She pauses to take a long drag from her cigarette.

“He will ask if it feels natural. You say yes.”

A long exhale, sinuous smoke.

“He will ask if it hurts. You say no.”

The cigarette drops to the ground.

“You do whatever he asks of you.”

She grinds the toe of her left pump.

“You will probably get angry at him. Throw things.”

She lifts her her chin slightly. A faint scar appears.

“Later you see the picture.”

She changes position, adjusts a strap, readies herself.

“You will be gorgeous.”

Back in 1999, I started a website that became an all-consuming project, IS300.NET (changed to my.IS in 2005).  It became the largest online community for the Lexus IS sport sedan. Sure, it’s just one car from one brand, but 70,000 members and over 4 million forum posts tells you that the Lexus IS isn’t just any car. In 2007, I sold the site and turned to photography fulltime, but I’m still very proud of what was created out of nothing. My friend Joaquin (the only writer I know that uses more parenthesis than myself) has posted a nice retrospective on the site for this ten year anniversary, please check it out here.

I owned and operated a website for the Mitsubishi Montero Sport while owning one. It was difficult to get the message across that the Montero Sport was not a Montero, nor a smaller or related version. A few years later, when I was actively looking for a Montero, a prospective seller drove his truck 60 miles for me to see it, only for me to then discover what was advertised and discussed as being a Montero, was actually a Montero Sport. Frustrating.

Among my favorite bands is another example of bad naming strategy: The The. What was previously ironic and rebellious (The Smiths?), is now virtually impossible to google (is this a real verb yet?).

I found this article today with maps that have had their place names researched and translated to English. The staggering blandness and often erroneous naming is a delight my sarcastic sensibilities. Granted, many places have been named after their unique geographical attributes (Western Steps, Land to the Right), but others…
The Thousand Islands, and the next group over, The Hundred Thousand Islands. Town of Happiness, next to Town of Submission. Palace on the coast, and Here is the Palace located a little further inland.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-37310.html

Enjoy.

This guy is carrying two cameras – can you tell?

Aha. Check that out!

Where the straps cross in the back, four snap fasteners are attached at the corners of the junction.

Full R-Strap functionality is maintained

Look, Ma, my shirt doesn’t wrinkle!

Let’s put the T-Strap together, shall we?

Separate your two R-Straps so that they each form a straight line. Use the slide-lock to constrain the sliding eyehook connector close to the padded part of the strap, we want it out of our way for now.

Loop the strap from the first R-Strap into the padded portion of the other. Do not loop or twist the strap.

Now loop the strap from the second R-Strap into the padded portion of the first, twisting the strap once.

When you cross the rear part of padded portions over each other, your assembly should look like this.

To hold the two R-Straps together, I sewed on snap fasteners at the four outer corners of the junction. I want the two straps to not be permanently joined and I wanted the adjustability of the straps preserved. Behold my awesome sewing ability!

Once connected, your strap should hang like this:

I’ve got one thing to fine-tune and that’s optionally attaching the bottom points of the straps (just behind where the camera hangs) to my belt. It doesn’t feel completely necessary as the inter-looping of the straps keeps one side supported when the opposite is lifted but it feels better having them attached – just like a gun holster.

How can we (or Blackrapid?) improve this idea? Using two individual straps is great and since they’re detachable, we can still use them one at a time when appropriate. But the double layer of padding at the crossover point in the back is unnecessary for a purpose-built dual strap. I’d like to see a specially designed “X” pad arrangement to reduce the bulk of the padding. The low point/belt connection is also important – getting the strap to lay against the body in the optimal position may require some adjustments.

Check out my search for the best two-camera strap in Part I.

Before we go into what makes the best two-camera strap setup, let’s just talk about what makes a good strap and the ones that meet my goals.

• OEM Camera Strap – I find the Canon strap to be unusable. I like black straps with no markings. The canon strap is narrow, stiff and uncomfortable. Not even an option.
• Optech Super Classic – My normal shoulder strap of choice. Great for neck or shoulder wear. Good padding, comfortable and that great stretchiness.
• UpStrap -Recommended often by others primarily for its grip on clothing. I’ve never tried it.
• R-Strap – My new favorite strap is the Blackrapid R-Strap. The R-Strap differs from a typical shoulder strap in that it is not mounted to two strap points on the camera, but instead to the tripod base of the body (or lens tripod mount for long lenses.) with a swiveling connection. This connector slides up and down the front of the strap as you raise the camera to shoot. I have seen a similar idea in the wild called the Y-Strap. I really like the hardware and materials used in the R-Strap, and while I would like to see a moderately lower price on it, I feel it was worth the price paid.

