Welcome to the Internet: NOLA, day two but day one actually.

 Ok, I haven't blogged in a hot minute, because I've been busy as balls. 

But we're on the road! Or were, yesterday. We woke up and drove to NOLA for a week, despite the fact that we're going to be here during some really fucking shit weather. I checked the forecast a few days ago to see how hot it was going to be, and saw instead that it's going to be raining every single day we're here. 

Well fuck.

We decided to leave a day early to get one full day of sunshine in, and we really made the most of it. We woke up and did Laurel's senior photos at City Park this morning ,came back so Derek could sleep off his beignet stupor, and once he woke up, we headed out to Bayou Coquille to do some nature shots. 

Check out the critters I spied with my little eyed!

In the interest of full disclosure, that is not Bayou Coquille, that is Bayou City Park. 

HERE are shots from Bayou Coquille!!

Listen, we love spiders in this house, and I won't apologize for that. 

Wait. Allow me to clarify. We do not love spiders IN the house. We are just a family that loves spiders. 

Sigmund Freug. 

 We could have spent a few more minutes in the bayou, but I was starting to feel the nasty signs of heat stroke, so we left. 

On the way to the bayou, we saw a campus of really great, really abandoned looking, buildings. So we stopped on the way out to photograph them.

Derek and I left Laurel in the car while we explored the grounds, and the buildings truly are architectural stunners. Could we have gotten in? Yes. Derek found a few entry points. Were we tempted? Also yes, this is the shit we live for. Those things being said, Laurel was waiting for us in the car, and as I told Derek, we can never jut pop in anywhere and take a quick look. A quick look to us turns into several hours of seeing everything, and still not seeing enough. We also didn't bring our masks, and with the weather in this state, and the boarded up state of the places, who knows what's festering inside? We weren't prepared. 

I may be regretting not going on, and we may be debating going back. 

It's day three now, and the tropical storm will be hovering over us in just a few hours. Hopefully I find the time and energy to log today a little bit later. 

Every boy huggles his pretty pussy, part two.

 As promised, I want to put up a collection of my favorite shots I did for clients last year. The year started off pretty slowly, which is always fine by me, since school makes it difficult for me to concentrate and get photos done, and then covid hit and I had to pull all of my ads, and then we felt a bit more comfortable with precautions and then we did a fuck ton of shoots, and then we had to move and turn shoot after shoot down. Which was a bummer, but I'm really pleased with the work we did last year. 

I won't be posting any of the derby shoots Derek and I did. Not because I don't love them, but because headshots are Derek's speed, not mine, and he did the shooting for those, I just edited them. It feels disingenuous. 

On we go!

I LOVE milk bath shots. I was really sad that we had to turn down a few, and ran out of time for others, but the ones we did get to do this year are my favorites so far. 

BLACK. BATH. BOMB. Pure magic. 

Doesn't she look like a newly born wood nymph?? 

I had had my eye on shooting in that location for a LOOOOONG time. Kee Kee made all of my dreams come true there. She's too fucking cool.

And now the absolute highlight of my 2020: mermaid photos. I did a few in 2019, and I had been waiting on doing them since....oh, 2018? Whenever I knew we were moving to Hawai'i, I knew I had to do mermaids. It took me a long time to convince Derek these would be popular or profitable enough to justify buying the tails (they are not inexpensive, and they do not last terribly long), but when I finally did, I jumped on it. I did some test shoots in 2019 with friends who agreed to model for me, and then I got my first for real paying merclient, and then I got so many more. Again, covid rained on our parade and we turned down a LOT of shoots, and I've gotten requests for them since leaving the island that I obviously had to say no to, as well. It's been too cold here in Missouri for me to look at the places I have eyeballed, and to find new places that I don't know about, but as soon as weather warms up, I'm looking forward to seeing if I can make mermaids work here, too. 

Here are my favorites from 2020:

And there it is. 2020 wasn't all bad, but I'm very lucky, in that regard. I'm hoping I can feel confident enough to get back into photography sometime soon, but if not, that's fine. I have personal projects I want to work on, I'm resolved to posting more thirst traps on instagram because I'm a snack and I need to, and I'm hoping to start grad school in the fall. If it isn't a busy professional photo year, I'm alright with that. The plague isn't over yet.