I always had an “endgame” of sorts for my work on The Houston Metal Project. My original vision was for a book. The biggest thing holding me back was deciding on an insertion point. My plan is to continue to photograph these shows until I am no longer able, which made the decision harder. To put together his book, True Norwegian Black Metal, Peter Beste spent 7 years photographing the black metal culture in Norway. At the time I first saw his book (2015), I had been working on my own stuff for just over a year. I didn’t know if I could wait that long.
Here we are now, 5 years after The Houston Metal Project began, and I feel that this is a good insertion point for my first book. There are a lot of things to be decided aside from the images. Those decisions will come further in. My biggest constraint right now will be how much to include as this will be made through a self publishing service. Books from self-publishing services can be a little on the expensive side, and additional pages can really force the price per unit up.
With that constraint in mind, it’s only fitting that I begin the editing process now, even with Year 5 still in progress. This first edit is based mostly on technical grounds, with some subjective thought (e.g. composition) applied. To begin, though, I had to wade through over 2 years of images that were organized in ways that did not reflect any organizational discipline. Once I found those images and gathered them up, along with images from 2016 – 18, I found that I had published 2622 images to Facebook. All I did was sit there for 15 minutes, staring at that number, and ask myself what I got myself into with this stupid idea. Once that wore off, I started the initial edit.
At first I was a little shocked at what was published. There were images where the subject was slightly out of focus, underexposed images, ones with more digital noise that I would normally tolerate, and some that were just poorly processed. That isn’t to say there were no “good” images in there, they were simply a lot more far and few between then I realized then. Here are some of the gems I found in those early days.
This is just a small sampling from the keepers of the keepers of 2014 (I’m rather proud of the King Diamond image). 2622 images over 4 years is a lot to sift through, so those images are still being examined. This year, 2019, is still in progress in terms of making images, so after 1 January 2020 I’ll be full bore into that editing process. Help with the conceptual edit has been enlisted, but it will still be a while before I get to that point. What I want to say is going to have to be decided before I can think about that. Of course, these first keepers of the keepers are going to have a lot to say in that department as I start thinking about them. I’ll leave any commentary about that stuff to the appropriate time, i.e. when I come up with my own answers on those questions. My friends were more eager to help than I initially thought they would be, which is welcome because it shows they believe in what I’m doing with this project.
Moving along through these images, I have noticed a change in them and it can be seen in this image from 2019. I think this phase of the project is going to reveal a lot about my own practice to me, which is always welcome. To my faithful and not-so-faithful readers, I bid you goodnight. And as always, comments are welcome and encouraged.
PS – “Endgame” is in quotes because I plan to continue this project as long as I’m physically and mentally capable. This is just too much fun to not do.