Tag: thoughts

Thoughts at the End of a Trip

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It’s been a hectic few weeks. I’m writing this post in the wee hours of the morning while sitting in the airport in San Francisco waiting for my flight home. It’s been almost three weeks since I last saw my home so it has been a very long trip, the longest continuous time I’ve been away from home in my life. The trip mixed work, vacation, and of course, several shoots.

In the last month I’ve visited Las Vegas, Phoenix, the High Sierras of California, Central California, and the area around San Francisco Bay. After last summer’s trip went so poorly I had more than a little trepidation about this one, but really it’s hard to imagine it going much better. In a state in a severe drought I found rain twice, once to good effect and once less so. It held a visit to a spot with a lot of personal meaning to me, my first interruption by police during a shoot, meeting some new faces, and working with a few friends I’d not seen in a while. I even took some time to play pure tourist, which in my case means not carrying around the camera for the day.

Overall I’ve enjoyed the trip more than I could have hoped. Not everything went according to plan, but those were minor inconveniences and didn’t dampen the trip as a while. There’s lots of photos to come and stories to share coming soon.

Why Last Summer’s Trip Sucked and Why I’m Doing a Trip this Summer Anyway

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Earlier in the week I discussed my thoughts, concerns, and frankly fears about travelling this coming summer. I’ve been working to do more travel, but an overall rather bad travel experience last summer left me a bit shy about this year. I’ve hinted at that trip more than once, but I guess I should explain a bit about why the trip left such a mark months later. There are people involved I do consider friends, even if some of those friendships are strained at best now. So forgive some intentional vagueness, but an interlude into my last trip to Arizona and why it left such a mark.

The idea for the trip came a few months after I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time back in 2012. I wanted to backpack into the Canyon itself for a several days, and hopefully complete a rim to rim crossing. That’s starting on one rim, descending into the Canyon, and then ascending to the other rim. Early last year I asked a friend to accompany me on the trip, and she agreed. I was able to secure a permit for a trip in June. This friend models and the resulting plan eventually coalesced into travelling to Arizona for several days before the backpacking portion. When schedules and time allowed we’d travel together to split expenses, but otherwise plan to meet up and head to the Grand Canyon for the backpacking trip.

Sidetracking the preparation and above came in March. In a fairly short period of time I entered into what I only describe as an absolutely horrible stretch of time. So many things went sideways in a short time, a few weeks really. My professional life hit an absolutely horrible stretch leaving me a bit lost and bewildered. Suddenly though a professional opportunity I’d really had hopes for, but seemed dead came back out of the blue. That made it even more painful when it just missed and I got the news in early April. And just after that a seemingly promising romantic relationship fell apart suddenly and unexpectedly. Many more things, small and large over those months . Through all this the trip was sort of my anchor and my landmark as I waded through the muck. The thing I kept looking forward to and stayed excited about.

I’d had some concerns in the last weeks leading to the trip, but felt it mostly nerves. A phone call a few days before my departure soothed those and I felt good whenI left home to drive to the airport for my flight. Right up until the moment I stopped for gas and saw the text from my friend that she wasn’t coming.

I was already committed, I was on the way to the airport, so I flew out. My friend didn’t return my calls before or after the flight leaving me somewhat worried about her along with being bewildered and completely unsure what the hell to do with myself and this trip. The backpacking trip that meant so much to me began to crumble, and I had no idea why.

Still I’d planned several days before we met up, but almost nothing went right. So many shoots canceled or fell through at the last minute. A friend in the area I found both over promised and under delivered combining the frustration I felt. In fact even the shoots that did come to pass almost all had issues such as reptilian photo bombers. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the highlight of the trip was not being bitten by a rattlesnake in spite of being a couple feet from a coiled one. As for the backpacking trip, I’d planned the trip for two people and changing to a solo experience with a few days notice felt impossible. I tried to make it work, but it wouldn’t. A few days after arrival I canceled what I could and ate the rest of the backpacking trip along with changing my flight to an earlier departure. On the day I’d originally planned to arrive at the Canyon, I instead flew home. The dream delayed.

