The Moon Sets Over the Amargosa
September 20th, 2008
While we were shooting in Death Valley and the surrounding area we stayed at a wonderful place, The Amargosa Hotel and Opera House in Death Valley Junction, just outside the park. You can read the very interesting story of the Amargosa and its owner, Marta, on its web site.
I had hoped to meet Marta while I was there, but unfortunately she recently fell and was confined to her home while we were there.
But it is an interesting place to stay, with a lot of history. And maybe we added just a small bit to the story when I took this photo of Neva as the moon was setting one morning before we headed out for the day.
Rules Are Made To Be Broken
September 19th, 2008
I’m in Los Angeles after 4 wonderful days of shooting in and around Death Valley. It was a great trip, largely because of the fantastic models who went out in the desert with me. NevaehLleh and Vima just did a fantastic job day after day in the heat and sun, on the rocks and in the dirt and sand. I couldn’t imagine better models to work with.
But that’s because I was very lucky. These weren’t the models I had originally planned to take to Death Valley. One of my rules is to not go on multi-day shooting trips with models I’ve not previously met and preferably worked with. It may come as a shock, but not all models are nice people. Some are very difficult to be around. I won’t work with difficult models. I won’t work with unpleasant models. Life is too short. So I want to know what a model is like before I take off with her for several days of work.
But the models I had originally planned to use for this shoot all dropped out for a variety of perfectly valid reasons. And I ended up looking for replacements on Model Mayhem. And I got lucky. Very lucky. NevaehLleh and Vima are as good as any models I’ve encountered. And that goes both in front of the camera and in all those other times between shots. Very nice young women who I can highly recommend to other photographers. Really great models, these two.
There is lots more stuff from Death Valley, of course. I’ll be editing and posting them as I get time…
A few more days in LA, then it’s back home. I’m looking forward to getting home even more than usual this time since my first grandson just arrived in this world a couple days ago and I’m looking forward to introducing him to his grandpa.
Green Hawaii
September 14th, 2008
Hawaii is green. Everywhere, green. Overwhelming green. Green that seems like it might swallow you up if you turned your back. It’s not a threatening sort of thing, just a powerful one. Here’s Leona Anne again, about to succumb to the greenness of Hawaii.
I’m in LA now. Heading out to Death Valley with a couple models before dawn tomorrow. No internet out there. I’ll be back to LA on Thursday. Should have more for you to see when I return from the desert. Don’t think I’ll be seeing so much green out there.
Lost…Under the Banyan Trees
September 12th, 2008
Did some shooting yesterday with Leona Anne who got up before dawn and very capably guided me to some excellent locations for shooting, then added her beautiful form to the beauty of Hawaii. For those of you who are still fans of “Lost” (I think the show jumped the shark after the first season and stopped paying any attention to it myself) that Banyan tree Leona is leaning on in the shot above is the one Charlie hung from. It’s near the trail head for Manoa Falls.
Students Achieving Oneness Will Advance To Twoness
September 11th, 2008
I stole that post title from Woody Allen…one of my favorite quotes from him.
I spent most of today wandering around in the vicinity of Manoa Falls and the Lyon Arboretum. So I thought I’d share a few of my snapshots from the day.
Aloha
September 7th, 2008
Don’t hate me. I’m in Hawaii. In a hotel on Waikiki Beach. These photos were shot from the balcony of our room.
I’ve never had any desire to visit Hawaii. I don’t know why, it was just never on my list of places to go. I’m here because my wife’s old college roommate invited us to join her and a lot of her other friends here to help her celebrate her 60th birthday. She used to live here. She worked on Magnum PI. She wrote a couple scripts for the show back in those days.
So, we’ve been running around with her and a bunch of really nice folks who either live here on the island or flew in for the party.
I have to say that here in Honolulu I’m not all that entranced with this version of paradise spoiled. It’s just a very busy city with a beach and hot weather. Beautiful in a sadly ruined way. But over the coming week we’ll be exploring the less urban parts of the island and I suspect I’ll find that more to my taste. We’ll see.
I’ll have more photos as the week goes by, no doubt. And if this really, really bad internet connection holds up well enough, I may be able to upload a few more. We’ll see. I certainly can’t recommend Skywave Wi-Fi in Hawaii. Terrible service, regularly dropping the connection, very complicated, difficult sign-on. But it seems to be the only option, so it’s what I’m struggling to use. A good example of what you get with no competition.
Graceful Athena
September 4th, 2008
I don’t really have time to write today. I’m catching a plane in a little while. I hope to have internet access while I’m traveling, so I’ll post more when I can.
Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of the lovely and graceful Athena from last Friday’s shoot.
More when I can.
Steely Phoenix
September 1st, 2008
Life has been busy and it looks to continue to be for the next few weeks. But I managed to fit in a good shoot with a couple favorite models in Dayton on Friday before the holiday weekend started. Here’s one quick pick from that shoot. That’s Phoenix Kelley showing the contrast between her fine figure and some steel plates in a studio.
I’ll have a few more to post from this shoot over the next few posts and I’ll probably be going back over the things I shot on the trip out west and the Tampa trip to find some other photos to post from those. But with the schedule I have ahead of me for the next 3 weeks or so, I’ll make no promises about how many or how frequently I’ll be able to post new things here. But stop by now and then and see what I’ve managed to do.
Tampa and Computer Problems
August 27th, 2008
The two subjects of this post are not related.
That’s pixel in her back yard in Tampa last week. Lighting courtesy of Tropical Storm Fay. Pixel was great to work with and we did several interesting things in addition to having her run around naked in her back yard.
I haven’t posted for a few days because of the computer problems. On Tuesday I went to my studio with a full day of work ahead of me…mostly editing and printing photos. I turned on the computer and it said there was a new update to install. As usual, I told it to go ahead. Big mistake this time. It was installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. After the install my computer would not even boot up. Just a black screen. So I lost that day of work for the most part.
After getting home I sent a message to Microsoft tech support about the problem. Yesterday, as promised, there was a response to my message. Of course, the response was nonsensical and of no help at all. But it did have a link to tech support which offered free chat support for SP 3 problems. I took my laptop in to the studio, hooked it up to the internet connection there and tried the chat support. I ended up spending the entire afternoon in chat with an excellent tech support person who worked through the problem and got SP3 uninstalled so my computer will work again. They also sent me an e-mail with install instructions. I think I’ll wait a while before I try that, though. I just don’t have time for this right now.
Jo Jo and Fay
August 22nd, 2008
I’m in Tampa. Came down here to get my daughter started on her sophomore year at University of Tampa. Tropical Storm Fay seems to have been avoiding us on this trip. We drove through Jacksonville before Fay arrived, just catching a little rain from the fringe of the storm. Since we’ve been in Tampa Fay as gone up the east coast of Florida and now turned west, both times keeping us just on the fringe of the rain and wind.
Well, I had some spare time today, so I got up at 4:30 a.m. and drove out to Clearwater to pick up the amazing model, JoJo Suicide and head for the beach. We were on the beach at dawn and Fay was churning things up. We got wet from the rain and the wind, but we also got some photos. JoJo is a great model, a fine person and a lot of fun to work with.
There’s more to share from my Tampa visit, including another very different shoot with another model…but for now I just had to share JoJo and Fay.
