Last week, I started chronicling the "story" of creating a feature story I'm doing on the adult movie industry. This is the first story I've done with this editor, so last Friday I shot her an email summarizing all that had come together thus far. I got an email back from her today asking a few questions and pointing out a few things to bear in mind.
There are lots of different ways to do a story like this. One is to have "your story" be the lead story that takes the reader through the story. Another is to have the story tell itself. In all likelihood, I'll be doing the latter. I'm not nuts about writing about myself. Maybe if I was Hunter and freakin' on acid, I'd make a different decision, but generally I'd rather be a shadow character.
I had also asked her if she was interested in photographs to go with the piece, and she said: Yes. And suggested the possibility of a companion slideshow. And I found that to be very interesting, indeed. For a variety of reasons, now more than ever, I'm interested in taking more photographs. To be honest, I'm probably more excited about taking the photographs than writing the damn thing, probably because I'm so damn used to writing, and I'm so not an expert at taking photographs.
Way back when Nerve had a brief run as a print magazine, I did a piece on -- I don't know -- it was either "freak porn," "bukkake," or -- I think it was "freak show porn." (Ah, the shame of my so-called career never ends.) When I was about to head out, the editor asked if I would take some photographs, something I'd never done in my life in any professional capacity, so I borrowed the digital camera of my boyfriend at the time, and went to the bukkake, and I took some photographs. I think they're around here somewhere, but I don't know.
Now the prospect of taking photographs is thrilling to me. I haven't taken any photographs since 2005, so I may try starting with a camera suggested by Clayton Cubitt, who is a real photographer. That's a Panasonic Lumix DMC FX-150K, and I could say a lot of different things, but the bottom line is that it's cheap as fuck and Terry Richardson uses one.
I'm really excited about the idea of taking more photographs. My brain changed in the last few years, and I think the idea of what I'll be doing with the camera is a lot more like how I experience life now, and while sometimes that is not a good thing, sometimes you have to do the thing to get to the thing, to get through the thing, to get to the other side of the thing. And that's why I'm doing this story at all.
As a sidenote, I've added my Twitter feed to the sidebar of this blog. It's got random thoughts, quotes, and other inanities, if you're into that story of thing.
