Carrot Art and Life

Daucus carota, the common roadside weed we call Queen Anne's Lace, waves its four-feet stalks topped with palm-sized plates of tiny white flowers in late summer in Indiana.

The weed was introduced here from Europe. It is from this species belonging to the family Umbelliferae (umbel is the type of inflorescence shown by the wild carrot with short flower stalks of equal length like umbrella ribs) that our present-day kitchen carrot was bred.

The disks of white flowers invite photography. From above, from the side, close-up and from afar, the flowers offer endless possibilities for structural beauty. Here is another take on them.

Last night I visited several sites on smugmug.com and went to bed this morning feeling dejected. I've focused on model photograph since coming back from Italy in May and I've enjoyed shooting people and catching the many expressions on their faces and bodies. I just am not sure that I want to be exclusively a model photographer.

This morning, waking up after four hours sleep, I didn't get out of bed to the computer. I read about Dan Brown's first Robert Langdon adventure, Angels & Demons. Friends introduced me to the author last year before his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, was released as a movie starring Tom Hanks. The debate on the radio, Internet and TV was heated. I loved it. Brown combines elements from history, religion and art, the same topics that endlessly fascinate me. Words are another of my interests, older and I think stronger than images.

In the morning after I get dressed, before I tackle processing my photographs and building my website, I have to write to feel I have started the day. I am a man torn between two worlds. In fact I am a Dionysian devotee, forever being torn in a hundred pieces by my many interests. I stay with an interest long enough to know a little about it without really mastering it then fickle interest moves on. 

I'm like the umbelliferous carrot flower, hundreds of tiny flowerets in a dish, none of them taken by itself spectacular enough to invite closer inspection and only closer inspection shows their grand design and beauty.

Multiple Stories

ABC last night aired Diane Sawyer's interview with Randy Pausch, the charismatic computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who created a stir in September 2007 with The Last Lecture just months after he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Randy died Friday, July 24.

A man facing death has few reasons to pose. A poseur's games suddenly don't matter any more. All our life we build multi-story houses about ourselves. Facing death can bring us to a sudden stop. Randy was known to be forthright to the point of coming across  brash and insensitive. Randy told Diane his life motto: Tell the Truth All the Time. 

Harder even than telling the truth all the time is facing truths about ourselves.

This morning before I started writing I had to clear two piles of books that had accumulated on my desk. The piles were so tall I felt like a prisoner behind thick walls.

I looked around to see where I could move the books. Every available space was occupied. To move the books from the desk I had to sort through books on two other locations in the office. I bagged several books from the top of a bookcase, books about language and vocabulary. The Internet has made many reference books superfluous. That cleared the top of the bookcase so I could move one pile of books from the top of the credenza to the space they vacated. I couldn't clear enough space for the books on the desk so shoved several into a library storage box I stored under the desk. Whew!

Going through the books I was reminded of all the projects I had thought I would do. I saw my pattern clearly. Buying a book about an idea was again and again as far as I got with the idea. I've had tons of ideas! There were books on Excel, the Microsoft spreadsheet program upgrades of which I have been buying since it was first offered in 1984 as Multiplan. The only use I've ever made of the program was as a database for my computer and Internet passwords and the serial numbers of equipment and software.

There were many other books on the piles, a dozen about Photoshop that I still have not learned enough to use other than creating the watermark I use on my digital photographs. There were dozens of books on film and digital filmmaking. I have not worked in digital video since I started photographing models. I do want to get back to videos but when? The books represent the many projects I want to accomplish and rightfully feel overwhelmed.

Years ago I became a devotee of Elaine St. James whose book on simplifying one's life became a bible to me. For a while I did apply what I learned from her but you would never know I was into simplifying my life when you walk into my house today. Coming up with goals is so much easier than following through.

