At the beginning of the year, I sat down and made a list of goals for myself. In addition to the effort to gain momentum in my photography career and procure more jobs each week, I knew I needed to set my strong eye—because let’s face it…by this point my left eye is infinitely stronger than my right due to all the time squinting behind a viewfinder—on something more creatively satisfying than headshots. Too often I’ve seen photographers go down the roads that make money, only to abandon the creativity that got them interested in the profession in the first place. I refuse to walk that path.
The problem is: creating, while ultimately more satisfying than anything else I do, has a way of driving me crazy from the moment the idea sprouts in my head until the moment I fix the final color alterations in Photoshop.
Never has this been more true than with my work on one of Ryan Scott Oliver’s newest songs from our project
35mm, fittingly titled “Crazytown.” A dreamscape that explores the unexpected twists and turns our subconscious creates, this song has been shouting in my ear for months now, begging me to come up with an idea worthy of its intricate musical styling. And just as the narrator in the song seems unable to grasp the imagery confronting him at every turn—rivers filled with snakes, jeering jackals, choking orgies, and towers covered in doors—I found myself nearly incapable of thinking outside of the literal, rapid-fire landscapes Ryan created for each verse.
In my time as a photographer, I’ve answered mostly to myself when working on creative projects; I’ve been inspired by another photograph, a painting, an everyday experience on the street, and, yes, at times song lyrics. But this was different. Now I was faced with the challenge of creating a handful of images that had to make an obvious link with the song in some way. I didn’t want to be literal, but I knew that if it became too abstract the audience would struggle to decipher not only the explosion of words, but how they related to the images. Ultimately all of this would become a frustrating, rather than satisfying, viewing experience.
I began my efforts while in Montana over the holidays. Before arriving there I’d decided only two things: that I wanted the images to include some use of the double exposure from the Jekyll & Hyde-ish photo Ryan had initially used as inspiration, and that I wanted that to exist behind some sort of keyhole (an homage to a construction gate I saw on a city street), as if the viewer was just being allowed tiny glimpses of the world that is “Crazytown.” What I couldn’t wrap my head around was what would actually make up those images.
With only a piece of construction paper, a silver sharpie, and a mask, I began exploring the possibilities of a five-second double exposure.
Flash. Move. Flash. End.Suddenly there were Francis Bacon-esque waves of mania happening in the camera. (It’s amazing what convoluted things light will do when consolidated on a camera sensor for a prolonged duration. In person, I was just standing in my parents’ living room, still overstuffed from Christmas dinner.) But, despite creating a decent placeholder, I knew I hadn’t quite nailed the feeling of the song.
Over the following weeks, I did what I’d been doing from the beginning, and sat and listened to the song over, and over…and over again. My love for the material grew exponentially, as did my fear I wouldn’t, or even worse, couldn’t, do it justice. If only I had a budget, I said to myself, convinced that money was the only thing keeping me from executing the task.
Ryan and I agreed the song would best be served by rapid-fire imagery, rather than one photo that lasts for the duration of a song, as is the case with many other parts of
35mm. I storyboarded. I wrote down word associations that came to me while listening to recordings. And then I began to crack.
One night, after I set up a faux-studio in which I wrestled with the elements in an attempt to both control sheets of paper as well as lighting and the focusing/triggering of the camera all at once, I gave up. Unless I could miraculously turn into an octopus, there was no way I was going to get an image I was satisfied with by the time the Joe’s Pub concert was performed, which, at this point, was only five days away.
I called Ryan and huffed through a monologue about my frustrations and inability to deliver. On the other end of the phone, during my momentary pauses, I could sense him formulating a response that would simultaneously frustrate and inspire me. “You either choose to do it all out, or you choose to just use a placeholder image,” he said. Part of my ego was bruised out of frustration. I seemed unable to be a one-man creative machine. And then I realized that this was a collaboration in the true sense of the word and that I needed to let his words sink in and act as motivation.
When I set down my phone, I took a deep breath and listened to the song again. Suddenly it hit me that the song is a series of directional changes. The story takes our ears up, down, and sideways within the course of five minutes, and I needed to provide images that would do the same for the eyes. Rather than creating elaborate set ups that would shift to multiple locations, I opted to keep it simple and create an additional character for the song, a demonic temptress of sorts manipulating our singer’s journey through this world. Suddenly I saw a series of hand motions that would act as the road signs of “Crazytown” and realized this was something I could accomplish in the allotted time.
With three days until the Joe’s Pub concert I scheduled shooting time with my muse Gillian Todd. I cut the appropriate pieces of paper, popped open my lighting umbrellas, and transformed the entryway of my apartment into a photography studio. Had anyone walked in, they would have not only seen all the equipment scattered within a room barely bigger than a parking space, but a half naked woman holding cheap colored paper over her boobs, which were covered in even cheaper white paint; a typical day in my household.
Within moments I knew this was the right path for the song, but I wondered why I hadn't been able to brainstorm this in the first place. What I realized as we proceeded was that, even though I hadn’t planned as well as I could have for what the shots would be (and though it had taken me a month to get to this point), the immense amount of failed attempts I’d had leading up to the actual shooting day informed me at every turn.
Seeing them projected at Joe's Pub (all 46 images) was reward enough. In that moment of relief at seeing the final product I knew that if I hadn’t gone a little crazy, I wouldn’t have been able to go to “Crazytown.” And I certainly wouldn't have been able to take the audience there with me.
