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.
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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! ]]>
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.
]]>A scene from on of my all time favorite films. “If….” directed by Lindsay Anderson staring Malcolm McDowell. When I was working on the set of Basquiat, I was talking with Gary Oldman. I mentioned this film and he told me that it was this film and McDowells performance that inspired him with the desire to act.
This scene, an exploration of sexual attraction through the avant-garde and girl that seems as though she was taken right out of a Fernand Léger painting
This is from the archives ]]>
I monitor a drawing session for Spring Studio
This was done from a 20 minute pose.
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