As a result of all of this, I have made massive updates within the Girls of Ipanemic gallery. It’s still a lot of work, but the time it takes to post updates has significantly decreased. Significantly.

In addition to adding about 100 items to Anastasia’s Catholic School Girl Revisited set (of which there are about 150 more left to add), I’ve completely filled out the Britney Stripped set. Yay!

Please note that in order to see a lot of both of those sets, you’ll need to register and log in (registration is free, of course) and set your viewing preferences appropriately within your profile.

Enjoy!

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

Street +/ Life

• Focus on Lincoln Road,
• Focus on photos of ink and the people who love it,
• Photos added from early August, specifically, the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th,
• A few new street portraits up, with more coming.

Girls of Ipanemic

• Renna becomes the currently featured model,
• Focus on jeans within photos,
• More photos added of Angela from our first shoot,
• More photos of Christie added,
• A couple of photos added of Anastasia from the Catholic School Girl Revisited set.

I should be returning to a more regular posting schedule now.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

Do you like this music? I do!!! This song is one of my favorites. It is “The Girl from Ipanema” by Stan Getz & João Gilberto. This is the 45rpm issue off of the Getz/Gilberto album.

Anyway, I really like it. The song means so much to me and brings to mind such wonderful pictures of life. Some of it I’ve lived, some of it I haven’t.

Really, if you don’t own it, you owe it to yourself to buy the album. It’s one of the smoothest and possibly most influential albums of the 20th century. And just so utterly relaxing.

Yes, here let me take that for you. Please, have a seat. Let’s talk.
(Just a note, all links on THIS post open up in new windows/tabs, depending on your browser preferences.)

Music Nontop

So here it is. This is the new ipanemic.com. I’d like to provide you with an overview as if this were your first time visiting since, fundamentally, this site has a both a new physical layout as well as a certain direction. More about the direction later, although, some of it should be evident in the layout. Let me start off with the most basic information:

I began writing a little post here about the changes to ipanemic.com and what it is and realized that it wasn’t little at all but was becoming a user’s guide. I will probably publish that, but it will appear under the Corporate link in the menu. Yes, the Corporate link.

For now, I would just like to point out a few key features. Let’s start at the top and work from there:

1. Social networking links at the top in the menu.
   Flickr: a curiosity more than anything for the comments (the photos posted there are a SMALL subset of what’s here.)
   YouTube: sure, check out the videos. They are all here, though. And then some.
   Facebook: like me!! You’ll get insider stuff there.
   Twitter: ugh. I’ve decided I’m going to maximize my use of 140 characters when it isn’t simply a link to a post.
   RSS Feed: the feed on the main page is entirely separate from the feeds within the galleries. Subscribe accordingly. Street +/ Life feed here. Girls of Ipanemic feed here.
2. The main page of ipanemic.com
   Recent posts appear in the slideshow at the top. Featured articles, notable links, additions to the galleries noted, guest columns in the three boxes underneath. Recent posts follow that with navigation links taking you into the archives.
3. Street +/ Life Gallery
   Top slideshow contains ten random images from South Beach. Three featured articles (including exploration of locales, tags, photographic technique, etc) underneath. Recently published underneath that.

   Make sure you check the category list on the right hand side of the page. Also, be sure to check Lost and Found for any items you may have misplaced.

4. Girls of Ipanemic Gallery
   Content here has safety filters applied. Visitors will not see any photos beyond lingerie shots by default. This isn’t news, but I’m providing this information here for cohesiveness in this overview. To see photographs/video with implied nudity/nudity/erotica, visitors will have to register AND indicate that they wish to view such material.

   As for the layout, the slideshow contains 10 random photos/links (matching the visitor/members filter preferences). The next three boxes contain featured articles. Focus on tags, models, guest articles (from models and others), technique, location, etcetera. Then the archives begin with recently published.

   And here, I would strongly encourage you to look at the breakdown of categorization and tags on the right-hand side of the page.

5. Artwork for Sale
   Prints are available for purchase within the Girls of Ipanemic gallery. Select photos are available for purchase as well within the Street +/ Life gallery. I am working my way through that gallery to mark which can be currently bought. Currently, though, I’d recommend checking out The Sun Also Rises collection as well as my collection of Personal Favs.

   More information available here.

