An old lady just unsubbed. I'm gonna refrain from emailing her and calling her a dick. Poor old bat...probably signed up thinking she was gonna get Holocaust posts, and instead she got a porn girl. Via con Dios, Gertrude.
Over the years I’ve learned much more than just Holocaust history from you. Today I learned how lenses, lighting and angles in photography can do the bearer of the visage injustice. You could talk about paint drying on a wall and I’d still find it engaging and enlightening. Politics, Romero, Zombies, physiognomy, not taking sides regarding facts regardless of its support or contradiction of a narrative.
Shucks, feels cheesy to say but I’ve come to see you as an uncle and a mentor.
I never talk or show pity regarding women because I feel I’d be seen as a hypocrite who wants something out of it but I think Kera was very sweet and beautiful and could’ve had a decent career in Hollywood. You treated her like a goddaughter and I found that chapter of your life quite wholesome.
What a truly wonderful comment, and I'm indeed honored to have you as a friend. Just goes to show that the Internet ain't all bad! Sometimes it does what it's supposed to and connects people for positive and rewarding purposes.
Yes, there'll always be a "what might've been" with Kera. But I can rest easy knowing I tried my best to keep her centered and healthy. It was what I needed after my mom's passing, having joy and happy noise in the home. I'll always appreciate her for that.
I think it's great that you took care of her for awhile and tried to keep her from ruining her life. It's impossible to save people from themselves though!
Tony Northrup (a former engineer turned photographer with a big Youtube channel) went on a rant at the start of Covid over the toilet paper shortage being the result of a dishonest wide-angle low elevation shot showing "empty" grocery store shelves. It's another great lesson in how even non-photoshopped images can be used in deeply dishonest ways. I'm a photographer myself - once you see these tricks (and have USED these tricks), you can't unsee them. Focal length on head shots is huge, and so is the elevation of the camera relative to the eyes or whatever else you're trying to shoot - my kids love using super-wide from above for the "giant brain" effect, and have made full galleries.
I recognized Sam Henderson's work in that shot of Kera - he's got a definite style that's quite classy without totally turning the women he shoots into objects. Nude and beautiful, but not porny.
Peter Hurley is a professional headshot photographer in NYC, and I watched one of his online headshot classes where he talked not just about the B&W to Color transition, but also how trends change for the portrait orientation too - a lot more flexibility is allowed now, though notice that a lot of corporate headshots still have to make mid and upper tier management look like they've got poles up their backsides (the rictus grins next to the block quote DEI pablum ring of "Say the line or we shoot your puppy"). Only the CEOs are allowed to look cool and relaxed on Linked In.
Is it that obvious Dave? How in th' hell did ya figger that out? I seek a very particular type of woman, them Mongol girls are hot stuff to me. I am working on learning their language, with limited success so far.
Obviously I would be playing the part of a delusional, old ( almost 62) hick, afflicted with incurable yellow fever, who also has an unreasonable fear of RF radiation going into his cranium !!!
I should market my tinfoil cowboy hats, them Alex Jones fans will buy all of 'em. I'll say that the signal that detonates explosive brain implants is blocked by the foil !!!
John Wayne played Genghis Khan, not his best role. I on the other hand, being 5'7" and all could make it work. Or maybe a remake of "Shane" you know Alan Ladd was a short guy too.
Kinda surprised that no one mentioned how little ink your "porn girl" had. Getting harder and harder to find one that you don't start to wonder what you would learn if you scrutinized ALL her tats. But I guess the pros have learned that it is easier to paint on tats one doesn't have than paint over the tats one has.
When Kera moved out, she went nuts. Face tat, neck tat...ruined herself for good. I was able to forestall the debacle for two years, but the lure was too strong. With me out of the picture, nothing was there to prevent it.
Hey Dave--- thanks for the schooling on the whole casting/headshot stuff! Pretty interesting! BTW-- you got it right saying I want no harm calling Kera's nicely toned arms "guns". I did not mean to imply that she looked masculine! Just when you said all she did was fuck and do drugs- I was expecting to see meth-scrawny or heroin-chic. She looked more like a personal trainer! (I guess plenty of fucking and the right drugs?) At any rate- I sorta regretted my comment after sending it. I think it can be too easy to comment on people's faces and bodies in this kind of venue. Maybe poor Trudy felt it was turning into a pile on?
