The days since my return from Boston have been a blur of activity. All
kinds of activity.

First, we had to bury my long-time friend Lyle Richardson. A great,
troubled painter and musician, he died of a heart attack the weekend
before last. Wasn’t found for 4 or 5 days.

Lyle and I had a small show together at Gallery La Petite Mort, just this
past February. He didn’t sell a painting.

Sad.

But life is for the living and, as my mom sez: “Busy hands are happy hands”.
I hope you won’t think me callous or unthinking when I say here that, after
the funeral, I got on with my life. Of course I spared some thoughts for Lyle,
felt sad, but. . .

Work takes over.

Bunch of shoots, teeing up a bullet-proof limo to shoot for my new personal
project, scouting locations for an upcoming editorial thing, getting my studio
(more accurately called a workroom) tidied and organized for a studio visit
from some gallery folks.

Getting ready for a studio visit

Even though I call the studio a work room, I still use it for shoots. It has
spectacular light and doesn’t look like any normal studio or room.

Peter Herndorf, CEO of National Arts Centre, in my studio, available light

STRAYLIGHT PRESS

STRAYLIGHT has been live for 2 weeks now. I did a soft launch, just a mention
here on drool and one tweet. I wanted to open slowly to be able to respond to
any feedback I got about it’s architecture, typos, general juju and so on.

I’m pleased to report that, generally, the site got a big thumbs up. A few good
folks, though, did get back to me with some thoughts and concerns.

We fixed up the contact form, for instance, and a few typos were pointed
out and eliminated.

As well, there was also a bit of confusion about what, exactly, STRAYLIGHT
is. Well let me tell you. . . .

I started it to raise funds to get LIVE THROUGH THIS on the press. Initially I
had thought about doing a crowd-funding drive via Indiegogo to raise the
money, but upon some reflection decided to do it myself, to open this thing
called STRAYLIGHT. Then I thought that as long as I was setting up this
e-commerce infrastructure I might as well bring other photographers along
for the ride. I reckoned that the more folks who were represented, who had
“product” for sale, the better off we’d all be. Community, etc. It’s just the
beginning and the intention is to add publications a few times a year.

So folks don’t know if it’s a quasi-crowd-funding thing, or just a store. It’s
both. But we need your support upfront.

Now that the initial soft launch is over there’s going to be some selling going
on. I intend to do a whole campaign aimed at getting the word out that we
need some of the fabulous moolah up front, that we need you to pre-purchase
the book so there’s some money in the bank to roll out the book.

Cover and page spread from the 6th iteration of the LIVE THROUGH THIS edit

A couple of people wondered why they should buy the book now, before it has
even been published, when they can just wait and pick one up once it’s on the
shelf, so to speak.

So I decided to include an original, tipped-in, signed print with every book that
is bough by pre-order. A bonus, if you will, for your faith and support.

But enough for now. Look for the social media campaign that will include
video and the written word to further explain, enlighten, inform and cajole.
That’s coming soon, you lucky people.

Or you could just drop in to STRAYLIGHT now and support this endeavor
by buying a book or some ‘zines. As well, you might want to subscribe to
the STRAYLIGHT blog, where you will bump into all manner of info, like
this. Support independent publishing.