robertwilde1

[robertwilde1]

The girl stood in front of the Renaissance castle in Milan, Italy and felt like a may fly, so short-lived, barely there next to this proof of a long and deep civilization. A Surreal Moment in Time Time is not a matter we can shape, it is an abstract rhythm we assign the flow of things. When time steps out and makes itself felt as with this building of long history, we are enhanced with awe as we get a feeling of the depth of times, the long past that has happened so long ago and has left these visible traces for us to remember that everything flows.     Escape into Dreams Our century is a commercial one. Dreaming does not increase revenue and should only be done in collective movies after paying a for the ticket and then have the same, flatlined dream as all the others watching it. But the real dreams, the good day dreams, those alternative worlds that make our imagination fly are personal. Dreams are an escape that are the most amazing trips where no power has access. Alternative Worlds If it is not in your head it is nowhere. Only what enters our imagination and thinking is real for us. Our rational surface can only focus on a couple of events. What is really going on in us is beneath the surface which is why there can suddenly rise an idea out of us which was rolling there, beneath conscious reality and a connection to our consciousness sparked. Dreams consist merely of what is beneath the waves, our personal worlds, of things that we imagine but only in unclear shapes until a piece of art, a book or a movie touches it. The girl in this picture had been touched by a sudden imagination, a day dream. See more blog posts here See portrait photography See men's fashion photography See fashion photography women

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The streets are no longer safe. Ladies, when you consider a handbag don't just buy for the looks. Consider instead: how hard can you hit with it when an attacker wants your bag. Hand Bag Self Defense Imagine. You are walking down a nice shopping street. Suddenly there is a flash mob robbing stores. No police anywhere to see. I guess we are in San Francisco or Portland, Oregon. One of the masked crazies runs at you and shouts: "Give me that bag, you ..." (censored: the word hidden is an itch for the decent and starts with a b ).     Finally you can apply what you have learned in self-defense class: You take a swing and hit the attacker on the head with your bag his tooth fillings fly out sideways. And if you have purchased the special edition handbag, the one with retractable spikes and the bullet proof metal that attacker will have to take a long time to get up again - if he ever will. Just to be sure: it also works beautifully against female attackers and will do more damage than just disturbing their bad makeup and meth head hairdo. Fashion Photography without Dictators It's become a new fad to picture dictators with fashion like in the most recent Vogue shoot with the Ukrainian strong man Zelinski who ended the democracy in Ukraine in 2014 with a power grab. We are trying to be more ethical and make sure the right people get hurt. We want the robbers and attackers, the bullies and scumbags to be hurt.     Self-defense by Weaponized Handbag Which is why we urge you to buy the right kind of bag. And what about us, say the men? Well, have you ever heard of a knuckleduster? Which, by the way, fits nicely in the best combat handbags we tested. Instead of a makeup compartment they feature a knuckleduster compartment, a pepper spray slot and, for the really lawless cities like San Francisco, Portland and New York, a gun holster. Just in case the hyped nutcases come by more than one. Fashion designer Desmond Destruct of the new combat handbag brand Crusher said he is working on a version that can release tear gas, pepper spray and some more serious gas should the war conditions in our cities further deteriorate to full blown civil war. Well, I guess that's what you have to do if certain types want to defund the police. You have to fund your own assortment of self-defense means. Find more inspiration for futuristic fashion ideas here:  

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The high fashion coat by the Italian designer Giulia Camata is one of my favorite fashion pieces I have seen recently. I photographed it in front of the Renaissance church Chiesa Del Carmine in Milan, Italy. The late afternoon sun carved out the wonderful reddish building in a floating balance of architecture and light. As an artist from Vienna who lives in Los Angeles I have a great love for Italy. Here is a photograph from a series that I took in Milan, the most interesting fashion city in the world. Milan has Renaissance buildings and high end contemporary architecture and a sophisticated population. Strolling through the city day and night I photographed many views of the city as well. The Italian high fashion coat, photographed by a Los Angeles Photographer from Vienna The coat was designed by the young and yet not well known fashion designer Giulia Camata which I hope will soon get her chance to make an impact in the Italian fashion scene. Her orange coat is a marvelous piece of work that has many different appearances and adapts to light and different contrast situations very well.   New Designs in Fashion and a personal approach in fashion photography It is important for interesting fashion to grow to have independent fashion designers who have their own shop and are not employees of fashion brands so they can develop their own vision and are not subject to esthetic micro-managing. How about one of those big fashion brands with large budgets to fund Giulia Camata's designs for one or two years and have first look rights to her designs?  Contact me if you are interested in supporting this fashion artist. At the same time, the photography of creative fashion is best done with a personal approach. The photographic artist is asked to work and create, not a commercial one. Fashion is personal, and so should its photography be.     Fashion design and fashion photography create new worlds of esthetic pleasure and intellectual stimulation: an inspiration for creation. See more fashion photography of women's clothes  

[robertwilde1]

It was a very cold January in Vienna Austria and we had to be quick. Otherwise the model might have turned into an ice statue as the temperatures were below zero. The rose bushes were covered to protect them from the cold so they would bloom again in spring. The rose bushes seem to be asleep but they are wide awake and listen to everything you say.     Fashion photography at the Volksgarten, Vienna, Austria The Volksgarten is a park created when the city walls were demolished in mid-19th century and is between the National Theater and the Emperor's Castle, which the Viennese call the "Hofburg" - a contradictory term as "Hof" means court, the court of the emperor, and castle means the military fortification, two things that do not go together. It's a bit of political poetry. The girl was very brave as she had to be as cold on her whole body while I only had my fingers fall off in the cold but I held on to my camera. We later went to the so-called "Schmetterlingshaus", the greenhouse at the "Burggarten" (garden of the Emperor's Castle) where butterflies fly freely.     I had to wait a while. Coming in from the ice cold into the hot and humid glass house made my camera fog up. Living in dry and warm Southern California I never had to deal with it. This one taught me. On a recent shoot in Florida, whenever I took my camera from cool and air-conditioned interiors into the humid outside I had it sit in a plastic bag until the camera had the same temperature as the surrounding world. No more fogging. And it can destroy your electronics, by they way, of which a camera is full of (brief memory to the one fully mechanical camera I own, an "antique" Minolta SRT 101b). The butterflies were nearly as big as my hands and fluttered around our heads curiously. During a break I noticed one of them sitting in the middle of one of the narrow walkways. Very risky place to relax for a butterfly as there's a high chance someone would step on him. So I bent down, offered my right index finger for a brief ride to safety. The butterfly, black and beautiful, inspected the offer and accepted by taking a seat of my finger. I moved him into safety but now the butterfly didn't want to leave. He liked sitting on my index finger. As you cannot shoot fashion with a butterfly sitting on your right index finger i had to get him to fly again. So I waved my hand slightly and he took off and landed on my neck. He took off again and now sat on my head. I had tried out a shaved head and a beard at that time and found it wasn't for me. But it is documented here, together with the amorous butterfly who didn't leave me for the rest of the shoot. Did he guess I had likely saved his life and was grateful?     Finally the butterfly took off but continued to sit on my head at times watching me work and the model perform. He was a very beautiful creature. There were many little walkways and small ponds and butterflies swarmed everywhere in the tropic air. Outside a winter day drew towards its end, the sun sinking behind the high roofs of the Emperor's Castle. We left the Schmetterlingshaus and said farewell. I continued to walk the old and narrow street of the inner city of Vienna and dropped by the "Café Bräunerhof", one of my favorite coffee houses when I was still living in Vienna over 20 years ago. We love stories. We can't live without them. Take a look here:

[robertwilde1]

The surreal hotel was not part of this world. As she opened the entrance she had, for a last time, seen the bright, warm California sunshine. Now she was walking the endless corridor that seemed to reach to the other side of Earth. Now, inside the hotel it was as if the sun had ceased to exist. In the stuffy environment of the old hotel the very idea of sunshine seemed absurd.     Surreal Hotel - a Fashion Story She carried her midi keyboard, wouldn't let go. She had played so many songs on it that it was a part of her. Now she was at the transition into a new life or was it the end? What was expecting her at the end of the corridor, that room she had to go into? She remembered the sudden insight she had had when she had entered that corridor of no return: "Don't go. Don't go there. What's a career if become an undead. Don't go. Don't sell it" But she was in the mood to take any risk, even risks that gave her little chance to win.     Have a dark day yourself? Take in some light from photography.

