NYC wrapup

Hello patrons! I thought I’d write a quick note about my NYC trip. I started with 9 models (well, 8 models and one model’s friend who she recommended to me through her nude video art pieces). Ultimately I did 6 shoots - the first day was just a clusterfuck of timing, where I would go to a place, wait 30 minutes waiting for responses, then have to leave because I had to be somewhere else, wait to hear they’d also be really late, then I had to cancel that and move on... it didn’t help that I did a redeye flight from Phoenix and was running on empty. The end of the first day I hung out w Cacia Zoo and her boyfriend who is from the same musical era of 90s techno and UK alternative as me, and I had the best goddamn pizza ever, so that ended well! Fuck all this photography shit, just eat pizza!

Day 2, I had broke down and rented a studio from people I liked and booked my hairstylist friend. My original plan of just shooting outdoors and soaking up city atmosphere was kind of a really bad idea, just really difficult for me to pick out more than one or two locales in a city I don’t know super well. Smartly I only had 2 models for a 4 hr studio session because of course they were both late, but When you expect that and you know you have the time it’s not so bad! Annika is a 21 year old art student into surreal video and Ella Mai (also 21) has worked as a commercial/ fashion model since she was 12. I found them both on IG and was super happy to meet new people who were into my style. To aid with these ladies was my hairstylist friend of 8 years Andy Tseng, who made some really weird stuff with Annika and really pretty stuff with Ella Mai. 

Then an actual hour shooting with Cacia, a quick nap, a Lyft to an art museum to shoot around with Lorelei Black for exactly one hour, then meeting w Kacie Marie at 11 pm to shoot in a creepy basketball court and along all sorts of rainy night/ flashlight lit/ barbed wire vibes. Ultimately we took another Lyft to a late night diner, and thankfully the Lyft driver (scared we would narc on the maryjane smoke left in his car I guess) let us shoot the cool cinematic city/ rainy window car stuff I have been thinking about since I saw The Shape of Water.

Kacie and I wrapped at 3 AM, but I was committed to meeting Thursday’s one-and-only shoot at 6 am at my hostel. I probably ended up with one hour of sleep between the days. 

Erin Mae was a bit more mysterious than the other models as she barely writes anything on her largely nude art model related posts and profiles; imagine my surprise when it turns out she designs elaborate sets for a D&D company and does LARPing. We hit it off super well and went out to Coney Island beach to shoot in the only beautiful weather I got to see the entire trip. Erin turned out to be very much on a similar creative wavelength about what we wanted to make and I can tell that the lack of pressure for time or expectations and the fact I was on that crazy sleep dep energy for one last bank robbery, as it were, made for a fucking incredible shoot.

All in all... I probably shot exactly the amount of people I genuinely had energy and time for. I could tell the two people from Day 1 were genuinely bummed and asked about rescheduling during the other days, but if it’s a model shooting trip I try to fill all the time just making art; no downtime or entertainment or room for rescheduling.

Anywho, I was able to get bits of video interviews with Lorelei and Erin, some video art footage for Annika, Cacia and Erin, and bts with Annika and Ella, and of course around 200 instax from all shoots combined, with the intent of making new Instax squares of a lot of the digital images I shot using my Sq-10 printer. I hope you guys enjoy all this new work that will be spread out over the next few months!