By the time I met her, Kera had stopped doing any hard drugs (or I wouldn't have allowed her in my house). She still did WAY too much pot, but she was very outdoorsy, hiking and going to the beach daily, exercising here at the house, going to the gym. Hell, she even got my lazy ass to do seven-hour beach walks. She ate healthy and stayed in shape. Those were her best years; it was all downhill after that.
Yeah, re: the ole fux who thought black and white was the only format for headshots. (Still a thing, amazingly, though more in theatre.) Reminds me of the ole time photo editors and art directors who were still insisting that large format was still the only professional way for photographers to work, years after Hasselblads and Nikons had changed the way people shot. It's why a certain generation of pros held on to their Speed Graphics right into the '70s and even '80s before finally dumping them on the used market in bulk - probably just when the ole fux finally retired.
And yeah - people don't know how to look at photos; there's a whole generation who are sure that selfies are the highest form of portraiture as we speak. And no - celebrities usually look nothing like you imagine them when you meet them in person. (From considerable personal experience, this is more true for women than men, and more true as they age. Which is cruel, but true.)
Yeah, I think about this stuff all the time. (Well, I have to.) I stopped posting my portraits on photography forums a while ago because there's always "that guy" who writes in that no professional would shoot a portrait with a wide lens and not a telephoto. Yes, a photographer who wants to make flattering headshots inevitably goes for a longer lens. But photographers who aren't making headshots or glamour photography will opt for something that lets them get up the face of their subjects. Avedon and Penn did it. (And I did, for many, many years.) Once you know that you know that there are no objective photos, ever, of anything.
Hey, Dave. Like your friend, the first thing I noticed about that pic was the "guns," though I didn't think they looked masculine, just well toned. Kera is certainly a beauty. IMO, some of the pics you posted would have served her much better as headshots.
We had a website I ran for her with all her best pics. It's how she became Amber Heard's body double. When they were making Aquaman, the studio did a web facial ID search and the pics on her site came up as the best match. She was called in to Warner's, and landed the role that day.
Amber's quite the beauty too, though the whole poop in the bed thing ruined her for me. I prefer to live in a fantasy world where women don't poop or, as Gavin McInnes said, if they do, they poop rainbows and bubblegum.
Well, WAS pretty. After she left here she got a face tat. As much as I tried to keep her from going the porn girl route of fucking everything up, she fucked everything up.
And yeah, drinking in October will allow me to really enjoy Halloween.
I've grown up in the age of mobile phone cameras etc and always thought myself bad looking from the occasional selfie I would take, but people often remark on the opposite and women love me. Clearly there are some self-esteem issues going on as well, but model gf tells me I'm a 10 (she's probably exaggerating but still) and little camera tells me I look weird AF. The photos you provided at the beginning explained the difference in our perceptions, so thank you!
Any photo I have will be taken with a phone! Do you think the greatly increased popularity of beards among young men is partly the result of people often perceiving themselves via little lens selfies?
Here is my question- I’ve often heard people talk about seeing some “hot” actress in person, and depending on the encounter, we get- “she’s really not that hot, or beautiful, in person”, or “in person, she is just mind blowingly gorgeous! Even better than in movies or TV”
Honestly, depends on the woman. When I was 20 I knew Christina Applegate. She looked nothing like Kelly Bundy, and could walk through a room as herself with nobody recognizing her. Still very pretty to me, but to "civilians" who are easily tricked by hair & makeup, she looked like a nobody.
This is the kind of week that I've had: The thought of you emailing some old lady and calling her a dick is just too funny. I'm in a mean mood. Pye is partially to blame but that's a stupid story and I have something slightly better, something that fits in with today's theme. My husband traveled for his business. So, we traveled a lot. One day at LAX a group of people mistook him for Kiefer Sutherland. Being amused by this, we did not correct their thinking. I didn't think he looked a bit like Sutherland. Then it happened again. And then one day I caught him in just the right lighting at just the right angle. And I realized that he looked a hell of a lot like Keifer. It's amazing, what angle and lighting can do.
He sat with her a LOOOOONG time. His assistant told me that Quincy loves the company of any young woman who throws off a Peggy Lipton vibe. I was fine with it, as it was an open bar event, so that kept me busy.
