Stephanie, I don't know you from a random chai wallah in Madras.
And yet I think I have you pegged pretty well. I sure hope I'm wrong, but all indications point otherwise. Please bear with me through this post, eventually you will see my point.
I grew up in a small town. A crushingly boring place filled with very small minds and little to no future for most of the population. Somehow, that town has pulled a miracle out of its bum, and become the jewel of the wine industry. But 15 years ago, it was still a crushingly boring town with nary a big box store in sight until Walmart showed up. 10,000 people attended the grand opening, because, hell, there wasn't anyplace else to be. Through a very unique concoction of total chaos and incredibly bad planning, somehow enough wrongs equaled each other for the town to pull off a miracle and become a half-way interesting place these days. That is a new development, and when I was growing up, it was a craphole.
Some people from that town have made big names for themselves. Most people have not...many of them are still in that town, and are living crushingly boring lives that most people would not be able to take without a steady stream of prozac and other mind altering chemicals.
The town almost crushed me...I come from a family of professional musicians, world caliber musicians back to the 16th century. My mother married another musician who happened to live in that small town, even though their work was an hour away in Portland, where I live, for the time being. I had a mitigating influence on my life, which was Portland, my grandparents, and general aspirations of things intellectual. Books were a big help to me, as those days were largely before the internet. I spent a lot of time in libraries and in front of books...I developed a vivid imagination, which was a big help.
One friend of mine growing up is now well on his way to being a billionare. Another friend went to USC film school, where I lost touch with him. There are a few people who made names for themselves in other pursuits...all of them had mitigating influences on their lives. Either their parents were well employed and cosmopolitan, or they had friends and family in bigger places in the world. If nothing else, the successful people had things like books and films to pull them out of the mud...and yet one more help was that Portland was only an hour away.
There were a lot of small town dreamers in that town though. People with little to no interest in the outside world, and specifically little to no interest in comparing themselves honestly to people in the outside world. They saw themselves as big big fish, but they didn't realize that the pond they were swimming in was just a pitiful puddle in the dirty backwash of the rest of the world.
I heard things from people like "I don't need to know art history to become a painter." or "I don't need to read novels to be a writer." Or even more comically "I am a better writer than that guy!" even though they had never published anything.
Note books, diaries and secret confessionals do not a great artist make.
Likewise, deciding to be a great artist before one has even put brush to canvas is a little like saying you will discover the West Indies before you've invented a boat.
The small town dreamers are simultaneously aware that they are nobodies, and at the same time they equate themselves with the "fancy schmancy" people in big cities. They like to think that they can take shortcuts. They like to think that they will be able to achieve things that nobody has ever achieved before, just because their mother told them once that they were talented.
The sad reality of life is that for most people, there are only very few shortcuts. People like Kevin Federline and Clay Aiken aside, there is no substitute for education, careful thought, and experience. One does not put the cart before the horse, and the wheel has already been refined to a level that is quite adequate.
You have a habbit of coming onto this forum and making big claims, and taking big assumptions. There is more than enough fodder for one to doubt your motives, but taking things as they may be, and playing devil's advocate, maybe you are for real and just naive.
You want to sell your nude prints. You have never taken nude self-portraits, but you want to sell them. Maybe you've shot a few self portraits, and maybe they are "good" to your eye. Have you ever spent long hard hours in the library really analyzing what made pictures of the great photographers great? Have you ever figured out why Mapplethorpe was such a great photographer, despite the disgusting subjects he depicted in many of his photographs? Have you ever spent time in front of a book on Renoir, and asked yourself "why?"
You ask about film, cameras, flash, lighting, etc. etc. etc. Yet you have never even approached any of these things with anything but the slightest of discipline. Not to mention that you constaintly harrang about your lack of money. How will you afford the great ammounts of Pan F, Portra and whatchamahaveyou that you talk about. Have you ever mastered even one film? Have you ever shot more than 50 rolls of ANY FILM WHATSOEVER?
It takes a lot to be a great photographer. Everybody and their uncle thinks that they can pick up a camera and become a professional photographer. After all, that picture you took at the Grand Canyon last year sure looked good, why doesn't National Geographic call you up? Everybody thinks they can be a photographer, because nobody knows what it takes to be a photographer.
