Alfisms

Find the absurdity in everyday life and revel in it.

True love doesn't come along very often: Don't fuck it up.

It is better to have loved and lost than to be a 40 year old virgin.

Take wrestling and track -- if you can't beat them, run like hell.

You don't need that DVD recorder as much as you need to go on a road trip with your kids.

A trout in hand is a good day.

To fly or spin? The answer is obvious.

Travel to the ends of the Earth for true love. If you don't find it -- at least have fun on the trip.

The quality of a fly is only as good as the fisherman using it. My dad once caught his limit in 15 minutes using a fly he tied from the hairs on his horses hoofs.

Slow down; no amount of money is as precious as the time you have here on Earth.

Laugh at yourself and others will laugh with you; laugh at others and they will stare at you like your an idiot.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to flyfish and his wife will hate you for the rest of your life.

Valhalla Awaits

(I wrote this about 20 years ago after hearing about a friend from high school who had died, and is one of the few poems that I ever liked of my own.)

Valhalla Awaits

I fear not what awaits on the other side,
For I am a Soldier and I know.

Many are the eye that look toward me,
Faces of those who have passed before,
Not judging, for they have been there also.

On feathered wings of resplendent light,
I will be carried to the Soldiers paradise.
By beauties with golden hair and gleaming swords
Streaming through the air, guiding my soul.

“Lo, he comes,” is the cry that arises.
“Lo, here I am,” is the cry I return.
And tears fall for those left behind,
For they don’t know the beauty and camaraderie
That awaits the Soldier in Valhalla.

Never again to feel pain of sword or bullet passed,
Or to feel hunger while waiting on battle,
Never again to feel worry for those on the front line,
Or to feel betrayed by conscience.

I can now join my brothers and sisters
Who have fought in numerous fights and countless wars,
Those that know what a Soldier is about.

I need not fear what awaits on the other side,
For I am a Soldier and I know.

A typical photo shoot for me

Let’s go through a typical shoot for me.

I sometimes spend hours, days, even weeks trying to line up a model and get her comfortable enough to work with me. Let’s face it, when are an old white guy getting people to trust you with them naked takes quite a bit of work just to begin with. And this isn’t even part of the shoot, just the far-advanced preliminaries.

I can’t even begin to guess the amount of hours and gas I have wasted just driving around to check out potential places for photo shoots, and that amount has doubled since moving to this area as there are hardly any places within close proximity to do great pics in that are also secluded enough to make the models feel comfortable getting naked.

OK, got a place to shoot. Got a model to shoot. Lets move on to shoot day.

Most of my morning is taken up with cleaning my plethora of lenses (why I don’t know as I typically use only 1 or 2 of them.) Making sure the camera batteries are fully charged, the memory cards are emptied and placed in the camera bag. Other supplies for the shoot, like rope, gloves, outfits for the model to change into, plenty of water for both myself, my assistant and the model and snacks to eat to keep the energy level high. Load everything into the vehicle. This used to include things like a fainting couch, mirrors, mirror stand and everything else I might possibly want to use as a prop, but since I sold the truck, is now much less.

Fill up the tank on the car/jeep whichever one is going to be needed. Drive to wherever the model is to pick them up (sometimes 30-40 miles away or more).

Wait for them to get ready.

Wait. Wait. Wait. … fuck!

Finally get on the road. Most often drive 30-60 miles to place of shoot. Sometimes in places that require 4 wheel drive, and driving 5 miles an hour.

Unload everything from the vehicle. Start setting up exactly where and how I want to shoot things based on the attitude/demeanor of the model, and what I see in my minds eye as the finished product.
Typically the first half hour to an hour of a shoot is just wasted clicks on the camera because the real person who is the model doesn’t immediately get comfortable in front of the camera, unless they are a professional model (and I typically don’t shoot with pros as they cost money and I’m a cheap bastard who does this for fun and for free.)

The next 3-4 hours is what the model considers “the work”, and what I consider “the fun”. Outfits are changed numerous times, different poses tried in different places all intended to create different visual effects. Camera settings and lenses are constantly rearranged for changes in lighting and what I think will look “cool”. Lots of water is consumed. Snacks are eaten. More shooting is done. I am constantly moving, kneeling, laying on the ground, climbing on a structure to get a new angle, going forward or backward to catch more of the subject, less of the subject and ALWAYS, ALWAYS checking lighting to make sure that the shot is not underexposed or overexposed.

