LaurieWrites

Fallen Princesses: Art Imitates Real Life

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel,any remaining illusions I had of charmed lives for princesses did too. I was a teenaged Anglophile, one of the millions who woke up extra early to watch her wedding day on tv, and felt real sadness - whether I should have or not - in the years after as that initial fairy tale story crumbled.

There it was. Princesses - at least one,anyway - marry people who don't love them all that much, or at least not enough to cut ties with his ex-girlfriend. She gets an eating disorder and never quite gets over her parents' divorce. She goes through a series of bad relationships and then ends up unthinkably dead in a traffic tunnel. And this when it seems, only just seems, that she might be beyond the worst part of the learning curve.

I'm tempted to sugar-coat this as some kind of life lesson but I fail miserably at that, which may be why Dina Goldstein's Fallen Princesses photo series remains very much on my mind, a week after I saw it for the first time on the JPG Magazine site.


Even Cinderella's coach breaks down in a sketchy neighborhood. All images brilliantly shot by and courtesy of Dina Goldstein.

Goldstein takes princesses - the Disney versions, this time - and depicts what may have happened after the closing credits. Cinderella's hitching because she got drunk in a dive bar. Snow White looks miserable with a house full of children. And in the ones that hurt me to look at the most, Rapunzel holds her wig of long braids during chemotherapy, and Belle lies on an operating table during a plastic surgery procedure.

As a strictly in-the-moment shooter who knows and chooses not to take on the work that goes into studio photography, I'm impressed with Goldstein's work on a technical level and also of any use of photography to intentionally comment on larger issues. It's one of its most important uses, I think.. In Goldstein's words on JPGMag.com:

As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm's stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

Now, despite what any Facebook quiz would have me think, I am not any kind of Disney princess, unless upcoming releases include Princess Who Swears-a-lot, or @Laurie of Twitterlandia. I grew up in the generation after the classics were released - Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella, and they really didn't work for me. I was honestly freaked out even at an early age by the recurring theme of women needing to pass out for indeterminate periods of time in order for things to get better. No thank you. I was way into 101 Dalmations and Mary Poppins, stuff like that, and if anything really scarred me for life it was Bambi.

Real life has not been princessy either. Issues, I have issues. Externally, weight gain, a congenital facial scar, eyeglasses, unfortunate spiral perms. Internally, a crazy penchant for overanalysis and an occasional attitude problem. You name it, I got it. For more appropriate pop culture references, I was Winona Ryder in Heathers, minus the Christian Slater killer boyfriend, or Janeane Garofalo to my best friend's Uma Thurman in the Truth About Cats and Dogs. I maybe passed out sometimes, but there was no guy standing over me at the end crying. (And if there was, he needed money for the tab.)

Now that's just a cheap parenthetical joke. But the truth is, I've been jealous of women whose lives have appeared to be more charmed, more princessy than mine, at least aesthetically. I've thought that real-life girls who were popular, and pretty, and consistently boyfriended, were better off than me.

That's the truth. Sometimes I thought it because they strongly insinuated it, or because social interactions made me feel that way. Or maybe I thought it because of music videos, or movies with impossibly happy endings that looked nothing like my life (or to be honest, anyone's I knew, but we all kind of live in our own head until jarred out of it.) Even last night, watching a rerun of The Office at the gym, I was all, "Look how cute Jim is. Where's MY Jim? Pam's life is AWESOME. I'll just keep doing this here elliptical exercise for thousands more hours and some day, my Jim will come up to me in the parking lot with Dwight who will hand me things to photocopy!"

I said there were issues, right, just so we're clear? Now, I know and you know that Pam is not real, and in most cases I would not indeed like to be a paper company receptionist in Scranton, Pa., (unless Jon Krasinski really did work there, oh my word) but this is what happens to my brain while watching closed-captioned sitcoms while exercising. I have no real desire to fly around with a guy on a magic carpet Jasmine-style, or dance with talking tea cups and butter dishes waiting for a beast to transform in some creepy castle. I would not have argued, however, if Lloyd Dobler showed up in the Malibu. Alas, the person I mistook for him showed up in a trashed Jetta for which he paid $1 and moved into an undergraduate dorm five years later at an advanced age, leaving me behind with a stack of books about letting go Buddhist style and an assortment of irrational behaviors.

