#You know a solid 90% of the time I’m certain my writing is garbage and I only post it to feel accomplished

[chibipandaao3]

I might post this Goddess Bless You From Death fic this weekend 😅 because it’s basically done and because I have no chill.

I think it reads very different from the Charlie fics — which is good, considering it’s a different character. Still weird though.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Houses With Teeth | Writing Update

Hey People of Earth!

What is this shiny new title--is she a short story, is she a... a new novel?? Or is she the seventh book of FOSTERED because apparently that series never ends!! Haha.

Ha.

So yes! This is the first update for--yes!--book 7 of FOSTERED! A few things you’ve probably already noticed:

The title is not a past tense verb and we STAN. If you haven’t noticed books 1-6 of the series follow a verb-ED structure, and I honestly became so over it by book four but kept up with it for consistency’s sake. I debated for probably two seconds before I settled that I am TIRED of these UGLY fostered titles, so we have made a CHANGE. Honestly, I kind of needed this change because this book is going to be kind of... different from the others (genre, tone, etc, etc), and I needed a more concrete separation from Old Fostered to New Fostered.

Originally, this title actually belonged to REWIRED for about 2 hours before I decided to give it to the new book. This was my thought process:

Me want new title for REWIRED, this title = trash

*comes up with new title*

nvm i’ll never be able to think of a title better than this for book 7

(I’d like to say my process was more thoughtful than this but this is literally how it happened oops)

While trying to come up with titles for the three sections of Rewired, I came up with houses for part 2. This is what sparked me to think of the title HOUSES WITH TEETH. I changed part two’s name because houses literally made no sense in conjunction with the chapters, and I’m happy about it since I looove this title. 

So without further ado, let’s get into it!

I honestly have been struggling with the idea of this book for a very long time. As I’ve mentioned, FOSTERED’s 5 year anniversary will be coming up this October--AKA I’ve been writing this series for a very long time! I grew up with this series and its characters and whilst it’s all been very special to me in my development as an adolescent, I’m also older now, and my tastes in both writing and books have changed immensely. I knew I still had a story kicking here with FOSTERED, so I could have ended the series I just had one thought that held me back: why end it when it feels like it’s only just begun?

For a very long time, I severely misunderstood MANY of my characters in Fostered. Is this because I don’t characterize and blindly pants all of my novels hahahah possibly. Keeping in mind that the FOSTERED novels on average usually only took me about 2-5 months to complete, despite writing with these babes for 5 years, I still failed to understand them as characters. I don’t think this is exactly wrong--I understood as much as I needed to get through the first five books. 

However, this idea that my characters were beyond what I’d made for them really confronted me when I started writing book six. I soon realized that literally 90% of the cast is made up of garbage people I absolutely love, and that in general, I really like writing about dark, strange, unsettling things. But this realization came as I was writing the sixth book in the series--very late! Though I acknowledge at some point FOSTERED will cease to be (rip), this idea of leaving it when there was, to say it simply, SO MUCH JUICY TEA, would feel like an injustice. 

This is where this book comes into play! Although this isn’t a chapter update (more of a preliminary intro, if you will), I’ve had some time to think about the novel itself. Though I still really don’t have solid footing on the plot, it’s got an aesthetic and that’s... enough??

I made a mini moodboard of all the things HOUSES WITH TEETH. Here it is:

Process:

I’ve been struggling a lottttt with this book lately because I honestly don’t know what it is?? So far I know a few major things like Reeve being 20 and living in NYC, Foster being a central character, etc etc, but the book hasn’t materialized beyond these things? I feel very headless working on this project, which I know means I need to do a lot more thinking/planning before diving in. Because it’s slightly different from the rest of the books, it’s taking a bit more elbow grease to work into.

I recently changed the tense from present to past, and I think this helped?? Possibly?? I don’t exactly know what the story is in past tense, but I also didn’t know what it was in the present so lol I think the experimentation is good for me. For now, I’ve kind of put this guy on the back burner while I work on other things, but I have drafted some of it, the first ‘present’ version in a writing sprint because girl needed a push, and the second ‘past’ version pretty recently. I do like both, though they kind of achieve different things. I was having trouble keeping momentum with the present version, hence the switch, but I am having trouble transferring Reeve’s cynicism into the past. 

I am not fully certain on plot yet because of these things, so I’m not confident enough to share a summary, but I do have some excerpts! With that said, there’s a lot that could change, so everything I share here is malleable/could change. 

Excerpts:

The first excerpts I’ll share are from the ‘present’ version of this story, which is how I initially started drafting! I do like a lot of it, I just don’t think I can keep up with the tense without running out of steam.

This is the opening. I’ll share both from the present and past tense versions so you can see how different they are (because oh boy are they!). For some context, Reeve is cleaning up some broken herb planter pots from her sink after she believes Ethel, the ghost in her apartment, has knocked them down:

The apartment is haunted but Joel won’t get a priest until he sees proof. You won’t see proof of the paranormal, I’ve explained, but Joel doesn’t care. Joel is atheist and my landlord. He thinks Christians are Satan worshippers, and I haven’t ever disagreed. But there’s a ghost. Her name is Ethel.

Ethel is twenty and was murdered in this apartment. A cold case. She hates New York City, too buzzy, too fluid, the traffic vulgar and boring. I intuit Ethel, which sounds like bullshit, because it is. I doubted her and she cut my hair in my sleep. Ethel hates this apartment.

idk what is up with the sentence structure here but:

Once I’ve cleared the first pot from the sink, I work on the next, a wilted clump of cilantro. Unrooting it from the splinters of terracotta and placing whatever I can salvage on a paper towel. The de-potted herbs intestinal, like webbings of medicinal veins. Ollie’s movie muttering. The motor of the refrigerator gruelling and wet. In my head I tick off the herbs I’ve saved so far: thyme, rosemary, parsley, dill. All the pots empty and bagged for the garbage. I grab the notepad from the fridge and make a note: buy better pots. 

In the middle of cleaning up the pots, Reeve gets a phone call and answers, assuming it’s her landlord/roommate/semi-boyfriend Joel. I wrote all of this during a writing sprint with my buddies and I haven’t looked at it since. There are parts I like and some parts I don’t lol: 

Static echoes through the speaker and it’s a telemarketer, a wrong number, a prank call from two teenage girls in Indiana, Ethel on the other line. But then there’s a clink and someone clearing their throat. “You’re in Manhattan?”

The familiar swell of his voice through the line is like the shaft of a finger tracing the notches of my spine. His voice crackles, bad connection, and I want to use it as an excuse to hang up, but don’t. I finger the leftover bits of terracotta in the sink, swirling the mud against the stainless steel.

“Who is this?” I say this because it’s easier. There are not explanations if I’m just from the city. The distant shimmer of music from his side fills the dead air, the melody gentle. Outside, Marty from the convenience store walks her golden retriever, bustling through the suburban neighborhood across the road. The woman who just started her shift at the apartment’s lobby smokes absently on the drive-up. I put the phone between my shoulder and my ear and gnaw at my fingernails.

