12/9

These mannequins are completely strange. In a town full of modernity, and this shop in particular is a very hi-tech home appliance store. And there are these two. Stuck in time.

But I love his hand.

It is so incongruously graceful.

So it just goes to show why I find it hard to let go of anything as I know it will have a comeback eventually!

The ques! I have never seen anything like it! We finally managed to design our own Barbie and I must say they were magnificent! You could choose between hairstyles, clothing, shoes, handbags and makeup. Once your design had been completed our masterpieces were put together and rocked the looks we picked for them in a glass display cabinet before they were wrapped up in a plastic box and popped through the shoot landing in our hot little hands. There were so many things to choose from and we ended up walking out with a remake of the first ever Barbie made in the 1950’s (It was a tough choice between this one and a remake of the 80’s Barbie), a nail file with the phrase ‘plastic is the new tan’ and our design your own Barbie. I almost bought my husband a Ken T-shirt with the slogan ‘doing it Ken style’, however I knew he would never wear it. They also had an offer to subscribe to vogue for six months and you would receive your very own collectable Vogue shopgirl Barbie. That night I went home and immediately ordered it and she is awesome!

Since going to this expo I have noticed Barbie is popping up everywhere! Mattel have teamed up with Mac and Stila creating the Barbie loves Mac and Barbie loves Stila makeup lines. Even Mimco have got on board with handbags and accessories called Barbie loves Mimco.

Beam me up to Xmas 09, originally uploaded by CVerwaal.

Another mannequin shot, this time with my Olympus rangefinder. This was a tricky shot to time. The lights and lettering were constantly changing and with my film camera I had one shot. Did not want to waste too much film on this. I watched the scene for a while to see the patterns and clicked when I saw what I wanted.
Madison Avenue, New York City.
Olympus 35SP, Zuiko 42mm f1.7, Fuji Superia 400 Xtra

No compassion, originally uploaded by CVerwaal.

These two mannequins seem without any compassion to their colleagues in my previous shot “Out in the Cold”
Taken with my Canon G9 powershot in RAW.

Out in the Cold, originally uploaded by CVerwaal.

These nude mannequins provided a surrealistic photo opportunity outside the Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue, New York City. I happened to run into them with my Canon G9 powershot. Some days you just get lucky

Converted to BW from RAW with red filter, TriX and 400 ISO film grain simulation and hard paper simulation.

Well, I have to say that I stayed quite a while looking at the Holt Renfrew Christmas windows…Don’t these mannequins look amazing? And the reason I think this way is because the visual designers who put these widows together made their head pieces {you all know how much I love head pieces, right?} with recycled Christmas cards, tinsel and lights. What a clever, creative and “green” idea! Can you see the birds and feathers as well? Let me tell you that they look totally awesome! And if you are here in Toronto, go to see them. My congratulations to these visual designers!

But don’t go far…I still have more photos to show you. Stay tuned!

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I love holiday movies.  They always put me in the Christmas spirit.  And thanks to my unemployment (and to Fa la la la Lifetime, ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas, and Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas), I’ve been able to watch a lot of movies this holiday season.  I’ve discovered that most holiday movies fall into the following categories:

The Traditional:  Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas

The Not-About-Christmas-but-Gets-Labeled-as-a-Christmas-Movie:  Love Actually, Die Hard, The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Cartoony:  A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer; to name a few.

However, I’ve noticed that apparently a lot of my favorite holiday movies fall into another category:  The Bizarre…

Christmas Comes to Willow Creek

Unlike the two movies below, I unfortunately didn’t catch this movie during my childhood.  No, I didn’t discover this Christmas classic until my husband pointed it out a couple of years ago.  It has remained one of my favorites ever since.  Here’s why:

If that 80s commercial didn’t pull you in, here are some other awesome things about Christmas Comes to Willow Creek:

• This movie is essentially The Dukes of Hazzard meets Christmas, no Boss Hogg though.
• The two main characters, although they have many differences, have one major thing in common (well, besides being in love with the same woman), they are both truckers.
• Just when you think this movie has nothing to do with Christmas but in reality is all about the reconciliation of two feuding brothers, a pregnant woman gives birth in the wilderness on Christmas Eve, BAM!  Christmas!