Half a year into my yearlong sabbatical and what can I show for it? I have learned a lot about photography and creating websites using iWeb. I have shot models and discovered that photographing people is as much fun, maybe even more fun, than hearing people's stories of their lives when I did clinical work. There certainly are themes that run through my life. Doing a guilt trip on myself does not lead to anything productive. Seeing the patterns might help me restore sanity to my life.

Last night's show included Diane interviewing Randy's wife, Jai, who divulged how she was coping with her husband's illness and imminent death. She told Diane how she reminded herself over and over again. I have everything I need, I have everything I need. That's a mantra I should learn.

We don't have to keep building our multi-story house. Being truthful with ourselves we can restore ourselves to the ground floor. On ground level, we have everything we need.

The Pool

After going with Arron to John Robert Powers last Sunday, I felt a chapter closed for me.

Going was exciting. This was Arron's first interview with a professional model organization and it was mine, too. I could have gotten additional clients for my model photography but I didn't, which was the right decision. But I looked at the photos the other candidates were carrying. Arron's photos that I shot were better. He printed them from the download sites I had created for him and the prints were okay. These two items validated my efforts so far.

I finished shutting down my office in Broad Ripple yesterday. While at the office, one of the company staff approached wanting me to shoot her four-year-old son. I told her I'd do it. Slowly I am shooting a variety of models and putting together my portfolio. At this point, shooting models allows me to experiment with lighting as well as processing options. I don't believe that I'm ready to start marketing myself.

This morning I woke up feeling my energy refreshed. It felt as if the cloud in my mind had cleared. I had checked out stock photography while reading and reflecting upon the books and website of Rohn Engh. Stock photography was not for me. For the last three months I have been doing model photography. I'll continue shooting people. I enjoy working with models and capturing the emotions in their faces but this too is not the right fit for me either. I am still an actor in search of his play.

I went back to the pool this morning and shot some more photos that I want to put together with the shots I took of Arron and Scott for my first photo essay. Photo essays or editorial work is what appeals to me right now. But the original draw for getting into the imaging industry still smolders under all that I have learned photographing models, setting up a workflow for capturing and distributing images, and building my first professional website. I wanted some elemental thing that also engaged and excited me when I worked with clients in a clinical setting. I want work that would touch me as movies, visual art and literature has touched me. I look at the gorgeous images people create with their camera and I am awed but I am left with a feeling that something was missing in this for me.

Before getting out of bed this morning I read an article in the latest issue of Moviemaker magazine (Issue 76) about the 40th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Critics especially the heavyweights on the East Coast railed against the movie but the audience, especially the teenagers and those living on the West Coast adopted it as their own. The movie somehow found its place in the longings of an era of Americans and emblematized what they wanted from life and their vision of the future.

Maybe some part of me still harbors great expectations for me. Maybe quitting my daytime job for this ephemeral pursuit I am returning to the heyday of my youth when ambitions clustered and seemed possible. I feel I have not tapped my true potential and that even with the short time left to me there is still time to fulfill the promise of those early years. What exactly the promise is remains unclear.

While surfing my favorite sites this morning I came across smugmug.com, a website home for photographers with special sensitiveness to Mac users and Mac sensitivities. Joining this community might be the best way for me to join the Internet community. The company espouses values similar to those I hold. I don't have to spend the next three or four months mastering Flash but use their site instead to create a commercial website. I still want to learn CSS, HTML and Action Script. I like digital technology but I don't have to create my universe from scratch and all alone. I can ride on other people's coattails while I search for what it is that makes me tick. In life's pool of possibilities, where am I?

My concept for Duende Arts is continuing to take shape. 

Targeting the market of mobile devices was the theme of the last two NAB conferences I attended. Back home I became excited after shooting models that I focused the business on model shoots. 

On July 11, Apple released the 2.0 version of its iPhone OS, its new online hosting, and the App store. I was caught up in the problems caused by the switch from .mac to mobileme. I couldn't update my Apple-based website. I ended up starting with a new site from scratch which admittedly was a mixed blessing. The new website is better. I focused it on photography and eliminated my blogs that could still be accessed with a link on the Welcome Page. With the work I had to do rebuilding the site I didn't appreciate what Apple had done.

