Daniel #119
Finding the courage to create sometimes seems like a struggle. It seems easier the older I get because I have become more focused and now have my own unique vision of what I want to accomplish. When I was younger, I had no sense of place or individual style. [read more]
Published: June 1, 2011
Travis #684
Up until 1902, photography had been concerned mostly with the ability to capture the reality of life, as a simple means of recording ordinary life as it naturally existed. Matthew Brady had captured and documented the aftermath of Civil War battle sites and brought a reality to its viewers. Eadweard Muyrbridge had managed to record that all four hooves of the horse could indeed leave the ground when it galloped. [read more]
Published: June 2, 2011
Jeremy #811
Today my life feels like a desperate Tom Waits song. It has rained hard for two days solid and my mind is drifting in the past. Somehow Kelly’s passing last week is pulling me back home to the small town of Superior. I have been visiting that time in my head for the past week or so as I am trying to piece my fragmented life since that period into some sort of perspective. [read more]
Published: June 3, 2011
John #212
We may indeed be getting summer here in Montana. I have never seen so much rain in this part of the country. The snow pack still has not melted from the mountains yet, the rivers are high and we are expecting record flooding with in the next month. [read more]
Published: June 4, 2011
Travis #637
Yesterday I got so busy that I was unable to ever get to this project. It is the first day I have missed since I began it at the beginning of the year. I just couldn't bring myself to sit at the computer on such a nice day. It was such an incredible morning that Glenn and I decided that we would work on planting our community garden space. [read more]
Published: June 6, 2011
Jason #116
I young film maker who is interested in me becoming his cinematographer or possible technical director has recommended I look at a series of films. The other night I watched an interesting film called STRANGER THAN PARADISE. This film has kind of been on my mind for the past couple of days. Visually the film had a stunning quality to it. [read more]
Published: June 7, 2011
Jared #116
It is raining yet again today in Montana and the skies are very gray. Which brings to mind one of the most fundamental elements of photography; an understanding about 18% gray. The idea that has been around probably since the beginning of photography. It is the shade of neutral gray that balances light for the camera to create a near perfect exposure. [
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Published: June 8, 2011
Cody #298
Being from Montana, our communities don’t see much violence. In a way it feels like we are kind of in a buffer zone, insolated from such things. When it does happen, it’s almost like it becomes a complete shock to the system and we absorb the violation as if it were our own. [read more]
Published: June 9, 2011
Matthew Shepard's Death
Being from Montana, our communities don’t see much violence. In a way it feels like we are kind of in a buffer zone, insolated from such things. When it does happen, it’s almost like it becomes a complete shock to the system and we absorb the violation as if it were our own. [read more]
Published: June 9, 2011
Brian #161
Yesterday I meet with a young photographer and filmmaker who brought a film he is working on by to the get my feedback. This kid is 27 and could see sparks of brilliance in what he was trying to produce. We talked for several hours and I began to realize this kid was me 20+years back. [read more]
Published: June 10, 2011
Brandon #209
I am a quivering mass of curly headed protoplasm filled with so much emotion and feeling that it just comes pouring out. This is possibly the best description anyone will ever know of who I really am. It is the sum of me. Today I face fears that have remained suppressed for decades and will be looking into the mirror of myself as a gangly kid growing up in a small town that I so desperately wanted to flee so long ago. [
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Published: June 11, 2011
George #139
It seems to be taking me forever to get anything done today. I feel like I am in a kind of jet lag state of mind after yesterday’s events for Kelly Jo’s memorial and not getting much sleep last night. The memorial service was held in the Superior High School Gym and was packed with about 500 people dressed in a wave of maroon and silver for the Montana Grizzles athletics and blue and white for the Superior Bobcats athletics. [read more]
Published: June 12, 2011
Robby #143
I have to somehow get myself back on track this week and get back to working on my art. I have five shoots from a couple weeks back that I haven’t had a chance to process and work through yet. It feels my time is consumed with so many distractions; summers are always particularly bad. [read more]
Published: June 13, 2011
Jeremy #915
There is nothing as beautiful as a properly finished piece of photography. It seems the art of finishing is becoming lost now that we can proof and show our images online. It allows me the time and energy to create a lot more images and it seems since I have moved to the digital era about triple the volume of truly remarkable images. [read more]
Published: June 14, 2011
Corey #523
Yesterday I received an email from Marklin that I think better sums up what I was trying to get at yesterday. So I am using it as today’s project writing because I think this is a discussion that is beginning to influence the way we see ourselves as artists and how we approach our work: [read more]
Published: June 15, 2011
Jeremy & John #783
In the early eighties a writer named Larry Kramer wrote a play called The Normal Heart. It was a semi-autobiographical story of a writer living in New York City in 1981 when an entire community of gay men was being stricken by an unknown illness. [read more]
Published: June 16, 2011
Chad #203
I began watching a television series last night called The Big C. Laura Linney plays a woman who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer with one year to live and how she suddenly begins to live her life for herself. It’s kind of a bittersweet approach to the subject. The series is quite up beat and focuses on the positive aspects of living instead of the downside of someone dying. [read more]
Published: June 17, 2011
On Becoming a Woman #102