A Mom for Christmas

Let me set the scene for this movie:  it’s Christmastime and young Jessica really misses her mom who died when she was just a baby.  Her dad is a workaholic and let’s her hang out a lot at the local mall, even though she’s only 11.  While hanging at the mall, Jessica meets a kooky old lady (later to play Marie Barone) who believes in wishing wells and encourages Jessica to make a Christmas wish in the well.  Jessica, of course, wishes for a mom for Christmas (hence the title).  Because it would be too easy for the magic wishing well to just make her dad fall in love with a woman who he meets at the grocery store or at work, the wishing well turns one of the mall mannequins into Olivia Newton-John and she becomes Jessica’s nanny.  They celebrate Christmas and turn other mannequins into real people.  In a very tragic scene, the Santa mannequin, who is now a live person, gets hit by a car.  No worries though.  You just have to pick up his pieces, stand in a circle holding hands and thinking about love and magic puts him back together.  An excellent holiday lesson.  Alas, Olivia Newton-John can only stay until Christmas Eve and then she turns back into a mannequin.  If only there was a way for her to stay with her new family?  Oh but there is.  Doris Roberts says that if you love mannequins enough, they can remain real people.  If you’re curious to see how this movie turns out, you can watch this really poor quality video that I found on YouTube.  It’s really surprising that a made-for-TV movie from 1990 isn’t more readily available on the internets.

A Smoky Mountain Christmas

The movie begins with Dolly Parton playing a character very similar to Dolly Parton who is so sickened by making this video that she retreats to the Smoky Mountains for Christmas.  During her stay, she takes up with a group of orphans.  Everyone loves orphans and Christmas so it’s no wonder this movie is a hit.  She also meets a gruff and lovable man aptly named Mountain Dan.  As a child, I always thought that Kenny Rogers played this lead male character.  It’s not Kenny Rogers though; I was probably just confused by his thick beard.  My dad has a thick beard and sometimes I think he’s Kenny Rogers.  Because you can’t just take up with a group of orphans, Dolly goes to jail and the orphans go back to the orphanage.  (This orphanage is a super scary one with mean old ladies.  I wonder if orphanages are like this in real life?  They always look so horrible in the movies; you’ve seen Annie, right?)  To make matters worse, there’s a witch involved.  Now, I’ve been to the Smoky Mountains and I don’t remember seeing any witches but it’s a movie, I get it.  To top it all off, this witch’s name is Jezebel.  Biblically evil.  This witch has a crush on the sheriff and gets mad when he talks to Dolly, so mad that she breaks everyone’s drinking glasses in the local diner and bakes her poison pies.  I don’t want to spoiler alert it for you and tell you how it turns out so here are a couple more of my favorite things about this movie:  it stars my favorite Salute Your Shorts child actor, Budnick, John Ritter (Rest in Peace) appears as the sarcastic and sensible the judge, and the movie is directed by none other than THE Henry Winkler (known best in my mind as “Barry Zuckercorn” from Arrested Development).

Here are some other movies that I intend to check out for further bizarre holiday movie watching purposes:  Santa with Muscles, The Dog who Saved Christmas, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

I went to the art room today with Erin. I saw some stuff.

I'm cool.

Mannequins are cool.

My face is chipping off!

This is the view from the art room….what inspiration it brings…

That’s Erin doing some reproduction of Monet.

That’s some crème brulee that we made.

That’s Erin taking a bit of it…get some sleep girl!

Peace Out.

Mannequins freak me out, all shiny, plasticy and staring at you wherever you move. I think they freak a lot of people out. Irrational fear of mannequins is apparently grouped into the same category as fear of dolls and children. (Refered to as pediophobia). How strange.

Madeline’s got this new obsession when we go shopping. She is very fascinated by the mannequins in the stores and has started to ask me to take pictures of her posing with them. The other night she and I went on a little shopping trip together and this is when I noticed this new quirk of hers.

Here she is:

You can’t really tell from the picture, but she has her hand on her hip doing her little pose. She had originally wanted to sit in the mannequin’s lap, but I told her that I wasn’t going to reposition the mannequin so she had to settle for posing next to it.

I can’t recall why she only had half of her hair fixed. I’m sure it had something to do with her little rebellious streak that she has going on right now. I think I was just happy that her clothes weren’t completely mismatched so I ignored the hair.

While on our shopping spree we found some mini-Christmas trees that just happened to be in a bunch of different colors. It would have been difficult to pass up a pink Christmas tree for Madeline, and since I had been thinking it would be fun to put a little tree in her room I bought it for her. I also bought a blue one for Anthony’s room. He didn’t seem very excited about it, but I know someday if Madeline her very own pink Christmas tree and he didn’t have his own it would be a problem. We bought some mini-ornaments to go along with the trees, and Madeline had a good time decorating both of them.

