Photo Stop(portunity)

Meeting d(r)eadlines

Last post I wrote about the curve-balls the impending exhibition has thrown my way of late. Without going into details, two of the four of us have had to pull out.

EEEP!

So, what has that meant for the exhibition?

Well, it initially meant disappointment. Not disappointment with the guys who had to pull out, not at all. Stuff happens, things change, priorities shift and life has a way of getting in the way of fun sometimes. I am disappointment that the whimsy we had years ago of showing our work together isn’t going to become an actuality. Well, not this time anyway.

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams

It’s meant a “flight or fight” response from me.

Flight or fight

Flight or fight

Do I fly way? Do I just cut my losses, write off the rent paid, and walk away from the idea, chalking it up as one of the many that were good at the time but in reality probably were never going to happen?

Nah!

Or do I fight? Do to make it happen? Do I suck it up, say, ”screw it” and grab this opportunity whilst it’s here? Do I swallow my self-doubt give it a red-hot crack?

Hell yeah, I do!

It’s also meant an increase in the number of photos we each have to produce. Initial number of exhibitors divided by half the number of initial exhibitors, multiplied by the initial number of photos required equals double. Double. Double? Curse you, lovely mathematics!

With a selection of photos ready to be sent to the printers, do I rummage through old photos, looking for some to fill the void, or do I get back out and shoot some new shots?

“You don’t have to twist my arm to work.”
– Henry Rollins

This was the easiest question to answer of all the ones that this curve-ball has presented. Nothing I’d shot prior to the idea of the exhibition was shot with an exhibition in mind. Nothing was shot with the thought that it might be hanging on a wall, being viewed, scrutinised, judged, critiqued and hopefully enjoyed by others. And digging through past photos, I couldn’t find anything that I was either happy to hang on a wall, or anything that I thought “worked” with the ones I’d already amassed.

Simple. Shoot more.

Dawn Patrol

“Dawn Patrol”
If I hadn’t been thrown this curve-ball, I wouldn’t have been down the beach at “stupid o’clock” last weekend, lying in the cold wet sand, waiting for the sun to rise, and wouldn’t have got this shot. Thank you curve-ball!

Sure, all this unforeseen extra toil to get this exhibition off the ground has impacted on other things, I’m posting less online, I’m struggling to find the time to finish numerous posts here, most of my energy and focus is being monopolised, and my recently tidied Lego room again resembles a war zone, but hopefully, this will pass in the next couple of weeks as I race towards the printer’s d(r)eadline, and it’ll all be worth it come opening night.

*exhales