I am caught in the frustration of technology, banging my head against the wall, unable to move forward or backwards. I keep wondering what I have I gotten myself into and why can’t I seem to gain control of it. Why is it, our worlds are beginning to exist and rely so heavily on technology? When a few minor changes can affect your whole mode of operation and shut you down for days. For most of us it’s beyond our comprehension as to how it functions and we don’t even know how to approach the solution. Granted, it gets better each day, but still the simplest things can become major roadblocks that seem insurmountable and can consume hours and days of your time. I have a great respect and diligently try to understand the world that surrounds me and within which I exist. I have been learning this Joomla program for 6 weeks now working on this new site. It’s brilliant the way it functions and the concept of how you interact with it. It very simple, this is why I have chose it. It looks incredible. We have been building the galleries and are beginning to fine tune it. I now know this program inside and out, and can make the navigation through it quickly but for some reason, things have been reset beyond our perimeters and have suddenly brought the whole project to a halt and have made it non functional today. It doesn’t seem to be the site at all or within the site, but the server or person who controls the server who is making adjustments or changes that impact its functionality. Do I try to find a new server and begin again? We have about 800 pages built, is it possible to transfer all the work we have done? Do we have to just chalk up what we have done to a bad learning experience and move on? Or do we just try to muddle our way through the process and see if it can somehow become resolved? Yes, I know it’s time to take a deep breath, put the gun down and step away from it. It’s all just a matter of wading our way through the process. Looking back, I began this year the very first week of this project with a hard drive meltdown on my laptop and I cursed the techno gods, then there was the midyear crisis of being deactivated from Facebook for a week. I did overcome it. As I know I will overcome this too, but damn it’s sure frustrating being helpless in a vast world that rules our existence.
Category Archives: Creative Process
Falling into a morning slump
Woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed at all, feeling a bit discouraged and beaten down. I am afraid this Naked Man Project is getting the best of me. Taking the break from the weekend only seems to have made it worse, because I have lost the momentum and it’s one of those projects that have so many facets that weave in and out of itself, that it is becoming hard to tell exactly where you are at times. I have been writing so much for the site and then to write for the blog, my fingers often feel like jelly as I make so many mistakes. I am working afternoons at UPS this week, which totally prevents me from getting much done. There was guy sick last night so it was like banging my head against the wall and I had to work late. I get home and Bob, one of my kitties is having such an asthma attack I think he’s going to fall over. I know the inevitable is coming for him, that his lungs will eventually collapse and we will have to put him to sleep, so it just ripped my heart out to see him going through this. Writing a daily blog also takes its toll, and sometimes a lot more energy than you would imagine, especially for us non-writer types.
I finally got out of bed, ground some fresh coffee, and texted Glenn, still working in North Dakota with barely any cell services saying. “I am missing the best part of myself, you.” The phone instantly rang and it was Glenn, which is highly unusual. He asked if I was all right. So apparently I don’t send him enough nice texts, that when I do he recognizes something is wrong. I said yes, just having a bad morning and that I was missing him terribly.
I debated if I should go out into the garden today and just lose myself outside, but decided to jump on the computer to get caught up in some of the back log of work I have been accumulating since putting so much of my focus into this website. It has been the season of Senior Portraits, for some reason I have had more than usual and they have all hit the last couple of weeks. So I began to work through them. They were all so interesting and fun. I forget how much fun I actually have just creating images. Senior Portraits in particular are so much fun. The kids are at such an interesting age where you really get to tap into their dreams and get to become a part of their often-quirky worlds for a short while. What a great time of our lives, lack of commitments, hanging with our friends, involved with things we are truly passionate about, aspiring to greatness. Suddenly it dawns on me, perhaps I really haven’t outgrown that stage, and perhaps that’s why I have such a good time working with them. I always interview everyone I shoot before hand to try to see life from their perspective and how they see themselves and relate to their worlds and then tailor the shoot specifically to them. There is no formula for me, I am an original through and through. Delighting in these images actually pulled me out my slump for the day as I see what a wonderful process my work and life have become. Prospects of working on the website suddenly seems much brighter.
Maintaining the Artistic Integrity
Are you getting tired of hearing about the website yet??? It’s all I can think about anymore and seems to consume my every thought. The process is as frustrating as it is exhilarating. I am not a techno geek and am more of a goal-oriented guy so when I hit a block, become very frustrated. There are so many settings and possibilities for options that I just don’t grasp and I can waste hours on one thing that turns out to be so simple. Julian who helped us set up the system seems to have abandoned us and we are left to flounder as we learn and try to figure it out. On the other side, we are making major leaps every day. We are finally loading the galleries today and I think the overall look and functionality if very impressive.
The fun part is that I have continued shooting through out this web process and had two shoots the other day, both vastly different, which means I had to reconfigure the set up and lighting scheme for the studio. The studio just seems to become a hubbub of activity constantly now. The shooting is becoming more focused as I now have a cleaner vision of what I want and need. I have been mostly working with subjects I have worked with in the past, so it’s easier to jump right in and get going. I am still maintaining and need to keep my focus on the original integrity of where I began this process and have not deviated from that, but the images are improving with each session and subsequent shoot.
