Rattle

After a week of admiration I finally exchanged virtual credit for a virtual copy of the new R.E.M. album Accelerate after watching the Stipe & Co. collaboration with Vincent Moon and the amazing Take Away Show crew. I already knew the album was a return to all of the things that had resounded in me with the band pre-Berry's exit, and had earlier in my older brother Ryan back when we lived in rural Georgia during the Chronic Town days, but it was seeing the band after all of this time and fame open themselves up/bare to something as potentially difficult as indie/DIY live music filmmaking that loosened my purse strings.

If I ever get to the point where I can quantify that I made it in whatever way is important to me, I hope I have the integrity, humility, and passion to risk/disregard that success again with returning back to the beginning and sinking into something hard - such as the subsequent collaboration between R.E.M. and Moon and creation of video web projects NinetyNights and SupernaturalSuperserious. The whole affair, regardless of the outcome, deeply turns me on from a creative perspective. I suppose its the basic reason why we keep moving with Blueeyes...

I was thinking about all of this yesterday when I bounced over to a day-in-the-life post from Timothy Archibald via Rachel/PhotoShelter recounting his recent composite shoot for Runner's World (*RH, this is by FAR your best post yet - thanks). Interspersed with the how do I do this stuff is the note about authenticity and the search for humanity in editorial portraiture and I was struck in the same way again. I had recently been spending a good deal of time on TA's website when preparing my new stripped down best of '08 JL.com update (I think its cool how few images you have there, Timothy - very elegant approach to what you are about), and that play between authenticity/humanity and the logistical challenge of larger productions that create these fictional empty, but very pretty, concept-driven visions was heavy on my mind.

So I guess the way it distills in my head is in thinking about the way that my own editorial work has been shifting (over the last few years) and the way that I've been using and thinking about light. Honestly I've just finally gotten familiar and comfortable with all of the tools of location lighting that I'm really starting to enjoy how I can use it and make it my own, which is perhaps the way that TA feels about the larger productions... its finally become something he is good at so there is an inherent pleasure in pulling them off for his clients.

Last week I bought a fairly polarizing piece of lighting equipment that I had planned on always keeping at a distance because of its constant overuse over the last several years. But with the hope that I can do something different with it I'm excited to open myself to something different and redefine the way that I try to record authenticity in my portraits. Maybe its a bit backwards, but with all of this more I want to try to strip things back and bring the subject forward in a bigger way. Like TA and a lot of us, I suspect, the ultimate judge will be The Fiancée and her wonderful ability to see through all of the bullshit and figure out if I've actually achieved anything at all.

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Comments (3)

This was a good read John. Thanks for the links as well. A friend recently turned me on to Moon, but haven't had a chance to really check him out. Thanks for reminding me. You've been talking about authenticity in your work, primarily your portraiture. We should talk more about that. I'm curious to learn more about your perspective and thoughts on the matter when it comes to authenticity in editorial/commercial portraiture.

That's a great question my friend -- perhaps best answered in a separate post. Lets talk about how we can bounce a few things off of each other.

That last line's especially right on. Amazing how the disinterested girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/wife/husband/partner/whatever always sees right through all the chaff that can be so blinding when you're in the middle of it.

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