If you’ve followed this blog for more than a few months, you know that I did go back in November and complete the backpacking trip with a few additional stops I’d not planned the first time. It lived up to my expectations and surpassed them. I’m very glad I made the trip even if it took a bit more time and drama than I’d hoped. The effects still linger in frustration and damaged friendships. While I’ve forgiven the friend for not coming out for the trip, I still feel hurt at both how she did so and her behavior since then. While I still hope we’ll reconcile, we’ve not. The friend in Arizona I consider lost.

So that was my trip last summer. Broken friendships, lost trust, Murphy’s Law, more canceled shoots than successful ones, and the dream and core of the trip falling apart when it was almost literally close enough to see. This hasn’t been as short as I’d meant it to be, but that’s why another summer trip feels me with a level of almost physical discomfort at times.

While my day job will take me out west this summer in any case, the question really comes down to what to do afterward. I’ve really decided to sort of go for it. Yes, I’m nervous about a trip going as bad as last summer’s. That’s no reason to not make some trip and enjoy myself. Yes things could turn into another disaster, but they could also be awesome. Without going they’ll simply be nothing.

Oddly that decision made the rest of it fall into place pretty quickly. While I’d love to do the long west coast trip, it would only be possible as a whirlwind and I don’t want to travel that way. I want to experience and savor the places I visit for a few days. So I’ll be visiting Las Vegas and then heading over toward California. It’s a big state and I’ve been there for only a few nights since starting to do this seriously. The plan right now is to start out in Vegas and visit Death Valley, Yosemite, and Sequoia parks. Also planning to come to the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and perhaps Sand Diego for a bit. I think it will be fun. More planning to do, but I look forward to some fun shoots coming out there.

Moving to Spring and Planning for Summer

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The quiet period is coming to an end. January and February usually pass as quiet months. Winter means few models from outside the area travelling through. Sometimes other opportunities present, but the cold and waves of snow and ice this winter have kept things fairly quiet even locally. Some shoots of course, but few as even local shoots seemed to fall victim to forecasts of snow more than once the last couple of months. That’s changing as March arrives. The first promises of spring tease in the air. People begin to move about the country again now that ice doesn’t blanket most of it.

My posts around the change from last year to this one focused around some frustrations from the last year. The last couple of months have given me time to make peace with much of that, and I look forward to the coming year as it starts to pick up. My experimentation has been mixed, but the secret of experimentation is that it’s designed to fail. The mistakes are learning opportunities to build upon.

I’ll be heading out west again this summer to Las Vegas for work. I’ll be extending the trip with some additional travel, though I’m not sure how much yet. The disaster that last June’s trip became has me a bit gun shy. During that June trip almost everything went wrong from the drive to the airport to the flight home. The normal lies somewhere between that worst case and the much better return in November and that’s where I debate. I’d love to take the time to enjoy the whole west coast from San Diego to Seattle or Vancouver, but that seems a little too far. Too many logistics that could break, too many days away, and other good, sound, logical reasons.

In truth I worry it’ll end up like the trip from last summer if I push it too far. When I returned in November the June trip led me to keep the trip tightly scheduled and my time for the unplanned short. So I had no time for the unexpected moments that arose. I didn’t get to work with some people because of my schedule, and what time I spent in Phoenix in particular was constantly either shooting or getting ready for a shoot. Being too busy seems better than not being busy at all. Is it better to rush through at a madcap pace or take the chance of leaving time for quiet leisure and the unexpected? The unexpected hasn’t been my friend of late, but I feel comfortable coming toward it again.

I don’t know what I shall do yet. I feel California along with Nevada are almost certainties. I have places I want to see there and I’m not sure the next time I’ll get back out west after this trip. There’s much of the country I’ve not seen in a while and I’d like to get back to those places. I’d like to add the Pacific Northwest, but again the logistics make it tricky. I have time to decide so the decision can be debated a bit more. The longer I debate though, the more likely I will find myself in the northwest this year.

A First Beginning

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Once upon a time it seemed during almost every shoot the model would ask me some version of, “How did you get started in photography?” I rarely hear it anymore. I assume that’s because I’ve been working long enough now that how I started seems less interesting than what we’re going to do that day. Also possible that I’ve just gotten so much better at small talk during shoots that models don’t need to go to their standard bag of questions to fill the silence.

