Just returned from a two-day shooting spree in Hesperia and Hinkley, up in the high desert. Dirty, sweaty, tired, and tons of catch-up to do. But I had a wonderful time collaborating with ~littlegett, ~NevaehLleh, and ~Goofgirl.

Importing digital images onto my computer now. We'll see what we got. Studio work from Tuesday - headshots, bodyscapes, and figure studies. Desert nudes from Wednesday. My first take on the concept, and I am glad to have explored a bit of my own feel with shooting in this environment. I also shot three full rolls and another two partial rolls of film in the desert - 1 finished and 1 unfinished 35mm b/w roll, and 2 finished and 1 unfinished roll of Velvia on 6x7. Some interesting exposure compensations, and if I did my job right, we may just have some spectacular photographs to show for it. We shall see perhaps by Friday on the film, as I'll take it to the lab tomorrow. And sooner on the digitals, which are transferring as I speak.

So while I was gone, I had TWO clients call/email between last night and this morning, requesting reservations for today. Obviously I was not able to accommodate these. I refuse to believe, even in the interests of availability and customer service, that it is inappropriate to take Wednesday as a personal day when I have no bookings for that day by noon on Tuesday. I always take short notice bookings when I can, but at some point, *I* have to plan out my own next day around the reservations and obligations in the calendar. I would love to keep the studio available to everyone all the time and never miss out on a booking. But at the same time, I do have to plan my own days, and I don't think doing that one day in advance is unreasonable. Just a little crazy, how "short" short notice is getting to be, and how common, is my observation here.

So yep, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with catch-up, but that's inevitable, from taking a two-day vacation. Need a shower badly. Need some sleep. We slept out for about 3 hours near the Hinkley dry lake bed, arriving there around 5:30am this morning, and waking at 8:30 due to flies and heat. Had a very adventurous day, touring several sites with abandoned and dilapidated structures, shooting, sitting around, talking, shooting some more, having dinner, returning to ~littlegett's place in the evening to pick up my studio gear that I'd brought up, and coming back down to Long Beach. ~Goofgirl was a fantastic tour guide, taking us to the perfect spots to stage in some shade, and shoot in really visually interesting places! I really wish I had had a full night to camp out in the quiet desert night, but we shot for longer Tuesday night than expected, no regrets there, it was great! Then tonight, just seemed to make more sense to call it a lovely time, than go back out for a few more hours and still have to drive back late-night for tomorrow's studio business. So... another time, as soon as I reasonably can.

I do have to cool it on shooting for a while. ~NevaehLleh and I went from, "How come we haven't shot together in a whole year since our first shoot last June?" to shooting two concepts last week, two more in Andrew's studio yesterday, and the desert shooting today. So while I do have a couple more shoots in the works for maybe later this month, I'm probably not going to actively plan anything further for a bit again, to make sure I'm NOT taking too much time away from business, and stay caught up on processing images. Haven't posted any of the new stuff here yet - a few more I want to add to the sets on my personal site before finalizing what I will add to my dA gallery. But the new albums are there for anyone who likes to check those out in progress.

Upcoming shoots are "werewolf researcher" with Macabri, and modern vintage corset bodypaint figure shoot with *Conundra and ~Battledress. This will be my first collaboration as a photographer with Lisa, and I'm tremendously excited about it, not to mention determined to live up to the level that her portfolio deserves!

Meanwhile, continuing to do my best to balance business and art - always a tricky time, but so far, so good, so may good fortune continue.