An Unfortunate Truth

Above is a photo from my latest shoot that I booked. I really think this one speaks to a lot of us in the photo industry... Clients, Artists, Photographers....

No, there's nothing wrong with your browser. There really is nothing in that photo.

Here's why:

I had a lovely woman book a boudoir shoot with me recently. She was so excited to book a boudoir shoot for her dude that the opportunity had both of us spinning with ideas. She had seen some of my previous work that I had done for a friend of hers and just wanted me to create something unique for her. She trusted me to be a badass photographer and make something beautiful, classy, and artistic. She was, in my mind, the perfect client.

Then, her dude caught wind of the shoot that we had booked... and was furious. The same shoot that she wanted to do for HIM and he was furious. Why? Jealousy. He insisted that I, as a male photographer, was going to sleep with my client and was using "being a photographer" as an excuse to get into the lady's pants. When my client let me know about the argument I was crushed. There are many MANY things wrong with this scenario that I'll apply generally across the board:

1. I have a wife a three kids, whom I love and cherish. Do you honestly think I'm going to ruin the life I've been working on to sleep with your wife/girlfriend?
2. Exactly how confident are you in your relationship with your wife/girlfriend that you don't trust anyone (men/women) to be around her?
3. This boudoir session was a gift to you for being awesome to her and for supporting her through everything that you've been through together and you react so negatively to it. Do you think she'll want to do anything nice for you in the foreseeable future?
4. The "I got a camera, I'll take naked pictures of you... Ain't no way I'll let some sex-hungry asshole take pictures of you...Go Arkansas!" argument makes you look like a fucking moron. Yes. F-U-C-K-I-N-G   M-O-R-O-N. I'm a professional photographer... and I make a living with the skills that I've been honing for years. You could have the exact same equipment I have and have no fucking clue what you're doing with it, make horrible photos, and then have your wife/girlfriend feel like shit about herself because you're too proud to hire a professional, you fucking moron. 
1. When your car is broken, you hire a mechanic.
2. When your roof needs replaced, you hire a roofer.
3. When your plumbing needs done, you hire a plumber.
4. When you need a massage, you hire a message therapist.
5. When you need your dress hemmed, you go get it altered.
6. When your computer crashes, you hire a geek.
7. When you punch a hole in the drywall cause you're drunk, you hire a drywall company.

Yes, you can learn about those things and do them yourself... You might be talented enough to follow directions in a book or on YouTube and figure it out... But there's no way to hand you experience and inside information over time that you could possibly do the job with the same expertise and quality that a professional can. When you decide that your wife/girlfriend doesn't deserve the professional treatment that an expert can provide you are devaluing her. Ask her how she feels about being devalued.

No, really. Go ask her how she feels about being devalued. I'll wait here.

Ahem.

People in general make these mistakes on a regular basis... We should consult not just one expert, but many experts, before deciding that we can do this stuff ourselves or hire that expert to do it for us. Human beings are capable of many things, but it's very difficult to master more than one thing at a time, let alone many things. 

Let the experts do their jobs. 

Let ME do MY JOB and make beautiful photos of your wife/girlfriend so that she can present them to you and spark a little romance in your life. (You do want to get laid, don't you?) If she doesn't do it for you, she might just do it for herself and not share the results of her efforts with you. Maybe she'll keep them to herself since you didn't believe that she deserved the best-possible experience. If you don't treat her how she deserves the only pictures you'll get look just like this:

/rant

(Oh, and for-the-record: JCPenney, Kmart, WalMart, and Target don't hire photographers. They hire button-pushers, interns, teenagers that took a "photo class", anyone that can check email.... Anyone that can do as their told. They aren't photographers. Anyone that takes their kids to those places obviously doesn't love their kids enough to hire a professional either. Want to support Small Business? Hire a Local, Real, Professional Photographer.)

/endrant

/rant

(Yes, I cuss. I swear. I say mean things, but I'd rather that people that know that the guy behind the camera is a real person and not some fake brown-noser out there to make a buck off of you. I would rather you not hire me because it bothers you that I cuss than run around pretending to be someone that I'm not.)

/endrant

Dude, where's my life?

Hello, all 3 of you.

Things have just been crazy lately. I started a new day job which has been taking up quite a bit of my time... Well, not so much the job... but how I've had to rearrange everything and get used to a new schedule:

6:30am - Alarm goes off... I hit the snooze button.
6:45am - My wife calls me from her work and tells me to get up.
6:50am - My mother arrives to watch the kids
7:00am - Leave for work
7:05am - Forgot my wallet, keys, brain... head back inside to collect them.
7:10am - Leave for work
7:55am - Arrive at work in Boulder
5:00pm - Leave work
6:00pm - Arrive home
6:10pm - Eat dinner with the family
6:45pm - Play a game with the kids, Usually Scrabble or Candy Land in Deutsche
7:15pm - Kids get sent to bed
7:30pm - Kids tucked in
7:35pm - Kids retucked
7:40pm - Medium-sized-kid retucked
8:00pm - Talk with the wife
8:30pm - Watch a movie or The Colbert Report with the wife
9:00pm - Wife goes to bed since she has to be up at 2:30am.
9:05pm - Work on lots of photo projects that need lots of attention
9:15pm - Realize that I don't have lots of photo projects that need lots of attention
9:30pm - Realize that I need to promote myself better so that I have more projects
9:31pm - Realize that my client base is now in bed and my opportunity to promote to them is gone for the day
9:32pm - Get depressed
9:35pm - Read about what other photographers are doing and how busy they are
10:00pm - Watch YouTube videos and Flickr streams for inspiration and entertainment
11:30pm - Android Sleep tells me it's time to go to bed

