where you'll find me now....

So much has been going on. The new year has been more than a little eventful. I feel like the whole game has changed and this year is going to be an interesting and bumpy ride. Nonetheless I am getting to much work done. I have had 5 people sit for me so far since New Years. Some of them are people that I am just getting to know, or I should say that in shooting photos of them I am taking a crash course in getting to know them. It's been quite interesting. I feel like I am adding new people to the pot right now and I am glad, I have been needing it.

The First one was this little hipster/gelfling girl that I had photographed previously. She is an incredible model and a total natural at posing for me. She is an illustrator studying at MCA. I desperately want to teach her how to apply makeup. She is a beauty, very ethereal... colt-legged, but in the most charming way. It all comes off beautifully on film (I still say that even though I shoot digital now) and I am loving the work. I gave her a sack of PBR and a bottle of rum for her troubles and it was loads of fun. I need to actually hang out with her more. She is an interesting character.

The second was a rather shy and sweet boy, who is also an illustrator who studied at the same art college I went to way way way back. He was really eager to volunteer for my "project". I love how recent art students still think in projects. I didn't tell him that what I am really doing is trying to improve and see if photography should become what I make my life's work. I know that at music I am mediocre at best (I am too lazy to practice and I cheat) I have pretty much lost my will to paint anymore. Writing is too private for me.... but photos are so much more visceral and immediate and really like a hunt, a way to capture something fleeting and to make the conditions and composition match up to what you are seeing with your minds eye. I was a little worried about loosening him up (I did give him the rest of the PBR leftover from the NYE party), but he was actually a lot of fun, and I got some truly beautiful shots of him. He is a very tall, lanky african american with dreadlocks. I got some shots of him smoking on my roof in silhouette against the sky that I really fell in love with. He looks very regal in a few, which is not a word I would have ever used to describe him. But now I see it, because it's the beauty in him that needed to be found.

You can surprise yourself sometimes, and them as well. One friend I shot late last year was looking at what I took of him and told me that he had never seen himself that way. He said that I was showing him himself. I found that a little disconcerting because it fell on me that when you do what I am doing, you could very well be tinkering with someone's self image. But I digress...

The third subject was a guy that I don't know as well as the first two. Truthfully I have no clue where I know him from. He sent me a friend request on FB a year or two ago and he looked so familiar... I knew that know him from somewhere, but I come up a complete blank when I try to think where or when. The screwy part was that I had the realization that both my roommates were out for the night and I was suddenly alone in my house with a guy that I essentially DO NOT REALLY KNOW..... right about the time he was coming up my stairs. It didn't help that while he was climbing said stairs I saw that this guy is ginormous. He did not look that big in pictures. We are talking biceps the size of my head. I actually had a real fight or flight moment looking up at him in my hallway. It passed and he turned out to be a total sweetheart. He's a personal trainer and a combat medic in the reserves, which explains why he is "built to tear a man in half" (as Trevor would say) He has the sweetest brown eyes, an intriguing nose (despite loathed septum piercing), gorgeous skin, endearingly crooked teeth and an achingly beautiful jawline. I also took a liking to his hands as well. I noticed that he held them in steeple formation most of the time. I had a hell of time shooting him though. A lot of guys who are that muscular are incredibly hard to pose because their body is rather locked up in itself. It makes for rather stiff looking poses. I got a lot of great head shots and quite a few nice ones of his hands. He was very snuggly, he hugged me 3 or 4 times before he left to go to a wake. Another one I will have to get to know better.

The fourth Subject is a Lady I have been meaning to get to know for a while. I met her one day when I went with a friend to take photos at the Ornamental Metal Museum on the river. She is this dark middle eastern beauty with big liquid brown eyes and a long, lean frame that is more muscular than waif-like. She has a Dali tattooed on her back that she never shows to anyone. I immediately wrapped her in a sheet, put her hair up and proceeded to take these really graceful shots of her back with peacock feathers in her hair. I also got a black and white topless (but still wholly decent) shot of her that is so weirdly intimate.... you would never think that it was made by two people who barely know each other.
I also got some shots of her playing my guitar and a few of her hands that I really like. She wants me to come and shoot still life at her house. She had told me beforehand that she was camera shy, but she did a wonderful job taking direction and holding still. She is willing to do it again and I am excited about what I can do with her in a long-line odalisque type pose. It will be gorgeous.

The fifth subject is a rather self assured little creature that is kind of dating one of my room mates. He tells me "I am kinda vain, so will you take my picture?" I said of course and we set it up. He is, in no uncertain terms, hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that I really hope that my roommate continues to date him. He is a tiny slip of a man that can eat twice his body weight in bacon in one sitting. As expected, most of the shots I got were rather humorous, but I got a few genuinely good ones that reflect his personality, and still manage to be good portraiture. A few that I shot on the roof turned out really well. I still have yet to go over them all.

I have more people getting lined up and I am trying to come up with new ideas, lighting schemes and poses to put them in. I am rather excited about it all. I am afraid it will be slower going since I have gone back to work after a week off for New Year. 2012 is shaping up to interesting indeed.