“Your brother.” I picture him on the veranda of some Delaware beach house, playing lazy games of Parcheesi with Harrison, his hair long and unattractive to the girl he tries to impress at the public pool. Sharing a cigarette with his roommate-boyfriend-co-worker. The tobacco protruding into his lungs, feeding through his throat.

Marty and her dog have made it to the streetlamp outside of the complex; Marty on the phone, the dog sniffing at a fire hydrant. I lean over the sink and mix bits of plant fertilizer and water from the drain with my pinkie. It’s easy to imagine him by the ocean, the porch of his new place gritty with sand. The ice cream truck whirring lazily around the block.

Blowing smoke from the cigarette out the window, onto Marty and her dog, “How did you get this number?”    

“Your ad in the paper. I’m calling to fill that position.”

This is the last of ‘present’ HWT that I’ll share which I do rather like! This is the continuation of their conversation:

“I think you have the wrong number.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say. I last saw Lonan nine, ten, eleven months ago, in an unmemorable daze. Sitting glumly in the shade of the cabin with a magazine and cigarette, staring sunward as we rolled out of the lot. Bristles of burr bushes, mosquitoes nipping at his elbows. His phone call feels criminal.

“Why Manhattan?” he asks.

“Better restaurants.”

“I want to fill that room you’re renting.”

“And what about Harrison?”

“He’ll come.”

“It’s an ad for a couch. You can’t both stay on the couch.”

These excerpts are from the ‘past’ version of HWT, again, the first page or so (unedited as well):

Three summers after my father died, he called the phone in my apartment and abruptly hung up. I’d heard his voice for only a second, a brief hello, and it was only when I considered the disconnect to be my fault—a clumsy fumble of the thumb, that I remembered he was dead. It was an easy write off. My father had been appearing in my dreams for six months before he first called. I told no one because I didn’t have to. I convinced myself I was going crazy. I lit a cigarette and smoked over the herb planter Joel and I had set up the week before. No matter how much I tried, every single one died. A half hour after the call, off the brim of a cornfield, a young woman named Ethel was fished out of a silo and pronounced dead. 

So we have a very different first sentence/conflict, idk what this even is lool.

The following is the rest of what I’ve written. We kind of see the present version strung through to this version. This excerpt also introduces a new idea that Reeve’s been following this story religiously since it broke (which isn’t in the original).

My father was dead, Ethel was dead, the herbs in the planter were dead. I didn’t make a connection because there wasn’t one. I just followed her story on my walks to work, the easy flight downstairs to the bakery Liu only hired me at because she pitied me. Flipping through the newspapers Liu had out front for five dollars a copy on my lunchbreak, stashed behind a bulk order of red bean paste in the back room when I wanted to finish it later. In headlines, from the first arrest, to the first release, to the first plea from her parents—Ethel was only twenty. With my hair up, down, my tennis shoes on, off, on break when I should’ve been rolling filo pastry, I followed her story. Until it went cold and everyone forgot about Ethel and she became unremembered, unmemorable, unsolved. It was that easy, that tragic. 

A week after her headlines ran out, she started turning the water in our shower on and off. She started turning on the TV and ejecting Ollie’s film noir rentals from the library. She started tugging on my necklaces and unscrewing the bolt of my sunglasses. The apartment was haunted I told Joel, but he didn’t believe me. He wanted proof—there would never be proof, and this is the only reason I called Foster back. 

(for context she’s calling Foster for ghost hunting troubles because she knows he’s concerned he too is being haunted why do I only write about ghosts is this becoming an issue)

I like both and I think I want to find a way to fuse both together? I think both achieve different things so this is very dependant on what I’m going for! I’m at a bit of a loss, so I’ve been letting it sit and also being inspired by @sarahkelsiwrites break through with her novel and the beautiful prose she’s been pumping out! Let me know: which version do you like better? I’m still going to keep the past tense for now, but we’ll see how it goes when I dive into edits (hopefully soon!). Who knows, maybe none of this writing will end up in the final thing--we’ll have to see! 

If you’re struggling with novel openings, I feel you! I’ll keep you updated as I trek through the first chapter/sort out my thoughts, but I hope you liked this post! I know it’s a bit different than usual as I’m having a visible crisis lol, but thank you for reading!

--Rachel

[battlestar-royco]

Hey I’m interested in hearing more about your thoughts on asoiaf. How do you find the writing wonky and things like that

I’ve already talked about it a bit on this blog before, if you wanna check out some posts about why I think ASOIAF is overrated and problematic, and why I don’t like the Daenerys plotline: x x x

But I could talk about books forever so here we go. To preface, when I say “overrated,” that doesn’t mean I dislike the series. It’s grown on me, solid 3.5-4/5. I just mean that it gets unwarranted credit and attention for doing a lot of the same things for the fantasy genre as other contemporaneous writers are doing. The hype is probably what set me up to think ASOIAF was only on the better side of good rather than AMAZINNNGNGNGNGNG like everyone says.

So, my overarching issues are:

I didn’t begin to love any characters until ASOS. I only continued reading after the first two because the show was gaining popularity and other people were reading it. While I did enjoy AGOT, I was only meh about ACOK. ASOS blew me out of the water, but AFFC lost its way and I’ve been “currently reading” ADWD for five years.

I don’t mind the amount of narrators; GRRM distinguishes between his narrators amazingly and the range of POVs makes the world seem bigger and realer. HOWEVER, I cannot fucking stand being in the heads of some abhorrent characters just because GRRM wants to make a ham-handed point about misogyny or colonization. (Some examples are Theon and whatever the fuck his uncles are named and Daenerys. I hate Theon’s and the other IB POVs, and I could live without Dany.)

I really don’t care for GRRM’s writing style. It’s so extra and repetitive. If I have to read “fingers of blood” one more time I’m gonna throw hands. Just cutting words for concision could have reduced the first book by fifty to a hundred pages.

GRRM is known for his shocking deaths but I don’t think the shock factor is what makes the story good at all. It honestly makes the books weaker at points. The first few times, the deaths made complete sense for the characters and the story, but after awhile it gets tiring. Most readers want someone to root for, not to be apathetic to all the characters because we know they’re all going to die.

Also, GRRM is a white dude dealing with issues of misogyny, racism, imperialism, etc, and he started publishing the books in the 90s, so there’s A LOT of just… absolutely fucking yikes treatment of women, queer people, POC, and other minorities in the books that I wish I could put in a garbage disposal.

Specifically (vague spoilers for all the books):

AGOT did a good job of establishing all the characters and the stakes, but the worldbuilding is so ambitious that it only starts making sense on a second read. The world itself is thoroughly built and convincing, but it’s nowhere near my favorite fantasy world because of its excessive -ism/-phobia and basic medieval Europe-ness. Plus, the pace is glacial until they all get to King’s Landing about 200 pages in. The same thing goes for ACOK. These two books didn’t do much for me. I liked the Starks and I wanted them to be back together, but tbh I don’t find the Lannisters or the Targs all that cool. They’re a bunch of incestuous assholes trying to kill each other and I don’t find that relatable or anywhere near as compelling as a mourning family trying to piece itself together during a war.