Tech gurus are hailing Apple's release of its new OS for the iPhone and iPod touch as a pivotal change in the market. Apple has opened the new system for third parties to develop software for these mobile devices. OS V2.0, unlike similar smart-device platforms like market leader, Blackberry's RIM, is actually a full-featured computer OS. The iPhone is a small computer in itself with full access to the Internet. With the App Store, Apple has turned the page. It has opened its software to third-party companies to develop programs for it. 

With access to the Internet, mobile device owners can access not only my public folder on iDisk but also the download galleries I make for each model or photo shoot subject. 

The other day, I was talking to the mother of one of my models. She had accidentally trashed the message I sent her through mobileme.com giving her access to her daughter's image download website. I located the portfolio on her Windows laptop. The photos were blurred and not sharp as they appear on my Mac monitors. I had my iPod Touch in the car but didn't think of showing her the images there. 

We are limited by shibboleths that no longer hold. I need to think about photography along with my other interests like videos, Apple and Adobe software so that I can create my market niche. Unlike many photographers I don't do weddings or other family events. I don't do corporate videos. At the outset I wanted to use the Internet as basis for creating media products, for displaying and for distributing them. I also have a long-standing interest in text products.

I have always described myself as an outsider. I don't join mainstream groups well so I need to create my own place in the Internet-driven, digital-media marketplace.

Launching myself into photography was not the reason I took this sabbatical from clinical work. My main interest was to develop creativity. I even say that in my mission statement.

Walk the path and you'll encounter companions with whom you can make new realities. I have to break with the shibboleth holding me to what has already been done. I need to stay creative while gaining focus. Taking time away from the daily grind is actually helpful. When I come back I can look at what I'm doing with refreshed eyes that I define my own unique vision.

Structure as Art

As I navigated the catwalk above Bally's workout floor this evening, my mind drifted to the business of photography.

I've mostly shot people since I came back from hiking in the Amalfi Coast. I have not even processed most of the photos I took on that trip. Shooting models became my focus.

I love capturing those fleeting emotions that people have on their faces. The models themselves are surprised at the varied expressions they show.

Before I started traveling and taking travel photos, before I started photographing models, in geology-unspectacular Indiana, I depended on flowers, trees and gardens for subjects. One of the few lenses I invested in after purchasing my Canon D20 was a macro lens which most of the time gathers dust in its leather case on my shelf. 

Yesterday morning, noticing the quality of the light in the garden I attached the macro lens and took pictures of what was blooming in the garden. The big show is over. Now individual plants come up with their show but not massed together as they were earlier in the season.

I've always loved Queen Anne's lace. I've allowed a plant to grow in the garden and every year it thanks me with three-foot high stalks topped by gorgeous lacy flowers. When magnified, the tiny individual flowers become visible. I have been photographing food. Now I want to re-explore macro photography, both topics I am told are not lucrative in an overcrowded field of stock photography. 

With the right light, flowers and other natural and man-made objects reveal their structure. Geometry is more than a science. It is a way of looking at lines, shapes and color just as one does with photography and videos. Colors are so dominant that they can ravish us into forgetting other elements of vision.

I have no shoots scheduled which should allow me time to finish the two last shoots I did. I also would like to go over my older photos and see what I have. Meanwhile, vacating my Broad Ripple office is coming along. I shall in effect be contracting my work space back to just my home. As I continue to shoot at home I am turning the whole house into a studio. After some necessary repairs I want to repaint the whole house with background and photo setups in mind.

There is so much more to learn. I have started blogging and enjoy learning about this now old technology. There are social networks, too, to explore. In creating my products I need to stay in touch with my other interests that combining them in various ways I can find my own unique niche in the universe.

