2021

Joey in 2021

When summer break (and my freedom from school arrived) I was sure I'd be able to get out and do some glamour work, but if you read my last post you'll already know that the shoots I was able to accomplish were done before the summer break. No one was going anywhere that year - we were wearing cloth masks and gloves to go to the grocery stores to survey the sparsely stocked shelves and very limited and rationed supplies of toilet paper, paper towels, and sanitizer. Models adapted and remote shoots became a process. It was not a great summer. 

When the school 2020 -2021 school year the school district was far more prepared and the online school work was far more structured and interactive and we all became super proficient with Zoom meetings and submitting lessons online. Those lessons included written assignments, videos, photos and believe it or not, nature walks. The lessons were time consuming, starting at 8:30 am and finishing up usually after 5 pm. Of course, everyone was still social distancing and very few, if any, models were posing in person. In December, when vaccines became available, I hoped things would get back to normal, but the limited supply meant younger, healthy people (like models) were the lowest priority and so for modeling and glamour photography nothing changed. 

Bree Summer 2021

Fortunately, as 2020 segued into 2021 vaccines became more and more available and in the summer near the end of the school year, things were looking a lot better for glamour. I managed to get five shoots done in the summer of 2021 - examples of which you can see in this post. Only one of the shoots was with a new model, Cat, but three of my favorites came to my rescue with their willingness to shoot. 

Unfortunately, in the late summer, early fall, the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus became predominant and out of an abundance of caution, my family decided I would continue to coach my granddaughters until at least Christmas, and then until Spring Break, and then, ah, heck, just finish the school year. Now, I won't say things are back to normal by any means. Vaccines and boosters are readily available to those who need and want them, and while I try to be apolitical in my blogging, the anti-vax idiots are keeping the virus dangerous with by incubating new mutations of the virus in their bodies, and yes, continuing to fill up hospital beds and morgues. 2022 is looking a lot better, though and I've been shooting pretty steadily for the past few weeks. More about that in my next post.

Cat

Joey in September

Floofie (Kira) in her Studio

2020 - Global Pandemic - Year 1

Lust - Merrique

The twentieth year of the second millenium of the Common Era was almost a total bust for me photographically.  I did exactly two glamour shoots the entire year. One was a Patreon set for my friend, Merrique, and the other was a socially distanced, outdoor shoot during a lull in the pandemic. The rest of the time was primarily spent coaching my kindergarten and 2nd grade grandkids with their online studies while we were doing our best to deal with the pandemic conditions.  

I did do a bit of editing and cataloging and, of course, I continued to take photos of my family events and portraits of my grandchildren as opportunities permitted. I did a fair amount of walking and biking, but most of the summer and into the fall we were plagued with heavy smoke from the many wildfires in the surrounding areas which made landscape photography nigh impossible. It definitely impacted the ability to breath out-of-doors and made for some unusual sunsets and sunrises.

Danielle at Sauvie

Fortunately, my one outside shoot happened in May before the wildfires gained a significant hold. We shot on Sauvie Island, one of my favorite places, and even though the model and I stayed well apart (separate vehicles to the area), we got some lovely images. I also found out where the exact boundary of the clothing optional area was located thanks to a friendly ranger.

Along with the pandemic, we had the utter chaos of the election cycle and all the idiocy that typically goes along with it. This time, though, it was exacerbated by the lies and venality of the former president and his cult of ignorance. Fortunately, there were enough sane voters left to oust the previous president, though the Big Lie continues and he continues to babble his nonsense on the right-wing networks that will have him.

That's enough about 2020.  I'll discuss 2021 in my next post.  At least I'll have a few more images to share.

Winter Editing

Joey Darke at Fairy Creek

Since I retired from my full time job a few years ago, I was able to concentrate on shooting more projects with various local and traveling models. So, for about 4 years I was shooting about about 50 sessions a year with many different models. Of course, many of these sessions were repeat shoots with the same models in different settings and shooting different concepts and themes. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, I have built up quite the inventory or images, very many of which have been edited and published, but a majority are untouched except for some preliminary global editing for white balance and exposure as they were imported into my Lightroom catalog. This winter, I've been working on editing some of this backlog, and even re-editing previously published images with new techniques that I've learned in recent years.

These days, besides picking up a few shooting gigs here and there to help out local models with their various endeavors, I'm primarily spending time taking care of my family and grandchildren, which leaves me little time for shooting. Though I do plan do shoot this year with several of my favorite models, I'm sure my yearly average of sessions is going to drop significantly. So, you're likely to see fewer new shoots with new faces on the sites where I usually publish my images, and more images from past shoots and concepts.

Nikko at Sauvie Island