Kick in the ass

Yes. I used PS Dark Arts on Myself - 012812

"It's great to have a passion, but you must also have a work ethic around it." Unknown*

For the past month or so I received multiple subtle and explicit messages to get my shit together.  Most of these messages concern my art.  All of them are basically saying, "Karl, You take pretty good photos.  You have an eye for capturing people in your photos.  Good boy.  Now you really need to move on to the next level.  You need to do it better and you need to get it done.  Not only done, but done right."

I  hired a graphic/web designer/artist to help me build a commercial website.  She designed  a new logo for me late last year.  I was impressed by it and looked at her portfolio of commercial websites she designed and was very impressed.  I showed her my half-ass, stagnant website and she gently tore it apart in a critique.  I knew then I had hired the right partner to help build the new one.  A month later, and many hours of writing text, selecting key photos, and many other tasks concerning SEO, keywords, aspect ratios, and categorizations, it is almost ready to go public.  I will co-premier it here and Facebook when it is ready to go.  I will also share her name and website in that post.

That experience taught me a valuable lesson.  If I am going to spend a good chunk of money and get a strong commercial site going, I had better go all in or pack up.  You can't go into business half way.  All in or fold.   Balls deep.  Shit or get off the pot.  Ok.  Enough metaphors for that.

While on Christmas break I saw a great a video clip of a George Carlin tribute with Louie C.K.  Louie C.K. is a comic genius and speaks so many truths for me.  In this tribute he shares the influence of Carlin on his career.  The key lesson is to keep reinventing his work and push his comedy further and further and get to what is raw, core, and never stop exploring.  Go deeper.   The gold starts at 4:55.



It is too easy to keep producing the same images the same way and getting the same responses.  I keep creating the same stuff, just with different flavors.  I keep getting the same results, and not going too far both in my art and in the success of my art.

The golden nugget from this video made me realize that I get the best feedback from my stuff that pushes me in new directions, new materials, new concepts, new people, new methods, and new feelings.  It is time to let some things go that are finished and run their course with me.  It feels like being given a new wild world to go out and explore!!!

So, if the first lesson was to go all in or go home and the second lesson was to keep reinventing and pushing myself harder, deeper, and into new areas, the third one was a hard criticism on what I have done.  It made me first question what type of photographer/artist I am in the sense of the quality of my work and then kicked me in the ass to do something about it.

I sent out a few proof portrait images.  The subject liked a few and then did something shocking, but also taught me a lesson.  The subject edited  one of my photos and sent it back with the list of edits.  Holy fuck.  Nobody has edited my photos before, especially without telling me first.

At first I was pissed.  How dare somebody touch my work like that!  I went for a walk around the neighborhood and came back and decided to look at the edits and compare them to the original I had sent out.  In came the head kick of humility and the lesson - Karl, your digital photo editing skills are kind of rudimentary and basic.  Karl, you do some digital photo editing really well, but if you are going to do this seriously, you really have to get better at it.

I use Adobe Lightroom for my photo workflow, everything from downloading and storage, through editing and refining, to creating a print or digital output.  It has many great tools that are similar to what can be found in the traditional darkroom.  It greatly complimented my darkroom knowledge and helped me make the transition from film to digital.   All along I denied the value of Photoshop.  I felt it was too complicated to learn.  It made my art a technical exercise, not a passion of the soul.  I would get lost in all the layers and gadgets and my art would lose its soul.  All of these were excuses, not reasons.

I am in the middle of an intensive Photoshop course now and am finally beginning to understand that its a wondrous tool box that can liberate so many of the limitations that straight photography places on me.  I am quickly realizing that I am not making the best art I can and honoring my subjects by my reticence to learning this important (and let's face it, industry) tool.   It is sort of like learning magic.

I've learned many new things that remind me of the Harry Potter universe.  Magic has both its good and bad arts.  In the books, all Hogwarts students had to learn the Magic of the Dark Arts.  For some it became their primary tool for power, for others it became a last-use weapon or a knowledge on how to defend ones self from it.