ASOS made everything better. By this book, I finally felt settled with all the characters and the world and GRRM’s style, and things were actually happening. Jaime, Arya, Sansa, Cat, and Jon’s ASOS arcs are among my favorites in the entire series. This book still has its sluggish parts, but the pace and the emotional weight made it worth it.

AFFC… hm. I understand why people like this book, but at the same time I think it’s on the same level as ACOK for me. In this book, the subtle themes and central drama between the three main families (Stark, Lannister, and Targ) disappears in favor of Dorne and Brienne subplots. The Sandsnakes (from the books) and Brienne are cool, and I understand that GRRM is trying to represent the aftermath of war with them, but it was way too over the top and unfocused compared to the page-turner stakes of ASOS and the latter halves of G and C. GRRM seems to be interested in all these new characters when the rest of us just wanna know if the Starks are ever going to see each other again, if Dany will ever get the fuck out of Meereen, if the Lannisters either finally fall or redeem themselves, etc.

What I’ve read of ADWD hasn’t impressed me much so far. Again, I can’t reiterate enough how much Dany’s plotline and point of view as a white colonizer in an Asian/African fusion setting make me uncomfortable. Aside from some of the most bizarre and offensive depictions of POC in fantasy through a white girl’s perspective, her love/sex life exclusively consists of 30+ year old men sexualizing and infantilizing her. I find that abhorrent and unnecessary. Tyrion is equally as hard to take in this book, seeing as he’s mostly throwing himself a constant pity party (he does this in every book, but this one is the worst) while meandering around Essos with characters who have just been introduced five books in. The Ironborn POVs are just unneeded, boring, and overly misogynistic because I guess GRRM is trying to make a statement or whatever. Most of the Starks–my personal favorite characters–are absent in this book, and the Lannister twins only get a handful of chapters. The only narrator I’m genuinely interested in is Jon, which is ironic because I was indifferent to him until ASOS.

TL;DR I’ve pretty much only ever been invested in the Starks but GRRM is obsessed with adding unnecessary new POVs. While he tries his best to deal with issues like sexism and racism, he ultimately fails in certain respects due to his hypersexualization of young women and exoticization of cultures of POC. He needs to regain control of the story.

[taraljc]

my thing about Batgirl

(Reposting from mah Facebook, because reasons. Also, for clarity, I'm a 44 year old nerd girl who started reading comics when she was 11 or so.)

OK, so, possibly after drinking a statistically significant amount of coffee that I likely shouldn't ought to have done right before catching up on social media, I have now consolidated and cleaned up what was an open letter to Warner Bros but came across more as a bitter and angry rant about something I care a lot about, but the rest of you may not really understand or even care about. So here's what's been on my mind for quite a while now.

I've never been as incandescently happy as I was in this exact moment I learnt a certain womanising hack who has coasted on an outdated reputation for way too long is never going to get the chance to destroy one of my all time favourite female characters in the entire history of comics. I feel as if need to commemorate this with pie of some kind.

(sweet potato pecan pie with bourbon whipped cream is the frontrunner at this time, assuming I can find $$$ to go grocery shopping for the ingredients except the bourbon because you know me. I always have bourbon.)

In case you haven't guessed this is gonna be about Barbara Gordon.

It amazes me how no-one has ever thought to adapt the EPIC storyarc by Ostrander & Yale about how a former vigilante became one of if not THE most power and influential non-superpowered women in the entire DCU after literally being thrown away like trash.

(Google the quote "Cripple the bitch." Trust me, it will make you understand where I'm coming from with a lot of this.)

Oh yeah, and not only did she do so using all the skills she already had before she put on a cape and kicked some ass as one of a dozen minor figures in the Gotham vigilante scene, but she created and ran one of the best covert teams in history.

(If you do not know who the Birds of Prey are, that's OK. An origin film would solve that problem for you.)

OH OH OH and not only was she running the Birds, but she was simultaneously acting as the Field Co-ordinator that turned her original vigilante found family into a much more efficient, effective, and powerful crime-fighting force not just in Gotham but the entire DCU.

All while transitioning to life with a disability. Did I mentioned she'd been shot through the spine solely to torture her uncle/father in one of the most mysoginist comics stories of the past 50 years? Sorry. I probably buried the lede a bit, there.

What really matters is, we're talking about a woman who used her research and cyber security skills honed by her day job as a research librarian and went up against Amanda Waller and came out on top.

If someone who claims to love comics as much as that guy who did that male power fantasy TV show about hot chicks back in the 90s can't figure out why Barbara Gordon as Oracle would have relevance or appeal, well...

What can I say. Maybe it's time to actually hire a writer who can deliver a solid script that doesn't reduce 50 years of history (the balance of which was spent not as Batgirl, but as Oracle) to a casualty of the feud between Bats and the Joker?

So you know, if anybody's looking for a list of creatives that as both a comics fan and a film fanatic whom I believe would be more than up to the challenge, I am ready to write a six part series on @TheMarySue any time. Y'all know where to find me.

I think what a lot of people don't realise that when you take a character like Barbara Gordon who trained hard in isolation, with no teachers or mentors, because she chose to join the fight because she knew she could make a difference, only to be under-used, under-valued, written off as collateral damage, and ultimately expected to fade away into the woodwork...

...there is an incredibly compelling story just sitting there waiting to be explored about how someone with that drive, those skills, that passion for justice who flat out refuses to let the world write her off. She takes the world by the balls and shows them there's still work to be done, and that you don't need to wear a cape and a mask to do it.

And THAT to me, ever since I was 15 years old, reading Ostrander & Yale's Suicide Squad while my other friends were off going to malls or Depeche Mode concerts or whatevs, was what made me a hardcore fan of Barbara Gordon. Not Batgirl. ORACLE. And THAT story of Barbara Gordon becoming Oracle is the story that I want to see told in theatres, to the masses, so they can see what I first saw in a former sidekick who turned into a massive powerhouse in the DCU not by force, but by using her intelect.

I've never got why people don't understand how HUGE it was to see a character who'd been literally thrown away like garbage, be reinvented as a character so much more important and integral to the future of comics, not to mention A++ representation of a hero with a disability.

If no-one can turn that incredibly compelling story into a 120 page screenplay, then it's time to stop looking to the same 4 white guys (like for reals I am not kidding) to write comics adaptations for the big screen, and cast a wider net.

What I'm saying is, I think after the last 2 decades we've seen all there really is to see in terms of range from The Usual Suspects (David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan, Zak Penn, and the aforementioned womanising hack Joss Whedon) that have stayed at the top of studios speed-dial for far too long..

Time to spin that rolodex and give The Wachowski Sisters, Zack Stentz & Ash Miller, Allan Heinberg, Jennifer Lee, or Ava DuVernay a crack at nailing just the right tone and story for a big-budget feature Batgirl.