I bought my first digital camera embarrassingly early. That camera was little more than a toy and useful only for taking photos for web pages when speeds were measured in bits per second and not megabits per second. I came into photography through art. I started drawing and painting the nude, and then thought of photographing the nude. Moving to nude photography took a while. Finding models became the hardest challenge to working often enough to build my skills. I first photographed a nude in 2005, a female friend who was mostly just curious what it would be like to see herself nude in a photo. This was before everyone had cellphones to text naked pictures to each other making it a more unique experience then. I hired a professional model for a shoot later in the year, but my inexperience really showed there.

After a few more attempts that came to nothing as I moved through early 2006. Late in the spring I connected with a model traveling through the area and scheduled a shoot. She also introduced me to a friend also traveling through the area at the same time. In the end things worked out where one model would come through and we’d work one on one, the second model would arrive and I’d work with the pair, and I’d finish working solo with the second model for a while.

The circumstances for the shoot weren’t the best. I was scheduled to close on a house a couple of days before the scheduled shoot and really had no alternate plan had the house closing been delayed. Most of my belongings were in a storage shed so the only lighting I had available was a single halogen work light bought to use when renovating the house. The house had last been renovated in the 1970s and the color choices reflected that. On the day of the shoot I had only a couple of chairs for furniture and wifi had been installed late the day before. Most of the shoot took place in an empty room that’s now my bedroom.

I mainly remember being really nervous before the shoot working with both models. The first model was okay to work with, but the second model really taught me a lot about working with a model and getting good results. I learned more during that one day of photography working with these two models than any other single day I’ve had with a camera. While I had little idea what I was doing,  that second model in particular was wonderful to work with and really taught me a lot about how to work with a model. That second model was Melissa Troutt. It was the first time I worked with her. While it would be several years before we’d work together again, a quick search of this site will show how much we’ve worked together over the years.

Melissa was great, but there’s little I look at from that shoot today without cringing at the mistakes I made. Here Melissa demonstrates why you should always make sure models are well fed before starting the shoot.

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There are a few gems scattered in there though. Melissa probably deserves most of the credit for those, but I do think the idea to shoot some images using candlelight worked well. A good example below and this is a lighting I need to try again sometime. It’s also been a while now since I’ve had the chance to work with Melissa, and I hope that we can work together again soon.

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Thanks to those of you that stuck around and read through these last few days. As I get to the end you might wonder what the point of this was? I’m hoping as I move into 2014 that I’m making the same jump I did in those times documented today or yesterday. A moment when I can move to a better level of work and one day look back as a similar transition point. In the last few days posts I’ve documented some of those moments along the way from the past. On Monday and Tuesday I touched on some frustrations from the last year and thoughts on where I want to go moving into 2014. Wednesday I looked at the worst stretch of my photography time. One Thursday I looked at the stretch that broke that frustration and titled it a new beginning. Today I looked back at my first beginning.

Later this morning comes my first real attempt in this direction in a shoot that will push me outside my comfort zone. The results will either be amazing or a mess. It makes me a little nervous, but I think that’s a good thing. Even if it doesn’t work, then I’ll learn from it and can take that forward and try again as I explore some new areas in photography. There will still be photos like you’ve seen in the past here, but expect some new things to show up in the future.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled post programming.

The End of a Phase

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I took the photo below in early August 2009. The models are Candle Boxx  on the left and Kimberly Marvel on the right with a light bulb in her mouth. The two had driven up from Atlanta for the shoot. It was the last photo of the day, the end of a final comic theme around the two playing at trying (badly) to fix a problem of a blown light bulb. We ended with this Uncle Fester inspired solution. Not a great concept, but fun and they did it well. I enjoyed shooting with them on it and do like the humor in the final photo here.

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I wouldn’t take another photo of a model for about seven months.

Right after this shoot a lot happened. A long term, and often tempestuous, relationship came to a final and unpleasant end. As that fell apart, two people I’d put a lot of trust in screwed me over to their own benefit. All three were involved in my photography. Some people leave a mark on your life when they leave it. Others leave a scar. After those moments, I just didn’t want anything to do with photography for a while.

