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What's Bershon? Oh, you know that look. It's the look you have on your eighth-grade picture.
Sullen. Bored. Ennui.
It's a look that says, "I'm a little too cool to have my picture taken, but I must suffer the indignity for the sake of my parents."
This uniquely adolescent pose exasperates mothers of teenagers everywhere.
"Why couldn't you just smile?" they implore.
Until recently, I did not know there was a name for this expression.
Now I do.
It's called Bershon. I discovered the term when I read Design blogger Michael Bierut's post about Bershon, and witnessed the lovely picture of his wife in a classic Bershon-y (Bershonic?) grimace. I grinned in instant recognition of the classic teen and pre-teen posturing, which heretofore had been nameless to me.
You will recognize Bershon instantly when you see it. And I am much pleased to note that the topic has its own Flickr group, appropriately titled, "I'm so Bershon". It's a joy to flick through these images. So much so, I'm considering using them for the break slides in my next PowerPoint presentation, no matter what the topic.
Note to teenagers and pre-teens everywhere: for your next class photo, suck it up.
Make your mom happy.
Just smile. :)
And 32 years from now, you won't find your grimacing mug on Flickr.
PS to Moms everywhere: how can you use your new found appreciation for Bershon to generate even more Bershon photos from your young? ;0
Labels: fun, photography, PowerPoint Presentation
¶ 5/09/2008 12:12:00 PM 1 Comments Links to this post
What's Kitsch? Kitsch is a black velvet painting. Garden gnomes, lava lamps, troll dolls, flamingo lawn ornaments, dogs playing poker -- all are classic kitsch. Often of poor quality, kitsch is an object that appeals to lowbrow, popular, or tacky tastes.What's Camp? Camp is the presentation of kitsch. Jon Waters, Cyndi Lauper, and Kiss are deliberately campy. Tom Cruise, Judy Garland, and Betty Davis are (probably) unintentionally campy. A campy presentation is so outrageously dramatic, inappropriate, gaudy, affected, or out-of-date it's ironic and funny.
What's contemporary kitsch & camp? When you watch VH1 "I Love the [insert decade here]" - you are watching a top 100 kitsch & camp report. In 3 years, what will be considered kitsch and camp for the '00 decade?
Will PowerPoint presentations make the kitschy cut? After all, there's a certain black velvet quality to many PowerPoint presentations...
- the Jobs priestly-black dress code
- the gratuitous and cliched body language of Buddha-pose-faux-humility,
- PlaySkool-ish, Web 2.0-y graphics,
- the promotion of i-Everything,
- dancing iPod silhouettes --
Kitsch and camp are iconic, ironic fun. When you're deliberately kitschy or campy, you can come across as witty and self-deprecating. However, if you're unintentionally Tom Cruise-y or Apple-campy, you risk appearing self-important or buffoonish.
Try jumping on a couch these days without appearing ironic.
Commit to your camp. If you have a kitschy style, make sure you affect a campy mannerism. This can help you more fully engage your audience. There's no sense having a clipart-y, cluttered, bullet point-y, totally 1990's Microsoft-kitsch PowerPoint presentation if you don't drive it home by, say, swaggering like Johnny Depp in Pirate of the Caribbean. Cringing like the evil Mr. Burns from the Simpsons while presenting with a very 90's slide design is also an excellent kitsch-camp combo.What's on your kitsch list? What is contemporary kitsch that is currently not commonly recognized as such? What contemporary '00 kitsch & camp will become classic kitsch and camp in the '10 decade?
Labels: design, fun, images, photography, PowerPoint
¶ 11/13/2007 01:51:00 PM 6 Comments Links to this post
For the past three years in March, my friend (and client) Nancy Sweatt of Dolphin Journeys sends me breathtaking pictures from Hawaii. She runs a dolphin and whale touring business in Kona -- and posts some remarkable client photos at her website.
Her clients often take wonderful pictures from her boat. And they often get some terrific underwater shots, as well. (You can see the whale, underwater, and dolphin photos here.)
Nancy emailed me the picture you see in this post of two dolphins that swam up to her boat. They exhaled simultaneously -- and Nancy somehow got the shot.
Here are the sound effects for my three-step, failing process:
- "Ooooh! There's a whale surfacing! Quick, snap the picture!"
- "Splash!" Whale goes back underwater...
- "Click!" goes Laura's shutter.
Nancy laughed when I told her of my plight. She insists that for every great photo she takes, there are 1,000 stinkers. Same thing for her customers -- lots of pictures of ocean.
So I guess I shouldn't feel so bad. Especially when I can look at Nancy's photos online, and dream that I am swimming among the dolphins, instead of looking at the powdery results of a freak April snowstorm outside my office window!
Might the secret to great action photography be: take a thousand pictures? One of 'em might actually turn out to be worthwhile?
Labels: photography
¶ 4/05/2007 01:18:00 PM 1 Comments Links to this post
