Rants

In the past four years, more than a dozen local mothers have brought their teenaged daughters into my studio and asked that I shoot photos of the girl in a bikini, lingerie or partially nude for use in a "teen model web site."

Although I do occasionally shoot nude photographs of adults, I do not take such photos of children and, in each case, the girls brought in by their mothers were 14 or 15 or younger.

"Teen model" web sites feature underage girls in sexually-suggestive poses and revealing attire. Many charge "subscription fees" for access.

I tell the mothers to get the hell out of my studio and to not come back. When they leave I usually have to sit down and stop shaking. Such exploitation of children brings out blind rage.

I wrote about this problem some years ago for another web site. The story: Underage and Selling Their Sexuality on the Web brought a number of awards and calls for changes in the laws that allowed parents to give permission for their children to be exploited as sexual objects.

I've always wondered what in the hell these mothers were thinking when they sought to abuse their children in such a way. I'm also wondering what country singer Billy Ray Cyrus was thinking when he watched Vanity Fair photographer photograph his 15-year-old daughter, Miley Cyrus (above), topless and covered only by a sheet. With her tousled hair and sultry look, the 15-year-old appears to be in what the romance novels used to call as "post-coital" moment.

Miley, of course, is better known as Hannah Montana, a G-rated creation of the Disney Entertainment Factory, and an apparent role model for children her age. This "role model" told Vanity Fair that the steamy HBO series Sex And The City is her favorite TV show.

Shocked? Don't be. It is now standard operating procedure for young girls to be used as sexual objects.  The trend is examined in the book: Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization of Girls in American Culture.

Writes author Patrice A. Oppliger, an assistant professor of mass communications at Boston University:

Instead of advancing women's social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages.

This study investigates the effects of mass marketed sexual images and cultural trends on the behaviors and attitudes of young girls and describes many ways in which young girls are increasingly taught to go to outrageous lengths in seeking male attention.

Topics include the powerful effects of cultural phenomena such as revealing fashions, plastic surgery, and beauty pageants in influencing teen and preteen girls to willingly participate in and promote their own sexualization.

These chapters also explore other cultural factors contributing to this early sexualization of young girls, including absentee parenting and material overindulgence.

Later chapters focus on the sexual representations of females in the mass entertainment media, focusing specifically on how popular magazines, television programs, films, and the Internet prey upon, promote, and reinforce young girls' physical and sexual insecurities. 

Some feel this is an urban problem but consider this:

1. Radford photographer Bob Shell is in prison for his part in the death of a young model in his downtown studio. Although the model, who specialized in bondage themes, was over 18, Shell also promoted teen model web sites and many of his photos were shot at his farm here in Floyd County;
2. In each case, the mother who brought her young daughter for "teen model" photographer, lived, at the time, in Floyd County.

(Photo of Miley Cyrus from Vanity Fair. Copyright 2008: Vanity Fair and Annie Leibowitz.  Book cover courtesy of Amazon.Com)

Somebody left an unsigned, multi-page racist screed taped to the front window of Blue Ridge Muse last night.

I only got through the first-page of the hate-filled diatribe aimed at Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama before starting to retch. I ripped the pages into shreds and dumped them into the nearest trashcan.

Let's get something straight up front: I despise racism and those who practice it. I have no patience with bigots, homophobes, racists and anti-Semites.

So stay the hell away from me. Don't waste my time with your ignorance, your hate or your intolerance.

Too many Floyd County residents this past week say they were more terrified by some of the more overzealous "tactical team" state police officers searching for Steven Dale Branscome than they were of Branscome himself.

"There were rude, menacing and frightening," says one Indian Valley resident who asked not to be identified when she contacted Blue Ridge Muse.

John McEnhill, executive director of The Jacksonville Center and another resident of Indian Valley, says fatique-clad cops came onto his property, pointed their weapons at him, and demanded to know who he was.

"I put my hands up and tried to explain that this was my land," McEnhill said. "I was afraid they were going to shoot me."

Such stories have poured in via email and over the phone during the week long search for Branscome, who wounded a State Trooper after a car chase ended in West Virginia.

Cops pull out all the stops when one of their own is shot. The trooper's wounds were relatively minor and he was back on duty this week but the rule is simple: When a cop goes down -- either wounded or killed -- the response is immediate, massive and often intimidating.

Yet one Floyd County Deputy told me privately this week that he is embarrassed by the aggressive attitude of some the cops in the Branscome manhunt.

"It's overkill," he said, "but if Branscome was willing to shoot a police officer that makes him even more of a danger to civilians."

Perhaps, but was a career petty criminal like Branscome worth the presence of 16 different police agencies, SWAT teams, armored vehicles and a presence that seemed more like an armed camp?  Would the response be the same if Branscome shot a "civilian?" Those are questions that must be answered after Branscome is captured.

Sheriff Shannon Zeman says he is "grateful" for the help of other police agencies in the hunt for Branscome but the officers who routinely patrol the roads of Floyd County are a far-cry from the swaggering, over-aggressive group that invaded the county over the past week. Even worse, I sat a table away from these state tactical team officers at breakfast a few days ago and heard them make jokes about the "local yokels" and brag amount "scaring the piss" out of some county residents. They also denigrated some of the Floyd County deputies, calling them "jokes" and "Barney Fifes."

I'm sure that most of the officers involved in the hunt this past week treated residents with respect and conducted themselves in a professional manner but the handful of over-the-top members of the State Police Tactical Team damaged the reputation of all who came to help.

