Enjoyable and relaxing but a productive departure

I created the self-portrait project for myself to hopefully motivate me to keep shooting. However, photographing myself on a regular basis just seems to go against my personality. I'm wholly unimpressed with myself, so why waste the time or effort photographing that? I'm sure I'll still do it here and there, since I am one of the very few people I DO feel comfortable shooting.

On a lighter note, I DID spend an afternoon with my cousin Rachel, walking around and discovering a local park, and shooting along the way. We had a grand time, found a super cool new location for both of us, and we both got some pretty cool images from the excursion. I don't feel so bad about not following the project like I had intended because I haven't abandoned it entirely. It really felt good to just shoot period. Getting out into the beautiful weather, walking around enjoying mother nature and spending time with my cousin... it just doesn't get much better than that. We had a good chat, and good shooting. Mission accomplished.

Orgasmic photography

You know, sometimes I wonder...

"Why do I bother? What is the point? Who is really benefiting from this?"

This is what I sometimes wonder about my art, which pretty much entails my pictures. I've really poured my heart and soul into learning all I can about photography, and attempting to implement what I've learned because I want to get better at it. I shoot often (but still not as much as I wished), and not because I'm consciously thinking that I have to practice to be good. I enjoy shooting immensely; it's a rush when an idea washes over me. And then, the ultimate (the "creative orgasm" so to speak), is when you nail the shot and the picture kicks ASS.

Then I start to wonder if doing this I'm doing nothing but just stroking my own ego and feeding my addiction. It feels good to create that piece of work, from inspiration to finished product, but isn't that euphoria and satisfaction self-serving? The picture that I took of the broken chair I found outside an abandoned house near the airport isn't really contributing anything worthwhile to anybody. So isn't the whole process just a way for me to "get off" and get it out of my system momentarily? I mean, at least a product of sex is a human being who actually makes some kind of impact (positive or negative) on the world.

I dunno, maybe I'm slipping into a artistic slump. I hope the project I've created for myself will help pull me through.

On a rainy day in October

I began my self-portrait project. I had toyed with the idea of making this a weekly journal of sorts, but I just want to try to keep myself motivated. More than once a week is fantastic and let's hope I can do some of those, but a weekly entry is generally what I'm aiming for.

Here are my submissions for this week. They obviously don't have any kind of autobiographical context, other than I just felt like dolling myself up and experimenting with some lighting and post-editing work. A mixture of flash/no flash from my camera, modeling lamp/no modeling lamp and various apertures and shutter speed were my "conditions" today. I'm fairly pleased with the post work I've done, although I know the heavy-handedness of the editing isn't for everyone. My focus for technical prowess, photographically speaking, still lies in my work outside of self-portraiture. Doing this kind of stuff allows me to practice a whole range of things without wasting the time of some poor model. I can flip-flop manual camera and lighting settings and really botch these photographs in editing without feeling guilty for giving my unsuspecting model really crap images in payment for their time. So, yay for self-portraits!

Insomnia typing

Once again, I find myself sitting at the computer in the middle of the night, having tried and failed to sleep all the way through 'til morning. Not sure what's keeping me awake, the reasons are varied and often impossible to distinguish, so I rarely try to figure it out anymore. And not like it makes a difference anyway.

Lately I've been feeling the itch to shoot something or someone. There's been so much going on the past several months that I don't find myself with the time or energy or inspiration to do much shooting at all. I've had a few moments of slight inspiration here and there, but nothing with real gusto. I think I might've stumbled across an idea, though. What kinda kicked it off was thinking about how Jim and I have been shooting a documentary of sorts, creating images of the pregnancy week-by-week. I could do my own "documentary" : a self-portrait every week, with possibly some autobiographical theme or context. Like a photographic diary. And maybe this blog is the perfect place to showcase it. The more I sit here and think about it, I REALLY dig the idea. I think it could be something that I would enjoy doing and might yield some interesting images, a nice creative challenge for myself. :) *pats self on back* And, I believe I will begin this new project tomorrow. It's perfect, I'll have almost the whole day (and house) to myself.

I'm beginning to feel a bit tired now.... I'm staring blankly at the screen. Time to click "Publish Post" before losing this entry.

Night.

Enough is enough.

I think maybe in a way I've held onto parts of my past (and the people in it), not really wanting to believe that all those years were all for naught. However, it seems to be that this is the case. Very few people from "the before time" keep in contact with me, if you can even call it "contact". Mostly its the random Facebook tag and that's all. And I'm not sure if its true, but it felt like the ones who were on my Facebook page were there to spy and gather gossip material. A few unceremoniously de-friended me, but a few stuck around (which seemed rather odd considering they never actually spoke to me). I don't think I would have such a negative opinion of them (or the situation) if there had actually been REAL contact going on but there wasn't. So, I'm left to speculate. Yet, it seems that even this small group that kept hanging around, for whatever reason, was really keeping me from fully moving on, and at the same time still had the power to hurt me with their indifference to my life and happiness and MY attempts to reach out for some kind of contact with them. This morning, I've just had enough. I'm finally putting my foot down and ridding myself of all of this entirely. I've made my share of mistakes, and I feel that I've punished myself enough for them. Don't I deserve happiness too? I never wished any of them any ill-will (and I still don't) but I don't know if the feelings are mutual. I refuse to let them hurt me any more. It's time for me to put the past where it belongs and finally, completely move on with my life. My life will change forever in January when Cadence is born, and he is truly all that matters now. So, a final farewell to my past and those in it. I wish them happiness, and am ready to fully embrace mine now.

A-U-Ep

So, I guess I'm sitting here writing this because I promised myself that I wouldn't lose track of this thing. I really don't have any idea where this is going at the moment. I have times when I think of something clever that I want to blog about, but it inevitably when I'm lying in bed at 2:30 a.m. or I'm driving to work in the morning and I have no opportunity to write it down for later. I think, "That's so wickedly clever, there's no WAY I'll forget THAT!" Yeah right. And, tonight I was thinking that it had been too long since I'd written anything here and I needed to put SOMETHING down. I have a Voice Memos app on my iPhone, where I can record voice notes to myself. This could be pretty use because I can leave "notes" to myself at virtually any time especially when it's inconvenient (or impossible) for me to write them down. Funny though, I really don't enjoy listening to my voice and I think that this is why I've yet to make use of it. That, and feeling like a tard leaving a voice note to myself when someone is around to hear and see me do it. So as a result, I lose those unique thoughts and ideas to the wind. And this dribble it what comes out because I've guilted myself into writing anything instead of writing because I feel inspired. I guess I have no one to blame but myself. I suppose if it really starts to bother me then I WILL use the voice memos app and get over the aversion to my own voice.

However, I'm so lucky to be suffering from insomnia (and apparently leave tags and comments and such on websites with no recollection of doing it) so there is also the possibility of getting some quite interesting blogs during these kind of moments.

Benadryl is finally starting to kick in... maybe I'll get a good several hours tonight before getting up.

Peace out.