Middle Grey

My first post after quite a hiatus.

“I will do it today”

I say out loud to the empty kitchen as though a question had been asked. In the living room, I lift the blinds and grey surrounds me. Middle grey. That’s the color of the morning sky in late August as I look out the window pouring my first cup of coffee of the day. With the thunderstorm that rolled through last week, the summer is feeling too much like fall. It’s chilly in the house which makes that first hot sip of bitter sweet so much better. As the coffee does its’ morning magic, I consider how to write the first blog post in well over a year. How do I start? What have I got to say? I haven’t had a shoot in two years.

I keep noticing small ways the last few years have affected me and I am getting some passion back. I want to do something, to create something, to be part of a community again. I became very isolated and I was clinically depressed. I had stopped caring about anything, including me, and I just couldn’t find a way out. I hadn’t sold one copy of the guide I wrote, models and photographers I knew had pulled way back as I had gotten worse, and the event that I had organized which failed gave me good reasons to quit. It was quite humbling, I assure you. I had taken it very personally and felt like a failure and incapable of anything really. I still feel like that but I am practicing my self-awareness and slowly stopping those automatic thoughts. In all honesty, I did not do a good job managing the event and I was ‘drama’ as a friend. I have planned and managed many events with the largest being 35,000 people and the Honda Offshore Powerboat Grand Prix. I know what I am doing and I would have been fired for rookie mistakes if I performed the way I did. Now, I also had serious depression and was making decisions I cringe at when I look back now. I also learnt that losing my business I had built up over 7 years hit me hard and having another business idea (the Vancouver studio house) fall apart so quickly afterwards just piled one failure on top of another one. I was kind of broken for a while.

I can with all honesty say that the last 3 years have been the hardest I have gone through mentally. Now, I have to let it go and put things back together again. I have a home very close to my sons and I have a good job with a great firm. I have space and I am healthier and grounded again. It feels really good.

The rain runs down the window. I lower the blind and sit in my only chair in the living room. A red tub chair. I bought it last week because it reminds me of the studio house in Vancouver. We had two set against a black paneled wall and they worked so well that when I moved, the two red chairs went to another studio photographer.

I am aching to shoot and I have tried landscapes, street stuff, self-portraits but none of that hits the mark like a fine art shoot. However, models are expensive and although I have a great job now, the cost of living is an “inflationary environment” as I heard it described by a financial expert. No, it’s prohibitively damaging. People are struggling, rents are crippling, working overtime to make ends meet, and so expendable income isn’t really a thing. Hobbies tend to take a back seat in this environment, especially if they incur costs. Mine does.

So, I am having to rethink how to make photography not only viable but an active ongoing hobby that doesn’t cost a lot. I also don’t have the space I did before so concepts are very limited. The obvious choice for me is to concentrate on portrait photography and expand my network to find willing subjects for other concepts. Using (let’s just say) the general public is quite challenging.

“All the women you photograph are beautiful”. I have heard this many times. “You do a lot of nudes……” So often followed with the pregnant pause. Or just no reply at all. Maybe my work isn’t as good as I hope it is. I also think not having one particular style affects what people imagine they would get back after a shoot. Muted painterly or black and white, maybe a saturated color print. I battle with this all the time in my mind. I must admit to most compliments that I get for my work are for my black and white work. Yet not everything suits black and white and vice-versa.

I find myself setting up the studio for portraits and doing self-portraits to test different lighting setups and styles to find one I can commit to. I started with a promo-like shot that would show me in a work-like environment. One large light on me and a bare flash onto a large reflector to light up the space behind me.

Then something moodier. One side light and an overhead beauty dish shot with a different angle.

Last night, a straight-up color portrait with a large side main light, an opposite side reflector and an overhead beauty dish.

The color grade and the Van Gogh lighting works best in my opinion but it’s hard to nail when shooting self-portraits with a 10 second timer. I’m pretty low tech.

I am putting together a local workshop for photographers interested in dramatic lighting such as the Van Gogh classic. Simple one light setups are affordable and can produce wonderful results. It will last about an hour and a half with a break in the middle. The area I live has a decent population of photographers so it might work. It will help put my name out there as a portrait guy too. As for money, I will charge a small fee to get in with a limited number of seats ( I think I can get 10 in my garage). To start rebranding more as a portrait photographer, I will need to do a bunch for free and charge where I can. After all, it is a hobby.

I will start to write here again and I will endeavor to get back to topics other than me. Thank you to the subscribers and for hanging around to have a read.

Robin