Look, I know It's easy to play armchair producer when it's not my $$$. But as a fan, Warner Bros. ain't getting a single CENT of my money if they don't take the lessons they learnt from critical & commercial success of Wonder Woman and apply same 1st class treatment to Barbara Gordon/Batgirl.

[manifestoe-blog]

A couple of months ago I interviewed my one of my closest friends, the lovely Nina White, about an album of her choice in pursuit of getting to know her better through her relationship with music in her life. We discuss No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom’ in relation to female anthems, ska revival, being a little bit punk, the frightening prospect of having to sing on stage with your ex about your relationship, and the impact of the album in her life thus far.

So Nina, tell me about the album that you’ve chosen.

I’ve chosen Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, which was released in 1995. I was only 3 when it was released; however they slowly released singles from the record until 1998 so I am guessing I was pretty late to join the party. My mum bought the cd for me, and it’s fair to say that I thrashed the absolute shit out of it until I was about 16. I honestly listened to it all the time; it was always on some kind of rotation, whether it was in the car, or in the six stack, whatever.

So you were listening to it pretty consistently for that solid 8 year period?

Yep, pretty much - it was one of those albums that I have never gotten sick of. Actually, a few days after you asked me to do this, I pulled it down from the shelf and played it in the car, and like four tracks in it started skipping. That poor CD – it looks as if it was strapped to a tire and driven on tarmac. I think it actually did really well to get through four tracks! It has survived a lot of years… coming on twenty.

This was their first really popular album. They spend 2 and half years recording this album in 11 different studios and by all accounts it was utter chaos. The name Tragic Kingdom is a nod to Disney Land which they grew up almost literally I the shadow of in Anaheim – always too poor to go, but able to hear what was happening there from their houses down the street.  

No Doubt were just so different to everything else I was listening to at the time because this was music that was written and lead by a woman, and while there was other female driven music rocking around at the time like say, Courtney Love or Garbage (who I was peripherally aware of, but not into then) Gwen wrote songs that were more relatable to me at that age. . She also managed to do that in a really fun and interesting way - and their visual language always really stuck with me as well. They were playful and chaotic and experimental and seemed to enjoy fucking with people’s expectations of what they were supposed to look like, and what they were supposed to sound like. I think the thing that draws me back into it every time is their exuberance, they’re wild.

Pre “Gwen Stefani, The Brand”, baby baby Gwen, is everything that I wanted to be in life. She's powerful, she doesn’t give a shit. She is just up there having a good time, stomping around in those bloody big boots with such contagious energy. I don’t think that their music is particularly punk, but their attitude definitely was. And the best thing about this album in my opinion, was that it was her first time writing (before that her brother was their songwriter), so everything is genuine and authentic because it was her first time. It was before she could even have the chance to construct something marketable. It was about her life, the shit that was going on, it was just her first coming out as who she was. The way she was performing is just so incredible; it was more masculine than anything else that I had seen at the time, yet she was able to do so without denying her femininity in any way. She was merely presenting herself the way that she is, and having fun doing it.

What are some of your highlights of the album?

Well, my highlights are different now to the highlights I had as a kid. In saying that, the first track Spiderwebs has always been one of my favourite songs off the record. It just sounds really fun and funky, but it’s actually pretty subversive. The track is basically about being pursued and harassed by a guy that you have no interest in. I really liked it as a kid because of how much of a banger it is, but now as an adult I like it because I can really relate to being dogged by someone and told you should take it as a compliment, when you really just want to tell them to fuck off.

Just a Girl is another obvious one because it has become a bit of an anthem. Just a Girl, Sunday Morning, and Don’t speak were the most recognizable songs from the album, and Just a Girl is the more punk track, when I was growing up everybody knew that song, and everybody knew Don’t Speak. To be honest, I didn’t really like “Just a Girl” as an adult until I saw a video of them performing it live, and it was like “FUCK YES. LOOK AT WHAT YOU USED TO BE! Dammit, Gwen.” It made the whole thing come alive again as something more than just a well thrashed track on a ‘90’s greatest hits’ playlist.

Anyway, I guess the whole album is centered around two main themes: coming of age, and the transition of an intimate relationship. I think these themes are the reason why it has continued to be relevant through different eras of my life. Don’t Speak is always going to have some kind of universal relevance; if you have an argument with a loved one or you break up with someone, any kind of emotional friction.

Or like in Sunday Morning, you’ve got themes of coming to terms with who somebody is and how they treat you. And how, I suppose, you may have been in a love bubble where you are allowing somebody to treat you a certain way, and as things progress you start to notice the power balance in the relationship. The whole thing is just so damn relatable, and almost dystopian. “I thought I knew you, I got a new view, I thought I knew you well, oh well.” It really captures that moment where the fog clears and you see someone as a person, not an ideal.

All these experiences that are shared in the album related directly to relationships within the band, especially the relationship between Gwen and Tony (the bass player) who had been dating for 7 years and broke up when they were writing the record. They then toured for something ridiculous like three years and had to play ‘Don’t Speak’ a totally autobiographical song about their personal heartbreak in front of thousands on stage every night.

I can’t help but just think about this in relation to all of the talk surrounding Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. They were writing, recording and then performing these intense songs about one another, and it weirdly creates this form of mythic speech around it all, which completely adds a whole new level of intrigue. I think it’s this whole appeal of an ‘artist coping mechanism’, which is ultimately often idealised, but is just so different to what we can get away with in day-to-day life.

Yeah! And I guess it is weirdly insular as well. The community for them is so incestuous, for want of a better word – they live in each other’s pockets constantly with little escape from each other’s bullshit. It’s a far removed experience from most people’s romantic complexities.

All of these themes are symptoms of situations that are often massive grey areas, but ones that we all go through at some stage and to some degree. And to be able to see people dealing with themes in a public and performative manner is just so intriguing.

You were saying before, about the simple fact that she was a woman writing and performing these songs, she was becoming this absolute icon, and it was super important to you hearing this female perspective. Is there a particular song or lyric that comes to mind in relation to how hearing her female perspective has influenced yours?

Yeah definitely, there are two that come to mind. First one being “Just a Girl”, because when I was little, that song was what sparked the realisation in me that being female meant that there were certain expectations you were supposed to conform to.  That song kind of slapped me out of the pretty much genderless, tomboy period of my childhood where I could get away with dressing like a boy, playing with the boys and there was no sexuality implied in that.  It was kind of like a trigger for me, to be more aware of what was expected of me within my gender, and I just hadn’t had to grapple with those expectations yet. There is a lyric in that song, “take this pink ribbon off my eyes” which directly refers to that feeling for me.

She wrote this song when she was 24, after she had to drive home after rehearsal at a late hour. Her bandmates, all being male, could just drive home and go to bed, but because she was a girl she would have to knock on her parent’s door to let them know that she was safe. The song is really about her coming to the realisation, through all of these subtle everyday experiences, that she was being treated differently. It documented a moment of clarity for her where she realised how much she was coddled and overlooked as a woman and how fed up she was with all the gendered bullshit. I guess as an adult it’s always a nice reminder not to take that kind of shit complacently in your daily life.

