First I want to say that do not believe wholly in astrology. I can’t avoid, however, the accuracy of some of its points. I am a Gemini, and definitely have a conflicting attributes: shy but social, a deep thinker who loves to talk, among others. Some of the more confusing ones (especially for me) are my spur-of-the-moment, rash decision making and out-and-out perfectionism.

I used to think that these could not exist in the same world. The myth of the free, un-tethered artist relying only his talent and instincts was a something I held on to. Sure he went to school to learn some skills to put in his tool belt. I had always thought that that was it. The virtuosity took over the art from there.

In my life, some amazing contradictions to this belief started to come about. I can’t work in a cluttered environment, I can’t work from a place of despair or unhappiness, and I can’t work without a final goal. This is not how I believed art to work.  In fact, looking back on the whole thing, the more effort I put into “the process” (said with a deep voice and echo), the better the outcome.

It seems odd, though, that I am realizing this after so many years. You don’t have to become a slave to the process, but it is important that you have something.  I should draw from my other talents, ones that don’t lie strictly in the creative world. I think one of my strengths as an artist is that I can exist in a technical world as well as the nebulous world of art and bring those talents to bear.

You have to give your work some sort of skeleton for your images to stand their strongest. You have to give your rocket some fuel to take flight and go to different worlds.

I finally am advertising my weddings. I am not sure how that will work out. I may have to get a different page for them due the content I want to bring my site as well as the look and feel of the site itself.  No one wants to get married in sand and fire filled world, heavy with lonely wastelands, predatory animals that herald the end of it.  It just doesn’t fill you with wedding happiness.

I want to do weddings that our very different, but I don’t want to dedicate myself to only those types of weddings. This is the picture that inspired me to do this…

Neither do I want to alienate the other side of the clientele.  I guess the answer would be to put a site up that speaks to my strengths and let the work develop on its own.

If you ever wondered about how I manage my site or if I managed my site at all, I do. Mostly is little things that I am tweaking when I have a moment or if I have help ( yes, thank you Alex). Let take remaking the Galleries for example. This is what I had to do.

1. sort though the pictures and find which ones I am going to put up.

2. get them all into photo shop and re size them to a common scale ( for instance if the is a hor. I change the length to 1600, vertical 1600)

3. Create a watermark

4. Apply water mark.

5. Adjust watermarks location.

6. Adjust transparency of the watermark.

7.Save it as a Psd to preserve the layers.

8. Run an automated script to flatten the image and save it as a .Jpg.  This is for each Image. EACh freaking image... then I have to make the gallery, tweak the gallery, and add my graphics, link bars etc.

that is not even thinking about starting on jive75.com

It's getting more and more painful the closer I get to being finished.

Aint no rest for the wicked this is now my anthem. In fact this version linked here.  As I have said before, Music provides me for energy and inspiration for my work.  It's not all songs... and it's not the same songs all the time. Its a moment by moment thing. It's not always to pump me up but to help me get through.

I remember for a couple weeks I would listen to Alanis Morsitte's Thank you over and over again.  I wasn't sleeping, and wasn't producing any work. Believe or not, that was the only thing that kept me sane. Now, when I listen to it, it hold none of the same power for me.

This song is not like that. This song is a bridge song, a "spark" song as I like to call it. It's a song that throws a spark on all the inspiration that have been building and releases it energy.  Burning away the straw and wood, leaving pure molten ore ready for me to shape.

But it's not the regular song. It's version they use for the video and they released in the UK. Without having the music background to example to you what they are doing different, I would invite you listen to it and hear it for yourselves.

Despite having seen the video, I would the describe the song pretty much the same way.  Lost in the heat and haze of a hot day. Bones aching, the scratch one your arm from a piece of metal that didn't cause you to bleed but scraped skin making it just that more painful.

The song, the "spark", will start a fire. Burning through my inspiration, all the straw and wood, leaving nothing but molten ore for me to shape at will.

I need to start working again.

I had a busy weekend. Most notabilty I refreshed my selection of pictures I am going to put up on my site. I am trying to find a better way to make album so I am customize it. Everything else I have on my site is customized to a tee, but the albums are a constant source of... well bewilderment for me. The problem is that I would like things to look a certian way. (my vision and all that) but I don't always posseses the skills and programing languge. This frustrates the hell of out of me. So instead of settling, I push on to make it work. Most of the time it means lack of sleep and late nights. I am trying to relax about it. TRYING. Of course.. when I get this done, it will be the first album to include my Digital work. I am very very proud of this step and that it was something that I feel that I have accomplished. Digital photography scared the hell of out me. I didn't think I would be able to control it like my film. I was wrong and in a good way. It definently not that same as film, and in my opinion will never replace film, but it's its on medium and I am gaining control in it.

This is really as kind as I could put it.

I HATE Cameron as much if not more than I currently hate Lucas at this point. They're very talented talented people who for some reason now can't write their way out of a wet paper bag. Why is that you think? you may ask ? its because they are so fluffed up by everyone around them... they feel they don't have to be "disciplined" because they are demi-gods to all their followers.

