THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

I've been wanting to write a bit of a formal paper explaining the influences that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) has had on my Cemetery Girls project for some time now, but have floundered every time I've tried to start it. Part of where the desire to write this "paper" comes from was in wanting to offer an explanation to Juliet Landau (Drusilla, from BtVS) in my attempts to attract her into becoming a participant in the project. I probably misfired some of my ideas to her though in my personal communications because I vaguely referred to "her" as a subconscious influence on where my original inspiration for this photo project came from, when in reality, it is the "many girls" of BtVS that float around in my subconscious inspirational playgrounds and drawing boards. I would like to have an opportunity to photograph, not only Juliet but also any of the other actresses that were involved in Joss Whedon's masterpiece of pop-cultural reflections o...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NakicbfCYKg

Well, I did it! I could have started working on this months ago, but actually only began 2 weeks ago. It was not that difficult of a task, putting this book together but in many ways it was a very grand task for me. For one thing, publishing this book brings me to a crossroads with my photography. Originally I wanted to photograph 100 women for this book, and at this time I've only photographed 48. This could mean that I go on with the project and eventually publish a "volume 2". Or it means that I could stop now and find something new to do. Regardless of what I do I am proud of this publication and it is with humble joy that I thank all the women that have participated in the project with me. I also thank all of my friends and family that have encouraged me, and/or modeled for me. There have been detractors along the way too. Something I still don't quite understand. I may have more to say about all of this later, but for now I just wanted to share this image. Part ...

this is a pretty amazing image, if i do say so myself! it is a collage of over 300 images compiled by using the new collage feature of Picasa 3, available for free download by The Google Company. this is a miniaturized version, viewable on your computer screen. the original, printable size is 71 x 44 inches!! the time it took to compile this image was nearly 20 min on my nearly 4 year old Sony Vaio desktop. And these are my unedited photos too. i just threw this together on a whim to see if the program and my computer could handle generating such a massive image.

Sometimes you don't know who or what you are until someone else shows you. I've been doing this "Cemetery Girl" photo project for over a year now and I've worked with close to 50 different models but it has been a rare moment when I've been caught in action. This photo was taken by photographer friend Rachel Stanich (who I met at DVC 2 years ago) when I was doing the "Maggie and Elizabeth - Cemetery Girls" shoot in, I think, January of this year.

It feels as if my life is just beginning to hit it's stride. Remember I talked about cycles of 7 years being significant restorative periods of time? And that this year I am living my 7th 7 (turned 49 years old in September)? Tomorrow night I have the biggest photo gig of my life so far. I have photo/press passes to cover the Coheed and Cambria concert at The Warfield in San Francisco. I have earned the privilege of receiving regular photo and writing assignments for the online music zine, groundcountrolmag . After the first concert review I wrote for them last month they asked me to send them a "wish list" of shows that I would like to cover. I will be at a minimum, the writer for upcoming shows by The Cult, The Waterboys, and Queens of the Stone Age. How this worked out for me to be the writer and photographer for C&C happened (I think) because I only requested the show last week and they didn't have a photographer available for the show! Am I jazzed? Yeah, yo...