i like to tell stories

i am an addict.

11/22/07 – 3/30/08 (as of 1:45 am):3442 minutes played = 57.37 hours.

4253 accumulative score = 129th place of 13,142 players = top 0.98%.

i don’t really have any video of me in competition, so here’s yet another day of practice from last year. i haven’t had practice this year or lessons, despite going to FL last month thinking i could do well and losing another competition. i’d like to keep taking lessons, i’d like to keep competing but i’d also like to have money in the bank and trophies on the shelf, these things don’t always go together and neither one guarantees the other.

.the first was a journal page i had done. the person that was bothered to this day has never read it. it’s been 10 years. we spoke one day long ago before the falling out and they asked me if i wrote about a certain situation that occurred between us years before. when i said yes, this person dropped me from the their life. the fact that they never read it, it was unpublished or that it was unreadable online years after i was dropped didn’t matter, just knowing i wrote down something they had told me once so long ago, somehow hit a nerve i will never understand. i didn’t even write about the odd event that occured between us, i just wrote what was discussed later, no matter, they are now long gone. it still hurts. i didn’t deserve it.

.a mutual friend told me this fall all that they ever heard from this person about me was that i did something inappropriate.

.the other is very recent, while i’ve known this person for 17 years, we only became close again this fall thanks to mutual friends and the miracle of video ichat. sadly, it is the same person that told me the other person thinks i am inappropriate.

.one random night, this person surprised me with something special, unexpected and wonderful over the internet. it made me feel loved in a moment i really needed to. i printed and framed up a response i thought was beautiful and mailed it off. it made them blush and that was that. our relationship moved on as always. a month or so later, they surprised me again, i sent off a series of what i simply considered thank you letters. nothing more nothing less, just something to keep our odd bond alive, no matter if it was fantasy or reality, real or fake, it was how our relationship was defining itself. so i thought.

.it would seem i was wrong again. this person too disappeared only after it was them that open the door. it still hurts, i didn’t deserve it.

.twice, two people i considered important in my life are gone, because of something i did for them i considered special, maybe off the map a little, yet otherwise grounded in sincerity, respect and love.

.twice, both opened the door to a side of them i hadn’t known, twice, it was my reaction in writing or images that then made then vanish. i wish it didn’t, i wish i still knew them. i wish i could say i would do it different, but everything i wrote, every image i made, in those moments, felt right, felt good, to make, to share and to give away.

.it seems i am inappropriate.

.i heard or maybe we did speak at some random point so many years ago i cannot recall it properly, but that tape was lost or otherwise recorded over, so i hear anyway.

.the image that sparked finding these i came across because it was mixed in with the minor white film, this portrait is 13 years old, probably this week. i didn’t realize this until figuring out the dates in a random backwards manor. this is how everything seems to come together, this project or that, this letter or that journal, that story or this one.

One of the first things I ever remember reading about photography is loosely quoted as, “You can spend your whole life photographing the block you live on.” I cannot remember the source as I write this today, so many years later, but I do remember who said it. It was Minor White.

I was a teenager just beginning to seek the words, pictures and basic wisdom of those that made the same struggles I was beginning to experience in walking out into the world to make photographs, reacting to my life and the things in front of me. It was that sentence that pointed out to me that where I was wasn’t what was important in making a great photograph, rather it was who I was that mattered. I took this to heart and ever since, I can see no other way of looking.

Certainly subject matter plays its role, as does equipment, technique, the history of photography preceding yourself and the physical location the photographs themselves are to be made in. Many times a photograph of an amazing place is just that, a photograph of an amazing place, not really an amazing photograph. The photographs that inspire me, in making or viewing, mine or yours, are those that go beyond the amazement of the location itself, and bring the life experience of the photographer through in the image, in whatever way, escalating the impact of the image past simply the obvious amazing location.

Part of what landed me in Rochester, NY a couple years after reading that quote was the history of the photographic community that resides there, even knowing Minor White had once taught and lived there had its meaning. So when I was 21 years old (1995) and leaving Rochester, my first home in a way, one of the last things I did before I left was seek out Minor White’s home, a place were even some of his more known images were actually made over 40 years ago, 72 North Union St. I somehow found it fitting that I should go make pictures on his block since I had no block of my own. I had no camera at this point in my life, so I borrowed one I had never used before, grabbed my last 7 rolls of 120mm film, drove over, got out and shot every frame I had in maybe an hour. All walking the small area around what used to be Minor White’s home.