Class and Classic

I should have all the Model Portfolios on the web site live by the end of the day so I can post the whole site to Duendearts.com tomorrow. I still have Joe's photo shoot to process this afternoon. I did finish Abby's photo shoot yesterday evening.

I probably won't have any Photo Essays on the website when I launch it tomorrow. These are for me the heart of what I want to do. I'll take my time designing these. I'll also start learning to create the website using Flash. I hope to know enough about Flash-based website in two months. Flash is central to my marketing plan that includes the deployment of Flash videos as well as photographic images.

I have not scheduled any more shoots but my mind is busy planning them. I want to shoot on the Indianapolis Art Museum grounds and at the White River Park downtown. The museum shoot should produce some classic shots against the classic background of the French-inspired Lilly mansion and the garden on the slope above the White River. The White River Park shoot will showcase downtown Indianapolis. With that shoot I shall be exploring other niches and markets.

I am also planning studio shoots with a more elaborate setup like pieces of cloth with which to drape the model, on the props and background. I continue to experiment with light.

Meanwhile I am shooting non-people images just for my own enjoyment. I like to photograph plates of food and flowers have always been a favorite subject matter. I delayed purchasing the D5 full-frame camera so the $300 instant-rebate offer is gone. I was not sure I wanted to get that camera which is over two years old but I do want to start shooting with full-frame CMOS that don't need the images adjusted by 1.6. I also want to shoot with more professional lenses with larger apertures.

Checking out the websites of other photographers makes me realize how the Internet is flooded with beautiful and beautifully photographed images. I am not too worried but must keep going in the direction I want to go for the career to start making me some income. While there are many great photos on the Internet, most of the photographers don't have the goals I have for these images.

Processing Abby's photos yesterday I was impressed by the patience and sensitivity of one so young. She is only 13. Shooting her certainly opened another avenue for me. Most of the images that I posted on her portfolio were taken outdoors, at the lake here and the lake at the Crossing. After shooting with just natural light for years I am rediscovering my love for the results.

There is definitely more that I want to learn about commercially productive photography. I continue to improve my photography technique while broadening the scope and depth of my options for images. While I am occasionally plagued by doubt I am mostly riding high on the excitement of what I am doing. I sense there is more at the edges of what I know waiting to be discovered. It's at the edge that we have the greatest possibility to grow.

Between the Old and the New

In the morning, while still in bed, I check my email and surf looking over photography and social network websites.

The past month I had been shooting with images of fashion spreads in American magazines in my mind's eye. The models are serious even when they're playing. The backgrounds are simple, usually white or gray. Few designers employ the exuberant, über romantic style I associate with European photographers.

I'm a student of Thoreau who wrote, "I require of every writer a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives.... for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me." I embarked in photography because I wanted to live as an artist, someone who viewed who looked for beauty on the canvas of his daily experience. After living till now analyzing and reasoning I wanted to shift what I valued and therefore paid attention to what appealed to the aesthetic sense.

My ideas are generations old. They are not bad. Many are reassuring, some even wise. But I am drawn especially in images or what the eyes consume to what is new, what people younger than me are constructing as their images of beauty. These are new ways of seeing things. This is why I wanted to try this new way of looking.

There are many photographers out there, many of them amateurs like me in the sense of not having earned money from their work, whose photographs just knock the socks off one. It's the colors they put in their images, the surprising juxtapositions, the humor and derring-do, almost disrespect for canons with which I grew up. This is exciting. Possibilities equal hopefulness. There are more things in life to know, Horatio.

In the brouhaha I want to improve my own sense of beauty and ultimately my love of life but I don't want to lose myself either or disrespect what I am. The new always excites but is not always better. Still I am learning to see in ways that feel new to me. Perhaps this is the fabled fountain of youth. As long as we see possibilities we can make part of ourselves we are not dead but alive in concert with everything else that changes and has consciousness it is changing. Maybe beauty is just another word for being alive. 

