Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Our Memorial Day

Our memorial day was a beautiful day of friendship, travel, photography and BBQ. The morning started at 9:00AM when our friend, and fellow Studio 247 resident, Liz Smith, showed up at our door. We loaded some lunch, camera equipment and our tired butts into her car and headed down the road. Our desitination? The top of the Oregon Coast Range.

Welcome to Mary's Peak. 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Mary's peak includes some beautiful water features. Run off from the spring melt creates some amazing water falls and creeks.

[[posterous-content:pid___1]]The top of Mary's Peak was socked in with clouds creating a sense of gloom. And while we never had the chance to see the bounty of beautiful views of the valley as can only be had on top of Mary's Peaks, the view we were presented was stunning none-the-less; it was beautiful.

As we headed back towards home, we stopped for some lunch. After a tasty meal, we hit the road back to Salem. When we arrived at our final destination, I cam across a treasure throve of imagery. Starting with fire.

[[posterous-content:pid___2]]The came the machinery...

[[posterous-content:pid___3]]And finally came the view and surrounding object.

[[posterous-content:pid___4]]My wife finally got some use of her new camera as well.

[[posterous-content:pid___5]]It was an amazing day. Thank you Liz, and Kirsten, for having us out that  beautiful day. 

Monday, May 30, 2011

A Evening with Nathan Smith

Yup.. that's right, photographers are not excluded from being in front of the camera. How else can we make our subjects comfortable in front of the camera if we aren't. So here a small set from an evening at the studio with Renowned photographer and lighting expert, Nathan Smith.

A new boom was tested this evening at our studio, and the results are simply amazing. I am loving the light once again. Thanks Nathan for being patient as we worked through the light angles.

 

Friday, May 27, 2011

An Evening with Savannah

My many thanks to Nathan Smith for inviting me out to assist him with this shoot, and of course for letting me shoot. 

I am truly in my skin when I am creating art, even if it is just helping others with their projects. Nathan knows this about me and even joked last night that he was doing community service in that by getting me out of the house and creating he was preventing a previously unimaginable amount body count. I laughed and acknowledged that he was probably right. So I would to say a big thank you to Nathan for getting me out of the house and keeping me sane.

So anyone have a project that they want some help on? 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

An Afternoon with Lyndsey

I spent an afternoon at Crendo Studio for a social mixer they hosted for local area photographers, models and makeup artists. It was an great networking opportunity that was a welcomebreak from the mundane existence I tend to normally dwell in. During the mixer I met Lyndsey Love, a local area model, and when she got in front of my camera we both worked a little magic.

I hope to work with her again in the near future. Thank you Lyndsey for working with me that day, and thank you Bruce and Tamara at Crendo for being such gracious hosts. 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

An Evening with Christina

I got to spend an evening photographing the ever fun and always lovely Christina in the studio.

She truly knows how to work a space, and is a natural in front of the camera.

Even after five solid hours of work, she was willing to keep going. Thank you Christina for being the free spirit you are and for working with me so freely. 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Night with the Monsters

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining Nathan Smith and Liz Smith (of no relation) on a shoot in a haunted house called the Nightmare Factory. What an awesome haunted house. Put on in the basement of the deaf school, by the staff and student body of school. This haunted house was put on in celebration of Friday the 13th. If you have never been, do yourself a favor and check them out this Halloween.

Again, make sure to check them out this Halloween.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Recovery

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It has been a while. And while I haven’t been alone, by definition of the word alone, I have been in a form of solitary. Not sharing, not being a part of things as I had been in the past. To be honest, it has been good for me, but I have missed it. I have spent considerable time holding myself accountable. I have been putting myself through “Bad Things” day in and day out for nearly a month now. Yeah, I have been particularly rough on myself, but that is who I am.

During this time I also observed the world around me. I observed the people around me. But my most important observation was of myself.

In observing the world around me I saw dark days. I saw the apparent collapse of my network of creative contacts as many of them pulled away. Rightfully so I am sure. I was a scary person for a while. I wasn’t able to hold myself up, so how could I support them. I saw very little beauty in the world around me. I felt very little emotion towards my world. I was cold in my frigid isolated world.

