Photography with Joe

 Friday the 13th BAD LUCK DAY Friday the 13th  Scholz and Zeno and Wallace Friday the 13th, that date whose superstitious reputation is both absurd and compulsively compelling (or so I tell myself as I watch a snowstorm, small and unheroic but sufficient to make every pedestrian regret having emerged), began, as is typical, with the residue of a fractured sleep—the kind where the mind doesn’t quite leave the dream, doesn’t quite register the morning, and yet somehow is simultaneously alert to every minor failing of the world outside. The air was colder than yesterday, which was mild, reminding me that temperature can itself be a petty adversary, and the snow—enough to inconvenience but not enough to glorify—settled over the city like a layer of passive-aggressive criticism. I left the house around ten, intending to attend a medical appointment, which, like minor wars or particularly tedious court cases, is best approached with low expectations, and I was not disappointed: the ...

.... Once upon a time, the deal was simple: You start small. You hustle. You scrape by on commercials, on bit parts, on late nights waiting tables. Those jobs were the ground floor — the space for the hungry, the unknown, the ones still chasing the dream. But now? The giants come stomping back down the staircase. Not content with the penthouses and the spotlights, they reach for the crumbs too. They take the ads, the cameos, the scraps — the very scraps they once left behind. It’s not ambition. It’s gluttony. It’s the greed of wanting every stage, every paycheck, every flicker of attention. They eat from both ends of the table — the feast and the leftovers — and leave nothing for the ones still starving. This isn’t just unfair. It’s a betrayal. The ladder was meant to be climbed — not ripped away once you’re on top. And so the newcomers wait in the shadows, staring at doors that no longer open, jobs that no longer exist, opportunities swallowed by the same people who ...

  What the Hell is Red Meat – or Purple Meat, for that Matter? Scholz Journal, Rewritten and corrected by AI When people say red meat , they usually mean beef, lamb, or pork. But why “red”? The answer lies in myoglobin — a protein in muscle that stores oxygen for use during activity. More myoglobin means darker meat. My doctor told me to eat more red meat. Call me a philistine, but I had to admit — I wasn’t exactly sure what counted as red meat . On the plate, if my steak looked like a stoplight — bright and glowing red — I’d be worried, not reassured. Why do some animals have more myoglobin than others? It’s evolutionary biology. Myoglobin works like a tiny oxygen tank inside the muscle. Animals that use their muscles for long, steady effort need more oxygen on demand, so they pack those muscles with myoglobin. Cows and sheep spend much of their lives standing, walking, or chewing. Their muscles are built for endurance. High myoglobin lets them keep moving for hours witho...

 Helmut Newton–style   Khiara Gray: cinematic, intimate, and raw! Khiara Gray She doesn’t enter the frame. She claims it. With nearly a decade of experience in artistic modeling, Khiara Gray moves between muse and auteur. Her body is not decoration—it is declaration. Her gaze dares the camera to flinch. There is nothing passive here. Every pose is a negotiation of power, of vulnerability, of knowing exactly how much skin to bare—and how much soul to withhold. Born with a restless eye, Khiara fell for photography before she could name her desire. Self-taught and instinct-driven, she honed her style by watching, absorbing, and ultimately transcending the work of the photographers around her. Then came formal training in painting—where anatomy, color, and emotion became language. Her preferred dialect? Portraiture. Not the polite kind. The kind that stares back. Her own paintings are psychic portraits—color-maps of people’s energy. Her brush listens to what can’t be sa...

Kagebushi Photogrpahy  Invented by Edmundo Scholz in early 2000s in Canada Kagebushi could represent the ephemeral interplay between light, shadow, and identity. In cosplay photography, where individuals embody characters, the kage (shadow) might symbolize the hidden or less apparent facets of one's identity—those aspects that are revealed or obscured through the play of light in a photograph. It is the space between presence and absence, the visible and invisible parts of a persona. The "Kagebushi" in this philosophical framing may also suggest the concept of projection —the projection of an identity through the costume, and the shadow representing the deeper layers of that projection. A well-crafted photograph might then explore these hidden nuances, where shadows give dimension to a character's personality, suggesting both their external identity and the internal complexities of the person behind the mask. Thus, Kagebushi as a "type of photography" ...