So here I am, days away from signing a two-year lease agreement on a retail space located in the auspicious Pioneer Square district of downtown Seattle. Which if you know Seattle at all, you will know that it isn't really a square, but an area of about twenty city blocks packed full of restaurants, galleries, and tourist traps: where the affluent brush shoulders with the homeless. An odd mixture of the classes, both co-existing on the same sidewalk, equally visible and invisible.
The nine hundred square feet space is just off the main high traffic pedestrian areas, but still on the First Thursday Gallery Walk route; tucked at the end of a partial block, my neighbors are an alley and a store which sells high end contemporary home furnishings.
So what I am going to do here?
If you remember from reading my previous photographic entry about the Nizhnevartovsk Fashion Show, I said I was going to spend a weekend learning studio photography from a fashion photographer in LA.
Brigham Field showed me everything from how to set up a studio, the basics of lighting, working with models, post production in Photoshop, right down to the legal paperwork of model release forms. It was an exhausting weekend but I came away from it with a huge amount of knowledge as well as some beautiful photographs. (They are featured on my portfolio website, but beware; if the naked body offends you, don't go there!)
So with all these cool new ideas running around my head I was keen to start shooting more and more studio work. The first step was to start connecting with models in the Seattle area. I set myself up with a membership with One Model Place, which alongside Model Mayhem, is one of the premium web communities for the modeling industry. Almost immediately some of my work was selected for their Premium Showcase, and I found my profile getting about 3000 hits in the first 24 hours. Wow!
I also started to look around the Seattle area for a suitable studio to rent on a daily/hourly basis, but struggled to find anything that would fit my needs.They were either prohibitively expensive or just plainly unsuitable.
And unfortunately, right in the middle of this, life got a bit crazy.
:-(
Here we are now in July, and I need both to find a place to live, and to focus on what I am going to do for the rest of my life. Without a doubt photography is something that both gives me great pleasure, as well frustrates the hell out of me. Maybe it's just another one of my projects, something that I get involved with for a while, then ultimately my intensity will fade and I'll move onto something else. Well, if that is the case then I can at least give it my usual 150% for as long as possible and see what happens.
So while surfing through Craigslist, looking for a loft apartment in Seattle, somewhere I could throw a futon onto the floor as well as raise a white background and shoot, I stumbled across a small entry in the Office/Commercial section: $1600 / 900ft²; - Pioneer Square Retail, Office or Studio.
Now I have always fantasized about owning an art gallery; Liziee and I even looked at a vacant space on the island last year, with the crazy idea of opening a photographic gallery, something that San Juan Island is lacking. But the financial realities of trying to make a living selling photographic art just didn't add up, and so we made the decision not to pursue the project. Now things have changed, and here I am looking at a space that fits all my current and future needs:
1) A space to set up a studio, so I can continue to learn my craft, and build a cool portfolio focusing on Fashion and Fine Art/Artistic Nudes.
2) A place to live. (Okay, really I should not be living in a commercial space, as I am sure I am in violation of Pioneers Sq. zoning, as well as invalidating some clause in the lease agreement, but I'm not going to be there all the time, so maybe I can get away with it. My schedule should be something like this: Sun, Mon, Tues up on the island with Liziee and Cameron; Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat down in Seattle working in the studio. When I am away in Russia I hopefully will trade studio time for someone to keep the gallery running on those four days a week. I'm not sure if that will work or not, I might have to actually employ someone to run it for me.)
Also parking is nearly impossible around there, so I am going back to my motorbike riding days and will commute up and down on Burble, my 1999 Honda VFR. I'm looking forward to becoming a utilitarian motorcyclist again, instead of just a pleasure rider. There was a time in my life when I said I would never drive a car again...
3) The potential to open a small photographic gallery right in the center of Seattle, to showcase my own work or that of others.
I should really hang tight on this idea. The chaos in my life needs to settle and perhaps I should live quietly for a while, rebuild my cash reserves, and continue to take classes and workshops to further my photographic capabilities. Then, when I am good and ready, think about opening my own studio. But opportunity has come knocking and I can't help feel that I should grab this before it slips away. The location is right, the rent very favorable, the space almost perfect (aside from no direct daylight, so I'm going to have to get used to location shooting.) and if I should once again fail, then I know I have at least tried one more time to find the meaning in my life that I so desperately need. Fingers crossed.
My plan is to set up the studio first, then in a few months open up a small gallery at the front. I will print and frame all my own work, while continuing to develop a portfolio that might let me break into the fashion photographic industry. All the while, at least until I can stand it no more, I will continue to work in Russia to pay the bills. There is the potential to teach studio photography classes in a year, and also rent out the studio when I am not there to other photographers. I don't expect to make any money for a couple of years, maybe I never will. We'll see.
All images copyright 2007 John Sinclair Photography.
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