6. Model Application
   There is a model application present for girls (AND GUYS) who wish to model. Yes, guys.
7. The galleries themselves.
   Within the Street +/ Life gallery, there are over 4,300 photos currently published with 95% of them being of life in South Beach. I would venture to say that ipanemic.com presents the single largest online collection of street photography in Miami in an easily navigable format. I encourage you to explore it.

   Within the Girls of Ipanemic gallery, there are currently over 1,400 photos currently published. Again, probably the largest online collection of a single photographer within the area. Some of you know that I have moved photos off of here, published them under a different site, and that I am now republishing them here.

   (There are 5,700+ total photos across the galleries as of today, August, 27, 2010)

   A note about both of these galleries, though. They are BOTH continually expanding. I take photos every day. And I publish photos almost every day. Many days I post multiple photos or entire sets. Were I to never take another photo, I’m sitting on enough photos to post one new photo a day for the next 10-20 years It’s hard to say exactly. Maybe 30.

8. About Page
   Updated, worth reading. Explanation of ipanemic.com (now with pronunciation!)

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Motivation and Goals

There is a reason for all of these changes. And shortly, I will make this all very publicly known. I can tell you this, though: I’m not competing with anyone in South Florida for anything. I’m not trying to pull traffic away from anyone. Quite the contrary. I’d like to drive traffic to the people (and businesses) who I believe in and like. And there are quite a few.

If you look at ipanemic.com right now, what you will simply see is one of the largest online collections of high-quality, artistic photography of South Beach and Miami that is very easy to navigate and explore. It is a South Beach/Miami/South Florida resource unlike any other.

To be that resource isn’t really my goal. I mean, great. Yay. That’s awesome!! But that isn’t my end goal. It just works out that I have amassed a gargantuan library of photographs I’ve taken over the past three years.

This redesign simply brings the library out and makes perusing ipanemic.com and looking at life in South Beach and Miami a pleasant experience. (See testimonials.)

I really hope that you like this new layout. I find that it fits well with my life and makes exploring the site much, much easier while keeping it relatively safe. I’ve given careful consideration, both to my viewers and to where I’m going with this site, and hope that ipanemic.com will be a place that you will want to visit and explore regularly.

The site will be expanding daily, the galleries will always be added to, nearly all sets of models will always expand (except those that are complete), and the content will always be current.

This is my art, my work, my life.

(Dangit! This was as long as the original post I deleted!)

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

Safe viewing pleasure assumes that you don’t find lingerie objectionable. But if you do, you can set the bar lower by registering and specify that you don’t want to see lingerie.

But more, registered users can then specify their level of comfort with my work. If they want to see implied nude photos, they can choose to do so. If they do not find nudity (partial or full) objectionable, they can specify that they’re ok viewing such content here. And if they want to see my more erotic art, they can choose that option as well.

But there is no nudity of any kind by default. Of course, there is, but you won’t see it by default. At all.

Couple of notes.
The Girls of Ipanemic gallery has nearly 1,500 photos in it currently. There are thousands upon thousands more that I’m sitting on, waiting to upload. And then there are more photos to come from new shoots. It’s an expanding gallery always.

My point is that there is a ton of content already. And so much more that will come. Sexy content!

But not all sexy. And I need to say a word here about the models that I shoot. Each shoot is entirely different, and each model is entirely different. Whether they are a close friend who lets me photograph them with their loving pets or a good friend who is just fun to shoot, a dedicated artist’s model, simply a young woman who wanted to build a portfolio, or a woman whose shoots are more erotic, they are all very different.

Every shoot is different. Every girl is different. I consider myself fortunate for getting to work with and getting to know such beautiful people. Thank you, “girls.”

Please keep all of this this in mind when perusing the Girls of Ipanemic gallery.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

For those of us who have the luxury of living with a roof over our head, the rain can be beautiful. So beautiful.

The rain has made me realize something as I bring this site into this new life: My street +/life gallery is massive. More correctly, it is a massive gallery to manage.

I was sitting here looking through photos, thinking about the rain. Realizing that I took rain photos within the past two weeks that I haven’t even put up on the site. Photos I haven’t posted of people I’ve met on the streets. Photos of god knows what.

And that there are hundreds of photos that don’t have any tags yet and aren’t found unless I just happen to stumble across them. Like one of my favorite photos: my coffee cup sitting on the wrought iron railing in the rain, the green palms in the background blurred out of focus. No clue where it is. But it’s somewhere in there.

