daily ruzz

rumbling

i've been queried and questioned. bad formatting framing banter, and the curiousity is: what's with you and few pictures?

i have decidedly stepped back some from photography, but it's latent, not patent. there are obvious contributing factors--like life. but, more than that, there is a disconnect somewhere. a realization that i had detoured from the path of exploration i was on. Partly attributed to the z2, partly to being an alien in new york. partly because of the shift into everyone just automatically linking photography to ruzz.

i'm not any one thing, and i don't want to be. i like following my curiosity. it doesn't have a preference for a camera, code, paint, words. it goes where it goes, and most days i follow (to my own expense). and while the z2 is a far better camera than my 950, it broke the immediate connection to the result (being digital-slr type) and i have yet to regain my mastery of focal depth and control. in some senses, i wish i still had my 950. it didn't impress the ladies, but i knew it like breathing.

so i've been set back. unable, or unwilling to wrestle the z2 into what i see i end up taking far less emotionally esoteric images and just want to delete it all. which is why i haven't completed my photo essay, or done fuck all with photolush. and, maybe is why i barely pick up the camera.

or maybe, i just don't like the uncertainty as much as i think i do. because, everything is chaos right now, in my mind and life, and some artists (gag) would use the camera to sort it out. me, i just want to kick someone in the balls, or lay under my bed. either or.

i want to record things i will want to recall in the future.
i have some great portraits of some people, people who i no longer have any esteem for and when i see them i hate them, but they are good pictures. what does one do with great images of people they wish they could forget?

it constipates you when you go to push the button.

of course, i'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. thats what i do. you know that, i know it, Saddam damn well knows it.

but thats how it is. i'm not wasting perfectly good finger wiggling energy pushing a button to remember something i would rather forget.

this period, which i spoke to earlier, may be recalled as something like: the unremarkably blah period.

wherein, all my spare energy is spent hunting ghosts, exorcising demons and basically being dragged into the past--rather than creating new anything, memories included.

the kittens are cute though.

check it out

i encourage you to check out this new photomagazine (go to BZKmag).. not so easy to get around, but good content.

Photolush

I've conceived my first photo essay for photolush. i have to execute it, jude is going to write the introduction for me, and then i need to actually get a system in place to display this shit. All, as i gear up for what is presenting as the most insane week or two in the past year.

of course, nothing will rival the opening of incorruptible while simultaneously moving into this pad, and moving the servers to their new homes last year, but it's going to be interesting.

when did september become the month of change and work.

so, i hope, i can steal enough minutes to produce the work i want in the next couple weeks. it's low key. doesn't require a lot of extra shit like models or special settings, so that helps. If i can do that, then, in the first week of october, i should be able to get it up, i will be without internet as we're shuffling some things around here, so the timing will be good. no net, means i can't waste time blogging for you.

maybe, i could actually create something interesting without the net.

oh, and i found out who our mystery commentor is. i'm surprised, and a little let down. voyuerism is not half as sexy as they say.

changes.

because i rock, and because you don't, i've created a new feature here in ruzzland. I notice my weblog is quickly becoming a photolog, and while i love to share my photos that wasn't my intent here. so, in an effort to thin out the photos here, and get texty content, and also to have a place where i can put up more than a shot here, or there, i'm happy to introduce your asses to:

photolog: i.m. ruzz

bookmark that baby if you're the sort of person who does that sort of thing. ish.

i never do

i never seem to know if someone is interesting to me till i put them in front of my camera. you can learn so much from watching people when they know they are being watched.

I have a longish blog comin up. sit tight y0.

thank god for dvd burners

This is just for august, no other photos. 24 days of august photos.

how were going to do it

first
first we're going to gather all the faux angels wings in the whole great earth and make the largest pile of faux angel wings ever assemebled

then
then we're going to get judekyle to light them on fire
and build a huge base of coals

then
then we're going to take all the effin photographers who've commited the crime of putting models in faux angel wings and we're going to toss them

one by one
onto our faux angel wing pyre.

the world will be a slightly better place.
we can even make smores, if you want.

39 helens agree.

its official, folks.

i've sold my first copy of one of my photographs. cashed the dough. bought me a porsche.

sweet.

were i dreaming when i

i sometimes daydream that i will one day find myself sitting behind a camera finding new ways to show you the worlds most recognizable faces. Doing portrait shoots for the faces we all know intimately, have seen a thousand times and are still curious to see more of.

and the daydream becomes a waking horror when i find myself in front of a subject who breaks down the camera and refuses to be reduced to film.

i think about these people, who move with a certain grace, smile with a certain comfort and are bringing a beauty from a place that only the lucky are able (by chance) to record. happenstance like. People whose power, or strength, or calm simply will not submit to the restrictions of cameras.

and it terrifies me.

