Where to begin? [link] D. M. Gremlin and I just got back from spending the 4th of July holiday in Las Vegas. We were primarily there to attend the opening of [link] UniqueNudes' gallery showing at Apparatus. And of course while we were in town, we set up a location shoot with a local model, and shot machine guns at The Gun Store. Yes, it was a shooting weekend!

It was a really cool trip. We pretty much spent the days scouting shoot locations - hiking around sand dunes and the trails at Red Rock Canyon. Yep, in the record-breaking 120-degree heat, we were out hiking in the hight of the afternoon sun! Crazy us! We were drinking gallons of water every day out in that heat, but it felt great to be outdoors hiking and climbing, seeing some beautiful scenery, and searching out the "year-round springs" that turned out to be a little trickle that we had to climb down (and back up) a canyon off-trail to find. We found what turned out to be some great spots amongst the red rocks for our photo shoot, which went really well despite having to wait for hikers to pass by a few times. How dare other hikers come by OUR photo locations!

Friday and Saturday evening, we spent at the gallery and studio events held by Richard Rasner of UniqueNudes. We both knew Richard's work, and had shot with some models in common, but hadn't met him personally. He turned out to be a great guy, who definitely knows how to put on an event! We mingled at the gallery opening on Friday, then got invited to go along on the limo ride, cruising the Strip and Fremont Street for 4 hours. It was way fun to meet everyone else involved. Saturday was the studio party with our new friends, and then Sunday morning before our shoot at Red Rock Canyon, we went back to the studio to check out Richard's shoot with models and rats. Yep, models and rats. Pet rats up for adoption, to be specific! The models loved the rats, the rats loved the models, and one model even ended up adopting a hairless rat. A nude rat for a nude model - couldn't have been more perfect! I ended up doing some "behind the scenes" documentary photography of that shoot. I'll be sending along a bunch of those shots to Richard to post, and maybe posting some of them in my own gallery as well.

Sunday afternoon, we went shooting machine guns at The Gun Store on Tropicana. Gremlin had been before, but I hadn't. Man, I wish we could have shot every gun there. But, ammo is WAY expensive, so we limited ourselves to one pick each. He picked the SAW (Squad Assault Weapon), and I picked a decked-out M-16. We both shot both weapons, and pretty much agreed - the SAW totally rocks - what a fun gun to shoot, and it's really smooth. The M-16 is much tougher to control, even in very short bursts. While it was fun to fire, it seems like it would take a LOT of practice to make that weapon practical at anything but pretty short range. I guess that's what military training is all about. Not that we want to join the military, mind you, just shoot the guns!

So it was shooting to shooting, then on to shooting! Our model for the Red Rock Canyon shoot turned out to be super cool, and totally gutsy in climbing around and up the rocks. All that hiking around and scouting locations, aside from being great exercise and fun, paid off. We had several choice spots picked out, and when the first spot became a little overrun with hikers, we just moved on down the trail and picked up our shooting again. This was our first real location shoot, and it was a totally different kind of adventure than a studio shoot. We'll definitely do it again - have to get out and find some locations around Long Beach and LA.

So Sunday night after the shoot, we headed straight back, got back here pretty late, and got ourselves some rest! We have a couple days off here at the studio before we're back in to sessions. Time to unpack, revive from the heat a bit (though it's pretty hot here too!), and get new friends added on dA, MySpace, LJ, etc. So, if you're someone we met at Richard's events this past weekend, we may be adding you, or if you find us first, please add us!

Thanks again to Richard for making us feel at home at his studio, and once again, it was wonderful meeting everyone and making new friends! Hopefully we'll get back to Vegas a little more often now that we've made contact with such a cool part of the art photography scene there!

" title="birds-club" " title="parrotsandbirdsunion"