Hi everyone I know that it's been a while since I wrote a blog post. Let me explain my absence. For those that don't know Jeannie and I broke up and that hit me very hard and I went into a depressive state. I am no longer ashamed to admit that I suffer from depression and anxiety and I went to the Dr. to get back on some meds to help with that. The medication seems to be working well and I go back to see the Dr. in two weeks to re-evaluate and see if changes need to be made.

I am also very thankful for a group of friends to reached out to me and lent an ear to listen and give advice and I am so thankful for that. I have some amazing friends and I am so happy to have them in my life and I love them for it.

Since I was starting to feel better the urge to get creative again has come back and I reached out to my friend Emma to see if she would like to do a fine art shoot with me and she happily agreed.

Now for those of you who don't know about #shapesandshit this started a couple of years ago when I was shooting my friend Emily and we were in a park and I was posing her to blend in with the shapes of the rocks and I said we are making shapes and shit and she said that I should start using it for all my fine art work. So began the #shapesandshit hashtag. I even own the domain name for it.

So on to the shoot. Last week on our day off we went out to Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsboro NC which is an old Nascar track that has long been abandoned but turned into a park with walking trails. The old concrete grandstands are still there along with some of the buildings. I knew that if we went early in the morning when most people were at work the park would be fairly empty and we could pull off the shoot with no issues.

We arrived at the park and there was a couple doing stair climbs when I wanted to shoot so we decided to walk around to the back of the speedway to see what we could find to shoot in the meantime. We saw a bench and with nobody around we started our shoot.

Emma is very flexible and does a lot of pole fitness so I knew that her poses were going to be epic. We shot off a few frames on the bench and was able to get this amazing shot.

After this we walked around back to the grandstands and the couple was gone so we started figuring out the poses that we wanted to do. Emma was very good in figuring out the poses and we just started shooting and we got this images which blew me away when I saw it.

I have this in both black and white and in color and I cant decide which one I like better. Emma likes the color version hence why I am posing it here. We did get interrupted a couple of time by walkers but since it was dirt we could hear them coming and Emma was able to cover up quickly. We continued shoot a few more poses.

Since it was very humid we decided to start to wrap up but I had an idea for one more shot using the frame of a window in on of the concession stands at the top of the grandstand.

That wrapped up our shoot and for me this shoot was very therapeutic for me. I know that I am happiest when I have a camera in my hand and I am creating art. I need to get out there a lot more and continue creating on a regular basis for myself. While I am glad that my business is getting busier and I am shooting for work a lot more often noting compares to doing personal work.

So that is going to wrap up this weeks blog post. I hope you enjoyed it

For this week I didn't have anything new to share (but I will next week) so I decided to do another throwback blog post. For this one I wanted to share some of my favorite images that I have taken of one of my good close friends and an amazing model Emily.

Emily and I met a couple of years ago at a Christmas party and I knew right away that we were going to be close friends. We messaged each other quite a few times and then we set up a shoot at Raven Rock State park.

We met and walked around the park for a while looking for areas to shoot. I saw a really nice formations of rock and we started to shoot.

We had a wonderful shoot and we knew that we had to plan another one.

My friend Nita had taken me to this property that she had permission to shoot at and it had a wonderful mountaintop view. I told Emily about it and we set up the shoot

On the day of the shoot while driving up there we knew that there was a threat of thunderstorms but we decided to risk it and shoot anyway. We hiked up the mountain and when we got to the location I could see the storm clouds rolling in and i knew we had about 15 minutes to shoot and then we would be getting the bad weather. I quickly set up and did our shoot. I have to say the storm clouds made the shoot .

After I took this last shot I told Emily that we had to leave the mountain. I quickly packed up my gear and Emily barely had a chance to get dressed as almost hurricane force winds started blowing around us. We started running down the mountain and I almost lost my way as the trail we came up now had a tree down across it so I didn't recognize the trail. Emily only in her underwear and I ran down the mountain to the car and to safety. I have to say I was scared that we were going to get struck by lightning or have a tree fall on us during the run down the mountain but it was all worth it.

For the last shoot that I want to share this week Emily and I went to a spot along the Eno river where I had assisted my friend Paul on a shoot a few weeks earlier and I knew that I had to come back to this awesome location. For this shoot we were going to do a fine art shoot and get Emily in the river posing along all of the rock formations in the river. Again there was another storm brewing but we had a lot more time to shoot before the weather would hit us. The water was nice and warm and I even waded in the water with my camera to get these shots.

Well that is it for today. I have a wonderful shoot lined up on Sunday morning with a model named Jackie and we are going to shoot at an abandoned house in the woods next to my apartment complex and i look forward to sharing them with you next week.

The blog is back and the triumphant return of #Shapesandshit

Time for another throwback. This time with Emily.

Search Posts

Featured Posts