In observing the people around me I saw people that were repulsed by me. I saw people who had very little compassion for me. I saw people who viewed me like a spoiled little brat. I saw people who looked past my were compassionate, supportive and concerned.

I looked in the mirror yesterday morning and I saw a middle aged has-been-wanna-be. Yup, that’s right. I am a has-been and a wanna-be at the same time. And yes I am middle aged. See I am a has been, because the prime of life is behind me.  By all standards I have accomplished a majority of what I will accomplish in my life. I am also a wanna-be in that I want to accomplish more but am not sure if I have the ability to do that.

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I also saw a man who has a passion, drive and determination to accomplish whatever I set my mind to, which is what made the recent downfall so much harder. I don’t fail often, so when I do it is hard and I am very hard on myself. I know failure is supposed to make you stronger and wiser, but I never learned that lesson in life.

During my time away I found out who my real friends were. My real friends stood by me. My real friends, while they might not have understood, showed compassion. My real friends, while possibly perplexed at my response to the change, listened and took action to get me doing what I needed to be doing, even if that meant I needed to be left alone. My real friends challenged me by keeping me active. My real friends did more for me than they will ever know.

So what has changed? Not a lot, but some important things did. I am still deeply saddened by my failure, but I have developed a few tools and activities for coping. I am working on a blueprint for my future and how I achieve my goals. I can’t count on people valuing art, let alone my art. So, I am not going to count on my art selling, regardless if it is through portraits, weddings, fine art prints or some other tangible art.

Times must and always do change. If you don’t change with the times, then you become an antique which is pretty to look at but useless for practical purposes.

I have evaluated my business savvy. My personal marketing skills are a vacuous dismal disgrace. I don’t know how to fix that because my “suck” is at varying levels. My main problem is I can’t say no. This is why I have new desk job. I wanted to say no. I could have said no. In the end I couldn’t say no. Much in the same way I couldn’t say no to all of the free work people wanted me to do. My confidence was not where it should’ve been. My follow through was lacking. I was under the belief that if Kubota, Arias or Bianci could do, I could do it. I believed that they don’t have any more talent than I do.  I believed that I was equally creative as them. What I didn’t do was look at the difference in our market demographics and geographic locations. Salem isn’t Atlanta. Nor is it Los Angeles. Nor is it Bend. That was a failure in understanding the market. I lost a paying gig with a “friend” to a much lower bidder because my initial prices were 3 and 4 fold greater than the other photographer. I became bitter at that point and that was in December. I felt betrayed. I felt kicked in the face. My attitude was fuck you, I will prove you wrong. I didn’t lower my prices and I became more bitter as time wore on. I messed up.

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I made myself dependant on others for my personal success, and this lead me to be lazy because I could just blame the others when things didn’t work out. Did I blame “the others” when things didn’t work? Nope, because I knew all along that I was my own undoing. I owned it. My failure was my own. They were simply an attempt at having a patsy, because they had absolutely nothing to do with my failure. They were and still remain true friends.

So what does the future hold for me and my attempt at providing for my family with photography? I don’t know, but I do know that photography won’t be the only avenue I pursue. I will be writing, painting, drawing, playing music, photographing and even might try my hand at acting. I doubt I will share much more of my written work since that seems to create more issues in my life than I can handle at this point, but I will start sharing my other works.

The future also spells out that I am going to be much better at saying no to working for free. This does not mean I will not help out my true friends or organizations in need. My true friends deserve so much more than I can give them and organizations that contribute to the well being of the community deserver all the help they can get, so they have my services available to them any time I can, but everyone else, get ready to hear “no” a lot, especially when it comes down to working for free. I deserve to be valued and those that don’t value me don’t deserve to reap the rewards of my talents for absolutely no cost.

This may sound selfish, but it really isn’t. It means that I will continue helping others in need. I plan on volunteering my services to several organizations that not only need it, but deserve it.

The future also means that I surround myself with co-supportive people. This means that I support them as much as they support me and I am not talking financially. If the support isn’t mutual, then the relationship is not healthy for me.

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“Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.” ~ Lao Tzu

The future also means not fearing and not being just hopeful. I will not fear being successful. I will not fear being praised. I will not fear my confidence. I will not fear the unknown. By facing my fears I will take their power away. When the unknown becomes the known, there is nothing to fear. When you don’t fear praise, praise can lift you up. When you don’t fear confidence, then moving forward becomes easier. When you don’t fear success, it will find you because you won’t be hiding from it.

