We were maybe an hour into it when we realized we were not alone.
I guess I should back up…The summer season in the Pacific NW is fleeting, at best. There are those who brave the ice caves or lava fields or deeply dripping forests at other times of the year but I will admit to being a fair weather adventurer. I fell for the not-so-distant high desert a long time ago because it's more interesting in the shoulder seasons and even more survivable in the winter. But for throwing models into waterfalls or just generally being nude in nature, well….summer is pretty awesome. Over the past two or three decades, however, the increasing population of the NW has driven their Subaru Outbacks to weirder and wilder destinations, wearing puffy jackets and hauling over-sized water bottles deeper and deeper into wonderful woods. There is goddamned NOWHERE to get away from them.
I have been hooking around the less-traveled corner into this little nature preserve for a number of years. Once upon a time it was wildly exotic, beyond the boundaries of Our Fair City. These days it's practically a weekend living room for Portlanders and I can anticipate the Viet fisher folks, the sunset wedding photogs, over-excited hikers and, yes, an assortment of bird watchers skulking along the edges of the shallow lakes, keeping their eyes out for……us?
The set itself had taken half a day to build. I was using clear plastic-wrap to encase a stand of slim river-bottom alder and over the course of two days worked with two very different models who brought totally different perspectives to the concept. The more I built, the more I wanted to build. I want to make it a playground. I want to build a strip mall, a maze, a wonderland of plastic wrap that someone can wiggle through or cartwheel or laugh their way around. This is almost as much fun as throwing paint at people. And like all the best shoots the results are wildly at odds with the giggle fest that we created.
I don't know if it was coincidence but there was a bird watcher halfway around the curve of the lake both days. They seemed chill. I assume they had binoculars. They may have had some amazing lens and gotten their own shoot out of our frolic. Honestly, more power to them if they got something interesting! I found the images most interesting as black-and-white, high-contrast. More to come, I'm sure….
