debate about counting…

do you have 10,000 of something that you’ve created? i have 9,980 things i’ve created. and they are all in one place where they can be experienced. that number changes daily though. it’s increasing. and i don’t put junk there either. every one of those 9,980 things are creative expressions that go through my personal standards of quality. that’s the way art is, isn’t it? the artist is the ultimate judge. i’ve created art before that i’ve hated. or at least felt such a rage of emotions stir up inside of me that i couldn’t stand to look at it. (this instance was during a drawing class i participated in for only two sessions when i lived in Mendocino back in 1980. and because of what happened there i will never take a drawing or painting class again, the self revelation was so powerful it frightened me.) i ended up burning the things i drew. well, and then i pissed on the ashes.

i produce a lot of photographs. because it is easy for me to. if i could write as easily as i can photograph i’d have written my Ulysses & Finnegan’s Wake by now. this 10,000 image thing though, it has me burning up inside. i don’t know if i’ll just stop at that 9,999th photograph and then put my cameras away, or if i’ll delete my Flickr account, or if i’ll actually be so caught up in editing new images that i won’t realize i passed 10,000 until i’m up to 10,011… in a lot of ways it doesn’t matter, but in others it does.

Flickr actually intensifies my social ostracizing. it used to be a place where i felt welcomed, part of the family, admired, appreciated, and not oh so lonely. but photography is an obsession to me. i can’t get through a day without taking new photographs. it is the act of CREATION, not the sitting around and talking about it that drives me. it is a face of fire that i feel looking back at me though. i wasn’t going to bellyache, too much at least, in this post, but it feels good to complain.

For example, look at this Flickr photograph . No, it is not mine, silly! i want you to notice the statistics though. It has been viewed 16,432 times, 1,680 people consider it a favorite and it has been commented on over 490 times. and i doubt that it is the most popular photograph in Flickr either. in contrast, my most viewed photograph racks up 6,188 views, 4 favorites and 4 comments. why it is so popular for views baffles me. why it is not fav’d or commented on is more apparent. so this leads me to think three different things; my photography sucks, Flickr is broken, or people just prefer women as photographers. if a woman had taken this photograph i bet it would be as popular as Rosie Hardy’s work. (oh, and in defense of the Flickr is broken argument, THIS photo of Kelly is much better than the popular one.

so i have a new Cemetery Girl photo shoot scheduled for tomorrow. one that i should be more excited about doing than i actually am. my body is aching so much today i just can’t believe i’m going to have the strength to drive to Santa Cruz tomorrow, as scheduled/promised to photograph these two beautiful anthropology students from UCSC. if the shoot does happen i’ll hit that 10k mark in a couple of days with these new photos. and i really should not do this shoot either. i should be resting my body and letting it recuperate from all this fatigue and tension. help it heal rather than let it’s manic drive to be a flame that cannot be doused burn me to a crisp. if i drive and shoot tomorrow, i am going to be in 100x more physical discomfort than i am now for the next two weeks.

is this the price we pay for art? is my art worth suffering this much to make worth it? what if i am scheduled to die this weekend. if i did not take these photographs tomorrow would the world suffer too? from not getting to see them? oh, and by the “Flickr is broken” statement, i mean has Flickr become so huge and flooded with inconsequential snapshots that the real art does not rise to the surface any longer. mind you, if you prostitute yourself on Flickr; join 1,000 groups and flood them with your images and kiss up to other people about how amazing their images are, you’ll get kissed up to back. i used to be a Flickr whore. not any more though. come that 10,000th photo i may just decide to hit the “delete account” button. or not.

can’t sit here any longer. this pain is orgasmic. out.

& remember. Jesus didn’t have a camera.