Gay Terbush

The Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania are famous for some of the best resorts anywhere. And they really shine when it comes to winter ski vacations. These resorts are very well organized and operated and the have a great
 variety of things to do and with the abundance of hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, you will be sure to find one that suits you. The resorts do have recommendations and some of them offer ski and stay packages. It never hurts to save some money. Be sure to check out the web sites for special offers. These offers can change, so come back often to see what is available. Make your reservations as early as you can. These are some of the most popular resorts and you do not want to be shut out. If you have never been to a Pennsylvania Resort, you are missing out on a great experience. Come once for the skiing and you will want to come back for the summer experience as well.

Alpine Mountain for a Winter Vacation
http://www.alpinemountain.com
(570) 595 - 2150
Alpine Mountain is a medium size resort with 21 trails, snowboarding, tubing, half pipe, and ice skating, with double and quad lifts. They pack a lot of action into one mountain. When you need a food break, stop by the lodge, sit back relax and enjoy the food at the cafeteria. And when you are ready for a full meal, the lounge give you a great view of the slopes while you enjoy a great casual meal, a drink or two or three and the weekend entertainment .
They have no less than 14 choices for lodging listed. Check them out Some of them have great ski and stay packages available and for dining off the mountain, they recommend 11 different restaurants serving everything from pizza to a full sit down menu. They know the different establishments in the area and when they recommend one, you can rest assured that it will be one of the best. They say they are the best in the Poconos, and if they are not, they are sure near the top.

Catia

It is 9 a.m. on a sunny Los Angeles day, and a certain pink wigged, loud sweatshirted, Zac Efron-obsessed blogger is sitting at his pink bedazzled laptop ruining the lives of celebrities. His Tazo tea-toting assistant reads off a gamut of incredibly urgent news, for instance a Real New York City housewife has stabbed a puppy after mistaking it for a predator. Later that day, he must be seen at the week's hottest A-list event: the wake of the recently deceased Britney Spears. The audience may laugh, but this just one snippet of the incredibly important life of Perez Hilton.

“Perez Hilton Saves the Universe (or at least the greater Los Angeles area)”, chronicles a day in the life of the celebrity blogger and his thrilling life spent bitching about people on the internet and saving LA from nuclear disaster. Love him or hate him, as Perez (Randy Blair) sings early on in the show, “he writes what the world wants to read.” Although he is mega famous, with both Kirstie Alley and Barack Obama on his answering machine, Perez's rise to the middle has been surprisingly lonely. All he wants is “love, or at least a BJ.” It seems as though his luck is changing when he meets Kevin (Tim Drucker), on an X-rated dating website. Little does he know, Kevin is really Kebab, half of an Islamic terrorist duo hell bent on blowing up LA and achieving fame of its own. Shortly after their first date at the Olive Garden, Perez is kidnapped by Steve Urkel, who now works for a government-sponsored anti-terror unit, and is told he is the only person who can stop the evil plot and save the world's most important city from nuclear disaster.

After given top-notch defense training, including the ability to create a fool proof decoy (a.k.a. screaming, “Hey look! It's Mario Lopez!”), Perez must choose between “the first person to give him feelings… ever” and the city he loves. Many songs and celebrity cameos later, by the likes of Kathy Griffin, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Tiger Woods, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and yes, even Zac Efron himself, Perez is able to put himself in the center of the action and to go down in history as the hero who saved Los Angeles.

Highlights included a diva moment by Perez's assistant, Alyssa (Dana Steingold), in which she laments the life of the assistant, with all of the work and none of the glory, a song about “shooting [a hot terrorist] in the face,” and a slideshow of images with Perez's sloppy white handwriting all over them to add to each scene.

The show is colorful and kitschy to the max, and boldly attempts to delve into the psyche of this (in)famous blogger. In this show, men want him, and women want to be him, but all Perez really wants is to be rid of his own insecurities. It suggests that Perez is the way he is because he is able to take out his own neurosis on the people he writes about. However horrible that may seem, it turns out the celebrities really need him as much as he needs them. As the closing song says, bitching can save the world.

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Science educators often skim off the top, as it were. They regale young minds with the marvels of science while remaining silent about the problems to which it has contributed.