Sometimes we sit, camera in hand, and look at our subjects and know we must create artifical movement to imply spirit, create artificial depth or meaning to downplay some other more dominant focus. And we play tricks with light & shadow, we change the depth of field, we take shots from uncomfortable angles, rely on clothes, rely on makeup, rely on interesting materials in the photos. we lay on these things as crutches.

sometimes, the same situation requires none of those things and the emotion, or power is authentic. no matter how the shot is setup we capture it.

and sometimes, we sit in awe of the scope of our subject. unable to quite figure a way to capture it.

In the last three days i've had opportunity to stand behind the camera in impromptu candid shoots for two beautiful women. One i choked on the light. One i choked on the scope.

and i know, that i am far from mastery. I know that in my work to find control of the images i'm getting i will occassionally be gifted (or cursed) with a subject i simply do not posses the ability to bring to film with any strength.

and that happened for me tonight. it makes me so angry i could cut my hands off at the wrists.

two potentially amazing shoots in three days. two botched shoots. two times i fell prey to bad light, to not being able to handle the speed of candid photography. two i failed technically, if not in what i brought to the camera with me.

this shit matters to me.
it really really matters.

i want to make images that blow people away and when i'm given the gift of incredible subjects i can't allow myself to choke and produce one good image for every twenty photos.

i know i'm being hard on myself.
but thats how i push myself to excel.
that's me reaching for something.

tonight, somehow, rather accidentally i ended up as a tag-along on a dinner with jude, kiki, jack and claire. We went to dinner and the light was sensational. the light was.. fuck the light was everything. and no one seemed to mind my obtrusive camera in their faces so i went with it.

then we came back here and played some 80s trivia, and it started out slowly. it started out.. simply. but as the night grew on, the focus of my photos gravitated to my curiosity about claire. and in the end, everyone knew that i had given up even caring enough to pretend otherwise.

and she relaxed into it. or seemed to. and it was like we cut this channel of energy photographer-model right down the middle of the room, right over the 80s trivia board. and she was posing, very subtly for me. and through one eye i would be composing a shot, through the other i would be looking at her, and her looking at me, and for a while, the complexity of the rest of my life just fuckin ebbed into my desire to capture what i was seeing on film.

now the irony of this is, i said i wanted a model who would just let me go. Would let me take photo after photo after photo till i could break through the idea of a man and a woman, or a photographer and a subject to this place where time doesn't exist, and energy is the currency being traded. and i got that tonight, somehow, by being alone in this chain of energy between the camera, her and i, i got that.

it's the fucking point of photography for me to get there. to get to that place where, nothing matters more than this stream of intense images ripping through my eyes.

and i got it.

but, because ruzz is ruzz, almost fucking nothing came out the way i wanted. Unless i want to make them all thumbnails. make them all 200x200. unless i want to stare at my inability to transfer what's there to film.

and i have a spoon here beside me, and i'm wondering if i gouge my eyes out would these be the last images i held? would, my brain hold onto the last of them, so clear, so amazing because nothing new was coming in like a fucking tide and washing them away?

so you can see claire in the POTD today, but you can't, you know, see claire.

you can see the thinnest fucking thread of what i saw.
and it kills me to think there is no second chances sometimes.

but folks, you can count on this much from ruzz, maybe not the next time, or the time after that, that i sit down to take photos of someone who extends beyond my reach, i will be ready. One fucking day i will be ready. and when that day comes i'm going to scream it from the rooftops that i got the thing i wanted most in my life, and if God is fair, he will strike me down right there.

maybe i'm a tad worked up here.
but thats what passion is.
giving a shit.
feeling it all the way.

tired ruzz

The shoot went great yesterday, all my worries were for naught.

but, i'm so so very tired and hung over.
who knew skinny little waif models could pack that much booze away.

just chillin with my man peter sellers now. watchin the party (1968) and revelling in the amazing range of physicality sellers perfected. he is so under-rated in our time, it's sad that jim carrey could have been our generation's sellers but isn't.

not yet at least.

and then, then i have my electrolyte replenishing powerade and a choice between the reckoning, outfoxed, and a couple other less attractive options.

owing blockbuster a teste is no good.

anyways, penny said she thought i fell off the face of the earth so, i figured why not blog something. and something is exactly

exactly
what i blogged.