[robertwilde1]

A fashion photography story from the desert: The girl was standing on the roadside in the desert mountains, waiting for roadside assistance. A large bird flew overhead. Now he was circling. She didn't like the fact that she was the center of the circle. She could just imagine what he was waiting for. Probably the same type of shark that were circling here wherever she went. A flying shark! That's all she needed on a day like this. She shuddered at the thought. She had been here for two hours. As if making fun of her the wind took up a dust devil of sand and threw it into her face. If only she had brought water. Lost in the Desert The silk dress moved in the wind like an emotional flag. Would they come? She didn't want to wait in the car which was hot as an oven. The wind picked up and she felt it go through the thin fabric of her elegant dress. She had been at an art exhibition in a small desert town. Impressed by the artwork she had allowed the artist to give her his business card. She had given him her number, too. Should she call him? Roadside assistance was likely only to send an ambulance to pick up her remains. What was that behind the bush. Something had moved. How a Coyote influenced fashion photography The coyote stood behind the Yucca plant and grinned at her like an idiot who had blown out his brains on Instagram. What was she thinking? Coyotes didn't do social media. But it would fit. She realized that coyotes almost exclusively were the users of social media. It had been a long time since she had encountered a human being there. Coyote's Delight The coyote moved closer. She looked at her car. Should she get into that oven on wheels. Otherwise she might get chewed up. Torn apart or baked alive, today's choices were not what they used to be. The phone rang. The artist said over a crackling line that seemed to reach down to her from the moon:"Did you get home well?". "No, she said, and if you would like to see me again - can I give you my location? Someone is really interested in me and very insistent"."Give me your location and I'll pick you up and I'll deal with that coyote"     Relief or Disaster? When she hung up she looked at the phone in stupor. How had he known about the coyote? He couldn't be...  She looked over. The coyote looked back at her. Was there a grin in his toothy mouth? It was a grin. Was it him? She had heard of magic people that could turn into animals of their choosing. So was all this just a neat plan to get this expensive silk dress off her body? She wasn't truly aware of the single-mindedness of her thoughts, always circling about her attractiveness just as sharks, with wings or without, circles around her. She looked up. The bird of prey was still there. She looked up at the glowing sun. She has been too long in the heat without a hat. She began to start imagining things. The mountains seemed to grow in size. She looked over and just like that the coyote faded away. At the same moment a car braked near near in a big dust cloud. About this fashion story I photographed this fashion story in the California desert. Landscapes are a wonderful background for high end clothing and they build beautiful rapport for stories. The silk dress is by the designer Sergio Duque. The model is Eugenia from LA Models. Stories engage audiences and are also much more enjoyable to produce. Consider creating a story instead of a regular lookbook or a commercial campaign. The current and future fans of your fashion brand will thank you for it. See more photography of women's fashion here:

[robertwilde1]

The sun sinks in the mountains above the Pacific Ocean and the shadows rise. Soon the whole landscape will be covered with shadow and the contrasts will slide and the shapes will merge. Night will cover the visible and the stars will shine.     Solitude allows thoughts to gather. Distant is the bustle of commerce of the city, the constant requests to do something. Focus regained. The hour before the sunset have a moment of heightened reality. The light makes every smallest twig and brush appear universal, contain in its smallness a part of everything there is.     Would you like to see other images? Here is more photography:  

[robertwilde1]

It is a much trodden upon cliché that ghosts appear at midnight. As if ghosts had a schedule. As if ghosts cared about Generation Z wanting to be safe at all times. One of the key joys of being a ghost is making you feel unsafe. Are you feeling a wave of cold go over your body? Is your hair standing on end? That's what a ghost likes. The Pinacoteca di Brera is a museum of Renaissance art in Milan. The building has been there since the Renaissance and many a grueling death has happened there, so many that in fact I cannot say which murder caused they undead to appear at all times.