When I was in grade school as a member of a different younger generation, we had routine drills in which we took cover under our desks. This was to prepare us to act quickly in case the Russians decided to nuke our playground. No one ever explained how this pathetic maneuver would save us, but it seemed to make the teachers feel better. Today's youngsters are treated to a different menu of menaces. Their nuclear hazard is more likely to come in the form of a dirty nuclear device detonated by a terrorist instead of from a Russian plane or missile. Then there is global warming, nuclear waste, environmental degradation, polluted air, water and soil. There are acidified oceans, melting polar ice, oceanic dead zones, dying coral reefs, vanishing species, on and on, all of which are due in some measure to the downside of science and technology. The mantra that only science can save us from these perils rings hollow to many youngsters, since it was largely science and technology that bequeathed them in the first place. As anthropologist and educator Loren Eiseley put it,

We have lived to see the technological progress that was hailed in one age as the savior of man become the horror of the next. We have observed that the same able and energetic minds which built lights, steamships and telephones turn with equal facility to the creation of what euphemistically is termed the “ultimate weapon.” It is in this reversal that the modern age comes off so badly.

The usual defense from the science community toward views such as Eiseley's is that it is technology, not science itself, that has made a mess of things. This is no doubt true to a certain extent. But scientists sometimes take risks in their research that appear breathtakingly irresponsible and reckless, which they usually justify in the name of pure or basic science. Some of these risks are so obvious they draw fire from scientists themselves. Consider a recent editorial in the respected British publication New Scientist titled “The Scary Business of Tinkering with Life”:

“By tinkering with the cell's natural machinery …[the research team] has found a way of making proteins with entirely new properties, opening up a future of exotic designer organisms…. This is a fundamental advance that could lead to new drugs, materials and energy sources. But tampering with life's operating system will inevitably raise safety concerns — and it's true that we have no way of predicting the fallout of this work. Synthetic biologists need to confront openly and honestly public fears that they are “playing God [emphasis added].”

Science boosters should wake up. Kids aren't dumb. To borrow novelist Ernest Hemingway's term, they have excellent “built-in bullshit detectors.” And nothing triggers the warning more than when those in charge present only one side of a story.

Must Science Be Depressing?

Why would anyone who is psychologically healthy pick a career that demands a view of the world that is morbid, pessimistic and depressing? That's precisely the worldview advocated by some of the most outstanding scientists of our day. This can be a turnoff to any optimistic, questing, curious, intelligent kid who stumbles onto it. Perhaps that is why the advocates of science education almost never acknowledge this prevailing view when promoting the wonders of science to youngsters.

Typical of the gloomy perspective is that of Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book The First Three Minutes. In a now-famous passage, he writes,

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning… It is hard to realize that this all [i.e., life on Earth] is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

By the time Weinberg unveiled his gloomy view, the notion of a purposeless, meaningless universe was already on a roll in science. One of the most influential supporters of this perspective was the Nobel molecular biologist Jacques Monod (1910-1976), whose 1972 book Chance and Necessity powerfully influenced a generation of scientists. For Monod, purpose and meaning in nature were outlaw concepts; for a scientist to believe in them was unbecoming at best and a moral failing at worst. As he confidently proclaimed, “The cornerstone of scientific method is the systematic denial that 'true' knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes–that is to say, of 'purpose.'”

Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University has joined the chorus of meaninglessness by dissing free will. “When we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality,” he says, “we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.”
Although prevalent, this depressing verdict on the status of meaning, direction and purpose in the world is not unanimous, and kids who intuitively reject this view have a few strong shoulders to stand on, as we'll see in the next blog.

References

Eiseley L. The Man Who Saw Through Time. New York, NY: Scribner; 1973: 106.
The scary business of tinkering with life. Unsigned editorial. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 3.

Geddes L. Rewriting life in four-letter words. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 14.
Hemingway E. Quoted in: Thinkexist.com. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/develop_a_built-in_bullshit_detector/204440.html. Accessed February 17, 2010.

Weinberg S. The First Three Minutes. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1993: 154.

Monod J. Chance and Necessity. New York, NY: Random House; 1972:21.

Dennett DC. Quoted in: “Overbye D. Free will: Now you have it, now you don't.” New York Times online. January 2, 2007.

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I hadn't felt this nervous since the day my daughter was born. I kept asking the employees at the front desk of the hotel what I should wear. I had crossed the Atlantic, spent a few nights at La Rioja, taken a plane to Barcelona, and then driven for almost three hours to the little town of Roses in Spain. In the days prior to this meal, I had visited a number of other restaurants. Every time I mentioned where I was going, they all had a story. It was like the old E.F. Hutton commercials — when I spoke, people listened. I was having dinner at the restaurant that dethroned French food. Yes, I was going to El Bulli, Ferran Adria's cathedral of modern cuisine.

First things first — if you have a rental car, get a driver, or take a cab. The restaurant is located on top of a mountain, with a winding road leading up to it which makes Lombard Street in San Francisco look like a highway. Once you get there, you realize that the place which for years has been the best restaurant in the world is also the most relaxed and unpretentious. I could have left my sport coat at home.

