She sold me the paper coasters in Tucson and had a trucker hat on and I asked if I could take her photo but without it on and she said she was vain but she would let me and I am glad she took the hat off because her eyes were cool.
The Model CS. I scouted out this area before she was done working so I knew I wanted to capture someone’s face with the beautiful light in the tall windows behind me. She obliged.
She was sitting across from me as I was holding down the fort waiting for our daughter while my unwife went browsing the little stores on 4th Avenue in Tucson. Turns out she was acquaintances with my daughter. I told her we were hoping her friends would watch out for her since we didn’t live in Tucson and she said she would, but was leaving to move back home to Oregon in three weeks.
She had moved to Tucson to become independent and discover new things, just develop on her own, which she had done for 6 months. But she was homesick for family and felt that the lack of structure to her life in Tucson, without the familiar obligations and connections was very hard. Her Uncle was in the hospital and she felt bad not being able to visit him.
She is a good and strong young woman, I think she will have a great life.
She was at the front desk, then in the gallery as I looked at the exhibition. We got into a long discussion about the images in the show and that led to a discussion about my work which led to me asking her if she wanted to create some art with me which led to her saying yes which led us outside to take some photos I will use in a collage and also some straight portraits, of which this is one.
Models getting ready for a shoot are sometimes more interesting and fun to photograph than the shoot itself.
She had been running around off-set wondering where her lip gloss was, so when she found it I followed her into the kitchen at the auto repair shop/photography studio and took some shots as she put it on.
We were having a photo shoot in an auto repair garage that adjoins the photography studio. We had someone in who was giving a tutorial on studio lighting. At one point he asked this model to do some poses on a divan/couch with her shirt pulled up, exposing her abs and belly button. I could tell she was a bit uncomfortable with that and was worried about what her parents would think, especially her father. The poses weren’t exploitive as such, but they were on the cheesy side and I could tell she was a bit awkward about it.
Turns out she has the same name as one of my daughters and graduated from the same high school, a few years later. We talked a bit about her going to college and what she wanted to do. She seemed to like the photos I took off-set. I will have to ask her what she thought about the ones I mentioned above.
Often I will just play with an image just to keep in practice regarding my Photoshop skills. I spent about 2 hours on this one, just trying different things, not having a particular agenda since it wasn’t commissioned. I like having some time to do that and it is essential for any artist to spend time just ‘goofing’ off so to speak. Without it your work can become so stale and uninspiring that you cease to do it any more.
There were 2-3 kids playing on this bar for a quite a while. I waited quite a while until there was just the one girl and she was in just the right pose with just the right horse walking by. I wish I had a chair while I was waiting but it is always worth it for the right shot.
This week will be a number of photos from an Equestrian competition I photographed in Inola, OK.
This is a pretty straight portrait. I waited for her in the shade of the arena knowing that the very bright sunlight behind me would make for a great glow on her face and in her eyes.
Day four of my week long series on ‘People of Color’. A regular customer of mine at the restaurant where I worked for many years. I didn’t mean it to be such a flat, graphic image but something about the lines on the sheet and pillow started me in that direction and it slowly built from there. It wasn’t stylistically consistent with my other work at the time, but the subject matter and the stripes definitely were.
I don’t know if she ever saw this drawing or not actually.
Day three of my week long series on ‘People of Color’. Her tattoos sang beautifully together.