Would a princess have better luck? I don't know, because I haven't met any. But life proves to me frequently that real life is not charmed really, for anyone. Happiness is fleeting and weird. Princessy people are happy or sad depending, just like average people, whatever that may mean. I know people who I believe to be very attractive who pick themselves apart worse than I ever have, who are not happy with their internal or external selves. Beauty pageant winners are dethroned, while it is considered remarkable that Susan Boyle can sing at all given her physical appearance, and when she opens her mouth the world pats itself on the back for its enlightenment until she gets second place and ends up hospitalized (there's a Disney theme for you.) And you know, while I'm on the uplifting tip: nobody gets out alive.

Like my co-contributing editor and brilliant blogger Rita Arens wrote about the Fallen Princesses, happiness is relative, and hard-won:

In real life, happiness is the time spent being thankful you aren't going through hell anymore. In real life, we don't know happy unless we've been sad, really sad, or really angry, or really sick. Once we've been all of those things, we learn to appreciate moments when nothing is wrong --- and see them as happiness instead of the status quo.

If Rita's right, I should be accompanied by bluebirds 24/7, and even though I'm not currently bursting with joy, what I'm learning to identify as happiness in her terms is simple contentment, best experienced by not comparing other peoples' experiences and circumstances with mine. This may be why I choose not to watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

A larger aim of Goldstein's set might be to realize the very obvious and basic truth that is nonetheless easy to miss when you're caught up in bibbity-bobbity-boo and whatnot: I don't decide happy for princesses and their ilk any more than they ought to decide it for me, no matter what the zeitgeist says. And if I think for a minute that anyone is immune to common suffering like disease, addiction, lost love, or body image issues - no matter what slice of princess life we've seen in movies or through the media lens - that misconception is mostly on me.

As another well-known BlogHer, co-founder Lisa Stone wrote on Surfette in response to Rita's post:

Amen. We live, we learn, we grow up, we are thankful, we learn to find our happiness.

Unless, for some reason, we don't.

Other reactions:

A Cup of Jo finds the series "genius and heartbreaking."

Kelly at DesignCrush liked "seeing the flip side of the typical fairytale."

The Queen of the Quarterlife Crisis was "enthralled" by the images.

My friends and I have been saying for years that it's really the fairytales we heard as children that actually fucked us up. These grand illusions of men climbing up a girl's braid to "rescue her" can really give a girl a COMPLEX. Anyhow, the artist here replaces the "happily ever after" with reality that addresses current issues such as war in the middle east, addiction and self-image.

10 Summer Photo Commandments

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

The summer solstice puts the actual season a few weeks away, but the May and June proliferation of graduations, weddings, beach trips and barbecues mean summertime even if the calendar hasn't yet caught up. Since so many events often mean much capturing of memories on memory cards (and film? Yes, please?), it seems like a good time to make a little list of Ten Entirely Subjective Commandments for Successful Summer Photography.

Let's shoot, shall we? (Sorry.)

1. Get your gear in gear. Find your battery chargers. Um, actually, find your camera. Then make sure it works. Then make sure it's charged. It's sad to head out the door to a highly photographable, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime event and find out last minute that the pictures aren't happening due to preventable technical difficulties - like I did, at my sister's graduation last week, when I walked out the apartment door with the battery still in the charger, on the wall. DUH. Besides, even if you're not that spaced out, summer is a great time to scan photo sales if you find you're in need of an upgrade, and hopefully you'll have until next year when all the new models come out and your sweet camera is obsolete. The new crop of ever-cheaper, powerful point and shoot and entry level DSLR options is seemingly endless, if a little overwhelming. The digital camera space on Cnet.com is my go-to for comparisons and reviews.