No short rib, Chilean sea bass, or rack of lamb on this menu. Here Ferran Adria, partner Juli Soler, and his staff will serve you caviar made out of mango, eggs fried in nitrogen, olives made out of pasta, ham turned into gelatin slices, Parmesan ice cream sandwiches and whatever else you never expected to eat in this world. He is the king of culinary foam, there is more foam here than at the old foam parties in South Beach's discotheques. The difference is that here everything tastes spectacular. The olives explode in your mouth, swiftly turning into pools of the finest olive oil. The 34-course meal takes about three hours. If you get there early, start with a drink on the terrace, overlooking La Costa Brava.

The food looks like art. Even my wife was impressed, and she's never been impressed with me.
Good to note that the restaurant is only open for about six months of the year. Reservations are taken a year in advance. The other six months are spent at El Taller in Barcelona, a warehouse where they experiment with products for the following year's menu. It's like visiting NASA.

If you want to go, hurry. 2010 is sold out, and there are no scalpers here. If you are lucky, you might get in for 2011. Reservations start again in September.

Adria announced a few months ago that he would close his doors after the 2011 season for a few years. When the New York Times falsely reported that he was closing for good, it felt like the gourmet world's Titanic had just sunk. There were articles everywhere lamenting the closure. Ferran, however, denied the report and all was right with the world once more. The only recent frenzy has been trying to get a reservation before he goes on hiatus. If you do get one, here's something to bear in mind — the restaurant is losing about half a million Euros a year. So don't give the chef a hard time.

Dinner Tonight: Pasta with Brown Butter, Capers, Walnuts and Spinach

Posted by Blake Royer, May 25, 2010 at 5:00 PM

[Photograph: Blake Royer]

Doesn't it always come back to pasta? Dinner can take many forms and draw from many cuisines, and I love being challenged as a cook and learning new things. Yet sometimes all I want is what I know will be delicious. Something I know I can cook well, that I've loved all my life. For me, that's pasta. Always will be.

This particular recipe is adapted from a recent issue of Esquire magazine, from chef Joey Campanaro of The Little Owl in New York City. They asked him to come up with a trio of pasta dishes with a short shopping list—the other two are a tomato-bacon sauce and one with white anchovies with peppers. I was drawn to this recipe with nutty brown butter and the “tangy punch” of capers. Quick-wilted baby spinach gives it an earthy flavor, and a handful of walnuts are the crunch, while Parmesan brings it all back home. A simple dish, but one with an unexpected depth of flavor and a cooking time as long as it takes the pasta to finish.

Pasta with Brown Butter, Capers, Walnuts and Spinach

- serves 4 -
Adapted from Esquire.

Ingredients

1 pound bucatini, spaghetti, or other long pasta
1/4 pound butter
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon capers
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
5 ounces washed baby spinach
4 torn sage leaves
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and black pepper to taste

Procedure

1. Bring a large pot of salty water to boil and cook the pasta until al dente.

2. Meanwhile, in a small pot or large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Once it foams, watch it carefully, stirring often, as the milk solids begin to brown and the butter becomes fragrant and nutty. Scrape along the bottom to prevent the solids from sticking and burning. When the butter is rich and brown, add the lemon juice to halt the cooking, then lower the heat. Add the capers and walnuts and cook for a minute longer.

3. Turn off the heat on the butter and add the spinach and sage leaves, tossing to wilt. Add the cooked pasta along with most of the Parmesan and toss. Taste for seasoning and finish with black pepper and the remaining cheese.

About the author: Blake Royer founded The Paupered Chef with Nick Kindelsperger, where he writes about food and occasional travels. After a year in Estonia, he's now living in Chicago.

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Behold, the KFC Double Down sandwich. It is, if you really want to know, two slabs of fried chicken intersliced with two pieces of bacon, two slabs of cheese, and the Colonel's “special sauce.” It comes in the form of a sandwich, with the fried chicken where the bread used to be. It's sort of hilarious. It's sort of perfect. And then it'll probably make you vomit….

Did you notice? How in one pseudo-food item, you are consuming not one, not two, but the mutated, chemically injected flesh/byproducts of fully three different distended, liquefied, industrially tortured creatures? Feel the love, pitiable animal kingdom.

You got your chicken-like creature, your pig-like creature, your dairy cow-like creature, all wrapped in a $5 fistful of nausea, ready to strangle your heart and benumb your brain. God knows what is in the “special sauce.” Maybe some sort of fish byproduct, just to round it all out. It's like a wild kingdom in your mouth! It's like a toxic zoo in your colon! It's like a suicide note from left of your brain! “If you eat this, you are a complete and total idiot, and through. Signed, You.”

