grief

I believe that grief is a solitary emotion. Somehow through grief we envelop ourselves in a sheath of what we think the experince death might be like. We try to kill ourselves, just a little bit, on the inside out of respect for the dead. We try to pack every little moment we can remeber of those who pass into an emotion that sweeps and rocks us in deep internal waves. It ebbs and flows in the days that follow. Hallucinations and riptides that catch us along the sidewalks of our days. We touch this, we hear that. We are in one place and then we are in another. Grief should fill us, swell and swell until it breaks and flows down and away from us like broken water.

Last wednesday my dear friend and fellow photographer died in a tragic accident. We were putting together a new magazine we thought might make us famous and change everything but he never showed up at his apartment.

What you do is you bite it all back. And you breath, and you wake up, and you walk one foot in front of the next. And it hits you in waves that pound like the surf, exploding in your chest as you fake your way through another normal day.

I miss you man.

sensation

The sensation, however slight, that you might actually succed in whatever your trying to do, is a scary one. The sense that I have that what I'm doing might actually work out, eventually, freaks me out. I lay in bed at night thinking about this. As strange as it may seem, and worry about it. Trying to be someone is an immensly emptying experince, just from the amount of effort you put into trying to mold yourself into what you've seen in your dreams. The real fear though, is like dreaming about what happens to the hero, after he rides off into the sunset. When the movie ends and the curtain closes, the hero is still riding. For us, he moves like a legend, backlit by the setting sun and as he shrinks away from us in our world, he grows in our hearts and minds and imaginations. We turn away and go home. Inspired, uplifted, cleansed, absolved by his courage and deeds. But really, his act for us is a sacrifice. We leave the cinema, perhaps embolded by his story, but ignorant of what he has lost. On the walk home, his horse still gallops, and the open country still sweeps before him. Yet there is no sacrifice so great that it can outrun the sunset and eventually our hero must stop, his horse tired, and the light of day gone.

There will always be tommorow. No matter how great today. There are no dreams that last forever, and no sunsets that never end. Greatness comes only at the cost of our own lives. We live but for one moment, that in which our silowet is set against the sky and the purpose and meaning of our journeys becomes for but a moment, universilly clear. We struggle against our fate and circumstance to prove that our destines are not dictates of god, but rather arrogant and assertive claims of equality and cooperation between a man and his deity.

Photography is peculiar in that your fame is forever invisible. You are your art, and you are your image. You fear it though, because you know, if you ever do make it- there will be nowhere else to go from there. Beauty is glory only through the finite nature of mans art. We chase the dream, knowing full well it will be the end of us. And we are at peace with this.

Fashion outakes

For me, fashion outakes are almost like real life. They are all those beautifull moments that a person unexpectedly has during a day. They are brief, they are lovely, yet they never really quite fit into that rubric of whatever it is that we are trying to do. So they become outakes. Stolen glances in coffee shops, furtive smiles in the park. They are lovely moments without past or future, and like these brief moments, outakes then disappear.

the price of dreams

Following your heart is a difficult business and any true dream carries a heavy price. The energy that you spend from within can easily burn you out. These are just long days, and long nights. All you can do is have faith because everyone around you simply fears. They fear for your success and they fear for your failure. They fear your dreams will leave them behind and they fear your dreams will change what they loved. Our hearts are lonely places where our self doubt coexists in a delicate balance with our inner strength.

Following your dreams means risking being a failure to those who support you. You can only ask forgiveness from those who might think you have forgotten them along the way. Success is built on the selfless love of the quiet inspirations that surround you. Fear and love are the foundations of our humanity and are the two things that wake us each day.

Forgive us if we can not pause. We must, we must, we must. We just try to hold on and hope that we are still in one piece when we get there.

Float

the view from here

I finished on a shoot for PowerBar. Apparently they have a new type of powerbar out that is actually edible for normal people who aren't looking to bulk up or run a marathon. More chocolate, caramel, peanuts. Who knows how it really tastes, but I've got a carton of them now so I guess I'll find out. For anyone who's watching the commercial should be on ESPN and the major networks in about a month. We're the guys with our heads in the fish tank in the Chinese restaurant. I'm the guy who loses the bet underwater.