I started trying to come back toward the end of the year, but shoots kept falling though (a few legitimately, but mostly just flaking models). The trend and my frustration built early in 2010. I reached the point I begun to consider if the frustration was worth it. I got as far as gathering my gear and considering putting it onto eBay and stopping completely. How close I came to that is hard to say. At the time it felt like a close thing, a near decision. Looking back I have trouble believing I would have done it, but time changes perception. Photography wasn’t as much a part of my life then as it’s become today. I don’t really know. Even if I had quite then, I think I’d likely taken up a camera again at some point. Probably I came closer to quitting model photography than I did giving up on photography completely. I do think I was close to giving it up.

As 2012 moved into mid February I’d seen little other than frustration in my attempts at scheduling shoots. Probably a few more negative experiences would have pushed me over the edge. As the end of February arrived I had set up shoots for March with three models. One I’d not worked with before, one I’d worked with early in my photographic career, and the third had been one I’d spoken with a few times, but shoots never worked out. Three shoots in March, and all three worked out well. I do wonder if they had fallen through if that might have been the push to

As part of it I also decided to look at something different and work on shooting outdoors. I’d started hiking the year before, the first step in the long road to getting into good shape. I’d even done one swimsuit shoot outside in 2009 and had found a couple of locations I thought it would be interesting to work with a model. One at a waterfall and the other with some great rock formations around. To those shoots, and why I think they kept me from quitting, I’ll speak more tomorrow.

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Closing with another photo from that shoot with Kimberly and Candle. I’d worked with each model individually once before this shoot. I worked with Kimberly again in the spring of 2011 in a nice outdoor shoot. I believe she’s semi-retired now. Candle is still a very active working model and still as talented. Why I’ve not worked with her since this shoot given she lives only a few hours away I can’t really answer and need to try to remedy sometime soon.

Looking Back and Looking Forward – 1

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As we prepare to celebrate the passage of one completely arbitrary division of time to another this week, there’s a seemingly natural call for reflection or at least looking back. I’ve not been immune over these last days. I’ll not be sad to see 2013 fade into the rear view mirror. I can think of no year as full of frustrations as 2013. There were moments of fun and happiness of course and I’ll speak to those tomorrow. But there were parts of 2013, especially the spring and summer months, that challenged and placed me under some of the worst stress and pressure I’ve faced. It often wasn’t fun and I more than once felt like a ship adrift in storms far from a safe harbor.

So forgive me this week if I take some time to look both directions. Backward to the past, and forward to the coming year over the next few days. There will be photos too.

Like many children, I had a fear of the dark. It was never the dark I feared, but unknown things that could be lurking in the dark. What those things were are lost along with many other childish thoughts from those days. What I think I truly feared though was the unknown that the dark represented, and that fear of the unknown lingers in us all.

I no longer fear monsters hiding in the night, but those unknowns still exist.  It comes in when a person you trusted and cared for hurts you without explanation. The fear arrives as the tone in a lover’s voice when you realize that she’s going to end the relationship. It will show up as the ringing phone in the middle of the night that leads you to a loved one in the hospital. It brings with it injury and age as they take a toll on those you love. It comes when those we care about and trust leave or betray us and we do not understand why.

As a child I could hide under the covers feeling from the fear or run to the light of my parent’s porch where safety lay. My adult fears cannot be escaped as easily. Instead they follow me into bed during sleepless nights passed staring at the dark ceiling. They cannot be defeated like the monsters in a horror story.

But they can be defeated by facing them. By feeling fear, but moving anyway. By trusting again after someone breaks your trust. By letting someone else in to see the scar the last person left when they parted. By cherishing time that remains with those who have little left.

Fear tells you what you care about. Fear sharpens your focus to what truly matters.

As the year ends I’ve been buffeted, hammered, and perhaps a little bent. But I’ve not broken. I’ve picked myself up, dusted myself off, and begun moving forward again.

I’ve been angry and hurt this year, but I’m choosing to forgive. There were friendships that have been lost or strained, and I’m choosing to attempt to rebuild those. To reach out to those who hurt me and attempt to repair the damage done without worrying about who did what to who. I do so knowing they won’t all repair, but that some will and those are worth the pain of the ones that do not. I will let people in again knowing some will hurt me someday, but those who do not will be worth that pain.

