Sex In Between

One time, she sud­den­ly asked me, “Have you had sex with any­one else?”, which she used to imply as between the last time and what we were about to do. It was a valid ques­tion, since we’re both sen­si­tive to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Cupid’s itch and Venus’s curse.

I was insult­ed that she asked, because at the time I felt like sex with some­one else would have been cheat­ing on her. As uncom­mit­ted as the rela­tion­ship was, she still had my heart, and con­se­quent­ly, oth­er parts of my body as well. I’m also not like that, and it takes a lot before I decide to be inti­mate with some­one. But at the same time, I was flat­tered that she thought I would or could, a lit­tle boost to my ego that is rarely ruled by machis­mo or testos­terone.

“I haven’t either”, she reas­sured, which was some­thing I nat­u­ral­ly assumed of my mod­est muse, so it was of lit­tle com­fort to me.

The Dawning: Rachel CD Release Concert

When Rachel Beausoleil start­ed work­ing on her lat­est album, she approached me about design­ing the art­work. We sat down and threw around some ideas before she even start­ed record­ing, but did­n’t come up with any­thing sol­id because I did­n’t have a sound to go on. All I knew was that it was a med­ley of songs, not like her last album where the songs fol­lowed a theme.

One day I came home to find a record­ing of the album in my mail­box, yet to be mas­tered. She named the album after the epony­mous track, The Dawning, which is a jazz arrange­ment of the famous song Aquarius, a per­son­al anthem of hers.

The Dawning artwork front

She gave me her notes soon after, so I put on the album and gave it a good lis­ten, feel­ing a cer­tain clar­i­ty from her sound. It made me think about dawn, and space, and sun­ris­es, and hot colours, so I incor­po­rat­ed those ele­ments when lay­ing out the text, as well as some bokeh to give an off-focus glim­mer.

Continue read­ing “The Dawning: Rachel CD Release Concert”…

Waiting For A White Christmas

I can’t wait until the Christmas hol­i­days. I’ll have a chance to work on projects I’ve put on hold to make time for paid work. A chance to breathe. A chance to do noth­ing. Some seri­ous me time, inside my warm house, watch­ing a movie while wrapped in blan­kets. Lazy maple bacon every day, her­mi­tiz­ing. I may even decide to go home and vis­it peo­ple I always mean to see when I’m in Toronto, but nev­er have a chance to.

I’m busy with side-work until the new year, and cur­rent­ly not accept­ing new work. On the social end, I’ve come to a point where I’m not only booked, but dou­ble-booked, and find myself hav­ing to pri­or­i­tize plans and decide what I’d rather do. It’s been great for keep­ing my brain busy, and where­as I’d nor­mal­ly feel over­stim­u­lat­ed, I’m now rev­el­ing in all these awe­some expe­ri­ences and peo­ple I get to meet.

This does­n’t feel like a tran­si­tion phase, as the tran­si­tion, or what­ev­er the hell it is, already hap­pened weeks ago. I was at fork in the road, and now that I’ve tak­en the first steps, I find myself on a one-way path through a tun­nel with­out any exits, won­der­ing what’s on the oth­er end.

Horizontal Eyebrow Piercing

Horizontal eyebrow piercing 1

I should start by say­ing that I’ve want­ed a pierc­ing since late high school, either an eye­brow pierc­ing or a tongue stud1.

For some rea­son though, I nev­er seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. To me, it was like hav­ing chil­dren; one of those things you know you’d want some day, but don’t take it seri­ous­ly. Then last week, I was sit­ting at my desk and ran­dom­ly thought, “Why not?”. So I slept on it, and woke up the next day still want­i­ng one. That’s when I decid­ed to do it.

My biggest con­cern was that it would­n’t match me. Some peo­ple with pierc­ings look like they’re try­ing to over­com­pen­sate by being part of a “scene”, or by being younger (i.e. the midlife cri­sis, which my dad seems to be liv­ing out with three pierc­ings last year), or it just does­n’t fit their face. The last thing I want­ed to do was get some­thing that screamed atten­tion for the sake of it. Most peo­ple have told me that I’m a far cry from mid-life cri­sis age, but I’ve feel­ing much old­er late­ly.

So I fig­ured that I’d rather get it at this age, than when I’m in my fifties like my dad, when it looks ridicu­lous. But as Tiana remind­ed me, it’s much less per­ma­nent than a tat­too. If I don’t like it, I can just take the pierc­ing out with min­i­mal scar­ring (as long as there are no oth­er com­pli­ca­tions).

So I decid­ed to get a hor­i­zon­tal, because I find that ver­ti­cals are not real­ly my style (and alto­geth­er too com­mon for my tastes). The side seemed some­what arbi­trary to me, and I did­n’t decide which side until I did my hair one morn­ing and noticed that the part on my hair was on the right, and so it seemed like there was a more open space there for the pierc­ing to fit.

Continue read­ing “Horizontal Eyebrow Piercing”…

  1. My work in the den­tal indus­try, how­ev­er, has made me shy away from get­ting any­thing in the mouth, so that elim­i­nat­ed the only oth­er option for me. [↩]

Photographic Habits

Julie in her aviators

I gen­er­al­ly don’t show my mod­els the pic­tures I’m tak­ing of them until I’m fin­ished the shoot, and have had a chance to do some post-pro­cess­ing. That’s because I want them to see the final prod­uct, not the draft, and the impact is much greater. But if a mod­el is inse­cure, or I want them to get a bet­ter sense of the idea I’m going for, I’ll show them a pic­ture or two. It helps build their con­fi­dence, and they start to trust me a lit­tle more, which, in turn, gives me a lit­tle more cre­ative con­trol.

Dolly on shoes

I also try to look at the LCD screen as infre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble. It forces me to have faith in myself and my pho­to­graph­ic abil­i­ties. Some peo­ple laugh at those who chimp; admit­ted­ly, when I see a “pro­fes­sion­al” who checks their screen after every shot, I lose con­fi­dence in them. That does­n’t mean I won’t look down to at least make sure my flash­es went off, or the auto expo­sure isn’t going wonky due to some extreme light con­di­tions, but that’s it.