That has been my routine for weeks now. I got tired of it so I made fresh flyers to put up at King Sooper's bulletin boards and Starbucks. Made 1/4 page flyers to pepper the neighborhood around a local high school. I put myself on "sale" which is a double-edged sword; People are interested in hiring me all the time, but only jump on it when I have a special running. It lets me be busier, but it makes me feel cheap.... I hate feeling cheap. I work my ass off for less money.... Most people would quit their job if their boss told them to take a 20% paycut... That's what I do to myself when I have a "sale".... I hope my clients realize that... I love them, but it's hard to communicate how crazy things are when you own your own business instead of punching in and out for your check: When I go on "sale" I literally take a paycut.

Anyway, enough loathing: I was able to schedule a shoot with Cassie a few weeks back. That girl is awesome! We had a plan to borrow a wedding dress and go up the hill and do some sunset/bride/whatever-we-can-think-of shots. Instead, it was mucky an rainy and not what we wanted so we went to Plan B.... Plan B was to put her in a tub and cover her in black... I wanted noir and although I didn't push the noir genre at all we definitely got some cool shots out of it. One them is above, but you can check out the rest on my site: bit.ly/JCPnoirbath I hope all 3 of you like them.

It's not on the back burner...

Hello all 3 of you!

Begin Transparency:

It's been a stressful week. Those of you that are in-the-know know that I started a new day job this week. I know, some of you are thinking,"Aren't you a badass, full-time photographer?" Sadly, no. I have two other jobs in addition to photography. Why? Cause I'm still growing my business at a pace that allows my family to ... ya know... EAT.

When I was a bachelor, things were way easier to budget: I didn't have to feed small humans that can't get a job and feed themselves. If I were a bachelor I could probably afford to eat Ramen and slave away myself into starvation in the name of making are and fulfilling my dream. Since I love my wife and kids more than anything it means I have to do things that I don't really want to do in order to feed them.

Don't get me wrong: I like my new day-job (and to a much lesser extent, my other day job) and I'll work my ass off for them... but I see it as allowing me the pay off my student loan and other crappy bills so that I can leave all of it behind when I can finally quit everything else. In the meantime, I can shoot as my schedule allows, build a client base, and feed the kids.

There's this taboo out there that photographers can't admit that they have other things paying bills on the side.... Maybe I'm wrong about being transparent, but I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. I'm just like everyone else trying to get by.... The difference is my Number One priority for my photography to feed my soul... Number Two is getting paid. I'm not about to take shitty jobs that I don't like just to make money. Fuck That. (Sorry if you're not a fan of using swear-words to create emphasis.) I would rather be poor and happy with my work than rich and hate where I am. That's precisely why I'm not a wedding photographer. I love my wedding-photo buddies, but I couldn't do that full time.

Anyway, where I am today should look nothing like where I'll be in 2-3 years, or 8-10 years. I'm going to be a full time photographer and not rely on Ramen to feed my family. I need to build up my business and know that my clients are getting a huge value from my work. They value my work. They buy my prints. They share me with their friends. They book me again and again. All because I put my LIFE into my work. That blood, sweat, and tears gets poured into my work in a way that my new bosses only dream I could do for them. People spend money and time on what they value: I value my goals more than most. More on that some other time.

Anyway, to all of you doing shit you have to do in order to do shit you love to do... Cheers! I'm with you.

End Transparency.

30-50 Project: Update 10

This week, I'm posting my final subject for the 30-50 Project, Krissi.

Krissi is another friend from High School. I didn't intentionally put my friends last on this project, but yeah... I totally did... Oops. ;-)

Krissi was totally excited to shoot with me. We had planned to have her playing in the snow (it was 20 degrees that morning) and getting some fun photos but we also planned to get some really sad photos too... You see: Krissi has gone through a lot this past year. Her husband lost his job, twice. They couldn't get a reasonable unemployment benefit and it left them stressed. That's something we can all relate to in this economy, but something that not all of us can relate to is that Krissi was also diagnosed as being bipolar.

I don't completely understand what it means to be bipolar, but there are apparently different sub-categories of it. Krissi often swings from being super ecstatic about life to dropping to a depressive state fairly quickly. Typically, "Normal People" don't understand what could be wrong with their friends and loved-ones that have bipolar disorder which leads them to distance themselves from the affected person. This can leave those with bipolar disorder to feeling very lonely which only exacerbates the problem. Krissi's husband, John, has learned to be more sensitive to her needs and realizes that just being there for her can make all the difference in the world even if he doesn't completely understand what is happening.

