Something is never done. If time and money and deadlines were no object, people would tweak until the cows came home. Ultimately, I would like to think something is done when I master it and I send it off and I’m so stoked about it. I feel like, “Wow, I really brought this one home.” And then I get the same feedback from the artist, that it is just beyond their imagination. Where it comes back to them, and they get excited about the mixes again. Or if there was something they were worried about, and it gets addressed and sounds better than they would’ve thought.

I had this sort of…vibe in my head that I wanted to get onto the page. It wasn’t even an image, not even that concrete. It was almost like a song that I couldn’t hear. The spirit of a book that wasn’t yet written, but wanted to be. I felt that way for Jell-O Girls, too. It was an energy I wanted to translate. I knew Aesthetica had come together when I saw and felt the vibe on the page. I don’t know if this makes sense, but I think now, after going through this process of channeling the vibe into a book twice, that there’s no way to force it. It’s a matter of time.

I think that’s an instinct.

I think that there is a lessening of attention. Sometimes when a series is done I still make a few extra pictures where I’m still kind of batting the dead mouse around and sometimes those are where the best pictures get me because I’m not trying as hard, or I’m more open-minded to let other things come into the picture. That’s what happened with one of my favorite pictures in the book, the one where everyone’s in the sand and they’re making out. I actually ended up dating one of the girls in this picture afterwards.