THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

Some ideas about the influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my Cemetery Girls photography project and story telling. The roots of my ideas of Cemetery Girls genuinely were buried in my subconscious, going back to memories of visits to cemeteries with my mother and grandmother during summer vacations in Ohio when I was a young boy. That is the very first place this idea came from. During the years of my deepest depression suffering from the troubles of being treated for bipolar disorder I spent 5 years in a cocoon of hibernation (it was really agoraphobia mixed with being over medicated and mis-medicated). That is when I became a devotee of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. During the years of first run episodes and when reruns went into syndication I watched a minimum of 4 hours of Buffy episodes every weekday. My schedule rotated around being awake in time to watch Buffy. This seriously went on for at least 5 years. I loved the story. I loved the characters. I loved the mythology. The s...

this project is a step in a new direction for me. someone that i've become acquainted with on the internet coauthored this new book with me. it contains poetry inspired by my photography written by a young woman from Minnesota that has found inspiration in my work. her name is Grace Carthey. we already have two more like-themed books in the works. (pictures are pretty to look at online but nothing is more gratifying than holding a copy of a well designed/crafted book made by a friend in your own hands. buy a copy, won't you?) Cemetery Girl Poems by Gracie & Darko | Make Your Own Book

i had coffee with my friend/model Rachel F. in Moraga on Friday so i could show her the new book. we're talking about doing a new shoot together this week. not sure if i'm fully ready to go out and create new images yet though.

click on this to see it large. this is available for sale.

Here is the latest addition to my "Cemetery Girl" collection.

This video was posted by Zoe Keating yesterday on her Facebook page. I urge you to take the time to get quiet in your head and your day and watch and listen to her perform. She is one of the most amazing one-woman performing shows in the world. I'm crossing my fingers that she and I will be doing a photo shoot together next month after she returns home from her current European tour. I approached her about 6 weeks ago via a letter at her MySpace page and she was very enthusiastic about the idea of becoming one of my "Cemetery Girls". Stay tuned as I'll let you know when we confirm a date.

My photo shoot with Niki was much earlier this year, in March. She was the first model that I had found and made contact with at Model Mayhem . She lives in Stockton and at the time we first started talking about doing a shoot together, Stockton didn't seem that far away. I think it was actually February when we first made contact. She had made a comment on one of my photos. We had planned on doing a shoot on pretty short notice, like in March... but as some of you loyal readers will remember I fell into a pretty black depression during March and April. I contacted her again in early May and we had our shoot scheduled by the end of the month. It was a sunny day, temp in the low 80's and I was doing a dog walking job at the time. I remember that the timing was a bit critical in that I could only leave the dog alone in its house in San Ramon for 4-5 hours. I had to jet out to Stockton, do the shoot and then be back in San Ramon in time to take the dog for another walk. ANYWAY.....

I became fascinated by Wynd the first time I looked at her portfolio on Model Mayhem . Mind you, I don't really have an interest in shooting nudes and that is the way Wynd prefers to model. We never discussed it as I guess my portfolio speaks for itself. No, what intrigued me about Wynd was her eyes and her hair. Later, as we communicated more, I became fascinated about her lifestyle too. Anyway, Wynd is a professional model and no longer does shoots in which she trades her time for a cd or prints (TF-CD/P). I came upon her at a time when I was sort of able to talk her into a trade with me though. I gave her a condition, that if she were able to get a paying gig on the day of our shoot it would be ok to cancel on me. I also told her that I would give her a "gratuity" of $20 so that she could buy some dinner after our shoot (or do whatever she wanted to with the money). We started this conversation in March and she said that if she was going to do a shoot with me it wou...

i just need to talk out loud a little bit. i hit a new level of understanding about the vision of my novel today. it is a bit of a breakthrough in some ways. i photographed a teenage girl in the actual cemetery where my story takes place. THIS is what my entire "Cemetery Girl" photo project has been about. enabling me to have a real vision of what my character truly may have looked like. this girl, Kim, is the daughter of one of my oldest acquaintances from high school. Kim is the exact age of my novel's main character, and even though she does not look exactly like i imagine my character's looks to be, capturing her today, walking into this cemetery for the first time ever helped me imagine in a very realistic sense just what it may have felt like for my character the first time she stepped foot here. whether i will do more work with Kim in the cemetery later, or if I will entirely change the focus of who i shoot for this project to be just teenage girls, i don't...

something happened to me tonight that many people would be inclined to wrongly interpret were it to happen to themselves. i pride myself in being able to decipher esoteric events with wisdom. i was in my cemetery, THE cemetery where i have done all of my research for my novel. you know the one. i had not brought candles for my special ones there since just before christmas. and i especially like to bring candles during these very, very cold, long nights of winter as i suspect those whose spirits still dwell there feel especially lonely when most of us have warm places for our slumber. recently i have only been bringing 4 candles to the cemetery; one for Krista, one for Grant, one for Tara and the last for Callie. and i walked my normal pathway starting at Krista's grave then circling back by hers on my way back to my car. when i got back to Krista's grave tonight i saw something that i had seen before but usually only on return visits. her candle had "fallen" over o...

this is the last posting i will send automatic email notice alerts to. unless you respond to this notification and specify that you want to continue to receive posting alerts i will remove your email address from the mailing list. there are a couple of you i already know need to receive the notifications and i will leave your names on the list ( Jeff M. & Robin S.). my reasoning is that if you only read my postings from the emails you do not see what is happening on the actual blog page. photos, videos, music - other changes. ok? now on to what is important. life is always new, isn't it? i ran into a very new experience of so-called-life last night, yet it had an old taste to me as well. i'm so exhausted emotionally and physically i can hardly even bring myself to describe it to you. god, my mind is just jumping from "beginning of sentence" to a different "beginning of sentence" to start to tell you the story but i can't decide what to tell you first...