Honestly...

It's a shame, in life, when we have a falling out with someone and we give them the open door to handle it responsibly, and they turn away instead of making peace. I'm not talking about Kelly, but I do want to share something that happened this week, which pertains to my shoot with Kelly.

There's a photographer who has a reputation in the community for mistreating girls. He makes visually amazing photos and is very talented at what he does, but he apparently also insists on being able to touch his models (some of whom come to me and ask me for advice on how to handle him).

So it was certainly surprising when he publicly slandered me (without coming to me first, to get the facts) for how my shoot with Kelly went. Apparently they dated at some point, and he was upset at me in a way that didn't even make sense, as if I'd been a past romantic interest of his girlfriend or something. The reality is, I had zero romantic interest in Kelly, but she did inspire me to try some things beyond my comfort zone, which I think can be a good and wonderful thing in life. She's a lot more kinky than I'm comfortable with, so I welcomed the opportunity to learn some things, and to stretch myself and my artmaking. Our shoot had some experimental portions, but we never did any concepts she wasn't comfortable with, and I didn't touch her at all without asking permission. That's very important to me.

That was a year and a half ago, and I lost paid work because of this individual, because my interaction with Kelly upset him. So when I found out a couple days ago that he was apparently planning to attend a group shootout I've been organizing, I called him up and basically said, "Hey, I heard you were planning to attend my event, and I figured we could take this opportunity to make peace." I really wish we could have smoothed things over, but, alas, he had no interest in talking about it. I felt bad for him. I felt bad for the girls he's hurt. And I lamented the work I've lost, and community connections I've lost, because of his false words. He's not the only person who behaves this way, and I wish he'd taken the opportunity to treat me the way he'd want to be treated. Our community needs that.