I'll tell about how that all went some other time. As for me, I've got about six hours of sleep before I need to be up and shooting my own shoot for Inmagine.com. The worlds third largest stock photography company. The company owner and head director is in town to do the shoot. My crew has ballooned from me and two models to me, two models, my assistant, my stylist, her assistant, the makeup girl and the client who might be from one to three people. Yeah. Everyone has their own idea about how it's going to go down, and with that many people it's easy to get them wandering their own ways. So it will be awkward, especially since we're wandering all over town, but I'll just have to be strict. With a crew this size and really no one at the reins but myself, I'll have to rope everyone in so everything stays on schedule. First things first: I'm buying a crate of energy drinks and passing out that carton of PowerBars.


THE VIEW FROM HERE

I got two cards in the mail today. One's a birthday card because I turn 24 on Wednesday, from my parents and they say they love me. My relationship with them is much better these days than it was in the past and after having taken the three month hiatus that lead to the break in this blog, I'm really glad that we've worked everything out.

The other was a wedding invitation from an old girlfriend, who is getting married next month. It's also my first ex girlfriend to get married which is an emotional experience in and of itself. There are some people, who you know you could have never been with, but whom somehow you had always just expected would always remain somewhere out there in the world like the other piece of some old medallion. Each piece a part of something that can never be whole, yet the shape of which can never really ever disappear.

The view from here, from this point in my life, is inward. I am young, but old enough to know that I've got to stop always starting all over again. Years ago I would have looked forward to who I am and where I am now, thinking this would have already 'been it'. From here I can see only how far I have come, knowing that an unimaginably long and difficult path still remains ahead. What I would have once thought was the end, is really but the beginning with everything getting only more difficult from now on. In truth though, the view from here is a melancholy introspective. This life that so many might admire, or aspire to, is far from any of the dreams we might have. These people around me, many quite well known or famous in their own right, are simply that- people. Even the famous get bored, and lonely. Money has never made anyone's soul happy just as fame has never erased anyone's fears. The vulnerabilities that we seek to eliminate through an ascention to the crust of our society remain with us for all our lives, and we can't escape this. We are simply, these people. On set today I threw up after being asked to hyperventilate and then hold my head underwater repeatedly. You do it, not because your asked to do it, but because it is your job. You work a thirteen hour shift, sleep five and do it again, not because you are tough, but because you have to. This is the glamour that exists behind the lens and off screen. You sweat and you toil, like everyone else. But with this, it's not a nine to five. It's not something you do because there are no other options, or because it's the best thing for your future. You do it, because there is something inside that you owe to yourself. And that's probably the hardest thing of all.

Stock Photography

The shoot I have this week is for a stock photography company. Stock photography is an interesting beast, I don't know exactly how to define it. As one of good friends here who is a photographer said, "it's not fun, but at the same time, lots of fun". It's almost like acting in some ways. Anyway, here is one of my 'stock photos' that I have.

New Lighting

This is from a test of a new lighting setup I am trying. This weekend I will shoot two models, but just briefly each of them. The idea is to try this new lighting setup as well as try just capturing personality through a portrait. It should go quite well. Additionally it looks as though I will be working to prep the dummy issue of a new national magazine. Hopefully- I'll keep my fingers crossed at least, theres still a bunch of work I'll need to do for it.

Of me

Here is a random photo that was taken of me by another photographer. It's at the end of a makeup artist competition. Thanks Jan!

Magazine Work

I'm trying to get work at the moment for a new magazine that's opening here. The drama that has surrounded it's appearance on the market has been, shall we say, stupendous. Of course, with any big media endevours stuff is always over the top in terms of the politics of famous people working with other famous people and powerful people dealing with monied people and so on and so forth. Regardless I shot this yesterday evening as just a proof test for my roommate who is a stylist. It might look like boring work, (and it can be) but stuff like this (catalog work) is the bread and butter of many photographers. You can easilly make twenty thousand euros shooting a large catalog of just this stuff. But your earning your money, that's for sure.

Another

I shot the cowboy model for a second time. I wasn't satisfied with our first shooting. He needed to losen up, I needed to let him be more of himself. These are all nebulous concepts at best. Here's a new one, he looks a bit older here. It's with flash, outside.