Ed Norton was a find, for sure! Man, that dude can act. Any role you give him. Probably the worst offenders in the photo chicanery division are the UFO grifters. Unless you've got confirmed genetic material that didn't originate on this planet or some extra-planetary element, stfu with that shit. People who should know better like, uh... Tucker Carlson and seemingly every other social media grifter latches onto the flavor of the month, and I'm deleting my Twatter account. But I ain't unsubbin from you bro! 😁
Is this the girl that went off with some total loser to pick sticks and seeds out of weed for $12/hr...? And she wanted to put this homeless loser up at YOUR house...? That was a real woozier. I hope this isn't her, she's really pretty.
Sadly, yes - that's the girl. That's why she left; I wouldn't let her 30-year-old transient bum with no ID or job stay at my house. Once Kera became unmoored, joining that guy in homelessness, it went downhill fast.
An old lady just unsubbed. I'm gonna refrain from emailing her and calling her a dick. Poor old bat...probably signed up thinking she was gonna get Holocaust posts, and instead she got a porn girl. Via con Dios, Gertrude.
Gertrude, lift your boobs
Himmler’s dead, Porn is real
Over the years I’ve learned much more than just Holocaust history from you. Today I learned how lenses, lighting and angles in photography can do the bearer of the visage injustice. You could talk about paint drying on a wall and I’d still find it engaging and enlightening. Politics, Romero, Zombies, physiognomy, not taking sides regarding facts regardless of its support or contradiction of a narrative.
Shucks, feels cheesy to say but I’ve come to see you as an uncle and a mentor.
I never talk or show pity regarding women because I feel I’d be seen as a hypocrite who wants something out of it but I think Kera was very sweet and beautiful and could’ve had a decent career in Hollywood. You treated her like a goddaughter and I found that chapter of your life quite wholesome.
Have a blessed weekend.
What a truly wonderful comment, and I'm indeed honored to have you as a friend. Just goes to show that the Internet ain't all bad! Sometimes it does what it's supposed to and connects people for positive and rewarding purposes.
Yes, there'll always be a "what might've been" with Kera. But I can rest easy knowing I tried my best to keep her centered and healthy. It was what I needed after my mom's passing, having joy and happy noise in the home. I'll always appreciate her for that.
Have a blessed weekend as well!
I think it's great that you took care of her for awhile and tried to keep her from ruining her life. It's impossible to save people from themselves though!
Yes. For a High School dropout, the Jittery Jew will sure leave a mark.
Tony Northrup (a former engineer turned photographer with a big Youtube channel) went on a rant at the start of Covid over the toilet paper shortage being the result of a dishonest wide-angle low elevation shot showing "empty" grocery store shelves. It's another great lesson in how even non-photoshopped images can be used in deeply dishonest ways. I'm a photographer myself - once you see these tricks (and have USED these tricks), you can't unsee them. Focal length on head shots is huge, and so is the elevation of the camera relative to the eyes or whatever else you're trying to shoot - my kids love using super-wide from above for the "giant brain" effect, and have made full galleries.
I recognized Sam Henderson's work in that shot of Kera - he's got a definite style that's quite classy without totally turning the women he shoots into objects. Nude and beautiful, but not porny.
Peter Hurley is a professional headshot photographer in NYC, and I watched one of his online headshot classes where he talked not just about the B&W to Color transition, but also how trends change for the portrait orientation too - a lot more flexibility is allowed now, though notice that a lot of corporate headshots still have to make mid and upper tier management look like they've got poles up their backsides (the rictus grins next to the block quote DEI pablum ring of "Say the line or we shoot your puppy"). Only the CEOs are allowed to look cool and relaxed on Linked In.
David Cole wrote:
"And a few of you REALLY need to get laid."
My reply:
Is it that obvious Dave? How in th' hell did ya figger that out? I seek a very particular type of woman, them Mongol girls are hot stuff to me. I am working on learning their language, with limited success so far.
Example of my type o' woman , https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/77/25/b277251ebe46019f7b16adf7e6165d1f.jpg
Here's my head shot, no BS that's me, https://postimg.cc/kBKjf673
Something more than an LOL would be appreciated, I had hell keeping a straight face while taking that pic !!!
Actually, I really like it! If I were still in casting, you'd get the part (what part? That I haven't figured out yet)
Obviously I would be playing the part of a delusional, old ( almost 62) hick, afflicted with incurable yellow fever, who also has an unreasonable fear of RF radiation going into his cranium !!!
