Last May I did a little personal challenge where I wanted to post an image to the site every day for the month. I’ve decided to do that again this year starting today. For today’s photo I go back to 2012 and an image with Ginger done at what at the time was a favorite location, but one that I seldom use now. A mix of having done shoots there a lot and it’s not as out of the way as it once was and harder to use.
I was introduced to Nymph by a mutual friend in the community while she was visiting the Asheville area late this summer. We met up and headed into the mountains to work in one of my favorite areas of Western North Carolina including a waterfall that will look familiar to regular visitors. She also was the first model I’ve worked with at a new nearby location that I’d scouted only a few weeks before.
The weather threatened a bit early in the shoot and at our first stop deep in a wooded cove we did have a little drizzle, but that soon left leaving those wonderfully lightly overcast skies perfect for shooting in the outdoors. The long days that time of year gave us almost perfect conditions in fact until the clouds thickened again toward evening. Great work by Nymph and looking forward to our next collaboration.
In the original plan for my California trip I’d planned to spend a day or two winding down from hiking in Yosemite and other parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains and then heading over to the coast around San Luis Obispo for a day or two. After booking several shoots around that area, I decided to just head to that area for a few days between the mountains and heading up to the Bay Area.
When I think beach, what comes to mind for me are those of the Atlantic coast of Florida and South Carolina. In summer the water is warm and generally calm unless a tropical storm makes an appearance. The Central California coasts don’t match the same vision. The water when I was there seemed rough and choppy. Fog hugs the coast in a way that reminds me of fall mornings here near the lakes and rivers that carve through the valleys. Except many days that fog never quite went away. It’s a different terrain in spite of being another place that ocean and land meet.
My last day in San Luis Obispo started very early with at 5 AM meeting Katja Gee. Early mornings are a common element of morning shoots. Here our hope was to catch the light crowds of the early morning until the sun burned through the fog. On the good side the fog never really burned away. On the down side along the beach itself we found a constant light drizzle just steady enough I didn’t want to get my camera out in it. Katja had scouted a good location for us, and we found some nice sports to work with in the woods and trees around the area.
In particular there was a large Eucalyptus tree that we saved for the end of the shoot. I worked around these trees twice in the area, and really love the way the curves and size of the tree can either compliment or dwarf the human form. There are tall trees here, but the sheer scale of some of these trees (not to mention Sequoia and Redwood trees) have a scale and presence that’s hard to put into words. These trees were already old generations of people ago. The photo above shows Katja in a small section of one tree. The photo below shows true scale of the tree with Katja posed against it.
My afternoon shoot in the area had canceled by the time I’d returned to the city. After Katja and my shoot completed, I left to make my way to San Francisco, hoping to arrive before rush hour. I almost made it too.
Some photos from a late spring shoot with Xlcr Moon outdoors at one of my favorite locations, but the first time there with Xlcr Moon. This was a late starting shoot that stretched late enough that we wrapped about the time the light became too dark to work out in the woods. We started out in some nice deep wooded area in the mountains.
In spite of the late hour, I think some of our best work came during those last few minutes of shooting before it became too dark. We wrapped along a nice, well worn wooden fence near some water where that best work came. Moon as always does great work and really seems to produce some of her best work in the woods.
And Photo May comes to an end, I kept the pace to post an image each day. It was close one day where I didn’t post the photo until late in the evening.While I don’t think I could keep this pace of posting up all the time, I did enjoy the excuse to look through my older work and rediscover a few images I’d overlooked in the past. I also found a few that were improved I think by a new editing eye. I think I’ll look to increase the posting pace for a while, though likely to a more sustainable one or two posts per week.
Today’s image comes from what ended up as damn hot day in the Nevada desert. Taken on my last visit to Las Vegas with Wonderhussy, perhaps the best model alias ever. This was the last shoot of the vacation trip where I first visited the Grand Canyon that year. I loved this location, but we waited way too late in the day to get started and it quickly got too hot to work. This interestingly shaped spot in the rocks caught my attention. Heading back to Las Vegas in June and looking forward to seeing the American West again.
May marked the busiest month of shoots I’ve had since last year, but other commitments have kept me from getting photos posted here. I’m changing that today with these photos of Xania taken around the middle of May on a gorgeous spring day. These were done working around some rock formations I frequently shoot near. More coming soon done at a nearby waterfall.
Happy Memorial Day to US readers. This photo comes from my backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon last fall. You see an image of the Colorado River taken from the Silver Bridge that connects the two banks of the river. I took this around mid-morning as I began my climb after a night at the Bright Angel Campground to Indian Garden Campground. It and the nearby Black Bridge provide the only crossings of the river for several hundred miles. The bridge runs around sixty feet above the river (I never could find an actual height) with a metal grate flooring allowing you to look down at the river below. Looking down also shows a water pipe, the trans-canyon pipeline, which provides the water supply for the entire tourist area on the South Rim. There are several places along the Bright Angel Trail where the pipeline is again visible above ground.
From an outdoor shoot with Viktoria last summer outdoor shoot in North Carolina.
Continuing the outside theme of the last few days comes today’s photo from a shoot my first shoot with JEM in 2012.
Earlier I posted a few photos done in the fading light near Phoenix. After the sun set and the darkness came in, we switched to something more along the lines of light painting. Here instead of using a traditional flashlight, I used a headlamp that I’d brought for the hike out in the dark. It worked great as a bright small light source to light up Leanne and the area around her and leaving the desert around her in darkness for contrast. These are close to the same area as the last photos.
After we finished the photos, she and I donned headlamps and prepared to head back to my car. This meant a short hike back through the area we knew might have those annoying little cacti in there. So we carefully made our way to the nearest trail with neither us of being stuck. Once there we checked each other’s feet. Leanne had avoided further cactus, she’d gotten one on her flip flop earlier. I on the other hand had four of the tiny little balls of potential pain stick to the sole of my shoe. I’d chosen not to wear hiking boots and instead had on only my trail running shoes which the spines would have gone through with no problem. Thankfully all had stuck in the thick soles and were easy to remove before heading back to the car. In short, those little cacti are evil.
Leanne was my last shoot in Phoenix. I left the city the next morning and in doing so went from a temperatures near eighty when I arrived at the Phoenix airport to barely above forty degree when I landed in Nashville. A nice trip and enjoyable one. I’m hoping that my schedule will take me out west again next year and we’ll see if I can make my way back into the desert again.
If you’d like to see more from this shoot, please visit the members area.