.i’d gone to LA on a whim from NYC. a woman i wanted since college invited me to meet her there, a woman i’d wanted for years yet never been with or otherwise even kissed, yet openly chased since meeting her sometime around 1993. i got there and it was obvious she regretted inviting me to meet her.

.i ended up at random friends of friends homes after leaving her, asleep in the other bed in the hotel room.

.this wasn’t was my first trip or whim like this for a woman i barely knew yet really wanted, i cannot even say it was the only one, certainly won’t proclaim it to be the last either.

.i never let go of hope, it would seem lately, in anything that i do, women, pictures, career, women, again and again.

.i have a handful of images from this trip now so many years ago, even pictures from a similar journey to LA less then a year ago, pictures out the windows of the car, the hotel, pictures made on lonely walks of frustration and rejection. it’s one of those sets of pictures i always mean to do something with yet never do, too many projects like this i ‘hope’ i will always get to, do something with, only to find again years later.

.this is her below, the 1999 LA girl, i’d helped her and roommate/best friend learn some location lights one day at photo school years before the LA rendezvous, many days later after this college ‘photoshoot,’ the roommate gave me this one chrome i made of 1999 LA girl, just as you see it below, this roommate knew the situation, this ‘gift’ filled my head with hope.

.i found this chrome/note from the roommate last summer in a box while looking for some other old picture, then remembered why i had these random pictures from LA that i still hope to maybe do something with. i also remembered why i kept every little picture and every little note ever given to me. the cause, the effect, the story, it makes it hurt less.

.this was the first plan for visitor pictures. 1 roll of 24 with the twin lens out in the back ‘yard.’ there is a small handful of these i need to get around to scanning, finding, making more of and or posting. someday, laura k, KB s, frank o3, mark h, mark r, who all let me take some, will be here.

.but this image of terrence, one of the first few i made, will always hold serious gravity in my brain, maybe it’s because it’s the first place i lived truly by myself that these visitors have become so important, or because this place is so out of the way to everyone i know, that a visit just to get a picture made means so much, maybe it’s because of terrence himself and the person he is, or maybe because it was made just as our friendship started falling apart. time doesn’t heal anything. 10 years can be as fast as a blink.

.this is from an older post, but to refresh:

so thats almost 5 a year, but i have done them as i can afford them, so some years 2, one year i think i did 10. (that year felt great, i think simpler cards, more often make the most sense, or at least feel the best to do to me, but i cannot say i got more attention or work that one year i did 10).

38,000 printed.

approx. mailed 31,000.

the printing only (no mailing cost) quantities at today’s prices:
approx = $9209.00

the mailing of say 30,000 of one just one card of various sizes at different rates, some in envelopes and some not: approx $10,000

so the approx cost of all my mailers over the years is roughly:
$19,000
this is not enough, i know i know, but i do my best with i can afford.

i have had my book called in from a mailer ONE time from a new client, but the PE already new me, so the word new is relative.

in talking to PE’s at time inc, where most of my clients are, it seems almost none of them remember ever getting a card from me at all. now it could be my cards aren’t that memorable or maybe one or two got lost, but we are talking about the PE’s i actually shot the jobs for, so memorable image or not, seeing how i shot the image for them, i would think they would notice, not the case, they don’t recall ever getting the cards.

so i started focusing on email promotion, at about $15 per 500 versus $1000, it made sense and is fun, ideally, both would be a good idea. with email, i can look and see who clicked where, who opens and who doesn’t, who chose to receive more and who doesn’t.

but being how things are, most are blocked or ignored as spam unless maybe the PE actually sees it, maybe that PE actually knows my name and maybe the PE bothers to open it, maybe the PE bothers to load the images lost in the blockers.

so today, 19 clicks of 403 sent after 5h, and those are actually decent results.

it would seem to me, PE’s want to see pictures, either by those they know or those they don’t, it would seem it’s in their job description and that there should be some sort of system in place for image delivery in any form, all be it thru an inept mail room or email box, looking at a damn picture shouldn’t be so hard….. yes, i know, there are millions of cards, millions of emails, but still, LOOK PLEASE.

.photographed a suit today, a damn intelligent one, it was great, he was super pleasant and even joyful, one million beige conference room shoots and counting.

.kate, sondra, cheyenne, sid, lisha, tim, carolyn, will, jesse, amy, dan.

.new(ish) visitors to #1RN, 43 polaroids, these should match the with out you project (50 people), but it doesn’t. you’d think it’d be easy to always have polaroid around and the lights up each time someone visits, yet it just never works out that way.