Let us now add a shred of wary perspective. For well do I know this horrible crapbucket of chyme joins a very long list of fast-food nightmares you should never put anywhere near your mouth, unless you deeply hate yourself and don't give a damn anymore, and you want to die fat and stupid and smelling like that rotting thing you found in your rain gutter.

What's more, some fast food companies are trying, at least a little, to respond to the call for slightly healthier foods, adding salads and fruit and grilled chicken breasts to their menus, even though every single one of those items is just as jammed with chemicals, preservatives, synthetic flavorings and high-fructose corn syrup as the rest, and all the “healthy” meat products are still raised on the most execrable, environmentally rapacious industrial feedlots imaginable. But hey, it's something, right?

Further, some argue that it's a bit disingenuous to blame the junk food purveyors for all the obesity, cancer, impotence, bad skin and colonic pain in the land. After all, the undereducated masses love to eat this garbage, right? KFC test-marketed this Double Down death bomb for months, to (presumably) great effect.

Of course, it's sort of a foregone conclusion, a rigged game. This vile meatwich is crammed like a grenade with sodium, sugar, fat and chemicals. Ergo, the testers, presumably people with taste buds devastated by years of cramming similar compost into their guts, thought it was pure nirvana. And then their colons exploded.

Had KFC actually tested it on people who eat real food every day, folk who have not touched fast food in years, whose systems are strong and fully recovered and in whose bodies blood flows unobstructed, had KFC dared any genuinely healthy human to take a bite, you can bet they would have heard, and smelled, a slightly different reaction.

Maybe it's all a silly, futile argument, a fool's game to point up the obvious evil of such products. These items are legion. They just keep right on coming. What's more, it's just capitalism at work. It's about giving the people what they want, right?

And if they don't really want it — if, deep down, most humans sense this garbage is hugely unhealthy, that it's a form of slow poison and there are far superior and wiser options out there — well, you do what companies like KFC, Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonald's and all the rest have done since the dawn of the free market.

You convince the less educated and the gullible that they are wrong, that this crap is actually a good value for your family, nutritious and safe to feed to children, even as you manufacture all the flavors, smells and meat-like textures in a giant lab and sell truckloads of the crap to the poorer classes, until they get fat and sick and die. Meanwhile, you employ cartoon characters and bright, funny mascots to lure in the next generation, to keep the cycle going.

Do I have that about right, Mr. KFC exec? Did I miss anything? Can you hear me down there, what with all the flames and the screaming?

This piece was originally published at the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate, here.

Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest work for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. Get it at daringspectacle.com or Amazon. He recently wrote about the Texas Board of Education, sex rehab, and what it's like being part of the evil liberal conspiracy. His website is markmorford.com. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention…

You are certainly aware of this, but this day is not just any Monday. In the same way that we all remember September 26, 2006 as the debut of Burger King's Chicken Fries, April 12th, 2010 will be seared upon our historical consciousness as the premiere of the new KFC sandwich, the Double Down. I'm afraid I must confess that when I—a connoisseur of speedily-prepared foodstuffs—first heard about this sandwich, I found the concept distasteful and thought myself unlikely to sample it. But here I am, having eaten both of the available versions and writing about them on the internet.

If you aren't familiar with the Double Down, here's some marketing language from the Colonel's website that breaks it down:

The new KFC Double Down sandwich is real and it's coming April 12th! This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel's Sauce. This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!

One of the best things about this blurb is that they had to make sure people understood that this was not actually some sort of amusing prank or illusion. Which makes sense really. If someone told you KFC was coming out with a sandwich that used either grilled or fried chicken in place of bread and bacon as the "meat," accompanied by multiple layers of cheese, and then a sauce, you might assume it was some clever comment on America's obsession with fast food and subsequent obesity. So I suppose an assertion of the product's actuality is both warranted and necessary.

Also, KFC is not lying. An accurate review of the sandwich is pretty much: "This product is so meaty, there's no room for a bun!" In fact, I should probably stop wasting everyone's time because that's the most systematic description of the sandwich that could ever be written. But you know what? I ate both of these things. You're going to sit here as I walk you through each component of this "sandwich"/"product" and like it.

So let's get to it and break the Double Down piece by piece.

The "Buns"/Fried Chicken and Grilled Chicken

There are two options when ordering a Double Down: one can either select the grilled version or the fried version (or, in my case, both). The grilled version offers the breakout (right?) KFC item of last year: the Grilled Recipe filet. It evokes a less ambitious Boston Market/Kenny Rogers' rotisserie chicken. It's not terrible, and is actually probably better than you would think it to be, but it's definitely not good. (to clarify the comparison, let's establish in the context of this review that the Boston Market/Kenny Rogers' rotisserie breasts are but not exceptional.)

