I haven’t been blogging, and I’ve been wondering why that is? I like to blog. I like to syndicate what I think and the way I go about my process. However, I’ve stopped and I’ve been wondering?
My stopping is not about results. I know this because I expect no results from blogging. However, I think that I’ve figured it out. I blog less cause I have an email list that emails everyone on that list when I post a new blog. Not all of you are subscribers. Meaning that you didn’t subscribe to my blog. Although, I know that all of you are friends, it’s my conscience that is blocking me from blogging because I have not asked for everyones permission to put them on the email list. And because of this I have raised the standard of what I think is a publishable blog. I’ve censored myself. And it’s because I have signed people to my email list that I’ve never asked. I don’t want to be a spammer.
I like to blog and need to in the freest of form. I need to just be able to do it with out worry. So I’m going to remove everyone that I know that was not asked to be on the list. And although you haven’t complained to me about it you will have to request that I keep you on the list to be notified of new posts.
Blogging for me is important for many reasons. I have to continue to do it and I can’t feel guilty about it or put myself in the position of the judgment of it’s relevance. People can always register if they want to be updated. But for now and my peace of mind, I’m not going to send email alerts to people that haven’t agreed to an email alert of a new posting.
I made a decision at the beginning of this year that I was going to put my energies to pursuing the process I love most. And shooting is what it is. My critique of photography is as great as my love for it. “What kind of photography am I going to do,” I’m often asked.
I choose to stay away from classifying it cause I just love to shoot. When I first started to take my interest seriously and build my book, it was half fashion and the other reportage. I would show it around to people and the funny thing was that the fashion people really loved my reportage and not my fashion. And the photo-journalists thought my fashion was good and my reportage work, not so good. This lead me to the conclution that they are all full of shit! This absurdity pushed me to taking a break from trying to produce more fashion shoots, which for me fashion just seems for me the most natuaral and only conceavable route to pursue, I just do not have the acedemic nature that I find in most photo-journalist.
During my break I made an effort to improve my illustration skills which I have achieved a moderate success in making a career out of it. My conclusion is that the only way to succeed in a creative field that boarders art is to have deep passion for it. Your love for it is the only well you can draw upon to keep you motivated in doing it through the failures and rejections. And you better love it’s process because it will shape how you live. My love for the process of photography is so powerful that it’s greater than my interest in it’s results. For me the results will always have room for improvement but not a reason to stop. My success are a treat and more importantly the process mobilizes me to change how I live by engaging the world around me.
So after a two year break from producing and shooting a fashion shoot the results are a click on the picture above. And although I took a break, doesn’t mean that I stopped shooting. I always shoot and will continue to.
It’s difficult times to make a living in this economy. But for me it has never been easy. This is why I take pictures like this. I’m caught in limbo trying to change my career. It’s always been difficult to survive doing storyboards and although I like it as a job, I can’t say that I deeply passionate about it. Maybe this is the reason I do not work all the time. However, if given the opportunity I would take a full time job drawing in a minute.
I love to take pictures and I’d have to say that the photographers market is much more competitive. But I just have to hang in there.
No comments please!
Often I lay in bed and just listen to the world in motion out side my window and apartment. I listen intently imagining my ears traveling to the vastitude of the city’s limits.
This is what I hear.
- The tolling bells of the St. John the Divine
- The chirps of the birds
- The hooos of a morning doves
- The call of the peacocks
- The crows of crows
- The bark of dogs
- The whistle of a trains
- The roar from an Airplanes
- The chop of a Helicopters
- The engines of trucks that execrate and the boom they make going over a steal construction plate
- The sirens of the police cars and ambulances
- The hiss of a leaf blower and the scrape of a snow shovel
- The groan of the oil trucks refueling the furnaces
- The growl of the garbage trucks devouring the rubbish
- The gusts of wind
- The patter of raindrops
- The crack of thunder
- The neighbor’s front door that squeaks and slams
- The neighbor’s running water in their bathroom
- The hum and whirl of the elevator engine
- The hiss and clank of the building heaters
- The chatter of men at work and the scratch and beep of the their walky-talkies
- The beep of the intercom and the buzz from the door for visitors to enter
- The “hallelujah” from a man on broadway
- The babble of people that walk by and through the building court yard.
- The “I love you” a woman who calls up to her mother every time she leaves the building
Today this guy was attacked on my block, by three youths in their attempt to rob him of his cell phone. They didn’t succeed. I have the feeling that NY might see a raise in the crime rate as the U.S. continues to plunder into an economic depression.
Click here to view movie
It’s fashion week again in NYC. And for all you fashionistas I decided to re-release my short film Les Icon Plastic. It’s a film I shot years ago during fashion week in the winter of 2002. It’s 7 minutes long, so I ask you that you be patient and watch the whole film through because it’s it more than a brainless montage of pretty girls in slow motion. I cut it with a subtle arc and if you let your self be taken by it’s trip, you will find it hypnotic.
click to view
I’ve just completed the first comic I’ve drawn using the classic comic book procedures; A page breakdown; Penciling; And inking with a brush. Practice is good and it’s worth doing. Drawing in my sketchbook is good practice. But I think that I have to take it beyond that. The real practice is the actual doing. If I actually worked on carrying out the ideas into completed projects I think that I would improve faster and get much better. Sketch book practice lacks commitment to the completed idea in my head. It’s hard to focus in the sketchbook. And when I draw, I want to draw for keeps. It reminds me of playing pool. To get better at pool, I felt that I had to gamble. And it’s true. Gambling gives winning a pool game value and therefore evokes a greater personal effort to succeed. The same is true with drawing. It’s always a gamble as to whether I can execute the idea in my head on to paper!
Yesterday I attended the National Park Service Women Life Guard Tournament. Although I was asked to go with the idea that it would be a nice opportunity for me to spend a day at the beach in Sandy Hook N.J. to enjoy the sun ,the water and watching pretty girls bathing in bikinis, I could not help but pick up my camera and become apart of the action. And action was what all these girls were about.
I’m happy to announce that I’ve finally launched a stock photo gallery. Now I don’t want you to think that I’m getting into the stock photo business cuzz I’m not. Ghetty and Corbis have that market already cornered. However, I call it that cuz I take a lot of photos. And I wanted to have a gallery where I could save them and use as a pool of creativity for me to sip from as well as serving a great number of other functions like people asking me if I can email them that random photo I took of them.
What is nice about this gallery is it will work along side this blog forever developing until my death or a fate worse. However, I have to say that it was a long internal debate as to how much I want to make this gallery public or regularly referred to. My main concern was, “do I really want everyone to have access to see photos that I’ve taken that would be considered bad from a professional photo aesthetic? I wouldn’t want to be seen as an amateur! As we all are lead to believe that a professional like Bruce Weber never shoots photos of his family that look like that of an ametuer.
This conflict is the bane of my professional existence… But this is a discussion for another blog post. But as I aspire to be a true iconoclast, I feel that trying to present myself and my work in the truest of manner is the best way to challenge the illusions that bind us to our conceptions in judgment.
I hope that you will enjoy clicking through the galleries.
