Leia at 37 weeks

Shot Thanksgiving weekend 2010. That's only one big boy in there. And as of right now, Leia still hasn't had him yet.

Following images do contain nudity and some are NSFW

Kait in the window

Kait had her ink finished in the end of August. On the same day I shot Jen in the uniforms, I photographed her new side tattoo in Jen's living room. She hadn't done anything nude like this before, but like my last set with her, when she got in the zone it was quite easy to shoot. I played around with a couple of different processings in Lightroom. The ink looked incredible up close. Given she is a hair stylist, her pinup, complete with holding a hairdryer in one hand, was perfect.

Following images contain nudity and are NSFW.

The Bat building at Kadena AFB Japan

The above image is zoomed and rotated in from GoogleMaps and is a building on the American Air Force Base Kadena in Japan. Original zoomed in satellite view here. A friend of mine linked to the image and so I thought I would see if I could figure it out.

After a bit of Googling, I discovered that the US Navy's Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One has a detachment at Kadena. Amongst other things they fly P3 Orions (seen on the tarmac at the North end of the base). The main logo for the VQ-1 'World Watchers' is a bat logo, and the the VQ-1 Detachment Kadena shoulder patch is this:

The other theory could be that it belongs to the US Air Force 44th Fighter Squadron (44 FS), the Vampire Bats,  that is part of the 18th Wing also at Kadena Air Base. They have had many shoulder patches, a couple of which are direct copies of Batman logos.

Given the difference in sizes of organizations, VQ-1 being all around the world, and the 44th being just at Kadena, I would think the Bat logo scales to the former not the latter, but who knows.

I tweeted the KadenaAFB and asked them the origin of the rooftop logo but given its midnight there they might not answer - if ever. Especially if it has a more secret Bat purpose. :)



Mike

A real green G.I. dress, thats cool.

When I was in Tillsonburg last month, I photographed Jen and her niece Kait on the same day.

Jennifer had previously shown me an image of her wearing this super short olive drab dress and I thought it would be a cool outfit to get some shots in. A hat was located that matched, we added a belt and voila. It made me think she had a sexy female Israeli soldier sort of look. She also changed it up and switched jackets and caps. Those to follow in another post. Kait's to follow as well.

Should I stay or should I go now?

A frequent backyard visitor, this wild rabbit was warming itself amongst the fallen leaves in a patch of afternoon sun. At least till it had enough of me. October 9th, 2010.

Mike

Lee, Morgan, Chris and Derek of Rusty Water and the Broken Troubadours ( Facebook & Myspace ). They were playing an afternoon set during ArtFusion Fest in London a couple of weeks ago - that was when the  large mural was being done on the exterior of il Tenore.

Holiday Selfs

I seem to have made a tradition of doing self portraits on or around holidays. I didn't intend to do one this Thanksgiving, but I ended up with exactly that. Quickly shot from the doorway of an unlit empty storage unit. Camera set on rapid shot self timer, propped on the folding two step stepladder I have, angle tilt in the second one achieved by the camera sitting on the brim of my baseball cap.

For several reasons I think the images are not the greatest, but they seem to capture my dark, frustrated, lonely, brooding mood of late. Or as American photographer Tawnee Lynne Cowan said, it speaks to my "ability to yell in a whisper."

Mike

Never seen a Reichskriegsflagge before.

Going for a walk the other day, I came across this flag flying on the front of an otherwise unremarkable house on an otherwise unremarkable side street.  I did a double take as most houses I see don't fly anything other than the odd Canadian flag, and certainly not something so unusual or potentially controversial.

I knew it was German but had a slight doubt as to from when. The flag, judging from its crispness and creases, is a new one. As near as I can figure, given the thickness of the black stripes, it is a reproduction of the German Reichskriegsflagge of 1903-1918, but it's not a totally accurate representation. For example, the orb and scepter are completely wrong compared to the example on Wikipedia. More like an earlier German Empire version. One thing is for sure, it isn't the German civilian national flag of the time. It is the military colours which German Imperial units and ships would have flown.

Asking around, my friend Peter let me in on something that I didn't know about. Today, October 3rd, 2010, is the day that Germany finally finishing repaying its war debt to the Allies. That's the debt from World War One which ended 92 years ago. It was a massive debt, and it can be argued that it was one of the main contributing reasons for WWII starting so soon after the end of WWI. But to be still paying it nearly 100 years later was really surprising and something I had no idea about.

Given that being the case, it makes some sense for a German household knowing their history to fly it this week. But it's still different randomly seeing a foreign (formerly enemy) military flag on a pole in front of a house.

Mike

True Bugs

After the Oil Beetles, Ryn, in her continued attempts to educate me about local flora and fauna - I try , but I can't tell the difference between lavender and a birch tree - pointed out an infestation of insects on a group of common milkweed plants.

These awesome looking orange and black bugs are Large Milkweed Bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus). Most of the immature ones were smaller than the Oil Beetles, and to my untrained eye there appeared to be a couple of different generations of the insects in this shot. In the lower right you see a mature one with the horizontal band, the mid sized juveniles with the black dorsal patches, and a little tiny nymph near the centre.

The orange/black warning colours, and the fact that they ingest the toxic white latex from the plants, make these True Bugs to be avoided as a party snack mix by most people other than Bear Grylles. There were quite a few of these groupings on the milkweed follicles, but with it being breezy and top heavy milkweed plants not being the most stable of platforms, this was the sharpest cluster.  Cool, eh?

Mike

Beetles One

I went walking with Ryn to ostensibly shoot some fall colours. It turned out it was a bit early and too cloudy. We came across quite a few of these guys on a narrow footpath between an overgrown field and a stream.  According to what I Googled - and it took a few minutes to narrow down what they were after ruling out Paul and Ringo, I think they are Oil Beetles (possibly Meloe americanus or Meloe angusticollis?)   Less than two cm long at most.  Apparently these are males due to the strange kinked antennae. No macro lens, so they are what they are, but I like em.

Mike