models. mayhem. soap.

early in may this year i went up to dallas for a few days because my friend kirk was there on a work assignment. i like kirk and we're about as alike as we are different, which makes for a really good dynamic and balance between us. and despite having only spent a relatively short amount of time actually with him in the years that we've known each, we seem to have an dang lot of adventures and stories together. so i was ok with taking a weekend in dallas. we had our usual lively discussion about movies and everything else over a good steak dinner then went back to his hotel room. there, he showed me some photography shoots that he'd recently been doing.

the other side to kirk is that he's very energetic and active, always doing something and planning something else (this is both a blessing and a fault of his at times) and it can leave me feeling unaccomplished, meager, or even lazy. especially when it comes to camera stuff; in our group, i'm the camera guy. so as he was telling me about how he'd signed up on this modeling website as a photographer and had just been shooting stuff for the fun of it and just to try out ideas he's had, i couldn't help but see myself as... nothing much.

the thing is, they were good shots and ideas, too. they looked really nice. better than anything i have (or do i even have anything?) and he wasn't doing this for something he'd been hired to do; just for the fun of it. for the love of the craft. i guess that's how it shows if you really love something; if you do it when you don't "have" to.

scrolling through the photos, trying to help him in his request for my opinion on which ones were the best, i was inwardly doing what i could to console myself. yes, i could be better and work harder and be more dedicated, but i must have done some good work somewhere in my life, right?
then he interrupted my thoughts:

"i got the idea from you, actually. because whenever you walk into your house, your walls are covered with stuff you've shot and it looks so cool and i wanted to do something like that."

....

inside, i blinked at that unexpected comment.

~

after some slow and feeble time working on the storyboards for my thesis project this evening, i just needed to remind myself of this.

please pardon the blatant self-indulgence. this is my blog, after all.