How many nudes have you looked at in your life, that were not gracing the screen of your computer? How many books have you asked your small town library to get through Interlibrary loan? Have you ever heard of the name Eikoh Hosoe? What was his ordeal anyway, life can't be that hard, it's just a basket of roses, right?
Stephanie, I know there is a big chance that my comments will just be deleted. I know that many people won't read them. I don't care. I only hope that for just a moment you will consider the things I say. In humanity there is great potential, and in any one human there lies great potential. Some people think there are shortcuts, some people don't take things seriously.
Trust me, I am guilty of many of the things I de facto accuse you of. I complain of a lack of money...I complain of a lack of chances....I complain of a lot of things. You know though, I firstly do it silently, and i look for a genuine solution. I don't want anybody's pity, and I don't want anybody's handout. I want to make a name for myself, and I want to enjoy life...but I know that life can be tough, and I know that there are few shortcuts available to most of us.
Trust me, there are two kinds of people in the world: those with talent, and those without.
I've been cursed my whole life with a talent for everything...anything I pick up, all of the sudden I become an expert. This means that I also love just about everything, and I can't decide what to do. More importantly, it means that my talent allows me to get by without work. The most important thing in life is not talent, but work, practice and discipline. I have met so many talented musicians that five years later sell insurance. Painters who end up working at coffe shops. Photographers who could blow your mind who end up checking peoples' shoe sizes. You have to work in life, and if you're talented, it just makes it a little easier.
If you want to do nude photographs, fine. I couldn't be bothered to give two shits about it. Just do it. Don't ask people about if you should do it to get out of depression. Don't ask people if they would buy your stupid prints. Don't even talk about it until you've grown up a little inside. Take your pictures, enjoy them. More importantly, GO TO THE LIBRARY. CRACK OPEN A REAL BOOK. Those places called libraries still contain quite abit of wisdom in them, and the opinions in those books are different than opinions on the internet in that they had to stand the added scrutiny of ACTUALLY BEING PUBLISHED.
All this goes for your cooking as well. Have you ever, in your entire life, even for one day, cooked in a restaurant? Perhaps you are like so many people in that you can cook half-way decent food that your mother says is the best she's ever eaten?
I've seen your blogs, I've seen your postings. You talk about organics, even though you don't really know much about them, and you don't know WHY people use them. You may have read some recipe books...you may have even stumbled upon some recipes. Instead of thinking about your culinary education and how horribly hard it will be to get one (and don't forget, it is no guarantee of good employment) you should go out, and cook in ANY restaurant.
I have two good friends who are TRAINED chefs de cuisine. I have another friend who graduated from Japanese cooking school, which is much more rigorous than American studies. All three friends are magnificent cooks, and all three had extensive experience cooking in restaurants. All three of them decided to throw their education in the trash, because they realized what their hours and salaries would be....cooking is not glamorous, it is not financially rewarding, it is not easy.
As with your nude studies....read a book. Go out and try it. LIVE A LITTLE.
Who gives two shits what film you're going to use...who cares which brand of pan you're going to use? Is that a Wusthoff, Henckels or Shun you're chopping that carrot with? IT DOES NOT MATTER because you've never done it before. By asking such questions, you become the very definition of a poseur. You are an imposter posing as an expert, although you have no experience what so ever.
Your creative process is artificial: you decide what you're going to do (without the benefit of hindsight through experience) and then you want to do it, and the simple willingness to do it tells you that you are qualified to do it. What makes you think that your as yet uncreated prints will ever be good enough to command money in competition to the work of professional photographers? There are always horny men willing to pay for photographs of naked women. That you should know, such things consume the internet. By selling your prints, you have equated yourself with Avedon, Mapplethorpe, Penn, Giacomelli......
An organic (and that goes for foodstuffs as well) would be to experiment, start small, evolve, grow, try new things, analyze your results. By all means ask for opinions on your work, but don't let those opinions FORM your work, otherwise your development is artificial and stunted....you will become another self-fulfilled flash in the pan.
Humanity is a beautiful, amazing thing. But great achievements have always come when individual humans realized their actual limitations and tried to overcome them through pure creativity and the goddamned force of their own will. Have you ever wondered why Rembrandt chose brown?
Thus endeth the lesson, brought to you by one upon whom the lessons of life have been burned with red hot irons.