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This week I’m going to post some photos from my early shoots. I’m going back into the archives for these so expect to see more of my learning process than polished work. Some are images I like, but all, along with many others not posted, were part of the growth process toward getting to where I am as a photographer today.

In 2008 I decided to make a real push to get more serious about my photography after dabbling in and out of it for a few years. This photo comes from a shoot that fall and one of the first shoot after making a late year decision to really start working and improving my craft. Tammi was inexperienced, but willing to learn, and had a lot of potential as a model. We only worked together this one time. A similar color photo this pose is still in her portfolio today though she didn’t model long.

Happy New Year – Moving into 2013

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I’m not a believer in New Year’s resolutions as I feel that if I find something I want to change I generally prefer to start then instead of waiting until the next time the calendar year flips over. Still I do admit that the combination of the calendar changing and the somewhat quiet moments that pass after Christmas and before New Year’s Day do much to make it almost impossible not to reflect for a bit.

As a photographer 2012 brought much good and some bad. I made some advances, but felt frustrations in my work more than once. I hit a bit of a wall this year, especially late in the year, and am not completely sure I’ve moved past it yet. I enjoyed working with many wonderful models this year including a number of new ones. Though it actually came out in 2011 and most of the work was done that year, I still think of the book as part of my 2012 work. It turned out to be an interesting experiment, one which at least was useful to a few people based on feedback I’ve gotten so I feel it was worth the time and effort.

In my personal life I completed my Master’s degree which had been a major investment of my time and energy over the last three plus years and now leaves me with a lot of free time moving forward into 2013. I dealt with a serious family emergency late this year that took a lot of my time and energy, especially as it combined with the wrapping up of that degree. While the situation in the family is well settled now, and better than I could have hoped for, it was still a major energy drain the last few months of the year and has left me somewhat behind. And I’ve managed to get my health into a vastly different place for the better and am now down to a weight I’ve not been since college. Before warmer weather returns for spring, I should at a normal weight again for the first time since my early college days. Even still carrying a bit of extra weight I’m likely in the best health and shape of my life right now.

Looking forward in the next year I’m going to continue to look more at landscape work in addition to my nude work. I’ve always had a love of landscapes. I shot those long before I used anything near professional equipment and before I’d taken one photo of a model. I’ve always enjoyed combining the nude and landscapes, but will move more toward more of nature on its own too. I don’t plan to shoot any fewer nudes or fewer combinations of the two, but increase my landscape only work.

I’m also planning to travel more in the coming year. I’m already working on planning one trip back to the southwest for late spring and will post more of that when it settles in. I’m looking forward to 2013 and what it brings.

Photography in the Desert

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My recent trip out to the southwest gave me the first opportunity to try shooting in a new environment, the desert.  I’m no stranger to outdoor shooting, as even a quick glance through my posts and gallery will demonstrate, but this was a very different environment, both in the obvious of few trees and little water, but in more subtle ways such as the way the sun interacts with the landscape.  So I thought I’d not a few observations of the differences between working in Arizona and Nevada compared to my normal Tennessee and North Carolina locations.

As always these are just my observations from a couple weeks in early June.  It will definitely will be hotter if you go in July or August where I’m not sure I’d even go outside during the noonday sun.  It will also likely be more humid then too.  In the winter it will be completely different I’m sure.  In other words before taking this as gospel, check a weather forecast.

The Desert is Hot and Dry

WonderHussy-1I know you’re thinking, “No kidding.”  Still it’s one thing to read or hear that the weather is hot and dry, but it’s a different thing to be standing out in that weather.  I was fortunate during my trip that the weather was actually a little cooler than normal, but still 100 degree heat is nothing to dismiss.  I will note though there is a notable difference between the humid heat where I normally work and the dry heat of the southwest.  I felt more comfortable at 100 degrees in Arizona early this month than I have in Tennessee this week at ninety degrees with the higher humidity.