The fried option is essentially the chicken breast they serve in the buckets that you may or may not remember from your childhood depending how awesome or unawesome your parents were. While undoubtedly palatable, I've never found the Colonel's blend of flavors to be my cup of tea. Which should not be taken as a disparagement of all fast food fried chicken; I am no stranger to Bojangles' and Popeyes—the former being much better than the latter, but both ranking significantly above KFC for me.

What I'd point to as the major flaw in this sandwich—in its underlying principle, really—is that both varieties of chicken, particularly the fried, out-muscle and overpower the rest of the sandwich with the intense taste of saltiness. Make sure you get a drink. Actually, if you're ordering the Double Down, you should probably get water instead of a fountain soda, because you are going to be really parched both during and after the act of consumption. Also, you don't NEED a soda.

The Bacon

Sadly, the belly of the hog is pretty much an afterthought. To be frank, by the time I had turned my attention to the grilled version I was unable to perceive even the existence of bacon. I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe the grilled one is the 'healthy' version! Maybe I could try this again!" But nope, that wasn't the case: There was bacon in that one too, only I just couldn't tell. It's either because the chicken, cheese, and sauce are all so flavor-full/salty and the bacon is kind of "meh," or because the bacon is kind of flimsy and afterthought-y. Or maybe it's because I was eating my second KFC Double Down in the span of 15 minutes and at some point your palate gives up and says, "F you, if you're not going to treat me with respect you don't deserve to taste." I'm still not sure.

The Cheese

If you like gooey cheeses that promise the suggestion of a flavor with which you are familiar without actually presenting such flavor, this is going to be up your alley. The cheese, much like the chicken—or perhaps because of the chicken—has sort of a salty and nutty thing going on. It's more identifiable than the bacon while eating, but this may be more a product of consistency than actual flavor.

The Colonel's Special Sauce TM

It's pretty much Thousand Island dressing. I think it's safe to state that when a fast food chain promises a special sauce, it's going to be Thousand Island dressing. If you're share my affections for the McDonald's Huge Mac, note that that special sauce is also Thousand Island dressing, although if have waded this far into a review of a fast food sandwich that uses chicken instead of bread this is certainly a fact of which you had prior knowledge.

(Sidebar: Did you know that there's actually a place in the world that is called Thousand Islands, somewhere between us and Canada, that may be the origin place for Thousand Island dressing? It turns out that there's a pretty interesting—relative, perhaps, to this review—debate about it on the Thousand Island dressing Wikipedia page! Spoiler alert: passive aggressive comments arguing about salad dressings are behind that link!)

Nutrition (LOL!)

So KFC claims that the two Double Downs only have 540 and 460 calories each (fried and grilled, respectively). At the risk of being unfortunately unpleasant, I'm forced to express my disbelief of those numbers, because there's no way that these things have less calories than a Huge Mac (without cheese!). Also, if you look on the board at your local KFC (or at least at my local KFC), there's a calorie count for the meal, which comes with potato wedges and a drink (you fatty!), that counts the calories at 475-1080.

Further to this issue, Susan Levine, the nutrition education director for the Committee for Responsible Medicine, has issued a letter to Yum! Brands Inc. (operators of KFC, obvs) insisting that the shouldn't advertise the Double Down to children. Levine feels that the "sandwich" is a "troubling symbol of corporate irresponsibility." She also believes that the FDA should restrict Double Down advertising in a similar manner to the way it handles tobacco advertising. Sorry, phallus-faced Camel who's eating bacon surrounded by pieces of fried chicken, your kind isn't wanted here.

(Sidebar 2: Did you know that KFC also offers a Double Chocolate Chip Cake that is 1700 calories? I mean, truth be told, it looked pretty dope, but 1700 calories? Holy crap.)

Overall

Should you eat this? Probably not. It is very much what you think it is, a sloppy and salty mess, and will make your stomach injured for several hours after you've consumed it.

Still, I asked the KFC employee behind the counter how the Double Downs were doing, mostly in the hope that I would have been the first one to order this creation. It was not to be: Apparently my local KFC affiliate has been serving them for "a few days" already. In fact, they are "selling a lot so far." So I guess that's cool. America, we did it! We, like the Double Down, are pretty much exactly what people think we are.


Awl publisher David Cho previously reviewed the products prepared on the new Burger King broiler. The Awl has no financial arrangements with KFC or its parent company Yum! Brands, which should be pretty obvious right now.