Coming Soon To This Theater

My focus this week is to empty my office in Broad Ripple so I can vacate it before July 31. I am doing all my shoots at my home studio. I can save money and earmark what I have for expenses more relevant to where I am with the photography business by dismantling the office

Down the road (my target date is still October or November when I need to make some financial decisions) I'd want a studio with more space and a high ceiling. I want to have more options about camera positioning, maybe shoot from above or from a distance with longer lenses, maybe even occasionally hire a crane for really long shots. 

By that time I should be shooting videos. Maybe I can find someone who can man the video cameras while I shoot with still cameras. I have seen and liked photography sites that used videos to create excitement about the photos but I want to create movie-quality videos that are art works in their own right. As Robin Gillan writes, "any medium used by an artist is art."

The last two shoots at the swimming pool were thoroughly enjoyable. I loved the photos in natural light. I loved having that space in which to stage the shoots. For the first time I got a sense of what it was like to shoot professional models on location. There is much more to location shooting for advertising or fashion than what I have done so far. That's okay. A step at a time will get me there soon enough.

Meanwhile I have more ideas for studio shoots as well. I've found a suitable platform so I can elevate the models and take better photographs of them in more poses. The platform will also compensate for the shallow depth of my current studio space so it will be easier to shoot full-length photos. I like the plain, white backgrounds á la Richard Avedon but I'd like to try more elaborate shoots as well. I generally don't care for complexity but how else does one grow but by pushing his limits.

British portrait photographer, Robin Gillan, is educating me not only about his academic interest, photography, but also his specialty, portraits. Most of what I am reading in his book, The Photographic Portrait, is strangely familiar, like dreams I just awoke from. We can learn from other people's experiences but mostly we learn from what we have to do to survive. Necessity truly mothers invention.

I canceled a shoot with a model who is coming to town from New York. I just can't summon the energy to shoot her. I need to have models who excite me. A job is a job and starting out I couldn't expect to always call the shots (no pun intended) but as much as I can I want to choose who I work with. Necessity notwithstanding, art is still ultimately a luxury item. Some of us may have to live on pizzas and water while making our fortunes but art nonetheless is about carving out time to waste on activities that in the real world amount to nothing.

My dad used lecture us: Why waste good money going to a movie? It's just make-believe." He was, as I've written before, consummately practical. Art is not on the same level as breathing. Without oxygen our bodies die. Without art, we die.

After finishing the duendearts.com website, after processing the last three photoshoots, and after vacating the Broad Ripple office, I want to learn more about designing and printing marketing materials. Another book I'm reading is Lou Lesko's Advertising Photography. He writes how he spent lots of time and money persuading his graphic designer friends to design his marketing card until he discovered that the most effective was something he designed in Photoshop. The front showed one of his photos with a narrow border displaying his name and contact information. That was it. Simple and effective, my style.

Art is make-believe but tolerates no excesses. Hyperbole however is absolutely okay.

Features from Limbo

Having to rebuild my Duende Arts web site on Apple servers has turned out to be a veritable blessing. I don't foresee myself spending the whole time working this site to perfection. What that is I don't crave it. I do want to have it contain the features I want to market my products and services on the Internet. The thing is though my conception of products is still evolving.

When I went on sabbatical last December I had a different idea where I was going. I was more focused then on videos and film but felt I needed to learn and apply the Adobe software I had bought last year after NAB. Beyond that the goal was nebulous.

Photography only came front and center after I did my first professional photo shoot with Kaleb. I shall always think of Kaleb as the model who set me firmly on the path I am now walking. Doing that shoot crystallized in my mind that I enjoyed photographing people.

Shooting Arron and Scott and talking with these guys who were so much more verbal about their goal of breaking into professional modeling little by little shaped my focus. Truthfully, on my own, I would never have thought of venturing into fashion and advertising photography. That is audacity I normally do not possess. (Duende is not, I am learning, something to possess. It comes and goes by its own light but leaves in its wake the magic that shapes our dreams into palpable reality.)