I had a photography friend, Katie La Salle-Lowery, come by last night and we spent a great deal of the evening talking about our creative processes of creating images. She is mostly a landscape photographer with an intense passion for Yellowstone Park. Our approaches are on the utter extreme from each other, but the core of our ideas and base of knowledge of the fundamentals are the same. [read more]
Published: June 18, 2011
On Becoming a Woman #103
I had a photography friend, Katie La Salle-Lowery, come by last night and we spent a great deal of the evening talking about our creative processes of creating images. She is mostly a landscape photographer with an intense passion for Yellowstone Park. Our approaches are on the utter extreme from each other, but the core of our ideas and base of knowledge of the fundamentals are the same. [read more]
Published: June 18, 2011
On Becoming a Woman #104
I had a photography friend, Katie La Salle-Lowery, come by last night and we spent a great deal of the evening talking about our creative processes of creating images. She is mostly a landscape photographer with an intense passion for Yellowstone Park. Our approaches are on the utter extreme from each other, but the core of our ideas and base of knowledge of the fundamentals are the same. [read more]
Published: June 18, 2011
On Becoming a Woman #108
I had a photography friend, Katie La Salle-Lowery, come by last night and we spent a great deal of the evening talking about our creative processes of creating images. She is mostly a landscape photographer with an intense passion for Yellowstone Park. Our approaches are on the utter extreme from each other, but the core of our ideas and base of knowledge of the fundamentals are the same. [read more]
Published: June 18, 2011
Dad at Hub Lake
It always felt like my relationship with my father was a bit stormy. Growing up I felt like I could never quite connect with him for some reason and I felt a distance swell between us. My brother Mark, who’s a year younger than I, seemed to do everything right while I couldn’t do anything without fear of harming myself. I was mother’s favorite and was probably pampered more by her than I needed; Mark was always dad’s favorite, the perfect son. [read more]
Published: June 19, 2011
George #221
For some reason it feels like the surface of my vision has become boring. The more I settle the less interesting I become. Is this project refining all the hard edges out of my life, healing so many old wounds, that it is grinding all the truly interesting parts of myself away? [read more]
Published: June 20, 2011
Corey #505
Fear of failure is our greatest hindrance. This sort of fear paralyzed a lot of my younger life. As artists it seems it’s very difficult to get our creative lives started. In the beginning we haven’t yet developed skills to gain confidence. To choose a creative passion to follow also requires resources to acquire the tools of the trade. For me, when I first began photography, I bought a very cheap camera, the best I could afford. It suited me well through that learning phase. [read more]
Published: June 21, 2011
Dave #124
I thought this project would lead me more to the sexual side of myself. Sex was always such a big and crucial part of my life. After all, there is a rawness when a person stands before you naked, or at my age, as I stand before myself in the mirror. Though my images are not really about sex, my search for desire becomes a crucial element. [read more]
Published: June 22, 2011
Jeremy #923
Congratulations this morning to Elizabeth (Alison) Lister on the publication of her first gay romance novel EXPOSURE. It just came out last night and is available from MLR Press on line. Here’s to making a dream come true Alison. The novel centers around a young model who comes into a shoot with a photographer and how their passions ignite into a relationship of sex and romance. Several months ago I met Alison online and became friends with her as she was just finishing the manuscript. [read more]
Published: June 23, 2011
Travis #900
I feel in love with or thought I fell in love with the first man I ever slept with. My urge to get there was overwhelming and took lots of coaxing to get to point of actually physically making love to another man. It was like a heightened dream of an experience and I was both captivated and addicted by its mysterious nature. [read more]
Published: June 24, 2011
Nate & Zach #210
About a week after my newfound love was beginning to settle we went to see a movie that had just come out: MAKING LOVE. It was the first movie about gay people to hit mainstream cinema that portrayed gay love in a somewhat realistic light. It had such an emotional impact on me I was overwhelmed with all kinds of feelings, most of them not so good. [read more]
Published: June 25, 2011
Chad #221
“I have what might sound like a silly question to you, but could you please tell me what you mean when you say you use strobe for lighting? I have noticed the pieces of your work I tend to like the most have that. Marklin” [read more]
Published: June 26, 2011
Robby #107
I sometimes see a man on the street and I am instantly attracted to him. I am not always sure what that attraction is, but it is like a magnet that draws me to him. I want to walk up and ask, “Can I photograph you?” but most of the time I am too intimidated to approach someone else because they might think I am gay or a sex starved psycho. [read more]
Published: June 27, 2011
Corey #715
I’ve been reading Allison’s (Elizabeth Lister) new book EXPOSURE and it is really awakening thoughts and memories of years back. I feel a tinge of the old sexual self wanting to emerge as I examine where I am in my current relationship. It’s like the past, the present and the future are all colliding into one time, now. [read more]
Published: June 28, 2011
Joesy #176
Within a week of meeting my first partner, he just sort of moved in with me. I was working as a manager, running two different movie theater complexes for a single chain operation out of California. I loved movies, and feel I have somehow always been connected to them. I was making a decent living, for my age, had a great apartment, nice clothes, the whole status thing. [read more]
Published: June 29, 2011
Travis #102
The ending of first season of “The Big C” television series packed such an emotional wallop, it stirred in my head most of the night. For those of you just coming into this discussion it’s a Showtime series about Cathy (Laura Linney) who is diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer and how she deals with coming to terms with how it’s impacting her life. [read more]
Published: June 30, 2011
