It feels like spring is finally hitting Montana, all the huge piles of snow in the driveway are beginning to melt and I see spring plants beginning to nudge their winter weary noses out the earth. It feels like life has become a flurry of activity; I am now shooting on this project every day. Constantly editing, working, creating awesome new images, I am now staying up half the night working into the wee hours of morn trying to keep up with it all and still try to maintain my other work and jobs. I have finally hit the stride I wanted all along and am now scheduled about two weeks out. I am developing such a strong communication with the people I am working with. It feels like I go deeper into myself with each new shoot, testing all my theories and concepts. The Project hit 10,000 visitors last Sunday, which is mind boggling that it’s happened so quickly. Someone is now looking at this project every moment of the day, somewhere in the world. There are 250 to 300 people per day now connecting to it. So to everyone out there thank you for following my project and sending all your love and stories my direction. This truly is becoming a collective of amazing artist and supports of this type of work and imagery. It’s life transforming for me. I love to hear from you so don’t be afraid to send me a quick note, letting me know who you are, what you do, and your connection to the project. I was caught off guard the other day when two guys from Kalispell, about 120 miles away, called and asked if they could come see my studio, meet me, and look at my work. The place was mess right after a shoot, and I really wasn’t organized to do any kind of presentation. I dug framed images out of heaps in the corners of the studio, covered in dust to so show them examples. It really got me to thinking how do I actually begin to present this stuff to make it saleable. I definitely need to begin to make some kind of income from the process, now that it’s consuming so much of my life. If anyone has any idea I need some help here figuring out this part of it. I could use a lot of advise is this department. I have been so caught up in all this that I realize I forget to promote myself. The website has not been finished and I have come to the conclusion it now needs to be two separate sites, one for commercial stuff about jobs in Montana and a second for the types of images on this project. Again I need suggestions, any suggestions, connections or help solving any piece of this massive puzzle. Thanks again for all your amazing support and believing in what I am doing here.

Looking back over the past three and a half years since undergoing my crisis with cancer, I now realize how much it has actually impacted my life. My life is a constant forward gallop, forward with little time for reflection. I have never really been a person to look back, it always made me feel bad and there was much I wanted to leave buried somewhere in the past. This project, this year is forcing me to examine all those connections more closely now; and life after treatment set me into hyper drive. I somehow felt I had to make up for lost time. Though my regular daily routine was curtailed a bit, I didn’t allow it to cease all together. It took probably a year to fully recover and get back to a new state of normal. I had changed now, somehow became wiser, matured. I didn’t like what it did to me physically, but mentally I now had a lot of lost time to make up for a recovery. As I gained my strength, I took on more work and projects to fill to put that energy to use. I was determined to not waste an ounce of it. My priority was to rebuild my finical status back to before the treatment and I took on more work to compensate. It became a time to make up for all the things I had not accomplished or yet achieved in my life. To make the things I had only dreamed about become a reality. I had owned a great little studio space, originally designed as a big open painter’s studio with a bank of northern skylights that filled the room with beautiful indirect light. I had long outgrown the space as the studio equipment was getting bigger and I was acquiring more all the time. The actual workspace shrank to point I could only do one light set up and that was becoming boring. I decided it was time to build my ultimate dream studio space. I designed it around the idea that it would always have extraordinary, indirect natural lighting though out the day, and that it would merge with my passion for landscape and garden, both seamlessly flowing in and out of the other. With the help of a draftsman and structural engineer, we drew up the plans. I hired my cousin Ed as the contactor and it took about 9 months to get the project to completion. We did a lot of the work ourselves; I did all the wiring and most of the tiling and Glenn pouring concrete countertops. My life had become so hectic running from job to job, shooting wherever I could find space, working UPS in the evenings still. But when I was finished it was a dream come true. Last year I began the landscaping part of the process and hope to finish it up this year.

