ENOUGH LEMONS ALREADY
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
The phrase, obviously, is about making the best of a bad situation. It’s about seeing the glass as half-full (the glass in this case being your new lemonade) and making the best of what’s left (horrendous job mixing metaphors but I’m gonna ride it out, sorry).
It’s catchy. It’s positive. And there’s no one worse at it than me.
Fighting adversity with positivity? Never heard of it. Being happy that it happened rather than sad that it’s over? Fuck that, I’d much prefer the latter. Me? I over-analyze, I fantasize, and I mis-prioritize. I stress. I obsess. I worry about the other half of the glass. Where did it go? Why? Was it my fault? What could have been? I retrace my steps in life so much that it’s hard to believe I’ve gotten anywhere.
But I have, I’m not where I started, and it’s because I’ve always gotten my drive from the opposite force.
I want revenge on whoever has the rest of my lemonade. This can’t keep happening, I tell myself. I look inward, I look outward. I want justice, no matter the culprit. Someone needs to pay, even if it’s me. But especially if it’s you.
That desire, or need to get even rather than simply move along has shaped and molded me as a person and as an artist. It has led me to make rash, bold, and many times, wrong decisions. It has paced footprints into the carpet of my soul, so to speak. I can easily point to it as the single driving force behind many of my life’s choices, leaving a constellation of results that are connected in the most karmically painful and beautiful way possible. I can walk outside on a clear night and see all my mistakes.
That force, the desire to double-down on negativity rather than find a silver lining, wallowing in self-pity and scheming for justice (often times where there’s no actual injustice) has, well, unfortunately driven me to make some of the best art of my life.
I don’t want to forget about it and move on. I want to dwell on it. I want to remember it forever. I want use it as fuel to win, and I want to remind you about it in my hall of fame speech.
That is my everlasting dilemma as both a human and an artist. I play better mad, and it has always come back to bite me.
That brings me, finally, to this photo shoot. On the surface it looks pretty shallow - Allison has lemons on her bra - it’s Instagram caption ready and the pics turned out great. Life gives you lemons, blah blah, ship it. But really there’s more to it than that.
See, this particular trip didn’t go the way I planned it. Things fell through in a way that stung me. But I didn’t reach for the fire this time. I simply made the best of it.
I reached out to Allison, who drove all the way from Belle Plaine or whatever bumfuck town she’s living in now (lol) and we crushed an impromptu shoot at the Doubletree (I’ll have second set finished here soon!) The hotel gave me the north side view, which sucks, but we made the best of that too. Camera batteries died, vape pens died, and the shoot ran way over schedule and she brought WAY too many clothes. Who cares. We made the best of it.
So what changed? There was something amiss from my usual process this time. I didn’t let the fiery passion drive for once. I had no underlying motivations. No petty intentions, no ire directed at anyone, no revenge in mind. I wasn’t in a hurry to rub the photos in anyone’s face. Hell, it was her idea to shoot boudoir, I was gonna throw her in a Rosecast shirt lol. I was just going with the flow, finally just happy to be here. Doin what I love, but with the intensity dialed back to zero.
She told me mid-shoot that I “feel lighter”. She was right.
I was finally seeing the glass as half-full, making the most of my new lemons, and still got the results I wanted from the artwork. Same great pics without the eternal flame burning in my chest. This might not be so bad after all.
Did the window washer die or… ?
When I was a kid my dad used to light a fire under my ass during basketball games. He’d press the exact right buttons until I was basically rage-playing, often times nearly in tears (“Come on four-four!” In his defense, I was soft as hell lol) and there is no doubt it yielded the best results. I simply played better mad. As I grew older the crowds got larger and I could no longer hear my pops, but I was able to find that motivation from the opponents themselves. I still know the names and jersey numbers of some of those Linn-Mar shitheads. I simply needed to hate them, it produced the best results ( and with them it was easy.)
I’m realizing now that fuel-to-the-fire mentality carried on into my photo career. Some (most?) of my best work as an photographer was me rage-playing with tears in my eyes. It started with the light-show stuff, then the rooftops, and finally the meetups and portraits. All driven by my desire to be the best, to prove someone - anyone - wrong and going to extreme measures to do so. Hell, my career as a photographer basically started because Matt Reynolds tagged me in a downtown CR shot on Instagram, a metaphorical 'you’re it' as a friendly challenge about 10 years ago. I haven’t let up since.
(Shoutout to Matt aka Billy Lightning, who instantly went from opponent to teammate, and a damn good one at that. Miss ya buddy.)
It’s a funny juxtaposition, really, because when it comes to most competitive things in life, I want nothing to do with them. I am so conflict-adverse, so willing to lay down flat to get this over with, that it’s almost unrecognizable to the person I was on the court and now am with the camera. Honestly I don’t even like playing Go Fish with my niece - what if she has the card I’m fishin for and I have to take it from her? That sounds so awful.
But when it comes to this photo shit? I have been trying to kill you guys for as long as I can remember.
She didn’t have matching bottoms so we… wait for it… made the best of it lol. I tried for the most part to shoot around that but it was inevitable in some shots like this one that I thought were still good enough to share.
Now looking back in hindsight I see some of the damage that method has done. I see some of the casualties of that thought process, the bodies left behind on the trail getting here, wherever 'here' is. All these years… could I have mustered up the courage to produce the same results with simply the desire to be good at what I do, and not a fire-fueled need to be better than the next guy? Could I have just gotten over it and not tried to ruffle someone’s feathers with the next post? If I saw my metaphorical glass as half-full, or God-forbid completely full… would I be any good at any of this?
Honestly, probably not.
But for the first time I’m acknowledging it, assessing and re-assessing. I’m certainly proud of how this session turned out… and I could definitely get used to "feeling lighter" to the people around me.
I will always have the flame instead me, but maybe I don’t always have to let it guide me.
God bless.
You mean I don’t have to put the full weight of all my life’s mistakes into my next Instgram post? Hmm.