She redecorated her tree repeatedly for the first few days, so that alone made it a great investment! Unfortunately Anthony has also taken a liking to the trees and I have to spend a great deal of time telling him to stop messing with the trees. Here’s Anthony starting to go after Madeline’s tree.

And since some of you may be wondering how Anthony’s doing with his croup I figured I’d updated on that too. Thankfully he hasn’t had any more really scary breathing episodes in the middle of the night, but he is still sick. The steroid that the doctor gave him in her office is wearing off, and we’re not really seeing a lot of improvement in how he’s doing. He’s still got the stridor going on as well. During the day he’s his usual active self, but at night it’s a different story!

For the past few nights he’s had a hard time settling down and staying comfortable at night. The vaporizer in his room doesn’t seem to be having much effect on him either. I’ve been spending a lot of time holding him and rocking him. He sleeps just fine in my arms, but the moment I try to put him in his crib and leave him he wakes up and starts to scream. The screaming causes his throat issues to get worse, and then we’re back to square one. Also, for some reason, Anthony has decided that he only wants me to rock him, so David can’t even offer me much help.

Finally last night I was so tired of sitting in his room and not being able to leave him I just broke down and brought him to bed with me. Madeline had a nightmare while I was dealing with Anthony, and David had gone into her room to lay in her bed while she settled down. Of course he ended up falling asleep, so I just left him and let Anthony take his spot in our bed.

It wasn’t quite the same sleep that I am used to, but I was getting desperate for some relief. Anthony was so sweet it was hard to be too upset about my lack of sleep. He wanted to be sure I was still with him in bed, so he finally reached out and put his hand on my arm so he could feel me. Melt my heart! I have to admit that I can see why parents end up keeping their kids in bed with them, because it is so sweet to have them passed out next to you looking all angelic instead of wreaking havoc like they normally do during the day!

When I woke up this morning I rolled over and saw Anthony sitting up in bed next to me smiling. Yeah, I’m not a morning person but that sight made me reconsider whether I could be a morning person.

Tonight is looking like it could be another rough night. We’re hoping that Anthony starts to see some relief soon because we miss our sleep!

The Day after Black Friday, originally uploaded by CVerwaal.

A mannequin, stripped bare, stands lonely and discarded outside a store on Madison Avenue, New York City.
Olympus 35SP rangefinder, Zuiko 42mm f1.7, Fuji Superia 200

Cédric DEBACQ, Mode Homme, Nouvelle Collection 2009

Cédric DEBACQ Nouvelle Collection Photo 2009 Mode Homme

Looking through the window of a women’s clothing store in Washington D.C. with buildings across the street reflecting off the window.

© 2009 D L Ennis, All rights reserved.

NOTE: Permission for the use of my images is granted for personal websites and blogs but is to include a link back to this site and proper credit given to me, D L Ennis. Link to be used…(Visual Thoughts http://dlennis.wordpress.com/)

NOTE: Commercial use, and the creation of prints, must be purchased! For more information you can contact me here.

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Came across these in a late night net spree last night – a load of terrifying mannequin photos.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/12/04/scary-creepy-mannequins/

Their faces are quite disturbing…

The more humanlike something that is not human is, the more we feel digust towards them, or so Masahiro Mori, a Japanese robotics scientist, says – there is a point at which giving things artificial human characteristics will be deemed cute or charming, such as a robot with a human smile and artificial eyes. But when a non-human object becomes increasingly more human-like, we no longer find them charming or cute, and instead have a reaction of almost-horror  and disgust to their anthropomorphism.

This realm of feeling disgust towards non-human entities is called the “Uncanny Valley”, according to Mori, and has an application when thinking about computer game characters and how difficult it can be for designers to create something that is real enough to not cause the repulsion-reaction.

I hope to create some sort of animation or time-based something based around the idea of mannequins some day. There is something a bit mystical and very sinister about them that I find fascinating!

I have a set of three grey mannequin hands that I bought from a shop closing down for £1, and they are really quite scary. They have featured in an animation project that I am currently working on, in between applying to UCAS, doing graphic novels/illustration commissions and my full time job! I hope to post that online soon – all that needs attention is the sound right now.

These days, my after-work dog-walks happen long after dark, so I rely more and more on illuminated shop windows to light my way downtown and back home again.