As we transitioned from the happy-snow photos I warned her that I was going to ask her about how hard this past year has been. I told her, and John, that I was going to try to understand more about her disorder by asking questions about it in an attempt to get something really compelling from the session; A session which she loved and felt was therapeutic since she didn't have to hide behind a smile if she didn't want to... But I wanted to shoot Krissi when she was sad...

Why would I do that?

Easy: I love making dramatic portraits, remember? Most of the time we look at a photo and say,"Oh, she looks beautiful!" or "That's sexy!" but somehow photos of someone crying... or upset... isn't pleasing. You're right, though.... Crying isn't pleasant... but it IS dramatic because it's a part of our life. I don't mean "Oh! Look how Emo that 14 year-old girl is! She's crying!" because that's just stupid....... I mean "OMG that woman is crying like she just lost everything..." It's harder for us to look at photos of those who are very sad, very angry, very anything... We only love the ones where we look hot, or happy, or whatever... but being sad is a part of our human existence. I decided one thing last year about myself:

I shoot people, so I need to shoot every part of people's lives: Happy, Sexy, Sad, Angry, Lonely, Birth, Death.... All of it. To shoot only "happy" is a damn lie and anyone who only shoots happy should be ashamed of their craft. (bold statement, I know)

Krissi, Thank You for letting me in your heart and showing the world what I found there. You're a wonderful human being.

30-50 Project: Update 9

It feels like I've been shooting a lot lately. It feels really good to get out and do what I love. I don't mean that in that funny, stereotypical "Oh, I love it!" kind of way... I mean... having the opportunity to be creative and make something from parts of nothing is an amazing feeling. It's exactly the same feeling I get when playing Legos with my kids.... Making something from parts of nothing.

When I had the opportunity to shoot my friend, Jenn, I couldn't pass on it. Similar to Leah (from last week's post), I've known Jenn for a long time, but we've had an "on-again off-again" friendship. It's embarrassing for me to say, but since I often speak from my heart I say things that I mean, but since they never reach my brain before they reach my tongue... it gets me into trouble. Sometimes I hurt people with the things I say and it totally sucks. It's made me filter out a lot of what I say, but to Jenn (for some reason) I don't filter when I speak to her and as a result we go years without speaking sometimes. This past time we "made up" (I guess that's the best way to describe it) we promised each other to talk it out before we disconnect again. She's a valued friend and an awesome person; it sucks to not have her around.

Wow, for a post that's supposed to be about the subject it sure did turn into a navel-gazing introspection of a daunting reality... I'm Flawed.... in so many ways. ::Adjusts Tie Uncomfortably::

Ahem..

I took some liberty with the Black and White conversions this time. I haven't done that in a long time... I find that I take a different creative direction with black and white than I do color photos... The whites are white, but I drop the blacks through the floor while allowing midtones to remain. The result is what you see here. (I'll probably add some different photos in another post when I sum up the project...These are same ones I posted to FB, but I just loved them too much to pick a different set of 4 for each place...)

30-50 Project: Update 8

8 posts about this project already? Seriously? Apparently this project has been successful considering I expected roughly zero people to take me up on this thing. Very Cool.

Some of you might remember my next subject, Leah D'Andrea. I've worked with her on her costume design portfolio from last year. We've known each other for a long time, so when I was looking to expand what I do into a completely different direction she was an easy pick. I had been following her work for a long time and really admired it. There's a lot of parallels between fashioning pieces of cloth together and fashioning pieces of life together: They both require foresight, patience, resources, and ever more patience. There's always been something about designing and realizing clothing that has fascinated me.

In any case, she doesn't just design cool stuff; she wears them too. Since she's a costumer she has quite the  outgoing personality and is a natural when acting. Being herself is a little harder to do in front of the camera. I can't say I blame her since I get nervous too! It's a good nervous! If the roles were reversed and I was in a costume at some Con (I've never been to one as an adult... is that bad?) I would be incredibly nervous.

Without further ado...

30-50 Project: Update 7

Hello again! This week's post is brought to you by the number 7, and the letter D.

In this session, I shot my best friend, Devin. I hadn't intended to shoot any of my friends, but when I put the call out for 30-50 year-olds I had many volunteers, naturally. Devin and I go back about a decade; We went to UNC together. We were roommates for quite a while in college, and then for a few years after we got out of school.

One of Devin's passions is music. Not just music, but rather independent music that you might not have heard of. A few years ago he actually sold most of his CD's in favor of Vinyl Records. Yes, they still make vinyl. Tim Ferris, author of The 4-hour Work Week, said on an episode of CJLive that   "...the book from this point forward is going to have to be art." He was referencing that digital media is so popular from books to music that printed, tangible works are almost a dying breed....in other words, "art." I completely agree with this, and obviously Devin does as well. In fact, some of the vinyl records he owns actually have artwork etched into them. They truly are a work of art.