Ideas Are Like Stars

Red.

The color of fire and blood, of intensity, passion, desire and love.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe so many people are worn out by the five months we’ve been through that there’s no passion. No intensity. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe it’s time to put on our pants and get to work. That’s what the late New Orleans chef Leah Chase said after Hurricane Katrina, when people asked her how to rebuild.

In the same sense, we are rebuilding now. Unfortunately we are — as I’ve written earlier — trying to rebuild the house, while it’s still on fire. That may seem fruitless, but what choice do we have? We need the metaphorical house. We need to live. We need to work. We need to just be.

Right now everything is colored by the virus. We need to put it in its place and start to make the changes necessary to adapt to the future. I’m not sure what they are, and they will be different for everybody, but they will be.

That sounds like I’m feeling good. No. But, better. Making photographs will do that for me. So will listening to music. The house has been returned to all speakers pumping out the same music. It is a little disconcerting to walk from room to room and from song to song.

The Picture

It’s a rose. A red rose.

I played with it a lot. I liked it dark. So I went there. After all, you want it darker. Leonard Cohen sang that. It fits the time. But, I want it lighter. We’ve lived in darkness for five months. I suspect that this will be my last dark picture for a while. I had to get it out of my system.

Pictures. They’ve been my life for 48 years. I’ve made a good living from them. I’ve been very lucky. So many have tried and failed.

But.

Things have changed. Many pictures aren’t worth what they were once. Distribution systems are different. Art buyers are different. They don’t expect to pay much. Mostly, pictures aren’t used on paper. They are used on a screen, where there is millions of usages.

The timing might be right.

I’ve long thought that as I got older I didn’t want to hustle as much. I didn’t want to maintain the strictest quality standards that mattered to agencies once upon a time. That’s harder than you think. Most of their quality concerns were based on “what if.”

Even though I need to be outside, I don’t mind spending my time behind a computer making and distributing pictures to all sorts of new methods of getting them to market. The gross sales will be for less, but if the picture works it works. The net could be more because… well, read the next paragraph.

I liken this to music. There is absolutely no reason to need a middle man. Nor, is there a reason to record an entire album at once except as an artistic construct. Mostly, you have to remind people that you are out there. You do that via my least favorite tool. Social media. I know, most of the platforms are data sucks. They want my data. Your data. And, anyone in between. But, that’s what we have. For now. It’s just technology, ever changing, ever moving.

That’s where I’m at. I feel like I’ve passed through something that isn’t done with me yet. At least my head feels like it’s above water. And, that’s a start,

Stay safe. Stay mighty. Enjoy every piece of art.