2. Make friends with your camera, if you haven't. Read - at least skim - the instruction manual, preferably the part about what the different controls mean on the main dial. Yes, this might hurt a little, and I don't want to underestimate anyone's skill level, but at the nature photography classes I teach, almost to a woman the students are terrified of their cameras beyond "auto" mode, and this gets worse as the manufacturers pack more power and picture quality into basic point-and-shoots. You don't have to be a techie to learn a thing or two about what you can make this little machine do, but if you pick up a few pointers it will show in your photos. Does your camera have a "fireworks" option? Maybe. Do you need to understand how it works? Not necessarily, but if you even just know to click over to it your 4th of July pictures will rock. And the best thing is you never have to tell.

3. Work out your shooting rhythm when traveling and/or attending events in groups. My family is used to the fact by now that I'll always be lagging behind because I'm taking pictures, and I am very skilled at spotting the backs of their heads in the distance. Good thing I'm a fast walker who likewise knows when to step up my game if we're behind schedule. It means a lot to me that they don't nag me to hurry up - much - and I think they enjoy the results of my work enough now that they leave it alone.

4. If you're always the photographer, get in the picture, even if it's one, even if it's just to say you were there. If you have "I hate photos of myself" issues (which I clearly understand) maybe this is the season to work with them a little. If you don't, and it's just because you're always the one with the camera, that's even more of a reason to work your way in the frame at some point. On our recent trip to California for my sister's graduation, a picture-taking friend was along who shot one of the nicest pictures ever of us with our parents. My Facebook friends were shocked to see me in a picture that wasn't self-snapped in a ladies room (hey, whatever works), and I'm glad to have a memento of the occasion to frame for my parents and for us. Win.

Here we are, courtesy of Holly, aka blogblossoms, parent of one of my sister's classmates. Thanks again, Holly. We really appreciate it (especially me, because one Christmas present in a better-than-average frame? Done! And no, the wine glasses will not be cropped out. Tastees, they were tastes! Thank you, Temecula, California.)

 

5. Only two of you, siblings, spouse, bffs?? Ask someone close by to snap your photo. I know, I know it's tempting to stick with the arms-length couple self-portrait, and I'm all in favor because they can be fun, but sometimes you want to both be in the frame without your arms freakishly outstretched. Also, return the favor. I offered to take the photos of two different families in California last week so they'd all be in the picture, and it was almost embarrassing how grateful they were. Scoping out passersby for a potential photographer can be awkward, so offering puts people out of their minor social misery and also restores a little bit of faith in humanity. Again, win.

6. If you're traveling, dump memory cards every day if you can. If you can't, either because you lack a laptop or another storage source, alternate cards and leave one in the room. If the card goes wonky or worse yet, the camera is stolen, better to lose only part of your vacation shots than all of them. I typically split trips up on a few 4GB cards, with one 8GB in my bag for video.

7. Use your mobile phone to shoot in addition to or in the absence of a camera. Some parts of my trip to San Diego last week were not conducive to lugging the big camera around, and sometimes shots happened when I wasn't prepared with anything other than the iPhone. I'm here to tell you - some of these shots are some of my favorite of the trip. Add in my obsession with the ShakeIt app that allows iPhone photos to "develop" on the screen like tiny Polaroids, and yes - I'm sold, for the 1.99 cent cost of this little gem. (Thanks to Aimee at Greeblemonkey for that tip.)

The plumeria, they're everywhere in Ocean Beach! I'd pay money to take the gorgeous smell home with me, but the photo is the next best thing.

8. Edit and upload (or even print, remember that?) as the summer rolls along - and selectively, especially if you're short on time. It's tempting to wait until you've got a chunk of time to deal with the hundreds of Grand Canyon shots, but the deal is that if you do wait, you'll end up with a family wedding, kindergarten graduation and the first crab feast to deal with too, and that will all feel even more daunting. On Flickr, less can be way more, and better to document the best of what you've got than wait for the whole shebang. And the best will stand out when you skim, trust me. You know this.

