StuckpixelPhoto

Soooo......  It's been about 5 years since I've been active on DeviantArt (give or take a year or two).  A lot has happened in the time since. Changed jobs, bought a house, been deathly sick, recovered (somewhat), got into an accident with a drunk driver and got screwed over in the process from multiple angles, etc.  

Up until about three years ago I still had been shooting, just not posting any of my work on here.  I have a Facebook page but I hardly post there anymore either (mainly because of how strict it's become).  Between getting sick, buying a new house and not having a space to do any shoots, and overall being disgusted with how we have gotten nowhere with copyright and image theft issues, I had very little motivation to shoot anything new.

I'm toying with the idea of returning to it all but I'm still hesitant.  Although I've had a lot of crap happen, overall I've been really happy not having to deal with any photography related drama, and that in of itself has been a godsend.  

I'm getting the creative itch again though.

One thing I figured out is that I'm never going to get rich doing this.  Hell, nevermind getting rich, it won't even pay for itself in the long run.  That was a very hard (and expensive) lesson I learned.  I don't intend to repeat the mistakes of the past but don't be surprised if you see new stuff appearing on here...  Once I get over my photographic PTSD.

By now I'm sure the majority of you have notice that I've been uploading reduced resolution and utilizing the watermarking feature when I upload images to DA.  I know the majority of you hate it.  It's a distraction and to be honest I hate it more than all of you combined since I feel it ruins the final image.  Unfortunately because of a handful of asshats out there I've had to resort to virtually ruining the images I upload here.

It's an age old problem that unfortunately has no solution.

The problem isn't and has never been my fan base the legitimately enjoys my work (who occasionally share the work elsewhere on the web).  I'm GLAD that people like my work enough to want to show others.  No, the problem is the scum of the Earth that treat DA and other sites where artists showcase their work like a free repository of work that they can resell.

Back in the days of Myspace, tag makers used to frequent DA and steal work to resell to sites that would generate money from "clicks".  It was a pretty good scheme back in the day; one site that had purchased a stolen image of mine that was made into a tag was raking in over 2 million a year (no I'm not exaggerating that figure either.  I got it straight from the horses mouth).  Nowadays, every now and then I'll find .zip files my work for sale on some Russian web site.  Of course there's very little I can do about it (yeah... like they're going to acknowledge a takedown request, or even an invoice sent to them).  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I find my work for sale through other means too.

I'm not exactly happy about the various "college frat sites" that are geared towards your average college male who swipe and repost images to drive page (and advertisement views) either.  Their whole business model revolves around getting free content around the net and making money off of it.

I truly do appreciate my fanbase and I'm humbled that so many of you like my work.  I know the watermarks are a pain in the ass and the ruin the look of an image.  I hate using them more than you hate looking at them and if there was another way I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Just know that they're not on there because of you; rather because of the opportunistic a-holes who think nothing of profiting off of others' work.  

OK, so I've been gone for quite a long time (almost two years).  In that time A LOT of bullshit has happened in my life (as well as some really great things as well too).  For the most part I've pretty much stayed away from this place since it tends to be a drama magnet with people's egos flailing around, asshats with self-entitlement problems swiping people's work and using it for their own gains, etc.

So after a lot of deliberation on my part I decided to give this one more go.  With that said, a few things I'm going to make known up front.  I sincerely hope you enjoy the work I put up, however I have a strict zero bullshit policy.  Show me some common courtesy and I'll do the same in kind towards you.

With that said, for the time being I'm going to leave comments enabled on deviations I post.

I know I've mentioned this before, but apparently people just don't get "it".

The whole reason my work is for others to enjoy viewing it.  Not to steal it.  Not to hear whiny narcissistic complaints about how either they or I could do better, etc.  I neither want nor need peoples opinions, critiques, or advice on my work.

I'm well aware of my limitations, and what I still have to learn, and what i have to improve on.  However, Personally I really don't give a flying fuck what people's opinions are though.

With that said, for the forseeable future, all comments will be disabled.  One of the reasons i stopped shooting for almost a year was because of the childish bullshit others subjected me to in the name of trying to "help" me.  With all due respect: drop dead.

By all means, enjoy my work.  No ego stroking is ncessary.  Howver, there'll be a snowstorm in hell before I allow anybody to subject me to the bullshit I went through last year.


That is all.  

(Part 1 of this journal can be read by going here:  stuckpixelphoto.deviantart.com…  )

Part II

As I was saying the other day:  if the whole having a major falling out with a friend/muse of mine was the second to last straw (along with all the bullshit from everything else that preceded it), what was the last straw with my photography that nearly made me walk away and never look back?

Well the last straw in regards to my photography actually came around January of this year.  To make a long story short, I discovered a supposed friend (who is a photographer) had swiped one of my pinups to use to promote a group shoot that she was running and charging people to attend.  Initially when I saw the advertisement I thought I was running the group shoot.  My name was all over the photo in question (score one for watermarks! ).  When I questioned her about it, instead of getting some sort of apology, all I could get was a Mea Culpa.  As you can imagine, I was FUCKING PISSED OFF about it, but because she was supposedly a friend I let it slide.  I was pissed about it because, since my name was all over the pics, people attending this thing would have thought that I had some connection to it.  So in effect, she was using my name and work to draw people into the group shoot.  

