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My Photography Book Now - contest entry!

Well, I did it! I could have started working on this months ago, but actually only began 2 weeks ago. It was not that difficult of a task, putting this book together but in many ways it was a very grand task for me.

For one thing, publishing this book brings me to a crossroads with my photography. Originally I wanted to photograph 100 women for this book, and at this time I've only photographed 48. This could mean that I go on with the project and eventually publish a "volume 2". Or it means that I could stop now and find something new to do.

Regardless of what I do I am proud of this publication and it is with humble joy that I thank all the women that have participated in the project with me. I also thank all of my friends and family that have encouraged me, and/or modeled for me. There have been detractors along the way too. Something I still don't quite understand.

I may have more to say about all of this later, but for now I just wanted to share this image. Part way down this screen capture you can see my book on the list of contest entries. I captured this last night, around 1am, just after I uploaded and submitted the book for entry into the contest. Oh, and as of noon today, when the contest ended there are a total of 2,212 other entries in the contest. So I have a one in 2,212 chance of winning the $25,000 dollar first prize! Better odds than playing the lottery, eh? Click here to go to the order page!



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Now playing: High On Fire - Brothers In The Wind
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: High On Fire - Brothers In The Wind
via FoxyTunes

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silence is a golden thing sometimes…

seems that a lot of the time when i feel urged to blog it is because i have complaints on my mind. and then i go quiet and you don’t hear anything from me for awhile. well, usually during those quiet times i DON’T have anything to complain about and things are going pretty well. does that make you think i am a born complainer and only write or phone if there is a problem? maybe. maybe not. i don’t know.

i mean, i could complain now, about something, but that is not how i am feeling. or experiencing life right now. am i at peace? well, i actually think that i am pretty much at peace a lot of, or all the time. my own kind of peace and satisfaction with my lot. at least i am more at peace as more time passes, or so it seems. the things i complained about last time i blogged, i’m over, for now.

i do have a concern this week. the profundity of deaths of 50 year old men in the news. it’s foolish to think that big names in the news can set trends, unless you are superstitious. but the deaths of Michael Jackson and Billy Mays, both who were just 50 years old cast a perilous shadow across my mind this week. i’m just 50. and i’m not in good health. um, last blog entry anyone? i was going through some serious health crisis just a month ago. i feel a lot better now than i did then but i am certainly not out of the woods. and Billy Mays appeared to have died painlessly in his sleep. a local icon here in the Danville area died in his sleep just last week, and he was only 57.

someone commented to me recently that now that “we are 50, everyone seems young when they die”. kind of strange, but it’s really true.

anyway, i’m actually busy with activities right now. my kind of activities. the one thing that keeps my sanity in tact more than anything else is doing photo shoots. i still don’t seem to have any trouble finding people to model for me. it’s kind of a non-mental activity for me, in a way. yet it is what keeps me feeling like i’m in the game. if i can do photo shoots my mind is active enough, my body is not hurting too much, my social agility is in tact; i am still moving towards a goal. but there is still disintegration occurring along the way. i know less about what my end goal is. i am no closer to an end goal. i operate on a robotic, programmed level. i am not thinking or progressing. i am just treading water and aging.

i think there is a lot more i could say here, but who is really listening, other than me…

crossroads, horizons, antithetical nonsense…

i’m here again. wanting to be a writer. wanting to be THE writer i’ve always been meant to be. feeling the urge. feeling the push. feeling the birth. pulling all the old ideas together into a mass of tissue that wants to breath and walk amongst others that can see what i mean. a coalescence, a formation, a tantamount expression of all the mysteries that i’ve whined about during this lifetime, this deathtime, this passage into the other.

so i’ve recently, accidentally, though that’s not possibly true, made a connection with someone that i genuinely consider to be one of my favorite writers of all time. a beautiful woman, just a little younger than i am that specializes in writing young adult fiction. and i’ve earned a bit of an audience from her; by that, i mean that i’ve spoken out to her and she has responded to me. she has a busy life full of people; i’m not saying i think there is anyway that i’ll become a member of her clan, but i foresee the possibility of getting to meet her in person and doing some work with her. in simplest language, she has announced a workshop & celebration on a Saturday in August and i told her that i was interested in attending. i have also asked her if she would be interested in modeling for me as a “Cemetery Girl”. she said she “would love to”. so maybe if i can make my way to Hollywood for that weekend i could interact with some magick.