9. Speaking of mobile phones, upload to your Flickr, Facebook, Twitpic, etc. on the go. Pick your online social networking and/or photo storage spot, plug the contact information into your cell phone, and rock it out. It's the easiest way I've found to practice my moblogging skills, which is a good thing considering my current lack of frequency in even updating my Flickr stream, much less my poor little blog. I am not (unfortunately) paid to shill for Apple, but my iPhone is my favorite and my favorite thing about it is that I can slap stuff up on Flickr and, increasingly, Facebook when I feel like it. Want to make your friends and family jealous that you're sitting on a beach and they're sitting at a desk in the suburbs? Go ahead. I do. I don't care who thinks I ought be reading my book instead of geeking out on the beach. I'm making my own visual, digital archive and I love it. I can even post to Typepad - my blog platform - by putting the contact information in my phone or using my phone's Web browser if I'm feeling particularly ambitious.

10. Finally, just take - and print! - the picture. Have fun. Walk the beach. Skip posed and go candid at family events and vacations. "Good pictures" are relative, and what works for someone else may not for you. Growing into photography has literally made me see the world differently, and it's gotten to the point where I don't have to buy a bunch of souvenirs when I travel or worry I'll forget special events as time passes. My digital photo record is one of my most prized possessions and it's even better when I can share it with my family and friends. Making sure some of these shots make it to print is a bonus, especiaily for gift-giving and surrounding yourself with meaningful, hopefully beautiful, images on a daily basis.

This is the shot that I'm going to hang on my wall and put on my desktop at work, so when things are getting rough I can remember walking the glorious Sunset Cliffs National Park, feeling better than I had in months. Happy summer!

Related:

Geek.com's round-up of the "Best Cameras for Summer 2009."

All about Facebook Mobile, from Facebook.com.

Keep your summer photo mojo going with Photojojo's (that was completely unintentional) very fun time capsule. Hook up your Flickr account with their Web site and twice a month you'll receive photos from that time, a year before. I love it.

Sheri J's photoblog entry from last year: A Few Reasons I Miss Summer.

Shutter Sisters has news about an awesome National Geographic contest. The prize is a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Check out the Flickr blog for constant inspiration, including 5 question interviews with the likes of Barbara Fischer.

20 Photography Twitters Worth Following - and the Five Best Waterproof Compact Cameras - from Popular Photography magazine.

SXSW Smiles and Photo Dreams - What's Yours?

Cross-posted at BlogHer, with a few additions here.

As a photographer and an adult with a cleft lip and palate who had a transformative experience shooting an Operation Smile dental mission in Vietnam a year ago this week, I was thrilled to see the SXSW Smiles project at the huge SXSW Interactive conference in the oh-so-awesome Austin.

Well, I didn't actually see it. I almost missed it entirely. I walked out of my last panel on the last day smack into a table that had piles of Operation Smile stickers and buttons on it (I was tired, and it turns out when you buy an iPhone you can spend a lot of stupid time looking at the ground.) It kind of hurt my knee, but it got my attention. And after a little bit of research into the project that brought a nonprofit organization like this one to a huge tech conference, I kicked myself harder than usual for not paying attention before. There's a lot to pay attention to at this conference, but this is one more thing that given my love for this organization's mission of providing surgical repair for facial differences - primarily cleft lips and/or palates - around the world, I feel like the universe should have put in my scattered, hurried path. (And the universe is like, "Hi, pay attention to the important stuff, thanks.") So I am now, and I hope you will too.

Renee Alexander Hamilton, Operation Smile's Social Media Strategist who represented the project at SXSW Interactive, tells the story on her blog, SXSW Smiles Journal.

-I told her about my new role and how now I am trying to do the same thing we do in Donor Relations online and in person at events. I explained that while in the past social networking tools like chat rooms were thought to divide people and keep them at home in a dark corner having "virtual relationships'. Now with Facebook and Twitter, these interactions are actually driving in-person meet-ups and beyond that they are inspiring ACTION.