This morning, I called up my sister, Merma, in Kansas. I thought we could meet in NYC in September for a psychiatric meeting. A CME event would make the trip tax-deductible. She told me she was planning to to drive to Arkansas next month. Our niece, May, married an Arkansan in Iloilo earlier this year. She has now joined her husband. Her parents, my first cousins, are coming to join them at a reception in Arkansas when the couple will formally announce to their friends here in the States that they are "at home." I told Merma I'll check into the feasibility of joining her.

Merma is clinical director of a state hospital. They are expecting surveyors to come anytime now. If they come she won't go to Arkansas. She wouldn't be able to justify going. If she didn't go, what would I do there? I could take pictures of her friends! In fact, one of our friends, Bonnie, reportedly wanted me to email her my site's address.

That was the germ. The result is a new page on the site for portraits. I included portraits among the products I shall be showcasing on the site as something I could do in addition to magazine and print work. I figured that even as I start getting assignments for paid shoots I would still have time to do portraits. I am not interested at all to do weddings, birthdays and such but I love doing portraits. In fact, shooting the many expressions that a model comes up with is one of photography's chief delights for me. This is along the same lines as what I wrote last night in this blog. 

A person's inner life is his alone to experience. A photographer or filmmaker (or, for this matter, a writer or poet writing about that person) seeks to put that inner life into medium other people can experience. Isn't art really about our inner worlds? The inner life is infinitely vast and various. Only through art can we attempt to represent this ungraspable experience. Art seeks therefore to mirror a bit of that ineffable fullness that is our inner life where we live in a reality more true than anything the nightly news could ever show.

One idea leads to another. I'll add a page for portraits, photographs of people who have no intention or desire to model on runways or in print. To formalize the process I'll include a page for what people can expect when I invite them to a photo shoot as well as a page where interested people could request either a portrait shoot or a model shoot.

My first portrait features Ryan, son of my neighbor, Linda, who was kind enough to let me shoot him the evening before I shot Kaleb. I tested lighting on Ryan. Without his help I wouldn't have the shred of confidence that allowed me to start shooting Kaleb. Without the shoot with Kaleb I would never have arrived where I am today. Where I shall be tomorrow, why, that's still in limbo struggling to come out!

New Model, New Web Site Design

Joe, a 19-year-old Thai who graduated from Carmel High School just this year, was the third model I shot this week. I didn't finish processing the last batch of shoots until Tuesday night. Now I am behind again with three shoots to process.

Kaleb, the firs model I shot, Arron and Sam are models I casted through a model site. A couple others were brought into a shoot by these model hopefuls. I recruited the rest from people I knew or met.

There is no question that the models casted from the sites were easier and in some ways more fun to shoot. They were not only invested in a modeling career but were invested because thy have characteristics that make them suited for modeling. They tended to be more good-looking so friends and families were always telling them they should be models. They like how they look, like looking at pictures of themselves, and like to take care of their physical health and beauty. They like clothes and know a lot about style. They are, like me, professionals in the beauty industry.

For the models that I recruited from the street, being photographed was a new experience. Many of them are embarrassed to look at their photographs. They don't think of themselves as being handsome or beautiful. They don't have an investment in their physical looks. 

As much as I enjoy shooting good-looking people I harbor an unprofessional interest in impacting society in a moral or ethical way. Beauty deserves the adoration we give it but physical beauty by itself can not be the basis for happiness. Happiness is my main objective, whether in me or in others.

Shooting Joe today reminded me how my new career in photography and the old one converged on pervasive interest I have in the quality of people's inner worlds and private lives. I want to join the ranks of fashion and advertising photographers and will what I need to do to accomplish this. But I don't see myself getting swallowed up in the dazzle of the fashion industry. I see photography, even fashion photography, as a vehicle that carries not only my career objectives but my long-standing interest in assisting people attain happiness. Photography can effect this less directly than what I used to do. Art is not quite so direct so that its effect on others depends more on the viewer than on the artist.

