Ok, so I may have been a little over zealous when I said I was going to post everyday. I have been busy though so at least I have an excuse. Lets see what have I been up to. . . ? Well on Tuesday I met with a model. Her name is Nicole and she is the model I referred to to in my previous post. We met up and had a couple beers, got to know each other and set a date for a shoot. She is excited and so am I. I'm not sure if we are going to be able to do the desert shoot or not because of financial reasons. The main reason is because in order to do the desert shoot right it really needs to be an overnight shoot so we can do some sunrise shots and I just cant afford to put up a crew in a hotel. I thought about seeing if she was open to camping out but I really want Christi to come and she has to work Tuesday, and Nicole has 2 kids so leaving them overnight probably isn't feasible. So we are thinking of shooting at Nicole's friends ranch which she has offered the use of. This will be good becasue it's private property and fairly secluded so that's a plus.

So I've also been busy with a construction project . I want all my outdoor shoots to be a success but in order to shoot in direct sunlight it's pretty much essential to diffuse the sunlight some way. Most pros accomplish this with what's called a scrim. You theater/photography types probably know what a scrim is but to the layman, it's basically a big screen that is placed between the subject and the light source to diffuse harsh overhead light, or sunlight in this case. Unfortunately a low end scrim can easily run $500 so I decided to design and build my own. I used 3/4" PVC pipes to build a frame and white rip-stop nylon for the diffuser. The whole thing ended up costing right around $40. Once all the glue dries and I put it together for the first time I'll shoot some pictures of it and post them. I also needed a reflector and they are around $50+ so I found a white, heavy vinyl roll up window blind at a thrift store that has a navy blue back so no light passes through. It was only $3.99, and I'm using left over PVC to build a frame for it. So I basically got a scrim and a reflector for under $50, how awesome is that? Plus it's been fun building it.

I also got a phone call yesterday morning from my Craig's List ad for a wedding shoot. I'm meeting with the couple on Saturday morning. It's a rather interesting situation too, but I'll elaborate in another post. Things are really starting to go pretty well, now the trick is to keep this momentum going.

Anyway, I was going to make todays photo of the day a test shot that I made when I met with Nicole but she was completely casual and not wearing any makeup so I'm going to wait and post some photo's from the shoot instead. So today's Photo of the Day is a shot from Canon Beach Oregon of Haystack Rock. I was going crazy with boredom a couple weeks ago and Christi and I were driving around looking for something to do, and I just pointed the car west and drove to Canon Beach. We got there just in time to catch the sunset and I was able to make this dramatic black and white panorama. I did get some good photos of the sunset but sunsets are just so cliche`, plus you rarely see black and white landscapes these days. My friend Lori wrote me an email today and she told me she recently watched a documentary about Ansel Adams. She mentioned she thought of me when she was watching it, so I'm dedicating todays photo to Lori and to Ansel Adams. I really love that I can share some of the beauty of Oregon with my east coast friends, so enjoy!