Cherry 2000

"In the year 2017, a good woman is hard to find. A Cherry 2000 is even harder." This is the tagline of the robot women, weird outlaws, the zone, foxy renegade woman science fiction film Cherry 2000 from 1987.

It is about a guy who short-fuses his perfect female android. He can rescue her memory chip and now strives to find the same model - a Cherry 2000 - again. In order to achieve this, he hires a renegade, who helps him to retrieve one from an abandoned factory where the only remaining stock of this model is stored. The problem is that this factory happens to be situated in an apocalyptic outlawed zone full of weird, treacherous individuals. After surviving numerous dangerous perils they reach the plant and also find a replacement Cherry 2000 model. This is when the guy finally realises that the renegade he hired is actually a sexy, perfect woman and on top of that made of flesh and blood, which is so much better than nuts and bolts! What a grand story ;-). The film has got only a 4.9 on IMDB, but what do they know ... ;-) ?

And this film was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this brilliantly photoshopped photograph on Flickr:

Photo by Aaron Nace, July 2009.

The great thing about this picture is the depth-of-field (DOF) and the sharpness, crispness and lighting of the model in the foreground. Both has been achieved using photographic skill during shooting, rather than post-processing. This makes the actual edit look really natural and convincing.

The model is great too. She fits just perfectly. And reminds me of yet another great 80ies film Mannequin, which is also from 1987! Must have been the Year of Artificial Females or something like that ...

Electro-cute Hairography

Even before Glee I always was a huge fan of hairography, although I have to admit I did not have an actual term for *it* before. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, have a quick look here and it will become obvious straight away.

The great thing about the term hairography is that it is somewhat universal. It's creators probably had something in mind like: "Dance performance ... Choreography ... Flip your hair around like crazy looks cool ... Can hair dance? ... Why not ?! ... Let's just call it Hairography!". Whereas from a photography viewpoint, one could say: "What is this mysterious hair actually doing while flipping around like crazy? ... Who has the power of freezing blinks of an eye in time? ... Photography! ... A photograph of hair doing hairography ... Hair ... Photography ... Hairography!"

I'm glad I worked that one out and can now finally show you an absolutely stunning picture of hairography:

Photo by LA NADA, December 2010.

I tried a little bit of hairography myself a while ago. It is great fun and the hardest part is to get a shot where the model maintains a normal facial expression. Not sure I could do that at all whilst flipping my hair like this (apart from the fact that it is probably not long enough)!

Photo by MAT, December 2008.

Beautiful Portrait

It has been ages since my last entry! 2011 shall bring more great photographic entries for the blog, and more taking photographs myself as well!

What could be better than starting off with this absolutely fantastic portrait:

Photo by Hannes Caspar, 2008.

Great tones and expression. There is more work of the photographer on his website, which is more that worth a visit!

Also on his website I found the quite interesting Facity project. FACITY is an international online photo project. Faces from cities all around the world will be shown on a daily basis. Anyone can participate in FACITY as a photographer or a model. Apparently you just have to get in touch via the website.

Australia's Next Top Model

Ok, this entry is not exclusively related to photography, but the persons I'm going to talk about are being photographed trillions of times during their lifetimes! Besides, I did find this picture on Flickr:

Found it on the account of Plastic Beauty in June 2010, but unfortunately don't know the original source.

My thoughts when I saw this were: "What the hell ...? What's the point of putting them through all the trouble just to pick one of them as Australia's Next Top Model?" Wouldn't it be so much easier to just hire a bunch of fashion designers and photographers and organise a runway event with ALL of them? I mean, who's gonna decide? Seriously, it's only their best friend, their boyfriend (hopefully) or their dads, who could express a justified preference.

In case you are still interested here are a couple of related links:

Official promo video on YouTube.
Fox8 TV Shows.

If you want to watch a really cool "find me a model show", you gotta see Find me the Face, from the BBC! Unfortunately, they stopped doing it for some reason. Maybe too much brains involved ...?!?

However, there are two modelscouts, Becky Southwick and Jody Furlong, who compete in finding the perfect (new) model for a particular genre, beauty, editorial, fashion and so on. Their scouting hunt is quite exciting and the comments are witty. Also, the models they find are usually not the zero-size runway models, but girls (and boys!) that actually look a bit more fun and realistic. Which adds a bit more charm for me.

Anyways, that's the last rant for June. In the unlikely case that one of the BBC big boys is reading this: "Please continue!"

God Save McQueen

Found this picture on ModelMayhem:

Photo by Jay Mawson, 2010.

The concept in this one is just awesome: not only does the slogan God Save McQueen remind us of one of the most fabulous fashion designers of the decade, but also the fact how the models in the picture are dressed up in a McQ-ish style.

God Save McQueen was used as a headline for an article about McQueen in the Guardian in 2003; ironically long before it quite had the meaning that it has today ... In any case, McQueen seemed to have admired Queen Elizabeth I, as he (kind of) stated when interviewed by his mother Joyce McQueen. I'm actually impressed how he was able to stay calm when interviewed by his mom ;-)!

Alexander McQueen's website can be found here btw, and the Fashion Forum features a short biography.

Happy Birthday Miss Jones!

Two days ago I re-discovered Grace Jones as an absolutely fantastic singer and performer. If there is anybody who thinks this woman is not hot then this somebody has no idea about anything ;-).

There are no words to describe the vast variety of things she has done (apparently long before anyone else), so here you go:





And here is yet another one, which is from a photographic point of view just awesome:




One older music video and a new one from 2008, here's the mojo ...





I actually looked for videos of Grace Jones on YouTube after I read that she said that she doesn't find Lady Gaga very innovative and that is she is not at all flattered when Gaga imitates her style. Don't worry about that Grace (not that I think she doesn't anyways ...)

Gypsy Rose Lee

Just found this great candid shot of Gypsy Rose Lee performing in a burlesque show when flicking through vintage photographs on the web.

Posted on Flickr by Joy Northrop, May 2010.

Before looking up Gypsy Rose Lee on all-knowing Wikipedia, I just thought: "Great candid shot of a gentlemen kindly helping out fixing the dress of one of the models at a fashion show!" After reading up a little bit on the woman in the picture, I learned that she was a very successful burlesque performer and actress (yes in movies for all audiences) in the early 40ies. Apparently, she was famous for her outstanding striptease act, which explains why the gentleman is so keen to help ;-), and was titled "the best undressed woman in the world (or the USA?)". In 1963, she actually played a role in a film called The Stripper, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Enough to get curious about and I think it is an awesome shot, no matter what stage of undressing might have been reached later that night ...