I'm addicted to dangerous places.
I'm drawn to events I do not understand and that lie outside the scope of my personal experience. For these reasons, I have wanted to be a spy, crime scene photographer or investigative journalist. I like the adrenalin rush that I get whenever I am in a place of absolute, total destruction. I also like visiting places that are abandoned. Like @ratel 's post where he photographed creepy Russian abandoned sites. His post was incredible but didn't get enough upvotes:
@ratel/my-travels-into-the-gloomy-past
When I'm confronted by a scene of total destruction, it forces me to evaluate my life choices. It forces me to question my existence. It makes aware of the billions of nerve cells that usually lie dormant within my body. Destruction wakes me up my mind in ways that drugs, sex and other forms of stimulation cannot.
this one always reminded me a bit of Salvador Dali's clock. This is how I found the clock. No photoshop was used
Another reason I love to see destruction is because my creativity thrives on chaos, raw energy, and raw materials. My mind weaves stories from piles of rubble and becomes activated when confronted with such disarray. I think most people shudder and want nothing to do with seeing danger and destruction up close. I am the opposite. I thrive on it. My brain craves disorder.
When the Joplin multi-vortex tornado, one of the biggest and most deadly tornados ever recorded in history, occurred, I lived about 5 hours away from it in Missouri. This was 2011. I had just had a child one year before. I was going crazy feeling trapped inside a house with a new baby.
I realized that this would be a once in a lifetime deal to see the fury of Nature. Three days after the tornado struck, I was seized with an insatiable desire to see the destruction up close for myself. I knew I had to see it. I drove there alone and even though I knew I was safe, all my friends said I was crazy for wanting to go to Joplin.
As I entered Joplin, I was shocked to discover that there were no blockades, nothing stopping people from going to any part of the town. The power lines were lying in the street, and I drove over them, hoping that the electricity from them didn't damage my car in any way. This was the first indicator that I was now in some kind of danger.
What I saw can never be unseen. The human victims had already been saved, the ones who could be saved, so there were no screams or anything like that. But the total destruction that lay before me in all directions is something I cannot even fully describe. I had to shake myself, over and over, reminding me that this was real, all real. It wasn't a movie set or a video game. It was TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION FOR AS FAR AS THE EYE COULD SEE.
The cars freaked me out the most. I'd never seen so many cars piled up, 100% destroyed, looking like playthings. Everything had this sort of theatrical set-like appearance because I couldn't connect what I was seeing with reality. Nature, is more powerful than you can ever imagine. I have a newfound respect for the natural world after seeing Joplin.
Let me continue on. After driving around in my car for a bit, I decided to stop somewhere and continue looking around on foot. I had a tripod with me and was taking HDR photos (that's why the details are so good in these photos). As I was walking toward a mound of rubble, I saw something moving inside the pile. It was a man. He climbed out before my eyes, and I captured this whole thing on a video:
Their story was horrific and extremely lucky. The tornado picked up their car, sent it flying across the parking lot, then a building fell on top of their car, saving them from being sucked up into the tornado! Watch the video for their story.
Now, I'm going to get into the Discovery Channel part of my story.
After taking my HDR photos and videos of the disaster zone, I felt that I had captured some things that no one else had. The photos I took had an artistic feel to them. I searched online after I got home and I could find no other footage like mine. Very few people do HDR photography because it's time consuming. You have to take 3 different exposures (light, dark and medium) of the same shot, then fuse them all together on the computer later.
Well, it wasn't long before the Discovery Channel found my Joplin footage. They said they were creating a special about the Joplin tornado and wanted to use my photos and videos. They sent me a contract which I signed. Guess how much they were going to pay me for using my precious photos and videos? I think it was around $100. One hundred fucking dollars. Incredible. But I didn't care because this was the Discovery Channel! I carefully shot a new headshot of me looking extremely wild and "dangerous", and sent that off with my contract:
Guess what? A film studio in Chicago also wanted to use my footage. And another director wanted it also. Suddenly, I was in demand. 3 different media outlets wanted to use my footage. You'll never guess what happened next.
First it was the Discovery Channel. After about a month after I had signed the contract they told me that the show was being cancelled. The main editor had axed it. Then the film company also folded. Then the director. All 3 media outlets had for one reason or another cancelled or stopped working on the films.
Great. Then I did what I've never done before. I reached out to all the news agencies. After spending large chunks of time crafting emails to the various agencies, they all said my photos were too "arty" for news. Hmmmm....then I reached out to art galleries to see if there was interest. The galleries all said my photos were too 'newsy', not artistic enough. Well, fuck.
THAT'S WHEN I DECIDED TO SAY FUCK THEM ALL AND JUST PUT THEM HERE ON STEEMIT.
I personally feel that these photographs are perhaps some of my best work I've ever created. I did give one Pecha Kucha presentation with my photos in 2011. Other than that, they have lied in obscurity, never seeing the light of day in any mainstream media sort of way.
Here are the full photos in video form. I actually cannot locate all my photos at the moment, but the video shows most of them:
Hey, and guess what? I love Steemit so much, I'm putting my entire collection of art and photos on STEEM IMG (thanks to @blueorgy who created the site), where you can use my art library for your own posts.
My idea in opening up my photos to be Creative Commons is to help people who have stories and posts, but don't have the artistic eye, or don't have time to create their own images. Attribution would be a kind gesture, but I'm not going to insist on it. I've been wanting to make a creative commons image library for a loooooong time. I'm just going to do it, to show my commitment to the strength of the commons. And to show how we can become stronger once we release our attachment. We are stronger as a group when we work together, sharing our talents.
So, from now on, you can use my images for whatever purpose you want. Even commercial purposes outside of Steemit are fine. So it's Creative Commons With No Attribution. You're free to use, share, reassemble, use for commercial purposes, use for Steemit articles, whatever. I'll be adding many many more photos to this collection. So keep checking back.
This is a big move for an artist, but I feel that my images are not doing anything good by sitting on various servers. https://www.steemimg.com/steemitqueen
Here's a Creative Commons definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons
Oh, and one other thing. I'm still in need of your secrets for the Secret Writer posts. If you have a secret that you're too scared to have connected to your own account, read this for details about my Secret Writer service:
@stellabelle/get-revenue-anonymously-how-to-submit-a-secret-to-the-secret-writer-project
