still journaling mostly over  here.

arrrrr-ugula!!!
so a friend last night said something that has been pounding in and out of my head since last night. Won't stop. Won't go away.

she said, 'we need to find somewhere that will hang your photography.'
this was the second time that she had said something like this, only the first time it was in passing and i had laughed it off. This time she was quite stone cold serious. To the point where we are considering places where we think that such things could hang.

this is kind of cart before the horse as i am still reeling from the very concept. as in someone just threw the medicine ball at me, i wasn't ready for it, it bounced off my chest and now my arms are all akimbo as i stumble backwards away from the point of impact. at any moment a giant pool of water will open up below me and swallow me whole.

how do you decide when you feel your stuff is good enough to be put in front of someone? more importantly, how do you decide that you feel it is good enough to want to try and put it in front of someone? it's not even the giant risk of rejection, people don't have to like the stuff that i do. it's more like, where do i get the arrogance to believe that my stuff is good enough to take up their time and eyespace? not to mention self-sales, i'd have to put together a portfolio and go to restaurants and/or galleries (we're leaning towards the restaurant type thing at first) and try to convince them that i was good enough to hang there. did i also mention that i'm lazy?

it's not that i disbelieve this friend. she wouldn't lie about something like this and she wouldn't set me up for pain without some sort of joy for herself in store behind it. and she has more exposure to it than anyone. not only do i subject her to more of it than anyone else (she's the one that i send anything new i do that i love, instantly. i'm sure the deluge gets annoying at times) but she's also been a model for some of my people shoots.

it's not that i don't think my stuff is good. i adore my photography. i believe it when people say i have talent and an eye for composition. i don't think that one friend hangs 5 in her house and another 3 more because they are polite. although that might be why my parents hang 3. if i didn't love it so much i certainly wouldn't have my own little gallery on one wall that hangs 9, considering the rest of my apt has very evenly spaced, very particular hangings of original art work.

so what the hell is it, you might ask...
well...is it good enough? i ask me this. do i think it's good enough to be putting it out there. for me this is a tough question causing me lots of consternation.

on the other hand...i really do love getting compliments on my photography. i love more than anything a friend asking me for one of my framed prints because they want to hang it, both because they think it is beautiful and they think it will enhance their living space. getting a stranger to buy one because they saw it somewhere? that'd be quite nice. i did get an offer on one of the ones in my online gallery once but couldn't sell him one as my original negative on that one was of too low a quality.

so i don't know.
i'm going around and around about it in my head.

even called another friend and asked all this stuff. i don't do that so much, because answers to questions like this from him, can really hurt if they aren't good. and i can't ask the question if i'm not willing to require the truth. he was quite positive. it was almost funny. he was hemming and hawwing about it when he thought i was talking about my sculpture. i don't think he figured he knew one way or the other what to think about that idea. but when i said it was photography, he was all on board and quite in favour.

the strange part is the connection with things. because of the photo shoot i did last weekend and because i have spent about 10 hours this week working on the results of that shoot, this week i was thinking that i was going to change my plan and buy a new camera for myself for christmas.  prints just work better with larger sized files.

huh.
ok...more thinking i guess.

sorry to blather...