I know I am going to see this film ... it's painful to think he did it .. and that I will be able to relate to it. and that I might enjoy it or even.... gulp... own it. but when Cameron was good I do own Aliens 2.

It's painful to think that I, as a artist, have been criticized for my lack of discipline. "Do you think that Cameron and Lucas just show and shoot whatever that day and hope it's good" I can imagine being asked. I would truly have to say yes at this point and that I hope to better then them.

Since switching to digital my work is now tied for better or worse to technology. Now of course breakthroughs in technologies have always fueled the art world.  This time I feel for some reason this leap is different.  As opposed to most other times this jump not only effects production but adds new steps for a people to follow. Not only am I a photographer but a storage engineer. I have to define and follow workflows for post production and to make sure that the data is backed up and correctly indexed, tagged, and properly classified.   I have already lost three years of photography to a disk failure. Three years, in matter of seconds.

However on the up side, thanks to this same technology saved that data.

It’s a different type of the same game, on a different field.  One that has new challenges, which will most defiantly, brings new perspective.

I have been thinking lately about trying to do 3D modeling. It another one of my many fields of arts in which I am involved. I think it’s a great field to use my imagery with and would let me to fully control my world. Of course the problem is that I am attacking a field that very very different that anything I have done. Sure the creative part is there but everything else is brand new. That learning curve is not impossible to overcome, but will it be worth it. Is the energy spent getting to a point where I can produce something that I find acceptable? Time to us on this plane is finite, and this will not be what it was in college spending day after day learning photoshop. Something will have to go by the way side, I will have to sacrifice something. I am sure I can do it. It is a matter finding the reason to make that sacrifice, and making sure it will be worth it.

I am not sure when it started but it was during the time I started working on my site. (which is still going on) The only thing I can compare this to is the “Sorcerers’ apprentice” ( which by the way scored big time with my family at the time… not) where those brooms become single task beings and no matter what mickey did, they kept on pouring the water.
It’s like every cell hears the call of the creative horn and starts shedding off functions to make my body nothing more than a conduit for this sound to echo through me. I becoming devoted to a single task and the logic centers in my brain are crimped off. This leaves nothing but the drone and beat sounding relentlessly, you’re not done yet...you’re not done yet. Of course, when I am like that my whole world suffers. Things that my mind has determined would be in the way are turned off. It must be some chemical that prevent certain neurons from firing.
I am still not done the site, but right as I was getting that on the way to being finished, “the card” incident came up. Why work on one project without any sleep when you can work on two. The first thing always to go is sleep. I don’t know where I come up with the strength, but it can’t be from a good place and it can’t be healthy.
By this time the site was (and still is maintaining a healthy pace) and I had messed up my cards and had to redo them. I finally got back my head and got off the crazy highway. I knew that I would experience a “sleep hangover” but … I didn’t know what form it would take. I got the worst of the bunch.
I get so wound that I have to let it spin it out. For me, this means countless hours of trying to get back to a healthy rhythm. This of course means the following things (I get tired, but I can’t sleep. I am distracted by the slightest of suggestion of a creative project. I have no energy to do anything constructive, just nervous empty energy.) This is only now compounded by the fact that I am in the process of moving, and really have to a whole bunch of moving pieces in the air.
I am not going to get over this quickly. I am sure something else will come up and destroy any progress I have made to this point. Thank god for Advil Pm and the ability to cut it in half.

Sigh… oh yeah… and I have a job.

This is way it happens in every movie I have seen. Her “regular” John is a middle aged, higher middle class man, fat and balding. She is a down to earth, full of street smart single mom who is just trying to squeeze out a living for her and her kid. He pays good money and she keeps the fantasy alive. Then, this is when the hero enters… young, handsome and ready to rescue her and her kid from the horrible nightmare.  They “fall in love” and live happily ever after, or there is a parting shot of her and her kid on a bus somewhere else to start a new life because it was too painful for her to stay him, OH… the memories.

Of course reality says, as well as Diane sawyer, that they feel fulfilled and don’t mind it at all. They even have a nickname for this guy; Capt’n-save-a-ho. These types of men are not smiled upon yet I still can’t figure out why. I would like to think that these kinds of guys remind them of the real world, the one where their real name is Megan or Christiania, not Montana. If this was their life, they would not have to sell the myth that their name, the orgasm, your sexual power, was in fact real.

What also then confuses me, are organizations that try and “help sex workers with health and self respect.”  Isn’t this a contradiction on the idea of someone who doesn’t want to be saved. You can’t then rely on these systems to support and at the same time sell the myth of the sex worker. How can the both be true?

I guess in my mind the happy ending would be something closer to the movies. Where an  awkward guy who has fallen deeply in love with a woman he has seen a couple times in bars, or a club, or on the street who, when no one else seems to have a ounce of respect, is paid by him to sit down and tell him her real name.