Having shot our way through a bit of fashion and some playful things, we returned to the reason for the adventure. Nudity and doughnuts. M eyed the bin of powdered sugar and said, "later". The first bites were deliberate although not tentative. That wasn't really her style. But it didn't take long for filling and glaze to be everywhere and the shoot became progressively more hectic. I was traveling with a pretty basic kit and it was clearly more than I could handle. At the time I didn't know how to really approach editing and a lot of this night has sat for years, lost in darkness and blur. I didn't start using Lightroom until the pandemic gave me a forced vacation and six years later I actually feel pretty comfortable on the lite version. Still don't understand the legacy product one bit. We were pretty low light in the old boat. I enlisted every lamp in the place but shutter speed vs blur was a huge problem. It was difficult for either of us to curb our enthusiasm enough to slow down. Like most mind-blowing shoots the mere fact that this was unfolding in front of me was almost too much to deal with in the moment, let alone track ISO and f-stop. I didn't have any fast lenses, which would have helped.
M became more and more feral as she tore through the box of doughnuts yet somehow remaining mostly poised and keeping her makeup together. Have I mentioned how impressed I am with her? LOL. She's incredible. The best part of revisiting SOME shoots is to remind myself that I did OK or even better than I thought at the moment. I'm pretty hard on myself immediately after a shoot. My models are badasses and I am constantly trying to keep up with them. Can I perform MY job as well as THEY perform THEIRS? Not likely. When I look around I realize that almost all of my friends make me feel like a slacker at some point. Kurt is a globe-trotting computer geek who turned his day job into a vehicle for playing DJ gigs all over the world and burrowing into a world-beat music scene that has given him amazing experiences. Chet is a studiously perfect guitarist who has toured the world on the frets but is also a network/IT sort and a self-taught master of multiple production disciplines. Larry is just a goddamned FREAK who is 150% freak at all times, like an acid-addled muppet who just ate a box of chocolate-covered espresso beans. Everywhere I look people are working far harder than I am. But these adventures....I wouldn't trade them for the world. I adore meeting new people and finding ourselves....DOING THIS. Squatting naked on the rough wooden planks of a repurposed river scow with jelly filling plopping off a knuckle. How OFTEN will we ever do THIS again?
Whew. It took me longer to scroll through the shoot than it did to do it in the first place. Time to get to other tasks. I went out with a friend the other night and we made a beeline for the front of the stage. The band was running a small club tour as a shakedown for what I assume will be a mid-afternoon-slot at summer festivals and it was awesome. There had been a moment where my inner-introvert tried to talk me out of DOING THE THING but there was no way back and I was fully committed so there was only forward. Imagine if we could all just pry ourselves out into the world and experience the most amazing and creative things we've ever done, even just once a month or every other. The last ten years have stocked me with a few dozen "once in a lifetime" experiences. Some more sublime than others. Sometimes it's enough to sneak into the hot spring pool at midnight with a bottle of wine (careful, please, don't leave broken glass for others) and bob around like a satiated cork staring into the Milky Way above you. Sometimes it's standing on top of a 12' ladder to get a picture of 200 of your closest weirdest friends, screaming at them like some kind of Prussian film director, waving your arms and snapping the perfect group picture before everyone strips off their clothes and runs into the forest to cavort for the rest of the day. Sometimes it's having someone wonderful burrow into your side and fall asleep on you as you drive through gloaming mountains that stick out of the desert like enormous wizards hats topped with snow, knowing there is a secret forest in the barren landscape and she will wake to a sparkling mountain lake surrounded by aspen. More, please.
How it started.....and how it ended.
More in the alt-text.
#muse #donuts #messy #roadtrip #onaboat #pdxphotographer #charlestonsc #BKeDSHoP #ravenous