That said, it’s still hot and potentially dangerously so.  And the dry air means that water just leaves your body in no time.  You sweat and it evaporates.  This does make you feel a little cooler, but it also means that drinking water is a constant necessity outside.  My sinuses dried out in minutes. I have a daypack that I normally take when hiking or shooting around home that holds 3L of water.  I normally can come back from a full day outdoors with water left in the pack.  While shooting out west I normally drank somewhere between 3/4 and a liter or water per hours while hiking or shooting in the desert.  If you take one piece of advice from this, drink lots of water.

The Sun

I’d in fact say the biggest change for me wasn’t the heat or the dry air, but the lack of shade.  I normally shoot in forests where trees 100+ feet tall are the norm around you.  Outside of the higher elevations above 5,000 feet like the Colorado Plateau I’m not sure I saw any plant even fifty feet tall.  Most plant life is brush with a height measured in inches.  What few tall plants exist are narrow.  The result is that shade is rare and shade big enough to put a person into, either yourself or a model, is even harder to find.  Clouds are almost non-existent.  I think I was out west for five days before I saw a cloud, a small whispy puff of white at the side of a mountain in Utah as I was driving from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas.

This will have two direct affects on you as a photographer.  The clear, dry air means the sun is there and will beat down on you.  If you’re out in the hottest part of the day where the sun is high in the sky there is nowhere to escape from it’s heat.  This makes the hot and dry aspect worse on your body and the body of your model.  The desert sun also has a very harsh and bright light that makes photographing during the middle of the day largely an exercise in futility.  I did one shoot with a model during the late morning to midday.  We found some places to work thanks to rocks providing shade, but for shooting in the desert think early or late in the day.

Sunscreen is a requirement.  Especially for the fair skinned such as myself.

Light

JenPhoenix-39As I mentioned, the sun when high in the sky is harsh and terrible for photographing a model.  With little hope of overcast, you’re only option is to find shade.  Fortunately there are rocks. In fact I think the rocks are the best feature of the southwest landscape.  For the times I was out in the harsher sun, I was mostly able to find locations to work around rock formations.  If you’re forced by scheduling to work during the middle of the day, look for a location with rocks formations.

The light during golden hour, the time right before and right after either sunrise or sunset, is simply gorgeous though.  The things that make the midday sun so annoying work to make this late light wonderful.  I can say that the golden hour light in the southwest would probably be the most enjoyable and wonderful natural light that I’ve worked in.

Privacy

There’s not a lot of people in the desert.  The big cities are big, Phoenix and Las Vegas for example, but in between cities there is a lot of wide open space.  Compare that to my area where you come through a small town or city every few miles on the major highways.  Out west it’s not uncommon to drive hours and not see a group of more than a hundred people together.  In short it’s a lot easier to find nice private places for shooting.

Visuals

The terrain just looks different.  Water is so rare those westerns where people fought wars over it now make a lot more sense.  The deep green colors are rare with browns and muddy green more common.  Mountains look totally different without the green.  The novelty is part of the appeal, but I really think there is something I love about the different landscape and the vast openness.  I’m already looking forward to my next trip back.  Coming up over the next couple weeks expect to see more photos from my desert shoots including those previewed in this post.

Other Thoughts

Plush-1All the models I worked with were locals and knew more about posing nude in the desert than I did.  All brought water to drink and stayed out of the sun as much as possible when not posing or until it lost much of its force.  My biggest concerns for a model or photographer working in the environment for the first time would be not drinking enough water and the sun on exposed skin.  I kept pretty well covered in sunscreen while outdoors, but did redden just a bit on my last shoot which ended in the full force of the midday sun.  I drank plenty, but still felt like I got behind a few times.  Plenty of water is the one thing I cannot overemphasize as the heat and dryness really pull water out of the body.

I also would suggest really focusing on the times around sunrise or sunset not just for the great light, but to give the best conditions.  It’s cooler and the sun is just too fierce and harsh to easily work during the middle of the day.  I’m also looking forward to trying some light painting my next trip out there.

Wildlife is another concern.  The desert of course holds several animals you’d prefer not to meet such as the rattlesnake and scorpion.  Thankfully I saw none of those while out shooting or hiking.  My personal favorite was the yellow signs similar to the ones we commonly see in the east warning of deer.  I saw plenty warning me to watch for bison or elk in the road.  Then as I travelled through the higher elevations of central Arizona I saw one warning me to watch out not for buffalo or elk, but mountain lions for the next ten miles.

