“Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.”

“True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.”- both quotes by Robert Genn

“The Latest Muse”

For the 100th time, I am addressing you on my Photoblog. Its taken just over a year, as I missed my blog birthday/anniversary on the 2nd of August. I’ve looked back over my posts from then and I really like where this is going. I think I’ve made some satisfactory progress and am pleased with my commitment to maintaining it. Oh sure, sometimes, I leveled off to just one post a week, but when you apply a little smoothing to the stats, I’ve been there for you. “Are you not entertained?!” (That was a Russell Crowe, “Gladiator” reference…)

Over the last year, I’ve made some major changes. Switching over to digital from film was the most major I’d say. Without a darkroom here in Vegas, the appeal for film lost some of its romance for me. Now, I can hardly imagine my workload if I were to begin again shooting film. If someone right now gave me a darkroom of my very own, I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. (Breathe, Dave…) Actually, I would. I just wouldn’t get to put it to use much. I do, however, still have every intent on getting my hands on a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. I am still fascinated with it and would love to use it exclusively for my landscape and special portrait work. I wouldn’t use it without a darkroom, though. It was interesting, today I was visiting Edda at B&C Camera. In walks a girl from Connecticut who is purchasing medium format film. I couldn’t help but ask what she was shooting and before she answered, I had guessed the 67 and was correct.

This past Sunday was another interesting day. When it comes to shooting nudes, I can shoot for basically as long as I have juice. Battery juice, that is. I’ve yet to have a model that can keep up with me in that regard, and especially in extreme heat conditions. Well, I’ve now met my match with Lorelei.

The term Muse originally refers to the nine daughters of Zeus in Greek mythology who presided over different elements of the arts. You’ll find the dictionary a definition meaning to gaze or meditate on. Well, artists who use the nude figure as live models refer to the best of these as muses, who exhibit a measure of passion and commitment to their trade. Lorelei is such a muse.

We met up on Sunday to scout out a trail and do some shooting while we were out. We ended up shooting from sunup til sundown and that includes during the middle of the day. We just stayed in the shade during the hottest parts. That still didn’t keep us from cooking at times. The sun was still high overhead and seemed to linger. We found one spot that was so gorgeous that we both knew we needed take advantage of it. The problem was that it was just sunny to get good shots in and trying to wait 3 hours before the sun dipped behind the mountains just didn’t seem like anything we wanted to do and we were low on water. Heading back to the car was not an option. So how do we get the shot?

Well, as it turns out, we found a shaded area and decided to do some candid shots. We chatted while I shot with no posing directions. We also discovered that we had a couple more bottles of water than we thought. The next thing we knew, there was no visible sun. It was 3 hours later! So we hurried back up to our spot to get the shots we needed before we lost too much light. It was amazing. By no means do I ever want to over work a model, but Lorelei was a real trooper. She was having too much fun to stop and I never seemed to get enough shots. I’ve often talked about some models who I could simply shoot all day. Well, Lorelei is one of them and we did. I can tell you we’ve already planned some more shoots as she has a kindred spirit complimentary to mine. I think its her hair that really sets things off. During our initial interview, she had it up. When I asked her to let it down, I was floored. We did our second interview shoot and almost every single shot was a keeper. I don’t mean to be overly complimentary of this girl, but damn! You can’t tell me that you don’t agree. The only downside is that I now have to edit all those images…some 600 plus, I think. When I have enough, you can look for more of her work on my website, hopefully soon. Thanks, Lorelei.