Out of the Shadows
September 21, 2019
Old Master Thoughts:
Out of the Shadows
Out of the Shadows
When I first came onto the internet and public social media, one of my first posts on Google+ was that “I was tired of living in the shadow of the Internet”. This was back in January of 2015 and what people might not know was that this was during one of my worst mental breakdowns. Against the advice of my friends and doctors I felt like time was running out for me and that it was now or never to start publishing publicly my photography, art and start building a space where people would feel a strong desire to create art of their choosing every day. With that every day practice every one would be on a journey to become The Master of Art.
With this firm belief I started www.The-Master-of-art.com . Now I don’t recommend starting a blog, website or business during the middle of a mental breakdown, however I cannot deny that it was probably one of the worst decisions that had the most positive effect on my life. Instead of trying to recover from the breakdown and feeling completely at a loss as to how to recover, I focused on creativity. With a distraction and goals my subconscious mind began to recover from the breakdown while I focused on creating and publishing art. Looking back, I realized how lucky I was because I was using art, blogging and building a community as a form of not just art therapy, but art therapy on steroids.
Now the posts and written works at the time were out-there and clearly written by someone who was not all there but the posts began to build an audience which in turn gave me the fuel to write more and come even further out of the shadows.
I had been working as a photographer since I was in middle school, in 2003 I was filming and editing and selling school performances, athletic events and even designed the media used for our schools graduating classes. Every Friday in home room we would have an open period where we could share something that interested us. For me I would use this time to premier a short film or a recorded event that I had edited.
I continued doing this work for years, working as an event photographer and animating films however I never published anything online and I was quite dubious of social media. I felt that social media was the devil and, in some ways, I still feel that way. My original assessment was that it created a culture that caused people to be more distant and remove the interaction and conversational aspect of friends and family. Instead of meeting with friends and discussing the time spent apart, we had a medium where we could post about the day and let our friends read about it with out actually communicating directly with each other. Just post into the ether and loose the two-way communication of telling the stories and feeling to someone directly one on one.
In 2015 on the advice of other photographers that I had admired and feeling the spirit of building a DIY media production studio I saw no other way to building my website without the aid of social media. This would force me to step out of the shadows, really against my will. I would write movie reviews, theories on experimental photography and art projects, but over time I began writing less and less. I felt the Internet did not need know the photographer behind the photographs, and like the Wizard of Oz I felt it was time to not pay attention to the person behind the screen.
From 2016 I had become quite again posting only photographs and short reviews of movies. On photographs alone I grew the reach of LCD-Productions which include Photations by the Master of Art, Live to Tape, Project Aerospace and Thumbs United to 9777 people a day or 303,113 a month. Again, using no words and art alone. This is not the recommended way to run a website or blog and the consensus for attracting people was to use your words not purely on photography and art.
Together using art alone, a community of other artists, photographers, gamers, blogger and more creatives began to grow. Honestly, I think people would be surprised that they were in our community, we’re a passive bunch who are very amenable to each other works, often saying nothing to each other however supporting each other with likes and retweets. More like colleagues from different companies, we are aware of each other and enjoy meeting at our corner of the internet even though we work at different places and on one level are each slightly at competition with each other.
For months now I’ve felt the urge to step back out of the shadows. I feel like we could build a better world by getting more people into art. I would hope that this could provide the desire for everyone to create more and people could feel the same art therapy on steroids as I did. However, this time we can guide each other as a welcoming community instead of each of use working alone in the shadow of the internet.
Welcome to Photations by The Master of Art.