Commercial break

This is the photograph we were working on HERE.
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The original idea was to create two photographs: one of a man in a capsule, the other of a man emerging out of a capsule. Photo Editor Brenda Milis, Creative Director Joe Heroun and myself all liked the evolution of the above image...but the "emerging" concept...well....none of us liked it at all. Rather than pretend it was all ok, pretend that it all worked out, we all just admitted that this 2nd concept just could not come together. Did I blow it? Maybe. Was the 2nd concept flawed? Maybe that too. Was this commercial suicide? I dunno...but I don't think so.
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In hindsight, if I had done more of these complex photo illustrations, I think I would have been able to foresee the potential minefields in a concept or idea and been able to steer the project away from them. With portraits, I do that all the time. With this new concept heavy work...I'm still learning. But the process, the learning, and the working out of a complex idea with people who are on it...I totally find exciting.

Interview With Myself, Part 3

Q: So, "Echolilia" is the name of your project, huh? Whats the deal with the name? Are we supposed to look it up?

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TA: Oh, I never really looked it up in the dictionary, but I think it means copying, repeating something verbatim, echo-ing. The idea of repeating something, doing it again, looking at something again. But not in a science-y way, like a clone, but in an organic way, with close similarities.

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Q: Why did you call it that?

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TA: Oh, I like the idea of all the copying I'm doing in all the materials I'm scanning. I guess having a kid is kind of giving you a chance to duplicate and see things again as well. But with the scans, I thought that act echo-ed the repetitions that I see my son go thru on any given day, the rituals. It's like we are scanning the stuff: the notes, the body parts, the pills, to find a clue, solve a puzzle, find some hints to help us figure it out.

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Q: What exactly is it that you are trying to figure out?

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TA: Oh...that is the thing. I just don't know.

Being A Scorpion

Report From The Field

Core Memory, the exhibition by photographer Mark Richards at Etherton Gallery, Tucson, Arizona opened on June 14th.
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Downtown Tucson was looking like a ghost town as I pulled in, but all of the nightlife seemed to funnel into this opening reception. Computer fanatics. Art appreciators. Women brandishing credit cards. Mark signing books and managing the masses. I really hadn't been to such a blow out art event in ...I don't know how long.




















It was Art and Commerce, with the latter going strong and not letting up. Shopping bags were filled with copies of Core Memory, geeks shared stories and the art folk of Tucson came out to see what the big deal was all about.
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And here...as you exit, a classic Arbus image, being stared at by a Witkin:

Summer of Blog

Big lull in photo blogging the past few weeks, though I'm referring to my fav blogs, not really my own dormant blog. I'll try harder this week....hope I don't have to pay someone to do this....

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Spent the last weeks escaping into 120 degree desert weather, shooting author Timothy Ferriss in the city and the redwoods, shooting author/genius/texan/brit Sam Gosling in a rented Tales of The City-esque SF home, celebrating my birthday and putting new stuff on my website.

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With the fast pace real time adventures of blogging, the website is actually seeming kind of old fashioned and dated, antiquated, a dinosaur. Its all about the blog these days. But anyhow I'm trying to pay attention to it. See The Literate, 3 shots from a recent editorial shoot that I was psyched about when I shot them, but was later told by a photo friend that " it looks like a catalogue. I mean a good catalogue... " and I really couldn't disagree with her or shake that thought. And then, despite public and private urgings not to do so, I created a gallery for the project that I've been working on with this blog " Echolilia: Weird Pictures of My Kid". Why? I guess I wanted my site to reflect my life: I love the commercial stuff but I have this other project I love as well. So...here we go...

Serendipity / Everyday

Driving away from my wife and kids and flying to Tucson, AZ on a Saturday morning was so unexpected it felt like someone was formatting the hard drive of my brain and letting me see everything new. Clarity began to set in. The typical chaos of the weekend was not filling my head and my brain just didn't know what to do with this space, this air, this solitude. I wasn't even headed out of town to take a photograph. All I had to do was think.

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Friday morning there had been a post on my blog in the letters section that said " Of course you've seen Everyday by Byron Wolfe..." in reference to my project on my son. At the time, I really didn't know what the person was referring to, nor did I have a chance to look it up.

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Saturday night at a gallery in Tucson I had a conversation with a woman I knew a number of years ago. She asked what I was working on and I spelled it all out to her. "Have you seen Everyday ? You might want to check it out, it sounds like a parallel to what you are up to. She brought the book over, I took a glance at it and bought it from her.

That night I met a bunch of friends I hadn't seen in years, drank wine, ate Mexican food, and smelled the cactus in the 100 degree evening time air. My hotel room was above a nightclub and I waited for the club to close before falling asleep. I woke up at 6:00 am, walked to a park and did something I really never have the luxury of doing: I opened my copy of "Everyday", read the introduction, and really gave the book its due, taking in every page from beginning to ending. It took roughly 90 minutes, a luxurious amount of time these days to get lost in a book. The education you can get by looking at a project that parallels your own, but on a different channel, is really inspiring.

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Byron Wolfe, photographer, photography teacher and father of two, made a photograph a day from 6/23/02-6/23/03. His images look at the clutter, the spilt milk, and a bit of the domestic messiness that fill his days, balancing it all out with bleak images from his day job and nurturing and escapist appreciations of nature, his garden, his fruit trees, and the simple warmth of the sun cutting into his living room. His story is honest yet distanced. It doesn't really pack a punch as much as it seeps into the cracks...you aren't hit by the images as much as you absorb them via osmosis.

See his project HERE. Get his book HERE.

Plastic Fist On White Paper

Ok, ok, ok

Ok...all of this analyzing of my work ( comments below at See It Here) is super appreciated, but I'm overwhelmed thinking about my work for now. I don't know what to do...gotta switch gears: Let's think about photography that is fun, still deep, but it feels real good. See the new project "Shadowplay" by L.A. photographer Jennifer Juniper Stratford HERE. No direct link, but like all good things, you gotta work for it.

photographs by jennifer juniper stratford

See It Here

If you are creating and sharing, you gotta get used to the fact that people may or may not get what you are working on. Or sometimes they get it, but most of the time they don't. Or they think they get it...and you think they get it...but you slowly realize they just aren't getting it. And sometimes you meet someone who totally gets it. But maybe they are insane? Crazy like you? Or insane in the way that manifests itself as just bad taste? Or are they the only one whe understands your genius? Or maybe you mis-interpretted them? This stuff can go on and on and on, but there is good that comes from sharing, no question there.

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Jealous of my buds who are going to Review Santa Fe this year...I kind of wish I was going myself. Whether people are getting this project or not, it is solidifying into something that I can call a project, and that feels good. I haven't really figured out how to present it. For now...it can all be seen HERE.

Mattress

Home Lab

My son photographed himself.

He photographed his brother.

He printed the images out on desktop printer.