Photo Shoots
Creativity is a fickle thing. Lately, I have not been doing a tremendous amount of photography, and it has been quite a while since I scheduled a shoot with a model. I have been feeling uninspired, for reasons which I will discuss in a moment. Someone asked me today if I had shot anything this weekend, and my response to them (aside from “no”) was that I need to step back from model photography and return to shooting still-life and perhaps work on shooting candids of people. He asked me why, and I tried to explain. However, no sooner had I finished that conversation than the wheels in my head started turning.
I opened up my idea file and started looking over the list. The project that has been slated as next in line has gone nowhere, in part because the preparation will be a lot of work that I am not 100% sure how to do. However, there is a whole list of less ambitious projects I could be working on. Furthermore, I realized that a location had turned up for one of the ideas that I had put on hold for lack of a location in which to shoot it, so now I am rapidly progressing that project. One thing has led to another, and I now have a whole plan for several relatively simple photo shoots.
I have identified a group of six priorities in my life (which are really three pairs of priorities). Photography is one that I have been neglecting for some time, while shooting and hunting have been consuming my resources for months. It is time to make a shift and put my priorities back in balance.
The reason that photography got pushed to the back burner in my life is partly due to the rut I have found myself in. That rut has been largely attitudinal. Working with models can be very disheartening, because they tend to have an agenda that is very different from mine. I have become very jaded by the necessity of filtering through and ignoring the self-aggrandizing that is the motive for models to model. Consequently, I have tried to avoid it. Additionally, there is the psychological impact of working with attractive models while having no woman in my life. On top of all that, it has been a very busy several months.
I have also been dissatisfied with the creative course I was taking. I had been hoping to use nudes to express intelligent concepts while disregarding the inherent eroticism of nudity. It’s as if I was pretending that the viewer is missing the point if they are aroused by the nudity in a photograph, even while I insisted that the nudity was necessary, simply because of my own arousal. However, my recent interactions with others regarding the topics of eroticism and sexuality, as well as a more frank recognition of the importance that eroticism plays in my psyche, have influenced me to embrace the erotic more in my art. I must stop deluding myself that the art has a far higher purpose than the nudity itself. Nudity is a perfectly justifiable reason on its own to create art.
Anyway, at this point I know what my next steps are. I must do the preparation for my Space Invaders and Nude Puzzle projects. I need to acquire a tiny bit of gear and do a little testing, arrange some non-photographic equipment rental, and coordinate the location, the model, and the MUA.