In re-building my web site on Apple I am redesigning it. I am moving forward to market myself in advertising and fashion photography but I sense that I won't be a run-of-the-mill fashion photography. It's a new career, not a new me.

A Splash No Less

The shoot with the two guys from Richmond was a blast, or should I say a splash! They got here at half past nine and the light was getting intense. We had an hour to shoot outdoors and the photos turned out fine.

The shoot was my first that gave me a sense of a professional location shoot. Arron and Scott are phenomenally great models. We have a history now so working together is like working inside the same skin. They move into their own poses spontaneously yet respond to my directions quickly. This is the joy of model photography. The shoot moves along seamlessly.

When we got to the pool, two maintenance guys were cleaning. The pool guy told us they would be finished in twenty minutes. We walked down to the beach and unto the dock where we took some great shots with the blue lake water and the apartment complex beyond as backdrop. Sunlit images have taken on a new attraction for me. I love the wider palette of colors that natural light brings out.

When we moved back to the pool, we had the whole area to ourselves. It was funny. For the twenty years I've lived here at Harbour Club I had visited the pool maybe once. When the management changed the lock to the gate several years ago I didn't even bother to get a new key. It took a week to get the new key. Over and over I see the dynamics of how life unfolds. I would never have thought of having such a perfect location for shooting so close to home just two weeks ago! It's convenient, too. I forgot to bring my 8 Gig card and I quickly got a "CF Full" message on the Canon. Returning to the house for the card was a cinch. I was back at the pool in minutes.

The guys had changed to swimsuits. I asked them to horse around while I took pictures. Soon they were both in the water. I didn't even have to adjust the camera settings to catch droplets of water as they splashed each other. I wish now I had asked them to jump out of the water and jump up from the ground more. More action shots would have been great!

I didn't shoot as many pictures yesterday. We came back to the studio and shot a few pictures of the guys in dressier outfits and soon it was time for lunch. Even Scott piped up and said he was hungry and ready for food.

The last few years I'd gone around mostly in tee shirts and shorts in the summer, tee shirts and jeans in colder weather. In my closet though I still had dressier outfits that I kept buying even after I stopped wearing them. I had a DKNY zip-up turtle neck that looked great with black slacks on Scott. The red-and-gray cotton sweater suited Arron, hiding how another satin cotton black slacks were too big around his waist. I even found them a Perry Ellis and a black Armani Italian-leather belt. Funny still I never thought of myself as a clothes horse before.

I reformatted the CF card on Arron's Canon and he started taking quite good photos of Scott at the studio. He got so involved shooting that I didn't take enough photos of him in his outfit. By three I was actually exhausted as we looked at Quick Look previews of the shoot. The guys also chose photos for their new print portfolios.

The day could have been fuller but I am happy with what we produced. Every shoot I do I learn something new. The adage is true: one can only see until the next bend in the road. And the road keeps bending!

Next on my agenda is to build a commercial Flash-based website, and then I'll start serious marketing. Apple's troubles with web pages on the new me.com is pushing me to another bend that I know I need to explore anyway. Meanwhile the sense is growing, too, that I can't keep on working to improve my photography style. I don't aspire to perfection but a photo shoot can always be better. I need then to move on to exposing my work to public bidding.

For now, here's a photo of Arron splashed.

Big Cat Changes

I still have not figured why I couldn't update my iWeb-created site, Duende Arts. Apple emailed me on Monday but the fixes Erica suggested didn't work. I spent yesterday morning trying out the British web construction software, Rapidweaver. It is fast and has a built-in FTP client. There's a built-in Flash-slideshow-maker that is simplicity itself to use. It has more themes than iWeb but positioning text and photos on the pages is more complicated. I would almost need to learn CSS and XHTML so why not enter the lion's den?  I could purchase Rapidweaver, a bargain at $59 for a web download, but I think I'll start learning Flash instead. I have been holding on to the David Morris Visual QuickProject book on creating web sites with Flash CS3.