So I guess you could say I'm in Austin for a little Smile Action!

SXSW Smiles set up shop outside the very cool Beacon Lounge for nonprofits and social change organizations in the Austin Convention Center, with the goal of enough donations for 10 new "smiles" - repair surgeries for kids with cleft lips and/or palates- each estimated at $240.

Directions were simple. First, pick up or download a "Make Me Smile" sign, and write whatever makes you smile on it. Upload a photo of yourself with the sign to Flickr with the "sxswsmiles" tag. Donate by texting "smile" to 90999, or dropping it off in the Beacon Lounge.

Check out the Operation Smile SXSW Flickr set here, hosted on Alexander aka Entropy Art's photostream. The answers are fun to read - "Bhangra," "our absurdly clingy dog", "hot salsa"- and you'll also get a peek at some of the folks roaming the halls of SXSW, if that's a draw. I would include them for you here, but "all rights reserved" is what it is.

The SXSWSmiles project is part of a larger $240 Smile Challenge March (aka Smile Month.) The cause's Facebook page says that $4203 has been donated so far and $3710 is still needed to reach their goal of providing 20 repair surgeries to children. Check it out.

While this is so much on my mind, Lenovo Microsoft is asking people to "Name Your Dream Assignment," asking "Where will your lens take you?" on a photo project for which they will give a prize of $50,000, a video camera, a blog and a computer to record it all. I haven't entered, but mine? To go on a mission - a surgical one this time, and to shoot it. I don't know when or how this will happen, but I believe that it will, and just as I felt in Vietnam, I think it'll be one of the most important things I ever witness.

And why? I'm as idealistic as I am hardcore about photography, and that's a lot. Photos can change lives, I will boldly, idealistically, perhaps overdramatically say - whether they're photos of people talking about what makes them smile or, maybe more importantly, photos taken before and after cleft lip and/or palate repair. No pictures exist of me prior to my lip repair at six weeks old. Hospitals didn't take photos of babies with facial differences then. I'm not sure what the deal was in my family, honestly - I do know my mother was never ashamed of me, in fact saw beyond my flaws as mothers most often do. Who knows what pressures existed on a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, in the days before cameras were omnipresent, everywhere, where images were immediately available.

But photos are essential and I wish there were some. I would love to see what I looked like before this repair, to see the reality of this situation that has affected my life like no other. And I like seeing the impact a simple repair surgery can make on a child who may otherwise walk around in their impoverished town or village with a gaping whole where there ought not to be one. Photos can inform and change perceptions and raise awareness just like, and sometimes even more than, words can. It can be difficult to see if you're unaccustomed, but just like with many things that present challenges that can't be easily solved, or aren't so pretty, or disturb on some level, they don't go away just because we don't pay attention.

When its in a picture in front of your face, it's hard to ignore, so may there always be pictures of important things in front of our faces.

Me, exhausted, at the end of a harrowing trip, happy nonetheless to be spending time with the very important kids at Hanoi Medical University, March, 2008. Many had just received their first dental exam. Photo kindly taken by their teacher. (The whole set is here. I love these pictures.)

And I can easily say that Operation Smile is my favorite new Twitter contact from SXSW Interactive.

Other photo dreamers for this and other causes:

Joanne Bamberger/PunditMom's dream assignment is to tell the stories of moms keeping their families afloat in tough economic times.

Katie Ring's Photography and Life blog with footage of Operation Smile patients in India and her photos of a mission there.

Audra, an American expat writing at Nicaragua: The Obandos accompanied her students from the American Nicaraguan School on an Operation Smile mission

Beth Kanter was a fixture in the Beacon Lounge and wrote prolifically about the nonprofit presence at SXSW and in social media communities. Her post on the Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam is a good place to start, but scroll around for lots more. <

A pink boa

Just to lighten the mood.

(But it's still of me, and also taken by me, lest there be a break in the navel-gazing.)

