The Right Equipment
Friday, November 07, 2014
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| Don't forget to have your heart checked in the Conex Clinic during the January T.L.A. Convention |
In one of my trips to Buenos Aires in the late
90s I mentioned to my rugby-playing nephews that I could not understand the
huge toothpaste billboards that featured a beautiful woman in a most skimpy
bikini. I told my nephew, “What does that woman have to do with brushing your
teeth and why is she wearing a bikini?” My ordinarily gentle nephew, with a
grin on his face, raised his voice and said, “Are you a homosexual?”
I attempted to tell
him that after years of being in Vancouver I had changed my macho ways and now
accepted the idea that one should not use a near naked woman to advertize any
product except, perhaps, bathing suits.
If you happen to look
at billboards or newspaper ads in Europe (England,
France, Italy, Spain, etc) you will be amazed how
politically incorrect they are and how the female figure is used to sell
everything.
You will not see
anything “subtle” like a recent NY Times T-Magazine page advertizing wrist
watches by showing a man’s hand, in many frames, lurking close to a woman’s
miniskirted legs in a car.
It seems that
Europeans and Latin Americans don’t get this thing we have in Canada and they
celebrate the beauty of the female figure. Since Buenos Aires is one of the world’s capitals
for same-sex tourism they just might soon switch to advertising toothpaste with
a man wearing thong.
As a man from that
other century, the 20th I remember one of the worst shooting days of
my life. It happened in 1988. I had a beautiful studio in a not-yet-expensive Yale Town
on Hamilton Street.
I shared it with fashion photographer Dennis Montalbetti. I had been hired by
designer Chris Dahl to shoot a calendar for 1989 for his client Continental
Explosives. The company sold dynamite that was principally used in logging plus
drill bits and something called grader blade edges.
There was to be a truck
logger’s convention in January 1989 in which the conventioneers would go to a
special room to be photographed (for a price is my guess) with a “nurse” who
would check their hearts.
The nurse was a famous model
(in the logging community circle) with extra large breasts. She was my
subject for the calendar in which most of the poses were designed to have her
bend down to show more cleavage. She was a natural and was most pleasant to work with.
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| "Get the Edge" with Conex (Boundary Sandvik Grader Blade Edges) |
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| "Everything for Blasting" from Conex (CIL & CXA Products) |
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| "The Right Equipment"from Conex (Boart Drilling Equipment) |
