California: Ranch Undressing

Workshop day 2 was "hot and cold" as they say... the weather remained hot and virtually cloudless, but dry with more shaded areas, so pretty reasonable. The models were great, and I even managed to work with a couple of "bonus" models -- one of the wardrobe assistants (who despite denying being a model, is actually quite an experienced model), and one of the other photographers, which is always fun -- even though I myself hate being on the other side of the camera. But I digress.

One harsh to my Cali mellow was that during a shoot late in the day, I'd forgotten that I pulled the card from my camera to pull images off it, and didn't put it back. SOMEHOW my camera was set to shoot without a card (this is a setting used when photographers connect the camera directly to their computer), so some of my favorite shots of the day disappeared into the ether. Once I figured out that I'd done it, the model was kind enough to redo a couple of the shots, but it's hard to re-capture a moment, and I can't help but think that the ones that evaporated were supergreat. As some wise man once observed, "Never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it over."

So, shortly after this episode of stupidity, we were all gathered to review a slideshow of what people had shot during the course of the workshop (the reason I had pulled the card from my camera in the first place, even though I didn't manage to find a laptop I could borrow so I wasn't able to submit). As I tend to do in those situations, I just kept kicking myself for the shots I didn't get, and how well most everyone did. Most people took full advantage of the colors of the setting and the wardrobe options and got some real eye-popping images. As I'm prone to do, I opted to shoot mainly nudes, mostly B&W, concerning myself more with light, shadow and texture. But I still feel I missed the opportunity to break out of my habits (rut?) and do something different, but I have a hard time doing that when I can hear the meter running. Once I'm home, I may look into more of that sort of thing, but I won't have the access to the wardrobe and styling pros I had there.

After my little rant about shooters "poaching" shots over the shoulders of photographers, I got an e-mail from the organizers asking people NOT to post those shots. A number of the shoots were specifically intended to appear in Marquis magazine, but if they appear elsewhere, even on ModelMayhem, even if it's a "behind the scenes" shot, Marquis won't run them. Apparently, at least one set of shots has already been compromised. So, in addition to the aggravation these poachers cause, now there's a chance of actual damages that will cost the organizers money and put their publication at risk. This also affects the companies providing the wardrobe, the stylists, the MUAs, the models, everyone. So, a lesson to photographers: don't poach, don't tolerate poaching.

As I was leaving the ranch location, I happened to look down and see a USB "thumb drive" lying on the ground. I picked it up and noticed that it looked like mine, but how would mine have gotten there? Virtually everyone was gone, so I figured I'd just check out whose shots were on it and mail it to them. Got it to my computer, and sure enough, it WAS my drive. Dumb luck that I happened to be the one to find it... very odd. The two shots with this article were among the random stuff on the "recovered" drive, so I figured I'd use them for this post. Miss Kittie and Engel...