The Image Addiction!!!!!

Creating images is becoming an addiction!!!! I have been shooting a new subjects everyday all of this week and wow, it feels like a huge leap every single shoot. I have never had this kind of consistency in my images or work. This week has been completely about naked men. I feel like I barely eat, drink, or sleep because I am so caught up in the process and images I am working on. I had a photo shoot this morning with a guy from Seattle that was sensational. Incredibly mesmerizing, I totally identified with him on so many levels; we have a lot of the same history, hang-ups and insecurities, but seem to be at the same place in overcoming them. Together we explored a concept, we both felt, about escaping the implied feminine impulse we felt being associated with being gay and our struggle to regain the masculine side of ourselves. The images are sensational, some of the best I have every created. I felt the influence I am seeing in the French imagery I have been studying lately, creeping in. I am beginning to rethink my center point of balance in my images. I am trying to force myself to shoot off my normal axes of balance but am encountering great self-resistance; it’s like driving a car off the lines of the road. Our instinct tells us to stay between the lines, and all impulse keeps us there. To cross those lines implies danger, hazard or possible death if we go to far. For me photography is about the geometry of the image. When I first got into shooting I did exercise after exercise in finding, seeing and shooting that balance. It certainly comes into play in theater and on stage. I rarely look at an image without seeing the geometry that governs its shape, form and texture. Triangles are very strong and important to me. A slight bend or S shape can almost give me an orgasm. I know this sounds crude but we must respond strongly to impulse whenever it’s present. Excitement wells up within and comes across in the image. After all, the image is about feeling and when it stirs something deep within you, something powerful is at work. Thus the process of creation becomes an addiction. I tend to shoot about 700 to 800 image per shoot, exploring all the possibilities, angles, perspectives, a variance of light, a variance of movement, ever responding, ever present. I used to try to narrow my images down to a dozen, but now shooting such volume is becoming increasingly more difficult to separate and sort. There is way too much sensational stuff and I have to eliminating stuff that I may find brilliant later. Sometimes I cannot drag myself away from the monitor, like today, because the images are evolving and my perceptions change with each image. I was the same way in the darkroom, but there you become lost in a time and space and merely existed in a dark void. I guess it really hasn’t changed that much.

Today’s image was one such exercise I did in my early days. It’s called HARD, it’s about things that are hard, muscle, hammer, expression and mass of weight. You will see a very strong triangle with the face and the arms outcast to the sides. There is even a slight S curve in the axis of his torso. The overall structure is a hard line from top to bottom. See even exercises in photography can still be fun, and you just thought there was half naked man standing in front of you. I hope I didn’t get too geeky for anyone out there, but after all this is my fantasy.

VIEW FULL IMAGE: HARD