I have a sort of collage wall next to my computer, filled with pictures of models I’ve shot. Check it out:

I love to let my eyes wander on that wall. I used to update it regularly, back when I had time on my hands. I might update it sometime in the winter when things slow down a little.

Anyway, so the Holga is gonna have a wall of its own

Finally, can someone help me with this? I took a walk a few days ago, right around sunset, and saw this…

That’s not the sun behind the mountains because I’m facing east on that one. The sun sets in the west… I had to turn around and find the sun to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. And the sun was too low on the horizon in the west to cast rays DOWN towards the horizon. If anything, it would have cast rays UP. Not to mention, the rays clearly dissipate as the move away from their source (behind the mountains), just like any source of light would…

So… What was going on behind these mountains?!…

Getting ready to board the tiny plane.

I loved how calm the water could be. So peaceful.

Every city has dark alleys.

A few more from Alcatraz.

*APPLAUSE*

Day 99/365

Where do I even start…

The fact that I wanted badly to work with Kelly goes without saying. Her portfolio is certainly stunning and even intimidating, but she seemed to like my work, so I wasn’t gonna argue.

We set a shoot date and I started thinking about what I wanted to do. I kept drawing blanks, so I went location scouting. I decided I’d had my fill of run-down, “ugly” areas of downtown and wanted to go somewhere a bit more grand, a bit more poetic; probably a canyon. I settled on Emigration Canyon and headed off.

I drove and drove, got out of my car and walked where I wanted to take a closer look, but I couldn’t find anything that really blew me away. Sure, there were options, but nothing I was uncontainably excited about.

It wasn’t until just before sunset that I found this perfect little place where I decided I wanted to take Kelly. It had a beautiful little trail made of rocks, the view was spectacular, especially at sunset, and on and on. That was the place.

And before long, I knew what I wanted to do:

Barefoot hippie.

The idea struck a chord with me in a big way. Imagining her carefully gliding over a beautiful little trail made of rocks felt right. Maybe a bit heavy-handed, but I liked the idea anyway and I already had a specific picture in my mind.

So everything was ready to go. My model was booked, I’d found the perfect location, I had a concept in mind, I knew how much time we needed for hair and makeup and when we’d have to leave to get there in time for sunset and still have enough time to shoot in different places.

Then Kelly threw me a curveball…

FOX13 – yes, THAT FOX13 – wanted to shoot a story, which, in part, involved interviewing Kelly and getting some footage of her in action, on location, with me in charge.

“Ruh roh, Raggy”, said Scooby Doo.

Ruh roh indeed, Scooby. Maybe some Scooby Snacks will calm us both down.

I was already a bit intimidated by Kelly’s very strong portfolio, now I was going to have to shine with a FOX camera pointed at me some of the time. I can’t even imagine how Kelly must have felt. This was new for her too and she was nervous just like me, except the camera would be pointed at her most of the time.

On top of that, because of FOX’s schedule for when they were planning on doing the interview and shooting the in-action footage, we needed to come up with a new location somewhere in downtown Salt Lake and shoot at around 2pm.

Worst possible lighting scenario…

2pm lighting sucks. A lot. The light is harsh, ugly and very strong. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky to shield us from this. I needed to find some shade, but in downtown Salt Lake, that meant buildings. And buildings are boring, unless of course, they’re in run-down, “ugly” areas.

So much for having had my fill of it.

Here’s my favorite of that part of the shoot:

Kelly had the whole day to do whatever we wanted and we had a gap of a few hours between when we shot for FOX and when we needed to go out to the canyon. So we decided to fit in one more look in between, and I already knew I’d been wanting to do a shoot with a model in black lingerie, on a bed, swimming in a big fluffy comforter, so I went for it:

And finally, my vision of the hippie when I first went out to the canyon. The first shot was the picture I was after, the second works well with the concept and the third is probably my favorite and the most spectacular. It’s very encouraging and exciting to see the gap between my vision and my results become narrower:

This didn’t really belong in the series, but it has a robotic, plastic mannequin, Marilyn Monroe feel to it that I absolutely love:

I can’t tell you how hard it was for me to cut these pictures down to just six. We took 686 pictures in all and I assure you, there’s a lot of them I loved enormously.

There’s an expression that is common among artists.

“Kill your babies”

It’s when you have to choose to get rid of something you love but that you know doesn’t belong in your body of work. You’ve got all these little creations that you love equally, but you know you can’t keep them all, so instead of giving your babies up for adoption, you kill your babies.

I had a hard time killing mine with this shoot.

I hope this post was worth your wait and thanks for sticking with me this long! Giant shoutout to Kelly Kaye (model) and Jaylene Barbir (makeup artist) for such fantastic work and FOX13 (giant media corporation – you may have heard of them) for allowing me to promote my business through their story. Thanks also to Kelly’s husband who helped enormously in making this possible by holding up the gold reflector, a simple job but I can’t stress how crucial a role it was in capturing the shots I did.

I’ll let you all know as soon as I find out when the story airs on FOX.

Day 85/365

Day 86/365

As the title implies, I worked with Dani again. We’d actually planned the shoot for that day (the 7th) weeks ahead of time, while the one from a few days back (the 4th) was last minute. That’s my excuse at least.

I tried doing some natural light stuff and it really didn’t work out… Like, at all… It’s making me want to get to the point where I can do it well, so I’ll probably try again in the future.

And then I turned my lights back on… Ahhhhh… The control…

Day 87/365

I honestly didn’t think Quincy was gonna show up! Communication had been touch and go, but I was glad when I heard a knock on my door.

Also from that day, I took this shot of my cologne… Why? Because I was in my bathroom getting ready, I look down to my cologne and then realize… I have the most pretentious, arrogant cologne on the planet!

I promise, I really just bought it because I liked how it smelled!

Day 88/365

I’ve never bought a Seventeen Magazine in my life. That day, I did. And that’s because I’ve been published in it! Woohoo!!

Look for this photo in Seventeen’s May issue, which I shot in the summer of last year:

It’s easy to forget how nice your surroundings are when you see them day in and day out for years on end.

This is the view from my house:

I remember a long time ago, seeing a picture from a photographer whose work I greatly admired where he’d just taken a shot of the grass. It was a moodier black and white, but I like mine too.

It’s amazing how much more of the world around you, even something as mundane and commonplace as grass, can take a life all its own when seen through the lens of a camera.