Archive for October 2007

Some of you may have heard of the Minotaur – the creature from Greek mythology that had the body of a man but the head of a bull. Then there’s the Mermaid, with the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a fish. (I once also saw a stage show with something called a Maidmer that had the lower half of a human and the upper half of a fish.) Many of you will remember the movie The Fly, which showed us a man with the head of a fly and a fly with the head of a man. (“Help me!”)

And now, specially for Figures of Grace readers, just in time for Halloween, I present to you…..

Lupo Girl !

Of all the strange creatures that have ever entered a photography studio (and I’m sure there have been many), Lupo Girl must be one of the strangest of all – an extremely rare combination of a human female’s body and the head of a wolf. She’s presented here absent of any clothing to prove to you, faithful reader, that Lupo Girl does indeed possess the body of a human girl along with the genuine head of a wolf. No wolf in sheep’s clothing – or any other clothing – here!

I really can’t tell you much about the origin of Lupo Girl. I am but a humble photographer and not a scientist. Still, one must wonder. Was it the result of some strange experiment a la Dr. Moreau, someone bitten by a wolf as was Larry Talbot, or simply a natural mutation of nature? Could it be something as mundane as listening to old recordings of Wolfman Jack??? The truth is, we may never know.

Quite honestly, with the ravenous appetite that Lupo Girl must have, it’s really quite amazing that she has kept such a nice, relatively slender figure. In fact, I got the feeling while photographing her that she really likes to strut her stuff. It makes me wonder if this strange transformation took place recently, before she’s had the chance to head on over to Trader Vic’s to join the perfectly coiffed Werewolf of London and wolf down a lot of grub. (On the other hand, maybe she’s been there already. With the kind of food the English have, no wonder she’s still thin.)

Well, I guess Lupo Girl is just one of those mysteries of science that may never be solved – but beware. She’s reputed to be active on moonlit nights and Halloween. Just watch out for old Hungarian gypsies or someone wearing sheep’s clothing.

And yes – Happy Halloween, everyone!

(I’ll have to remember to carry out my yearly ritual of watching the video of my favorite Peanuts cartoon, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”)

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Daniela Petkovska

Born: 1982
Place: Skopje
Height: 182 cm
Weight: 52 kg
Bust: 90 cm
Waist: 63 cm
Hips: 92 cm
Hair Color: Blondie
Eye Color: Green
Titles: Miss Internet Macedonia (2001)





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Well, it’s just past 10 pm here in New York so I thought I’d sit down and finally write my entry for tonight. I’d planned to do a bunch of things and then watch a Star Trek video, but I instead have spent most of tonight talking on the phone with friends and looking up possible trips for next year on-line.

I don’t have any newer photos to show than the photos of the Sarah’s. I’ve gotten more film developed since those but I need to file that film and then make some scans. The latest film developed are photos of Jacqueline Chantelle (http://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=192748), who I really had fun working with in both April and July.

As I mentioned before, I went to the PhotoPlus show at the Javits Center, way over on the west side of Manhattan, on Saturday. I didn’t see any camera bag companies there as I’d seen in the past (I once spoke with the founder/owner of Tamrac there), so my search for a new bag will need to continue elsewhere.

The show itself for me, as I also wrote before, is not it once was. Part of it is the whole digital thing, but it seems like a lot of companies that once showed no longer are there: I mentioned Tamrac, but I don’t remember seeing Mamiya and others who used to be there. I used to see a lot of people I know but not so much this time, either. The highlight was spending time with my friend Renie from the Santa Fe Workshops as I hadn’t seen her for several years.

As for the vacation planning, my thoughts are still up in the air for next year. I’d like to continue my photographic exploration of Asia, so I’m considering places like Bhutan, India, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Turkey. I still have time to decide.

Photographically, the photos I’m posting today are from the archives. At the top is model Candace Nirvana in her Manhattan hotel room in 2003. Next down is Cyd, photographed in my hotel room in New Orleans in anti-deluvian times (also 2003). Finally, a photo of Gabrielle in an old Victorian era house in upstate New York made at a workshop in 1995. I like the look on her face in the mirror.

