Dear Diary... #1

I've been struggling lately with what kind of work I want to do. A portrait photographer I see my work as essentially the same as those who have come before me: artistic reproduction of people and (usually) just their faces. By working diligently I have proven myself capable of doing the same thing others have done and are currently doing. I can mimic so many well known photographers both living and dead. By doing so I've simply proven myself a good copyist. I suppose (and I'm sure others will say) this is part of the apprenticeship process.

But I want something more. Something different. Right now I don't know what that something is exactly. Lately I've been fooling around with a scanner and photoshop manipulation of scanned items (see my instagram if you're bored. I don't really have control of these images in the sense that when I start with a scan I have no idea how it will transform and end up. I just start manipulating and see where it takes me. For some reason I think this is different than pre-conceiving an idea and trying faithfully execute it. Maybe how I'm working is like how many others work. I have no idea. But for some reason (for my own work) I feel it's more important to come up with a semi-finished idea in my head first and then try to make it. Maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself. No idea, really.

But back to the idea of wanting something more. I don't know what the more could be. Maybe a moving picture. Perhaps I will happen upon a manipulation I like and apply it to photos. I've had a notion of somehow mixing a photo with some real-life components. Like gluing some of the clothing or accessories a subject is wearing onto an image to create a kind of semi-3D kind of look. Video? I've been putting it off forever and it will probably keep waiting. Maybe nothing will come of any of this thinking. But there is something slowly chewing on a morsel of the back part of my brain. It's telling me of an essence of a notion of a... something. I want to find out what it could be but may have to be satisfied with not being satisfied by figuring it out.

[dictated but not read]