There is a point in your artistic career where you know you’ve go the technical aspects down. There’s more to learn, but you’ve got the basics down and you know you can get the image you want.

And suddenly it is hard. Before you worried about getting the light right. The exposure. Composition. You knew if you got that stuff down you’d make “good” pictures. Now you’ve got that stuff and you images start looking the same. When models agree to shoot with you, you know you can give them something good. But you want to make art. Do something different from what you’ve done.

Now you have to be creative. You have to come up with new ideas.

And that isn’t easy.

I’ve got all these shoots next week in Vegas. I’ve got one this weekend. I had one Wednesday. I have to make up new stuff for each of those shoots.

Right now I generally try to decided my purpose for the shoot in advance. Like on Wednesday I wanted to get fashion images I could show to a modeling agency to get them to send me models for paid portfolio work. So we shot some catalog stuff and some high fashion.

But next week? I don’t know. But I’ll come up with something.