The Eye Of A Clown

I knew that I wanted this goat on the cover of Iowa, it was just a matter of finding the right image. So, this is a revision of something I was shooting over and over and over and over. And I ended up not shooting the image that went on the cover. After being frustrated for weeks shooting Eeyore — which is what we called the goat — I just felt like I wasn’t getting what represented the music, so we had my mentor, Stefan Seskis shoot the picture we actually used.

This one would have been one of the contenders that I made for Iowa. It could have had the silver on it and all the gray spots and still be in the realm where Iowa was, but after taking a couple thousand photos, I ended up handing Eeyore over to Steffan because I just wasn’t happy with where I was at. I just feel that, if you’re an artist, you have to be willing to trust your insights, especially when you’re representing hundreds of thousands of people. Our fans are so important to us, and I needed to have exactly what was going to express what was creating.

Sure, I could have sold this and passed it on, and maybe it would have been the image they all would have seen forever, but it just didn’t meet up to what I was feeling. In art, I practice every day not to be selfish. What’s funny is, I literally gave Stefan over the goat head, and he took the goat outside the apartments we were all staying at, put it down, lit a cigarette and took three or four photos. And when I got to the studio later that night he said, “I got something to show you.” And I picked number two out of four.

I just looked at him and went, “I’ve been shooting this thing for weeks and you got the image.” And he went, “Hey, it’s all about light.” And that’s when I started really taking light seriously. He explained to me that light does not know it’s a goat’s head. So, I learned that light is extremely important in photography and you have to really study light in order to capture what you see.