The other one that comes to mind was important to me a little bit later in my life, was “Excuse Me Mr.” Its the second track on the album, and it explored the feeling of waiting having to wait around for validation from people more powerful or important than you. Especially as an adult, female, creative trying to make a living doing what I’m passionate about, this song is just such a good reminder not to wait around for opportunities or support to fall into your lap and just get on with doing it yourself.

My sweet sweet Nina, thank you so much for telling me about Tragic Kingdom, this conversation felt like a trip to the Magic Kingdom itself. Would you mind summarising why you love this album in a few sentences for me?

Thank you so much for having me! I love this record because it was the first album that I l truly loved and it has aged with me like a good whiskey. Tragic Kingdom sort of ended up being the unlikely soundtrack to my life. It didn’t necessarily guide me, but it definitely made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my experiences. Especially as I’ve always been a bit of an awkward human, and it was good to know that there were some other awkward shitheads out there with me, doing their own thing and totally killing it. It’ll always serve as a reminder that it was okay to wear big boots, and be goofy, and that the people that matter in my life will still love me and stick around anyway. Yeah, that was pretty nice.

[stannamarsh]

Souvenirs From Hell

Souvenirs From Hell, by H.R Martin, (AKA YokoKoko on Tumblr, though this is the best edit.) I worked all day on this and forgot to eat. ----------------------------------------- Maya Angelou once commented that, "There's no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you." A certain person who will be mentioned later gave the opposite advice. Don't tell stories. Stories make one accountable. . Anyway, this story is unapologetic and it is all mine. What I learned recently has to do with the difference between life as a messed up 24 or 25 year old and one as a messed up 29 year old, aka me. It starts with knowing what you want and planning how to get it. Knowing that your fuck-ups are your responsibility. Knowing you're a mentally ill bitch who says harsh things, making the granary of truth in your words harder to hear. It's frustrating that you were attempting to communicate but somehow you got it all wrong. It's wanting desperately to be more thoughtful, helpful, intelligent, necessary and kind with your words. It's striving for the best in every action I choose to take. I want to be a decent human being. Due to my flaws, it's a struggle. Knowing isn't the issue. Doing right is the challenge. As for the five years growth between 24 and 29 I never believed it was that big of a difference until I lived it. That gap, in my experience is filled with codependency and attempts to train or fix someone. This is how we drive ourselves crazy. It's their journey. Not letting others walk their own journey or not being left alone to walk it is 90% of our therapists' jobs. We should work on ourselves. Because many, if not most partners that we try to prod and improve, and love into what we need them to be are stubborn idiots, and frankly so are we, for attempting to do this. I don't want to waste my fucking energy trying to train them to man/woman/non-binary up and be friggin grownups. Not my circus, not my monkeys, and most certainly, not my cage. Now that the intro is finished, the goals. I want: 1) A home that is mine. Not living in a hippie garbage can or benign drug house, albeit one with a chill vibe, in a nice neighborhood full of little-free-libraries, with nice people who are doing their best so you can't really blame them. But goddammit, I want different. It scared me that this was becoming my life. Is this my scene? What about my goals? I got negative and bitchy, and eventually exploded despite your stellar hospitality. I'm trying to work on these things at my own place, but humans are influenced by their friends. I need to distance myself until my living space at Hawk's Ridge is up to my standards, I need to work on that. Yours can be whatever you want it to be. And the hypothetical me with my shit together would give zero fucks about that, once I'm confident that I have my own standards in place. Otherwise, I get very anxious. 2) A solid community of friends and family who are "going places" in life, to the best of their individual ability (which does not mean under the constant influence of recreational yet legal prescriptions.) I'm not judging, given my penchant for these, and the fact that I'm starting NA tonight. Legal drugs that become a grey area between therapeutic and recreational are fun, but they won't help you achieve you goals. Anxiolytics are for anxiety, or the dentist. Vicodin is for pain and don't mix either with copious amounts of alcohol. That's why you spend too much time throwing up instead of doing fun things, like a cancer patient with much nicer hair. Also, drink water if you want to keep up with Mexicans, working in the hot sun without getting heat exhaustion. Common sense, people. I'm not saying your pain isn't real but some of it is your doing, just like some of mine is my doing. We have to hold ourselves accountable, better ourselves, drink and smoke weed socially and responsibly on VACATION (not stupidly or ever before getting behind the wheel.) Get with the program. People with more obstacles than solid doctors, helpful family, and a paid-off home do it every day. This was what I was keeping to myself until I said it in the wrong way while crying in your bathtub, "communicating" why I was harshing your buzz with my negativity. At the time, I had had a Klonopin, a Xanax, a Vicodin, another Xanax, another Xanax, and alcohol. I'm not a puker. I'm a cathartic, brutally honest crier, which is as bad a vomit in its own way. It smells better but takes longer to clean up. I'm sorry I hurt that sweet boy's feelings through the wall and seemed ungrateful for your hospitality. It's my fault for taking all those drugs, but I wasn't comfortable, something was wrong, I couldn't put my finger on it, and I repressed it with anything available to keep from being rude. It didn't work. There was truth in what I said, but the way I put it was mean, and unnecessary. Holding stuff in is bad for me. You said communicate. I said what I said and if I hadn't said it then, I would have done so eventually. Yes, I am grateful to people who open their homes to me, go on adventures with me, share their possessions with me. Catharsis can be cruel. I can't hang around you when I have 99 problems to solve already. Whether you would even want that is a mystery to me. I'll be busy but I still care. Though, I expect at this point, it's tl;dr for the both of you. That's another thing. Friends are people for whom tl;dr does not exist, unless they've had a stroke or something. 3) If there is a love mate out there for me, a soulmate if such a thing exists, I want to encounter this person on my adventures. I don't chase or look, because it depresses me and reduces love "such that it is" to consumption, or a meal ticket, a housing situation, a drug connection, a business deal, or a codependent puddle of mutual enabling. It's worse than any drug, save needles, meth, or crack, and all too often often, "love" drives otherwise healthy people down that road. 4. I want to go to Boulder, CO, my own personal Mecca. My condolences that police and a drugged hippie were mutually stupid and it resulted in tragedy. I mean the guy was strung out running naked in public. The worst child murder/ rape in recent memory went down there too, but people move on and this is where I want to live. This is my goal and I'm strong enough to not let news reports stop me from achieving what I want. 5. I want my MLIS and I will get it in December. When I get my debt and income under control, I want to participate in a BA to MD/PH.D program because once I'm stable, and clean, I know I can buckle down, tear through that MCAT and make it happen. See, when I was messed up, I at least knew enough not to hurt myself or spend the next day vomiting. Let's turn this sad, low-rent talent of mine into something that can help people. Want to be: medical librarian, doctor, medical PH.D (You heard me: MUD/FUDD), writer,Gonzo blogger, adventurer, world traveler, and at times, gainfully unemployed. These will all happen if I go to my meetings and follow Dr. Robert's advice: Get clean, hang out only with stable people who are tackling their goals, and achieve my scholarly potential, which truth be told, is at least a Masters' and an M.D/Ph.D. Not to brag, but that potential is somewhere between Lisa Simpson and Malcolm in the MIddle. (Meaning I'm probably a crazy genius, and if I'm retarded, John is a vegetable, organic I hope, so as compost he can me useful.) People say all the time that you're too old to start over. If someone can't do it they want to tell you that you can't either. Age is just a number. And truth be told, I'd rather die learning than being stuck in mediocrity. 6. I want happiness, stability, freedom from drama. attachment issues, an end to envy that a friend or acquaintance has someone, no matter how messed up the situation. I want independence, to control my compulsive, self destructive need to help others when there's shit I have to do for myself, just to prove my worth and keep them from leaving me. I end up burnt out and I become unnecessarily honest at people. I need to trust my vibes. If a situation feels icky or grasping or just plan dirty, I'm out. It's been real. Thanks for having me. Time to go slay the other goals. 7. MONEY...ENOUGH money that I have everything I want and need,within reason and accounting for storage space: a home, a housekeeper, or at least some kind of professional organizer to help me with cleaning and beautifying my abode, which is not my forte. My wonderful parents Susan Coleman and Donald Jeff Martin are helping me follow my bliss. They are the absolute best parents. I can never do enough to properly thank them for giving me life, taking a great risk to do so, for my dad taking the time to give private preschool quality education to me as a toddler so now math and languages are easy, for my mom who taught me about feminism, and whether she knew it or not, supercharged my innate qualities of forthrightness, justice, and the desire to fight for what's right. Thanks for teaching me right from wrong,and taking care of me. I had an enriched life, despite our initial lack of money. That is a miracle. My parents (and my pets, and my goals) are, together MY EVERYTHING. Gratitude. Balance. Best Life. That's what I'm after. Money is the tool to reach goals, not the goal itself. 8. Lastly, I want adventure....safe, but not so safe that it isn't fun. Exploring the world, writing, experiencing, living. This alone will keep me from getting sucked into any sexist bullshit or dysfunctional "love" vortex. When I achieve THAT, the desire to hurt myself, check out, or die will be OVER forever. I know this instinctively. That's the GP. Hell. I might become a GP. But, I'd prefer something more Housean, such as Pathology or Internal Medicine, I am the queen of my castle. But, to paraphrase Marley, that castle is in my MIND. To paraphrase Thoreau, my castles in the sky are the shit. Now they and I need a proper FOUNDATION. None of this is meant to be a mean dig at Jexi. I call you this because I know you as a unit. Who are each of you individually?(Also, I don't think either of you are notorious enough to be figured out by that alone, so I'm attempting discretion.) This is just my perspective. My truth. Thank you's to: Gino Dykstra, Amy, the therapist, Doctor Robert Wesner, Dr Widitz, Dr. Don St. John, and Linda the P.C, and all the people from Partial Hospitalization and STEPPS. If I forget someone, add yourself. Oh, Lori Parrish Niemi, Christina Morris Penn-Goetsch, William Niemi, Jexi, for helping me gain this insight, and Keith E Gatling. Weirdly, I am also grateful for that squirrelly, two-faced bastard, John Trachsel, who made himself useful for the first time ever, by convincing me to abandon my impulsive suicide gesture. He didn't know who he was talking to so he treated me like a person/ possible lay for a while and pretended to care, right up until the point where he learned he had called me. I could hear him backtracking because he doesn't want people to know he talks to me. When I called him out on this, he called me crazy, "retarded", and finally admitted that he didnt want people to know he talked to me. He, in a his glory thinks he's too good to talk to me? I have his mugshot on my hard drive, named "ThereISAGod.jpg." This is bullshit because most people have no problem acting like a god-damn human toward me. Anyway, this is proof that even a shmuck-a- fuck like him may sometimes do good things by accident. Of course, if he'd caught on quicker, I think that he would have hung up immediately. If he, for one second believed that I, Hanna Martin. was distraught, suicidal, and in need of help, hell, that was his goal anyway, right? But screw you, I didn't kill myself. My point is that even though you badly need therapy and other help, you are not completely useless. There may still be inpatient help for you and I no longer wish you dead. Thanks to all who have helped. One day at a time.