Many years ago I only dreamed of being in a place like this and now here I am in the middle of it all and things are coming together. Having the assistants is making a huge difference in how I create. It’s actually allowing me to focus on my process as they work through so much of the detail and I get to jump in and oversee it for maintaining the artistic integrity.
Don’t worry I will be back to some of my interesting stories soon, once we get this thing rolling and I can begin to focus on other things.
Idealistic Explosion of Talents
It’s like suddenly The Naked Man Project is kicking into overdrive and I am in heaven. Everyone in Europe and patrons I have been meeting through my social networks had all advised me that I needed to create a presence for myself, to begin to define and refine what it is I want to do. This is the most essential step of my process before anything else can happen and before I make the next step. In less than one month that presence is beginning to emerge and I am seeing a remarkable wonder and extraordinary beauty I have not recognized in myself in a long time. And yes I did get outside yesterday and worked in my garden for a couple of hours; as I transplanted delphinium and cleaned beds, suddenly, all that I have been doing came into sharp focus.
Now that Stephen has done all the housekeeping on most of the image files, I have begun working through each shoot, subject by subject. Wow, what an incredible group of people I had the privilege to work with and explore my creative process with over the years. And they are all here, from Montana. I am now skimming the cream of the crop of each series and extraordinary things are beginning to reveal themselves. I now am beginning to see more what others have been saying about the images for some time. I am often reluctant sometimes and find compliments hard to receive. It’s part of my backstage personality of those years in the theater where I remained hidden, but was the controlling force that kept the show and companies running each night. I tend to also be a fairly humble guy, who believes in keeping everything low key and simple, not the case anymore. This is becoming one of the greatest adventures of my life, every day now is filled with excitement, joy and wonder. My time in the garden yesterday also taught me that this does not have to happen at breakneck speed and to actually savor and enjoy the process as it unfolds. I am so jacked for when I will get to reveal this creation, but know I do not want to rush it or get sloppy.
I met with a new intern yesterday that I am actually jacked about having him join us. His name is Stopher, another gay kid that is funny, witty, smart and cute. He is going to take on the blog element of the site. We have found a module that will import this existing blog into the new site without much loss, and minimal adjustment. The new blog will become easier to archive and search for things. It still amazes me how massive my thoughts have exploded into this format. To be honest I thought we were going to have to start over, or somehow painstakingly transfer it one posting at a time, so I am much relieved to know it will be quite simple.
The Naked Man Project is now becoming a team collaboration of local talents and distant advisors. It feels much like creating a show in the theater where all of us function at our most brilliant capacity and are having a blast pulling it together. We challenge and push ourselves each day to see such huge progress. A show in the theater takes months of planning, preparation, rehearsal and tech before the curtain rises. I need to remind myself each day of this process and take a deep breath as I step into the beauty of this extraordinary work I have created, with which I have now surrounded myself.
Organizational Essentials
It feels like Montana is heading into fall already. The nights are getting very cold, though we have not had a major frost yet. This is typically my favorite time of the year, when I actually get out and begin cleaning my gardens out for the season, but this year I feel like I have become oblivious to what’s happening in my outside environment. This morning as the sun is streaming through the studio windows I realize what a shut-in I have become this fall. My focus and energy has completely shifted to The Naked Man Project, 24/7. In many ways I have become obsessive about it. The website is completely taking shape and the overall structure is set. Stephen and I are working through the massive naked catalogues I have amassed over the past 14 years since I took up photography and doing a massive sweep of housekeeping elements I should have established early, but never quite kept up on. I did it for my photography business, but never really for the nude portfolios. The catalog is so massive that we needed to begin copywriting, rating, sorting and key wording all the images so it becomes searchable and manageable. The galleries are built in the website, now we just need to import the images into those galleries. To do a web site of this nature I really cannot just turn it over to someone else and have them build it, because it is my personal connection to each of these shoots and collection of images that will make the project and site interesting. So it really needs to maintain the integrity and vision of what I conceived from the beginning. And the way the Joomla platform, on which the site will operate has already been designed, so the look and feel have already been established; now the content just needs to be inserted, most of the content, here of course, being the images. Stephen is becoming very good at recognizing what I see and am looking for in my own style, but he is still not quite up to speed, so the final selection and elimination needs to remain mine. I had no idea I had such a massive collection of images. One of the reasons I have neglected this kind of housekeeping on my collections was, I never really intended them to be used for anything. So my lesson and advice to artist is to come up with a filing system that you can grow into. Take the time after a shoot, once you have created the images to do some housekeeping on them, make it a part of your workflow, even if you never intend to use the images. Believe me it has taken me years to figure out a filing system that makes for easy access. I use the Adobe Lightroom Program because it has so much depth to the possibility and it one of the most powerful cataloging software programs available.
But most important I am going to take a couple of hours this afternoon and get out into my garden and rut around in the dirt and feel the cool earth in my hands and get back to an essential part of myself I have been missing: my connection to Montana in the fall.
