At long last... (Patreon)

So it's almost 11:30pm. I've been awake since 3am, having taken my mom to her tri-monthly doctor's appointment three hours away to LA only to be back at noon so I could get back to work on the computer. Right now, at this very moment, I just finished sorting, editing, emailing images to models, loading to Google Drive for Patreon, and backing-up the last of the photos I needed to do. And by that, I mean everything that's been weighing on me for months, and some of it years. I’ve been killing myself for months and now the time has come. I’ve finished old shoots of your favorite models dating as far back as two years ago all the way to earlier this year, as well as all my photos from Italy and Switzerland this summer, all the images I’ve been shooting since, and especially so many photos from my recent weekend trips to LA and the local and famous Madonna Inn.

I still have a ton of family photos from two years ago to work on, several erotic shoots of couples for the books I plan to work on next, and a few fun images from my workshop last month to sort through, but all of that will be like a child sorting out candy from Halloween: a fun and necessary self-serving pleasure. I'm afraid to shoot more because I love having this feeling of weight off of me, but I’m eager to see what I can come up with. I have been talking about this feeling for over three years now, about taking a break, giving myself a breather of at least a few weeks of not touching my camera (which of course is unheard of for me), recharging my batteries, and starting all new work, and now I can finally see it on the horizon. It’s imminent. And goddamn, does it feel good.

Patreon has been such a blessing to me, and I’ve been killing myself the last year or so, using as much of my free time as my sanity could allow, to up the ante and give you all as much as I can. I have literally 50 full photo shoots I have to share, and it’s almost painful for me to space them out. I want to drop them all into your lap tomorrow and feel like I can start fresh, but that doesn’t really make sense either, now does it?

Anyway, this break from shooting by no means will include a break from posting, sharing images, telling my silly and pointless stories, and repeatedly thanking you all again and again. Your continued sponsorship makes my work possible, and that is truly such a rare and unexpected gift after a dozen years of making my photos in literal poverty. So thank you, thank you, thank you once again. I will continue to do the best that I can to not disappoint you all. Please keep in touch, I love hearing from you, and I truly mean that.

Thank you again from the bottom of my exhausted heart.

Mark