Caution: Jaded Bohemian Ahead

Last night I was at a Valentine's Day lingerie fashion show to photograph littlemissrisk and evilyn13's burlesque and the show in general. The burlesques were were sexy in the cute and classy way they should be, but were a little lost on the college crowd. After the opening burlesque when evilyn13 came out in her PVC maid costume to pick up after littlemissrisk I actually heard one guy say, "What's she doing? I don't get it." A couple minutes later, after she was done and off the stage another voice replied, "Oh, dude, I get it! She's like a maid cleaning up after the other one!" Holy cow.

The rest of the show was like a watered-down strip show - replete with the exact same music the shrubs would blast from their muscle cars at pit parties back in Duncan twenty years ago. Even the pacing of the show seemed patterned after the strip-club standard, complete with the three-metal-song intermissions between "sets". It felt more like "Duo Night" at the No. 5 than a fashion show. I think I must be spoiled by shows like cheekydevil's "Forbidden" and "Fallen" shows, and The Cool Cat Club's "Paradise" shows. Lingerie or not, I found the clothes boring and the pacing of the show abysmal. It would have worked much better if instead of the strip-club-standard three-song intermissions if the burlesques were used to give the models their change time and the show proceeded non-stop.

On another level, in an ironic way, I really did enjoy the evening. I love the fact that my life remains bohemian enough that I can be bored by "ordinary" web-girls in lingerie. I love the fact that women like littlemissrisk, who make their living off thier image, trust me to make images of them. I love being out with artists and artisans, even if we're just a small group monopolizing a table in the back to wonder how anyone can be seriously enjoying the music and trade tales of work-related accidents.

I desperately need to replace my camera, though. After roughly four and a half years of nightclub photography it's becoming harder and harder to work with. The resolution has never been suitable for decent sized prints. I've got no control over lenses and filtering. The lag time between pictures is a frustration at fashion shows, especially with amateur models that fail to linger at the corners. But most frustratingly, the auto-focus fails too often these days and the manual focus is cumbersome. It's time to get a little more serious and get a digital SLR.