Structure

I experience a drive to create. I love to get outdoors and be active. And when I'm surrounded by nature, I have the urge to get naked. And when I'm naked in nature, I feel compelled to create art. It's something I enjoy doing very much, and it keeps me physically fit.

Few activities are as grueling as the repeated burst of energy expended from sprinting back and forth from camera to pose while the timer counts down each time. Especially in situations where there is the added suspense of being caught with my pants down, so to speak, while I'm focused on making art.

That said, I enjoy taking pictures (as a model as much as a photographer) more than I enjoy sitting in front of my computer editing them. It's a necessary evil, and though there is an excitement in sifting through the dirt in search of gold - those pictures that really stand out and make me proud to show off - I do feel in the back of my mind that it is a cost (and a limitation) that comes with every image and video I create in the field.

I felt some pressure constantly producing content for my now-defunct Patreon account, with the fear in the back of my mind that if I hit a dry spell, my subscribers would rebel against me. I'll admit that being freed from that pressure is somewhat of a relief. But at the same time, I had the most consistent workflow during that period, and my photography was the most organized it's ever been. Even if I was working through a backlog, I still had everything in order, and that just meant I had a buffer of content in case production dropped off temporarily for any reason.

That organization is one of the things I miss most. Not having that structure for releasing content, stressful though it sometimes was, is taking its toll, as I continue to produce content that languishes in folders unfinished and unshared, and builds up, compounding the problem over time. I want that structure back, but I have yet to find an adequate replacement.