Summer

Summer is a strange time in the modeling world. Depending on your market the models either flow in or they flow out. In prague, they flow out. The Czechs are a landlocked people. They live here, in the center of europe, with no view of the ocean. As soon as the warm weather comes, they as a habit, leave- in search of sea breezes and sandy beaches.

I don't blame them.

The models are also gone. The good girls make their way to the bigger markets in Barcelona, New York and Milan. There's lots of work to be had here in the summer months. Plenty of bikini shots, and lying in the surf.

I really don't blame them.

So in the summer a strange calm comes to the czechs while the din of mass tourism beomces a roar. The summer is a time of the new models. Young, fresh, faces who are still in highschool- too young to travel but enchanted by lure of fashion. Summer is the season for testing. Lots of faces, lots outdoors. Lots of warm nights and bikinis in the grass. It's both good, and bad. Good because it represents a chance for you to pull your stuff together and shoot, shoot, shoot. Bad because the signal to noise ratio is low and only one in a hundred really 'has it'.

Planning

There is a certain magic to planning things properly, especially in the summer. Prague is a city where during the winter you can be bored to death from the lack of things to do, yet in the summer absolutely swamped by the work you'll have. At the moment I'm I am negotiating two jobs for next week. One is a photography shoot for a Malaysian company that I'm really quite excited about. The other is a commercial for a big American candy bar company. Both are quite big jobs, but for the American one I'm just a model, where as for the photography shoot, I'm the photographer. Should be interesting.

Yesterday I re-shot some of the model from the 'cowboy' series. In our first shooting he was as stiff as a board. It was his first shooting ever so I guess it's forgivable. It's tough when you are shooting new models for agencies because you always have to deal with models who might be pretty, but most likely don't have that 'it' factor that makes them truly beautifully. Beauty in fashion is really not about ones body as much as it is about ones own inner confidence and personality. Of course, most people wouldn't think so. The number of people I come across who lamblast models as stupid, shallow and dull is really astounding. Yet for all these stereotypes, I've got to admit that very rarely is this the case for successful models. Successful models are at the near tippy-top of our society, and for good reason. Not only do they have lovely bodies, but they also posses a certain set of social skills that make them as adept at handling social situations as Einstein handles physics. Beauty is not a 'wake up and it's obvious' type of thing. Regardless of a body type, it comes from within. To be beautiful you really need some sort of inner strength or confidence in your beauty. It's something you must subtly (emphasis on the subtle) convince others of.

But all this, for the most part, is something most young models don't yet understand. True, some have it from the very start, just born with it. Others cut their teeth in the casting process, learning the hard way through success and failure the faint emotional cues they get as the feedback registered on the faces of casting directors who watch them for no more than a minute. It's a tough road for sure. But the girls (or guys) who really want it don't give up. It's here, while waiting in long lines that models learn what works and what doesn't. When to smile and when to smirk. All the little things that happen when your not holding your number that can influence a career.

Updating

Keeping things updated on ones portfolio is a pain. On the one hand there is the need to keep your stuff fresh and constantly updated so that people can always see the latest and often greatest stuff. But the pain that goes into putting new stuff up is considerable. I'd like to keep it more updated, but it's a constant challenge to find the time. I should move over to making it more like a plain adobe photo gallery, but I haven't figured out how to merge that with my minimalist design. Anyway, this is from a new 'mini' series that is rather 'dark'. It's hopefully for a new magazine, but we will see about that.

Cowboy

This is from a model test I did last week for an agency. The test went well although I'm still not sure if I captured everything that I wanted from the model. The model was 16 and it was his first photoshoot. The makeup artist and I were trying our best to loosen him up, she sang and danced, but to no avail. Sometimes they just don't smile and there's nothing you can do about it.
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return

So this is my return to blogging. After a few months hiatus I've decided that I miss the psychological release it gives me. Additionally I've received quite a high volume of emails asking "where am i?". I must admit I am quite flattered that I have a little following of my own here with my blog, so I've decided to return to documenting the experince that is the process of trying to become a (famous) fashion photographer. Long road my friends. Long and hard.