Hope without action will result in failure. My actions will always be focuses on success: success of someone be it another or myself. As long as a party is benefiting and their benefit benefits others then action is worthy.

Always without desire we must be found for if desire is always within us its outer fringe is all we shall see.”  ~ Lao Tzu

There are few things I actually desire, but when I do desire something, I get tunnel vision. Yup… I see nothing except for what is right in front of me, my virtual goal line. That means I miss critical road bumps, and even other opportunities that might have been critical to my success in another arena. I need to remove this limitation from my life.

I am a student by nature. I love learning new things, but in my learning I have taken much of the mystery out of the world, and therefore I have taken much of my appreciation of the wonder of the world from me. I need to regain the awe I once had about the world around me. I miss that.

In addition to being a student by nature, I am a teacher as well. My ways of teaching are different than many I have experienced myself. I teach through passive methods. I teach by giving what is needed and letting the student discover the most important things. I find that through this type of discovery a person feels a connection with the new found knowledge. So when teaching a software or camera technique I teach the mechanics (how and why it works) and then I send them down their path to discover what it can do for them. The results of this are usually amazing.

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My dog killed a squirrel yesterday. It took her two months of stalking and hunting in the backyard to do it, but her patience and persistence paid off. She never got mad. She never resigned to herself to failure after failure. She persisted day after day, until her day. I had assumed that our dog was simply playing a game. I assumed that if she ever caught a squirrel she wouldn’t know what to do with it. I thought I knew my dog. But it turns out that she knew herself better. She knew what she was doing and knew what to do when the time came. It was her instinct.

People do the same thing. I can teach the mechanics of drawing, photography, music or painting, but it won’t be until they can take those mechanical aspects and blend them with their own instincts to come up with something unique. That can’t be taught. If teaching it is attempted then the student is only taught how to work like the teacher does and the awe of the moment is lost.

In much of the same way I can’t be told what to do, otherwise I won’t have my “aha” moment of discovery. I can be given some basic mechanics, but then I have to be released to work with it. It definitely makes the process a longer, but it is the way it has to be with me.

There is a lot I have to work on still, but I can only do one thing at a time. I am not anywhere near close to being fixed, but I am working on it. I am going to have good day and bad days. If you don’t want to know the truth, don’t ask me about my day job, because although I may have found a way to deal with it, I am not happy with it and I won’t lie or beat around the bush.

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So I will begin blogging again, but my posts are going to more about art and less about me. So I return you to our regularly scheduled program.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Newest Edition To Our Yard

Just a quick post to let everyone know I am still kicking. I am still checked out and offline, so don't expect much from me in the near future.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

And Now, I Disappear

I am going for a walkabout. I am disappearing. I don't know when I will be retuning. It might be a week, a month... maybe longer. I am not sure. I have obligations and I will fulfill them with all of the gusto that is expected and I will provide the best possible service to those that I have promised. This will be part of my recovery.

Life has been like a freight train dragging me along the tracks here of late. I guess it is more like my reaction to life has been more like me trying to stop a freight train with the open palm of my hand and a deep resonating voice commanding it to stop. Needless to say, it doesn't work. The other day, I nearly made a dear friend of mine cry. Now why would I do that? My friend asked me how my job was. I was honest with my friend. My friend's response was a callous, "Cry me a river. I wish I had it that bad." This was in reference to the fact that my friend's job is in retail and my friend would give the soul of their first born for desk job. For some odd reason, my friend's response pissed me off beyond belief. Pissed is too light of a word. It enraged me. Maybe it was because it was the umpteenth time I had heard that type of response. Maybe it was because everyone seems so happy that I am caged in a box, wasting away in a tomb eight hours a day. But I felt like telling this friend to go slowly fuck themself in the ass with a ginsu knife while gargling with a liquid drano and razorblade cocktail. That is not like me, normally, to react this way towards people I actually care about, but that was my honest reaction in my mind. I am just lucky that I held back that I actually controlled myself (it was so difficult it literally hurt), and stuffed that reaction because I do value our friendship. But this tells me that something is definitely wrong with me.

