The Last of Char
August 5th, 2011
Well, I certainly hope it isn’t the last photo of Char Rose to be posted here, but this will be the last one for now from this one day of shooting. What a totally successful shoot that was. It helps to have a beautiful and talented model. This was up the creek above the waterfall where we had been shooting. Nice little waterfalls to enjoy with the stream flowing much more than it usually does this time of year. In fact, it is often completely dry by now. But there is nothing normal about this year.
If all goes well there will be more shoots with Char coming in the near future.
And, speaking of beautiful and talented models, I worked with a new one (to me) yesterday. On my way to New York City I stopped off in Pennsylvania for a day of shooting with Cam Damage. I noticed her when she modeled for some friends of mine and we had been talking for more than six months about doing a shoot. So I finally found the right time and we did it. You’ll be seeing the results here in the near future.
And, yes, I am now in New York, staying with my friend, Dave Rudin. Tomorrow we are meeting some friends and going to the International Center of Photography to see the Elliott Erwitt show there. Erwitt has always been one of the photographers who inspire me. He was a star photojournalist back when I became aware of photojournalism and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. I later became disillusioned with photojournalism as a career, but never lost my respect and admiration for those, like Erwitt, who were able to show how it should be done. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to seeing this show.
I also have shoots scheduled with a couple NYC models while I’m here. One is one of my all-time favorites who I try to shoot every time I get to the city. The other is a new model to me, but one who is a true beauty and has much experience and obvious talent. So it should be a great visit if all goes well. And I even found a parking space almost immediately when I got here, only a block from Dave’s building. That kind of made up for the hour and a half that it took me to go the last 20 miles to his place. I’m glad I don’t live here. Love to visit, couldn’t deal with it on a daily basis. But it’s a great city with much to offer. I once thought I wanted to live here, but I think I’ve gotten too old to handle it.
L’Allure des Mots
August 2nd, 2011
The second issue of this wonderful on-line magazine has just been published. It’s as beautiful as the first issue, even without any of my photos in it. Really, check it out. It’s a work of art.
http://www.lalluredesmots.com/issues/issue2/issue2.html
Up The Creek
July 31st, 2011
After Char Rose and I shot all those photos at the last waterfall we decided to wander on up the creek above the waterfall. Usually by this time of year this creek is dry and there is no water going over the waterfall. Obviously this is not a normal year. I’ve shot in this creek when it is dry and it makes a very nice setting. But it works when it has water in it too, as you can see.
I’m still suffering from the heat and not doing much outside. And it doesn’t look like it is going to cool down to normal temperatures any time soon. But I have some new shoots coming up…some in and some outdoors…so there should be lots of new material for the blog soon.
Meanwhile, I have more of Char coming too. This was a great shoot with a great model and produced more “keepers” than I usually get on a shoot. And I’ve also done a shoot with one of my old favorite models that will be showing up here after I finish posting the Char photos.
Now, if we can just keep the air conditioners running long enough at the studio to actually get it cooled down I might be able to shoot some new stuff in there too.
More of Char Getting Wet
July 28th, 2011
Yep, I got a lot of keepers on the shoot with Char at this waterfall. This is the last one of her at this waterfall that I’ll be posting here. There are more to come from the shoot, though…we moved on to a couple more locations after this one. The spray was really getting her in this spot. Sounds good today as the temperature is back up in the mid-90s.
There’s a tree trimming crew working on the the giant Elm tree in our yard today. It dropped a limb on our house and the neighbor’s house last week. I actually had a note to call the tree trimmers for this week, so I did and they are cleaning up the mess from the limb that fell and cleaning up the tree so it won’t happen again. We have the tree worked on regularly to try to avoid problems, but got caught this time. Not a whole lot of damage to the houses, though, so it’s not a big disaster. Still waiting for the insurance adjuster to come and see it, though.
I’ve been looking for a few more models to work with on a regular basis and I think I found one this week. I’ll be setting up a shoot with her in August, so if all goes well, you’ll be seeing her here soon.
