Collaborating w/ Cora for her first editorial!

Late night blog post but I’ve managed to make it a streak with the exception of one day that I missed. The fact that I’m here now on the keyboard, though, I feel like I’ve been able to reset my routine for nightly writing. I had an okay day. I’m observing my first Ramadan […more on that in a freewrite soon] but I’ve managed fasting well. In addition to that, my time management has been better than usual, still making it to kickboxing, quality time with @guthrie and editing new photos. There are a lot of things that could be going much better in life, but I have to acknowledge that things could be a lot worse as well. Trying to show gratitude for the good right now.

One thing I did manage to do was dig into a shoot from 2017. This was highpoint of my career as a photographer […I’m confident in saying so after a few years to reflect]. Big things were happening. I was being hired by the biggest brands in the pinup scene, clients all over the world and working on my Dark Pinup book with @wcpublishing. It would release the following year in Las Vegas. One of the clients that hired me was my longtime friend Cora from a upscale lingerie blog. Her hope was to be the creative director for the shoot and I would be the hired photographer. We worked with a mutual friend that modeled several outfits for this editorial look book.

The energy on set was great. Cora booked a beautiful LA home on PeerSpace that hand endless areas for me to set up complex foreground, mid ground and background compositions. I’ve shot with both Cora and the model before on previous occasions so we were already familiar with one another’s style and approach to collaborating. I have a deep respect and love for Cora’s eye and creativity, so I let her decide on what looks would best suit each room. Our time was limited and hair and make-up took three hours, but in the two hours that we were shooting, we were so efficient that we checked off every piece of wardrobe on the list.

I loved returning to shoot and finding new gems that I’d overlooked when we made our original picks in 2017. This is how I’d love to spend my retirement. Reviewing the hundreds of thousands of photos I’ve taken over the course of my career and looking at them with new eyes; taking time and care to dust off the treasures that I missed during this chaotic years of my career, then breath new life back into them with edits encompassing all the skills I’ve learned. For tonight, though, this was a glimpse of what that future may be life for me. Thank you for reading. I love having this platform to share my work and my thoughts. Follow me here for more photography and stories.