NIGHT RAIN RIO

 

From new book coming, HOW TO TAKE BETTER PICTURES : USEFUL THOUGHTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS EVERYWHERE

 

Every time i get ready to quit Burn, something happens which keeps me in the game for another 5 minutes…I am sure you can imagine I often have to ask myself “is all this really worth it?”…a pretty typical thought for all of us , most of the time, regarding wherever any of us are putting our psychic energy…so, I really came into Burn 02 thinking , ok this is it…done..finish with flourish

Then I actually held 02 in my hands.  Hmm, THIS is something…THIS is it…and I honestly can say that I could easily (well not easily) rock out at least 10 issues before my feet even hit the floor from a content standpoint…I am in touch with just that many photographers and have so many of the iconics and emerging ready to throw their best efforts into this pot…so that’s nice…at this point in my life, that’s just nice..…i like that….a peer group after many many years can love you or hate you….

At the same time, oddly I have some buying into my “future”…that’s a new one for me…yes, buying work, actually paying me for work that I have not done yet…no, not commissions/assignments, but prints out of my darkroom… selling and the darkroom is still not done yet..a show and book launch at the Australian Center of Photography booked, done, on for their fall 2012, and I am on my way out the door to go shoot a chapter of this show/book in a few weeks…(simultaneous piece in NatGeo same time) ..yet nobody is this crazy…curators will be nervous, my friends will abandon me, all stuff I love of course, and then I will ride into town with the show…whew..with work that could have been better if I had just been organized!!! smiling…

Point is: my time is going 100% into you/Burn and 100% into me and my work…somehow it is possible …I am on it..somehow doing it..comfortably..learned to zen it…minimal stress….not much sleep , but the minute I fall asleep I wake up with a new idea…yet still I cannot help succumb to temptation and let my mind drift into total selfishness to manifest the hell out of my own work ….and yet just about the time i get ready to drop the hammer on Burn, something happens…

Five minutes ago it happened…dammit,yes, one of dozens of emails i get a day to open a link and look at work and 99% of the time it is hard work to look carefully and rarely a spark and lo and behold tonight i open up our friend Jukka Onnela work and just got blown away..I looked at it for maybe 30 seconds tops…ok maybe two minutes tops tops…fast anyway…and I KNEW right away, that I had to publish his book…no, not right now nothing else is right now, but next year or whenever the time is right….Jukka tells me I am the only one who has seen this particular sequence of work…maybe I have that part wrong…but never mind, not important …so dammit, now i am stuck putting all of my energies into somebody else!! his is brilliant work, you will see, you will see…a powerful  extended version of what he had in 01..

So what exactly is the photo/life lesson here?

Isn’t is obvious? Time worn. Works. Every time. Do what you love passionately and pass the baton to others as often as possible. Makes for a better day. Or rainy night.

Or, looking at it another way:

If you can get to a stage in your work and believe you are playing the piano, then you ARE playing the piano.

Just a state of mind, just a state of mind.

-DAH-

Published on September 18, 2011 by david alan harvey. 87 Comments

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