On one recent shoot I took 1400 pictures, but this is almost twice what is normally taken, and should be specified that this was over the course of 2 days with the same model.

Typically by the end of this time I am worn the fuck out and a drooling mess … and nearly as happy as I can be. It’s like running a marathon, but without all the stupid shit … like running.

Pack everything back into the vehicle. Drive the 30-60 miles back to the models home. Hug. Hug again. Hand out for a bit. Hug some more. Drive the 30-40 miles home. Leave everything in the vehicle and go pass the fuck out.

Wake up the next morning at an ungodly hour. Not because I want too, but because I have to pee at like 4 in the morning because of all that water I drank during the shoot. Figure I’m up anyway, might as well take a look at the pictures, and start sorting through them.

It most often takes me about and hour or 2 hours just for the initial assessment of the pictures, deciding which ones to keep and which ones to immediately throw out. Usually this nets me 50 or so pictures that I think are worth my time to work on. (The recent shoot of 1400 netted me around 200 pictures I thought were worthy.)

Start working on the RAW photos in Photoshop to crop them to what I think is appealing to the eyes and senses. Adjust exposure, colors, how deep the blacks are, how white the whites are, add or delete sharpness … suffice it to say man adjustments are made as I get closer to seeing on the screen what I had envisioned in my minds eye. Usually this process helps me to eliminate another 100 - 150 pictures so that I am left with typically 50 or less pics to do the final work on. (Recent shoot left me with 120 pics after this step.)

Open the .psd files in photoshop and remove blemishes to the model’s skin. I typically don’t over process like other photographers as I want as much of the TRUE model to come through in the pics. I usually don’t do things like make the model look skinnier or anything. That is what camera angle is for. Also I tend to enjoy black and white art myself, so that is my usual intended final product for most photos. I will save a few color ones for the model to keep if that is more what they were wanting. I just find B/W to be more artistically appealing to me. This step of the work usually helps me eliminate another 20-30 pics so I am left with 20-30 pictures that I am proud to put my name/logo on. (Latest shoot eliminated 50 on this step so I was left with 80.)

The photoshop work is usually around 6-8 hours of work for a normal shoot.

I generally load a copy of all the final color and black and white pictures and send them through dropbox to the model and have them look at the pictures and let me know which ones they are comfortable with having posted online. Sometimes due to technological difficulties on their end I will burn these photos on a disk and take it to them.

Finally I usually wait a couple of days to choose which ones I want to post online, further narrowing my chooses to somewhere under 10 that I am happy with everyone else seeing.

This whole thing is generally done for free because I love to make people look good, and I am trying to improve my photography skills and become great at my art. I don’t expect to make money, and I probably never will because I am overly critical of myself and horrible at marketing my photography.

I really do appreciate it when my friends like my pictures. It makes me feel like it is all coming together and I am doing things right. It validation that I am getting better at what I do.

Then some little girl snaps a fucking selfie with her cell phone of herself in her underwear and she immediately gets 200+ “likes”! Fuck my life!

The cat is a whore!

My girlfriend has been feeling a little guilty lately. Not because she did anything wrong, per se, but because she has been spending so much time at my house lately that she has not been at her own place and spent time with her cats.

She has three.

No, she isn’t a “cat lady”. She has a boyfriend, me! (She has impeccable taste in men.) She just likes cats. Two of the cats are brothers and still kinda in the kitten stage, and the third is stray that she took in.

Now I have a cat also. I have had him for something like nine or ten years. He’s old, he’s grumpy and he also refuses to believe that he isn’t the master of the house. As far as he is concerned us humans are there to feed him, scratch him when he wants to be scratched and then to leave him the fuck alone.
We’re perfect for each other.

Anyway, I could tell that my girlfriend was feeling bad for not spending enough time with her own little ones, so I opened up one evening and told her that she could bring one of them over. Maybe one like the stray. Of the three he might be able to get along with my cat, Cloud, more then any of them. He’s pretty laid back and easy going and besides, he’s gorgeous as hell. Silky black fur and green eyes that say, “yeah, I can take you or leave you. Doesn’t matter to me.”

