Professional Life 2010

I let my website lapse in December. Not only am I relatively calm about it, even though it happened to be my name and a domain I have consistently held for over a decade, it also frees me up to redefine a few things on a professional and personal level. For instance, ironically doing more web based work, coupled with my publicity background as a “helper” of sorts. You never know quite what will define your career, just under a year ago I thought I would be better suited as a photographer with a respected skill and growing fan base. Although, I never quite got it – my work wasn’t functional no matter what publications wanted it or who wanted my services… for free. My photography now has evolved into something I am starting to be happy with, since I have selected to work with just one model, one muse.

Modeling focused photographers that think that having 20 minutes, an hour, even a full day with a model, or shooting hundreds of models a year – or even month – shoot differently than what I have been doing that has developed into the primary art and passion for my skills and eye as a photographer. I have been very blessed, lucky, etc to be with what could be called my muse. I personally think I wouldn’t be who I am today, and who knows WHAT I would be, if it wasn’t for my intelligent, beautiful, creative partner, best friend, co-parent and love. She has given me the insight into myself that takes a creative skill that I had and turns it into an art, and with 39,000+ views on the social networking index in less than a 24 hour period, it is a success at a level that was never achieved with just my skill and camera – I dare it couldn’t be achieved with a photographer’s prowess and even a few high-powered models. It takes an intimacy, a relationship that transfers to the camera and to the photo(s) audience – and this goes well beyond a sexual intimacy that seems to be a fair assumption. Without this intimacy, I would be just another photographer marketing themselves to a failed economy and the hopes and dreams of young men and women – a shakey, and somewhat nefarious position for anyone to be in no matter how much business you are doing and who you are doing it for. For this, I must be grateful and humble to my muse! She has made me real. Although, we have yet to make a living at doing just this – but I think there are reasons why that are out of our immediate control – the changed marketplace.

I think the state of creativity has been changing and in 2010 may just be to the boiling point for creatives. The one’s that have not embraced social media in the early days are flocking to it in troves now, why? Because, like any whore, it’s a hard market to sell what everyone is giving away for free. It really has come down to creatives in all mediums learning the simple and sometimes not so simple art of self-promotion. Graphic Designer, photographer, copywriter has more and more come to mean not just “self-employed” but “under-employed” and as a creative in the smack-dab middle of his life, this has been a lesson hard learned. Skill doesn’t mean anything when programmers can write a JQuery script or Java Applet for exactly what you have taken the time to develop on your own. Time is not on our side, and someone picking up the most entry level camera has access to tools just a few years ago would have been thousands if not hundreds-of-thousands of dollars.

We are finally in the age where, for better-or-worse, everyone really is an artist, or at least can be.

So where to go from here, but to provide all of the “artists” of the world ways of utilizing the networking, and potential of this new world and market. I think this is what is becoming… using what I have discovered and developed over years to help others get up to speed and help this economy get back on track.

Sounds good anyway. I am starting to understand a few things about raising the bar and being humble to the source.

More to come. Watch this space.