Good and Ill

I keep plugging along on my projects, but there never seems to be enough time.  I am far behind in everything that I owe people now and think I will have to cut back on actually taking pictures to once a week.  But taking pictures is the exciting part.  After that, I must sit at the scanner for hours and hours and hours listening to it go, "theewunk!whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrclank!weeeeeeeeeeee."  And I begin to go mad.  And then there are the endless hours spent making the photo in Photoshop.  One image can take many hours.

Yesterday, I shot with someone I've worked with before.  She gives me many good ideas.  I was using her to experiment with some new techniques that I don't know will work and she understands that nothing may come of it all.  For giggles, I picked up my digital camera and shot a few dozen pictures of her.  I like to shoot with big apertures, but my eyes are getting really bad and I keep fucking up the focus.  It is a problem.

Skip ahead.  I sent a description of one of my projects and some recent photos to a woman who was interested in working with me.  She wrote back:

"im sorry but ill have to decline, these images come off almost scarry to me."

This, of course, startled me.  It is the first time I have had this response.  I thought about her comment, though, and had to admit, well, yea, there is that certain sense of despair and desperation in them.  I looked back through the images then and saw them newly through her eyes, and I could see what she meant.  They began to scare me a bit, too.  

A friend of mine who has published two semi-important books on areas of Modern British Lit once said to me that he thought reading modern literature caused depression and other mental illnesses.  Sure, it has some elements, I said, but that's what makes me happy.  Just to know that I am not the only one subjected to the horrors palliates the sting.  But again, I know what he meant.  

The girl in the studio yesterday told me she roller skates.  Not blades, but skates.  Who in the world does that anymore?  I asked her all about it and told her I'd like to photograph her in her skating costume.  Way led to way, and she gave me another good idea.  She is young and hangs out with skater trash and surfers and the like.  She will bring them to my studio.  

When I began writing the last paragraph, I thought to say that these will be bright, happy photos, but I already have my doubts.  It all depends on what one wants to see, I think.  When I looked back at the portfolio of the girl who declined the shoot, I felt the kind of horror one gets from beauty pageants and glamor photos, all those plastic, orthodontic smiles and skin kept pure by acutane and heavy cosmetics.  No knock on her.  I'm just saying.  

The photo I am posting today is one of yesterday's digital photos.  Man, that is easy!  Just click, download, a few adjustments, and BAM!  And I like the picture.  I even hit the focus on the button.  So what am I doing fooling around with all these invented processes I can barely control, making the "almost scarry [sic]" images that so few people want to see?  I could do the other thing more easily and have more approbation.  

If I could answer that, though, everything would be different.  For now, I'll keep on with what I've started.  I don't even care if people like them, though I wish they would.  But when I look at those images, especially in a group. . . man, I know I'm doing the right thing.  

I think.