As the week ended, most evidence pointed to a successful escape by Branscome from both Floyd County and Virginia. The truck he stole in Indian Valley turned up in Statesville, NC, and he is believed to have stolen at least two other vehicles since dumping the truck.  He's gone but you wouldn't know it by the continued police presence here in the county.  It will be up to the U.S. Marshalls to catch Branscome.

The Ramada Inn web site clearly stated that their hotel on Eastridge in Richmond's West End has high-speed Internet access in the rooms so I booked a room for Friday night . The plan was to stay in Richmond for the state championship game if the Floyd girls' team won or stay over and drive back home early Saturday if they lost.

The Lady Buffs won, of course, and I left the Siegel Center for the 15 minute drive to the city's West End.

Found the hotel without any problm (thanks to the in-car GPS) and asked as I checked in:

"Is your Internet access wireless or hard-wired."

"We don't have Internet access," the clerk behind the counter said.

"You don't."

"Nope. Never had."

"The Ramada web site says you do."

"Sorry sir, we don't."

Internet access is a requirement for any hotel when I'm traveling so I cancelled the reservation and started looking for anoher hotel, a difficult enough task on a state high school championship weekend but even more difficult when Richmond is also hosting a big crafts fair.

After 11 phone calls, I found a room at a Motel 8 on West Broad Street -- their last one. I grabbed it after confirming that they did, in fact, have wireless broadband in the rooms.

That room was a smoking room and reeked of cigarette smoke but the Internet worked and the bed was soft. I settled in, posted a game update on Blue Ridge Muse, sent a strongly-worded email to Ramada Inn (along with a promise for a strong letter to follow) and headed downtown to meet Jonathan and Jeri Rogers for dinner.

Turned out to be the only glitch of the weekend.

I head into the coming week realizing that time is neither on my side or under control. My time is no longer my own. It belongs to too many others, controlled by outside forces, dominating every waking moment. The day ends in exhaustion. I collapse into bed or fall onto the couch and sleep, in bits and pieces, until the new day dawns.

Time to cut back, prioritize, focus on the important and discard the minutiae. But how? I'm over-committed, over-scheduled, over-utilized and unable to control time, life or destiny.

Life in the country is anything but restful, easy or bucolic. Every evening this week is booked. Every day is dominated by appointments and meetings. The approaching deadlines must wait until the overdue projects are completed.

There is a breaking point. Or rather there was. I think I passed it a long time ago.

My Canon EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR went to the company's repair facility in Newport News this past week for a photographic version of a factory recall.

Some early models of the Mark III had problems with the automatic focus (a new design on the model) so Canon launched a massive retrofit program that involved replacing the sub mirror assembly in the camera body on all early models. It meant sending my five-month old camera back to the factory service center and being without it for a few days.

"Few days" however, can be subject to interpretation. Canon promises a three day turnaround for working pros so I sent my camera off to Newport News via UPS next day air on their tab. According to UPS tracking, it arrived at the Canon facility at 8:11 a.m. on Friday, January 18.  However, it wasn't logged into Canon's repair system until the end of the day on Monday, January 21. OK, it was a weekend so no big deal.  The same system said the camera repair was completed by Tuesday, January 22 but Canon didn't ship it until Wednesday and, for some reason, they chose FedEx two-day air to return the camera. That meant the camera goes from Newport News to Memphis and then back to Roanoke for Friday delivery -- eight days after I sent it in. UPS ground can get it from Newport News to Roanoke in one day.

The "upgraded" camera arrived at our house Friday afternoon. I was out but Amy signed for it and I got home just in time to unpack it, stick in a freshly-recharged battery, and head back out to shoot the Floyd County High School basketball game and homecoming that night.

At the game, I put a telephoto lens on the camera, focused on the action, pressed the shutter release...and nothing happened.  An ominious message flashed in the viewfinder: Error 99.

Error 99 is one of the most dreaded messages that the user of a digital camera can receive. It's a communications problem somewhere in the digital bowels of the camera. It also means the camera won't work. I tried the recommended steps to try and correct the problem: turn the camera off and on, remove and reinsert the battery, change memory cards and/or lenses. Nada. Dead in the water.

Fortunately, I carry backup camera bodies so I put the new and improved Mark III away and went back to my trusty EOS-1Ds Mark II and a 40D to shoot the game and homecoming festivities.

When I got home I called the Canon "priority" support line and said, in a relatively calm tone, that "a week ago I sent you a working camera and you upgraded it to one that doesn't work.  Why is that?"

The support tech apologized at least 10 times, got his boss on the line and they emailed me a UPS sticker to ship the camera out this morning via next-day air to the New Jersey repair facility.  They promised the problem would be repaired and the camera returned to me no later than Wednesday of next week.

Floyd, unfortunately, does not have Saturday pickup for next day air. So I will pack the camera back into the box that arrived just yesterday and truck over to Christiansburg or Roanoke to make the early deadline for next-day air pickup at one of the UPS stores, which also means cancelling two appointments for today with web site clients.

Ah, the joys of modern technologies.

Virginia's General Assembly, a group of legislators not known for ground-breaking initiatives, says it wants to do something about the spiraling number of drunk drivers on the Commonwealth's roads.

One of the more laughable proposals is to issue special license plates for those with DUI convictions.

Reports The Richmond Times Dispatch: