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Deep down a part of me has always known this but its been hammered in lately. Photography is simply something that I do & enjoy, its not who I am.
This has been really hit home in a variety of ways.
- being uninspired by a person's look
- a person's inability to follow freakin' preparation directions
- a subject's primma-donna'ish
- bringing outside drama which I don't need
- changing what has been previously agreed upon in advance the day of the shoot
- content being all about them & not enough giving on what I want or need
But most importantly, if you don't have a sense of humor & are overly particular about being shown a certain way, then I'm sorry, I don't care how hot you think you are, working together is just not for me.
I'm not saying all the people I have worked w/ fell in the above category, Its likely just a numbers thing. By this time last year, I'd worked w/ close to 25 people. This year (as I write this) its closer 6 or 7, so of course the usual 10% of not-so-great shoots only SEEMS more prevalent.
This funk however has extended far beyond my people photography. I haven't shot any random junk stuff in over 8 months & I haven't practiced my sports photography in longer than that. Nor have I not gone out & wandered shooting landscapes or whatever. The explorational wonder just hasn't been there.
Whatever, life will go on.
&
This has been really hit home in a variety of ways.
- being uninspired by a person's look
- a person's inability to follow freakin' preparation directions
- a subject's primma-donna'ish
- bringing outside drama which I don't need
- changing what has been previously agreed upon in advance the day of the shoot
- content being all about them & not enough giving on what I want or need
But most importantly, if you don't have a sense of humor & are overly particular about being shown a certain way, then I'm sorry, I don't care how hot you think you are, working together is just not for me.
I'm not saying all the people I have worked w/ fell in the above category, Its likely just a numbers thing. By this time last year, I'd worked w/ close to 25 people. This year (as I write this) its closer 6 or 7, so of course the usual 10% of not-so-great shoots only SEEMS more prevalent.
This funk however has extended far beyond my people photography. I haven't shot any random junk stuff in over 8 months & I haven't practiced my sports photography in longer than that. Nor have I not gone out & wandered shooting landscapes or whatever. The explorational wonder just hasn't been there.
Whatever, life will go on.
&
The Passing of dA's JillianAnn999
This post is bitter-sweet & I've been struggling to articulate my thoughts into words. However I feel the dA community should know. It is with a heavy heart that the dA community lost one of our own Jillian Durgin, sometimes freelance model & founder of Ritual Fashion, here on dA she was known as "JillianAnn999." She was in a tragic car accident outside her home in Rome, GA on 26 Aug, 2023. When I first heard the news, I didn't believe it. I knew she was going throughthe usual BS most public personalities have with online a**holes so I called her number & left a voicemail asking her to call me, hoping what I'd heard was a different Jillian. Came inside, Googled her name while I waited, & was devastated to read the first entry was an outside news report of the car accident. This was later confirmed when her family & company's Instagram spread the same news. The news link is here: https://www.wrganews.com/2023/08/26/rome-man-killed-in-chattooga-county-wreck/ Here's the rememberance
Artistic Kudos to Wytherwing
Happy New Year everyone! May your 2024 be better than 2023. I'm normally reluctant to have people use my work used as reference or stock material because in all honesty, I view my work as a finished product. Its an intrepretation of my vision. Even when looking at samples of a prospective artist's work, its kinda a mystery as to how my finished product will look once its filtered through their prism. - Will it be trashy? - Will there be actual effort put into it? (Sorry but a crop job & playing w/ the colors doesn't cut it)? - Will they publicly credit me as their source material? - Will the finished product be demeaning to my subjects? - Will they even notify me when its done? Its always a crapshoot. Don't even get me started on my objections to AI art. You're welcome to read my feelings about it here. So long as the prospective artist asks beforehand (instead of just assuming I've already given permission), I'm likely to approve such request. Fellow deviant Wytherwing recently
Just Say No to AI Art
Just say no to AI "art." We artist are ALREADY undervalued, underappreciated, & underpayed. To say nothing about our work routinely being stolen. How does that effect the dA experience? Each time I open a lovely piece to comment, I view the keywords & if it has "AI" or something like that. I immediately move on. The more I move on & not find what I'm hoping for, the more difficult it is to find worthwhile artists who are *gasp* actually human! Let's be real. Me complimenting a computer program isn't going to inspire them. Making a suggestionin isn't going to improve something either their approach or subject matter or view it in a different way. Schmucks like me who've been around the block aren't the ones effected by dA's acceptance & promotion of AI art. Its the budding "human" artists who are effected because they have to deal with being amongst the riff-raff. On the upside dA is giving us the avility to block keywords & a checkbox that specifically "Mutes AI Art" in the
Patreon Launch Announcement
I'm proud to announce that I've stared my own Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/farenellphoto dA's been fun & largely still is. But I got told of receiving "sensitive contents" labels attached to my posts whenever I dared to post a portrait of a female wearing a t-shirt on a cold day. I choose Patreon over OnlyFans because it "feels" like its better geared toward my end of still photography. I don't really do enough video which I think is a strength to OF. & I don't want to have to deal with OF sale game - where you run a sale to gain new subscribers. But from observation, much of how Content Creators run those sale undercuts what they offer for multi-month bundles. If it works for them, who am I to tell them they're wrong? I don't feel like that's for me. I'm gearing my Patreon towards the exclusiveity angle. They'll be the very first to see certain sets or pictures or A LOT more of said sets than I show anwywhere else. There's (again) exclusive access to myhotoblog before its
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I feel for you and think that we have all been there.
Two of Nick's suggestions hit home one in a slightly different way:
Shoot what you love
Best advice ever (unless of course you are trying to make a living and have learned to hate shooting that which pays the bills).
Take a Break
I don't intentionally take breaks. But in reading this, the parts of your OP about model frustrations and Nick's suggestion came together for me. I've become really fussy about the models I will work with. This does two things:
1. I get exemplary models (I need to do a journal about this).
2. An unintended byproduct is gaps in shooting.
It may or may not work this way for you. But I have to say that being careful about which new models and sticking with the real muses has made my work very enjoyable.
Chin up old chap!
Two of Nick's suggestions hit home one in a slightly different way:
Shoot what you love
Best advice ever (unless of course you are trying to make a living and have learned to hate shooting that which pays the bills).
Take a Break
I don't intentionally take breaks. But in reading this, the parts of your OP about model frustrations and Nick's suggestion came together for me. I've become really fussy about the models I will work with. This does two things:
1. I get exemplary models (I need to do a journal about this).
2. An unintended byproduct is gaps in shooting.
It may or may not work this way for you. But I have to say that being careful about which new models and sticking with the real muses has made my work very enjoyable.
Chin up old chap!