[pauldeckerus]

Early Photos vs. Now: Seeing Progress as a Photographer

Whelp! The Internet reminded me a few days back that I’ve officially been shooting photography for over 10 years now. I’ll be honest, I thought my progress would have been further. I assume the end of my life will be something like what I am currently experiencing, which is “Wow, that went fast.” It seems I’m just barely starting to grasp the wise words of my elders when they told me “Time goes quicker than you think.”

Recent artwork from my 2018 RGG EDU tutorial. Both tutorials I’ve released with them are some of my favorite accomplishments.

In the spirit of anniversaries, let’s see just how f**king horrifying Year 1 and 2 really were… *Takes a deep breath* To the archives!

What’s this ‘flower’ setting on my point and shoot?? Oh s**t! You can take pictures of things close up! Woo!”*misses putting subject in focus

“Yes yes, let’s do a fake blood-filled cup and some s**tty pearls cause Anne Rice got me hooked on f**ken vampires in the 90’s!” Shot again with a point and shoot, with some lamps for lighting and some brutal Photoshop work to make up for the lack of lighting knowledge. Also had clearly not heard the term “Color Temperature” yet.

“Flash can be turned on manually on my Nikon Coolpix, and if I put it in front with the sun behind, it does THIS?? Well this is my new favourite thing ever!” Then I remembered that mosquitoes suck and promptly scampered into the studio for mostly ever more.

Photographed in my fridge, cause I learned that big soft light is sexy, and lamps just weren’t doing the trick.

Blown highlights and crushed shadows and no concept of color harmony?? You mean sky glitter and trendy as f**k presets…

When I first picked up a camera it was mostly to be creative in a way that didn’t involve modeling, and it was faster than drawing. I photographed macro, still life, bikes, and over the course of a year, a number of friends and slave labored my sister a bunch. The first few years were the most exciting cause the gains were exponential, obvious, and relatively easy to attain.

Admittedly, Year 1 was probably my most fun year in photography. Not that the subsequent haven’t delivered amazing memories and new friends, but I was in it purely for the fun and had no expectations from anyone but me. I didn’t have goals, a client wish list, no questions of what gear would make my work better, or any desire beyond the next batch of point-and-shoot pixels that would get my dopamine levels hopping off the charts.

Early years are dedicated to trying a lot of things, as many different facets as possible. I don’t think anyone should be really trying to “figure out their style” because if we do enough work and spend the hours just being immersed in it, style will inevitably start to form. Sometimes it looks like what’s already being made, and sometimes it turns into a creature that nobody has ever seen before. Regardless of what it is, you have to have your ass in the seat as often as you can or want, to find that voice.