Day of the Dead

I spend time in the cemeteries every time I go to New Orleans. Lafayette No. 1 is right up the street from my friend's house in the Garden District, so it's easy to shoot there. I spent most of my time downtown on my August trip but I stayed out on St. Charles on my last night and day in town.

There are more in the set here, and in this one from the April trip, with shots of Lafayette No. 3,
downtown.

These places - their history and this way of remembering generations of a city - fascinate me. The mix of grief and joy is something so difficult to understand about how we leave the people we love behind, but as far as monuments go, I've not seen anyone do it better than New Orleans. I think you have to understand loss deeply in order to process it and represent it well, and it makes sense that the people here get it.

 

Canon, Nikon or Independent: the Camera Candidates

Crossposted at BlogHer. (Where I love comments. Hint, hint.)

What's the difference between a Laurie who shoots with a Nikon and a Laurie who shoots with a Canon again?

NO, not lipstick, silly - just a jerk of a camera thief at the DNC.

I am to cameras what is known in political parlance as a "GDI." (Great, darling Independent, of course.) My first camera as a photography student a few years back was a Canon film SLR, which I still love although I am so pressed for time that my relationship with film has dwindled - temporarily, I hope. Just months later, I scraped together my pennies and bought a Canon Digital Rebel, and somewhere along the way I got a Canon PowerShot point and shoot too.

Early Canon Rebel buddhas, San Francisco, 2006.

I loved the Rebel deeply and without reservation and used it daily, until it died just a month out of warranty, I was grad-school broke and couldn't even afford the $250 that the company wanted for my joy of sending it to New Jersey for them to just look at. Plus, I was angry. I made do with the PowerShot plus another model that I got, and still consider them among the most solid cameras you can buy.

Moving more into photojournalism and school and in my work, I needed a new DSLR. I was wary of getting another Digital Rebel, even though a couple generations of them had come and gone since my experience. I didn't have many lenses yet, which in the D/SLR world usually determines what brand one sticks with. Plus I knew some excellent shooters who worked with Nikon.

Chevy/Ford? Toyota/Honda? Paper/plastic? These are easy debates compared to this one. 

In the end I decided to switch it up, and see how the other half lived, while maintaining strong allegiance to my PowerShot. So with some help from my student loan, I bought a Nikon D80 this February.

I thought I'd settled down. I loved that camera. I took a picture of it before it came out of the BAG. I took it everywhere. The kit lens (i.e. the lens the manufacturer sells to you in the initial package) was excellent - a much better bet than the Rebel's. I was off and shooting again. I took it to Vietnam. To New York.  To BlogHer.

At BlogHer I connected with some great women and photographers, many of them Nikon shooters. New Nikon Buddhas, San Francisco, 2008.

I joined NikonSisters on Flickr, led by Karen Walrond and Stephanie Roberts. I'm hoping I can still be an ally. Shooters particularly striking me in that photostream right now include Kirsten aka iheartnewyork, SewFab Martha (link to her blog plus sewfabmartha on Flickr), and Kristin/aka MaineMomma.

Enter Denver and the DNC a couple of weeks ago. I was looking forward to shooting the whole event for work and for fun, and things got off to a good start - until the D80 was stolen on the second night in a series of events that I will not detail here lest I sob again.

A few days after I got back from a trip where once again a Canon PowerShot saved my photographic ass, I bought a new Canon - this time a Digital Rebel, after a quick text to Aimee Greeblemonkey, one of my favorite photographers regardless of brand, who responded quickly and helped me nail my decision down. Cost factored into it, with the Rebel a bit cheaper than the D80 and the Canon 40D just beyond my reach. Add a Labor Day deal that threw in a telephoto lens and it was a done deal. I looked forward to the chance to use my film camera again. 

I've used the new camera a few times since I got it, not much yet, but it's served me well on one story assignment and I think it'll work out just fine. It's nicely light, but not flimsy. The image quality is good. I'll get some new lenses. I'll try not to let it out of my sight. 

