Two Weeks

Untitled #4 from the series Nature Calls

Image © Emily Shur

Wow, it’s been a little over two weeks since my last post.  Jeez.  Where does the time go?  Sometimes it happens – real life gets in the way of internet life and that’s just the way it is.  I think of this blog as a journal or diary of sorts.  When I was a kid and kept a diary, I used to update it on all the things that had happened since I last wrote.  Not sure why I felt the need to do this.  It’s not like the diary was curious about my activities or would feel lost without knowing what it missed.  It used to really bum me out – this neurotic urge to account for everything – because I would spend so much time on the catch up and then slack when it came time to write about current events.  Nonetheless, I feel the need to do the same thing as an adult, so here is a little recap of the past two weeks.

I’ve had a few shoots.  I had the pelasure of working with Aziz Ansari for the second time in two months.  If you enjoy laughing, I highly recommend his new standup special, Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening.  I haven’t laughed out loud that much while sitting at my desk in a while…or ever.  I photographed Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner (together) for about 8 minutes at a press junket for their and a million other actors’ new movie, Valentine’s Day…and that’s all I’m going to say about that.  I went to Vegas for a day to shoot UFC superstar and husband of Jenna Jameson, Tito Ortiz.  He was very tall and seemed like a real nice guy.  I entered my fine art work into Review Santa Fe (again), Center’s Project Competition, and Descubrimientos PHE Madrid.  Wish me luck.

I also just returned from four days in NYC.  Got to see my wonderful friends who I miss very much and did some meetings, made the rounds.  I took the husband to The Museum of Natural History and The Met, two of my favorite New York places.  Both were first time experiences for him.  I am definitely a downtown girl, but I’ve always been easily whisked away by the romance of Fifth Avenue from midtown all the way up into the 80′s.  I love the old beautiful buildings, the rich people, Central Park; the unchanged New York that is upper Fifth Avenue.  It was too cold to fully enjoy it this past weekend, but it left me with fond memories of life there as a college student, always having to go allllll the way up to The Met for some sort of art history assignment.  Of course, I was very happy to come home to sunny LA and The Baroness.  On the way home, the in flight movie was Michael Jackson’s This Is It.  Yes, I watched it, and yes, I liked it.  Sorry snobs, but I did.  It wasn’t a gripping documentary (I mean, it was no Truth or Dare), but it was a very good document of his talent and discography.  It also proved that this was not a man on death’s door.  This was a person, however weird he might have been, who was very much in control of his mind and his body and died unnaturally too soon.

So, that’s my update.  Now I can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to matters at hand.  Above is the newest image from my series, Nature Calls.  Before I left town, there were a couple interesting posts on Conscientious about what happens when more than one photographer shoots the same or similar subject matter and when do two photographs become too similar to each other.  Posts are here and here.  Also around this same time, a couple people e-mailed me or left comments on the blog regarding a German photographer, Robert Voit, who has also chosen disguised cell phone towers as his subject matter of choice.  At the time, I had never seen Voit’s work before, and I was deflated upon first viewing of his New Trees.  I was annoyed not only because we were clearly shooting the same thing, but because I liked his pictures.  I thought, “What is the point of me continuing this if someone else is already doing it, and doing it well?”  Well, what I’ve realized is that two photographers or a hundred photographers can shoot similar subject matter and it could very well not affect any of their abilities to make an interesting body of work.  Definitely more than a couple photographers have photographed in Japan, and that hasn’t stopped me from continuing my work there.  I enjoy being there and making those pictures, and I think I have something to add to the already large library of Japanese imagery.  Even if no one else agrees with me, it’s something that makes me feel good.  I think that as long as we approach projects with sincerity, it doesn’t matter if someone else is or was interested in photographing the same thing.  Mr. Voit and I are shooting the same thing, but through different perspectives, and I would venture to say that we are shooting these “trees” in very different ways.  I also know that him and I are not the only two photographers to shoot this subject matter, as I received several other friendly e-mails from fellow photographers with their own pictures of disguised cell phone towers.  Joerg Colberg makes some thoughtful points and comparisons on his blog.  Some of those side by sides, in my opinion, are questionably similar.  So similar that one has to wonder if one photographer knew of the other’s work when they were formulating their project.  It’s a topic that I think will be discussed quite a bit in the near future.  In the meantime, I will continue shooting and see where it takes me.