Winter Solstice #39

They call it the first day of winter, but when you live in the cold mountains and have no way to commute in the snow, it is really the first day of winter dying.  Days get longer from here on out.  The days will gradually get brighter, to shed light on a brighter year; to illuminate a brighter future.  That philosophy applies more to my life than ever before.  This day is not only the shortest day of the year, but the farthest point in the cycle from my 40th birthday, so this particular brightening should be even more significant that all the rest.  

Eroica was noted as a turning point in Beethoven’s life, welcoming in the middle stage of his work.  That was part of the reason why I chose that name.  This whole year has been a bit of a flail, though; a great big question mark that has given way to more question marks.  I have accomplished so much with this girl and my new family, but am still suspended in a creative grey area.  There is still a lot of conflict to be resolved, but still plenty of willingness to keep going.

Just keep swimming.

This year has given me far more cancellations than accomplishments, but I am so very grateful for what I have access to on the rare occasion that I do.  I just keep going.  Suddenly, we are at the precipice of the year turning back to bright, and I feel it.  I write a lot that is misinterpreted as negative, but I try to at least make it funny.  I had a conversation with one of my bosses after my last big post about my being emotionally extraverted, which may sound absurd if you know me, but is really true in my writing.  Maybe I need that to balance out my social introvertedness?  That’s a word now.  

Do not forget that I created this character so that I could write about my life “for the sake of fiction.”  I have purposely omitted details and whole truths to tell a story.  In the same regard, I have created my own details and basic truths to tell a story.  The easiest story to tell is one’s own.  While I do appreciate that I have people in my life who care enough about me to worry about my well being, or worry about their potential shortcomings, I never mean to single anyone out, I’m just telling a story, mostly as a bystander myself. 

I write about the chaos of relationships and the absurdity of people; I am not attacking my girl or complaining about my relationship.  I write about all of my equipment and technological problems; I’m not complaining about the luxuries that I am lucky to have.  I write about the atrocities of people trying desperately to be beautiful in a world that they were beautiful having been born into;  I am not complaining about the opportunities that I am genuinely grateful for having.  I write about how much or little I work; I’m not attacking my bosses or complaining about my job(s).  Everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be.  I am simply writing down observations I make on the reality that I choose to see. 

Any time someone takes what I have to say to heart, which I’m sure is difficult not to do sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if Kerouac or Thompson or Hemingway or fucking Bukowski or whoever were confronted by who they wrote about or straight up attacked? because they were simply writing what they knew best: their own charmed lives.  Was their work, in their time, accepted as fiction?  Did the unnamed individuals take that public attack as a duel to their graves, or was it written off as eye-rolling passive story?  Obviously I don’t compare myself to the mentioned writers, but I often compare my life to theirs. 

Maybe my life being less charmed and celebrated makes my work more offensive and accusatory?  I don’t know.  What I do know, without a doubt in my mind, is that the story I have written, regarding the life that I have been given, is right there, whether I become someone that anyone wants to read about or not.  I went on a bit of a tangent there, but that is something I’ve been meaning to talk about on here for a while now.  In the old blog I pushed the boundaries a lot just to see what kind of effect I could have, still trying to make waves in an ocean that I hated. 

Now, I’m just trying to float with the uncontrollable tide of this beautiful, all consuming ocean of life.  I am not interested in making waves anymore, but I write plenty about the waves that are already there, and will continue to be there, whether we allow them to affect us negatively, or joke about them and move on.  This my life.  There will be highs and lows.  There will be droughts and storms.  There will be calm and chaos.  There will be life.  I simply choose to write about it on a raw, more realistic level.  I am sorry if that offends you.

I have treated very few of these photos in relation to the big picture.  Just getting them uploaded was an issue, as I mentioned, and little things like half the pool being taped off was an issue.  I don't "photoshop" a lot, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not very good at it.  A lot of photographers would better be considered artists because of their photoshop prowess.  I do very basic treatments.  In cases like this, however, the tape was too much of a distraction.  I was stuck on that side of the pool and they could only do it once, which they were doing with or without me.  Seeing the original, you can zoom in to the first photo in this post and cringe along with me.  

