Summer always feels like a time of sex, late evening nights when the air begins to cool, becoming a bit intoxicated, wandering around town with a friend, that I gaze upon with desire. When I was younger it seems sex was always so easy and enticing. Seduction was always possible, and being from Montana, was probably with almost anyone. I was always fascinated with that blurry edge I could cross into the uncertainty. The forbidden, taboo attraction to male sexuality deepened my allure. It was captivating, sensual, filled with mystery. That part of the day when the sun faded into a twilight darkness heightened my sensuality. Almost like being a vampire on the hunt for some new succulent, beautiful neck to wrap my lips around. As the luminance of light diminish, the light tones of flesh take on an extraordinary radiant glow. The pale moist skin picking up the last remaining traces of light until it completely fades to black. I could never tell if I was more drawn to the poetic beauty of this moment of time or the actual body standing before me. To me this is where the romantic quality of life was born and lingers in a delicate balance and I become consumed by my own seduction.

We are revealed by the images we create, as scan my files I see my life flashing before me through all these images. So I have been playing with the idea of creating some sort of book using some of my images. Now-a-days there seems to be all kinds of publishing software that give you complete control in creating layouts and self publishing. I have been looking heavily into one called Blurb that seems to give you a variety of shapes, styles and texture of pages. I have been working with the software and it seems very simple to use. I have also talked to several people that have used it and said it was a positive experience. I have ordered many of their books and some of the quality is quite good. It has always been my dream to have something I have done in a book format. I am an avid collector of books on male nude photography and have book shelves dedicated to the subject. To me, I still love that tactile feel of leafing through a book and seeing the printed images on a page in front of me. I often go to these photographers as my source of inspiration and often times will have many books lying open around the studio open to images that I admire, a certain characteristic I am working toward in my own images. It puts me and the model in the same frame of reference as a jumping off point. It is so fun to look at one photographer’s vision and see their variations within their unique style.

So where do I begin this process of selecting what images from my collection should go into such a project? If anyone has any suggestions of images they think would work well or ideas of concepts on structure of organization please Facebook me and we can begin a conversation in that direction. It would be ideal to find someone with some kind of art direction skills who could help me work on the project. If anyone out there is interested let me know. I would like to use the writings of Tony Brunetto and have begun a conversation with him about the possibility. Now that it is getting very hot outside, this week is about catching up on past work that I have gotten behind on. I am shooting for beginning this process the following weekend. Please, please, please let me know if anyone has any thoughts or ideas of what they think would be interesting.

I have recently been cleaning and glancing through my massive files and was astonished by the volume of work I have created this year. What I post on here is just a very small tip of the iceberg of images I have created. I reconnected with Chad yesterday, whom I haven’t talked to in some time. I knew he had moved back to his home town some time back. We never did quite get a chance to review the last session we did before he took off. So, I began to look back through the shoot to create a disc I could send him. I was up until two in the morning, going back through the whole shoot and came up with about 200 images I totally loved that are all really great. When I am editing I tend to keep narrowing the image down to about 10 that I think best reveal what it was I was trying to capture, then I used to delete everything else. I will typically shoot about 800 images in a session. But in the last year I have stopped deleting those throw-a-ways and sometimes when I go back and look through them and see them from a completely different perspective. Like last night, I began to work these shower images in a new way, that completely changed the look and feel and suddenly they were all popping. Now there are hundreds of extra images that I will send to Chad this morning. Poor guy is going to have to sift through all that. I always hated when I would go to someone’s house and they would begin to show me their images. Not that I don’t like looking at images mind you, but not when they haven’t sorted them and they expect me to sit there through 2,000 images of a trip. I really only want to see the highlights, the best they have to offer and keep it to about 10 minutes. So I have always been apprehensive about showing masses of my own images and try to keep it down to a select few that best represent the shoot. I have a friend who also shoots male nudes who used to put every image he ever shot on line. He was a good photographer, just learning to work with light, and I would spend hours looking through his stuff, most of it not very interesting to get to a few rare gems. I used to collect a lot of art and wanted to buy something of his, but was so overwhelmed that I could not decided and so ended up with nothing. Looking at my Red Bubble profile and posting something new each day I too have began to amass a very large collection, and think it would be overwhelming to those coming in. My style of work and technique keeps improving. I think this one photo a day business is the key. But what am I to do with these surplus of 30,000 plus images of naked men? I can barely keep up with what I am currently producing. In fact I am several weeks behind now. I feel like I have gotten into something that has grown well beyond myself now.