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Magdalena Cvetkovska

Born: 17.12.1987
Place: Skopje
Height: 177 cm
Weight: 45 kg
Bust: 91 cm
Waist: 61 cm
Hips: 87 cm
Hair Color: Black
Titles: Top Model Macedonia (2002), Miss Teen (2003)






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Ivana Risteska

Born: 17.02.1983
Place: Skopje
Height: 168 cm
Weight: 52 kg
Bust: 87 cm
Waist: 60 cm
Hips: 90 cm
Hair Color: Black
Titles: Top Model Macedonia (2002)







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I haven’t posted any travel photos here for a while, so I thought I’d begin with a nighttime photo I made of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The Potala, for those that don’t know, was the home of the Dalai Lama’s – Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leaders – including the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

Notice that I used the word was. The Dalai Lama fled from Tibet to India in 1959, nine years after the Chinese Communists had invaded Tibet, during a Chinese crackdown on Tibetan independence.

I’m mentioning this now as the Dalai Lama was in the news last week, meeting with President Bush and then receiving a medal from the United States Congress, despite protestations from the Chinese government in Beijing. (It’s good to know that our government is finally doing something right!)

Before I went to Tibet, I had a discussion with someone at my job who’s interested in Asia. He told me that he has no plans to visit Tibet as long as it’s occupied by China, but the Dalai Lama himself has said that people should visit Tibet to see what the situation is like for themselves and then tell people what they’ve seen.

Well, it’s difficult to find out from Tibetans what they really think of their country being absorbed into China and to have more and more Chinese people flooding in. Tour companies and guide books tell visitors to avoid talking with Tibetans about such topics – more for the sake of the Tibetans, who can get into serious trouble with the authorities if found out speaking about such things.

Still, it’s hard to think that most Tibetans are happy with the situation. The Tibetan capital, Lhasa, seems to be another big Chinese city for the most part. Tibet is a Buddhist nation and a very devoutly spiritual one at that, and while monasteries are now being allowed to be rebuilt (a tremendous amount of damage was done during the Cultural Revolution and a great many Tibetans were killed, too), the Chinese control how many monks can inhabit each monastery. Monasteries that once housed thousands of monks, I’ve read, now are only permitted to maintain a few hundred. Even to become a monk, one must be vetted by the authorities and not found to have any ties to independence-minded Tibetans. I’ve read that students and government employees are also prohibited from being practicing Buddhists.

Now, I am certainly not a political activist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do try to learn something about the places that I visit. On the subject of Tibetan independence, the Chinese are claiming that the Dalai Lama wants to split up the Chinese motherland by breaking Tibet away. As the New York Times wrote in its editorial last week:


The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after the Chinese Army crushed an uprising there, is a powerful symbol of Tibet’s resistance to China’s suppression of its religious culture. In Beijing-speak, the Dalai Lama is a “splittist,” someone out to split off a chunk of China. Zhang Qingli, the Chinese party boss in Tibet, denounced the Dalai Lama as “a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland.”


The fact is that the Dalai Lama does love his motherland — Tibet — and is not trying to split it away from China. He said yesterday that he is not seeking independence from China. What he wants, he says, is “meaningful autonomy for Tibet.”


I tend to liken the Chinese occupation of Tibet to the Roman occupation of ancient Israel. Sure, the occupiers bring modernization and advancement (new roads, etc), but they try to suppress the local culture with a very heavy hand. Still, the Roman Empire eventually fell. Someone has written that Tibet will be free when China will be free – and a Chinese friend of mine in his 50’s says that he thinks he’ll see the end of communism in China sometime during his lifetime.


In the meantime, the Tibetan people still show their spiritual devotion despite all of the hardships. It is very moving to see people go to temples to prostrate themselves and pray. They bring butter with them to add to the butter lamps in temples; they walk the pilgrimage circuits spinning they prayer wheels. I saw some people traveling by foot on the road to Lhasa, prostrating themselves the entire way – a journey that should take weeks or months to complete. Even though the Potala Palace is an empty place – a museum – people still go there and spread themselves on the ground in spiritual devotion.