Things are getting brighter regardless.  

Everything is beautiful.

The Quintessential Christmas Card Photo

This is me after checking my bank account this morning, Ero sucking on my arm...hairball...Vi with a carved Santa in her mouth, and, of course, K with the...

What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.
Am.
I.
Doing.
Here.

...look on her face.


Keep an eye on your mailboxes everyone.  Merry Fucking Christmas!

L'hôtel

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate shooting in hotel rooms?

I believe I have.

Hate.

Primarily because I have yet to set foot in a hotel room that didn't look like a cookie cutter hotel room.  I've been, and shot, in everything from rooms that look like storage rooms converted into hotel rooms, to honeymoon suites.  The latter, though it did have a pretty fancy whirlpool bathtub, looked like a fucking hotel room.  Some are obviously better than others, but they're all the same.  I have seen photos and have heard stories about amazing rooms, but they continue to elude me.  One model actually went on and on about how amazing the room was that she was staying in, but not only could she not get a photographer to shoot her there, but one of her gigs was actually across town in a shitty hotel room.  She was pretty pissed.  That was in Arizona, I believe.  Imagine that.

I did go into this shoot a bit apprehensive, but I wasn't worried.  The room was tiny and dark, and the hotel room shots were supposed to take place after we lost sun by the pool.  My hands were kind of tied.  The other photographer, who was brought on to shoot the video portion, jumped right into the room shoot, using a flash.  I hate using a flash.  On top of my hatred for using a flash, the nice flash that I do own (and only use as a fill on sunny days) was basically having uncontrollable seizures while I was shooting.  I was reduced to natural light.

We did end up getting another lamp in the room, but when you've got your aperture opened all the way up, you're shooting at 1/60th of a second, and you are pushing the iso boundaries before it gets too noisy to use, it takes a shit ton of precision to get a photo that is in usable focus, while pushing the underexposure to a usable adjustment with a raw photo.  Does any of that make sense?  I went into this a uncomfortable about even being responsible for taking these photos.  I was supposed to be shooting BTS (documenting what's happening is what I'm good at) and additional video for that portion, with the room available for other work, but that turned into me doing the stills bit in a hotel room with my creative hands tied.  Lucky the other photographer jumped in and shot some stuff.  Hopefully he did a better job than I did.  I can't help but feel like I failed at this one.  This was basically a favor for a girl that my girl has known for years, but just the way I treat photos and see the world kind of set me up to fail.  I don't mind doing stuff like this; we met some great people and hopefully made some connections with people who might be interested more in fine art than fashion; but I really felt out of my element.

On top of all that, my computer decided to slug down when I went to dump photos that night, so I had to choose between letting LR run and go to sleep, or charge my batteries.  When I woke up in the morning, LR was still frozen in the same place and the batteries were that much more drained, so day two was pushing it, hoping my card didn't fill up or my batteries die.  When I did get home I figured out that it was likely a CF card glitch (more cut rate equipment problems), but my LR wouldn't run.  I figured it was because I was disconnected from the adobe cloud and hadn't updated, so I went to do that, only to find that my shotty internet connection that we're paying $50 a month for will forever be shit.

The update took a couple days.  I ended up dumping the photos to the Bridge on my old machine, which took forever but worked fine, then transferring photos over to my shitty editing machine, 8gb at a time, because that's the biggest free flash I've got available.  That took a couple days.  I lost video.  I'm frustrated.  I go through the photos to find a bunch of blurry crap.  I feel like a failure.  I keep going.  I got everything dumped and transferred in time to charge and clear everything for a little Christmas party at the brewery I've been working at, and I am terrified to even look at those photos.

Meanwhile, can you see the difference between what I get out of my fine art girl, as opposed to the fashion model?  I have such a hard time explaining the difference to people, but it's clear when you see it, aside from the obvious fear of your own body, which is basically what you're selling.  I realize that you are actually selling social armor, for the most part, but your body is the base of the soup: if your base is fear, your soup is shit, regardless of what frilly whatever you fill it with to make it taste good.