[robertwilde1]

This photography artwork represents how computerized information processing sees the world: breaking things up into small, equal sized elements that let the whole of it disappear in the fog of information processing. Photography Artwork Since the beginning of time man has searched for knowledge, strived to get at least a few things about the world that are true. He went out and explored and researched. He found things that were true and on which he could build his civilization. And he did. Rasterized: a contemporary form of Illusion With data processing things get turned around. Now the processing is key and the knowledge is reshaped by arrangement. Just notice how machine search algorithms shape the vision of the world for those who cannot see how they are being led astray by being told some things and other things are being hidden from them. Contemporary data processing is the most sophisticated form of lying and propaganda that has ever existed as it removes the original source completely and replaces it with an image of it. Someone caught in this data labyrinths can err there his whole life without ever finding one thing that he can rely upon, without ever grasping one thing that is true.

[robertwilde1]

Street Photography in Venice California is an endless inspiration if you overlook the fake crazies like the guitar player on roller skates. They are just for the tourists, including a credit card swipe machine for those who want an authentic picture of a Venice crazy. What you see is that is real. Nothing counts but your impression and how the elements suddenly blend together into a coherent image like the flash of an idea.     Fake and Real in Venice, California Key attitude: do not look for the real Venice, California. Real is what happens before your eyes. It's how matter of factly you see it without distorting it through common perceptions, also called kitsch. The real crazies don't often advertise their slant and they rise out of the crowds and sink back into them like a message in a bottle in the Pacific Waves pushing the latest oil spill on Venice beach. Street photography can be risky with the amount of drugs floating around in the intersecting blood streams of Venice beach. Have your pepper spray ready. Be sure to have a strong posture. And possibly not use a wide angle lens so you can smell the breath of the photographed.     Photography in the Street - Combat and Cage Fighting and Poetry I am not a true street photographer. I am not one of those who fly in the faces of people and get images of an absurd beauty. Maybe I am too private to do that. But I love to photograph the street for inspiration and I like to stay more unnoticed, not going in for the clinch like the cage fighters of street photography like Bruce Gilden. Looking at his work I wonder how he stayed alive all those years. In the close combat form of street photography the potential for conflict is great and you cannot get a good picture without basically attacking your subjects and move them out of their masked comfort zone to get that realism you see in Gilden's work. I guess the poetry of Henri Cartier-Bresson as a less brutal form of street photography suits me better. The poet always goes farther away from his subjects and leaves their reality untouched by creating an additional layer of reality on them. Hard street photography claims: this is what really is. Poetry street photography says: this could be if you can see it. There are as many styles of street photography as there are photographers. No matter what style, what is inspiring is that you have to react quickly and you cannot be seen by your subject too soon or they will  immediately put a wall of fake just like most people who know they are going to be photographed and want to put in their own image version. As non-actors can't act those are always terrible so if you get to that acting stage you lost that image. It all comes together in a very brief moment. Mind and camera have to go together without questioning.   I also go out at night when the people have disappeared and just a few druggies and potheads are dragging themselves along, electric bike riders shot up with anything you can buy illegally try to run you over on the boardwalk if the hour is late so you walk the side streets which they do not frequent as they are too scared to miss the space between the houses and end up with a broken neck in a trash can. I will publish another story over Venice Beach at night in the coming weeks. Here is another post on Venice Beach, but this time without people

[robertwilde1]

Landscape photography is first walking the scenery and then wait for the moment. Just as I turned a bend of the gentle, rising path the ocean and the hills presented themselves to me in their beauty. Beauty is rare in this world of mindless vandalism of Earth. This is a memory that beauty and nature has not given up its fight. Landscape photography Nature is the subject and just like with a person I photograph the character and the mood. Instead of a bright smile there will be a wide open panorama and for the thought shadows hint on the other side of this world that is in the shadows and that we often don't want to see but which is necessary to have a three-dimensional world instead of all-flat brightness (which is what makes regular commercial photography so dishonest and distant to us: it's just not real). How does it relate to fashion photography and portrait photography? Landscapes are wonderful backgrounds that have light that puts a special touch on people and clothing no studio with its a bit boring regularity can deliver. New outlooks, new scenery, a wonderful tree, a bush, a rock formation and then the view over the ocean. Picturing people and things in connection with the world gives them a story and emotional meaning. Here is a look at my portrait photography  

