February 13th, 2007:

Would you like an Interview by yours truly?

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions to be more intimate!
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Here are the questions “Melissa”:http://filmstar.livejournal.com/ asked me:

1) *Other than meeting/marrying Jess, what single event do you think has made the biggest difference in your life’s direction?*

It’s a toss up between my first technical support job, and buying my first camera.

Buying my first camera has obvious implications.

That first technical support job that I took was the straw the broke the camel’s back. It’s the job that made me realize I could easily make twice what I’m expecting to make when I get out of college right this very moment. It’s the moment at which I decided to put my efforts into a career instead of an education. Had I not made that choice, things would be VERY different today.

2) *Tit for tat: What one song, only one song, would you say best symbolizes me or your relationship with me? Why?*

Fat Bottom Girls, of COURSE. :)

No, really… it’s hard for me to answer this. More often than not, I don’t even know the words to the songs I like and I just make them up as I go along. And, the ones that I do know, usually have some personal meaning but aren’t really attached to someone else. Or, if they are attached to someone else, it’s because of the song and the moment and the events surrounding it, and no so much the words of the song. But, knowing all of that…

I’d say, most of all, F-Stop Blues. You introduced me to Jack Johnson. And I remember hearing that song and hearing him sing “Lift him up to see what you can see, He begins his focusing, He’s aiming at you”. At that time, it made me think of seeing you, walking somewhere on a beach, me with my camera in hand, stalking you, in a way. I always think of you when I hear it.

3) *A nuclear bomb goes off near your home and you will have to spend the rest of your life confined to a fallout shelter. You can take five people with you — who are they?*

Jess of course. And my dad.

The other three are more difficult. I need to make a few assumptions in order to choose.

I need to assume that taking people out of their current lives to be in my fallout shelter without their significant others is okay and won’t piss them off. For instance, I like you a whole lot, but I’m not close enough to Ali to choose him as one of my 5 slots. But I wouldn’t want to take you from him if that would make you unhappy. So I’m going to assume that everyone else in the whole entire world is going to die and so it doesn’t matter who I take from who.

In that same vein I will not consider who the other people would want to have with them. For instance, Jess would love to have her friend Mel around and her happiness is important to me, but, then that a totally different question.

And I also need to consider how well that group would function with one another. For instance, I have a friend or two that many of my other friends don’t really care for. As much as I like them, bringing them would only stress out the rest of the group. And, I need to consider not just my personal likes, but also, those people’s ability to contribute to the whole.

Really… there are too many factors to consider… waaaay too many factors… I don’t think I could choose. But I won’t cop out on you. I’ll just decide based solely on me and my current whimsical desires: looks, common interests, common beliefs, likelihood to show gratitude for saving their life, likelihood to do all the housework so I don’t have to, etc, etc:

Mel (in Sudbury), Gloria, and You.

4) *You can take one mix CD with you into the fallout shelter. What is the track list?*

Assuming 15 tracks on the CD…

1) Get out the Map – Indigo Girls
2) Overlap – Ani Difranco
3) F-Stop Blues – Jack Johnson
4) The Luckiest – Ben Folds
5) Since U Been Gone – Kelly Clarkson
6) Ossining – Mike Doughty
7) Rising Sign – Mike Doughty
8) City of Motors – Soul Coughing
9) But It’s Better If You Do – Panic! At the Disco
10) In Between Days – Ben Folds
11) When I Fall – Barenaked Ladies
12) Take It Outside – Barenaked Ladies
13) Hyena – Rancid
14) Date Rape – Sublime
15) Ikea – Johnathan Coulton

And, special bonus track: Inside – Honchie

5) *What do you miss the most about single life? The least?*

There really isn’t that much that I miss. I mean, most of the things I did when I was single, I still do (or could do) now.

If I had to pick one thing, I’d say it’s that I lend a large portion of my daily thoughts and actions to Jess and her well being. But I did that when I was single too, for friends, girlfriends, hopeful hookups and the like. However, I guess that, since I still think of all of those people *and* at the same time, put so much of myself into Jess, I can be stretched a little thin from time to time. It was nice to, every now and then, be able to do exactly what I wanted to do simply because I wanted to do it, with no one to answer to other than myself, my sense of morals, and the few people, if any, that happened to be involved.

However, even now, I can still act in this selfish manner from time to time, I’m just less likely to. Not because Jess requires it, but because of who I am and what I want to be, for her.

I think, even more than that, I miss the way people treated me when I was single. These days, a lot of people treat me like an old, married man. I have friends who don’t flirt like they used to because I’m married now, even though I’ve told them that Jess and I both understand and respect that we both like to flirt. I have guy friends who don’t invite me out with the guys because they want to gawk at women and they think that old married geezers like me don’t like to look at hot women any more. People treat me differently, and I wish they wouldn’t.

As far as what I miss the least goes. I don’t miss, even a little bit, not having someone to come home to every day. I don’t miss not having that security that comes with knowing no matter how I fuck up, who rejects me, what I fail at, what I forget to do, or what bad thing happens, there is someone at home who loves me and cares for me unconditionally and will help me through any trouble I might have, no matter how deep I’ve gotten myself.

Would you like an Interview by yours truly?