I should market my tinfoil cowboy hats, them Alex Jones fans will buy all of 'em. I'll say that the signal that detonates explosive brain implants is blocked by the foil !!!
John Wayne played Genghis Khan, not his best role. I on the other hand, being 5'7" and all could make it work. Or maybe a remake of "Shane" you know Alan Ladd was a short guy too.
LOL! Excellent! Your headshot is legendary Sir. Found it even more enjoyable because I rigged up a Cowboy hat covered in aluminum foil just like that.
Took way longer than I anticipated. Foil & Scotch tape were rough "mediums" to work with lol.
Kinda surprised that no one mentioned how little ink your "porn girl" had. Getting harder and harder to find one that you don't start to wonder what you would learn if you scrutinized ALL her tats. But I guess the pros have learned that it is easier to paint on tats one doesn't have than paint over the tats one has.
When Kera moved out, she went nuts. Face tat, neck tat...ruined herself for good. I was able to forestall the debacle for two years, but the lure was too strong. With me out of the picture, nothing was there to prevent it.
I made my comment before I read the other comments. What a shame. She was pretty cute without ink.
She has the kind of Midwestern wholesome looks that had my jaw dropping like a hillbilly wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon when I lived in Chicago.
Hey Dave--- thanks for the schooling on the whole casting/headshot stuff! Pretty interesting! BTW-- you got it right saying I want no harm calling Kera's nicely toned arms "guns". I did not mean to imply that she looked masculine! Just when you said all she did was fuck and do drugs- I was expecting to see meth-scrawny or heroin-chic. She looked more like a personal trainer! (I guess plenty of fucking and the right drugs?) At any rate- I sorta regretted my comment after sending it. I think it can be too easy to comment on people's faces and bodies in this kind of venue. Maybe poor Trudy felt it was turning into a pile on?
By the time I met her, Kera had stopped doing any hard drugs (or I wouldn't have allowed her in my house). She still did WAY too much pot, but she was very outdoorsy, hiking and going to the beach daily, exercising here at the house, going to the gym. Hell, she even got my lazy ass to do seven-hour beach walks. She ate healthy and stayed in shape. Those were her best years; it was all downhill after that.
Yeah, re: the ole fux who thought black and white was the only format for headshots. (Still a thing, amazingly, though more in theatre.) Reminds me of the ole time photo editors and art directors who were still insisting that large format was still the only professional way for photographers to work, years after Hasselblads and Nikons had changed the way people shot. It's why a certain generation of pros held on to their Speed Graphics right into the '70s and even '80s before finally dumping them on the used market in bulk - probably just when the ole fux finally retired.
And yeah - people don't know how to look at photos; there's a whole generation who are sure that selfies are the highest form of portraiture as we speak. And no - celebrities usually look nothing like you imagine them when you meet them in person. (From considerable personal experience, this is more true for women than men, and more true as they age. Which is cruel, but true.)
You are a true pro, Rick, so I greatly appreciate your input!
Yeah, I think about this stuff all the time. (Well, I have to.) I stopped posting my portraits on photography forums a while ago because there's always "that guy" who writes in that no professional would shoot a portrait with a wide lens and not a telephoto. Yes, a photographer who wants to make flattering headshots inevitably goes for a longer lens. But photographers who aren't making headshots or glamour photography will opt for something that lets them get up the face of their subjects. Avedon and Penn did it. (And I did, for many, many years.) Once you know that you know that there are no objective photos, ever, of anything.
Hey, Dave. Like your friend, the first thing I noticed about that pic was the "guns," though I didn't think they looked masculine, just well toned. Kera is certainly a beauty. IMO, some of the pics you posted would have served her much better as headshots.
We had a website I ran for her with all her best pics. It's how she became Amber Heard's body double. When they were making Aquaman, the studio did a web facial ID search and the pics on her site came up as the best match. She was called in to Warner's, and landed the role that day.
Amber's quite the beauty too, though the whole poop in the bed thing ruined her for me. I prefer to live in a fantasy world where women don't poop or, as Gavin McInnes said, if they do, they poop rainbows and bubblegum.
That's why I prefer women with tiny rears. The smaller the butt, the easier to convince oneself that nothing comes out.
Being Amber Heard’s body double must be about as lucrative as being a Lebanese pager salesman
Well, this was in 2017 when they were making Aquaman. Heard was still very much on the rise.