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This is a shoot with a fashion model who cannot actually play the saxophone. While fashion photography and music photography are two different realms they both can influence each other positively. The elegance of fashion and the emotional intensity of jazz music, photographed on the rooftops of Hollywood, California. Music photography with style : inspiration by fashion photography Photography of fashion has elements of style that strive for elegance and this is a good fit for musicians. There are enough f***ed up musicians out there. Great Jazz musicians always had their own breed of elegance from Dave Brubeck over John Coltrane to Bill Evans and  many others. Classical musicians, who mostly perform in formal clothing could use this even more. It creates a strong and positive signal - which is a great thing in times of negative news and statements. It works particularly well for classical music and jazz but who says that a rock musician can't be far off a line of cocaine?     Above the rooftops of Hollywood, California: a bright outlook in dark times. We can build a visual story out of ideas and concepts found in 700 years of history of art. Art has always supported the search for the light in times of darkness and the darker the times the brighter the art. We live in dark times and we better not depict the miserable but what can give inspiration and drive to improve things. That goes also for photography that pictures fashion and music. I photograph stories that do not stay within the often tightly defined limits of a genre and use what leads to visually enticing stories. See my women's portfolio here and my men's portfolio here.

[robertwilde1]

The girl was dressed in white, the color of innocence and purity. She left the town of high risers behind and moved towards the countryside. Her eyes held what she had seen in the past and a glimpse of the better things she would be seeing tomorrow. The Symbolic Meaning of the Color White Wedding dresses are white to demonstrate purity and innocence. It is also a symbol of neutrality. Waving a white flag is a sign of peace. In literary works white can take any character the writer can take on. A very complex form of this is as described in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" where the increasingly insane captain chases after the white wale and the color white becomes a fixation to him that leads to his and almost all of his crew's death as Moby Dick attacks and sinks the Pequod, Captain Ahab's ship. The Color White in a Photographic Story The woman in this picture wears white as she walks out on the high buildings that loom in the background. The contrast of her white purity could not be greater with the underworldly looming concrete structures that lack human character and dignity.

[robertwilde1]

A few steps can move you thousands of miles. As the sun was setting the hills took on the shape of a volcano. It was as if I were looking at the Kilimanjaro. The mist dissolved the base into light and the top of the cone seemed to be floating. Trees stuck out here and there from the silhouette of the forest at the foot of the hill. The photography of a landscape turns the location into a place of imagination.

[robertwilde1]

Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California: In an endless chain trash cans stand guard on the beach from Marina del Rey over Venice Beach to Malibu. There are hundreds of them all dressed in uniforms of black or brown, their mouth open to swallow what we no longer need nor want. They want what we don't want, but do they get it? Not as often as they'd like it. Yes, often people dutifully do their pilgrimage to sacrifice their trash to the trash bin for the greater beauty of the beach.  But often their big mouth stay open and their bellies have to remain empty while they are forced to watch people blind to beauty and inept to feel respect throw their junk right on the beach. You could create a distribution bell curve at which distance from a trash can garbage can be found and correlate distance to character quality of the garbage dropping person. Trash Cans and Trash Collectors Almost every week I see a girl walk along the beach with a bag and a giant set of tweezers and pick up the junk that others were too lazy to get into the trash can. There are groups who meet and then walk a line across the beach like a human chain exploring a crime scene for leads. It's a constant fight of those respecting the beauty of the ocean and its beaches against the knuckleheads who throw their trash away without consideration. Or with consideration when they arrange their trash to spiteful sculptures of disrespect. Then there are the bums who burn things on the beach and leave a trace of junk wherever they spend the night. And so many trash cans remain empty while the trash collects at the beach.

[robertwilde1]

Night in Los Angeles. The lights of the houses on the Hollywood Hills look down over the city. In a small theater at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard the saxophonist steps into the pointed limelight onto the small stage. She looks up as if the stage lighting were the stars before she lifts the instrument to her lips to let the music performance of contemporary jazz begin.

[robertwilde1]

Self-defense by handbag. #handbag #handbags #handbagaddict #handbagdesigner #losangelesphotographer #laphotographers #fashionstory #fashioneditorial #fashioneditorials #blackandwhitephotography #selfdefenseforwomen (at Malibu, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcGU5a1JdGZ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=