I think it's actually been a couple of years since I frequented DA with any sort of regularity. I'd say when I stopped being gallery director my visits pretty much dried up. Maybe doing that job wore me out. Maybe that job forced me to see how much crap 'art' there is out there. That combined with completing my photography course and all my creativity seemed to dry up. It happened - what I feared - I got jaded. I got sick of seeing all the b-rate 'fetish' photography out there. It seemed every man and his dog was a fetish photographer now. It was so boring and I feared my work was going down the same path. I stopped collaborating with people. It all seemed like to much effort and responsibility. People now had expectations of me, and I hated that. That is why I never want to do it professionally. It killed the joy of it for me, that sense of owing something to someone else. I was expected to pull off this fantastic shoot, and deliver a neat little cd of edited images to the model the next week. I just hate the pressure. I couldn't live up to expectations, my perfectionism took over and nothing I shot was worthy. It wasn't MY art anymore.

I kind of lost faith in my ability as an artist, that happens when you compare yourself to your classmates/friends on DA/idol photographers.

I never was one for the technical side of things. I don't have expensive cameras or lights or smoke/wind/bubble machines or hoops of fire to dance through. Even if I had them I probably wouldn't know what to do with them. I hate maths. There is a lot of maths in photography. I know if I was giving advise to anyone else I'd say 'It doesn't matter what equipment you have, just get out there and shoot shoot shoot'. Maybe I forgot where I came from. A crappy automatic film slr and a shitty digital point and shoot camera doing self portraits in my living room because I had no one else to shoot. Maybe I should just go back there. To the point and shoot, and forget about trying to get the lighting spot-on, and the focus razor sharp, and the makeup just perfect, and the expression on the models face just right. I loved it when my work was raw and gritty and didn't matter whether something wasn't exact.

Over the last few weeks I've been lurking around DA again, and to my surprise, the talent here has really been taken up a notch. Sure, there is still a ton of d-grade crap to sift through, but wow there are some great people doing fresh and wonderful things out there in the world of photography. I'm almost, almost inspired to pick up my crappy old camera again.

Some of the images of inspiration: