Childhood Traumas

I remember when I was three or four years old there was an evening when (what felt like) my entire extended family gathered in my house. I was too young to understand at the time but I knew that it was a big deal. All the elders, every aunt and uncle, and even grandmothers from both sides came to our little apartment in Tian Mu (little suburb outside Taipei) and gathered to do something.

I had no idea what that something was.

Thirty-some odd years later I asked my mother, "Remember that time when all the aunts and uncles came over to our house when I was little?"

She seemed confused at first and suddenly said, "You don't know?"

I said, "Know what?"

She said, "Your dad hit me"

And suddenly it clicked. I'm not sure if I forgot on purpose or didn't remember in the first place but I recall seeing my mom pull a kitchen knife on my dad. You know, that big one that you grab to protect yourself if there's an assailant.

According to my mother that was the only time that my father ever hit my mother.

But that wasn't the only time he was violent.

When I was 7 or 8 years old we had this neighbor, a heavy-set middle-aged man that would ring our doorbell in the middle of the night. It was rumored he had some screws loose and in retrospect it's very possible he had some mental illness. The next morning when my dad, my brother, and I were eating at a traditional Taiwanese breakfast place we saw him eating there too. When the neighbor went down the stairs to use the bathroom in the basement of the restaurant my father got up and waited for him at the top of the stairs. I don't remember if there was an exchange of words (I'm pretty sure there was), but as our neighbor was coming up, my father kicked him down that flight of stairs to send a message to stop ringing our doorbell in the middle of the night.

That was my dad's version of conflict resoulution. Strike first. Like Cobra Kai.

My father had a flash temper. From hitting random taxis with his umbrella (the taxi got too close to my mother and me) to knocking down all the KFC (we'd just bought) onto the floor with a single swipe of his arm (across the table), I am pretty sure I was constantly afraid of my father's flash temper.

I say "pretty sure" because I don't remember anymore.

But I know for a fact I was afraid of him. I'm just not sure if I was on pins and needles all the time.

I do remember that he'd get so mad at me and I'd be so afraid of him that my vision would change and my dad would look like he was pulsating through my eyes. Kind of like a Super Saiyagen but more like a weird tunnel vision where the thing I'm focusing on looks really far away and the whole scene pulsates. I'm pretty sure there's a medical term for this if there are any doctors in the house.

I remember when I was 5 or 6 and couldn't speak a lick of English in Kindergarten when we moved to Los Angeles. On our car ride to school, my dad discovered I couldn't say the word "hippopotamus" correctly and out of anger he made me repeat it over and over again until we arrived.

I remember when I was 7 or 8 when he discovered that the way I wrote the number 2 looked like the number 3 (where both numbers had a little loop tail). He was furious. He made me write an entire page of 2s and 3s without loops and made sure that there were completely discernible from one another.

I remember when I was 9 and he realized I stole a little handheld game from some friends at school and he smashed it with the circular end of an open metal pylon in our yard to punish me and send me a message.

And yet if you ask me, I'd say I had a (relatively) happy childhood. My father didn't physically beat me. I was never molested. I am sure a lot of people had it much worse.

Yes, but when you rationalize your traumas you aren't able to truly reconcile them and see them for what they really are... childhood traumas.

My father terrorized me. So much so that I internalized his voice in my head and amplified it 10x. Why? So I could innoculate myself from his verbal abuse. By the time I was 13 I had recreated a voice in my head that was much so meaner, so much harsher, and so much more extreme... I made it so that there was nothing my father could say to me that I didn't already say to myself and much worse. I retrospect it was an act of self-defense. I beat myself up more and hurt myself first so my dad couldn't hurt me anymore.

Case in point, I was 21 years old and my dad and I were playig tennis. I was having a bad day and couldn't get the ball over the net. When I did get it over the net, it went out of bounds... by a lot. I was super frustrated. I first started cussing myself out. My favorites are dumbass, dumbshit, fucking idiot, fucking asshole, retard, shithead... and any combination thereof. As our session went on, I became angrier and angrier, even slamming the racket on the ground on several occasions. By the end of the session I lost my shit. I repeatedly slammed the racket on the ground and broke the frame into pieces, rendering it useless.

The whole time my dad didn't say a word. He just looked at me in disdain and probably with concern.

I didn't realize what I was doing at the time. I was too young. But in retrospect it made perfect sense because it worked! I won. Not the tennis game but I won by preventing my dad from hurting me. I was so hard on myself and so angry at myself that I preempted my dad from saying anything to hurt me. To this day, I'm not sure if he knows what he observed that day on the tennis court. But that was me executing my many years of practice of beating myself up so he couldn't hurt me anymore. I mean what could he possibly say that I didn't already say to myself at 10x? I protected myself from him so I won.

Or so I thought... because in actuality I lost myself. My self-esteem. My self-confidence. My self-worth. My self-compassion. My self-love.

Ironically my dad was my hero. I never thought of him that way conciously but I always wanted his approval. I just wanted him to give me his validation. Over time he got much better at saying nice things to me. And it's possible that maybe it wasn't that he didn't say nice things to me but rather I was a sensitive kid and reacted poorly to the negativity. I don't know because it's hard for me to remember that far back. All I knew is that in my mind I could never win his approval.

When I was working, he'd always say "Why are you wasting your time working at someone else's company when you could be building out the family business?"

Even when I had a succcessful photography platform, he never once asked me about my work. He much preferred instead to talk about what he was doing and the money he was making.

It made me realize that my failure in his eyes wasn't a reflection of my failure as a person as much as it was that I could never make him proud of me because I wasn't doing what he wanted me to be doing. I could have made a million dollars a year and he would have still shitted all over it because I wasn't working in the family business and cheerleading for *him*. Because that's what he wanted. And that's what I wasn't giving him.

So it was damn near impossible to get his approval or his validation because I was an independent-thinking and somewhat rebellious kid. I still am that. But it meant that I could not get the validation and approval from the one person that mattered to me the most.

And that has scarred me.

But I'm starting to make sense of these traumas. Just as I realized it wasn't my failures that made him resent me but rather my inability to satiate his expectations of me, so too did I start to realize that my feelings of insecurity and worthlessness come from the way I was, and still am, treating myself. At 44 years-old I'm still beating myself up for stupid shit like dribbling food onto my shirt, for dropping things on the ground, for getting sick (he'd berate us for being physically weak). I'm still beating myself up so my dad can't hurt me... even though he stopped verbally abusing me years ago. And that self talk is exactly what makes me feel worthless. It's exactly what makes me feel insecure about the value I bring to the table, whether it's the skills that I possess or the relationships that I'm in. I'm still all fucked up because I haven't changed the way I treat myself.

Ironically my relationship with my dad has evolved. He's grown to become much kinder, calmer, patient, and positive. And yet my relationship with myself has stayed the same. I'm still the worthless piece of shit (oh right, I forgot about "piece of shit") that I have always been. I'm never good enough. I'll never be enough. It's why no one loves me.

And it breaks my heart. I'm in tears right now because of this realization.

But it's not the first time I've had this realization. It's probably the nth iteration. I've always known that I have to be nicer to myself. I've just never known why. But today I know why. I have to be nicer to myself because my self talk is the exact reason why I lack self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, self-compassion and self-love. But it seems like a circular argument. I beat myself because I feel worthless. I feel worthless because I beat myself up. Which is the chicken and which is the egg? How do you break the cycle? If it were so easy I'm sure I would have already done it. Or maybe because I needed this self-defense to protect myself from my father. Or maybe I prefer to think of myself in this way because changing my mindset is even harder than beating myself up. Or is it simply a pattern of behavior that is a habit?

Because all of this stuff feeds into my addictions... And that is a tangled mess all in and of itself.

Because I get addicted. Not to the typical things like whoring, gambling, and drugs but rather to everything I enjoy doing like photography, surfing, and music. Worse of all I get addicted to people. Even friends and social interactions. Because they make me feel good about myself and that makes me want more. It’s the validation I crave. That hole in my heart is what I’m trying to fill and the validation from others is how I’m trying to fill it.

But like sand through a sieve it never fills up. It quickly empties and I’m again left feeling worthless and unfulfilled.

And over time I’m starting to realize that I can’t fill that emptiness with the short-term validation of others or through my hobbies and interests. That validation is never enough. I either forget what they said or that they even said it. But just as I can not fulfill my father’s expectations of who I’m supposed to be, so too can I not fill my emptiness with the love of others. Because the problem does not rest with others not loving me but rather the fact that I don’t first and foremost love myself.

So all the praise I get on Instagram for my pictures, the applause for my music, the attention from girls, they don’t complete me. Because the problem does not lie outside of myself but rather inside myself. So all the money, the fame, the career success, and the plastic surgery won’t fill the emptiness that I have created inside my own heart.

It’s so easy to think we are not enough that it becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Everywhere I look I see someone better-looking, more successful, more famous, better appreciated, more validated... Because if I were enough, then I would (fill in the blank). For me that blank is that others would see me and validate me and in turn I would feel complete. Or it is that I would not be rejected by people and I would instead be loved and appreciated.

But how will anyone love you when you don’t first love yourself. How will you truly love anyone else when you don’t first love yourself. Those two questions alone are an essay in and of itself.

So unfortunately this is not a typical educational LUCIMA blog post. It also has nothing to do with photography. But they are confessions and a willingness to dig into my heart and mind to find the answers to lifelong questions that have plagued me. I'm sick and I want to be better.

Value of Dreams

What is a dream worth? Not very much. If there was so much value placed on a single dream/vision/idea then there would be a market to trade those dreams/visions/ideas. People would buy and sell them like stocks and arbitrage for undervalued dreams would make investors rich.

But there isn’t.

In fact ideas are a dime a dozen. People are always talking about the great ideas that they had but never followed through on. Inventions they came up with but never patented and never built the proof-of-concept for. They feel like they are the ones that should be getting paid for these inventions because they thought of it first. Unfortunately they have no legal claim to those inventions because they did nothing but come up with an idea.

That’s the thing. Ideas are cheap.

So are dreams.

It’s easy to sleep and dream. It’s easy to daydream. It’s easy to talk and share dreams. But you know what hard to do? It’s hard to *realize* a dream. It’s hard to *fulfill* a dream. Because the problem with dreams is that they’re not real. That’s why it’s called a dream and not called a *reality*. Because reality is worth money. Reality is traded on the stock exchanges. Reality has intrinsic value and worth. Dreams? Not worth much at all. Maybe worth a little bit of inspiration and motivation. Maybe worth a few clicks on Instagram. But to me a dream is like a distant relative dropping by to surprise you with a nice little gift that was purchased from the airport duty free shop and then leaving and never returning again. Basically worth as much as a box of 鳳梨酥. You might as well gift it to someone else because it isn’t worth much.

But then why do people put so much weight and emphasis on dreams? Because dreams are beautiful, dreams can be inspirational and dreams are extremely easy to share. But 99.9% of the time dreams never come to fruition.

That’s why I don’t spend time dreaming. And I’m terrified of dreaming big.

Instead I focus on *the work*.

If I want to run a marathon, I don’t think about running 26.2 miles. I think about running 1 mile 26 times. Sure, I can’t run 1 mile 26 times right now. But I know I can run 1 mile. And I know I can take a break between miles. Who cares how long the break is right now? Let’s just assume 5 minutes per break. With breaks, I can probably run 10 miles right now. That’s about 40% of my target. Over time I can increase that length. Maybe from 10 to 15 and from 15 to 20 and then eventually 26.2 miles. And I can also shorten my break time between miles. Finally I can speed up my running speed.

And that’s how you run a marathon.

Dreams must be broken down into bite-sized pieces. Consumable and palatable and digestible pieces. There must be a plan of attack, a road map, a strategy for how to get from A to B. Even Joey Chestnut, who holds the world record of eating 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes, he must eat 1 hot dog at a time (okay maybe sometimes 2 at a time). Furthermore Joey Chestnut has a complete gameplan with a proven track record for how to consume 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes. It’s not by accident or pure talent that he was eventually able to take down Takeru Koayashi and has won 15 out of 16 times he has competed in the Nathan’s Hot Dog contest.

Steps. Small steps. One step at a time, one second at a time, over minutes that become hours that become days that become weeks that become months that become years. That’s how dreams become fulfilled.

But you can’t really share the hard work on Instagram. No one has the patience to watch that stuff. It’s boring. The Instagram audience is all about “Show me the money!” Show me the bling, the private jets, the private islands, the hot girls. Even if it’s not real. Even if it’s all a lie. The audience would much rather buy-in to those *dreams* than learn about all the sacrifices and the struggles and the turmoil and the 學費 paid to get to those results. Dreams get clicks. Showing the behind the scenes (BTS) and the hard work gets “bounce” (a website statistic where the user leaves the page).

So you ask me again, what is a dream worth? And I’ll say the same thing I did when I was 31 back in 2011… Not very much.

The Best

When I was actively and passionately pursuing my career in photography I realized something, "I would never be the best photographer in the world."

While this might seem like a pessimistic outlook, it is important to remember that when the game is defined so narrowly, there can really is only one winner. I mean the definition of "the best" is singular.

I saw this on the Netflix series "Break Point" which interviewed many up and coming stars in the tennis world. Many bemoaned the difficulty of winning a competition and that everyone in the competition would ultimately be a loser except for the one winning individual. To compete on that level (top 100 in the world) and live with the reality of that outcome repeated over and over again is already an incredible feat that requires the highest level of psychological fortitude and perseverance. Furthermore when you consider that even Raphael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novac Djokovic still lose to each other while being literally the best in tennis (as they have been for decades), then it is even more important to realize that being "the best" is rare and virtually impossible.

If you asked me, "Who is the best photographer in the world"? I would honestly have no clue how to answer that question. I can name a few historically legendary photographers such as Annie Liebowitz, Helmut Newton, and Patrick Demarchelier. But could I pick just one? Probably not. How do you compare photographers if not through a narrowly constrained photography contest? Even then it depends on who the judges are that would determine the winner.

This is why I have never limited myself to competing on the pictures itself. That would be a disservice to myself. Why would I limit myself to compete on the one level that I already know that I am not the best? Why would I not include all the other incredibly valuable traits and characteristicsc that I possess, in order to create greater success as a photographer?

So that's exactly what I did. I leveraged my background in customer care/support, my degrees and experience in business, combined with my love of sharing and teaching... all to complement my photography skills to build (what was then) an incredibly viable business teaching fashion photography workshops. At the time, teaching fashion photography workshops was still niche and the market was not nearly as saturated as it is today. Therefore I had a wonderful opportunity to design a series of classes and build the LUCIMA brand on the back of my education platform. I am grateful that I had the pleasure of playing this game at a very high level. For my very first workshop, I charged $600 per person and I only got 1.5 students (two students over a weekend but one student only attended one day). Only a couple years later, my workshops cost $2000 per photographer, one where I took 18 students and shot at Eric Lloyd Wright's unfinished mansion in Malibu.

The irony is that when I became a photographer I thought my income would consist of shooting models and selling my work to magazines. Both were quickly dismissed as viable revenue streams because 1) models don't have much money and 2) magazines were facing extinction with digital content taking over the world. So only nine months after I declared myself a professional photographer, I started teaching fashion photography workshops.

Incidentally, this is the same design philosophy I employ to consult all my photographer students as they venture into becoming professional photographers in their specific locale. With each private workshop I would sit down with photographers that would come far and wide (usually out-of-state but sometimes even from Europe) to consult with me on how they would be able to succeed as photogrpahers back home. I always tried to find out what the photographer is interested in, what they're good at, where they live, and determine what markets and services they could explore in creating a differentiated product/service back home. Usually this came down to venturing away from crowded fields such as shooting high fashion in small markets because that's usually where the highest level of competition could be found. Instead we focused on the underserved markets e.g. pet photography, underwater photography, school yearbook pictures, boudoir photogrpahy, where the photographer has some competitive advantage and could dominate the field quickly and succesfully. My goal was always to position the photographer in a way that would yeild results swiftly so that he/she could then break some of the more competitive arenas (such as high fashion) to increase clout and price per sale (which usually required more branding and reputation).

This is interestingly enough the same design philosohpy I use to consult all startups as a venture capital investor. Startups tend to already have a good idea of what they bring to the table but at least in Taiwan I have found that the founders might be overly focused on their technical prowess without spending enough time to find the right application for their expertise/technology. The design stage of a startup's life is often the most critical point because misalignment of product/service to the market will make or break the business. I have personally invested in businesses that have bet their entire outcome on their technology only to find that the market does not value (enough) their technological differentiation. These failed/failing startups should have instead spent more time and care selling their product/service, creating more sales channels, and/or creating a greater vision and dream of how they can change the world.

The point I'm trying to make is that success (almost) never comes down to just one thing.

Even when people are the best at one single thing, it might not be enough. They might lose to someone who works harder and has more perseverance. Or they might might lose to someone who can pivot away from the original requirements and find a better application/niche. Or they might lose to time because they burn themselves out.

Case in point, I saw this time and time again while shooting fashion. There were superstar models that were incredibly beautiful but if they had a reputation for being difficult to work with, they would lose out on jobs to models that were easier to work with. I have personally passed on many incredibly beautiful models during casting because I had firsthand experience that they were unreliable, difficult, or just plain rude to work with. Even though they might create more powerful images, I would choose someone who had a slightly lesser look and worked twice as hard because at the end of the day, I can not bet a client's shoot on an unreliable model. When I am being paid to deliver a product or service, my team must be equally dependable and professional. I don't care if you have "the best look" because that is completely useless to me if I can't actually capture that look on my camera because you're late, you're pissing everyone off, and/or you're not putting in 100%.

Let me bring this point home. You see all these really hot girls on Instagram? I am not even talking about AI (fake) girls. I'm talking about the really good-looking girls that unfortunately offer no other value than some visual stimualation. You know, the ones that are just serving tits and ass. They might have hundreds of thousands of followers but the truth is these accounts (and the influencers behind them) have a hard time monetizing their audience. I should know because I have a similar audience. A lot of young men who don't have much disposable income and follow lots of hot chicks. This doesn't help me or the hot girls that share the same audience. The problem is that brands are looking for engagement to sell their products/services and unfortunately when your engagement consists of "you're hot" and "I love your tits", well that's just not very convincing to brands looking to spend marketing dollars. True engagement spans more than a couple seconds. True engagement is more than one-line comments that don't create a engaging conversation. True engagement from followers is a loyalty to the influencer that can actually be monetized.

This is what brands are looking for. And this is what really hot girls lack.

But aren't they the hottest girls on Instagram? They just might be. Hell, they might even become a trophy wife (or side chick) for some shallow guy. But you know in your heart of hearts that these perfect 10s will likely lose out in the long-run to an 8 with brains and a personality. I assure you an 8 with brains and a business model will completely destroy a perfect 10 if the time horizon is more than 5 minutes. I should know because I've worked with 9s and 10s that left me wanting to punch myself in the dick out of boredom.

They say life is unfair but I maintain that life is a lot more fair than we give it credit for. We so often look at people who are blessed with god-given talents and think that they must be crushing it in life. That the world bends over backwards for them and worships the ground they walk on. Maybe a little. Especially in the beginning. But I assure you, it's not enough to just be blessed with raw talent. Ask Michael Jordan and Stephan Curry. Raw talent does not usually equal long-term success. Sometimes it's opposite. It's the ones that are hungry, driven, persistent, and determined to succeed that are written into history... against all odds. These are the people that prove time and time again that a person's value far exceeds any single attribute. Raw talent is cheap and time usually reveals that hard work trumps raw talent any day of the week.

The idea of being a singular best is misguided at best. Maybe instead of being the best in any one single dimension, we should strive to be the most complete? To create the most value. Because when considering any singular dimension there is likely always someone better than you. The better challenge is to become unique and create a value proposition that is irreplaceable.

That's how you win.

Perfection

My perfectionism would previously have never allowed me to accept hot spots on her legs and arms.

I have been called a perfectionist on more than one occasion. And if you're reading this, I'm betting you have been called a perfectionist too.

There was a time when I took it as a compliment. Of course, it depends on the context. Usually it was about my work, whether it be photography, music, or just the expectations I set in the office with my team. That uncompromising, at-all-costs, all-or-nothing way of doing things that drove me to excellence (or madness) was something that I prided myself upon. The fact that someone recognized (what I thought was) my attention to detail generally made me beam with pride.

But as I get older, I began questioning this mentality and whether it has done me more harm than good. Whether it held me back from personal growth, whether it ruined some relationships, whether it was a cop-out (excuse) for not focusing on the bigger picture, or whether it was simply an expression of being obsessive-compulsive. Because all of these statements are true and the more I thought about it, the more I started to feel that being a perfectionist wasn't as noble as I'd made it out to be.

First off, perfection is an obsession.

When I first started retouching pictures, I had a pretty weak handle on Photoshop. I basically only knew how to fix skin blemishes. By learning how to use the dodge/burn tools and the heal tool, I became pretty good at finding and fixing skin blemishes. What's that saying? "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Yup, that pretty much hits the proverbial nail on the head (pun intended). What I didn't realize was that I was obsessed with making faces "perfect," and as I overcorrected for these blemishes, I erased all that the humanity from the faces of my subjects. Quite literally, my models began looking inhuman. As an example, I was so obsessed with lightening the darkness under the eyes that my models' eyes started looking two-dimensional. There was no longer any depth to my models' eyeballs; a spherical and protruding object on the face. Without the shadows that define the eyeball as a spherical object, my subjects began looking like they had very flat and inhuman faces. But I couldn't see it. I was too obsessed with getting rid of these "imperfections" on the face.

Which leads me to my second point. Perfection is a delusion from seeing the bigger picture.

When people told me that my models looked overly airbrushed or fake, I couldn't hear it. I felt that I had done a great job "perfecting" their faces. I was using perfection as an excuse to not focus on learning the other tools within Photoshop. More importantly, however, I think I was using perfection as an excuse to delay venturing outside my comfort zone. It would have been better for me to continue my retouching education and to learn how to retouch on a higher level or how to create a more compelling picture. Instead, I was stunting my own growth by overly focusing on the facial blemishes that were "ruining" my pictures. Ironically, 99% of the population of viewers did not see any of these blemishes to begin with. I was basically the only one that could see these blemishes, and I was basically doing this work for myself. I was so delusional about how I was making my images technically perfect that I couldn't see that I was not improving the overall value of these images to the outside world. In fact, if anything, I was detracting value from the outside world by trying to perfect these pictures.

But it wasn't just me. I had plenty of photography students mired in the same delusion. They would make perfect crops. Use perfect lighting. Pixel peep to ensure they had achieved perfect focus on the models' faces. Only to make a sterile image that lacked any life, any humanity, and (unfortunately for them) any value as an image to be consumed by the public. They had achieved technical perfection at the expense of removing all intrinsic life and value from the image. I mean, we literally threw away every image that wasn't tack-sharp on the pixel level. For what? So the critics on dpreview.com wouldn't be able to flame us? In retrospect, it was delusional to think that an image's value was solely based upon its pixel perfection. Or the focus. Or any single dimension.

