Michael
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Ernst Haas did some pretty definitive slomo ones of fights; think it's the only way I'd stomach one. I've never been to see one and know I'd end up being sick and/or assaulted for my views; they do present quite a lot of them here on tv, but the best shows on the topic are the street theatre ones where ladies who object paint themselves in 'blood' and lie in topless heaps in the streets; delicious! It doesn't happen (street demos) in my little neck of the woods, though, but perhaps Fred will have more opportunity of catching such a lovely spectacle on camera in Madrid...
Rob C
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The first, and last, corrida I've seen in my life was in Nîmes, France, in the roman arènes during the fiestas: it was a butchery ! No thanks.
Is there a horny spectacle to catch in Madrid's street today Rob? All I see are depressed people talking about Moody's, Merkel and Sarko leading Europe etc...but if you like I could shoot in the street hundreds of thousands of "se vende" (on sale) flats, in all possible colors and font styles, after the great speculation. Of course, with a model it would be much more attractive and provocative but generally there are some policemen trying to fire the people who can't pay anymore the bankers, then people from 15M movement trying to empeach them...very sexy atmosphere indeed, for a photo-reporter or a war photographer.
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It's my practice to cheer for the bull.
I used to as well.
But then, I was charged up-slope by a wild board while relieving my bladder and that deeply changed my perspective on human-animal interaction.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera. Fortunately, neither had the boar...
(edit: fixed typo)
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Back in 2004 I did a piece on attending a bull fight in Seville (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/death.shtml) and the shit never stopped for months. So even though I've done some very interesting bull fight photographs since, I never publish them here anymore.
I remember that article, Michael. It was among the first I read here on LuLa and it was what got me hooked on the site. I didn't frequent the forums then, so I hadn't realised it had caused grief.
It prompted me to buy a Minolta A2, as well, which proved a nice introduction to digital photography.
Jeremy
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I used to as well.
But then, I was charged up-slope by a wild board while relieving my bladder and that deeply changed my perspective on human-animal interaction.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera. Fortunately, neither had the boar...
(edit: fixed typo)
Pierre, what did you expect? One must always pee downwind and, with luck, downhill of any other creature. (Corollary to Newton's First Law of Gravity.)
Thanks for the best giggle of the day so far!
Rob C
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The first, and last, corrida I've seen in my life was in Nîmes, France, in the roman arènes during the fiestas: it was a butchery ! No thanks.
Is there a horny spectacle to catch in Madrid's street today Rob? All I see are depressed people talking about Moody's, Merkel and Sarko leading Europe etc...but if you like I could shoot in the street hundreds of thousands of "se vende" (on sale) flats, in all possible colors and font styles, after the great speculation. Of course, with a model it would be much more attractive and provocative but generally there are some policemen trying to fire the people who can't pay anymore the bankers, then people from 15M movement trying to empeach them...very sexy atmosphere indeed, for a photo-reporter or a war photographer.
Ah Fred, perhaps the anti-fight ladies were all demonstrating (?) in Barcelona? There, they won.
If you want to see Se Vende signs, try Mallorca! Many estate agencies have closed; most are not shooting pics with real photographers anymore either; must be just the right time to invest in a set of TS lenses! Joke. Oh, and Thomas Cook's in deep poo-poo too. ¡Viva el turismo!
Rob C
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This is a really interesting composition. I like the balance between the man lunging and the chap in the foreground having a pee. Though if I were to face a wild bull I wouldn't need to have practised emptying my bladder.
David S
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>It's my practice to cheer for the bull.
re: Guardia Civil, Cadiz, Spain 1972
In another life I was a reactor operator on a ballistic missile submarine (599). In the early '70s we operated out of Rota, Spain (on the Atlantic, north of Gibraltar). Francisco Franco was still running the show then. On the rare day off we'd go Cadiz to get off base and see a little bit of Spain. One time we went to a bull fight, and as you say, we cheered the bull. But not for long. Two Guardia Civil came over to us and pressed the muzzle of his Thompson into my neck. Said something in Spanish, like, "Don't cheer the bull."
We were not in uniform, but it was clear we were gringos from the Navy base. And unwanted, but for the huge rent the U.S. was paying for use of the base.
While the government was oppressive, Spain was beautiful under Franco. With the economy still stuck in the 1930s it appeared pristine and undeveloped.
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When we came here to live thirty years ago, the 'old people' used to tell us that during Franco's time they never felt the need to lock their doors when they left the house.
