This past summer I took some portraits of my friend Monique. She kind of made my job really damned easy because this girl is effortlessly stunning inside and out and such a sense of her own body and movements that every picture was near perfect. (I’m pretty sure this has something to do with her being a yoga instructor. Scratch that. I am certain it has a lot to do with that!) I tell you – portraiture is always easy when you have a model who has no fear for the camera and isn’t preoccupied with worries of if she is going to look beautiful or not but just looks into the camera without abandon.
Looking through some of my work from the summer makes me really long for longer days and shorter nights – where the sun is still up when it’s 9 o’Clock and you are wondering if the night will ever actually come. Looking at my work also makes me want to push myself further. It’s very easy to get lazy and complacent about organizing shoots when you are freelancing. But it’s not even laziness in the end. It’s nerves. Thoughts that I’m still now “there yet”. That my photos won’t turn out like the ideas I have brewing in my mind. That I will give it away that I’m still not 100% perfect with artificial lighting or this, that, and the other thing. That I am actually still not a photographer at all.
But in the end, the only way to keep climbing is to do just that. Climb, stumble, fall down, get back up, learn something from the whole damned thing, and start again. And then it’s also a matter of time. Making it all work with a full time job that I also love. But when you live and breathe creation, you need to push yourself to never give up and always find a way to produce more work.
One of my biggest goals for this coming year is to be shooting as much as possible. Setting up as many shoots and photographing as many new situations, events, and ideas as possible. And to then do it again. Once more, with feeling. Because I need to create. And I’ll only stop when I’m dead.
Photography: Rae Tashman
Join the LFB community! Use #theCLmovement on instagram and twitter to have your content featured on LFB!