I understand better now why that was happening to me. At the time, I was a first-year photographer, and I didn't have the context to understand the entirety of what makes for a good image. I didn't understand all the value that a single image contained, and I sure as hell didn't know how to retouch to those ends. So it was easy for me to get mired in the details of removing skin blemishes. It's a lot like trying to explain to a 6-year-old why her tiff with her best friend isn't the end of the world. Because for her, it is the end of her world. For her short 6-year-old life, her best friend is everything to her, and that feeling of her world collapsing in on her is very real. Trying to reason with her that it doesn't matter requires an understanding of life that she doesn't have due to her age and inexperience with life. It's like trying to explain the fourth dimension to me. I just don't get it. I can't see it, and I can't touch or feel it, so to me it doesn't make sense. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure physicists have already solved for many dimensions beyond the 3rd dimension in their exploration of the universe.

But in retrospect, I could have put down the retouching pen (I work on a Wacom tablet) and asked myself to explore the other aspects of retouching so I could learn to see the bigger picture. But I couldn't. I couldn't stop chasing this obsession of perfecting skin blemishes to see the bigger picture. I was happy living in this delusion. But because of this delusion, I was compelled to repeat my mistakes. To continue to make perfectly flat human faces. And I realize now that perfection is like that one friend who says, "Oh, what's the harm in doing this one more time? It's no big deal. It'll be great". But that person is not a friend. He or she is an enabler of my problems. That "friend" is keeping me from growing just so he or she has someone to continue doing bad things with. That's not a friend; that's a bad guy!

So instead of putting down the retouching pen, I say, "You're right, it does look better like this. Ahhh, much better"

All jokes aside, perfection has held me back as much as it has driven me to excellence/madness. I have gone to insane lengths in the name of perfection, but I think it's time to retire that mentality. My favorite pictures now are the ones that are "accidents". Pictures that are impossible to recreate because they are literally lightning in a bottle, frames between poses, forgetting to wind the film and double-exposing on the same frame, moving while shooting (or shooting through objects) and therefore creating motion blur or obstructive bokeh. It's the same as my shift in mentality toward shooting. I used to shoot to make pictures. Now I shoot to make friends. I mean it's even more poignant now that there's AI text-to-image generators and I can literally make pictures without people, so it's even more paramount that I stay in the moment to be part of the human experience rather than strictly focus on making compelling images. Sometimes it means slowing down. Sometimes it means stepping outside of my obsessive-compulsive mindset. Sometimes it means actually listening to what the model is saying (God forbid, lol). Whatever it is, it means that I'm not focusing on perfection but rather on the experience of taking pictures with another human being. These days, that is worth more than the value of the perfect image to me.

But your mileage may vary. I'm a lot older than I was when I first started taking pictures. The philosophies that drove me to shoot back then are no longer the core drivers. I have aged and evolved over time. I would never tell you that I'm right and you're wrong. Instead, I would suggest that we are each on our own individual journeys. We might overlap. We might not. Regardless, I just might have some stories that might be interesting enough to share and to consider. That's all.
  

The Source of my Madness

Plato said, "Necessity is the mother of all invention."

It is the single source of everything that I am and everything that I'm not.

Simply put, this philosophy is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.

I've written about the "what if" game throughout my blog. That's when you ask, "What if [fill in the blank]...? It's the perfect game for genres such as photography, where you can make small changes over many iterations that ultimately lead to a course correction or branching off into a new area of growth. Like "What if I use this blue filter in my channel mixer and then change it to monochrome and then change that layer to luminosity blend?". Well, that series of decisions turns skin tones much darker and allows me to make highlights and shadows in the skin that wouldn't otherwise be visible.

You're probably wondering, "How do I know when to play the "what if" game?" The answer is YMMV (your mileage may vary). I play it all the time. It's who I am. I'm dissatisfied with the way the world is. I do not accept things at face value. And I don't believe I have to lower my standards to suit your needs. Therein lies the heart of how I do anything and everything. It's what allows me to grow constantly, and it's what makes me a very difficult person to deal with. I'd venture so far as to say it's what makes the lives of those around me very difficult. For example, my wife says, "Nothing is ever good enough for you."

And she's right.

I've always had a problem with contentment. A fear of contentment, rather. The fear that I'll stop growing if I settle for what I have. A lot of people know this as "the grass is always greener on the other side" syndrome. Yeah, I have that. Or rather, I'm curious to know what's on the other side, so I have to see for myself (because I won't accept it if you just tell me).

