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Well it’s finished, my first manuscript has been sent off to my editor for another (and hopefully final) round of edits and suggestions. I signed a contract with Rocky Nook in November of 2006 after several months of negotiations and shortly after my dad passed. Truthfully I was in a fog for several months after his passing but finally got to assembling my notes about a year later. I spent eight months of 2008 writing and rewriting my thoughts about the creative process of artists, some of my experiences being self-employed and several anecdotal stories from my thirty-year career. This is not a book about f/stops and shutter speeds but more an exploration of how I arrive at the creative decisions that drive my work. Check out some of my portraits at CyberStern.com and if you like what you see you may like what I have to say about the creative process that gets me to the point where I make the types of images I do. The book includes a DVD loaded with images, Photoshop tutorials and other information plus a few small movies from a documentray shot during a shoot that I break down in the chapter about compositing. I plan to update the DVD Photoshop tutorials on a regular basis so you have the opportunity to keep some of the DVD material current. The book should be out in mid-summer, 2009.

I have a new agent Wendi Kaminski and we are launching a new marketing campaign tomorrow, the 5th of May. This initial email campaign is incredible. The announcement is sent out using a technique called throttling which controls the rate of dissemination, so it makes the anti-spam folks happy. The service we are using tracks how many were sent, how many were opened, who opened them, when they opened them, if they desire to opt out and if they clicked through to Wendi’s site. Very good information to have for tracking results. It’s new for me. I’ve waited long enough looking for motivation to get back into the game (I’ve been teaching a lot) and this seemed like as good a time as any.

I love teaching and while I still shoot commercially, my desire is to shoot more. Well I’ve taken the plunge and I am expecting great things to happen.

In the meantime, I’m working on a few new online and in-class teaching opportunities and I’ve applied for a fellowship to continue my work on Remnants.

As I said exciting things are happening, what about you?

Cheers!