I have hit a rough spot in my life lately and unfortunately, my blog took a hit because of it. Sometimes in life you hit unexpected bumps in the road and they can knock you back pretty bad, the past few months have been hard for me, I have lost a few people in my life, and I have had a difficult time getting back on my feet. I am so grateful to have photography as an outlet to get through times like this, it has helped me more than I thought it would through several difficult times in my life, recently it hasn't been any different.
I met up with this lovely model, Alyssa Kathryn, and we connected right away on our ideas and what we really wanted out of this shoot. She was a champ and didn't mind that it was just me and her, I was wrangling lights, having her on the edge of several large cliffs and making her hike through some pretty rough terrain in some shoes that are definitely not made for anything of the sort. What came to be obvious pretty quick was that my large light/softbox was in no way going to work with the wind and just me to place it so I had to go out of my element and just use natural light. Lucky for me there was some nice cloud cover so I wasn't dealing with direct sunlight. I was actually very happy to have to try something I don't usually do, but shoot in a way that would yield results I would not only be happy with, but would actually be something in my style of lighting. I was very happy I was able to make that happen. (side note: one of these I actually did use a light, bonus points if you can figure out which one and where the light was). I also decided to pull out my 35mm film camera and shoot a roll, which I am super happy I did. I have been concentrating so much on my digital and medium format stuff that my dear 35mm has been neglected. There are a few scans in this gallery, but I am really excited to work on them in the darkroom, a process I feel like every photographer should at least try.
Sometimes we lose people, and sometimes we are forced out of our comfort zone, we have to take a new path whether we choose to or not, sometimes we come prepared to shoot with lights and there are high winds. We must take these challenges and use them to our advantage.
