This reminder me of Ubercoolische - a site that took great pride in playfully pisstaking Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Magda, and Sven Vath amongst others. Unfortunately, the guys have put it into retirement and now launched Cubercoolische as a play on Hawtin’s new box project.

Anyway, back to the point of this article - how to be a cool photographer.

1. The first rule of a cool photographer: Do NOT show your photographs.
2. The second rule of a cool photographer: Do not show your photographs! If somebody asks you to show them - make an excuse. Tell about terabytes of raw images on your computer, being busy, copy and other rights, agreements with “Harper’s Bazaar”, “Esquire”, and other fancy magazines and advertisement agencies.
3. If you have a blog, post there a few photos of renown photographers with moderately positive comments such as “That’s how one should do it!”. Theorise a lot!
4. As an exception, you can post 2-3 abstract-looking photos with a note “I am just fooling around” or “these are my juvenile experiments”. No more than that!
5. Register on all possible forums, mailing lists, websites devoted to photography. Post often, criticise moderately, without fanaticism. Use expressions like “so-so”, “boring shit”, “the horizon level is off”, “faded colours”, “is there an idea?” “is there a concept?”, etc. Really cool photographer can always find something to criticize. Never praise. Mock newbies until their full destruction.
6. Learn the terminology. The words “expocorrection”, “bracketing”, “crop”, “polarisation” should always be in your arsenal. Use them!
7. Learn the jargon and use it fearlessly.
8. Disdain the rules, but ridicule those who disregard them.
9. Learn names of 2-3 famous photographers, and know the Cliff’s notes description of their work. Use this when theorising and criticising.
10. Install the latest version of Photoshop. Master the “stamp” tool. Tell everybody that you don’t use Photoshop on principle. Ridicule all who uses it.
11. Photo filters are crouches for disabled. Universal lenses are suitable for handless and footless. A really cool photographer uses different lenses for each situation, and uses his feet and head for moving objects closer and farther away.
12. Buy a camera. Remember, Canon belongs to cheap pop-culture; Panasonic, Sony, Olympus and Konica are all garbage. In the worst case, buy Nikon or Pentax, but you’d be better off with Leica or Hasselblad. If you don’t have enough money, buy a wide-angle “Kiev”. You don’t need to put any expensive film in it - just carry the camera with you.
13. The more lenses, flashes, filters, exponometers are in your photobag, the cooler you are!
14. Cool pros use film or the most expensive digital SLR’s. If you don’t have enough money for 1D Mark, carry an old film camera, motivating it by the fact that digital is inferior to the film. Argue about wrong colour reproduction, low resolution, and the young age of the technology.
15. If you are using a DSLR, claim that you ignore the screen and even the built-in exponometer, setting everything based on your vision and expertise.
16. Get a friend with a photo-studio and drink with him regularly.
17. Every so often, disappear for a couple of days. Claim that you had a large-volume contract and you were stuck in the studio, or that you flew in the “National Geographic” helicopter to shoot geysers in Kamchatka.
18. Display on your desk a certificate of some photo-school, but don’t forget to mention that you have outgrown your teachers.
19. Memorise Ken Rockwell’s article. Disprove it or substantiate it depending on the situation.
20. Learn all the camera models back to the 40s. Read the new releases, and know all modern cameras, lenses, flashes.
21. Be aware of photo exhibitions. You don’t need to attend them, familiarising yourself with the reviews would suffice.

Got it? Good!

This is what happens when you drop out of school early kids! Here’s MC Steve from Sheffield, and his audition for X-Factor.

“I’d love to have the hip-hop lifestyle. The biatches, pimped-up rides, bling, cars, hotels, free booze…” he says with a level of cockyness that surpasses P. Diddy and John Steffensen, but doesn’t have the talent to back it up. Respect? I think not.

John Howard after a meeting planning his relocation strategy

John Howard’s abode in Kiribilli is open for inspection, or is that election.

Here’s a PDF version should Domain realise and end the listing!

From the top of a bottle of Spring Valley juice:

Liddle Facts - No. 44: Penguins have an organ above their eyes that converts seawater to freshwater.

“All we need is about a million penguins…” - nicely said Danny. I suggest that you write a letter to both Morris Iemma and John Howard, and the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull.

Question: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?

Answer:

Now in case, you uh.. didn’t get that:

I personally believe — that — US American’s are unable to do so — because a — someah — people out there in a our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and The Iraq, everywhere like such as, and — I believe that they should — ah — our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or — ah — should help South Africa and should help The Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our (children).

Schadenfreude revisited.

We all know the story - noone seems to care, unless you work for a media outlet, or are a publisher/digester of junk pop-culture magazines.

If the winner of Eurovision was based on kitschness, then the Ukraine would have won. All I can say is “Wow!”, oh and that the lead vocalist looked like a combination of Mrs. Doubtfire, Elton John and a mirror-ball.

Meaningless.
Overrated.
Commercial.
Lame.

It’s not you, you can blame Hallmark. If you must send a card, try one of these.