With everything that had happened (and was happening) up to this point, culminating with this, the wind was completely taken out of my sails.  I said to myself, if a FRIEND could have no problem being an asshole and steal my shit, I'm completely fucked when it comes to everyone else.

At that point I couldn't move on with my work anymore.  I tried as hard as I could to put on a smiley face for people and I tried to do some shoots, but by that point I was so disenchanted and disgusted with everything that I nearly sold off all of my photography gear and never looked back.

That was near the end of January.  Fast-forward to October; where does this all leave me now?

Well, as I said earlier, I'm the happiest I've been in years.  Things have turned around substantially, and for the first time in my life I can honestly say that I'm legitimately HAPPY (and no, I’m not on some sort of medication.  lol!).  Not everything was roses during that time period, but the positives significantly outweighed the negatives thankfully.

Unfortunately it was a pretty hard road I had to walk this past year.  I think I did more growing up in one year than I did in the 30+ years that preceded it.  I also learned a few hard lessons about life that I neglected to learn (or see) earlier in my life.  What were those lessons?  Besides being a bit personal to say the least, they’re not lessons that can be learned easily.  I could tell it to someone until I was blue in the face, but they probably wouldn’t get it if they didn’t experience the pain and anguish first hand to go along with those lessons.  At the end of it all, let’s just say that I'm happy that I learned what I did and my life has never been better because of it.

When it comes to my photography the answer is a lot more complicated though.  My creativity had been severely hampered during all of this.  The reason for that?  Remember what I said earlier about that saying that artists are depressed?  With me, for years my depression had been fueling my creativity.  Now that I'm actually HAPPY for a change, well...  it had become harder to come up with concepts.   That and there’s a multitude of other reasons for it too.

I can’t explain it without going into explicit detail into *everything* that happened, and honestly, that’s something I'd rather not go into.  The best way I can describe what the problem was is that I had been left with a form of P.T.S.D. of sorts.  I was almost reluctant to jump back into it full bore because of all the pain and the unimaginable amount of bullshit and drama that I had gone through.  I had got so sick of the childish infighting and bullshit between models to models, photographers to photographers, models to photographers, photographers to models, and the rampant jealousy, over-inflated egos, drama, and the narcissistic trash talking that I was literally afraid of getting sucked back into all of that again.

That and one other thing…  for a while I thought I really did lose my creativity and it wasn’t coming back.  I have to thank my friend Jessica (Insatiable Kisses) for opening my eyes and letting me see what was wrong.  Once it was right in front of me it was really apparent (to me at least) what the problem was.  Easiest analogy I can make is to think of Peter Parker when he wished away his powers in Spiderman 2.    Yeah, I did do some shooting this year, but the dirty little secret is that either virtually all the ideas I had done this year where things I had thought up prior to this roller coaster ride had started, or the models had come to me with the concepts.  Mentally I was a blank.  What I discovered  is that when I withdrew, I had turned myself off to the point where I cut out all the art in my life.  Call it a defensive mechanism if you’d like; essentially I was afraid of going through everything again.  What I had inadvertently done by cutting out all the art in my life is that I had also cut off the creative aspects of my life too.  I had no creative ideas in my head because I was suppressing that part of me.

Once I realized that that’s what was going on, it was pretty easy to fix.  The ideas are starting to come back to me thankfully, but it’s only been in the past WEEK that that’s been happening.  I know that may sound silly, but sometimes it’s the little things you miss, and you need others to point them out to you.  Thanks Jessica.  

Going forward though I also had to make a decision as to just what am I?.  Am I photographer or am I an artist?  After thinking everything through I decided that at the heart of it all, I'm an artist.  Unfortunately I like having money in my pocket, so that means being a full time photographer is out of the question at this point in time.  People just don't want to pay for anything (and I don't just mean models...).  It makes it incredibly difficult to sustain myself unless I devote every waking moment to this, and I had to come to the realization that that's just not going to happen.  I'll eventually do more shooting, but I'll be playing by *MY* rules, not the rules that everyone feels I should be playing by, or doing what they feel I should be doing.

That’s it in a nutshell folks.  The longer story is a LOT more interesting, but since it's very personal I'm not going to share those details publicly.  One thing I will share is that right now I feel as though I'm making up for wasted time.  It almost feels surreal in a way; like the past 30+ years of my life was just a REALLY bad dream, and that my life has now just started.  At times I wish I had my own personal Doc Brown edition Delorean so I could go back 30 years and change things.  However, reality rears its ugly head shortly afterwards and I realize that not only do I lack the means to generate 1.21 jigawatts of power,  but time machines only exist in the movies.  No matter how much it may sting to this day, I just have to live with the reality of it all.

So yeah... I'm alive, I’m just starting to get back into doing the things I love, and for the first time that I can remember, I'm the happiest I've ever been.  Looking back it was THE most painful year I think I’ve ever been through in my life; worse than the year I nearly lost my mother to complications from open heart surgery, not to mention the year I lost my muse Jenny to a car wreck a few days after Christmas.  In a strange way I’m glad I went through the pain of the past year.  My life is a lot better now because of what I learned and experienced, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.  When it comes to my photographic work though, it's still an uphill battle for me but eventually I hope I can get back to where I was before this roller coaster ride went out of control.

This time...  let's try to keep The Screaming Oak  on the track, m'kay?

M.Rego
28-OCT-2010