Last summer I began to recognize the madness of my fury and felt the toll it was beginning to take on my life. Had I been consumed and swept away my fears and doubt? Was I actually running away from confronting myself self as an aging man who had faced his mortality? My life had not become about me, but an obsession of underachievement. It recognized it was time to stop and get back in touch with the person I had lost along the way. I began a rigorous workout and diet program that got me physically back into shape. I began to mentally pay attention to the details of the life around me that I was somehow forgetting to live. I began to look at the volume of work I had created that was stuffed and hidden away, and marveled that I had managed to accomplish so much. There was a sudden awakening to a stranger I had become to myself and others.

Now the photography market in Missoula is beginning to collapse; I feel like I once again have to reinvent myself. My passion has always been art, beauty, light, and the naked body, and not necessarily in that order. I have now reached that point in my life where it’s time to look back, recognized the influences of my past and move toward a new future. This time it needs to be more about me, what I need and want; to use the talents I have and discover what extraordinary things I am capable of if I just allow them to emerge.

I finished the chemotherapy at the end of summer 2007 and began the long slow process of recovery. Something had changed inside of me; I had been physically, emotionally and mentally altered. I suddenly felt matured. The boyish qualities of my youth had vanished and I was suddenly a middle-aged man lost in translation. The process had been long and took more out of me then I expected. Because it had been gradual, and I was caught in the middle of a struggle, I couldn’t see the transformation in progress. The biggest disappointment was the effects it had on my body. Going into the process my body was at the peak of fitness. The several months of less activity and the over abundance of eating just to maintain my energy had softened my muscles and added fat. I felt misshapen and completely out of breath; activity was still a struggle and exhausting. Though I rejoice that I was over the ordeal, the treatment being a success putting the cancer in remission, the rest of the summer was a struggle to regain and get back in touch with what I lost. My hair was growing back with a different texture, color and had lost its curl. My skin looked tired, worn, and pale. I had financially been drained, merciless bills now pouring in with threats to collection. I was at wits end and the aftermath seemed more divesting then the process.

My friends pulled together and created an amazing fundraiser to pull me out of the depths of despair I had fallen. My dear friend Eden sang and was accompanied by David Morgenroth. Billy was in from New York and did his amazing mime piece called “Under the Montana Moon”. Andy & Raphael hosted the event in Andy’s office which was transformed into an amazing gallery of my images, which everyone bought. Landee put together one of the most beautiful tables filled with succulent foods that were as much a masterpiece to behold as it was to taste. And Rus who had been my constant companion through the whole ordeal, MC’d. There were hundreds of people and I was utterly blown away by such love and adoration of so many friends and family. By the end of the event we had pulled together enough money to pay off all outstanding debt and I was back on my feet and it was time to begin the process of rebuilding my life again.

A special thanks all my incredible friends and family who helped me through that period of my life. I dedicate today’s post to you. I could not have made it where I am today without all of you.

Chemotherapy is designed in a series of treatments and is probably one of the most fascinating processes I have every experienced. I was injected with a series of drugs over a four hour period that were administered every three weeks over the course of four and half months. The intervals are just long enough for your body to rebound and you start feeling good, then in you go for another round and begin the process over again. After the first treatment I didn’t feel to bad and I thought wow this might be easier than I originally thought. But as the treatments progressed, each one becomes progressively worse because the effect is cumulative and your body becomes weaker. As the drugs are being dripped or injected, a strong wave of nausea overtakes your body and all your normal senses are thrown off balance. It helped that I was at the peak of fitness at the time I began the process. I had been working out, had little body fat, and was pure muscle. It probably the fittest I have been in my life.