So I’ve got about a week of tagging images just to categorize those photos. And find them. But it’s nice like this. It’s like finding little nuggets of goodness when I find those photos and my memory of that moment comes alive. A smile comes over my face.

Here are some photos from other rainy days. Mostly in South Beach I remember being in the passenger seat of a good friend’s car in one of them. What a great day.

Hello World, v2

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Yeah, check out those photos. While you’re there, you’ll see the gallery is really pleasant to look at now. All the photos open up in a nice frame to start, then clicking on images gives that whole screen image pop-up. That gives a scaled down version of the original (which is what I post to the site).

Oh, check out the categorizations on the right while you’re there. It’s broken down a little more. There are still lots of photos wandering out there that aren’t categorized. I’ll be adding a lot of different collections in there. And a bigger breakdown, too, so you can see sets of exotic cars, collections of architecture + design, and sets of simply people watching on Lincoln Road. I’m really pretty pleased with the way this is coming along.

See Hello World

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

About a month ago, I stayed up in Dania Beach for a few days. While I was there, I was commuting back and forth to South Beach on A1A. I’ve made the drive many times before, and it never ceases to be just a pleasant drive. I’m not alone in my sentiment, either. About the same time I was making that daily commute, Miami Favs actually wrote about A1A on her site. (By the way, go ahead and add Miami Favs to your own list of favorites; it’s all kinds of Miami goodness.)

On a scooter, though, the drive is particularly enjoyable. Of course, I may have a slight bias on transportation. The difference in the drive from day to night is, well, day and night. And both are equally fantastic, each for their own reasons. But this is about the daytime drive.

The beauty of the drive during the day is that the landscape is so vibrant, colorful, and alive. The buildings, the design, the architecture, the landscaping, the people, the cultures, the classes, the fashion, the sky itself, the traffic patterns… it all is so very alive and so very Miami. Yet a large part of the appeal of the drive, too, is simply the way the scenery changes as you move along A1A. People, places, and things all transform before you as you make your way along A1A going either north or south.

The photos in this collection will continue to grow. In fact, that’s one of the changes happening to ipanemic: I will be writing more to go with the photos that I take to provide more insight into life here. Handy for tourists. Fun for locals! Yay! Hm, maybe that should be my new tagline.

But back on topic… just so you know? You need to make this drive along A1A yourself. Totally, totally worth it.

Oh yes. One final note.
In addition to normal photography, I actually do a good bit of shooting whenever I’m on the scooter. So all of these photos were shot while on the road. I have a technique for shooting on the scooter that I’ve been employing for over a year now. I tested it out in Joshua Tree National Park last year, for the first time and have been doing it since. Trust me, it’s not that crazy and certainly not unsafe. At least, no more so than eating a donut while driving. Plus, I’m safer, by far, than 99.9% of all drivers in Miami. The fact that I use turn signals already makes me stand out like a sore thumb.

All shots taken on a scooter will be tagged as Scooter-shot. I’ll be going back through the Street +/ Life gallery to update photos with this tag eventually.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

I.

Welcome to the new ipanemic.com.

The skies are sunny and blue.
Slight chance of afternoon showers.
But mostly sunny and blue!

The Flat Earth

Not long ago, I began this process of cleaning up ipanemic to make the site consistent and more cohesive. I began to implement some features that match where I am and what I want to do with this site. A good bit of that work has happened behind-the-scenes. Now that I’ve reached a point where things make sense with me and I’m standing underneath the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m flipping the main breaker so everyone can see.

“Why weren’t there lights all along,” he wonders.

The other sections of the site are not yet ready. However, the entire site will run in this familiar pattern throughout when construction is complete. Think of this like that garage on Lincoln Road that you walk by. The one that was under construction for so long. That’s ipanemic.com right now.

“Yes, yes. This will do nicely.” Dressed in one of my nicer tweed suits, I nod approvingly with a gleam in my eye and a yellow hardhat atop my head. It’s apparently 1978.

I have a few large features I want to implement still (and a number of small ones), glitches I need to work out and I can do this now with the foundation in place.

II.

Since this site’s inception, and for different reasons, there has been this question that I’ve been asked repeatedly. “What is ipanemic?” Or, “what does that mean?” “Ipanema?”

From even my closest friends: “I go to ipanemic and I don’t know what’s going on.”

Completely understandable.

And now I can happily say that what you see here is what will be. It fits perfectly with what I want to do. And as I address the question of what this is and, more importantly where this is going, my intentions will become crystal clear. And I think you’ll like what you see.

