I have caught up with all my commercial photo work for the year and this site is now tweaked and I’m ready to begin adding new material.  It has taken a couple weeks longer to clean up than I anticipated.  I spent this week working with the gallery component developer adjusting and figuring out all the issues with the galleries and how they would look and function across all platforms.  This was the last major issue to work out.  The site is now visually linkable and fully functional.

Recently I have been looking at all the people I have shot over the years and, considering this is Montana, it seems quite remarkable to have so many!  I had a new guy in the studio I was shooting this week.  Someone I had begun working with last year but we didn’t get too far with the process because he was so busy.  It was so fun to get back to shooting this sort of stuff.  When I began shooting naked men they became more of a study to help me develop lighting techniques for my regular photographic portraits.  I have a great studio and lots of variations on lighting filtration equipment.  I have collected just about every type of light filter size and shape available to focus light from a broad softness to a pinpoint direct spot.  The naked male is the easiest subject, because it is all skin tone and in portrait photography is it all about lighting the skin in beautiful ways.  It also allows me to focus on compositional elements.  The next step is the photographic process is to figure out the personality of the subject and match the lighting technique to get to the core or essence of who they are.  Some people are soft, some are hard, some are sculptural, some not.  Next I factor in my relationship to the subject.  What feelings does this subject evoke within me.  Are they alluring, raw, do they connect to me or are they evasive.  What part of my own life intercepts with theirs, do they bring out a remembrance or connection to a time in my own past or sensual development?  We all have memories of times we connected with someone on a very sensual level that lingers in our thoughts that we would like to relive.  Photographically these become great ideas for exploration.  When you begin to put all these elements together this is where photography really become fun.  I am lucky I don’t do this for commercial gain so I can just focus on what’s important to me in a sense becoming my own personal journey.

When I first began this project I brought up the question are we born to be an artist or is it something that we learn.  I talked to a number of different artists and remember there was a mixture of responses.  For me I grew up on a family cattle ranch in the mountains of Montana where I wasn’t really exposed to much of anything creative, yet as a kid I was drawn to coloring and creative hobby type things as gifts for Christmas.  My parents must have recognized some semblance of talent there because they always gave me things that captivated me or mostly things I had to build.    When I colored I worked had to stay within the lines.  My grandmother taught me to cook and sew when I was about ten and I began to make clothing I would wear to school.  My parents tell stories of how I gathered all my brothers and cousins and created stage shows in the barnyard for everyone to see.  I was a drama nerd in high school and created a drama club and began doing stage productions.  I then won a scholarship to the University of Montana in Missoula for theater and earned a degree in performing arts with an emphasis on directing live theater production, essentially creating my own program at the time.  I was mostly interested in lighting design and work anything back stage.  I worked in professional theater for many years until I got burned out of constantly being on the road, returned to Montana, and took up photography.  Looking back, everything about my life has been creative and I feel fortunate to have made a living pursuing my passions.  I still make a living and do quite well with it and still live a creative life.

So was I born to it?  I am not entirely sure.  I was born with a strong curiosity and probably a stronger ability to make things happen.  I do know as a creative soul my focus becomes more concentrated the older I get.  Downright obsessive.  I am drawn to photography because it is something I never stop learning or growing with.  Though it has become relatively simpler from when I started with, processing my own film, it is still a challenge.  I probably have most every piece of equipment to filter or channel light in most any conceivable way.  I have found one of the key tenants of becoming an artist is to always bring yourself to the creative table.  Every day if possible.  Once you recognize this the world automatically sorts it self out and makes way for your creativity to flourish.  But be relentless in your pursuit.  After a while self doubt and constant questing vanishes and you get to a state where everything becomes a part of your creative evolution.  I learned not to be so critical of myself in the beginning and accept my mistakes as part of the learning process.  I see so many young artists who say this really isn’t very good about something they have created, expecting it to be a masterpiece right from the get go.  It never is.  They give up to easy and find something simpler to do, when this is really the impetus of something remarkable that has completely compelled and engaged them.  Yet they can’t see the remarkable beauty that brought them to it from the beginning.  They are only looking at the end result and judging everything else on that.  First and foremost believe in yourself and trust that all will be resolved.  To realize all of life is a creative process and an evolution along an expressive continuum.