Portfolio Frustrations
I've been working on holierthancow and I's joint portfolio site, picking up where Wyspurr left off with it. I really want to have it up before the weekend is out, but I've hit a wall. holierthancow is an artist. Content for his section was easy. He just handed me a disc with the art he wanted to put up on it and I put it up. No sweat. On the other hand, I am not an artist. I'm a writer and a photographer, and only the latter in the loosest use of the term. Thanks to multiple hard drive crashes and my wonderful tendency to lose what few back ups I make of anything I don't really have much to show of either.
In terms of my writing, all I have around is old poetry I can't seem to lose, a few old short stories that were published almost a decade ago and are frankly crap, miscellaneous comic scripts that are quite frankly horribly unproffessional messes since they were written for holierthancow who I can trust to understand my incoherency most of the time, a few random bits of World of Darkness fan fiction, and the stuff I'm working on right now that isn't ready for public consumption yet. So, basically nothing that I would want to use as examples of the quality of writing that I'm capable of, so for the writing portion of my portfolio the best I can do is say "Go read Roth & Earl. I write that."
So, what about the photography portion of my portfolio? Well, instead of the approach I've taken to my old photography page where I put up every crappy thing I had I'd rather at least try to pretend that I'm somewhat competent at taking pictures. So...looking at what I have trying to decide what would be putting my best foot forward, I realize that my best shots are of people whom I no longer count among my friends, Terina and Joe. I don't want to use material from shoots with people I've burned bridges with...it just feels like bad mojo. I have a few decent shots of Wyspurr and geckogirl, but that's pretty much it, and I'm really not terribly happy with those. They're good for stuff taken in bedrooms with my old, crappy camera and unfortunate lighting but they're not really anything to be too proud of. Also, using only those would reinforce an assumption that gets on my nerves...that I'm only interested in photographing naked women. I used to have some great landscapes, some good urban mischief photos, some lovely nature photography. All gone now because I never backed them up.
So, I don't know what I'm going to do. Probably use substandard material just to have something to take up space until I find time to do produce something worthwhile. It drives me nuts because I always fall short on everything I apply myself to.
I've been working on holierthancow and I's joint portfolio site, picking up where Wyspurr left off with it. I really want to have it up before the weekend is out, but I've hit a wall. holierthancow is an artist. Content for his section was easy. He just handed me a disc with the art he wanted to put up on it and I put it up. No sweat. On the other hand, I am not an artist. I'm a writer and a photographer, and only the latter in the loosest use of the term. Thanks to multiple hard drive crashes and my wonderful tendency to lose what few back ups I make of anything I don't really have much to show of either.
In terms of my writing, all I have around is old poetry I can't seem to lose, a few old short stories that were published almost a decade ago and are frankly crap, miscellaneous comic scripts that are quite frankly horribly unproffessional messes since they were written for holierthancow who I can trust to understand my incoherency most of the time, a few random bits of World of Darkness fan fiction, and the stuff I'm working on right now that isn't ready for public consumption yet. So, basically nothing that I would want to use as examples of the quality of writing that I'm capable of, so for the writing portion of my portfolio the best I can do is say "Go read Roth & Earl. I write that."
So, what about the photography portion of my portfolio? Well, instead of the approach I've taken to my old photography page where I put up every crappy thing I had I'd rather at least try to pretend that I'm somewhat competent at taking pictures. So...looking at what I have trying to decide what would be putting my best foot forward, I realize that my best shots are of people whom I no longer count among my friends, Terina and Joe. I don't want to use material from shoots with people I've burned bridges with...it just feels like bad mojo. I have a few decent shots of Wyspurr and geckogirl, but that's pretty much it, and I'm really not terribly happy with those. They're good for stuff taken in bedrooms with my old, crappy camera and unfortunate lighting but they're not really anything to be too proud of. Also, using only those would reinforce an assumption that gets on my nerves...that I'm only interested in photographing naked women. I used to have some great landscapes, some good urban mischief photos, some lovely nature photography. All gone now because I never backed them up.
So, I don't know what I'm going to do. Probably use substandard material just to have something to take up space until I find time to do produce something worthwhile. It drives me nuts because I always fall short on everything I apply myself to.