10 years in, it feels like the gains I make now are at the sacrifice of dragging myself over broken glass while an elephant steps on my back. I’m not here because I retained that energy of “This is the best thing evaaarrrr!” from the early days, but because discipline and stubbornness have forced me to continue. When I’m bashing at the walls of my inability to complete a concept that’s been in my mind for 5 years, and I’m still probably another 2-3 years away from being competent enough to finalize the piece, I know I’m in it for the long game.

Time has taught me the harder things feel in the moment, the more frustrated and pressurized my brain feels over the work, I’m probably just getting closer to my next sliver of a creative breakthrough. I’ll trade one elephant for another bigger, slightly heavier elephant. While they trade places though, in those brief moments I’ll find I can breathe again.

A recent challenge to create an image using only one area of the color wheel. Many thanks to Linda Friesen for channelling her inner Moon Goddess.

Those Moments Are What I Live For

I write this all to serve as a reminder, to those in their first year, or to the grizzled veterans staring down a resume longer than a CVS receipt. Where we started and where we are now is worth celebrating. Most of us weren’t born with a natural “talent” — in fact, many would argue that is a myth. We are simply a result of repetition and practice.

I think a lot of people get intimidated in their early years that their work will never look as good as they want it to. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can definitely say that 10 years in, I’m still another 10 years away from doing the kind of work I want to make. I hope it never changes.

My inbox is filled with emails asking the same question written hundreds of different ways, but the theme can be boiled down to “How do I get awesome at this??”

Answer? I could write an essay but here are some easy points:

Just keep at it. Put your ass into frequent, habitual practice.

Most who are any good, sit upon a throne of really, really terrible work, and years of it. Every time you complete a work of art that you think is pretty f**king awful, congratulate yourself. It’s one more foundation stone into your cathedral of mastery.

Do not look for shortcuts. You’re only stealing from your future-self.

There is no “one path to success”. There are thousands of ways, and what works for one may not work for another.

Know thyself. Inspiration is great, but nothing beats digging into the nuts and bolts of your honest creative self.

Self portrait, trying to grind down on better color theory. I probably need to watch Kate Woodman’s RGG tutorial…

Maybe you are the creator who does a little bit of everything from now until forever. Maybe you’re the type who started one style and never ever changes. There is no right or wrong answer. Far as I know, they don’t hand out medals in the afterlife… yet.

“They” say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’ve met some of those humans, and they’re most often either f**king unicorns, or completely disillusioned. Love what you do, or don’t, regardless your ass is probably gunna work pretty damn hard.

I fall in and out of love with my chosen career and lifestyle on a weekly basis. I equate my career to being in a long-term, committed relationship. Some days we wake up and look at each other in bed and wonder why the other is still there. Others we are reminded what got us there in the first place. Regardless of my feelings, I think they’re mostly irrelevant.

Accurate depiction of real life misery. Brought on by walking barefoot into a glacier fed, cold ass lake, or occasionally just trying to will myself into turning on my computer… Side note – Check out those “I clearly only ever wear boots” pasty ankles!

10 years in, I feel like I’m just cracking the surface of “me” and what that means to be a creator. Seated upon a mountain of embarrassing pixels and memories, I’m staring at the bottom of an even larger heap that I will create over the next decade. My well-made list of goals and plans will probably get muddled and misplaced by the chaotic influence that is life, but another 10 years will pass regardless.

I just hope that my small, infinitesimal contribution of creativity will maybe start to balance out the number of straws I’ve used.

Commissioned work for guitar queen Nita Strauss.

Inspiration time! I managed to convince some mind-bogglingly awesome artists from a variety of genres to also dig into their archives, and bravely share some of their own humble beginnings. This was a very cathartic experience for me. It was so just absolutely f**king perfect seeing where they all started to their current favorite work. Remember, we all start somewhere, and with a few years of dedication, we never know where we will wind up.

Dave Brosha

2003. “Pure garbage. Both emotionally and metaphysically.”

2018. “The only thing between where you are and where you want to be is the passion to learn and putting the time in. Some of my earliest images are laughably make-your-eyes-bleed bad – but I never beat myself up for them. They are what they are…and that’s to say, they’re part of the process of learning and growth.”

Visit his website here.

Curtis Jones

2012. “Cape Spear, Newfoundland. Completely disregarding geography, composition, and proper use of a tripod, I felt this was a pretty solid shot of my friends under the northern lights. To be honest, I’m not 100% certain a tripod was even involved but I was out there making an effort and that’s what sticks with me. Turns out the most easterly point in Canada isn’t a hotspot for aurora activity.”

2018. “Khongoryn Els, Mongolia. Now, with a few more miles racked up, an appreciation for location scouting and a better grasp on my gear, putting in the effort still counts but the returns have become more consistent – less random and more intentional.”

Visit his website here.

Felix Inden

2008. “I was really stoked about this one. Enough to save it as my first .psd (of course after reducing to 72 DPI)”

2018. “I was incredibly lucky that I got this shot… it was not thought or anything. I just saw it coming, fired away and luckily had the right settings from shooting out of the heli before of this moment. Don´t plan to much. embrace spontaneity. be there and be ready.”

Visit his website here.

Michael Shainblum

2007.

2018.

Visit his website here.

Tim Kemple

2004. “From my first commercial shoot. It was on Mt Washington for Eastern Mountain Sports and we had this awesome but wacky creative director that wanted a shot of the less glamorous moments that happen when you are out hiking. Shot on slide film. Provia 400F pushed a stop.”

2015. “Two climbers on Mt Huntington in Alaska. Shot with Phase One medium format from a helicopter.”

Visit his website here.

Elizabeth Gadd

2008. “10 years ago I discovered my passion for taking moody self portraits (because sitting on the ground and staring into space with a blurry focus seemed cool). Can’t believe how proud I was of this one once.”

2018. “10 years later, still taking moody self portraits. Hoping the practice has paid off!”

Visit her website here.

Bella Kotak

2008. “This was when I first discovered Photoshop! It took me a few more years to figure the program. At that time it wasn’t really about improving my “photography” but more about how I could improve on what I wanted to express. It just so happened that the camera felt like most natural medium to do that through.”

2018, The Kiss. “It’s amazing what time, practice, and knowledge can do. When it comes to creating pictures I’ve never focused on what I can’t do but rather, what I can do. The goal is, and has always been, to shoot often, keep learning, constantly experimenting, never hold back, and always try to level up.”

Visit her website here.

Kate Woodman

2014. This image represents my first real foray into using Photoshop in a creative/artistic way vs. a more conventional dodge-and-burn-cleanup kind of way. The image was accidental–one of my strobes didn’t fire, and I was left with something I wasn’t anticipating but though could lead to something interesting. It was the first time I really embraced a mistake as a learning opportunity–and I’ve made many more and learned so much from them, from both a technical but also a conceptual perspective.”