Apple's switch is just what I needed to push me to do actions I always wanted to do but didn't want to take the time to learn. Lynda.com even has a video tutorial on how to maximize blogging on blogger. Video tutorials work best for me. I continue to sing the praises of Lynda. Having a subscription to the web site is like having my own personal software tutor.

I finished processing Scott and Chanté's shoot last night. Whew! I told Linda and Abby when they left yesterday I would have their photos on a web site by Friday next week. I need to re-think how much time I need to process after a shoot. I thought I would start breezing through the processing after doing a few. I am developing a quicker workflow but it still takes time to go through the photos. Two weeks, I think, is a more realistic time frame.

Shooting Abby, the 13-year-old daughter of the office manager at BREO, is my second foray shooting a female model. Gosh, it's been years since I've dated a young woman. Linda, my next-door neighbor, has been my female companion the last 10 years. I work easily with mothers but women models are still a newfangled adventure. I have gotten used and like what feels like the easier connections with men. I don't have to worry too much about saying something to hurt their feelings. I think of men as less easily destroyed by comments. It's all in the head though but I prefer traditionalist ways of seeing the sexes.

Today I am shooting Scott. Arron called yesterday as I was shooting Abby and asked if he could come today instead of Saturday. That's fine. Joe from Ichiban emailed me this morning. He is coming tomorrow. That'll make my 11th shoot. 

At today's shoot, I'll take fewer photos and work more carefully with lighting and composition. It is sunny but warm. I plan to shoot at the swimming pool, at indoor locations, and in front of the white background.

Shucks! The Canon D5 is backordered at both Abe's of Maine and B&H in NY. The $300 instant rebate runs out on Saturday. I still vacillate between purchasing the top-of-the-line Canon professional camera, the EOS-IDS Mark III, and the older, much cheaper 5D. Eventually I shall need the Mark III so why not go for that? I'll need wider-aperture lenses, too.

The adventure goes on, sometimes like a big cat crashing through the jungles, felling trees, stomping everything in its path.

Change Comes on Little Cat Feet

We traipse merrily along our daily routines secure in our unfounded belief that things are permanent: we'll walk this way like this every day of our lives.

Not so. If we're lucky, each day brings its daily bread of surprises and we are forced to change. Change is more constant than permanence. Change gives us hope that we achieve what we don't yet have. People who don't change lie underground, the feast of worms and bugs.

But change discombobulates. We have to get our bearings again; we have to take notice of where we are. Contrary again to unfounded belief, attention is not so easy. It is one of the most painful things we have to do because we don't do it often enough. To pay attention we have to climb over dead bodies of resistance to get to the cashier. Attention requires boldness and invention. It disrupts our inclination for mindless living.

Apple switched over from .mac to me.com over the weekend. They started working on the switch Thursday afternoon. Unaware of what Apple was doing I worked all that day updating my site on iWeb. I posted all the photo shoots I had finished processing with Aperture. I was so proud of myself. I hit "publish" and got one error message after another. I checked the .mac site and the notice came up: regular maintenance going on. Regular? 

Throughout the evening and the following day, July 11, when Apple started offering their new 3G iPhone with automatic update of me.com data, I couldn't access the site. Each time I tried to publish I got error messages for my trouble. I tried doggedly over the weekend. No dice.

Maybe it is time to rethink. I have learned a lot about websites and blogs from using iWeb. Maybe it is time to create my website with Dreamweaver and post my blog on blogger hosts and social websites as I intended to do anyway. Here is change again, that birthing process to move us along to where we want to go.

Change comes on little cat feet, as Carl Sandburg once wrote, but without little kitties the big cats don't come.