I think this is true of Photoshop as well.  There are so many ways to manipulate photos within that program.  There is the subtle stuff like correcting for perspective, saturating or de-saturating colors, reducing wrinkles, getting rid of pimples, etc.  There is the heavy stuff like distorting the body to look thinner, taller, whiter, darker, and closer to an ideal of what someone should like vs. what they truly look like.  All of these tools are available for the photographer to change the photograph from simple edits to a work of fiction.  These are some potentially dark arts that I need to learn and master.  How I use my knowledge and mastery of the dark arts will determine whether my intent was good or not.

Below is a video about the dangers of Photoshop.



I haven't written a blog post in the past few weeks due to all the work I am pushing into my art while still working my paying job and trying to maintain a life.  I am not getting any younger.  I know I have many more years behind me than ahead of me.  I need to get my art done before I die and I need to get off my lazy ass and do it.  I also have to do it better or why do it all?

*I hate it when I hear a great quote and can't find who said it.  Google can only do so much I guess.  I know it was an author. 

Walk a mile without shoes... or anything else

karl-14 - Kristen Lucus

Kim Weston told me that it was crucial for the photographer to model nude to truly understand what the model experiences.   A few years ago I did a few self portraits sans clothing, but didn't feel that was the same thing as posing for another photographer.  Back in May I did the full Monty.  I posed nude for another photographer.

karl-20 - Kristen Lucus

Kristen Lucas is a great photographer that I took a class with last semester.  She was creating a series capturing the temporary marks we have on our skin from the restrictive clothing and accessories we wear all day.  These included the patterns left by underwear elastic bands, socks, rings, watches, belts, bras, and other tight items.  They are all black and whites and are close ups that approach abstraction.

I wore my belt an extra notch tighter that day so both it and my undies were rubbing deep into my skin.  My ring was etching into my finger.  I wore tight socks and tied my shoes tight to get maximum effect.  I wanted to be marked up for her.  This is the exact opposite of how must nude models dress for a shoot.  They usually wear loose clothing to avoid these marks.  This part of the reason I loved this theme.  It showed the real human state we live in... we have temporary marks from our daily costumes of life.

We photographed during class lab time in the same studio I photographed Candace in during our February session.  We started off with my hands.  I removed my ring and there was a big dent.  With only a single light source, the shadows from the textures and grooves were very pronounced.

karl-4 - Kristen Lucus

After a few minutes we switched to my feet and my feet with my hands.  The socks created a harsh pattern on the tops of my feet.  I twisted and contorted to her directions and tried lining up everything for her.  It made me appreciate the moves and poses models must hold.  I enjoyed it.

Next came the waist band marks.  I pulled it down to see if there were marks and there were.  I dropped my pants and undies, pulled off my shirt and stood there as she photographed those marks by having me slowly rotate to get them full circle.

I felt comfortable even though I have never posed nude before.  I wondered why as I drove home.  First, I trust Kristen.  I support and believe in her project.  I've seen her work.  She made me comfortable.  Second, I've grown to accept my body as what it is.  It isn't beautiful, but I try not to be ashamed of it.  Third, it was very educational to learn how being on the other side of the lens felt.

karl-43 - Kristen Lucus

As you can see... or can't, my face is absent from all shots.  This is true of her whole series.  I don't know how I would feel having nude photos taken of me with my face visible.  I would like to think I would be as comfortable as I was with these photos, but I can't say for sure.

Kristen shared her photos with me and I was very impressed.  I know I have to lose weight, but her photos did not make me feel ugly and fat.  I appreciate her treatment of the model, photos, and the subject.

What pearls of wisdom can I share with other photographers from having been on both sides of the camera?  Only one, earn trust (both ways), keep it, and honor it after the shoot.  Kristen did all of these.  She gave me a print and a cd with proofs of the session.  I greatly appreciate that.

karl-29 - Kristen Lucus

I photographed Kristen a few weeks later.  She wasn't nude, but the theme and situation was much more personal.  That story and those photos will have to wait for another day.