Rebecka is a Swedish jazz/ folk singer and for some reason that escapes me we decided to do a night shoot around her house in Hollywood. I've mentioned the difficulty of doing a night shoot in previous blogs, especially when you are doing only ambient light and maybe a bit of flash. She showed me around the neighborhood and for the 4th time in a row I ended up with images that had an Asian theme to them-- this time on the grounds of a ritzy Japanese restaurant and the Magic Castle, as well as some fairly creepy stuff from Highland Mall. Pretty sure some of the photos were actually taken in somebody's backyard. Rebecka herself is sort of a gypsy traveler, moving around where the wind takes her, so the clothing choice kept that gypsy spirit in it.
We'll skip the part where I got lost on the way back to my aunt's house and drove 30 miles in the wrong direction...
Saturday was the final day and took place in San Diego. Mya was first, quite a difficult model to instruct but a natural poser nonetheless. She kind of looks like Pebbles! I also got to hold a bearded dragon for the first time.
The final shoot was a two-fer of the "original" model Clouds, a vegan straightedge artsy type, and her friend Siedah, who was the most straight-up magazine print model I think I have ever shot. We shot in Balboa Park-- not an original idea based on the dozens of other photographers running around doing weddings, graduations, other fashion models etc.
There is a huge variety of stuff there, architecture from Roman to Spanish styles, Asian gardens, forests and a giant tree with the roots on the surface like Avatar. I usually try to mix the personality of the model with the way the shoot went so it's kind of strange to see Siedah's photos ended up more classic Vogue high contrast black and white while Clouds's images are generally dreamlike and supercolorful, when I shot both people at the same time. In the end I spent far too little time in S.D. but it was still worth it.
Two weeks later I've worked up some 200 images and had tons of great feedback, stuff I read over when the creativity ebbs or I get sick of photoshop. Already scheduled another trip June 3-6 with assistants, a modest budget (as opposed to my $0 budget-- I think all I paid for was balloons and a kite for the first person) and a couple more models that didn't work out the first time for scheduling reasons as opposed to "hmmm not sure about this person" reasons. And, of course, "round 2" shoots are always head and shoulders above whatever was done the first time.
The extra time will also be spent actually promoting work, visiting galleries and hopefully meeting an art director or two. Even with bullshit immigration laws being passed in AZ I wouldn't want to live in CA, but clearly that's where the work and the money is, so I have no problem driving there or flying there on a monthly basis. These are people so professional they won't answer their phones in the middle of a shoot, and I don't mind driving 6 hours to find that.
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