{"id":2740,"date":"2011-11-23T05:24:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T13:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coreyshead.com\/blog\/?p=2740"},"modified":"2013-05-31T09:16:06","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T16:16:06","slug":"self-portrait-in-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coreyshead.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/23\/self-portrait-in-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"Self Portrait in Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Self<\/a><\/p>\n

Takara King Walder Jr. Plantman – 9" doll<\/div>\n

You may have already figured this out but I’ve spent a good (embarrassing?) chunk of the last decade collecting, photographing, and obsessing over (primarily Japanese) toys.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the interim, I have taught myself a lot about studio photography, photoshop composites, and credit card debt.<\/p>\n

One of the main effects this odd combination of craft and immature materialism had was the drawing of my incipient visual creativity out of its cave and into the light: due to my success with the tools and skills, I went from being overqualified as a retail schmuck to entering the fields of graphic and web design. Had I not felt the urge to share my toy-obsession online with similarly obsessed friends, I might still be toiling unhappily behind some store’s counter.<\/p>\n

The flip-side, however, is that I somehow felt that what I was creating – images of other people’s plastic and zinc designs composited with scenes I chose to place them in – was viable beyond the simple titillation of my chosen group of online hombres.<\/p>\n

Fueling this misconception, in the mid-2000’s and thanks to a friend, I reached a verbal (if you can call email “verbal”) agreement with a publishing company to produce a book of my composite shots, a deal that petered out a few months later when the company realized that marketing the images would be difficult. <\/p>\n

Despite this reality check, I continued to make the images, not only for fun but also convinced by people’s professed enjoyment that I had a shot at marketing them. As a test, I began selling shirts and calendars of my toy pictures via Cafepress and gained a small following of people who continue to pick up my offerings with relative, annual regularity.<\/p>\n

Though my situation eventually changed so that I could no longer afford to buy toys, I continued to make composites, using them as a bridge to my still-collecting, online friends … and my illusion of the images’ value outside this fan-boy circle grew.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I felt ready to set out once again to produce the book. Before beginning, I solicited opinions from a few trusted parties and, with my new skills, decided to layout the book myself, thus creating a more professional vehicle (if not an actual end product) for the collection.<\/p>\n

During this process, there was a war going on within me between the rational and the hopeful. On the one hand, I really felt that my work was not only fun but valid, marketable. On the other, I knew that what I was engaged in was really a gigantic cheat. The central focus of my images weren’t mine. Sure, I’d applied lots of hard-won skills, labor, and money into the project but that didn’t change the fact that the main designs had been stolen from others. Imagine a book of Disney-related toys in similar shots being produced and sold without Disney’s permission and outside their original story lines. Yeah, no problem there … *cough*<\/p>\n

When I felt I had something to show, I asked the same friend who’d hooked me up with my original publishing deal, now wiser and a published author himself, to take a look at the rough draft of the book for me. He kindly did so and then hit me with the facts: this was good, fun, fan work but otherwise pretty unrealistic, as it constituted copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

His tactfully presented but clear comments hit home, shattering the remnants of my illusion. I mothballed the project and entered one of the deepest funks I have known in years. I felt, after a life of half-assed creative endeavors, of endless, idiot pipe-dreams, that the one thing I’d finally managed to take all of the way, the one thing I’d finally created that held any real value … didn’t.<\/p>\n

Rather than shouldering the burden of this knowledge, as I have now, and using my considerable creative momentum to blaze ahead into one of a dozen other potential projects I have lined up, I crumbled. I tried to put a brave face on it but, inside, I was a mess and ended up making an ass of myself on the forum of the website where the seeds of the project first took root; an act of public self-immolation I still shudder to think of. Awesome.<\/p>\n

As with all superficial wounds, I eventually healed, grew up a touch, and moved on. Sort of.<\/p>\n

I still sometimes have the urge to make toy composites and, yet, know that my motivation for wanting to do so is wrong-headed and that I’ll never be satisfied doing so again. I ache for the sense of accomplishment that producing something publishable will give me and, to that end, the toy shots amount to nothing more than a distraction and a dead end.<\/p>\n

So I am saying goodbye to making my toy composites, at least for now. This year’s calendar will be the last. Ending with the image above, a self-portrait I produced for the ill-conceived book, is a bittersweet irony for me … but really, its just a silly composite, of a silly man, being silly with his silly toys.<\/p>\n

Onward!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Takara King Walder Jr. Plantman – 9" doll You may have already figured this out but I’ve spent a good (embarrassing?) chunk of the last decade collecting, photographing, and obsessing over (primarily Japanese) toys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[332],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toys","tag-self-portrait"],"yoast_head":"\nSelf Portrait in Studio<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/coreyshead.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/23\/self-portrait-in-studio\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Self Portrait in Studio\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Takara King Walder Jr. Plantman – 9" doll You may have already figured this out but I’ve spent a good (embarrassing?) chunk of the last decade collecting, photographing, and obsessing over (primarily Japanese) toys.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/coreyshead.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/23\/self-portrait-in-studio\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"coreyshead\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/coreyaedwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-23T13:24:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-31T16:16:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Corey A. 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