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We have heard it before – every picture tells a story, and a picture is worth a thousand words. This is one such picture, taken on the streets of Las Vegas. The thousand word story is oftentimes best imagined. This is the direction I took with my project, The Extras, where I created a story for each of the images I presented, and I am thinking of adding this to that mix. One wonders of the events that may have led up to this moment, as well as the aftermath.
This image is in the same catagory as the diptych I offered with my previous entry, Two Thousand Words (thus the similar wording above). In this particular case the man was helping the woman with her jacket, but why ruin a good story with the facts?
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Las Vegas is a pretty cool place. I have no use for the casinos, but the mass of people make for an enjoyable time shooting on the streets. The bane of the streets, however, are what I refer to as flickers. I am guessing that there is a local term used to describe these people, but I refer to them as flickers because they flick cards in your path in the hopes that you will take them. The cards are advertisements for local strip joints and have pictures of nudes with strategically placed stars over specific parts of their bodies.
Initially their presence is amusing, but very quickly becomes Vegas’ version of street spam, something that 99.9% of the people do not want, but have to go out of their way to ignore. There are times when half a dozen flickers will stand in a line. flipping the cards so that they make a snapping noise, and even though one might ignore the first three, the second three are just as insistent that you take their card.
Of course, ignoring them does not necessarily mean that you will not end up with a card. I was walking behind a couple who had been shopping. A flicker offered a card to the man, and when he ignored the request a card was dropped into his shopping bag as he passed.
Spam works, which is why it is such a problem. My guess is that there may be a discount offered on the card, so that the proprietor can see that the person’s presence in their strip club might be due to the fact that he took a card. I did not count the number of flickers along the strip – I think that the number may vary with the time of night – but my guess would be a couple hundred around 10pm, so they are ubiquitous.
The sad thing is that I am sure that this is the only work many of these people are able to get, certainly this is not a career path. I wish these people well with the understanding that in other circumstances they would be performing more interesting work.
My work has been featured on Eric Kim’s Blog. Eric Kim makes his living as a street photographer, something few are able to do.
A while back I realized that of the gazillion groups on Flickr, none had anything to do with Bromoil, so I created one. I needed to find those who were posting Bromoil images on the site, and during the search I came up with a number of images referred to as “Bromoil-inspired.” These did not look at all like Bromoil prints, just poor digital attempts, and I came to realize that those offering such images had probably never seen a Bromoil print. Having worked with Photoshop since version 4.0, I knew that understanding not only the Bromoil process but also digital manipulation would allow me to create a reasonable faux Bromoil image. Of course, there is no way to make a print that actually looks like a Bromoil when viewed in person, since the way the ink lays on the paper is unique, but my task was create something that would mimic the look on the screen.
My guess is that there is little interest in the nuts and bolts of what I did in Photoshop to make this image, so if you have a real interest then shoot me an email (George.Smyth@gmail.com). Generally speaking, I used two layers that both included blurred noise and difference clouds, one employing the color dodge and the other the color burn blending mode.
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On the left is the original image and on the right is the faux Bromoil (compression artifacts make the noise look chunkier than the tiff version). I originally offered this image, On The Way Home, on the blog, so you can click the link for comparison. Apparently my scanner decided to do a bit of cropping, which is why you will see a bit more image if you compare these images with the darkroom example.
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As everyone in Braddock knows, a number spray painted on a building indicates that it has been marked for demolition. Some are houses, others are buildings that held businesses that have long passed. The only question is when it will be taken down.
Of course, there is a financial cost in removing a building, just as there is in creating one, and at a time when money is tighter than it has been in the past, these numbers could remain for a long time.
