Table of Contents
Hey y'all,
Two things this week. I joined my friends of Doe Gewoon on their writing camp to photograph their process of making music. And, the moment you've all been waiting for, the winner of the fine art print giveaway is here! Let's not waste any time.
Doe Gewoon
In an Airbnb in the back of a deserted campsite in the east of The Netherlands, six friends gather to fuse their creative brains. Fusing those into a dozen or so songs for, possibly, perhaps, hopefully, an EP or even an album is the goal. Well, at least that's the goal for five of them. My goal is to hover around and photograph whatever catches my eye. Let them do their thing, let 'em cook, see what happens. I'll point the lens when it matters.
It doesn't matter that the receptionist at the entrance of the park looked at us with questions and a hint of suspicion. Will they trash my beautiful rental building at the back of my park, my only rental building, or are these 'the good' kind of young men that have respect for what I've built here, is what I imagine him thinking. Trashing it we won't, of course not. However, a little remodeling is definitely required. The kitchen table needs to be moved to the living room. The TV that takes up a central place in the space is just dead weight to us and will live in a corner behind the sofa for a while. All the chairs are organized in a little circle at the perimeter of the room. We need space to move around; we do not need space to sit down; we need space to work.
All the gear is hauled from the cars. Three of them, filled to the brim. Computers, microphones, popfilters, mixing panels, audio interfaces, monitor speakers, and a mountain of groceries. It's installed on the table that's now central in the room; the fridge is filled with beer and a little bit of food (we'll order in if we have to), and the salon table is filled with snacks. It's all in service of opening up the headspace required to make music. If staying fed is not a worry, if the vibes in the room are on point, that's when you have a chance of making magic. That's the goal.
I take place in one of the chairs in the corners. My laptop is in front of me, my camera always by my side. I didn't take time off from my office job because I didn't think I'd need to. I know how you make music. I know how the process goes. It's repetitive, slow at times; there are long periods of hearing the same sample on loop, intertwined with people staring at their phones while softly talking to themselves. You can already hear the rhythms in their voices. The tonality of the song starts to take shape. No real words yet though. Only when the beat suddenly takes shape. Only then will you'll hear a 'check what I got' from the corner of the room and on the next loop the rhymes start feeling the room. That's when I pick up my camera.
Print giveaway: the winner!
I can drag this out and lengthily intro this, but I think you all just want to know who won the print giveaway. To be as transparent as possible, I filmed my process and the final draw. Give it a watch below.
The winner was contacted yesterday, and we've already been in touch! I'm making sure the print reaches them sometime this week.
Hope for non-winners
Thank you all so much for participating in this thing, it was a lot of fun to do! I might do it again but that'll be sometime next year, I think. For now, though, I would like to make you aware that there are still nine other copies available of the print! So, even though it won't be free, you do still have the option to decorate your walls with this image. Next to that, my online store has much more prints available. So I guess what I'm trying to say is: even if you haven't won and still would like to have my work on your wall, please give the selection a look. It currently is the best way to support the work I'm doing and allow me to continue doing it for free for those who aren't in the position to make these purchases.
That's really all I have for now. I'll be back next month with, possibly, another photo essay (I'm trying to make good on my ambitions from last month, as you can tell).
Thank you all,
Mitch
PS If you made it all the way down here (thank you!) there might be some value in the video I made during the entirety of April. I basically documented everything that had any significance and turned it into one long video. This includes the work I did during the writing camp. Who knows, there might be something you can take away from it. In any case, it's documentation for myself.
