Shut up and do it.

"My heart is like a mason's heavy weathered skin, each scar makes it harder for me to hurt again."

-Avett Brothers, Pretty Girl from Chile

I've been in the process of (more thinking than doing) beginning a new body of work called Manscape.  The idea was in some form born even before the first photograph in Decay Constant.   For some reason this series isn't pouring from me in the way my thesis show stuff did.  The top photograph here is an EXTREMELY elementary version of an idea I have for it (the real one definitely won't feature my feet anywhere in the frame).  The bottom photo is a cookie-cutter-whatever-Annapolis-photo I took tonight after the Wednesday night races (and is  in no way related to Manscape so don't worry).

I feel like I can't shoot this work the same way that I shot Decay Constant.   The landscapes (?) that I have been planning will not allow for that 2.8 aperture/shallow misty depth that has become a big part of my style/aesthetic.  I love f-2.8...I cannot really ever imagine anything above f-11 even.  Is it possible to successfully shoot something in a style seemingly different from my own?  But then again I want these photos to be a little funny.  Decay Constant was so friggin serious.  I don't want any mystery.  I want straight forward, awkward, and ironic.  Misty, shallow depth won't do those things.  

I always do this.  I think myself into a corner.  I think about everything before I do it and stress myself out about it.  I don't think I've ever planned a photo that I have actually liked in the end.  Sure in Decay Constant I would set out to photograph a certain person, a certain area, or a certain thing, but the only photos I would actually LOVE were the ones that I shot on a whim...in an unplanned light/untried/thought of angle/obscure moment.  Its like split personality disorder.  I've always had a tendency to be entirely too cerebral...but things (not just photography) always seem to turn out best when I haven't really thought about them too much.  But to not "think(!?!?!?!)" about something too much before I do it...why, that goes against everything I stand for!  Its like an epic battle between Aries and Taurus (I was born on 4:20, and no one ever knows which sign I'm supposed to be), and Aries always wins. 

If you are reading this Rebecca Nolan (an old professor of mine), I'm sorry.  I'll "shut up and do it"...just like you always told me.