Because the reality is that if a jerk hadn't stolen my camera (I mean, really, did that have to happen?) I'd still be shooting with the D80, which tempers the new-camera joy just a bit. And although I'm getting used to the Rebel XSi, how it feels in my hand and how the images look on the screen, I'm still really sad that one of the few material goods I really valued and used so regularly was lifted. There are many worse problems to be had, I know, but some things are just disappointing. 

And all of that said, clearly the brand doesn't so much matter to me as the ability to express myself in images does. It turns out I really do reach across the aisle. If a rocking Sony or Fuji presented itself I'm sure I'd use that too. 

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

The Nikon/Canon debate doesn't so much rage as simmer elsewhere on the Web: 

Alice Teh at Hello My Name is Alice splits between a Nikon D40 DSLR and a couple of Canon Powershots too. 

Tessa at Conquering Motherhood thought the Canon dslr was too "heavy and long" for her hands so she chose a Nikon D40 as well. 

Canon has over 53,000 (53,000!) groups on Flickr. Nikon almost 51,000.  At least one group has "Canon Girls vs. Nikon Girls," which kind of scares me (and there are many, many more non-gender-specific brand competition groups.) It could get hot in there, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to deal. In my experience there is beautifully photographed room for everyone. 

Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites and will soon be updating a sadly neglected Flickr stream with all manner of Canon power shots. 

Heart - San Francisco

The rest of the BlogHer/San Francisco shots here.

NOLA 2008

The New Orleans photo set is finally done. Visit and see how I was right there at Ellis Marsalis's feet, totally in Jane Fonda's personal space, and couldn't get a full shot of Kerry Washington to save my life. Oh, there's a shot of Val Kilmer's head in there also, but you can't tell it's him. The sighting led to repeated utterances of Top Gun quotes.

"I don't like you because you're DANGEROUS, man."

The celebrity sightings were only a small part of an absolutely wonderful experience in one of the best cities in the world. I still find it among the most photogenic and inspiring places I've ever been. I saw Habitat For Humanity's Musicians' Village, the lower 9th Ward and the devastated fishing community of Chalmette. I saw more craziness in the French Quarter and thousands of women crying and singing in the Superdome. I danced and took photos with hundreds of strangers in direct view of the Mississippi River. I spent some great time with my mom and my sister and our friend Kelly. I woke up in a cozy bed in a gorgeous room looking out over St. Charles Avenue, with the sun streaming in through the windows, and I believed I hadn't been happier in months.

I also laid down on the sidewalk to take pictures of discarded Mardi Gras beads. I loved this trip and I hope it shows.

To crop or not to crop?

I can't decide.

I had a self-portrait/portrait assignment due today so I decided to have some fun with it. I was sitting in the chair at my hair salon and I'm always really taken in with the frames on these mirrors. Add an interest in 'frame within a frame' photography and there I had it.

I did not allow her to cut my bangs again this time, and my hair is blown out and looks a little Steel Magnolias meets "the Rachel" here - very 1997 - but whatever. It got less puffy when I went outside, because of course the fresh air laughs at my hair as it blows by and plasters it to my head.

My hairdresser is so cute, she does the best job imaginable blowdrying my hair, takes amazing care and lots of time to do it. And as she's finishing up she always looks at me in the mirror and says, "Are you going out tonight?" I actually was, although not the gala event that would befit the kind of job she did. I always feel compelled to spruce my plans up a little for her, just so she knows her work is going to get some press, man. I hate to disappoint her and be all, yeah, I'm going to grab some food with a friend of mine and end up watching What Not To Wear reruns.  But hey, if that's your truth, your hair might as well be working at the time. I know Nick Arrojo (not to mention Stacy and Clinton) would approve.

Mini-update

In my futile lifelong quest to stay organized and semi-linear, I'm trying to keep all my Vietnam stuff in the same place. But then I just feel like I have to link it here. I'm so confused. Anyway, pictures. Just two, and more are coming. But these are my favorites today, and two of the very very few that I didn't take. They make me smile big.