I am not the kind of guy that takes the easy way out of a situation and do not look for a fast solution. I love and can suspend myself in the process of things in which I become involved. I like to savor the experience of whatever it is I am doing and explore it from a multitude of different perspectives. Often times we only get to experience something once, so I like to linger and make it last. People are this way for me. Sometimes I will only get one opportunity to work with a person, yet I will fit a life time of experience into that moment. It feels like others around me are hurrying to get to the end. I guess I would be the tortoise in that race. I live in a world where nothing is normal and virtually everyday is filled with something extraordinary. When I do a shoot I am often concerned that my slow process of working will push my subjects away, which hasn’t happened yet. In fact it tends to draw them nearer. I believe my images and subjects should be as natural and organic as possible so the evolution of a shoot takes some time to explore and get to what I see in the core of my subject’s intensity. I tend to over shoot and look at all the options and possibilities, constantly adjusting lighting, exposure, and point of view. I had a kid come in yesterday who was an actor and a model, he had some experience, which is rare for me to get to work with. We hit it off and suddenly 3 hours had flown by within what felt like just a few moments for both of us. I rely on my education in theatre as a directing student and bring those skills into my studio and my way of working. I do love to work with actors, because of my admiration for their art and I my ability to communicate with them so well, to pull out what I see emerging from within them. The art of photography, as with theatre, for me is collaboration. Yes I may have a concept in mind, but it rarely becomes the path I follow, it merely becomes a jumping off point.

So I have this concept every day of my time, and how I envision my day will go. I keep thinking in my head that things will get back to normal and that I will settle in. There is a part of me that desperately craves that kind of normal, but my reality is it never ever happens. I can never seem to reach that state of normal I think I desire to settle into. This last week I have been working afternoons at UPS instead of evenings and this always throws my schedule a bit out of whack because my normal afternoon photo stuff gets misplaced to other time slots that I can try to cram things into. Yesterday I did a photo from start to finish in one day. It gave me a great sense of completion. When I first started the process of photography, it was my goal to do an art project from shooting to framing in one day and was so jacked when I hit the mark, but then I only did one thing. How times have changed. Then again what I do is really not normal!!!

Have your ever considered what our country might look like today if the Declaration of Independence had been signed by a group of artists instead of Statesmen? Several years ago I was at a party with John Keegan and he brought up the idea, so now every Fourth of July I ponder the question and it just kind of makes me chuckle. To think how much different this country would be with more museums and spaces filled with public art, billions of dollars going toward self expression and the creation of ideas, finding a balance and harmony filled with color. Art would become a prominent part of our social fabric as we are encouraged to be creative from an early age. More theatre, more dance, more music, an appreciation of these performing arts becoming as equally as popular as athletics. It worked in ancient Greek culture and remained a defining influence of the Italian Renaissance, the era of Michelangelo and Raphael and of course Caravaggio. Where public art held a prominence in the churches and public meeting places and artists were regarded with high esteem, much still surviving years centuries later. Where everyone knows the work of art and painters become cultural social celebrities? Today I would estimate that 90% of American’s can name a living contemporary artist and what kind of medium they work in. But then again how many people know how many presidents we have had and who they were. I know growing up in a small mountain town like Superior in the 60’s and 70’s my artistic expression was quenched because it was perceived a frivolous. I remember my father telling me it’s OK to have as a hobby, but it’s not practical as a life choice. Coming from a moderately conservative poorer family who struggles to maintain the American Dream, my father telling me he would not help me with school if I chose to work in the Arts because it was a waste of resources to pursue something that was not sustainable and that I probably not succeed in and that I needed to be more practical. Yet helped my brother who became an engineer. But I was determined and believed enough so did it on my own and it eventually took me 8 years to work my way through college. Working in the arts is sometimes a very difficult challenge, because being an artist is the most underappreciated, under paid, misunderstood person in most circles of the world. Today I celebrate the birth of our nation and appreciate all the freedom we have fought to win and maintain. But for this one day, think what if…and don’t underestimate the power of art. Happy 4th of July America!!!