I stayed in my car the next ten miles.  And a few more after that.

In conclusion I loved the desert as a location.  I’m already looking at planning a trip back outside of summer to shoot among a few other adventures I’ve planned.  Like any other location there are precautions and challenges, but the rewards are worth them.  A lot of common sense goes a long way as with any outdoor work.

Reflecting at 33,000 Feet

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I started this post 33,000 feet over Kansas thanks to the wonder of in flight wifi.  The quality is quite nice in fact a person in front of me watched part of the US Open on it.  It made the four plus hours flight and made me a lot more productive.  I didn’t publish from there because the photo I wanted to include below was in my checked bag so not available.

I noted in the post written before I flew out west that I’d hoped to clear my head a bit both artistically and personally on this trip.  Ten days later and I’m happy to say I’ve accomplished a bit of both out here.  I flew into Las Vegas, but spent the first part of my trip around Phoenix, AZ shooting the local landscape and working with several amazing models.  I already wanted to come back to Phoenix before I had left the city.  The people I met and worked with there were all wonderful and accomplished artists.  The desert landscape and terrain is so different from what I normally shoot that I want to explore it more.  In particular a late afternoon to sunset shoot I did produced some amazing work I’ll be showing later.  I’m likely going back in the fall or spring when the heat isn’t quite as pressing during the middle of the day and shooting will be easier throughout.

I then made my way northward to spend a few days at the Grand Canyon.  If you’ve ever thought of going there, just do it.  The first glimpse surpassed all expectations I had.  I can say the word awesome is used in its true sense when describing the place.  The photo to the below was taken on the less visited north rim my last night there at sunset.  It was the one night I was able to stay inside the park and the view of the stars that night (which I did not photograph due to dead camera batteries) were beyond humbling.  I already want to come back again here and do the hike from rim to rim soon.  That’s definitely not a summertime activity, though I did meet a group of young women who did just that.

GrandCanyon

After my Canyon stay I headed back over to Las Vegas for the rest of my stay.  I love Vegas in doses, but I’m never that sad to leave.  Early in the stay I had a wonderful shoot at my hotel with an amazing, artistically minded model.  It was my only indoor shoot on the trip and I can’t wait to get through the photos.  I tried some new things there and pushed out of my comfort zone a bit, but the results look to be worth it.  I also had a nice desert shoot outdoors this week in a great location outside the city.

A great trip overall.  I got the photos I had in my mind I wanted to get on the trip.  I pushed myself artistically and personally and successfully for the most part.  In the desert I actually had a tumbleweed roll across the road right in front of my car near the Utah and Arizona border just like in a movie.  I watched a dust devil cross the road a few hundred yards in front of me and then fall apart before I could pull over and get a photo.  I saw beautiful sunsets, smog over Phoenix from the mountains near the city, and the devastating fires in New Mexico as we flew overhead close enough we flew through the smoke.  I saw bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, the fun, and the insanity of Vegas.  And on my flight back I sat behind a couple that got married while out in Vegas.

Photos to come soon as I get time now to finally work and process them starting with a shoot a couple days before I left out of town.

Make Good Art

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I have history with commencement speeches.  I’ve been through two as a participant, once for high school and once for college.  I may be in my third when I complete my Master’s Degree in December.  At the high school one I had to give a short speech.  All that I really remember about it was the wind blowing something on my regalia off kilter as I walked up to the podium and getting me so shaken up I never quite recovered during the speech.  My college one was less exciting as my sole job was to walk across the stage.  That’s probably one of the few conscious, sober moments in my life where I truly have no memory of the actual event.  I remember the rest of ceremony and there is a photo of me getting the diploma, but the moments from leaving my seat until returning have always been a blur.  Working in education for more than a decade means I’ve set through many more ceremonies either in person or while monitoring the streaming of the ceremony out to the world.  I’ve sat through some pretty good ones, some pretty dull ones, but never a really bad or really great one.

