As August comes to a close and September begins I think it'd be a good thing for me to come and thank you all profusely for your support, and talk about where we are headed!  When I started Patreon I really had no idea how successful it would be.  I had a shoot for the moon goals of $800 a month that would really allow me to focus the majority of my energy here, and well we've hit that and more.  I amazed and moved that so many of you have came to help make this happen.

The funds that I've received through Patreon have helped me create an incredible amount of images.  I'm shooting more than I ever have.  I think I've created almost 150 images for Temperance just in the last two months, and many landscapes/outdoor nudes in the months prior to that.  I've also started a darkroom and invested in equipment to start shooting wet plates.  Even though wet plates is a $1,000 goal I like to think of my goals as something I am definitely going to do.  They just are going to take me considerably longer if I haven't hit the goal.

Nicole and I are already planning some trips for the We Were Wanderers book as well.  If we hit our 2,500 goal we will be able to focus entirely on this project, and basically go back to living on the road for the better part of a year or two.  I'd love to make this happen, but for now we will basically be doing a trip every three months to try and shoot content for the book.  In 5 days we leave for Iceland where she and I will be shooting for the book, and I have a gig shooting London Andrew's 2015 calendar.  I'm excited, nervous, anxious, and everything else one feels before a trip of this magnitude.  I guess overwhelmed is the best way to describe it.

I guess what I am excited about the most, and what I am really thankful for is that with Patreon I have really been able to figure out what artistically I love, and what is the most important to me right now.  Figuring out goals, and what I want to be known for, and what I want to focus on is hard.  Its especially hard when you have to rely heavily one what sells.  You all have allowed me to give a lot of my favorite work a voice that it otherwise doesn't have.  The stories about the landscapes and nude work with Nicole I think are incredibly important to the images.  They are always varied, and quite frankly I never get tired of shooting them, and experiencing them, so going forward this is mainly what I am going to be trying to do.  

Temperance, or the idea of Temperance, will always be around in one way or another, but as a digital project I think it is winding down.  I've always considered it a larger part of a bigger project, and so I think I will looking to the next chapter of that in the New Year.  I have a dream of creating a book of 7 different series of eroticism.  Journey to The End of The Night, Temperance, The Waking, The Jungle, Honey for The Ants all being part of that, but I think that finishing that work will take a lifetime.  Some of these I have shot and finished, some I have started, and will need to restart, some I have never began, and don't even know what they will be.  All I know is that these projects tend to have much more defined spurts of creativity.

With that all said I just want to say one more time Thank You all so much.  I hope you are enjoying viewing my art work as much as I am creating it.

The first time I left my time zone I drove 16 hours across the country with a taxidermy fox to Kansas City.  When I arrived there was Mary on the other end of the road.  She has a warmth that made me feel like I was instantly home again.  Over 100,000 miles later Mary and I finally had our second shoot.  I’ve ditched the fox since then, and really matured as a photographer, and I think we’ve created something really really special.

The outdoor portion of our shoot had to be quick...very quick.  It was supposed to be the golden hour, but a massive thunder storm was rapidly approaching.  What would have ordinarily been the best time of day to shoot was nearly night.  We had all of five minutes before the sky was going to let loose on us, and so we shot as quickly as possible.  I used my 17-40mm at F4 ISO 4000 for these probably shooting at 1/20th or 1/15th of a second.  When I'm dealing with light that incredibly low normally I'd spring for a tripod but we were trying to beat the storm so I threw the camera into burst mode.  I've found that this way when I'm holding the shutter down my first and last images tend to have some camera shake, but everything in between is nice and sharp since my finger isn't moving the camera.  Its a little trick I picked up way back when I used to shoot bands.

Five or 6 poses in the woods, and it was just too dark to continue, and then the rain came.  Not wanting our shoot to be over we booked a hotel downtown and shot some more playful portraits.  Lucky me the hotel had a few mirrors I could play around with using my 85mm F1.4.  Since I hadn't brought lights on this last trip all of these were shot using the available light in the room.  Small lamps and a single over head light were just enough when shooting around ISO 3200.  Lots of high ISO on this trip.  I'm learning to love the noise, and work with it as best I can.

I can't wait to get back to Kansas City and have another shoot with Mary...this time hopefully less time will pass between our meet ups.   

-Corwin

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jcn28nqufhm0nz4/AABCs89v3U1FS863VnCNTfdAa?dl=0

I found out today that with one of the updates Patreon released caused a problem with a lot of my posts (4 months worth) so tonight I went through and fixed every one of the creations that were affected. It was a pretty easy fix, and really it is something I have been meaning to do as the new creation manager has a much better look to it!

In other news this month I am trying out a few new things. If you are a $10 a month or more patron you've probably already noticed that in addition to photo resources you now also have access to a new creation...my archive. Right now it is incomplete, but as I organize my hard drives the next couple of weeks I will be putting more and more work up there that pre-dates my patreon. Old series like The Waking, From The Dusty Back Roads, Journey to the End of The Night, and many sets will all be showing up there.

I'm also thinking about trying to organize a month skype chat to talk about photography, and maybe review portfolios. Is this something you would be interested in. I feel like it could be fun. I also feel like it could end up being me hanging out on skype alone for an hour.

Aside from that the next month will just be me shooting, editing and updating a lot! I'm in the working my ass off stage that happens when I get home from a trip, and the working my ass off stage that happens right before a trip...Nicole Vaunt, London Andrews and I will be heading to Iceland to shoot a ton in early September! I'm so nervous and so excited.

I hope you all are doing well, and if you have any feedback for me I would love to hear it.