New Year’s Evolution
Well hello there, and welcome back. It’s been almost two months since I had anything to write about, and quite honestly I still don’t really have much to say, but the crickets were getting lonely so I thought I’d better put out some words to accompany their solitary song. The Holidays have come and gone. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and now we’re entrenched in mid-January. There’s a little snow on the ground outside and that’s fine, it gives one an excuse to sit inside where it’s warm. This was our first holiday season in this new house which meant figuring out where the Christmas tree would go, where the lights would hang, and how to get electricity to everything without creating a maze of extension cords. It was all done well, the house looked beautiful and as always we waited to take everything down until my youngest daughter’s birthday in early January.
Creatively things have been slow, but that’s not unusual for me this time of year. I didn’t actually use my camera at all from mid-November until just this past weekend when I went out to photograph a home for sale in Idaho for one of my favorite clients. Even though I’ve transitioned away from real estate photography, there are still a small number of clients-turned-friends with whom I will always be happy to work. After all, I spent so much time developing that skill that it would be strange to just stop completely, no matter how disillusioned I am with the industry and majority of the people. Authenticity, loyalty and decency go a long way with me, and I’m happy to continue working with the few I’ve met who embody those qualities. It’s quite the evolution from the days when I would say yes to anyone who asked.
So now what? Man, I wish I could tell you. Before the break I photographed the 100th Calla Lily in my series (actually 103 so far) and that felt like a good place to end the year. It’s sort of surreal to think about that work. What started as a way to translate feeling into image soon became a search for meaning in the unknowable. Each lily was a piece of a puzzle and I felt that if I kept at it long enough, the meaning would make itself known. That’s the funny thing about dabbling in the esoteric: you’re dealing with matters and forces beyond your understanding and it becomes easy to lose your way when hope of outcome enters the equation. All that is to say that I’ve begun to realize that meaning is just a word, at best a collection of words, and that it’s never what we think it is. Will I stop photographing Calla Lily? Of course not, but when I do return to them it will be with an evolved mindset and a fresh outlook on what the whole thing is even about.
Lastly, portrait work is on the horizon once again. 2025 was a very slow year on that front. I had a few moments of inspiration, and did some very fine work with a few ladies I’ve collaborated with in the past, but as far as the portrait series or anything thematic or new, it just wasn’t in the cards. Again, not unusual as I’ve gone through several periods like this before. In my mind, The Portrait Series was over, ended in 2024. I’d had such lofty ambitions for that work but was turned off of it when several of my sitters began to use the images to promote themselves, which was something I discussed with everyone and I’d had verbal agreements from all involved that the work would only be shown as part of the whole. To my dismay, I began to see the portraits appear as social media profile pictures and worse, on advertisements for things that the subjects were promoting on their own. Two of them were actors promoting empty vanity projects, and one was even worse and we won’t go into that. Suffice to say, those images no longer appear as part of the series and the repeated show of disrespect to the material and the terms we agreed on put the names of those folks on the blacklist. The drama was exhausting and put me in such a mind that I didn’t want anything to do with making new portraits in the series, but time, that proven healer, has evolved my thinking once again. My goal was to make 100 portraits in the series, and it was foolish to think that everyone involved would play along. People are people, and sometimes they take advantage when they see an opportunity. Why should I let human nature deter me from one of the defining works of my career? So I’ve begun to think about who I would like to include in that work, and have begun reaching out to new sitters and the series should resume very soon. Portraits won’t be limited to the series either, the seeds of other ideas are starting to sprout and I find myself excited again.
So that’s about all I have for now. Well, all I am able to put down anyway. I have some other thoughts and plans about the shop here on the site and potential portrait commission work on a limited and exclusive basis but those thoughts are in the early stages and not quite ready to be mused about out loud. Stick around though, I’ll get everything out when the time is right.
-Cory