A great one would be like this one by Neil Gaiman.  It’s twenty minutes long and I’ve watched it twice times since coming across it a couple weeks ago.  It’s one of the few things on the Internet I saw and immediately felt the need to share it to everyone I knew that would care.  After a few emails to some people I knew would love it, I just posted it to Facebook and Twitter to save time for the rest.  The speech is simply amazing and I suggest you go watch it now if you’ve not seen it yet.  A few of his points stood out for me right now though:

  • Embrace your fear of failure and make peace with imposter syndrome.
  • Enjoy your work and don’t get swept up in the next thing before enjoying the present.
  • The creative landscape is in constant flux and rules change all the time. So make your own rules.

Early this year I worked with a new model.  She had more than ten years of experience  with a good history and experience.  While we shot she several times commented that she liked my lighting.  After the shoot she posted a couple of the images from the shoot to her portfolio.  I had trouble because I just couldn’t believe at heart the work was that good.  I mean I could see the photos and I liked them.  I knew they were well lit, they showed her well, and that they were good, but at some level I just couldn’t believe they were good enough to post above all the other work she had access to.

I think I have an realistic view of my skill level.  I know that I’m not great yet, but I think I occasionally approach it.  I think most of the time I’m good, often I’m really good, and occasionally I kick ass.  At the same time I’ve been fighting this feeling that I’m really just a GWC that gets lucky.  That the good work isn’t my skill, but just the amazing models I’ve been lucky enough to work with and blind luck – the photographic equivalent of the monkey that types out a Shakespearian sonnet while banging on a typewriter.  I know that’s not right, but it’s a feeling I’ve not been able to shake.  I think everyone who creates things and actually cares about their work always has moments where they wonder if they are really any good or just get lucky at times. For some reason it stuck a bit this year in my photography.  That’s imposter syndrome.

At the same time I’ve also been fighting what I can describe as the photographic version of writer’s block.  Too much I felt like I’m repeating myself and doing the same things again and again.  Or doing something I’d already done before.  Beyond that there are things I prefer not to go into even in the relative anonymity I enjoy here.  Worlds have collided a bit and the impact left a mess at times.  The damage was not the fault of malice or poor intent by anyone, but simply bad luck and things going places no one expected.  Repairs and rebuilding takes time and are still in progress

I did something I’d not done in a long time.  I stopped shooting for a while.  I scheduled nothing for most of May.  I’d had one shoot that canceled on me at the start of the month and one at the end of the month that didn’t come to pass because of the weather remnants of a tropical storm.  But for the first time really since early 2010, I intentionally did not shoot for a while.  It was partly a chance to recharge and clear the fog.  And it was partly to look at other work and just feel that fire again, the burning desire to create.  I do again.

At the end of his speech, Mr. Gaiman sums it up wonderfully.

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.”

In a shoot earlier this year a model pointed to an absolutely wonderful place to shoot and I didn’t do it.  Why?  A lot of perfectly valid good reasons that were all logical.  I’ve regretted it since.  The spot was wonderful and we should have shot there and would have gotten some great shots there.  A few years ago I had a model freeze while moving to a location.  It was high and exposed and truthfully a little risky.  She got part of the way up there, but couldn’t make it the rest of the way.  I’d never really known how she felt, wanting to do something with the fear winning, until after that shoot.  I’d been timid and I didn’t like it.

So that’s my hope for the near future.  Not just in my photography, but overall.  I want to try things and if they screw up, at least they will be glorious and wonderful mistakes.  They will be mistakes that I can point at and say, “That was cool to try.”  I want to enjoy my work again and feel I’m doing something interesting each time I pick up the camera.  I want to get back into a life that I enjoy being a part of in every aspect.

Around the time this posts to my blog I’ll be on an airplane heading west.  It’s my first trip out there since I’ve been serious photographer.  I’m hoping to try some work in the amazing desert landscapes and I’ve set up some thing with a few good models.  I’ve got several shoots set for after I get back from the trip.  I’m going to try some new things, experiment with some new styles, and see what happens.  I know that some of it isn’t going to work.  I know that in fact some of it is going to really and truly screw up.  It will though be interesting even when it does.  And as always a lot of the results will show up here.