Did I mention my girlfriend sucks at naming pets? Well, not all the time, but on this particular time I’d have to say she screwed the pooch. She usually lets a pet stay with her for a while until a name just kinda “fits”. And usually it works out. The pet ends up with a name that really fits its personality. This time, I think she just gave up. The cats name is: “Insert Name Here”! We all just call him “Insert.” He’s fucking black with green eyes. How fucking hard would it be to name a cat that looks like that? I could come up with a name for him with my pronouns tied behind my back. How about something like “Midnight”, “8-Ball”, “Spades”, “Black Bart”, “Shadow” … fuck, the list could go on and on. But no, he got branded “Insert Name Here.”

Poor fucking pussy.

I can’t say I’m much better though. Mine is “Cloud”. But at least in my defense when my daughter and I picked him out as a small kitten he looked like a fluffy, little cloud. Now he just looks like a big fat Cloud with some sunset orange bouncing off of him. He’s so fucking fat now that whenever something disappears around the house, our first train of thought is to say “Cloud ate it.”

Now Cloud isn’t so good with other animals coming over. Hell, he’s not good with other people coming over, unless they feed him. So bringing another cat into the house can be a pretty traumatic experience. Well, at least for me. So it took quite a lot of effort on my part just to offer to let her bring over one cat. As for all three, that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. If ever. I don’t think Cloud could handle it, and I sure as hell don’t think I could handle it.

Insert is a pretty good cat though. He stays out of Clouds way for the most part, although we have caught him looking like he wanted to stalk Cloud a few times. I mean, just look at all that meat. Who wouldn’t think about eating a big old fat cat? I think the only thing that stops Insert from following through is that it would be just too much fucking work to dispose of the uneaten portions.

He’s very friendly and loving though. He will crawl up into anyone’s lap and let them pet him. In fact, he rather insists on it. If you stop petting him he will start clawing on you and shoving his paw in your face. His polydactyl paw, by the way. Oh yeah, he’s a polydactyl cat, which means that he was born with extra toes. His are almost in the shape of thumbs, and my girlfriend claims that he can hold objects like a human does, although I have yet to see this myself. My girlfriend, like the great author Hemingway, collects polydactyl cats.

Yeah, she’s weird. Hence why she is with me.

Fortunately, Cloud and Insert do a pretty good job of ignoring one another. There has been minimal hissing and growling at each other, which in my humble opinion is a fucking miracle. Usually Cloud does that low growl thing that states in unequivocal terms: “Get the fuck out of my house you whore!” But with Insert it’s been more of a: “As long as you stay off my side of the bed I won’t have to smack you in the penis,” kind of thing. And what really surprises me is that Cloud has even allowed Insert to be on the bed at the same time as him. Which sucks.

Take last night for example I was woken up in the middle of the night with a face full of pussy. Now don’t get me wrong, I like waking up with a face full of young pussy as much as the next guy, but this was the wrong kind of pussy. Besides, I usually like my pussy to be shaved and most of the time to be tied up. This pussy had fur and claws and decided that sleeping on my fucking head sounded like a good idea. Now, granted, I have a sexy fucking bald head that is probably nice and warm at night, but I sure don’t want to use it as a cat warmer when I am trying to get some much needed sleep.
Cloud learned long ago as a little kitten that sleeping near my head was an option he didn’t want to pursue. Most likely because whenever he did, the result sounded like a really bad Saturday morning kung fu theater episode.

(Master to students: “Please take the position of Cat Who Flies Through Air.”)

Insert hasn’t learned these lessons yet, and he isn’t a little kitten with freshly trimmed claws. No, he’s a full grown polydactyl cat with fucking extra claws — and they are fucking sharp as hell! So I go to throw him off the bed and he fucking clings onto my pillow with such a death grip that I am pretty sure if I had successfully thrown him, he would have taken my pillow, and everything from my shoulders up with him. Out of shear self-preservation I decided that throwing him off the bed wasn’t such a good idea. So instead I put up with him not only laying right against the top of my head for the rest of the night, but also him deciding it was a great idea to prop his legs up on my face.

I’m pretty sure he was either laughing the whole time, or that his tongue might have stuck in my ear during the night at some point. At least, I am going to hope to whatever gods are out there that it was a tongue and not something a lot more intrusive.