Naked women, waterfalls and more.... thank god Nikon makes some tough gear.

    So, turns out I am once again very delinquent with my blogging. Silly life, always getting in the way of my internet time. But I finally have a little down time to catch up on things, so here's the cliff notes version of what I have been up to:

    I have done a few yoga shoots on my property,

   getting used to setting up and shooting here at various spots and times of the day.

   It turns out I really prefer to have my wife around for these shoots, since she is really good at adjusting my models and helping them into the poses.

    It doesn't hurt that she's a pretty badass advanced yogi herself.

 She is usually too shy to let me shoot her

 So I have to ask her to "help me check my lights...."

    I have also been doing a lot of traveling for work. When I travel I always try to meet up with someone local and get a shoot in, and use the rest of the time to try and get caught up on editing. When I went through Dallas, Tx a while back now, I actually met up with a model I shot once even farther back in time when I was still in San Diego.

   
    Turns out that in addition to being a model, she's also an amazingly creative photographer with her own studio space. We wound up having so much fun bouncing ideas off of each other that we shot for two nights instead of one, had a blast and got some great images. It's awesome working with someone who can see my ideas and not only make them work, but come up with inspired ways to take the vision further.

    If you ever get a chance to visit the House of Xtine in Dallas, you should do it. She rocks on either side of the camera!

   Next big trip was Miami, where I had the pleasure of doing a sunset shoot on the beach

   
See, I do sometimes take pictures of beautiful models in their clothes.....

  Eh, who am I kidding, I know what you are all here to see.... since you read this far, here you go...

    as well as a classic boudoir shoot indoors.

  Aside here- on any model photography forum there will be discussion about models who bring escorts with them.

    Most photographers seem to hate it, but I prefer it for several reasons. 1- my wife understandably prefers that I not be alone in a room with a beautiful naked woman that isn't her. 2- the model is more comfortable, which means better shots. 3- last but not least in exchange for a beer or glass of wine I get a free assistant. "Hey- can you move that light over there... help me move this furniture out of the way.... help her climb up onto this shelf and stand under her just in case it breaks....."

    Had some fun and got some great shots. I have decided that working with beautiful, talented models is both a blessing and a curse.

    It's awesome because they make it easy to get great images. It's bad because when your model is perfect and the images aren't, you have no one to blame but yourself. Sometimes you look at shots and think, "damn, how did I make sure a pretty woman look so bad." Out of blatant self interest, I refuse to put up any examples of this happening, sorry.

    Thankfully these ladies were able to look amazing despite my best efforts to screw up the shots :)

   Which brings us to my last trip, Hawaii. Back to Oahu. Did some shooting on the beach last time I was there, wanted something different, so found a good waterfall on line and found a model.

    All the web sites mentioned that it was a slick, treacherous and muddy hike under normal conditions and outright dangerous in bad weather, so of course it rained the whole time I was there. It actually was storming the morning before we were supposed to shoot. I was having second thoughts, I tend to avoid putting my models in dangerous scenarios because I like them and would rather not have them get hurt.

    I mentioned my concerns, but she said, "what the hell, it'll be fun, let's do it." Well, the rain stopped as we were pulling into the trailhead and parking. Turns out for once the internet was absolutely, one hundred percent correct, both in the directions to the falls and the muddy "fun" that was the hike there and back.

   I wish I had lots of pictures of the hike in and out, and some behind the scenes shots, but I left my D800 in the bag when I wasn't shooting because I needed my hands free on the trail, and by the time we got there and set up it was getting late, and I really didn't want to try the hike down in the dark, so I concentrated on the important shots. We did stop right at the end of the trailhead on the way back for a last shot by this awesome water tank covered with graffiti. Note to self- always keep a flashlight in your camera bag. This was hard to set up, focus and shoot in pitch dark.
   

   Anyway, first I had a light stand slip and my SB910 took a quick bath, but it recovered nicely and kept shooting. Then, as I moved to get a good angle for a shot, I took a quick bath when a rock shifted under the water and I wound up getting almost completely submerged. I managed to keep my D800 with the 24-70/2.8 attached above the water by slamming it into a rock on the way down and catching myself with the camera. It didn't miss a beat and kept shooting. Actually, in the final analysis, it managed better than me, because a few minutes later I noticed my foot was hurting a bit, so I looked down and found I was leaving a trail of blood in the stream from ripping a toenail off. Nothing I could do about it, and the cold water numbed it up pretty quickly, as long a I don't get leptospirosis from the water no harm no foul. At least I saved the camera, since we had just started shooting. Bottom line is that Nikons, at least their pro gear, can take a beating and keep going. Not sure my old D3200 could have survived as well verses the rock.

   I have to give another shout out to a highly underrated piece of gear that really came through and was vital to this shoot, my Manfrotto Super Clamps. You don't hear much about these things, but when you need them, nothing else will do. Even when you have other potential options, these damn things just work. Never realized how handy they would be when I grabbed a couple, now they are almost all I travel with. They are small and easily packable, and let you attach a speed light to damn near anything. For this waterfall shoot, I literally attached my speedlights to tree branches and vines. Yes, I hung speedlights from VINES! The rushing waterfall would have knocked over any light stand I could have carried up the muddy trail to the site, but these just clamped right on and went to work. Couldn't have pulled it off without them. I love these things, if you don't have any yet, get some now!

   So yeah. That's been the short version of what I have been up to lately, not including setting up a flying trapeze rig in my backyard and working on building a local circus community center at my place and realizing how soon I will be retiring from the Navy. That's kinda been freaking me out, I have to put in some serious time updating my portfolio, web site and business plan so I can see how much income I can potentially pull in from photography when I have more time to devote to it. I'd love to be able to get by with my retirement income plus shooting and working trapeze. Not sure if it'll be enough though, but I won't know if I don't go for it. So time to get cracking. If you feel like heading over to my web site, checking it out, and leaving some feedback, all constructive criticism welcomed :)

    Thanks for reading, and with that I leave you with:

 The End!