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Author Topic: Best of the Bunch  (Read 95126 times)

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #260 on: March 31, 2017, 04:14:45 am »

Wow. Special award for whoever thought of shooting a strawberry in B&W :)
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #261 on: March 31, 2017, 04:37:28 am »

Wow. Special award for whoever thought of shooting a strawberry in B&W :)

Yeah, that tickled my imagination too! There were also some great 'Leiters' in the bunch.

Rob

Telecaster

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #262 on: March 31, 2017, 03:44:23 pm »

Personal friend and photographer/Videographer for U2, Depeche Mode, etc..., also director of "The American", a wonderfully thrilling and evocative movie.

https://www.google.com/search?q=anton+corbijn

Yes, good film!

-Dave-
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Telecaster

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #263 on: March 31, 2017, 04:27:27 pm »

Which amazing thought forwards another two: does a lady who has achieved the big bucks the hard way, all by her own efforts and skills, also buy herself little rocks and metal rings? Or does she have different values? That's a bonus for today: immediate post-breakfast philosophical discussion!

In my experience the lady buys a guitar shop, hires a skilled luthier (also a lady) to do setup & repair work and runs the shop as a labor of love (not to mention source of primo coffee for in-the-know customers). The lady is also a film-era Leica afficianado, BTW.  :)  But this is a bit of an outlier tale in the world of wealth, which more broadly tends to correlate with corroding self-indulgence if not psychosis. Though in such cases at least the gold & diamond baubles survive!

Also, diamonds aren't particularly rare. Not in the ground and certainly not in the cosmos. Some dead star remnants are mostly made of carbon and are presumed to have diamond cores. The Cullinan is, by comparison with one of these, less than a pebble. That we still value diamonds as we do comes down to a combination of legacy behavior from a less informed age and a highly controlled diamond industry.

-Dave-
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #264 on: March 31, 2017, 05:24:23 pm »

Personal friend and photographer/Videographer for U2, Depeche Mode, etc..., also director of "The American", a wonderfully thrilling and evocative movie.

https://www.google.com/search?q=anton+corbijn


Tried to open this, Oscar, but all it does for me is bring me to a general list of entries for the photographer, not a video. May be a copyright trick with a mind to Brexit... now I really am starting to sweat: what if I do manage to sell my place after all, but it goes beyond the two-year 'transition' period? Will free movement of capital also be fucked? Exciting times!

More than ever it makes me think of the unimaginative, no-hope mindset that must have been behind many voters, folks with no inkling of the advantages to them of  being able to pick up the tent and go anywhere without asking anyone's permission first, but only of the opposite scenario where somebody could come over to the UK. Amazing to think that Scotland was able to get it right where England could not; but hey, there are many top Scottish brains making English companies work... I count my granddaughter amongst them!

But wait: what if Sctland goes solo, will th girl also get hoofed out of England?

Did you ever imagine you'd see the day when things in Europe could go so stupidly wrong again?

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #265 on: March 31, 2017, 05:27:43 pm »

In my experience the lady buys a guitar shop, hires a skilled luthier (also a lady) to do setup & repair work and runs the shop as a labor of love (not to mention source of primo coffee for in-the-know customers). The lady is also a film-era Leica afficianado, BTW.  :)  But this is a bit of an outlier tale in the world of wealth, which more broadly tends to correlate with corroding self-indulgence if not psychosis. Though in such cases at least the gold & diamond baubles survive!

Also, diamonds aren't particularly rare. Not in the ground and certainly not in the cosmos. Some dead star remnants are mostly made of carbon and are presumed to have diamond cores. The Cullinan is, by comparison with one of these, less than a pebble. That we still value diamonds as we do comes down to a combination of legacy behavior from a less informed age and a highly controlled diamond industry.

-Dave-


Well, Dave, thank you for teaching me a new word! At first I imagined you were making a strung-out, oblique reference to a religious type of skilled lady...