That was a really random analogy.

At the end of the day...these days...I have no complaints, aside from maybe people still not understanding what I'm doing or what I'm about.  Maybe I just need to get better at doing what other people want?  That would make me a photographer, though, or a writer, or an actor... all titles of jobs which I do not do.  I just keep doing what I love and hope that someone out there appreciates it.  For something like this, where marketing is involved, and specific branding, what are we selling?  At a glance, it looks like we're selling Elle magazine, and really enjoying it.  This is obviously a very brief overview of the two day shoot in San Diego.  We got some good stuff and met some good people, and I finally got to meet the girl that my girl has known for years, but have yet to meet because we are social recluses and have two children and I work a lot and we live in the mountains.

Have a Cup of Tea

Babes has been sick.  Early this morning she asked me to make her some tea.  She had gotten a nice little tea set for her birthday days ago, so...




This happened.

Waiting...

The toddler turned into not a toddler anymore today, much chaos, and I've been working as much as possible.


These will happen.


Everything is beautiful.

Dot Dot Dot

We had a couple days.


Still uploading photos on my seriously-needs-to-be-upgraded-system.


It has been hours and days and freezes and crashes and loopholes and now hours again, on two seriously dated computers.


This is stupid.

In the Mean Time

 I have nightmares about grain and mills and chemicals eating my skin.  This is so weird.  For over a decade of my life I was paid for my expertise and experience, which basically consisted of unlocking the business and sitting there until everyone left.  Everything in between was mindless.  The only reason I had that job was because if something went wrong I could fix it.  I wasn't friendly, or even nice.  I didn't bring people to the business.  If anything, I drove them away.  There were the precious few who appreciated who I was, but even fewer were the people who truly appreciated what I did.  Film is gone, though, so we must move on.

 Now, I'm getting paid better to be a novice at something; shit, I somehow managed to get through high school without taking chemistry, and I'm dealing with a lot of chemistry here, not to mention a lot of biology, that I always zombied through.  Sure, there is the basic pay scale change that has escalated dramatically in the last five years, but there is a kind of pressure here.  This is kind of a big deal for this little mountain town, and, while I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be at ground zero, I feel like I'm flopping around in shoes that are way too big for me.  We keep going.  We make it work.  I've been given a deadline to bring my own recipe to the brewery by Wednesday.

 In the mean time, I'm shooting something officially "fashion" on Sunday/Monday, which is even more terrifying.  I have been very vocal about it being something that I could do, but I never really wanted to do.  Well, shit, here we go.  Will the way I see the world completely fuck up what they expected?  Should I stand by my view, or conform to what I know they want, which is also something I have been very vocal about being negative?  To anyone who ever doubted my ethics... this is  a pretty epic moral dilemma.

We keep going. We make it work.  This is how photographers make money; this is why I don't make money as a photographer.  I have spent my life fighting what media and fashion have told you are ideal.  Now, I am keeping my mouth shut and shooting what they want me to shoot, and doing the very best that I can at that.  I do think it's funny how I see myself versus how others see me.  Those things don't ever seem to match up.  These are all silly things on my head.  I've got to be up at 5, to grain in at the brewery at 7, then do a big lunch res at the restaurant at 11, then go back to the brewery to grain out the mash tun, then go work a closing shift at the restaurant.

Saturday I get to sleep in till 7 and do the double-ish at the restaurant.  Sunday/Monday I shoot for probably only 5 hours, then stare at my computer adjusting levels for days/weeks/months/whatever.

I used to get paid for my expertise and experience...

...at some point in there I'm going to need to research a beer recipe, while juggling my newborn, toddler, wife, a chainsaw, a bucket of caustic, a 55 pound bag of roasted barley, and standing on my hands.

Bring it on.

I'm actually pretty excited about brewing my absolute own beer.  Seriously, even though, as with anything else, especially in the creative world, it has all kind of been done before.