Ogalthorpe, Ogalthorpe wherefore art thou Ogalthorpe?

I've been in a bit a creative lull for several weeks.  About a month ago I had to divert my energy to family matters and after the matter was put aside (but not settled) I found myself standing around trying to figure out where the heck I had left off on the path I was on previously.  It seems I had lost my bearings.
I further distracted myself by engaging in a severe restructuring of my living space.  One can easily extrapolate that the tearing apart and re-ordering of my physical surroundings was clearing a manifestation of some inner turmoil.  It's easily understandable.  My grandmother was like a second mother to me.  I spent a good deal of time in helping with her care in her last year.  When she died the whole dynamic of the family changed in an unknown degree.   It seems fitting that as a person governed equally by emotion and logic that some kind of psychic storm would blow into town.  It did but fortunately it didn't come in the form of a breakdown but of a humungous restructuring -- first external but indirectly internal.

So today I finished the last of the major rework on the loft.  All is clean and order has been somewhat imposed.  So now I find myself feeling the pull to get back to my work.  Both the work of becoming a professional photographer and also the work of being a photographer.  The first is a matter of business acumen.  The latter is a matter of the soul.  It's about doing the work that I'm meant to do.  The trouble is trying to remember what that is or at least figure out what it's going to be.  In my life changing, the nature of me and what comes out of me has changed.  I'm beginning to feel the slowing of aging and an increase in maturity.  This has lead me to wonder if I want to shooting hot nekkid models in a provocative manner.  I like LaChappelle, but I'm not sure how much I want to channel him into my work.  Well some days it's that and other days I think WTF? I should shoot what I feel like I want to shoot.  And that's probably what I might end up doing (hopefully),  But right now the idea bank is a little thin. Which leads me to the idea of influence (again).

Tonight I did a flickr search for "Avedon". My thinking was that I'd go straight to the top of the heap and see if I could reap any new insight or inspiration from the results.  And it struck me as interesting how much mimicry came up in the results.  Based on what I saw I would hope Avedon would be flattered.  Of course the images were all over the place in regards to quality and execution.  But I still found the phenomenon rather interesting.  I mean, I've been there -- trying recreate the lighting style of Leibovitz, Dan Winters, whoever strikes my interest at the time. But I'm at a peculiar crossroads -- I'm digging inside looking for some original content hoping to strike gold, not strike out. The way I see it I'm part amateur -- but I've outgrown the training wheels of Flickr, strobist.com, meetups and such -- and good enough to go pro.  But I'm also below the radar of the professional world.  I've got the talent but what's left is to do the work.  So as much as I appreciate the work of Avedon, Leibovitz, LaChapelle, etc. etc, it's time to put their books away and open my own.

To that end I've lined up a couple of shoots with absolutely no clue as to what I will be photographing.  I could sit here and pontificate all night long about the fuzz in my navel or I can get off my ass and do something.  The first step is the most awkward.  And it's especially frustrating when you've taken that step several times in the past.  But what I'm thinking is that if I just do something -- anything -- it puts me on my way to somewhere.