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions to be more intimate!
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Here are the questions “Liz”:http://bluestarliz.livejournal.com/ asked me:

1. *You don’t seem to have much interest in attempting a commercial photography career (eg. magazine work, editorial work, etc.). Why is this?*

I do, actually, have an interest in commercial photography. I would love to be able to get paid for doing something that I enjoy, even if I’m not doing it for myself. However, there are a lot of people in this world who would love for someone else to pay them to take photographs. The competition is quite stiff. This means that, in order to make it in that world, I would have to either be very lucky, or put a substantial effort into getting myself into a position like that.

Not having any “official experience” doing commercial work, and not having any formal training at all, this also means that I’d have to start at the bottom rung, which, more than likely means I’d have to put in long hours and lots of hard work for very little pay. At least at first.

In the end, if I really put myself into it, I might break into a 6 figure income. Unless of course I got lucky. If I got a really good break, that would certainly make a difference, but I’m not about to count on it.

So, why suffer for months and years with hard work and puny wages only to do something that, while I may enjoy in theory, will end up being just another job unless I happen to get lucky. I LOVED my current job when I first started doing it. I’m already very successful at my day job, doing quite well, and have a similar, if not greater, earning potential.

If you offered me a job working the same hours I work now, and making what I make now doing commercial photography, I’d certainly take it. It’d be a change of pace. And if you offered me a job allowing me to have my own creative control over the images I make and the jobs I take and I could set my own hours, I’d take a pay cut. But, if I have to work my way up from the bottom in a VERY competitive market, I think I’m much better off staying where I am.

2. *How did you initially get into artistic photography?*

Question #4 in “my Interview from Kristy”:http://revjim.net/2007/02/08/an-interview-from-kristy/ answers this in short, but here’s the long version.

Really, it was just the natural progression of wanting to make interesting images that pushed my desire to make art. At first, mastering the technical aspects of photography was enough. Juggling a whole host of settings, film speeds, development times, processing techniques, and the like took quite a bit to absorb. The fact that anyone other than me found any of my first images interesting was amazing in itself. Once the technique was mastered, I spent a lot of time taking “the perfect chair photograph” or “the perfect fence photograph”. However, I realized that other, technically inferior images, were grabbing even my attention, let alone the attention of others, more than my images were. That’s when I realized that the technical side to photography was only half of the picture.

It was at this point, actually, that I lost interest in photography. I never fancied myself an artist and certainly never considered myself capable of creating something that others would fine artistically interesting. So, realizing that to make “better” images I would have to get into that aspect of it, really took it away from me.

I continued to play with the camera and learn new techniques because I enjoyed it. Eventually, all the technical aspects of photography sort of faded into the background and I was left with the entire world, and a small black box to look at it through. Pushing the technical aspects into the background let my mind concentrate on what looked good without even realizing it. I continued to take photographs, only because I enjoyed it, and it helped me relax. I rarely showed them to anyone. I rarely bothered to even make prints of my work.

Then, one day, someone asked to see some of my photographs. So I showed them. And they liked them. And I was kind of shocked. So I showed them some more. And more people liked them. And that’s when I realized that maybe I did have the ability to create art, and I just never realized it. So I started reading up on art, and art history and what common compositional themes and elements were found in the art of the world and everything sort of grew from that point to where it is now:

I am so caught up in trying to create images that other people will like that I rarely create images just for myself any more. In addition, even though my work, naturally, continues to improve due to experience, I am once again so caught up in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, that I often fail to simply create. It is only in those most free, most inspired moments that I manage to create anything that I consider meaningful.

So now, realizing this, I’m slowly getting back to the point where I am ready to start photographing for me again; where I don’t care if anyone likes the photographs I make except for me, and my model if I am lucky enough to have one. I just want to create, and build, and flirt (with people, and nature, and culture, and danger), and have fun, and learn… and the hell with anything else. And I’m looking for people who want to do that with me.

3. *If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you pick and why?*

I don’t know most parts of the world well enough to select them. I’d like to visit lots of places, but wouldn’t decide to move to any of them until I knew them well enough. However, of the places I do know (basically, the United States and some parts of Canada), I’d select either New England, the North West, or the Mountain Region.

In all 3 cases my selection has to do with a combination of culture and environment. These places seem to uphold individualism, respect creativity, uphold local business, and foster community. On top of that, all three of these places are surrounded by natural and urban environment that promotes exploration, learning, and solitude.

4. *Where did your ram icon set come from?*

I took a bunch of photos of a children’s book entitled “Bill Grogan’s Goat”:http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Grogans-Goat-Mary-Hoberman/dp/0316362328.

5. *What is your guiltiest, secret listening pleasure?*

I like listening to a woman, when she doesn’t know I’m there, just as she’s about to… oh… wait… you mean MUSIC? Oooooh.

Well… I listen to Top 40s quite a bit. Mostly in the car. I don’t usually bother to buy it, or download it, or even find out who sings what. Every now and then a song will strike me and I will, but usually, I just want the sweet sugary goodness for a quick fix. Until it gets stuck in my head. Then I hate it.

“To the left… to the left… everything you own in a box to the left…” get out of my HEEEEEAAAAAAD!