Round about that time, topless swimming was all the rage. One day, my wife was at a beach here with our alsabrador - a great swimmer herself - when she was beckoned forth by the guardia civil doing a beach patrol (or just admiring the view - who could tell?). Oops, she thought, topless must still be illegal! So, setting the example for the famous two-handed Janet Jackson image, she left the comparative safety of the sea and approached the guardia. Turned out that topless wasn't the problem; the problem was the dog, because dogs had recently been banned from beaches, but nobody had seen fit to tell us.
I can understand that, if you allow your pooch to poop there, but ours was better educated than that. Educated but not very bright: you could fix her lead to a twig in the sand and she'd sit there, ignorant of the fact that she could have ripped it away without noticing. Oh well, at least she was an excellent guard dog: nobody bothered my wife for long. One display of an alsabrador's set of teeth is all it took for unwanted conversationalists to eff off with haste.
Those were indeed the days; miss them all the time.
Rob C
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Instead of cheering for the bull, which isn't in the picture, I'll cheer for the picture. There's a touch of surrealism there that makes it a really good street shot. Bravo, Michael.
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Instead of cheering for the bull, which isn't in the picture, I'll cheer for the picture. There's a touch of surrealism there that makes it a really good street shot. Bravo, Michael.
+1.
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Wot? You think an invisible bull ain't surreal?
Oy veh already...
Rob C
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The combination of violence, ritual, color and action (peak moments) make bullfights almost automatically compelling for a camera, but I simply got too old for them. I was in LA during the Occupy Wall Street hassle, and felt no urge to go look at it, though it had most of the qualities of a bullfight. Maybe if you've seen 100 riots, or bullfights, you've seen them all. I'd rather sit in a comfortable chair, with maybe a lemon-drop at hand, or a G&T, and a sketchbook to doodle on, or maybe a GH2 and manual to play with, and some kids around.
JC
Edit: Oh, yeah, I like the photo quite a lot.
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Right, John. That's exactly why, when I was in war zones, I avoided war pictures and made pictures of people. War has been wrung out in photography until it's become a cliche. Same thing applies to the photographic coverage of the Occupy fiasco. Same old crap we saw over and over and over in the sixties. If you're working for a newspaper or news magazine you have to cover that kind of meaningless garbage, but if you're a happy amateur you can avoid it and make pictures of things that matter.
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Like imaginary bull fights.
Michael
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Exactly, Michael, but it's not the bullfight or lack thereof that matters. It's the picture. You caught something in that picture that's significant and that can't be put into words. It's a hard thing to do. When you try, no matter how good a photographer you are you end up with a massive collection of failures, but every once in a while you grab something like that. But I know I'm preaching to the choir.
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Trying fails. Photography for me is a Zen practice. Trying usually produces rubbish.
Michael
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Trying fails. Photography for me is a Zen practice. Trying usually produces rubbish.
Michael
Nothing more true ever written. That was the trouble with trying to shoot stock: it seldom reached any seriously good level. The difference between doing it and shooting to assignment was in the psyche: the assignment ticked all the right ego/desire boxes I could imagine and, thus, provided lots of 'accidental' stock from the surplus commissioned stuff.
Frankly, I believe its the loss of commissioned work that creates my bubble of sloth: nothing photographic seems worth the bother...
However, one has to pass the time somehow, and there could be worse ways, I guess.
I watched a docu on big wave surfers last night. Those people have a death wish that's sometimes granted. I can understand doing it if the runout is onto a beautiful sandy beach with a tiny bar and fresh seafood on the go, but to do it knowing that you have a pile of friggin' rocks waiting for you is strange, to say the least.
Rob C
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But are they worth a hill of beans?
Rob C
I do not wish to enter the field of politics and economics discussion, but ss a Portuguese (and proudly so), I resent the PIGS acronym. There are many people suffering in these countries, and going through very difficult times with the increasing unemployment and austerity measures.
All the best,
Paulo Bizarro
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Trying fails. Photography for me is a Zen practice. Trying usually produces rubbish.
Okay, Michael, wrong term. By "try" I mean the "be there" part of "f/8 and be there." I agree that successful photography is a Zen practice. "Try" implies thinking, and thinking at the decisive moment produces trash. And to avoid getting off onto another semantic side track: by "decisive moment" I mean what Cartier-Bresson meant by it, not what most people take it to mean.
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I do not wish to enter the field of politics and economics discussion, but ss a Portuguese (and proudly so), I resent the PIGS acronym. There are many people suffering in these countries, and going through very difficult times with the increasing unemployment and austerity measures.
