Just spent an hour writing more of the Sundance narrative, but it was forced shitty clunky stuff that was far too literal a telling, so I have abandoned it for now. Last night, I shot with Drug Skinny again. I did it because I like her. I did it because she wanted to. I did it because I am back at the factory leading the deadening dull life I lived before. And so she came in an outfit she wanted to shoot in. I got her out of that as quickly as I could, of course, but I had no idea beyond that and I was wrong. I love her, though, for indulging me, and when she was back in costume, I said, "Were you posing in the mirror in this today?"
"Maybe," she giggled. I didn't have to say anything to her. She just moved from place to place and I simply pulled the trigger again and again--over seven hundred digital times. She was happy, so I was happy, too.
"You want to get something to eat?" I asked her. I had sweated through my shirt. When I am shooting for me, everything is very slow and deliberate and I take very few pictures. The yield, however, is very, very high. Seven hundred digital images. I was hoping for a few good ones.
But I am being cavalier rather than truthful. I had anticipated shooting something else with her this night, something we'd talked about over email too late at night while I was working at my computer on images I need to process and send out and listening to a large library of music that makes life seem better than it is. She was there, too, on the other end of the internet sending me messages, and I spoke in precarious metaphors not wanting to say the thing itself for fear of. . . just for fear. I would shoot with my Leica, I thought, black and white film, low light and grainy, unholy, exciting things that would transcend the act itself. . . . I'd not slept very well at all anticipating it.
But like most outrageous people I've met, Drug Skinny's outrage is a defense, and not far below the surface lies a very conventional person, and even more than that. She and I had not been speaking of the same thing at all. Besides, I told myself, the batteries on the little Leica flash were dead. Maybe I was relieved. I would settle for shocking tales over sake.
Since I've been home, I have been swamped with requests to shoot from models I've shot with before and from new models who have simply seen my stuff. I am trying to limit myself to shooting once a week. I am too far behind as it is, and truly, all of it in the end is work on top of work and my health begins to deteriorate. I want, rather, to go to yoga and come home and read. I want to visit with friends and have slow dinners. And. . . dare I speak it. . . I may even wish for. . . romance.
And so, of course, I've agreed to another shoot tonight. And the coming week's calendars are already filling up. I wasn't going to do this any more, I remember. I was going to go out with the big camera and shoot in the streets. Daylight. Fresh air. Social content.
I am too easily flattered, of course, and this other is like a drug. Just one more and then I'm done. O.K. One more.
Well, this is no better than what I wrote about Sundance, but it is late and the factory whistle is blowing. This is it. "Publish."
The multiplied image and linen-like texture is evocative of Warhol.
ReplyDeleteSomething went wrong with the new Canon, and for about twenty shots, there was only black. But I had an intuition that something was there, so I imported the black frames into Photoshop and cranked up the settings to lighten it as much as possible. And I was right. Images emerged. But the digital noise was hideous. I worked for a long time trying to rid the image of it, but I was only partially successful. I liked the underlying image, though, so. . . I tiled it and used it. There is possibly a technique to be had here. I will experiment.
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