Recipe for Press and other excitements

I am feeling restless in the most exciting ways.


Last week I went to Amy Flurry's workshop; Recipe for Press (she is the author of a book by the same name), at City Arts Boutique in Woodlawn (also a new discovery). My friend Cory told me about it at a top secret girls group meeting a few weeks ago, and immediately, despite the contradiction for someone who has declared to be "over" trying to get published, I was dead set on going. That probably speaks to just how much I really do want to be published.

After drinking a huge iced coffee from Urban Standard (thank you, Morgan), and a glass of white wine at the event, I was jittery and anxious and ecstatic all at once. Amy mentioned some of the designers and blogs and magazines that always make me swoon, the power of press, the importance of story, and immediately I felt this jolt to DO SOMETHING. Lots of things, really.

 

(Spindle Photography)

I love ideas. I love creating them. I love suggesting them. I love telling people what I think they should do. How they should proceed to better their business or their love life or their happiness. I do not want to create these same lists for myself, however.

At dinner the other night I said that if I had a lot of money (essentially infinite money, mega millions lottery money x10), I would pay people to make all these ideas I so love coming up with happen. As it stands the world seems too large and I have trouble trusting other people with these oh-so-important visions. In reality, I place limits on my ideas. Some of them are very possible. And if I were to be willing to invest in them, I could surely find people to help them come true.

But back to the workshop, I have a very excited feeling about the possibilities and limitlessness of pursuing the right places to tell whatever story it is at the base of my excitement. I'm drawn to people but completely disinterested in only knowing them on the surface. My interest in archaeology reflects that, knowing people based on what they've left behind rather than what they chose to tell you. The thrill I got in taking photos for my dad's newspaper in college, in being given permission to photograph them, such an intimate thing that I felt very privileged in. I still wish sometimes that I had the excuse of working for the newspaper or being an art student. I am very timid about imposing on people in that way. But observing them at weddings, capturing people when they forget I'm there, letting the people that find themselves to be unphotogenic see what they look like when they aren't scowling at a camera...I don't know, but it's such a delightful challenge.

I love stories about artisans, about beautifully made goods, about local people living, and I love photographs of them where they look like the most beautifully detailed souls. I am drawn to publications like Garden and Gun, to photography that creates more questions than answers, to images that take up great physical space, to intentional poses on models and unintentional faces on people.

Garrett and I have talked before about art, and how photography is a difficult art. I mentioned that the only photography that really feels new to me is portraiture, in the sense that the subject makes it interesting. A body of work on one person [I love the idea of a muse and wish I was a man sometimes for that reason, I don't feel like women tend to have muses in the same way] can be interesting in the consistency or inconsistency of the way they photograph. The angles and posture and clothing and hair color/style. If you latch onto a model as an object of intrigue you can become interested in every photograph she's in. With celebrities we admire, we look for whether or not they live the life we think they would when we watch their movies or hear their songs. We want icons. Audrey Hepburns. Or trainwrecks. People are delectable.

I have no idea what stories I will tell. I know that I am bursting with passion but I'm not quite sure where to focus it. I think this year has been the most fulfilling yet, though, like I am realizing something but that it's at the tip of my tongue.