2018. “I feel like I’m finally getting to the stage where my photography not only reflects my aesthetic preferences but also my conceptual interests. This is a more recent image which I think is pretty successful in portraying a narrative that is both visually and viscerally impactful. There’s definitely something going on but it leaves room for interpretation–that ambiguity is something I’ve always liked in others’ art and strive for in my own.”

Visit her website here.

Richard Terborg

2009. ” I like the snow, and I like photography. So I figured it would be funny to combine the two in a “creatively next level” way, by wearing my normal “day” clothes instead of winter clothing. Because I didn’t want my garden in the background this frame was the only one that worked.”

2018. “I’ve been on a Wes Anderson exploration/funk/inspired by/phase/binge??? So I asked my friend to bring anything yellow he has and a puffy hat. It was around 35 degrees celcius outside and he had to put on the only yellow woolly shirt he had and a warm cap. Love places with a lot of color and lines because of ‘Wes’ and this place just clicked perfectly.”

Visit his website here.

Julia Kuzmenko

2007. “I honestly had no clue what I was doing. I know now, that the best thing to learn something in a specific photography genre is to break apart and analyze every aspect of the images of a handful of successful artists whose work resonates with me the most. The cropping, the colors, the makeup, hair and facial expressions.. everything that we photographers have control of at the time of the capture.”

2018. “Shoot, shoot, shoot more! Practice like a maniac, so you are at the right skill level when the opportunity comes along.”

Visit her website here.

Tina Eisen

2009. “February. I had one light and a friend called Hannah. We knew nothing. Even less than Jon Snow. Not even the cat bowl was safe.”

2018. “September. I know a couple more things now! I still experiment to this day and wake up happy every morning that I took this step 10 years ago!”

Visit her website here.

Pratik Naik

2008. “I wanted to be a fashion photographer with my wonderful wide angle kit lens and sweet angles. I thought the more angles the better and so we angled all day.”

2018. “I realized what was actually kept me inspired was the complete opposite. It was energy, mood, and emotion. Through my attempt at fashion photography, I carved the path to what I really loved shooting.”

Visit his website here.

Benjamin Von Wong

2007. “Well, I found a second set of mirrors… on another escalator haha. Theres a nice big flash hiding my head but I thought it’d make a cool effect on the metal parts.”

2018. “Ironically, I believed myself to be a better photographer then, than I do now, even though my skill level is objectively higher. I wonder how I’ll feel about myself and my work in another 10 years!”

Visit his website here.

Ashley Joncas

2010. “I was always a disgruntled little $hit even when I started teaching myself photography. I was obsessed with antique portraiture but also obsessed with HotTopic…so the dynamic duo combined with me barely knowing how to turn on a camera ended up in a branch explosion from my friends head surrounded by fake smoke. Thankfully 8 years has made a big difference…and I’ve gone from doing a horrible job to actual horror photography.”

2018. “The work I do now is directly indicative of how my creative mind works and what it responds to. For a while I thought being a good photographer meant doing pretty images with flower crowns and safe color palettes, but I realized my voice was in the strange and irregular chasms of our reality. So, my favorite image from this year is a shot of someone sitting in a basement with a bloody eye and shackles.”

Visit her website here.

The Art of Mezame

2013. “I thought using a single LED light and a Samsung Galaxy S3 was good enough for toy photography. I remember the motivation for using the LED light was just so I could see something in the dark. I don’t remember editing the image though haha!”

2018. “I am now actively shooting portraits in studios and using more than just LED lights. Instead of lighting things up just so I can see something in the dark, I use lighting and lightshapers to craft images that tell stories. Only time will tell what else I could discover in my journey as a photographer. Still learning, never stopping.”

Visit his website here.

Joel Robison

2009. “Back in the early days I was still a bit nervous to really get outside and shoot, I was largely taking self-portraits inside my apartment and really only had one bare wall to play with. I was doing a 365 project and ideas were getting thin so I decided to do a week of making props out of cardboard…I whipped up a cardboard gun, money bag and mustache and spent a good solid 5 minutes shooting this image which I then ran through Picnic AND Photoshop to get the desired “vintage” effect.” We all started somewhere and I can’t believe I thought it all looked good!”

Visit his website here.

Webb Bland

2005. “Distortion? Check. Vignetting like I stacked too many polarizers? Check. A pass of every free plugin I could find? Check and mate, photographers! *Retouchers. Whatever.”

2019. “High noon in an airplane graveyard, spacing each car between stark wing shadows. The only thing missing is the abysmal HDR and VIGNETTING OH GOD HOW DID I FORGET THE VIGNETTING??! Shot for Audi.”

Visit his website here.

Alex Ruiz

1993. “Crappy figure drawing: This gem was from my submission portfolio to Cal Arts. Needless to say, I didn’t get in. In retrospect this was valuable lesson for me: get damn good at figure drawing or else I wasn’t going anywhere!”

2018. “Kat Livingston as Elven Queen. There’s something about creating portraits that I’ve always been drawn to more and more over the years. There’s a deep intimacy to it, having a character stare deeply back at you, and sometimes through you. This one is based off New York model, Kat Livingston. Giving her an ethereal, elven quality seemed fitting for her.”

Visit his website here.

John Gallagher

2013. “My Little Pony – A cautionary tale. I’m fond of migrating beloved and nostalgic animated content to ‘real world’ to test my own ability to stay true to the characters while transforming them for fun. This is a gorgeous cringe worthy example of what not to do. Cue sharp inhale.“

2018. “So Deadpool… This won 2nd place in the DeviantArt fan art poster contest with Fox. DA picked five fan-favorite artists to compete for prize money and a trip to New York to the premiere. There was a long list of no-fly zones for content and just a couple days to do it so we all hit the ground running. I thought it came together pretty well and dovetailed nicely with the slo-mo mayhem of the DP cineverse. It’s a natural fit for my brand of hyperkinetics.”

Visit his website here.

The best way to see our progress is to occasionally take an honest look back at our past. What kind of people we were, what we valued, and how we expressed it. While it sometimes feels weird or awkward to look back at our less than experienced selves, they are the treasures that helped us become who we are, and what we do now shapes our futures.

It’s also so easy to get caught up in comparing ourselves to others, the mysteries behind the scenes that helped evolve the final product they now share to the world.

This list is only a snapshot in each person’s life, a single Polaroid in an entire journal to be perceived as warnings or inspiration. Inevitably there will be someone commenting about “I like x image more!” or “I wish I was as good as their befores”. If those are your thoughts, I applaud your skill in missing the point.

Remember, we are only in ultimate competition with our younger and future selves. Our journeys are our own, appreciate the past and embrace the next 10 years.

About the author: Canadian born and raised, Renee Robyn is a former model turned photographer who has developed an ethereal style, combining fact and fiction. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Merging together expertly shot photographs with hours of meticulous retouching in Photoshop, Robyn’s images are easily recognizable and distinctly her own. She travels full time, shooting for clients and teaching workshops around the world. You can find more of her work on her website, Facebook, and Twitter. This article was also published here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2018/09/13/early-photos-vs-now-seeing-progress-as-a-photographer/