NOTE: When using a normal shoulder strap, I had the best luck mounting both ends of the strap to the grip side of the camera. With a gripped-XXD body or a 1 Series, there is a strap mount point on the bottom of the grip on the shutter side. Using that point and the top shutter-side mounting location (instead of the opposite upper point) lets the camera hang more comfortably at your side, but not as advantageous as for neck wear. When I showed this to my Nikon-shooting friend Jamie, she was very excited until she discovered that her Nikons (which includes a D3) have no bottom-grip mounting point. Haha.So now we want to find a way to put two straps together to carry two cameras. These are the methods I have come across so far.

• Two Shoulder Straps – An easy, and often default, two-camera setup is using two typical shoulder straps. Carry one on each shoulder is fine, but only in the most basic sense. Once movement is involved, like crouching or turning, the cameras become dangerous wrecking balls, or fall off your shoulder. Some people wear one on the neck and one over the shoulder. I don’t like a neck strap at all, and a camera hanging there would just bang into my shoulder-side camera too often. I’m already a klutz. You can criss-cross them over opposite shoulders, which will carry better, but pulling a camera up to shoot is impossible without its strap moving too.
• The Reporter - Carrying two cameras in the front might work for two P&S cameras, or a camera and some binoculars, but I’m trying to carry two gripped bodies with lens and flash. Impossible.
• Two-strap harness – So there’s got to be a way of using two shoulder straps effectively, right? ChrisDM in the Fred Miranda forum has probably carried this method to it’s best conclusion. I’ve tried something similar with my Optech straps (as well as un-strechy straps) and various mounting and suspension points. Ultimately, the main problem is that the shoulder straps can still fall off your shoulders and the weight distribution is sub-optimal. There is no stealth in this arrangement either, and I would knock the cameras together too much.
• Two R-Straps then – Ok, well let’s put two R-Straps together then, instead of two shoulder straps. This works pretty well. I’ve tried this with four or five weddings and it’s the closet I’ve gotten to my goals thus far. The downside of this method is where the two straps cross in the front. Not only is it bulky, but it constantly bunches up my shirt, including the collar. I have to constantly pull my shirt from underneath this junction, and it looks a bit ugly too.

So I’ve been staring at my R-Straps and thinking about gun holsters (the under-jacket ones, with a clip holder on one side) and how they go over and under the shoulders, joined in the back (and at the belt on each side). Searching the internet for inspiration, I found this post at photo.net. There has to be a way to make this work with my two R-Straps and I think I finally found it. Stay tuned for Part II, The T-Strap.

And now, Part II, The T-Strap

If that means anything to you, then you know I’ve been around the Internet for a while. I’ve done my share of web design and creative directing. Rarely do I see a site that leaps over everything else I see in my daily web life.

I’m a bit old-school in my web design preferences. I enjoy the art of a finely spun html page over a flashy interface. But there’s no reason a site shouldn’t be able to pull out all the stops. Websites for musical artists have this freedom. And when someone with the right style and skill pulls out all the stops?

http://www.jamesmorrisonmusic.com/site.html

This site loaded really fast. And the interface is beautiful.

This past week, my wife and I saw Seal in concert, thanks to a friend I’ve known since my college radio days (ed: omg – I sound so old.). We are taking some pictures for his engagement soon and since I wouldn’t take his money for the session, he offered two tickets for the show. We had ourselves an old-fashioned double-date.

In my short-list of artists, those whose releases I would buy sight-unseen, no questions asked, Seal is a card-carrying member. In watching this show and from my understanding of his career from the early 90′s Crazy until now, I get the impression that Seal is an artist who continues to present a true message.

I’m still on the lookout for a message, I’m not sure I know where this new gig is taking me yet. But when I listen I to music like Seal’s, I know that it’s possible to make it happen on your own terms and in your own words. That’s the kind of success I want in my life.

Seriously.

Go.

Here (Though you really need the whole song).

I’ll have tissues ready when you get back.

My idea is thus: I will pay my children to pack and ship certain orders for me. I will pay them  the profit on each order they ship (eventually, they’ll learn how to maximize their earnings). They also have to have the urgency to ensure that all orders ship within 48 hours, that will be the harder part to sell them.

What I’m hoping is that the scope of this idea will make it very exciting to them. Why not let them particpate in the success of the family?