Plus I have shoots with several other models, some new and some old favorites, coming up in the next week, so we’ll have some new material here soon. But I’m sure you aren’t getting tired of Char yet, are you? Who could get tired of a beauty like her?
Wet Char
July 23rd, 2011
The heat wave continues. I’m trying to just stay indoors in the air conditioning until it passes. I had intended to do some work at the studio this past week, but the new, larger air conditioning units we have installed there seem to keep tripping circuit breakers. I went in yesterday to find them both off and the temperature in the studio simply intolerable at 95F degrees. I managed to get both units working again and made some changes that I hope will keep them running. Maybe I can work there this coming week.
Meanwhile there’s Char again, getting good and wet from the spray off that waterfall. As I’ve said, she did a great job working the area around that waterfall, resulting in a bunch of photos that I’m very happy with. She is a fine model…and a nice person to boot. I hope we’ll be doing a lot more work together.
In other news, a tree limb fell onto the corner of our house yesterday without warning. We had been intending to get a tree trimmer out to work on the big tree in our our yard and to remove another smaller tree that died for unknown reasons this summer. In fact, I planned to make the call to the tree trimmer this coming week. But now I need to wait for the insurance adjuster to come and see what has happened. Not a lot of damage, but it did break and knock some tile off our roof…and tile repairs always seem to be unreasonably expensive, so we’ll see what the damage really is.
Cool Water
July 20th, 2011
Boy that water splashing off the waterfall looks good. She was getting wet while we were shooting this one. I wouldn’t mind lying there where Char Rose is lying, except that there would be a long hot hike and some climbing and scrambling over rocks required to get there. Like most of the middle of the US, we are having a heat wave. A really nasty heat wave. I’ve decided to treat it the same way I would a major blizzard in the winter: Just stay inside until it is over. I’m so happy we have air conditioning.
My son-in-law had a large air conditioning unit that he wasn’t using, so I borrowed it and installed it at the studio. Now it is significantly cooler inside the studio than outside. Once this heat wave passes I suspect that we will be able to maintain a normal room temperature in the studio. For now it is at least a lot cooler. So I just need to set up some studio shooting to pass the time until the weather gets better. The forecast has this hellacious weather extending out for the coming week, so I don’t know when I’ll get back to working outdoors. Not until it cools down to a more reasonable temperature.
Char did a great job working around that waterfall, getting into difficult spots and doing perfect poses. Still more from this shoot to come.
More Char
July 17th, 2011
Here’s another of favorite model, Char Rose, at another favorite local waterfall. The waterfalls have been pretty amazing this year because of all the rain we’ve had, so it’s been hard to resist making multiple trips to photograph at them. In a normal weather year these falls would be all dried up by now. As you can see, that’s far from the case this year.
We are looking at a week of temperatures in the 90s every day coming up. I’m not looking forward to that. I have one shoot scheduled at the studio, but I don’t think I’ll be spending much time there because the air conditioning units we have running just can’t keep up when it’s this hot, so it’s pretty uncomfortable there as well as outdoors. But I can, at least, go and stand in front of the air conditioners to cool off now and then. And it does keep it cooler than outdoors most of the time. So it’s easier to shoot there this year than it was last summer when we had no air conditioning at all.
Speaking of uncooperative weather, I thought I might be sharing a photo of the moon with a couple nude models in the foreground. On Wednesday I saw the moonrise and realized it was a perfect time for that kind of photo. The moon was almost full, the sky was clear, the timing was right to be able to shoot the moonrise just before the sunset, so the light would be right. So I contacted some models and got a couple volunteers and spent most of Thursday scouting for a couple good locations. We set out in the early evening to get the shot. At the first location we found a bunch of kids fishing right were I needed the models to pose, so we went on to the second location, which also had many more people around than when I had scouted it earlier in the day. It looked like we would be able to find an out-of-sight spot to do the shot, though. But, it didn’t matter. After a full day of bright sun, a low cloud bank settled in along the eastern horizon. It completely blocked the moon from view until it was well up in the sky, too high to be a photo element with the models, and too late anyway because the sun had already set and there was no sunlight to light the models.