Fine is not it ?

Detroit Film Crew Job

Asphodelus Productions seeks Director of Photography for short film “THE PROBLEM OF A FLOWER“. Synopsis: Adam, a sporadically-employed twenty-something, has lost all meaning from his life after his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal. He turns to his artist friends, each stranger than the former, for purpose. One makes thousands of paper airplanes; another composes poems to the dead; still another obsessively washes windows until he can see his own clear vision of the world. Perhaps Adam will learn a valuable lesson when all of them come together…or is he forever doomed to remain stuck in the past?

Our style is inspired by Gondry’s THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (surrealism) and Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND (a man fighting for his identity hindered by deep-seated psychological issues). We are looking for a disciplined Director of Photography who has strong visual sense and is able to tell an intimate story despite fantastical elements.

The position is unpaid, but will offer a great deal of creative control, as an important collaborator with the director. We will be shooting weekends from late April to late May. Possessing camera and lighting equipment is highly preferable.

Interviews are scheduled for Sunday, March 21st, from 12 PM to 3:30 PM, at 1353 Division St., Apt 3 East, Detroit, 48207.

Interested parties must submit a link to their demo reel to the above e-mail. You will be contacted prior to your interview to set up a time. Call 734-624-8626 for more information.

Tags: asphodelus productions, detroit film crew, director of photography, dp, film production jobs, short film detroit, the problem of a flower

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on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 8:37 am and is filed under Film Crew & Production Jobs.
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Any special moment, occasion or you are on a family trip, then you wouldn't ever forget to carry camera which is the most important accessory to keep your moments cherished forever. You can capture the most beautiful and artistic photography with a camera that can convey tranquility and harmony just as how the pictures would look real and full of energetic. One magnificent advantage of perfect photography is that they can capture transitory moments in a jiffy with a swift and simple click of a button. Thus photographs are always preferred for sporting events and even a relaxed portrait of a group of friends.

However when it comes to photography, the digital gesture is very much in facts and yet, both function on the same principles. Both have a lens, an aperture and a shutter. The difference lies in how the image is formed. There are different kinds of photography these days like corporate photography, wedding photography, advertising photography, and many more. Photography lighting plays an important part when it comes to good photography. The main reason of a photography lighting system or kit is to enlighten a subject to let proper image capture or to attain the preferred result. So to get high quality photography then proper illumination of the subject is very much essential.

Among so many photography's the portrait photography entices most of the populace. Portrait photography indicates photographing the subject in which the facial expressions are a principal feature. Moreover in this kind of photography, a photographer can also take the picture of the group of people as a group portrait. The chief point of portrait photography is to spotlight on the person's face. This photography centers on the feel of the subject and the photographer portrays this mood of the subject. In a portrait, the focus is often faces the camera directly.

However lighting effects used for the portrait photography is very important. A photographer should properly light the subject as well as the background. They can keep a simple background or overlay several sorts of images at the back of the subject. There is a key light that lights up the background as well as the subject. The back light distinguishes the settings from the subject in the photograph. While planning to hire a professional portrait photographer, there are three things that one should bear in mind. First, the amount of money that one is ready to spend on portraits is one of the most significant aspects guiding the choice of portrait studios and who you can hire. Second, they need to decide on what kind of portraits you will want. It can be either an outside photo session, or one in the studio.

With the novelty in cameras, photography has rapidly become a new, exciting art form. But at times portrait photographers are also used for promotional or public exhibition. These types of photographs are typically used for personal use. However sky-scraping digital photography lighting is an absolute requirement of a successful photo.

Photographers, just like designers, often use the Internet to help promote their work.

Other than using mainstream photography and design sites such as Flickr, Behance and DeviantArt, photographers usually like to have their own portfolio. Not only is it professional, but it gives them an unlimited amount of options and ways to showcase their own work.

This compilation showcases some of the best photographer portfolio websites out there, including both HTML and Flash based portfolios.

Did we miss a photography portfolio out from this list that you feel deserves to be here? Be sure to drop a link in the comments area at the bottom of the post…

HTML/CSS Portfolios

HTML and CSS based web designs are becoming ever more popular for portfolio sites to showcase work, whether it be photography or design, traditional art or furniture construction.

The latest technologies in HTML, CSS and JavaScript/jQuery allow us to create some awesome portfolio features such as light-boxes and sleek animated scrolling effects. Another plus side with choosing an HTML/CSS portfolio is that it can be viewed without the Flash player on mobile devices, such as the iPhone, or older computers that might not be powerful enough for CPU intensive animations.