Rob

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #266 on: April 01, 2017, 06:12:53 am »

does a lady who has achieved the big bucks the hard way, all by her own efforts and skills, also buy herself little rocks and metal rings?

A young lady of my acquaintance is finally earning some bucks, and has celebrated by buying a hairless cat. She (the cat) seems very sweet, but looks like a plucked chicken next to a regular fur-wearing feline. No accounting for taste.

As for jewellery, it has been my observation, possibly not generalisable beyond my circles, that expensive watches for men are not bought by the men who wear them, but by their lovers (who may also be men, in at least one observation). So the wearing of jewellery may be more about flaunting the gift than the buying...
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #267 on: April 01, 2017, 12:22:41 pm »

A young lady of my acquaintance is finally earning some bucks, and has celebrated by buying a hairless cat. She (the cat) seems very sweet, but looks like a plucked chicken next to a regular fur-wearing feline. No accounting for taste.

As for jewellery, it has been my observation, possibly not generalisable beyond my circles, that expensive watches for men are not bought by the men who wear them, but by their lovers (who may also be men, in at least one observation). So the wearing of jewellery may be more about flaunting the gift than the buying...


I bought my own before James Bond got his - and then one (smaller, more expensive, but close to the concept) for my wife.

In general, I think that buying stuff like watches or cars is not something that should be done without consultation with the person getting the gift. One could blow a lot of money buying the wrong model version. Imagine the disappointment of getting a convertible when, in reality, the lady hates getting the wind in her hair and would have loved a closed coupe instead.

A naked cat should never be bought. By anyone. The very idea is obscene.

;-)

Rob

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #268 on: April 03, 2017, 04:56:58 pm »

More than ever it makes me think of the unimaginative, no-hope mindset that must have been behind many voters, folks with no inkling of the advantages to them of being able to pick up the tent and go anywhere without asking anyone's permission first, but only of the opposite scenario where somebody could come over to the UK.

In the US anyway there's an entire subculture of people who fear even the idea of spending significant time in other parts of the world. To them this would mean being exposed to potentially "corrupting" ideas and behavior. A consequence IMO of the psychological/emotional fraying that purity movements typically lead to.

-Dave-
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #269 on: April 04, 2017, 05:03:35 am »

In the US anyway there's an entire subculture of people who fear even the idea of spending significant time in other parts of the world. To them this would mean being exposed to potentially "corrupting" ideas and behavior. A consequence IMO of the psychological/emotional fraying that purity movements typically lead to.

-Dave-


Yes, and I think I experienced them back in the late forties/very early fifties when I was in a boarding school in India run by American, Canadian and Oz Baptist missionaries.

It was the first time I came into contact with the pleasures of the cane: we used to spend an hour every evening cooped up at desks in a room in the boarding establishment, doing homework. I'd finished doing mine, and rather than stare blankly at the same little exercise book for the rest of the hour, I decided to read a book. There was an invigilator stalking the room, as ever, this one a visiting minister (one of the few visitors the system ever had!) and he tapped me on the shoulder and said: not allowed, you know that, you have to do homework!

The next morning, shortly after we had to get up, I was called into the housemaster's room and told to bend over a chair. Three mighty, hate-filled blows with a stick. I was twelve. I have detested those people ever since, not becaue of the pain, which was very, not even for the indignity and subsequent shame of yelling my head off, but because of the blind injustice, the idea that the rule was more important than the logic, and the incapability of that invigilator, that "man of God" to see all of that simple thing for himself, his inabilty to have resolved the little matter right there and then in that study room with just a shake of his head and a smile. Never mind the notion that he'd felt compelled to report me; what a set of spiritual priorities!

Yeah, the links to isantity are paper thin.

Rob

Telecaster

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #270 on: April 04, 2017, 04:20:06 pm »

…because of the blind injustice, the idea that the rule was more important than the logic, and the incapability of that invigilator, that "man of God" to see all of that simple thing for himself, his inabilty to have resolved the little matter right there and then in that study room with just a shake of his head and a smile.

One might even conclude that these "men of God" choose their vocation because it gives them permission to express loathing for and behave cruelly towards their fellow humans. Politics serves a similar function for such folk, no?  ;)  "Yes, we could run things kindly as well as justly. But how would that let us get off!?"

-Dave-
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #271 on: April 04, 2017, 06:48:28 pm »

One might even conclude that these "men of God" choose their vocation because it gives them permission to express loathing for and behave cruelly towards their fellow humans. Politics serves a similar function for such folk, no?  ;)  "Yes, we could run things kindly as well as justly. But how would that let us get off!?"

-Dave-

Dave, maybe we could start a political party of our own?

Seriously, though, it wouldn't be the first time that I have wondered about that incident, and thought that along with all the other little sons of bitches trapped therein (the boarding school) and frequently subjected to similar doses of authority, there wasn't perhaps just a smidgen of paedophilia lurking about there in the dim corners of some minds.

One thing, though: the years that I spent there - doing time? - did bring me one huge benefit in that I developed a sense of spiritual survival that has brought me through the loss of my wife and kept me truckin' with pictures...

Rob

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #272 on: April 06, 2017, 03:05:58 pm »

Dave, maybe we could start a political party of our own?

The Get Away From Me* party?   ;D

Quote
Seriously, though, it wouldn't be the first time that I have wondered about that incident, and thought that along with all the other little sons of bitches trapped therein (the boarding school) and frequently subjected to similar doses of authority, there wasn't perhaps just a smidgen of paedophilia lurking about there in the dim corners of some minds.

The things we try to suppress or repress will express themselves anyway, but in aberrant and often harmful form. You'd think we might get a clue about this at some point…but then there's that whole getting off thing. Some folks get off on denial. Hairshirt-ism. Wankery by other means.

Quote
One thing, though: the years that I spent there - doing time? - did bring me one huge benefit in that I developed a sense of spiritual survival that has brought me through the loss of my wife and kept me truckin' with pictures...

It's a tough way of finding out what you're made of. But you do find out, I think. My mom, the center of my first eight+ years of life, died shortly before I turned nine. I doubt this made me a different person but it certainly made me a more resilient one.

-Dave-

*Title of the debut album by singer & songwriter Nellie McKay. She'd heard the first Norah Jones album, Come Away With Me, and may've been less than enamored. OTOH she's a very funny lady and may've been less than serious.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2017, 03:09:23 pm by Telecaster »
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #273 on: April 06, 2017, 03:23:17 pm »

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #274 on: April 06, 2017, 04:12:58 pm »

mbaginy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #275 on: April 07, 2017, 01:09:08 am »

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Telecaster

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #276 on: April 07, 2017, 04:40:19 pm »

I like what Brodovitch has to say about "surprise quality." IMO it applies equally well to music, as does his comment about people being spoiled by good technical quality.

-Dave-
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GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #277 on: April 08, 2017, 06:16:48 am »

Wellll.... another way of putting it is that technical quality is no longer enough to surprise. But yeah, good thoughts. "Find your way of looking at things" seems to be the distillation.
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #278 on: April 08, 2017, 01:43:40 pm »

"The photograph is not only a pictorial report; it is also a psychological report. It represents the feelings and point of view of the intelligence behind the camera."

This one seems to be fairly reasonable, but what does it say when put alongside:

"The creative life of the commercial photographer is like the life of a butterfly. Very seldom do we see a photographer who is really productive for more than eight or ten years."

Apart from the money aspect and some presumption (usually) of technical mastery, the pro isn't that different a creature to the amateur. A conclusion, if one is not to discard the whole quotations thing as nothing more than an expression of situation smartassedness, is that perhaps the amateur will spread out his possibilites over a lifetime whereas the pro burns 'em out in a shorter, compressed time-scale. The bath, in the end, holding the same volume of water and baby, with the ratio of baby to water changing as baby grows.

It must be Saturday; it will be worse on Sunday.

Rob C

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