see, i’ve already made a connection with a different writer who i consider to be a living favorite; Clive Barker and i received his blessing a number of years ago. and just today, this writer, her name is Francesca Lia Block, wrote back to me and told me she is sending me her “writing blessings and magick”. i don’ take that kind of talk lightly. this is like a living, breathing talisman to me. i don’t need the attention of someone to be able to do this writing. i just need an entranceway into their consciousness to be able to tap into their greatness. no hand holding, no dancing around saying, “ooh, look at me!”. i think these are things i learned from the years of the guru. to be able know the power is there, and that the power is nothing different than what i already have, or am. but existing in this physical realm there are the laws and requirements of social acknowledgement and interaction that must be entertained to even just a slight degree. i can live my life on my own. i just need to have a feeling that my reflection is entirely unseen.

so will i stop doing photography? maybe. the CG project has been losing energy for awhile. at least the ferocity of it’s rampage last year has diminished. i still have models that i plan on working with; about eight between now and the end of September. but it would be very good for the writing project if i could redirect all of that ferocious rampage into conviction about and dedication to writing this novel. I first came up with the idea for this novel a little over 4 years ago. Not THAT long for an idea to gestate, but quite awhile for a novel to not be written in. i don’t think it will take me four more years to write this. i hope it won’t.

 Francesca, writing faerie

out of the house!

strange thing happened today. on the spur of the moment i decided to leave the house with my laptop. at first thought that i would just go to the dublin library because it is a place that i have worked at before, with little distraction. but for some reason i decided to drive by my old starbuttz and see if there by chance was a table open for me to use. and there was! i walked right in and was able to obtain my normal table with a cushioned bench. i guess the nice weather is driving people outside. and that was at 1pm when i got here. it’s now 3pm and the place is more full. i guess i lucked out.

the thing floating around in the back of my mind to do here is pull my writing back out of it’s trunk. my current writing project is my nanowrimo novel from last november.  i’m into the next chapter now, something i haven’t even looked at since april. it is really awful writing. and there is so much that can be edited out. not sure how i’m going to decide what to do with it. i want to keep it as close to the original style of my consciousness stream writing as i can, but i don’t envy the reader getting bogged down in my repetitive thinking and forced way of thinking. there really is an important story inside all of my chatter, and i want the reader to be excited about discovering it. i need a close friend to sit and edit this with me. alas, the chances of that happening are nil, so readers will be forced to toil through my murk.

on the photography front, i’ve got lots of new models to work with but my physical energy has been so depleted i’m having difficulty with scheduling and commitment. in just the past week i’ve had to cancel/reschedule on three different models. my last CG shoot was 6 weeks ago, and i was not all that happy with the results. she was another “professional” model. i mean she was beautiful and cooperative, but it just seems to take so long into a shoot before i can start to capture them in their relaxed mood/positioning. plus, she brought an escort – her boyfriend, something that does not usually bother me at all, but this guy just put off a vibe that interfered with me. never had that happen before with any other boyfriend/escorts.

Mirella in the Escher Room

yeah, so it has probably been 6 weeks since i’ve been here at starbuttz. haven’t been here since i cut my hair. nice, but one of my favorite baristas here knew it was me and said that she missed me. maybe this will be the start of me getting a little more social again, even though i don’t really talk to anyone here. just the fact that i’m getting out of the house and being around people is the important thing. and to feel free to do more writing. this is the place where i do most of my writing work. gotta figure out how to edit that nanowrimo. oh, i should mention too that i am using Windows Live Writer to create my latest blog entries. its feature rich and pretty easy to use. i like it and will probably stick with it.

debate about counting…

do you have 10,000 of something that you’ve created? i have 9,980 things i’ve created. and they are all in one place where they can be experienced. that number changes daily though. it’s increasing. and i don’t put junk there either. every one of those 9,980 things are creative expressions that go through my personal standards of quality. that’s the way art is, isn’t it? the artist is the ultimate judge. i’ve created art before that i’ve hated. or at least felt such a rage of emotions stir up inside of me that i couldn’t stand to look at it. (this instance was during a drawing class i participated in for only two sessions when i lived in Mendocino back in 1980. and because of what happened there i will never take a drawing or painting class again, the self revelation was so powerful it frightened me.) i ended up burning the things i drew. well, and then i pissed on the ashes.

i produce a lot of photographs. because it is easy for me to. if i could write as easily as i can photograph i’d have written my Ulysses & Finnegan’s Wake by now. this 10,000 image thing though, it has me burning up inside. i don’t know if i’ll just stop at that 9,999th photograph and then put my cameras away, or if i’ll delete my Flickr account, or if i’ll actually be so caught up in editing new images that i won’t realize i passed 10,000 until i’m up to 10,011… in a lot of ways it doesn’t matter, but in others it does.

