Hole in the Clouds

Incomplete Makeover #1

Feb 15, 2011

Here is Lali in Buenos Aires, the little girl in 1978 and the big girl thirty-two years later, in 2010. Argentinian photographer Irina Werning has published a series of such portraits, which she calls Back to the Future. The exercise requires a degree of attention to detail--re-creating the pose, facial expression, clothing,setting, lighting, and color tone of the original--that Werning says it taught her just how obsessive she is about her work.

We'll look at another one tomorrow.

Incomplete Makeover #2

Feb 16, 2011

For a second look at photographer Irina Werning's Back to the Future portraits, we have Matias, on the beach in Uruguay, in 1977 and again thirty-three years later in 2010. The adult Matias is a reasonably attractive young man, but even though he's not wearing children's clothes and his pose here isn't flamboyantly juvenile, there's something almost creepy about a grownup presenting himself as an adorable little boy.

Sleepy Man Banjo Boys

May 11, 2011

I have nothing to say about the video below, which shows the Mizzone brothers practicing an old Earl Scruggs tune, "Flint Hill Special." Jonny Mizzone, the banjo player, is 8 years old; Robby, the fiddler, is 12, and Tommy, who plays guitar and mandolin, is 13.

They live in New Jersey. They say they've got another brother coming up, who they hope will play bass.

Loud Inside

May 1, 2012

For an advertising campaign to promote the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich photographers Andreas Mierswa and Markus Kluska somehow shot pictures that appear to be looking out, or trying to look out, from inside musical instruments.

Winter Wonderlands #1: France

Dec 27, 2012

In the wintertime around the French ski resort of Les Arcs, the sun sets early; to get his tromping done, Simon Beck has to wear a headlamp along with his snowshoes. He'll stomp the snow, guided by his orienteering compass, for days on end, from can to can't, filling pristine snowfields with enormous works of art as big around as six football fields and impossible to fully apprehend except from high above. 

Beck is an engineer by training and a longtime orienteer by profession. He roughs out the geometry of his designs using what he calls "a kind of reverse orienteering." Then he fires up the music on his MP3 player and slowly, painstakingly, stomps in the details.

He made his first snow designs in 2004. "The main reason for making them," he said, "was because I can no longer run properly due to problems with my feet, so plodding about on level snow is the least painful way of getting exercise.

"Gradually, the reason has become photographing them, and I am considering buying a better camera."

Mmm, Chocolate

Mar 31, 2013

Happy Easter.