The day job is a fulfilling pastime — I run a small production company doing boutique events from concert series to gala awards ceremonies. It's always different and always changing. But post-pandemic my summers have gotten busier and that means that I'm not getting as much outdoor shooting time as I used to….and I miss it.
Which is why, when the stars aligned, I was quick to jump at a week off my current summer concert series and availability from a pair of wonderful models doing very different things. My old friend Eva was headed TO California for a wedding while unmet-friend Lumi was circling Oregon in a first modeling tour. I had nine days of open space on my calendar. Let's go.
Eva and I had very specific plans and they absolutely did not work out. That's OK, we adapted. The idea was to use a full moon and the Perseid meteor showers to get night-time long-exposures at a very remote Oregon Coast feature but when we arrived at the trailhead we were met with insistent mist, deep fog and very un-summer-ish cold (a natural phenomenon — it was triple digits a few miles inland which always draws cold ocean air across the beaches). We punted. I'll come back to this after the card loads onto this computer.
After half a week of laughter and deep conversation, Eva continued on to her next stop and I circled back to where we started to meet my new friend, Lumi. Again, I had an idea and it turned out to be wrong. And, again, it didn't matter. We made the best of our first evening and then played our way out to the ocean to catch sunset. I was looking for a sense of joy, perhaps the most subversive of emotions, and Lumi filled that role wonderfully.
FDT. Has to be said.