So I've never lived with the fear of being copied. Sure, you can copy some techniques, some adjustments, or some photographic elements that I employ (like prisms), but you won't be able to recreate the essence of my style because you're not me. You don't have my "disease", so you won't wonder what, why, and how, and then make subsequent changes to accommodate those questions. You're probably a happier person than I am. Living in a state of constant dissatisfaction only leads to unhappiness and conflict with the world around you.

So ultimately it's a double-edged sword. Stagnation is contentment's "next of kin". You don't evolve or change as quickly as I do because you don't ask why. The reason you don't ask why is because you don't wonder why it can't be better. And the reason you don't wonder why it can't be better is because you're not unhappy with the way it already is.

Then nothing changes.

I've seen comedians wonder if they'd be funny if they hadn't suffered some trauma in the past. Many of them attribute their genius to drug abuse and other bad choices they make in life. Many of them eventually discover that there's a delineation between constant self-destruction and past trauma. Just because you've suffered in the past doesn't mean you must continuously suffer in order to be funny. Comedians who have gone clean usually realize that they are just as funny without the self-destructive behavior. Their perspective is already forever altered by the events of the past. Continuing to suffer might make for new material, but it isn't entirely necessary since you already possess a unique lens with which you see the world. For comedians, humor is the point of reference for interacting with this world. They can't help but see things in a funny light. They're simply not satisfied with not picking at loose threads, wondering, or thinking about how ridiculous the world is if you think about it.

Comedians clearly don't take things at face value. If they did, they wouldn't have jokes.

Maybe the question should instead be, "Can you learn to be dissatisfied with the world? My gut feeling is, "No, being dissatisfied is innate. Even if it was brought on by some past trauma, that trauma had to first interact with some root of who you are to create the questioning nature. For example, if you're an incredibly forgiving person and don't hold onto pain and misery, I don't believe past trauma would affect you the same way as it does others. You'd make peace with all the events of the past and be happy and content.

But you also wouldn't have my madness.

Corner Unit

In the Spring of 2015 I signed a lease at 610 South Main Street for a corner unit on the 7th floor (#735). It would be the third iteration of LUCIMA STUDIO (aka LUCIMA STUDIO III) and the first time I had a corner unit as a studio.

Over the course of the next two years I would shoot this studio day to create all sorts of different looks. My favorite setup was 8AM direct sunlight streaming through the East-facing windows onto the south wall of the unit. You can see the lighting pattern from the image above. That setup would create the most brilliant highlights on the models' skin (more on this in a future post maybe). My failsafe setup was allowing mid-day diffuse light through the East-facing windows hitting the subject on grey paper. I shot this setup to death and while it worked amazingly well, it was too easy. Finally my second-favorite setup was using the corner windows to create opposing light (usually backlight) to shape the model. You can see the windows of the corner in the following picture.

While I never painted the walls grey (as I would later for all future iterations of LUCIMA STUDIO), I used the modular 4x8' walls from the original LUCIMA STUDIO as grey backdrops after I painted them grey. They were mobile and lightweight and served extremely well until put them in storage after moving into LUCIMA STUDIO IV. The following image is an example of the faux walls as the backdrop. You can see the seam of the two walls overlapping.

Shooting the corner was never easy. The exact placement of the subject between the two windows was critical because the distance from each window would dictate how much light the model would receive from each side. This would cramp my style a little bit since I normally prefered to have more flexibility in placement and movement. But when the light was balanced properly you'd get magic like this.

Or this where the windows were not exactly juxtaposed but served amazingly well as a main light with a back/rim light.

But I didn't come here to talk about old pictures and corner units exactly. I am here to talk about this image.

Because this is not a picture that I shot. Rather this was an iamge created by Stable Diffusion that reminded me very much of LUCIMA STUDIO III. So much so that the placement of the windows relative to the walls (and the subject) is nearly identical to my actual unit. While I could have tried to use Stable Diffusion to inpaint (modify a part of the image in Stable Diffusion) the walls and windows to look more like 610 South Main Street, my fascination for this image is how much it reminds me of #735 610 South Main Street and also the level of realism from Stable Diffusion. I've been using the Edge of Realism model for a couple weeks now and it's by far my favorite model for creating images that resemble my work. Even though it's a SD1.5 model, I find it uncanny how lifelike the results are. The last couple posts have demonstrated that I've come full circle. When I first got my hands on Stable Diffusion it was all about exploring and making random pictures. Then I started applied a logic set that forced me to explore the "impossible". While I still have many series that I've yet to show from that logic set, I've already come back to exploring what feels familiar. These images while not terribly interesting, mundane even, are still not easy to create. The iterations required to produce something that I deem valuable and worthwhile enough to share is about a day's work on average. Luckily I have a 4TB HD and a mobile workstation otherwise I wouldn't be able to run all these experiments at all hours wherever I am. Maybe the point of these recent images is to simply come home and say, "the heart wants what the heart wants". Sometimes it's not about shooting "the impossible". Sometimes it's just about making something that makes you say "wow" and refine that to the extent of your abilities (and the technology). It's okay that it's not different, unique, impossible, and never done before. Sometimes it's just enough that you like it.