Rick Nunn

Rick Nunn uses a modern design, making nice use of  jQuery effects and some subtle grunge textures. The main navigation area of the site is located in the footer, adding a unique and interesting way to find your way round the site.

Alex Flueras

Alex Flueras’ portfolio uses a clean black and white color scheme, which causes his photographs to stand out. The typography-based navigation menu on the left side of the layout is used to view different types of his work, you can then scroll sideways to view the works in each category. A great jQuery effect is used which allows you to click on the next image which, once clicked, smoothly scrolls to the left side of the page for you.

Rebecca Ruth

Rebecca Ruth’s portfolio is based on an HTML and CSS layout, although Flash is used to create an elegant slider. The use of a calligraphy style font adds more elegance to the portfolio, and the low-opacity floral patterns add a bit of depth to the design.

Robert Dann

Robert Dann makes great use of texture in his portfolio to add depth to the overall feel of the design. He uses the same hot and vivid pink found in his logo throughout his design which helps add that little something extra to the design. The portfolio area uses a classy jQuery slider, adding a little touch of style to the site’s usability.

Maurice Krijtenberg

Maurice Krijtenberg makes use of his photography skills in his portfolio design, putting the message across that he is a photographer right from the word go. His photographic work is showcased in a photo frame; to view the next piece of work you simply click and a cool  jQuery effect kicks in to play and does its job to smoothly scroll the image sideways to reveal the next photograph.

John Morris

John Morris has gone for the elegant and clean look, which is always a good choice if you’re a wedding photographer! The minimal white color scheme works perfectly with the style of photos and makes them stand out like there’s no tomorrow. Yet again, another jQuery effect has been used, this time to add an elegant smooth faded effect to the front page slide-show.

Sandy Carson

Sandy Carson’s portfolio is another minimalistic one, making use of white-space to bring out the best in his photographic work. The portfolio pages make good use of a jQuery thumbnail gallery, allowing you to select just the photos you want to see rather than having to view them all, although you most probably will view them all anyway!

Mauro Poltronieri

The faded damask style texture used in the background of Mauro Poltronieri’s one-page portfolio adds great depth, making the site much more visually appealing. The scroll effect on the portfolio of images itself is very smooth and adds a elegant feel to the design; the images can be clicked on and opened up to view the full-size image in a beautiful jQuery light-box.

Daniel Woolf

Daniel Woolf makes use of a lovely striped images on the left-hand side of his portfolio, adding tonnes of interest to the portfolio design itself. The portfolio section of the site uses a jQuery thumbnail gallery that fits in perfectly with the sites overall design.

Sunny Shen

Sunny Shen’s portfolio uses a very limited color scheme and makes use of rounded corners to make the square-cornered images stand out well. The portfolio section of the site is slightly outdated and doesn’t make use of slide-shows or any jQuery effects, however it displays well and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

Buddhabong

Buddhabong’s portfolio uses some really modern trends such as repeated striped background patterns, jQuery effects and a minimalist but effective and stunning navigation menu.

Andrew Gransden

Andrew Gransden’s HTML and CSS based portfolio uses some great rollover link effects in the navigation menu which is very easy to use and find your way around the site. The portfolio area of the site uses a popular, but well used jQuery light-box, emphasizing the quality of the photography.

Paulo Boccardi

Paulo Boccardi has such a simple portfolio, yet its elegance and simplicity make it absolutely perfect for his style of work, which stands out incredibly well. The portfolio area uses a great jQuery scrolling effect, making it simple to use and nice to look at.

Arild Danielsen

Arild Danielsen’s design uses great Flash-like JavaScript effects to make the site visually appealing and interesting to use. Thumbnails of the photos are enlarged in a pretty light-box when clicked on, allowing the viewer to view the photos at a larger scale.

Clouds 365 Project

The Clouds 365 Project is an incredibly interesting project, and has a superb “portfolio” to match. It uses a fantastic JavaScript effect that makes the slightly decreased-opacity images show their true color when hovering over them. Clicking on a thumbnail reveals a bigger version of the clouds, and like a blog, allows visitors to comment on their favorite photographs.

Ivan Vanderbyl

Ivan Vanderbyl’s photography portfolio uses jQuery rollover effects that reveal the name of a particular photo, as well as when it was taken. Clicking on one of the many thumbnails displayed on the front page takes you to another page, allowing you to view a larger version of the photo.

Rankin

Rankin is a huge and very well-known photographer, having photographed plenty of celebrities such as Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Jay-Z, Ricky Gervais and many, many more. The portfolio design itself is very simple and minimalist, using a frame to present the actual photographs in a horizontal scroll-box.