True. I’m sure pager salesmen made money in the past. I meant now
Dave,
Don't wait till November, ...enjoy that beer! (Yes, Kera is pretty, and cameras can "lie" to your eyes)
Well, WAS pretty. After she left here she got a face tat. As much as I tried to keep her from going the porn girl route of fucking everything up, she fucked everything up.
And yeah, drinking in October will allow me to really enjoy Halloween.
That's sad to hear. But that business relies on women being messed up.
She had very stereotypical father issues. As in, absentee and alcoholic. I did get her out of the biz, at least for two years.
and remember- we might not BE HERE in Nov.!!
Eat, drink, and be merry
For tomorrow we die...
I've grown up in the age of mobile phone cameras etc and always thought myself bad looking from the occasional selfie I would take, but people often remark on the opposite and women love me. Clearly there are some self-esteem issues going on as well, but model gf tells me I'm a 10 (she's probably exaggerating but still) and little camera tells me I look weird AF. The photos you provided at the beginning explained the difference in our perceptions, so thank you!
I think that to introduce yourself to the substack you should post a headshot of yourself and let us decide. Or a nude. We are not a judgmental group.
Any photo I have will be taken with a phone! Do you think the greatly increased popularity of beards among young men is partly the result of people often perceiving themselves via little lens selfies?
David,
This is some interesting stuff!
Here is my question- I’ve often heard people talk about seeing some “hot” actress in person, and depending on the encounter, we get- “she’s really not that hot, or beautiful, in person”, or “in person, she is just mind blowingly gorgeous! Even better than in movies or TV”
Is that all camera angles and lighting, make-up?
Or is there even more to it than that?
Some examples would be nice!
I’ve always just wondered about it.
Honestly, depends on the woman. When I was 20 I knew Christina Applegate. She looked nothing like Kelly Bundy, and could walk through a room as herself with nobody recognizing her. Still very pretty to me, but to "civilians" who are easily tricked by hair & makeup, she looked like a nobody.
This is the kind of week that I've had: The thought of you emailing some old lady and calling her a dick is just too funny. I'm in a mean mood. Pye is partially to blame but that's a stupid story and I have something slightly better, something that fits in with today's theme. My husband traveled for his business. So, we traveled a lot. One day at LAX a group of people mistook him for Kiefer Sutherland. Being amused by this, we did not correct their thinking. I didn't think he looked a bit like Sutherland. Then it happened again. And then one day I caught him in just the right lighting at just the right angle. And I realized that he looked a hell of a lot like Keifer. It's amazing, what angle and lighting can do.
I’ve been told that I look like Will Farrell. Wish I had as much money as him! 😁
Little hard to tell from your picture.
He’s looking rather inscrutable in the photo, but I was curious as to how the great Quincy Jones reacted, before and after.
He sat with her a LOOOOONG time. His assistant told me that Quincy loves the company of any young woman who throws off a Peggy Lipton vibe. I was fine with it, as it was an open bar event, so that kept me busy.
Ed Norton was a find, for sure! Man, that dude can act. Any role you give him. Probably the worst offenders in the photo chicanery division are the UFO grifters. Unless you've got confirmed genetic material that didn't originate on this planet or some extra-planetary element, stfu with that shit. People who should know better like, uh... Tucker Carlson and seemingly every other social media grifter latches onto the flavor of the month, and I'm deleting my Twatter account. But I ain't unsubbin from you bro! 😁
Much appreciated, my friend!
Casting agents really got fooled by Amandalorian Stenberg. She may look like an alien, but she’s just a Los Angeles lesbian
Is this the girl that went off with some total loser to pick sticks and seeds out of weed for $12/hr...? And she wanted to put this homeless loser up at YOUR house...? That was a real woozier. I hope this isn't her, she's really pretty.
Sadly, yes - that's the girl. That's why she left; I wouldn't let her 30-year-old transient bum with no ID or job stay at my house. Once Kera became unmoored, joining that guy in homelessness, it went downhill fast.
Sad she ended up like that after having a break in life.
James Woods's character Lester Diamond in "Casino" kind of thing - an overdone sense of caring by a lost woman?
You don’t need a camera, Grasshopper, to FOCUS. Use your God-given depth of field to FOCUS on the subject at hand, be it near or far.
Shabbat Shalom…