I don't know how to explain how the day job makes me feel other than bad. I don't know how to express the depth of failure I feel, other than I am in a deep grieving morn over it. I don't know how to accept that things are the way they are other than to give up trying. I feel defeated. I don't have the answers my wife wants from me on how to fix myself. I acknowledge that this has been very hard on my wife, I know. I haven't been a happy person in a long time. I haven't been able to smile an honest smile in over a month. I haven't been able to enjoy a single day without a feeling of remorse, regret and utter disappointment in my failure. I spend each day wondering what i could have done differently. I spend each night thinking ugly thoughts.

A short while ago, I wrote a poem called Bad Things and I was asked by an artist friend at one point following that post, who I wrote the poem about. I didn't answer the question then because I didn't want to freak anyone out. Well, I think it is time I answer that question now. I hope that my wife might actually read this, although I doubt it, she doesn't really care about what I write and is so tired of my "art"... she doesn't even pay attention anymore. I don't blame her. So to answer the question that was asked. Bad things was a addressed to me, written to reflect on my personal feelings about how I feel about letting myself, my wife and my dreams down. It was written to review how I felt about my failure. Yes, Bad Things is violent. Yes, Bad Things is disturbing. Yes, Bad Things is brutal. But it reflects honestly about my self-image and self-worth. Bad Things is what I do to myself mentally with each and every day I have to step into the death-cage known as my cubicle. Writing it was theraputic to a point, short-termed, but the self-loathing has not stopped or became magically easier since I put Bad Things on paper. I actually lost a friend over Bad Things. Another friend lectured about the inappropriateness (if that's a word) of having minors a friends on Facebook who might have read it. Bad Things did a lot, but heal me it did not. 

What I can say is that the jobs feels like a vampire. Sitting in my gray walled cubicle in the white walled office space under the crappy quality lights all day sucks my life from me from the moment I get up in the morning until several hours after I get home. I spend each and every day regretting my attempts at follow my dream and this makes each moment in my cavern of dispair a constant reminder of what I did wrong. 1/3 of my lief during the week is spent in a repeating loop of recalling each failed step I took over the last six months. Imagine that. Eight hours a day, living a real life "Ground Hogs Day". Reporting to five bosses each and every day is like having all my teeth pulled, put back in and repeated five times each day. I won't go into too much detail into my mental state, but I think the above "Bad Things" admission says enough. 

It saddens me that those that are closest to me, like my wife and non-artsy friends don't understand this about me and can't seem find an ounce of compassion for what I am experiencing. The lack of compassion definitely helps hold me in this dark and damp tomb I initially put myself in. This is definitely much like something that started as a self-induced exile and now it is being enforced by those around me. This is a very dark and lonely place, but alas it is a place I have created for myself. Therefore I must find a way out of it myself. So for now, I disappear. I am off to walk the scorched Earth of my mind to see if I can heal. If I can, I will be stronger, I am sure. But I don't know if I can at this point, but I will try. See that is how I am. Even if I don't if it is possible, I will try.

So now I walk away. I take my leave. There will be no music. There will be no T.V. There will be no photographs. There will be no blogging. There will be no short-stories. There will be no poetry. There will be no drawing. There will be no distractions. Just me and my thoughts. I will allow my mind to execute Bad Things, as written. I deserve it. We'll see what happens on the other side. I need to find myself again. I need to find my passion. I need to forgive myself and that means first being openly angry wtih myself and I shall do that.

For those that need to reach me (those that I have commitments to), you have my phone number and if you don't have my phone number, email me yours and I will call you back. I plan on fulfilling my commitments to each and every one of you, because you deserve nothing less than that.

[Fade to Black]

Monday, May 2, 2011

Protesters coming to the state capital

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We want rights.... seems to be there slogan.... education... moving on

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Sunrises, Balloons, Flowers and Trains

Today has been an amazing day. I got to spend the day with several artists at some of the most beautiful and inspiring locations; Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm and The Oregon Garden. With my camera in hand and my creativity aching to express I was able to do something fun, with people who have an understanding of what it means to need to create.

 

May your tomorrow bring at least one ounce of creativy my today gave to me.