I was determined to face the process and own it instead of allowing it to own me. I was very optimistic and fearless heading into the process. I knew I was going to loose my hair shortly. It was still one of the most shocking moments of the entire process and I will not forget that creeping feeling of being in the shower, running my hands through that stubble was left on my head and have it all just fall out. You lose all body hair, everywhere, and it was so strange to be naked, and stand in front of a mirror completely stripped away. I approached the whole process as a journey into myself, journal a lot of the process, and I was curious as to how the process would impact me. I discovered crispy fried bacon was an absolutely delight the morning after a treatment and always seemed to revive my energy. I ate well, slept a lot, but most of all I continued my life a normal as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening in my daily existence. After about the first two treatments I was given a promotion at UPS and become the Systems Operations Manager, the job I currently have. I process all the data, bring the drivers in at the end of their day, upload their data and close out their payroll. It was overwhelming mentally sometimes to stay focused and learn a new job, but luckily I was promoted into a position where I was instantly given full benefits and it paid a good portion of the treatments. I don’t think many around me were even aware that I was undergoing such treatments. Yes I would loose the day of the treatment, feel awful the day after, but would feel pretty good by the end of the weekend following a Thursday treatment and be back to work on Monday. In the summers I am a professional landscaper and gardener and that summer had one of the most extraordinary gardens I had ever created, I just had to take more breaks and lots of naps throughout the day. I did have to let go of photography that summer because my body was becoming unpredictable. I was afraid to schedule clients, because if I became too weak or sick, I would have to cancel the photoshoot. For me, photography is something I muster every fiber of my being to create. It was a very long summer, but I eventually made it through the treatments and have been healthy and strong for three and a half years now.

But where I have grown as a photographer and an artist from this experience is that I am now able to cut to essences of what is essential. A lot of my imagery is a stripping away of my subjects to get to the core of where they are true to themselves. I have been stripped to my bare essence and faced myself in the mirror. I saw a glimmer of beauty in myself and I search for this remarkable beauty in others. Why is it that so many people cannot see the extraordinary things within themselves? My subjects seem transformed by my process of discovery of them, for each it becomes their own journey into themselves. I had a guy come in the other day to look at his images after I had finished them and he was overwhelmed to see what I had seen. He later told me it was such an emotional moment and he almost cried. It is intimate, it is personal, and it is the way life should be. How have we culturally gotten so far away from being or seeing who we truly are? Why does it take a crisis for us to discover who we really flipping are?

The next couple of days after discovering I had cancer were a blur, so much happening all at once. I was sore from the surgery and could barely get around the house so I was confined to being stuck inside and was confronted with mostly processing all the emotions in my head. I am typically a person who is in constant motion. I am master at multitasking and have prided myself on the ability to have a dozen things going at once. This has somehow always been my nature. I am very patient and don’t really need instantaneous gratification and this is what makes me great at juggling so many things at the same time. My years of working the darkroom had given me a calmness to wait and work towards perfection. The old process of printing took hours and days just to create a single image. The calm in the darkness, with the gentle motion of the water in the trays waiting, watching for an image to emerge could take up to 15 minutes per print. It has given me the ability to take my time to get to a final result, to see the goal, and can keep on target. I think I am a person of extraordinary vision and research all angles and possibilities of that vision. So being stationary dealing with something I knew little about and not having enough information was excruciating. As the results came back and the overall picture become clear of what I was actually dealing with I began to research everything I could about the process and what my realistic expectations should be. I believe knowledge is the greatest power we have in confronting our fears. Each day felt like a frantic race with time. Within a few days I met with an Oncologist, though we knew it was Lymphoma we still didn’t know how far it had progressed. The treatment was the same for whatever stage, and the concern from the rapid growth in the beginning, we decided to jump right into Chemotherapy the next day. So the next morning I went directly from a CAT scan to identify the stage of progression directly into Chemo using the same IV. It all moved so quickly, I could barely really process what was actually happening and it felt my life had become a roller coaster. Here I was at the prime of my life, the physical shape I have ever been. It was like the lights and the darks of an image, the image of my life were beginning to blend, separate, become a contradiction of form and functions as I raised my face to the unknown universe that had provided me such life from birth and now delivered me to such uncertainty. Yet all I could make out was the figure of myself standing naked, alone, in the darkness searching for hope and light.