Snapping at eternity and capturing life in small pixels is the fastest most efficient way to lie the truth.
Because that's how I do it, and I don’t know or really want to know any other way.
You cant sell news stories that have data and cautious predictions. Where is the panic? Where is the impending doom? C'mon people , give me something to work with here…
..and as I was a yuppy marketing and advertising executive for the better part
of a decade, I am not really impressed with stories of selling your soul to the devil...
Ah, my all time favorite photographer. Me. I am so talented it is just amazing. But don’t just take my word for it. ask my mother.
Ok, I know, I know, writing about me is strange, but I am a strange person so it's ok.
First, a clarification. I am not a photographer, and I was never intended to a photographer. It's not a very good life and I am too spoiled for shooting bottles of shampoo. But I am shooting a lot, as an artist, who is using a camera. In fact, the first exhibition I participated in was sixteen years before I ever took a camera to my hands, and my first solo exhibition five years before I printed the first business card saying "fine art photographer"
You might ask yourself what is the difference; well I always said I am a very bad photographer. This is why I take great photos. I don’t know what are the rules, I shoot out of focus, most of my shots are underexposed, and some are cropped in a bIzaar way that can leave someone with half a head. Because that's how I do it, and I don’t know or really want to know any other way.
every morning make sure your pigs are fed, washed and ready to fly..."
I started taking pictures as a byproduct of my mixed media work. I used photos I found around as backgrounds for my work and it started limiting me in my choices, so I had no choice but to buy a camera. And the rest is history. (well, not history history, just regular history, you know, what happened a couple of years ago history)
First thing that I did as a fresh photographer was the obvious step of looking up every possible photographer and see which ones tickle me. I found a couple, some famous some not, but in the end of the day my favorite photographers are painters from the 17th century. What do you mean that is cheating?
As I am not a photographer, I could care less about all the tech talk and equipment per print paper type drunk vocal discussions with other photographers, and I am more interested in the final product, which is an image. Not a photo. An image. Every work I do is a work of art, and thus does not obey to the rules of photography. Good art or bad art is not my decision to make, and my opinion is not important. This is what I do. Like it? Great. You don’t? tough.
An artist does not have the privilege of being logical. "
For the techies among you, I always shot digital. Canon 5D and 5Dmk2. And I always do postproduction in Photoshop. I am a great fan of Photoshop. If used right it is the dark room of the 21st century. If you really think the photos that come out of your camera are good, think again. I have never heard of a great photographer that didn’t work on his photos in the darkroom.
Eugene smith spent full nights playing with spoons working on one single image. Photoshop is just quicker. That’s all.
None of the people in my shoots are real models (well, in four years I had two real professional models…) and I am more interested in normal people, with wrinkles, far from perfect. Beautiful.
As a lot of the poses I encourage the poor victims, eh, volunteers to take can lead to a nasty lawsuit, I use a lot of dancers and yoga teachers. They are so much fun to work with.
But I rarely direct or pose. Again, if it is a yoga teacher I will put him or her in really strange positions just to take advantage of having someone able to do them, but even that would be a marginal part of the shoot, and in normal shoot I just let people do whatever they want. The most common phrase heard in my studio is "but tell me what to do" to which I smile and never respond. That is why the poses are more natural, more fluid, they do what comes natural to them, and I just try to catch the right moment from the right angle in the right light.
Each shoot is a three hour Dadaist experiment of dancing singing laughing acting and just trying to exhaust the poor volunteer until they have no energy to pose or act anymore and then I click the best shots. The truest shots. They usually come out exhausted and drained. It is like therapy. (btw, the inspiration for that style comes from Max Vadukol early work. Thanks Max. )
The title that I always use for my work was 'visual poetry' and the main reason was that poetry is free. There are no rules. And that is how I shoot.
This is what I do. This is how it comes out.
Hope you like it. If you don’t? tough.
my spiritual advice of the day:
in the shit of life, you be the corn. "
