Technology is great. It's what led me to meet Dale - through twitter, and our mutual friend Ron Dubin. Ron saw the other tattoo shots on my blog, and thought that his friend would be a good subject for this, and boy was he right. Dale is a musician, and runs a recording studio in the city. She has two daughters, one of whom is a tattoo artist - her daughter being a tattoo artist is what got Dale into tattoos, and she started with one, and the rest is history. She is ordained with beautiful tattoos all over, some of which are done by her Daughter Mandy - who I also photographed in this session. Her tattoos have won awards in many tattoo conventions, most recently at the Baltimore tattoo convention.

Dale is incredibly cool and confident, and unfortunately she got sick on the day of the shoot - but she still made it, and was even singing along to Lady Gaga blasting in the next room while waiting for us to set up the lights....

Tattoo Credits: Ox of Jinx Proof in Montclair, NJ, Jim White of Chrome Gardens in Gettysburg, PA and Stacy McCleaf of Chrome Gardens in Gettysburg, PA

On a different note, a friend of mine, Thomas, has been travelling around for a while now, and only recently did I realize he has a blog. It has grown into a very nice collection of experiences, and will probably grow - feel free to check it out here: http://neonomadic.com/. He's in Chile right now (he's safe), and so I suspect there will be a few more additions to the blog very soon.

As usual, thanks to Francesco for helping me out big time.

A Drive through Switzerland

A drive through Switzerland is everything that I thought it would be. Mountains, lakes and the requisite chocolate stops makes this one of the more memorable road trips in Europe.

Cliché

Aside from the pristine beaches, there is another side of Jamaica landscape that I noticed when I ventured out from the sheltered resort area. When you venture inland, there is a plethora of other scenery that is very different than the tourism posters of Jamaica. I happened to walk off the hotel property, and stumbled upon the edge of golf course which was not really part of it, but still was very well taken care of. Either way, anybody would be more than ecstatic to have it as their backyard.

On a different note, I wanted to mention something about photographic cliches. Photographic cliches are images that are created with motifs that are very common, such as sunrise/sunset beaches, mountaineous landscapes, rocks in water, autumn leaves, white fences - and lone trees. I've probably rattled off about 70% of the recent pictures you've seen on the web (and possibly on my blog). The truth is that in the current digital age, and the easy access to camera equipment/technology, its pretty hard to be original, especially for amateurs like myself. All this is a little depressing unless you're a creative genius, and so the philosophy has to change. So if you're not going to create the next original masterpiece, then I guess the thing to take note off is whether you're having fun, and whether you believe in what you created (or are creating) - IMHO, its all worthwhile as long as that requirement is met. Also, I strongly believe that once you are having fun and believe in what you're doing, you will end up creating that masterpiece at some point. Yes, the lone tree motif has been done many times before, but I'm fairly confident its not that rampant in landscapes of Jamaica (I hope). This is my thought process in the ever changing, saturated world of photography of today. What is your approach?