Hey, I feel like a story, and since this particular image is of no consequence (this goes in my mediocre folder) and won't be viewed by that many folks, I think I slip it in right here. This way just the few who pay close attention to my stuff will read it. One of the advantages of DA, is that I actually do post some of my mediocre or even poor work here (that normally goes in my scrap bin) for a specific reason.

Early in my photography career I had decided not to be "influenced by anybody" other than John Hedgecoe, Jean-Loup Sieff, and Lucien Clerge - those were the only photography books I owned and they remain my holy trinity of knowledge. I studied them front cover to back cover and developed my own style - and then opened myself to critiques of certain photographers I trusted. Learning this way is not easy. You don't make yourself popular because you don't follow the "popular trends" no work shops, no helping hands, no post programs, no finishers. My work is just me... oops! Getting off track, more on that later, perhaps in another image or a journal.

This was essentially "amateur hour" my very first attempt at bodyscape work. Using lamps, a mattress and bedsheets... oh, and a wall. Don't forget the wall! And the model of course... this was Kayla, who, as I will explain in full, patiently waited through my learning curve.

Most of the credit goes to my models. I was lucky enough to have models who believed in me, but most key was that I had a few who were nothing less than partners in my art. Without those muses, their unique personalities, and what I learned from them, drama and all - shaped me into the photographer that I am. Each in different ways as well.

The first of these girls was Kayla (pictured here). She would do just about anything for an image, she was an actress posing as a model... she could laugh, cry, scream, rage, skip, jump, tell me anything and everything, she made herself completely transparent and completely available in every possible way you could conceive. There was nothing off limits to my field of vision when it came to our shoots. No part of her body, her mind, or her soul. By that I don't mean we engaged in crappy fake porn shots. I mean, that everything we attempted was genuine, and when there was something very "grown up" being shot, it was "real" as far as the emotions go. Nothing ugly and contrived.

I didn't get that this was RARE. I never realized what a gift of a model I had, and I actually believed that ALL models were going to be this way in the future. Hah! Not to say it's never happened again, but it's pretty scarce. I have had to cultivate the ones I have had, way more work, and never happened again to this extent. And I have never had anyone since with such a gift for acting.

Unfortunately, personalities that are so intense are also quirky and explosive. Our relationship was sometimes a drain on me emotionally and mentally. I won't go into some of the issues - not important but it ended unexpectedly when she took offense over my growing collaboration with other models.

She wrongly believed that I liked them more than her simply by counting the number of images on my portfolio. She did not understand that I had become a better photographer since the bulk of our early work, and thus, I took down some of the images that were not lit or composed as well. She took this as a rejection of her. She called me one night, just past midnight and wept on the phone for hours... told me that she sensed that I did not love her anymore, told me that I had broken her heart, and that she didn't feel like modeling again.

I thought it was hyperbole, that she was just being her emotional, high strung self. Nope. She was serious.

She was gone from modeling - never posed again. POOF. Never responded to me again, or talked to me again. Took most of her portfolio's down, and vanished into the mist. Several other photographers were quite unhappy with me as a result.

At the time I was too sick and exhausted to really let it register, but over time it has become more unbelievable to me that such a key person in my life could just be "gone" and never come back. But that is this business, it's the way it works and as a photographer you always have to be prepared for it.