This Is How the Finger Actually Works

This individual happens to be protesting the ongoing ban on imports from Cuba, chiefly those lovely Cohiba cigars. Note that he holds icons representing the embargo in the frame with his squinty-eyed visage: the cigar burns slowly and deliciously and the ring is held pinched between his fingers asserting the origin and authenticity of the smoke. His right hand forms a proper "finger" in which the knuckles should frame the finger much like the carriage frames the barrel of a cannon. I'm really quite taken with the compositional balance of this photograph. It forms two triangles, yet puts the essential elements all along a single horizontal. The wristwatch pulls the eye across the action of the picture and the perfect head-on angle to a less-than-perfect face gives it a certain almost Gaellic disdain, despite that the model has not a drop of French blood running through him.

Oh, and if the customs people are thinking about pursuing this guy, the cigar was purchased and consumed legally in another country. And every puff was like a big "fuck you" to the Bush-Cheney cabal...or at least it felt that way. Please compare the weak method used by El Presidente (below) compared to the muscular mode of giving the finger employed by our cigar lover.

Ah, the small pleasures are what makes life worth living.