I came home from school today frustrated. This quarter is one of those periods in college where you put in the time and jump through the hoops by taking classes that don't really pertain to your particular field of study. This will take discipline and patience, two things that I don't have an overabundance of.

So I came home frustrated and slightly grumpy. Day one and I'm sick of it already. In a fit of crab-assery, I grabbed my BAMF new camera and stormed through my apartment, setting out to take an amazing picture to make myself feel better about the utter lack of actual PHOTOGRAPHY this quarter (bitches).

Trouble was I was home alone, so I'd have to improvise with inanimate objects. No worries. I snapped a few cool shots of the sconces in my apartment.


Hell yeah. Yellow vs. black is bad ass. And see how dark that shit is? There was so much natural light in that room at that moment. My camera is one bad mamajamma.

Now what?

I don't fucking know, that's what.

I stood in my living room and turned around and around and around, looking for something to grab me, something that screamed, "YO! YOU! I'M AN INTERESTING SUBJECT WITH COMPLEX LINES AND SHAPES! YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS WITH YOUR BAMF CAMERA!" That's not exactly how it works, so nothing did.

I moped around for awhile, completely devoid of inspiration. I looked through old photos that I'd taken. I looked through thefashionspot to see if the likes of Steven Meisel, Inez van Lamsweerde, Greg Kadel, or even Terry Richardson (who I fucking hate -- although the linked picture is one of my favorites... weird) could stir the creative juices. The only thing that even remotely inspired me was David LaChapelle's "Jesus Is My Homeboy" editorial from four years ago. (1 2 3 4 5 6) It's not really my thing, but Homes had a vision and went balls to the wall as usual.

Snap! There it was. People! I've known that landscape and nature photography aren't my bag, but I've secretly been open to it, because you never know where the waxing and waning of the interests will end up. I just can't get into it. I get bored looking at 87% of the photos. I appreciate them, for sure, but I find them very boring. JUDGE ME! I want to shoot people. I need living breathing pose-able people who take direction and bring something to the table. I want cheekbones, brow lines, strong jaws, dead eyes, smiling eyes, what have you. That's what I want. And not much else.

The other dude that totally turns my crank is Erwin Wurm. I've been vaguely aware of him for about three or four years, but today I did my homework and his work really struck a chord with me.

Snap! The other half of the revelation. I don't only take photos, I make photos. I stage them. Every aspect is tightly controlled down to the tiniest detail. It's all created. It's all part of the vision. Random acts of lighting and development happen sometimes, but it all still works out for the overall concept.

In hindsight, it's all very obvious. These are things that I probably knew all along and are probably glaringly evident to my friends, but sometimes you just have to come to them.

So I'm now full of ideas, and I'm ready to put them into pixels. And, of course, I have the two best creative/artistic directors (Bombard & Matz) and the best key grip in the whole world (Kotlarek) that always help me reach exactly what I didn't even know I wanted. And ps, my models are always fierce as hell.

I guess what I'm saying is watch the fuck out.