Athleisure Simplicity and the Education Afforded by AI

There is one advantage that Stable Diffusion offers that is somewhat unique to me compared to other photographers. Stable Diffusion allows me to share the before and after as long as I'm willing to reveal my process.

Well, I'm willing to reveal my process.

I realized this when I was pondering the benefits of AI and how I could literally talk to Tony Stark about anything. AI isn't afraid of subject matter (within reason) and is more than willing to go down the rabbit hole with me in my interview. Similiary, my Stable Diffusion "subjects" aren't people so they don't have feelings and aren't going to care if I show the process for creating the final product. Historically there were two problems with showing the unprocessed images. 1. It makes the model look terrible because the original images are usually chockful of problems including but not limited to the model being fat, skin blemishes, wardrobe mistakes, etc. 2. I didn't want people to think that I couldn't get better better models if judging my abilities from the unprocessed image.

Fortunately Stable Diffusion (and all text-to-image generators) resolve both problems. 1. There are no humans involved in the creation so no one's feelings can get hurt (outside of my own) and 2. I'm not using models so you can't judge me for my model choice.

But this isn't what I came here to talk about today.

This image of what seems like a blonde girl is somewhat mundane. It's fully clothed for one, which is a departure from most of the images that I create. Secondly the backdrop is austere and devoid of anything special; it is literally grey (probably) paper.

So why this image?

There's something about simplicity that is beautiful. I suppose this post is akin to the grey paper post from last week. But rather than extolling the virtues of grey paper, I'm now talking about the beauty of simplicity. That's studio portraits (closeups) are some of my favorite pictures. It's actually why I have always been (unbeknownst to many) drawn to faces first and bodies (a distant) second. There's something powerful about a look, a gaze, a pose, an angle, that doesn't rely on gimmicks to work. Sure I chose this pose, this body language, and asked for this kind of a subject with this kind of a look, wearing what is still skin-tight clothing... but what makes this image work isn't that she's overtly sexy or doing anything particular. She just is. And sometimes (not all the time) it's just good enough.

To understand this process however, let me start at the beginning.

I started this journey with this image I'd found on the Internet. I was hoping to make a better version of it. Unfortunately the pose didn't play well with the AI models understanding of overalls and ultimately I coudln't create anything that was more interesting.

I then flipped through my own archive of edited imagegs and settled on this image from my horses series because I liked the pose. No they're not the same girl. I literally used different AI models to make each image:

In ControlNet I ripped the pose with OpenPose. What you don't see are the many iterations of modifying this pose (particularly the hand position) so that it is improved (and different) from the original image. I probably went through 10+ iterations of modifying the pose alone.

After 50+ different images and countless changes to the prompt, I got something a little different. Something more clothed but more interesting.

The problem with this image is that it showcases one big flaw of AI models; they're largely trained on porn and Instagram. The model's chest was pushed up too far and felt like it defied the laws of gravity. The shape of female breasts is of course a very subjective matter but I think most would agree that natural and believable shapes look better. Therefore I took it upon myself to alter the size and shape of the chest so that it fit better with my own ideals. But as I always say, your mileage may vary.

I also took liberties with changing the shape and size of the subject's butt. I could pretty much repeat everything that I said above with the exception of the "defying gravity" part. When I look at an image I look for balance. Some part of that balance is photographic, meaning I shot it too high or too low or too close or too far etc. Some part of the balance is intrinsic, meaning it has to do with the subject's proportions, issues that are not illusions/issues created by photography. In this case I took issue with the fact that the subject wasn't to the proportions of my liking (few are). Again YMMV. Do I need to explain that I grew up on a diet of 90's supermodels again? Maybe. I was sure I had a post addressing this in the past...

Of course the final crop, the B&W treatment, there are a myriad of little details I've skipped in the interest of time. The main objective in writing this post was to marvel at how an image so "contrived" could still capture and retain my attention enough to edit and then write a post about it. And two, to discuss the opportunity that AI imagery affords for me on the education side of things because I don't have to be afraid that the model will be afraid of backlash over the unprocessed images (or worse when and ask me to take down the pictures). Will there be more to come? Time will tell. You guys can make requests here or on Instagram.

Superimposed you can see the changes better