The fellow from my office who I mentioned earlier told me that the main reason the Chinese are allowing monasteries to be rebuilt is to give tourists a reason to visit Tibet and spend their money. Well, it’s hard to argue with that. In one monastery, my group visited a debating courtyard where the monks famously debate Buddhist philosophy and principles by slapping their hands to emphasize a point. The entire perimeter of the courtyard was ringed with camera toting tourists, and I did kind of wonder what the point of it all was.


Still, I figure that a monastery rebuilt for the tourists to come and visit that will provide some Buddhist instruction and inspiration is better than a monastery reduced to a pile of rubble. Even though Tibetan Buddhism must exist today under severe restrictions and scrutiny, I’m hoping that it will be enough to allow it to survive until the day that Tibet will once again be free.

Finally, the Times editorial also said this:

The Dalai Lama said yesterday that he felt “regret” over the tensions. It is our hope that leaders will continue to ignore China’s protests and threats, and that by continuing to honor the Dalai Lama they will finally persuade Beijing to open serious talks about granting autonomy to Tibet.

I hope so, too.





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Sara Leshi/Сара ЛешиSara Leshi

Born: 07.03.1987
Place: Skopje
Height: 176 cm
Weight: 48 kg
Bust: 96 cm
Waist: 65 cm
Hips: 95 cm
Hair Color: Blondie
Eye Clor: Blue
Titles: Miss Macedonia (2004)






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In my last post I displayed a photo of the “two Sarah’s” – Sarah Ellis and Model Sarah – wrapped in black and white fabric. Today I’m putting up a few more photos of them, but without the wrapping. I spent a good deal of time over the last few days scanning my film of the Sarah’s and then working on the images to prepare them for web posting. You can see more photos on my website at http://www.art2view.com/DaveRudin/content.cgi?content/GALLERIES__Art_Nudes/Ohio .

This is far as I’ve gotten so far with tackling my big backlog of film, but I’m continuing to move through it. The next ones from my trip to Ohio in April that I’ll be dealing with will be photos from studio sessions with models Jackeller, Nemesis, Gaea and Jacqueline Chantelle. I’ve also been working on organizing my work from a trip to Maine and Canada last year, so hopefully I’ll be able to show some of those before long, too.

In other photo news, today was the first day of the annual PhotoPlus exhibit at the Javits Center here in New York. This is one of the times when the photographic equipment manufacturers and dealers get together to put there wares on display. It’s geared toward professionals, but non-pros can attend to. To be honest with you, the show for me has lost some of its luster from when I first started attending a number of years ago. Part of that, for me personally, is that as the dealers are showing more and more for digital photography, the less and less interest I have.

One thing I do need to look for is a new camera bag, so maybe I’ll see something interest in that regard. My current bag, which I’ve had since I bought my medium format SLR system a dozen years ago, is literally coming apart at the seams. Much of it has just been the wear and tear over the years, but it was made worse by my trip to Tibet in August. The internal airline flights within China only permitted a checked bag weight of 44 pounds (20 kilos), and since I was over the limit, I tried to stuff as much as I could into my carry-on bag and camera bag to make my suitcase lighter. Well, the suitcase made the limit. Unfortunately, the weight was too much for the camera bag because the shoulder strap snapped! Luckily the bag did not fall to the ground as I had the waist belt attached, but I was forced to use the handle on top to carry the bag – and the weight was so great that the seams attaching the handle section on top to the rest of the bag began to come apart.

I did eventually get my stuff home safely, but by now I think the bag is probably beyond repair. The reason I haven’t gotten a new one yet is that I have looked around but have not been able to find one nearly as good as what I now have – and unfortunately it is no longer produced.

I normally go to this show every year but had to miss it last year due to the surgery on my foot that I’d had shortly before. I just passed the first anniversary of my surgery but, sad to say, my foot is starting to hurt again quite a bit and, as before, I don’t know how long I can stay because I don’t know how long I can stand.

