Last April I made a blog post about inspiration. I meant every word of it but I couldn’t listen to myself. Couldn’t? Wouldn’t? Shit, I don’t know. I could speak it but couldn’t hear it.

I’ve been quite busy with client work and I’m so thankful for that. Honestly though, I haven’t given two shits about photography for over a year now. I didn’t care about cameras. Lights. Pictures. The industry. Blogs. Other photographers. Myself. Portraits. Street. Art. That little winter depression stuff I deal with settled in and set up shop.

A few months ago I was seriously thinking about closing the doors, or rather, just handing over the keys to my son, Caleb, and just walk away from it. F*ck it. Bye Felicia.

Breathe.

Thank God for my friends, yoga, and wine.

Breathe Zack. Just shut the hell up and breathe.

Why can’t we give ourselves the grace we extend to those around us?

Then I saw this…

Thank God for David Bowie.

That took me back to that great Chuck Close quote that I mentioned last year on this blog.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

The rest of us just show up and get to work.

All the best ideas come from the process; they come from the work itself.

Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive.

Zack. GET THE F*CK TO WORK.

So I put a call out for subjects in the Atlanta area to immediately start shooting. I’m getting to work. Fuck all this sitting around being a depressive fuck. Get off your ass. Get to work.

So here’s the plan for the next little bit y’all. I can’t review cameras or talk about lighting scenarios or any of that until I get myself restarted. What I can do is share some of what I’m doing along the way. All that other stuff will return at some point. When? Some point. When? Whenever I’m a healthier person.

Let’s recap. I’ve been a depressive shit for over a year and was ready to toss in the towel. Thanks to my friends Stacy, Kevin, Dan, David Bowie, Chuck Close, and my son, Caleb, I’ve had my hand held through the process and then began to feel the gentle kicks to my ass to get up, shake it off, and learn to walk again.

I’m a photographer who works with people. I have zero interest in still life, architecture, nature, etc. I need people to help me make what I want to make. I put a call out on social media for people in Atlanta. I’ve had 60 people and counting reply. I started compiling a master casting list. It looks like this.

I quickly found how difficult of a task this is going to be. I was talking to folks via multiple platforms and trying to get everyone to just text me. After twenty text strings I was getting overwhelmed. Dan the man created an online form that everyone can fill out, upload a headshot or selfie, tell me their sizes for wardrobe, when they are most likely available, etc, etc. I’m now in the process of sending this to folks interested in a shoot.

I have an ambiguous name for this project that’s basically two words. ________ & ________ The photos I shoot have to match one of those two words. I am NOT shooting headshots. I’m NOT shooting promos. I’m NOT acting like these are client shoots. I’m NOT shooting on white seamless. That’s all stuff I do anyway. I’m am, like Bowie says, getting to the place where my feet aren’t touching the bottom. I need to head into deeper waters. Headshots and white seamless sure as hell aren’t going to get me there.

I actually hate calling this a project. I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s just me getting the f*ck to work.

There will be photos that I shoot that the subject might not like of themselves. It sure as hell won’t be something they put on their LinkedIn profile. For some of my ideas I’m simply casting people into a role that I think they can fill.

#NerdTalk – I’m shooting all of this on the new PhaseOne XF camera and the 100MP IQ3 back. Capture Integration worked out a trade in deal and I said, “Screw it. Yeah. I want that big ass ridiculous camera.” Yes. It is all sorts of unbelievable. I have never experienced a digital camera like this thing. I’ll get to that later. When? L8R.

I know many many many of you have asked about my X-Pro2 review. That’s coming too. At some point. Please don’t ask when. At some point. In the future. Here’s the basic review… The X-Pro2 is my number one most favorite interchangeable lens camera I’ve ever owned in the mirrorless to DSLR range. Ten thumbs up on that camera. But. That’s it. I’m not saying anything else for now. Also, I haven’t laid eyes on an X-T2. So… I have no idea. I hear it’s awesome. No reason to think it wouldn’t be.

I will post photos and some stories or something technical about what I’m shooting now. Comments will be disabled for those posts because I need to just do work, show work, and keep moving without going into a lot of back and forth about it. I have to get up, dust myself off, and find my stride again. If I don’t find my stride I’ll just be spewing noise into the world and God knows we sure as hell don’t need anymore noise in the world.

To signal!

I hope all of you are doing well. Let’s all get the f*ck to work for a bit shall we?

Cheers,

Zack