Flickr actually intensifies my social ostracizing. it used to be a place where i felt welcomed, part of the family, admired, appreciated, and not oh so lonely. but photography is an obsession to me. i can’t get through a day without taking new photographs. it is the act of CREATION, not the sitting around and talking about it that drives me. it is a face of fire that i feel looking back at me though. i wasn’t going to bellyache, too much at least, in this post, but it feels good to complain.

For example, look at this Flickr photograph . No, it is not mine, silly! i want you to notice the statistics though. It has been viewed 16,432 times, 1,680 people consider it a favorite and it has been commented on over 490 times. and i doubt that it is the most popular photograph in Flickr either. in contrast, my most viewed photograph racks up 6,188 views, 4 favorites and 4 comments. why it is so popular for views baffles me. why it is not fav’d or commented on is more apparent. so this leads me to think three different things; my photography sucks, Flickr is broken, or people just prefer women as photographers. if a woman had taken this photograph i bet it would be as popular as Rosie Hardy’s work. (oh, and in defense of the Flickr is broken argument, THIS photo of Kelly is much better than the popular one.

so i have a new Cemetery Girl photo shoot scheduled for tomorrow. one that i should be more excited about doing than i actually am. my body is aching so much today i just can’t believe i’m going to have the strength to drive to Santa Cruz tomorrow, as scheduled/promised to photograph these two beautiful anthropology students from UCSC. if the shoot does happen i’ll hit that 10k mark in a couple of days with these new photos. and i really should not do this shoot either. i should be resting my body and letting it recuperate from all this fatigue and tension. help it heal rather than let it’s manic drive to be a flame that cannot be doused burn me to a crisp. if i drive and shoot tomorrow, i am going to be in 100x more physical discomfort than i am now for the next two weeks.

is this the price we pay for art? is my art worth suffering this much to make worth it? what if i am scheduled to die this weekend. if i did not take these photographs tomorrow would the world suffer too? from not getting to see them? oh, and by the “Flickr is broken” statement, i mean has Flickr become so huge and flooded with inconsequential snapshots that the real art does not rise to the surface any longer. mind you, if you prostitute yourself on Flickr; join 1,000 groups and flood them with your images and kiss up to other people about how amazing their images are, you’ll get kissed up to back. i used to be a Flickr whore. not any more though. come that 10,000th photo i may just decide to hit the “delete account” button. or not.

can’t sit here any longer. this pain is orgasmic. out.

& remember. Jesus didn’t have a camera.

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the way of the double-cross…?

wondering tonight if i should abandon all faith in people as companions and go the way of Jesus. the dude had to be the loneliest person that has ever lived, yet he is reputed to have been the one guy that believed in everyone he met to the utmost. did his loneliness sting? was there room in his heart for it to hurt? was he entirely clueless that people didn’t dig him? is that the way to make it through this world? believe the best in everyone despite what they reflect back to you? if you can’t have a good conversation with yourself who else is going to listen…? and that time on the cross… was he smiling on the inside? because he still believed the best in everyone? despite the fact that everyone abandoned him?

i think that is what i will start doing. yet, by myself. you can’t be a friend to someone in the real world that doesn’t have time for you. in my mind though, i can adore someone to the utmost and they can’t do anything to stop me. ok, now i feel at peace.

liukumassa pois…

hienoinen muutos tapahtuu, ja olen alkanut sulkea oma avata oviaukkojen ja psyykkinen tutustua ihmisiin. Olen ollut tunne valtava valua energian, fyysinen ja emotionaalinen äskettäin, ja ainoa asia, että on järkevää minulle on se, että olen pakotettu avaamaan kanavia osaksi minun psyyke on menetelmä saada ystäviä minulle. se vain ei toimi, yrittäen saada ihmiset haluavat olla ystäväsi. on olemassa kaksi ihmistä lähellä pintaa elämästäni, että olen sulkemalla kaikki pääsy välittömästi. ei keskustelua, ei enempää sähköpostit, ei tekstitystä, ei enempää kerjäämässä ne viettää aikaa minun kanssani. että se on periaatteessa mitä se tulee alas. Tässä vaiheessa en välitä, jos en koskaan kuule niitä uudelleen.

online Olen Oikaisujen liikaa. kaikki paikalliset ihmiset, jotka liittyvät lukion menin, että i Lisätään ystävät kohtaavat kirjojen Olen poistettavaksi. jos et puhu minulle, et saa lukea minulle. se menee syvemmälle though. Uskon, että on olemassa todellinen porttikäytävä, joka on aloitettu päähäni, sydämeni ... kun i tavoittaa olla ystäviä, eikä ole mitään reaktiota, minun energia virtaa ulos olen, ei ole saanut, ja se on tuhlausta minun energiaa. no, nyt jos joku haluaa olla ystäväni he joutuvat tekemään työtä. Olen tehnyt.