Dave Hill

Dave Hill uses great jQuery effects in his portfolio to display a selection of washed-out thumbnails down the left-hand side, followed by a large preview of the selected thumbnail.

Alexander Henderson

The sleek, modern portfolio of Alexander Henderson uses a dark gray text to make the navigation menu on the left-hand side as subtle as possible. The thumbnails of the photos stand out incredibly well because of the very limited color-scheme, and when clicked are opened up in a beautiful light-box, allowing the user to view the photos at a good size.

Flash Portfolios

Using the latest Flash technology in portfolio design is a great way to display your work a little differently to those using HTML, CSS and JavaScript/jQuery. Although almost anything is possible, expect to pay a little more for custom Flash-based portfolios (if you’re not creating it yourself). One other bad point about Flash is it can’t be viewed on all computers and mobile devices, such as some older computers and iPhones.

Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry’s portfolio is laid out tremendously well and it couldn’t be easier to find your way around the site, from locating different galleries and scrolling through the different photographs. The use of subtle noise and texture in the background put emphasis on the photos, and the bold border around the whole design finishes it off nicely.

Felipe Marti

Felipe Marti’s portfolio is definitely something that can be achieved using HTML, CSS and a few good jQuery effects, but nonetheless it is still a great portfolio. The navigation couldn’t be any easier, and the lovely desaturated color scheme makes you focus more on the photography than the design of the portfolio.

Erik Borst

Erik Borst has designed his portfolio so that each photograph has the maximum amount of space possible to fill your screen with delightful compositions and colors. The navigation is very interesting, making it very unique compared to most other sites in this compilation.

Adam Sheppard

Adam Sheppard’s portfolio has some very unique animated navigation menus on his portfolio, allowing us to interact with the design a little more than others. When you’re not purposely viewing any photos a wonderfully transitioned slide-show is playing in the background. The portfolio area itself is explored via numbers, you never know what you’re going to get which builds up the suspense making you want to view more!

Evaan Kheraj

Evaan Kheraj’s portfolio is another one that makes use of great Flash effects to make the most of the space they have, allowing us to see the photographs at the biggest size possible. As well as being able to click through the photos in full-size, we are also given the option to view the album/gallery in thumbnail views, allowing us to pick and choose the photos we want to see, avoiding the stuff we don’t want to see – a great addition for those who know what they’re looking for!

Eric Ryan Anderson

Eric Ryan Anderson’s portfolio is very minimal, making us focus every little bit of attention in us on the superb photography. Albums are super easy to find using the easy navigation, and photos can be viewed by simply sliding from one side to the other.

Any special moment, occasion or you are on a family trip, then you wouldn't ever forget to carry camera which is the most important accessory to keep your moments cherished forever. You can capture the most beautiful and artistic photography with a camera that can convey tranquility and harmony just as how the pictures would look real and full of energetic. One magnificent advantage of perfect photography is that they can capture transitory moments in a jiffy with a swift and simple click of a button. Thus photographs are always preferred for sporting events and even a relaxed portrait of a group of friends.

However when it comes to photography, the digital gesture is very much in facts and yet, both function on the same principles. Both have a lens, an aperture and a shutter. The difference lies in how the image is formed. There are different kinds of photography these days like corporate photography, wedding photography, advertising photography, and many more. Photography lighting plays an important part when it comes to good photography. The main reason of a photography lighting system or kit is to enlighten a subject to let proper image capture or to attain the preferred result. So to get high quality photography then proper illumination of the subject is very much essential.

Among so many photography's the portrait photography entices most of the populace. Portrait photography indicates photographing the subject in which the facial expressions are a principal feature. Moreover in this kind of photography, a photographer can also take the picture of the group of people as a group portrait. The chief point of portrait photography is to spotlight on the person's face. This photography centers on the feel of the subject and the photographer portrays this mood of the subject. In a portrait, the focus is often faces the camera directly.

However lighting effects used for the portrait photography is very important. A photographer should properly light the subject as well as the background. They can keep a simple background or overlay several sorts of images at the back of the subject. There is a key light that lights up the background as well as the subject. The back light distinguishes the settings from the subject in the photograph. While planning to hire a professional portrait photographer, there are three things that one should bear in mind. First, the amount of money that one is ready to spend on portraits is one of the most significant aspects guiding the choice of portrait studios and who you can hire. Second, they need to decide on what kind of portraits you will want. It can be either an outside photo session, or one in the studio.

With the novelty in cameras, photography has rapidly become a new, exciting art form. But at times portrait photographers are also used for promotional or public exhibition. These types of photographs are typically used for personal use. However sky-scraping digital photography lighting is an absolute requirement of a successful photo.

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