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Endzi Stojanovska

Born: 02.09.1987
Place: Pula
Height: 177 cm
Weight: 56 kg
Bust: 89 cm
Waist: 61 cm
Hips: 87 cm
Hair Color: Brown
Titles: Elite Model Look (2001)






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I spent part of yesterday filing some of the negatives from my recently developed film. Today I did some scanning. My blog posting before last included images of Sarah Ellis in Ohio back in April, so today I scanned some film depicting Sarah E. with Model Sarah. I worked with Sarah E. in the morning that day and then Model Sarah arrived in the afternoon.

The other images I’ve scanned today are all nudes, but I thought I’d post something different today – a photo of some models covered up. Model Sarah is on the left and Sarah Ellis on the right.


I’ll post some of the nude material when I’m finished scanning and editing the images.


Stay tuned.

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Jana Stojanovska/Јана СтојановскаJana Stojanovska

Born: 19.02.1985
Place: Skopje
Height: 170 cm
Weight: 50 kg
Bust: 80 cm
Waist: 62 cm
Hips: 86 cm
Hair Color: Blonde
Titles: Miss Macedonia (2007)






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Sandra Spasovska

Born: 1980
Place: Skopje
Height: 174 cm
Weight: 54 kg
Bust: 86 cm
Waist: 68 cm
Hips: 90 cm
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Black
Titles: Miss Macedonia (2001)






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When I made my first visit to Ohio this year to visit my friend Dave Levingston, it was a weekend at the end of April. The photos of Sarah Ellis that I posted last time were made on the first day of that trip at the home of some people that Dave knows. The second day we were at Dave’s studio in Dayton as it was still a little too chilly to work outdoors.

That second day just happened to be April 29 – which this year also happened to be Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. This is an event that Dave had decided to partake in by making some photos with a pinhole lens on his digital camera. You can see some of his photos on his blog at http://exposedfortheshadows.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html .

As for me, I had no pinhole camera or pinhole lens, so Dave was kind enough to make one for me. He went out and bought a lens cap for the Pentax 67 (the camera I use), drilled a hole in the middle of it and then taped on a pinhole he’d gotten from a kit. I now had my own pinhole lens. The question was: how do I use it?

The first problem is that the pinhole opening is so small that the effective aperture can be hard to deal with. In this case, the effective aperture of my pinhole (according to the documentation) was something like f/256, if I recall properly. That’s a pretty slow lens (to put it mildly!) and requires a very long exposure with the ISO 320 film that I use. The other problem is that, even though I was using an SLR, the aperture was so small that not enough light was coming in to allow me to see anything through the viewfinder!

I tackled that problem by using my 55mm wide angle lens (like a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera)to frame the image, as the pinhole supposedly yields a wide field of view. Once I set up the image and did this, I removed the lens and put on the pinhole. The other thing I did was to take a light meter reading of the scene. Of course, my light meter doesn’t go up to f/256, so I had to take a regular reading and then we had to calculate what that exposure would be for f/256 – and, as Dave suggested, take into account reciprocity failure (the need to increase exposure above the meter reading for very long exposures). As I recall, the exposure time we came up with was somewhere between two and three minutes!!!

This would normally not be a problem for landscape photography, as it normally isn’t a problem to expect a mountain to stay motionless for several minutes. When dealing with people it’s not that easy, so I had to come up with a pose that our two models, Jackeller and Nemesis, would be able to hold for that long. I ended up taking four different exposures and both girls did an excellent job of staying motionless for that long. (I counted down every ten seconds and they said that helped, too.)

The next thing to do was to develop the film, but getting hit by a car just five days later and having my fingers broken put an end to seeing the results any time soon thereafter. It was a question of not just how the photos would turn out but also if they would turn out to be anything. (At one point, Dave said that I’d probably just get a blank negative, so I figured it might that or a totally bulletproof negative.)

Well, the film was finally developed yesterday and – lo and behold – I actually got something pretty decent for a pinhole. The exposure was essentially correct, with the negatives being slightly darker than the photos made with my regular lenses. Not too bad, I think – and you can see them here so you can judge for yourself.

On the other hand, though, the images are rather soft. It might not look that way seen in a small size here, but when the larger scans are viewed it’s pretty obvious. As a point of comparison, I’m posting at the end here the photo made with my wide angle Pentax lens. You can see that the pinhole has an even wider angle of view and is, of course, softer than the Pentax.

So, my first pinhole odyssey is now complete. It was an interesting experiment to try – and as I still have the pinhole lens, maybe I’ll try it again. Want to try it again some time, DL?

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Suzana Al-Salkini/Сузана Ал СалкиниSuzana Al-Salkini

Born: 08.01.1984
Place: Skopje
Height: 176 cm
Weight: 56 kg
Bust: 93 cm
Waist: 62 cm
Hips: 92 cm
Hair Color: Light Brown
Eyes Color: Green
Titles: Miss charme of Macedonia, Best model of Macedonia, Miss bikini (Malta), Miss congeniality (Serbia), Miss perfect (Bulgaria), Miss hair (South Africa), Miss talent (Malaysia), Miss Friendship (Turkey), Miss Disko (Athens), Miss Media, Miss Cinema (Ethiopia 2008)

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If you read my last blog posting, you’ll know that I’ve been rather busy lately. I also mentioned that part of that was for a good reason, and it was (and still is). I’ve finally begun to get my big backlog of film developed. As of today, I’ve taken care of 20 rolls of film – but as that’s only about 20% of the total amount to be done, I still have a long way to go. Still, I feel that I’ve done a significant amount and I’m happy about that.

Here, then, are the first fruits of my labors. The earliest of the film I developed goes back to my trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Maine last year. I’ll be posting some of that work in time, but for now I’m starting with my trip to Ohio in April, when I photographed the beautiful Sarah Ellis in a house that was converted from a small church. My thanks again to my friend Dave Levingston for hosting me and driving me around while I was there in O-hi-o.

To see more images of my photo session with Sarah, please visit my website at: http://www.art2view.com/DaveRudin/content.cgi?content/GALLERIES__Art_Nudes/Ohio .

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Marija Vasic

Born: 1984
Place: Skopje
Height: 180 cm
Weight: 57
Bust: 87 cm
Waist: 63 cm
Hips: 93 cm
Hair Color: Light brown
Titles: Miss Macedonia (2003)




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Maja Gligorovska

Born: 22.02.1982
Place: Skopje
Height: 176 cm
Bust: 92 cm
Waist: 66 cm
Hips: 88 cm
Hair Color: Light brown
Eye Color: Dark brown
Titles: Miss Macedonia







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Martina Pavlovska/Мартина ПавловскаMartina Pavlovska

Born: 27.03.1981
Place: Skopje
Height: 179 cm
Bust: 82 cm
Waist: 62 cm
Hips: 89 cm
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Green









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Well, as the title of this entry suggests, I’ve been kind of busy lately (though, at least part of it, is in a good way). I haven’t posted a blog entry for over a week, so I thought I’d better do another one before people forget about me.

I’ve actually been wanting to scan some older film to post with my next entry, but that will have to wait a little longer. For now, I’m posting a few more images from my photo session with model Kerie Hart last year. I wrote to her recently and she responded saying that she’d like to come back to New York again. Now I’m just waiting to find out just when that will be.

Betcee May also wrote that she’s thinking of coming to New York for a visit before long, so I’d like to work with her and Kerie again if I can. I’m not planning to do a great deal of photography as I’ve got a big backlog to take care of, but for these two lovely young ladies I would break my self-imposed temporary moratorium on new images.

Stay tuned.

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Marjana Stanojkovska

Born: 1985
Place: Skopje
Height: 175 cm
Weight: 52 kg
Bust: 90 cm
Waist: 60 cm
Hips: 89 cm
Hair Color: Light brown
Eye Color: Dark brown
Titles: Miss Macedonia, Miss Bikini of the Universe (2005)





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Katarina Ivanovska

Born: 18.08.1988
Place: Skopje
Height: 180 cm
Bust: 85 cm
Waist: 60 cm
Hips: 89 cm
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Green
Titles: Look Model (2004)







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