“Alright. Still has those social media links at the top. Did he ever mention those? Homelessness seems pretty prominently displayed at the top. Magazine format looks good here. Is he going to have featured articles? Guest columnists? Stuff still looks split up. Wow, cool. Notable Links still there. Girls of Ipanemic? Well that’s different. I wonder why… Ah. Yes. Ah. I see about the layout. I hope he doesn’t play music throughout. Oh good, he doesn’t?”

Just giving you some self-conversation starters when you’re mulling it over in your mind.

So this is my new interface with you. This is my new format, my new language.

Hello World.
Please, come in.

all my life i have waited
to be given any word.
it was screaming to be heard.

- The Flat Earth by Thomas Dolby, Flat Earth Album – buy it here.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink | One comment

I think, “Oooooh! I’m going to something! Maybe I’ll start to live a life beyond my camera and this monitor!” And I think, “I should set up an event calendar! That way, all of my friends can find me! And it would be so good to see them since I never get out!”

Apart from the exclamation points, I also have an excited voice (which has a sligthly higher pitch) that carries out this dialogue in my mind. Sad.

So I was having that debate a few minutes ago. Whether to implement a calender of upcoming events or not. The rather problematic variable in the decision-making-procedure is the fact that I frequently decline invitations. Or don’t go. Or something comes up that prevents me from going. That’s why I get excited about events at all: because I don’t get out very often.

In ANY event, tomorrow night at 7pm at Books and Books in the Gables, the group Escelano (in which my good friend Marco Haber plays some sa-weet percussion) will be performing.

I had the chance to hear Escelano at Aura on Lincoln not that long ago and the sound is soooo very smooth. So I recommend going tomorrow night.

[UPDATE 8:11pm] – I didn’t make it. A couple I know wanted to borrow my scooter. I thought they would really enjoy a ride. And I talked to Marco earlier today and he said it was cool if I didn’t make it. I hope some other people went out and got to enjoy the show.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink |

This sign appeared outside a neighbor’s residence last night. I think everyone in the building had a nice laugh then oh-that-sucks moment. Everyone except for the owner of the bike, maybe, who probably just had the latter.

Bike theft in South Beach is rampant. There are a couple of worthwhile and entertaining threads on MiamiBeach411.com dealing with the issue which I encourage anyone who owns (or is thinking of owning) a bike In South Beach to read:

My bike was stolen today
Owning a bike in South Beach

I’m just pleased I didn’t cluelessly witness this one like I did the last time a bike was stolen. I STILL get busted on for that.

(Here’s the original without my fancy red splotches.)

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments

I remember when I met Kevin, I had just moved to Miami and had been invited by Maria of SexAndTheBeach (who I had just met and would later learn is just an insatiable sex fiend – no, I kid about the last part) to a birthday gathering. Didn’t really know anyone down here. I had been reading local blogs and looking at local sites to try and get a feel for other people, but hadn’t really met anyone.

When I showed up at the bash, the whole event was such a happy, good time. And I was in heaven. Here I was, in the midst of all of these creative types. Artists, writers, cartoonists… It was like a wonderful dream. All of these people living lives I had dreamed of (except for the cartoonist – nice fellow, though.) And everyone was so pleasant and laidback. And had a fair appreciation of beverages.

In any event, Kevin was there. And I remember when I realized who he was, I was just falling all over myself like a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert. Hugely embarrassing. But the guy can write. I mean, really, really write. And so to meet this man in person… well, I was just thrilled.

I am so grateful for the luxury, while sitting around with him, to hear a tale one would think impossible in every conceivable life. And if there were ever a man who not only has the tales, but can tell them, it’s Kevin.

(Is that Justin Bieber I hear? Jesus, I sound like I’m gushing.)
Really, I just think very highly of Kevin. Even though I included his name in the same post as Justin Bieber. Brilliant mind, fascinating person, an inspiration, and a great friend. (Kevin, not Justin. I don’t know Justin.)

As for you, the person reading this, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you know Kevin personally, are just hearing about this HiddenCity fellow for the first time, are interested in hatwear… I don’t know what your deal is. Not unless you tell me. Given that, I’m making a blanket recommendation to you to improve your life:

Read HiddenCity.net.
Follow Kevin on Twitter.
Pay attention on Facebook.

Amazing fellow.

More shots from Lester’s here.

© Scott on ipanemic.com, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments