Creative: ESSAY, Issue Three

It’s live.
Issue Three Trade
Issue Three Magazine

This issue is better than the first two, but I think the fourth issue is even better than this one. Just to remind everyone, this entire undertaking was done to inspire people to do their own. As you can see, these are VERY simple publications. VERY simple. Issue Three is all about California. All about random images made over a twenty-year span. All black and white. And all analog if my memory serves me correctly. Many of the images in Issue Three were made when photography was nearly my entire life. There was a twenty-year time frame when photography was just about everything I thought about. I would find stories, shoot them, print them and try to find homes for them, mostly on my own. The assignments I was doing at the time were frequent but boring, poorly planned and not long enough to really result in anything meaningful. I found the most interesting stories came from personal work. I still feel this way. One of the strange side effects of having this magazine has been having clients approach me after all these years asking me to shoot things. They see the work on the pages of these magazines and ask if I can do work for them. In ONE situation I’ve said “Yes,” but that is still working itself out. In all other cases I said “No.” I said this because I know they want this work but they don’t have the time or money to actually make it. They want the IDEA of this work. Not the work itself, and I know far too much to ever get sucked down that road again.

Another thing I’ve learned is I want to really design Issue Five. The cover will keep to this tradition but the inside will look very, very different. I’m gathering ideas now and will begin to implement. You are probably getting sick of me saying this but you should be doing this, or something similar, on your own. Make me happy and go to print even if you make only one copy. Create your series and see what it does for your photography life. This was all done with Blurb Bookwright by the way. Again, two formats with the EXACT SAME content. I do this because looking at the work in differing formats feels, well, different. Some prefer the classic mag while others like the newer, perhaps hipper, small Trade. I’m in the middle. I like the real estate of the magazine but prefer the uncoated stock available in Trade. Any questions hit me up below. Good luck, have fun.