So it goes. Maybe next month.
Char at the falls
July 14th, 2011
Last month before I headed out of town I managed to fit in several good shoots with local models. I love having beautiful local models who are ready to work with me when the light is right. Char Rose has recently become a new favorite local model. I had shot her in the studio over the winter and one time outdoors practically in her back yard. But I wanted to find a good day to take her to some of my favorite local locations. We finally got all the pieces to come together and set out on a morning to see what we could come up with. It was a great day of shooting. Here is the first of many that you will be seeing from this shoot.
I have some big plans for Char in the near future. I hope it works out. If it does you’ll certainly see the results here.
Crack Up
July 11th, 2011
Yep, that’s a big crack up above Artistic Physique in this photo. I’m going to make this the last post from this highly productive shoot because I have several more shoots that I’ve done since then and more coming up soon, so I need to move on to the newer work. But, it’s just so hard to miss with a great model like AP and a great location like this gorge. I’ll be going through this shoot and pulling out more and more photos for a long time to come.
Thanks for the great work, AP. We’ll be doing more together soon, I hope.
Vermont Farm and a Suspicious Odor
July 9th, 2011
I’m just back home from a trip to visit family in Vermont. Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know what that means…new photos of my favorite Vermont farm. Above is a view of the farm in the morning fog.
It was haying time. Things are done very differently from when I way a kid making some money in the summer helping bale hay. No more work for kids dragging hay bales back into the barn’s hay loft where the temperature was well above 100F. In the old days they hay had to dry in the field for a few days before it was baled. Now it is cut, chopped, sprayed into a truck and dumped into a storage pit, all in the same day. And all the hard work done by machine. I can’t say that’s a bad thing. My reaction after a few summers of work putting up hay was, “I need to find something to do so I never have to do this again.” I guess some people did that work and decided they wanted to be farmers…but maybe they then figured out how to get the hay in without all that back breaking labor and sweat. More power to them.
As soon as all the hay was hauled away the next step in the process began. The next day hoses were rolled out across the fields. Then the end of the hose was hooked to this rig behind a tractor. Have you guessed what the hoses carry? Liquid manure. Yep, no more old manure spreaders, now it is pumped in liquid form direct from the barn to the field where it is sprayed by that thing behind the tractor. The odor is something to experience. We were lucky this year and there was a rain storm in the evening after the spreading was done. That seemed to remove the odor from the air.
But, speaking of odors, we had a bit of an adventure with our van on this trip. On the last couple days of the trip I noticed that the blower fan for the a/c had stopped working. I just assumed the motor had worn out. That seems to be a weak point for Chrysler products. I think I’ve had to replace the blower motor on my Dodge truck at least three times. There was still some air moving when the van was in motion and there is a separate blower for the back of the van that was still working, so we still had enough a/c to keep it reasonably comfortable. No big deal, I thought…I’ll just get it in the shop when we get home.
We drove from Vermont to my brother-in-law’s home in Canton on the first day of our return trip. No real problems on the road. The next morning I called my mechanic to make an appointment to fix the fan. He suggested percussive maintenance, saying that sometimes if you pound on the blower housing it will free it up and get it working again for a while. So I went out, started up the van, and did some pounding. Sure enough, the blower started working again…because the dead animal that had somehow gotten into the blower housing fell out of the way enough to let it turn. I cannot describe the odor that came rushing out of the a/c vents. Whatever it was had been dead for several days.
So, now driving home without fixing the problem was no longer an option. We got the van into my brother-in-law’s mechanic. They get to critter out and replaced the blower and filter. When we asked what the critter was, the reply was, “I can’t rightly say.” But it was certainly bigger than a mouse.
Well, there’s still a bit of that odor in the van, slightly disguised by a lot of air freshener stuff. I’m hoping it will go away soon. If it’s still there in a week or so I’ll take it to our local car wash/detailing place and see if they can do something about it. And on the next trip to Vermont I’ll try to park a little further away from the woods that surround my mother-in-law’s house on three sides.
It’s always something.