All the best,
Paulo Bizarro
Paulo, I don't see how you can adopt two contradictory stances at the same time: it's impossible to distance economics from perception of worth. The same (almost) symbols of affluence in the individual apply in the case of states. When the bank balance is red, you're in deep poo poo, whether you like it or not.
In the case of Portugal - look at the prices they have been charging for property and, worse sin, time-share in the 'golf' resorts. Put that into a perspective that's slightly coloured by recent memory of revolution, property-grab and Communist rule, and it's a wonder that Portugal is still kicking on any level at all! I wouldn't invest a goddam cent in the place.
As for Greece, have you been there? Italy? My mother lived in Rome for a while and one of her friends, a dear lady just reached retirement age, told her that she couldn't access her state pension because she couldn't find anyone to 'speak for her'... Spain? A great country, but one beset with the endemic problems of culture and climate, especially in the south; Catalonia clicks to a different ethic. The deep south of Europe is much as I think the US deep south must be: mañana rules. But, I can tell you, the black economy here is as awake and alive as I guess it will also be in Greece. In many ways, I think the southern European problem comes down to tourism: so easy, in times of plenty, to do nothing other than fill millions of foreign bellies and bladders with poor food and beer at high profit margins. You can even go to university in Mallorca to study that...!
A few short years ago you paid through the nose for a thinly walled one-bedroomed drawer in a high-rise apartment block; today, that little cajón isn't sellable; you probably couldn't give it away.
What am I saying, am I happy to see all this? Of course not; my own financial state is held to ransom due to all this shit that's come home to roost. But yes, I do think these countries have been the architects of their own disasters. As for the € - I remember going to the vegetable market just when the change from the peseta took place: boy, did they know how to ratchet up prices! Even a friggin' café con leche was doubled in price. Literally doubled. Then, we paid; today, they/we all pay the price of greed and general sloth.
I'm only surprised that the day of reckoning took so long to arrive.
Rob C
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If anyone's offended by my wisecrack, then I apologise. But the fact is this term PIGS is used frequently in the financial news in Australia, often as a heading on graphs depicting various characteristics and trends in these economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.
Rob's general comments in his previous post tend to resonate with my own limited experience of Italy in 2005. I remember well the first time we sat down in a local restaurant to sample the famous Italian pizza.
It wasn't a 'posh' restaurant by any standards; just an average restaurant. We were amazed at the high prices for what we understood was standard fare in Italy, the originator of the pizza dish.
We settled on a basic Pizza Margherita, hoping that the high price would be justified by an excellent taste compared with what we were used to in Australia.
Disappointingly it wasn't. It was the most basic pizza I'd ever ordered. It was not only double the price of a similar style of pizza in Australia in a similar standard of restaurant, but half as delicious.
Of course, we could have made it more delicious by ordering additional toppings, but that would have made the pizza 3x the Australian price. My point is not that italy is not capable of cooking delcious pizzas, but that most things (and services) in Italy seemed outrageously expensive compared with the equivalent product in my home country, in 2005.
There were exceptions of course. The exception that sticks in my mind was the price of Italian wine. It was just as good value over there as Australian wine is over here. I particularly liked the idea that a glass of wine was available at any time of the day, in any cafe, including small cafeterias at the railway station.
I just hope that, as a result of this current economic crisis, Italy will become a more affordable place to visit. I was rather disappointed that the Cellini sculpture of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, situated near the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, was undergoing restoration whilst I was there. I'd like to return to do a better job without the intrusive background.
Here's one of the two shots I took of that statue. As you can see, Hopeless! Ruined! :)
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Italy. If you can really include Sardinia in that definition, you'd think your pizza wasn't so bad. We were staying in Porto Cervo doing a calendar and rather than eat in the hotel, we opted to sample the fare available around the marina. We ended up using, mostly, the Clipper Bar/Restaurant (some might say aptly named) which gave the best value for the expenses money I had available to run the shoot. One evening, hoping to cut our national debt a little, we opted to drive out into the sticks for something slightly less expensive. Yeah, right: we finished up in a small country restaurant where, on checking the bill and questioning a small item that was charged at the UK equivalent of five quid (in '83!), it turned out to be a tiny saucer of olives...
Here, in Mallorca, you can have a complete menu del dia for around €8 - €10 which provides a choice of three starters, three main courses, and usually a wide selection of sweet; wine and water are also usually included in the price but not coffee. The same fare on a Sunday will set you back around €15 in the same joint. You tell me.
I suspect that's partly the problem: prices get based on what the market will bear rather than on what things cost and the profit margin required to stay in business. In other words, these little restaurants adopt exactly the same pricing techniques as so many of us photographers: they guess.
Rob C